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      Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift Race for No. 1

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      The two pop music titans, locked in a close contest for the top of next week’s album chart, are stoking fans’ competitive spirit with a variety of digital tactics.A cold war between pop music titans — or at least their mobilizing fan bases and record labels — turned into a digital arms race this week as both Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish gunned for the No. 1 spot on next week’s Billboard album chart.Swift, 34, has occupied the top of the Billboard 200 for the past four weeks with her blockbuster new album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” which has earned more than 3.6 million equivalent album sales so far (counting physical purchases, downloads and streams). But Eilish’s well-reviewed new album, “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” is challenging for No. 1 in its debut, as its 10 songs prove popular on streaming services like Spotify.If only it were that simple.Already, some impassioned followers of the two artists had been stoking a rivalry, dating back to comments Eilish made in March about “some of the biggest artists in the world” selling many vinyl versions of the same album, “which ups the sales and ups the numbers and gets them more money.”The tactic, which Eilish called “wasteful” and damaging to the environment, has been widespread but used especially broadly — and effectively — by Swift. (Even before those comments, Eilish’s brother and main collaborator, Finneas, had once been heard on a hot mic joking about being “sued by Taylor Swift” after performing with an artist who had criticized her work.)Eilish, 22, said later that she had not meant to single out any artist with her vinyl comments and added that she had participated in the practice, too. (Both artists’ work remains available in a variety of physical formats, though Eilish has stressed sustainability.)Still, when Swift pre-empted the release of Eilish’s album last week with three special digital editions of “Tortured Poets,” available for 24 hours and including previously unheard “first-draft phone memo” demos, many saw the move as pointed. Especially online, where pop fan allegiance can be a blood sport, the matchup became one to watch.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Cassie After Sean Combs Assault Footage: ‘Open Your Heart to Believing Victims’

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      The singer, who sued the hip-hop mogul over allegations of rape and abuse, posted a statement after 2016 video emerged last week showing him assaulting her in a hotel.Cassie, the singer who accused Sean Combs of years of physical and sexual abuse in a lawsuit that she settled, on Thursday addressed footage of the music mogul assaulting her that emerged last week, saying in an Instagram post that domestic violence had broken her down to “someone I never thought I would become.”“Thank you to everyone that has taken the time to take this matter seriously,” the singer, whose full name is Casandra Ventura, wrote in the post. “My only ask is that EVERYONE open your heart to believing victims the first time. It takes a lot of heart to tell the truth out of a situation that you were powerless in.”It is the first time that Ms. Ventura has spoken publicly about her accusations against Mr. Combs, whom she dated for about a decade, since her lawsuit was filed last November and settled in one day. Since then, as Mr. Combs has faced a cascade of legal troubles, Ms. Ventura has spoken about her claims only through her lawyer, who released a statement calling the footage of the assault “gut-wrenching” when it was published by CNN last week.In the footage from 2016, which appeared to come from security cameras, Ms. Ventura is seen waiting for an elevator in a hotel when Mr. Combs, wearing a towel, grabs the back of her sweatshirt and throws her to the ground, kicking her twice before dragging her down the hallway away from the elevators. The video corroborates some of the details from Ms. Ventura’s lawsuit, which recalls Mr. Combs assaulting her at an InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles in 2016 as she tried to leave.Although his lawyer denied the allegations in the lawsuit at the time, Mr. Combs released an apology video following the release of the footage, saying that he took “full responsibility” for his actions and that he had since been to therapy and rehab.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gamelan Dharma Swara Finds Its Authentic Self

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      The ensemble, which plays traditional and contemporary Balinese music, nearly dissolved during the pandemic. Reborn, it will perform a piece created for its members.On Mother’s Day in the main hall of the Ridgewood Presbyterian Church in Queens, a handful of members of Gamelan Dharma Swara, an ensemble that plays traditional and contemporary Balinese music, practiced its new piece, “Pagar Ayu.” It was a joyous cacophony — a melding of metallophones, other percussive instruments and flute — though it was still in need of refinement.“You’re giving away some part of yourself to the people,” Victoria Lo Mellin, Dharma Swara’s president, directed the musicians. Lo Mellin, 38, who has been with the ensemble since 2007, tried to communicate a sense of urgency. The world premiere of “Pagar Ayu” — a moment to celebrate the group’s rebirth in the wake of the pandemic with a work created expressly for its members — was less than two weeks away.There are more than 100 gamelan groups in the United States. Some perform the music and dance styles that developed on the Indonesian island on Bali; others take up those from the nearby islands of Java or Sunda. Some hew closely to the traditions rooted in gamelan’s 1,300-year history; others mix in, either subtly or liberally, Western and modern influences.Dharma Swara is firmly situated in the Balinese branch of the music, which has a generally faster tempo — think wind chimes more often caught up in a glorious gale than riding a contemplative breeze — and uses fewer gongs and more gangsa, a type of ornate bamboo-and-brass metallophone with keys that are suspended above the instrument’s body. But as much as the members embrace gamelan and its origins, they are also mindful of their own.“We have a personality that’s uniquely American. It’s innately American,” Lo Mellin said.To prepare for the debut of “Pagar Ayu,” the members took part in a three-day retreat at Chautauqua to bond, practice and learn more about Balinese culture. Tara Bryan for The New York TimesEstablishing an identity that is distinct, authentic and respectful has been Dharma Swara’s ongoing quest for more than a decade. After preparing for and performing at the 2010 Bali Arts Festival, the first time a Western ensemble had been invited to Indonesia to participate in the yearly celebration of Balinese culture, members started to ask themselves what else they could achieve.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tems, R&B’s Golden Child, Dials In

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      When the ground began to shake, rocking her bed to-and-fro like a raft in a current, Temilade Openiyi briefly wondered if she was dreaming. It was a bright April morning and she was still jet lagged from a flight — 12 hours from Lagos, Nigeria, to New York. It seemed unlikely that her hotel could actually be vibrating. And yet there she was, eyes wide open, bobbing along with everything else in the room.Openiyi, better known as Tems, had stopped on the East Coast on her way to Los Angeles, where she would soon begin rehearsals for her debut appearance at the Coachella music festival. It would be one in a swiftly multiplying series of firsts for the singer, songwriter and producer, whose music slides between R&B, pop and Afrobeats: her first album, “Born in the Wild,” due June 7 from RCA; its first single, the blissful party starter “Love Me JeJe”; her first headlining world tour, kicking off June 11. As far as milestones are concerned, a first earthquake was just another line in the tally.Tems, a faithful Christian, believes none of it has been in her control. When the earthquake subsided (magnitude 4.8), she said a prayer thanking God for granting her another day.“You can be planning your whole life and then something happens and it’s just done,” she said dryly, in an interview later that day. “You can control what you do, but you can’t control how life lifes.”Tems said she has embraced life as a warrior. “Even if they cut your leg, you walk on your knees, you fight on your knees using what you have — and that’s good enough.”Erik Carter for The New York TimesIt would be easy to attribute Tems’s vertiginous career trajectory to divine intervention. Since her appearance on the Afrobeats star Wizkid’s summer-conquering single “Essence” in 2020, she has become the first African artist to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (via “Wait for U,” a Future song also featuring Drake); won a Grammy for best melodic rap performance; and been nominated for an Oscar, for “Lift Me Up,” a song from the “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” soundtrack that she co-wrote for Rihanna after the singer messaged her on Instagram saying she was “obsessed.” In 2022, Tems was a writer and performer on “Move” — also featuring Grace Jones — from Beyoncé’s “Renaissance,” confirming her status as one of the most in-demand and closely watched young artists in the world.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Judge Blocks Attempt to Sell Graceland, at Least for Now

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      Elvis’s granddaughter, the actress Riley Keough, had filed a lawsuit seeking to stop what her lawyers said was a fraudulent auction of her family home.Graceland will not be sold at auction, at least for now.On Wednesday, a Tennessee judge deferred ruling on an apparent attempt to sell Graceland, Elvis Presley’s former home in Memphis, but kept a temporary injunction in place that would prevent the property from going to auction imminently.The bizarre case came into wide public view this week when a lawsuit surfaced that had been filed by Mr. Presley’s granddaughter, the actress Riley Keough. In it, Ms. Keough sued to prevent what her lawyers described as a fraudulent effort to auction the home by a company claiming that Lisa Marie Presley — Ms. Keough’s mother and Mr. Presley’s daughter — had borrowed $3.8 million and put Graceland up as collateral before she died in 2023.At Wednesday’s hearing at Chancery Court in Shelby County, Tenn., the judge, Chancellor JoeDae L. Jenkins, said he needed to continue the case, in part because no one showed up in person to represent the company seeking to sell Graceland and in part because he said lawyers for Ms. Keough needed to present additional evidence.“Graceland is a part of this community, well loved by this community and indeed around the world,” Chancellor Jenkins said during the hearing, which lasted roughly 10 minutes. Delaying the trial, he reasoned, would allow for “adequate discovery” to take place.The defendants included a company, Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC, which had scheduled a sale of Graceland for Thursday, according to court papers. The court said it had received a filing on Wednesday morning from a man named Gregory Naussany who had asked the court to continue the case.It was not clear when the next hearing would take place.Lawyers for Ms. Keough had argued that the company appeared to be a “false entity.” They also claimed that the company had presented fake documents purporting to show that Ms. Presley had borrowed the money and put Graceland up as collateral.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Popcast (Deluxe): Billie Eilish Is Done Hiding

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:The new Billie Eilish album, “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” and how it compares to her earlier workOther early-to-mid-career pop star pivotsEilish’s evolution as a vocalistEilish’s relationship to other unconventional pop stars like LordeSongs of the week, including how Tinashe’s “Nasty” went viralSnack of the weekConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan Saw a Gap in Pop, and Filled It

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      Two pure pop songs, “Espresso” and “Good Luck, Babe!,” may give the aspiring stars behind them a boost from music’s middle class to the big time.The caffeinated drink of the summer isn’t cold brew or iced matcha — it’s “me espresso,” a weird and strangely brilliant neologism coined by the pop singer Sabrina Carpenter in her ascendant hit “Espresso.” The track — sugary sweet, fiendishly catchy and meme-ready — has been out for only a month and change, but it is already one of the defining songs of 2024.It’s also one of the defining songs of Carpenter’s career so far. Last year, I described her as a member of “pop’s middle class”: a group of internet-beloved artists creating music that makes winking reference to pop history, whose celebrity vastly outmatches their commercial success. Although she is a new star in the minds of many, Carpenter, 25, is by no means a fresh arrival: “Espresso” was released almost 10 years to the day after her debut EP, “Can’t Blame a Girl for Trying.” Carpenter was 14 years old then; four more full-length albums have followed.Her career has been unusually slow-burning in the context of the well-oiled pop machine, and “Espresso” is a bullish breakthrough after a string of songs, including the Billboard-charting “Nonsense” and “Feather,” that had some radio and TikTok success but failed to permeate pop’s center. (“Espresso” reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and is still in the Top 10.)She’s not the only middle-class pop star having a brush with more tangible success. Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe!” has quickly become her first hit on the Billboard Hot 100. Roan, 26, loosely fits a similar mold: Her music is funny and oftentimes covertly acerbic, and on her 2023 debut album, “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess,” as Carpenter did with her 2022 breakthrough “Emails I Can’t Send,” Roan tried on a variety of styles that each seemed to pay tribute to a different era of pop, sometimes even a specific diva.Chappell Roan leveraged the spectacle of her live shows to make herself omnipresent on short-form video platforms over the past year. Scott Kowalchyk/CBS, via Getty ImagesRoan first signed to a major label at 17 and was dropped five years later, a setback that compelled her to move back to her Missouri hometown and work as a barista to fund her career. She has since signed to Amusement, an imprint of Universal Music Group started by the producer Daniel Nigro specifically to release Roan’s music. “Good Luck, Babe!,” a kiss-off to an ex with a queer twist, has been streamed over 106 million times on Spotify since its early April release; for context, that’s far more than any song on Beyoncé’s splashy “Cowboy Carter,” which arrived a week earlier, with the exception of its lead single, “Texas Hold ’Em.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sean Combs Accused of Sexual Assault in New Lawsuit

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      A former model sued the hip-hop mogul and accused him of forcing her to perform oral sex in 2003 at his recording studio. Mr. Combs has not yet responded.A former model filed a lawsuit on Tuesday accusing the hip-hop mogul Sean Combs of forcing her to perform oral sex on him at his New York City recording studio in 2003.In the complaint, Crystal McKinney says that when she was 22, an unnamed fashion designer invited her to attend a Men’s Fashion Week event at a restaurant in Manhattan, where she met Mr. Combs, who was a well-known record label impresario and host of the MTV reality show “Making the Band.”Later that night, according to the lawsuit, Mr. Combs invited her to his recording studio, where Ms. McKinney says she was given alcohol and marijuana that she later came to believe was laced. She says Mr. Combs led her to the bathroom, shoved her head down to his crotch and, after she refused, forced her to perform oral sex on him. Soon after, the lawsuit says, she lost consciousness, later awakening in a cab and realizing that she had been sexually assaulted.Representatives for Mr. Combs did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit.Mr. Combs, 54, has been facing deepening legal troubles since his former girlfriend, Casandra Ventura, known as Cassie, filed a lawsuit against him last year in which she accused him of sexually and physically abusing her for years. The lawsuit was settled in one day, but three more suits followed from women who accused him of rape. In March, two of Mr. Combs’s homes were raided as part of an investigation that officials said is at least in part a human trafficking inquiry.The producer and businessman, who is known as Puff Daddy and Diddy, has called the allegations against him false and “sickening,” and he has described the plaintiffs as looking for “a quick payday.”Mr. Combs’s conduct has come under intense scrutiny in recent days after CNN published footage from 2016 in which he is seen striking, kicking and dragging Ms. Ventura, corroborating part of her lawsuit filed last year. On Sunday, he apologized, saying in a video posted to Instagram, “My behavior on that video is inexcusable.”Ms. McKinney, who filed her lawsuit in Federal District Court in Manhattan, said learning of the other lawsuits against Mr. Combs led her to file her own. Because the allegations are more than two decades old, which is outside the statute of limitations, the lawsuit is bringing the claim under New York City’s Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Act, which, for a limited period of time, allows accusers to file civil complaints involving claims after the statute of limitations has run out.A lawyer representing Mr. Combs, Jonathan Davis, argued in a separate assault lawsuit that the gender violence act should not be used to allow such suits to go forward because another state law specifically extending the statute of limitations for sexual assault had expired. More