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      David Johansen, Who Fronted the New York Dolls and More, Dies at 75

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      David Johansen, the singer and songwriter who was at the vanguard of glam rock and punk as the frontman of the New York Dolls, died yesterday at his home on Staten Island. He was 75.His death was confirmed by his stepdaughter, Leah Hennessey.Mr. Johansen revealed last month that he was suffering from Stage 4 cancer, a brain tumor and a broken back. He announced a fund-raising campaign through the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund to assist with his medical bills, saying, “I’ve never been one to ask for help, but this is an emergency.”Mr. Johansen was prolific in multiple genres, from blues to calypso, and achieved his greatest commercial success in the late 1980s and early ’90s with his pompadoured lounge-lizard alter ego, Buster Poindexter. But his 1970s heyday with the New York Dolls, a band of lipstick-smeared men in love with trashy riffs and tough women, had the most cultural impact, inspiring numerous punk, heavy metal and alternative musicians.One of those musicians was the singer-songwriter Morrissey of the Smiths, who first witnessed the band as a 13-year-old living in Manchester, England. It was 1973, and the BBC was broadcasting a Dolls show. As the young Morrissey watched the Dolls flail through “Jet Boy,” he had what he called his “first real emotional experience,” according to Nina Antonia’s 1998 book, “The New York Dolls: Too Much Too Soon.” Morrissey soon became the president of the band’s British fan club.The New York Dolls were notorious for transgressive behavior; they were especially notorious for cross-dressing. “Before going onstage, the Dolls pass around a Max Factor lipstick the way some bands pass around a joint,” Ed McCormack wrote in Rolling Stone in 1972.“We used to wear some really outrageous clothes,” Mr. Johansen said in the prologue to the 1987 music video for Buster Poindexter’s hit song “Hot Hot Hot.” “These heavy mental bands in L.A. don’t have the market cornered on wearing their mothers’ clothes.”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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      David Johansen: 15 Essential Songs

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      He was the frontman of the New York Dolls, an adventurous solo performer and the lounge act Buster Poindexter. Listen to highlights from his eclectic catalog.It’s a paradox that Staten Island, New York City’s most conservative borough, produced David Johansen, one of its most outrageous frontmen. Johansen led the New York Dolls, five bright-eyed boys who dressed flamboyantly and dreamed of sounding like the Shirelles crossed with a midtown traffic jam. He died on Friday, at age 75.The Dolls’ self-titled first album, released in 1973, peaked at No. 116 on the Billboard album chart. Dismal, but they never got any higher. The title of their second album, “Too Much Too Soon,” told the story: The Dolls’ ecstatic form of rock ’n’ roll is credited as a chief influence on punk rock, but at the time, they were dismissed as talentless charlatans in drag. Mick Taylor of the Rolling Stones supposedly called them “the worst high school band I ever saw,” and even if their A&R man Paul Nelson made up this quote, it summarizes a widely held opinion.Overwhelmed by rejection, the Dolls disbanded, and Johansen started a solo career that was distinguished by his bonhomie and panache. He took stylistic diversions that included disco, Latin music, folk and vaudeville, and in the late ’80s, he began acting in movies, including “Scrooged” and “Car 54, Where Are You?” He also performed as Buster Poindexter, a lounge singer whose taste in oldies was more cruise ship than Café Carlyle. Regardless of style or medium, his work retained a sense of humor, a love of individualism and a distaste for conformism.Johansen seemed to know every good song ever written, a breadth he displayed on Mansion of Fun, the weekly SiriusXM satellite radio show he began hosting in 2004. He didn’t distinguish between low and high art, or between kitsch and classics. In May 2019, he tweeted a reminder to tune in to Mansion of Fun, and added, “a passion for music is in itself an avowal. We know more about a stranger who yields himself up to it than about someone who is deaf to music and whom we see every day.”He yielded himself up to a passion for music as much as anyone who’s ever lived. Here are 15 of his best songs.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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      Bruno Mars Is Pop’s Most Reliable Male Star. Who Is He, Really?

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      A schmaltzy ballad. A bubble-gum pop song. A raunchy rap anthem. All three Hot 100 hits feature Mars, a blockbuster singer and songwriter who is largely a cipher.It’s a free-for-all on the Hot 100 chart right now. “Die With a Smile,” a slick, sappy Lady Gaga ballad destined for oldies radio rotation in about 20 years, has been hovering around No. 1 since summer. “Apt.,” a peppy new wave-inspired cut by Blackpink’s Rosé that speaks the rhythmic, hyperactive language of TikTok, is also in the Top 10. And a little further down, there’s Sexyy Red’s “Fat, Juicy and Wet,” the kind of raunchy, would-be strip club anthem that seems to float into the mainstream every few years. Nothing really links these songs — except for the fact that Bruno Mars appears on all three.Mars checks many of the boxes of an A-list pop star. But unlike those who usually occupy the top slot of Spotify’s most-streamed artist ranking — which the 39-year-old musician has for the bulk of 2025 — it’s not always easy to discern his specific viewpoint, or even a favored niche. Pop has long rewarded shape-shifters like Madonna, whose careers are marked by bold artistic reconfigurations, but Mars is a different beast: a performer with such a malleable identity at one moment that his name stands for little except its association with hits.Depending on your vintage, you might best remember Mars as a sappy adult contemporary crooner, thanks to his early No. 1s like “Grenade” and “Just the Way You Are.” On “Locked Out of Heaven,” certified diamond for 10 million sales, he was in full Sting drag, belting over shimmery new wave. Silk Sonic, his collaboration with Anderson .Paak that yielded a 2021 album, reveled in a kind of throwback sleaze, perhaps in tribute to his semi-adoptive hometown, Las Vegas, where he has held down a residency at the Park MGM for an astonishing near-decade.In one of his early guises, Mars was an adult contemporary-style crooner.Chad Batka for The New York TimesRather than try to distill his essence into one sound, Mars has remained stubbornly chameleonic — though rooted in old-fashioned music-making, the kind that employs acoustic instruments and appeals to Grammy voters (he has 33 nominations and 16 wins). “Die With a Smile” hearkens back to his days as a Jason Mraz-esque wedding song maestro; despite its title, the song is pure soft-rock schmaltz, finding both singers indulging their worst impulses toward lounge act cosplay. “Apt.” taps into the new wave pep of his 2012 “Unorthodox Jukebox” album, this time cribbing familiar elements of hits by the Go-Go’s, Blondie and Bananarama.Both songs came with their own distinct visual aesthetic — ’60s Americana, and a shambolic, pseudo-punk look — and were colossal hits on TikTok, radio and beyond. While “Apt.” was always intended for Rosé’s December 2024 debut album, “Rosie,” Gaga initially said that “Die With a Smile” was a one-off, and had nothing to do with her forthcoming album, “Mayhem.” Six months later, fans noticed the song had been tacked on at the end of the “Mayhem” track list; it’s hard to argue with some two billion extra streams.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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      Maria Tipo, Italian Pianist Who Beguiled Critics, Dies at 93

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      Admired by fellow musicians like Arthur Rubinstein as well as by the critics, she created what came to be known as an Italian school of piano playing.Maria Tipo, a connoisseur’s pianist whose flawless technique and songlike sonorities earned her the admiration of fellow musicians and critics, though she was less well known to the public, died on Feb. 10 at her home in Florence, Italy. She was 93.Her death was announced by the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole, where she taught for more than 20 years before her retirement in 2009.Ms. Tipo’s career began in spectacular fashion, with triumphs in several major European competitions, a strong endorsement from the piano titan Arthur Rubinstein, and exhausting tours of the United States throughout the 1950s. But then she largely faded from public view, apart from occasionally releasing recordings, which usually drew high praise from music critics and a brief return to touring in the 1990s.From the 1960s on, she devoted herself mostly to teaching. She once explained to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica that the loneliness of concert life had worn her down: “There is the concert, yes, but it only lasts a couple of hours, and then you are alone with yourself again.”Her fellow star pianists cherished her. Martha Argerich considered Ms. Tipo one of the greats and sent her Argentine compatriot Nelson Goerner for lessons. Hundreds of students passed through Ms. Tipo’s courses at conservatories in Bolzano, Florence, Geneva and Fiesole, and she created what critics described as an Italian school of piano playing. Teaching, she told the newspaper Il Corriere della Sera in 2016, was “like a duty, to stay close to the young as they develop.”Ms. Tipo in 1987. She created a renaissance for the neglected piano sonatas of the early-19th-century Anglo-Italian virtuoso Muzio Clementi and was also known for her recording of Ferruccio Busoni’s piano transcriptions of Bach organ works.Jacques Sarrat/Sygma, via Getty ImagesWe 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 ‘Diddy’ Combs Faces Four New Sex Abuse Lawsuits, Filed in One Day

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      The suits cite the Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law, which opened a look-back window for alleged assaults and is expiring soon.Four new sex abuse lawsuits have been filed against Sean Combs, including one from a woman who says she was assaulted while a contestant on a VH1 reality show in which people vied to be hired as the hip-hop mogul’s personal assistant.The new cases, which were filed on Thursday in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, join the dozens of civil lawsuits that have been filed against Mr. Combs since Casandra Ventura, his former girlfriend, made bombshell allegations against him in November 2023. Ms. Ventura’s suit was quickly settled, though at least 50 civil suits have followed hers with various accusations of sexual misconduct or violence. He has denied the allegations.In September, Mr. Combs was also indicted on federal charges of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. He has denied those accusations and pleaded not guilty, and his trial is scheduled to begin in May.In one of the new suits, Kendra Haffoney says that she was raped by Mr. Combs around 2008, while she was a contestant on VH1’s “I Want to Work for Diddy,” which ran on the cable channel starting that year. On the show, various aspiring assistants tried to impress the demanding and mercurial Mr. Combs to earn a place as his right hand. Ms. Haffoney is credited with appearances on two episodes.In her suit, she alleges that she was handed a spiked drink at an after-party in the SoHo area of Manhattan, where Mr. Combs and others were partying and “many sexual situations” were underway, making her uncomfortable. She became delirious, the suit says, and Mr. Combs “guided her head down” to perform oral sex on him. She passed out and awoke later at the cast house, and “knew that she had been sexually assaulted, raped” by him, according to the court papers.Another suit was filed by Justin Gooch, who said that in 1999, when he was 16, he met Mr. Combs at the Tunnel, then a popular dance club in Manhattan. The suit says that Mr. Combs gave him ecstasy and alcohol, and they then went to a bathroom, where Mr. Combs gave Mr. Gooch more drugs and “anally penetrated” him without his consent. According to the court papers, when he finished, Mr. Combs said to him, “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”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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      The Violinist Christian Tetzlaff’s Tactic to Oppose Trump’s Agenda: Cancel Concerts

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      Christian Tetzlaff said he was disturbed by the president’s embrace of Russia and other policies. “There seems to be a quietness or denial about what’s going on,” he said.When the German violinist Christian Tetzlaff returned home to Berlin after a recent performance in Chicago, he was distraught. The concert had gone well, but he was increasingly disturbed by political developments in the United States: President Trump’s embrace of Russia, the dizzying cuts to the federal work force and changes in policies affecting transgender Americans.“I felt like a child watching a horror film,” he said in an interview.On Friday, Mr. Tetzlaff, 58, a renowned violinist who frequently performs in the United States, said that he was canceling an eight-city tour of the country with his quartet this spring — including a stop at Carnegie Hall — and that he was unlikely to perform again in America unless the government reversed course.“There seems to be a quietness or denial about what’s going on,” he said. “I feel utter anger. I cannot go on with this feeling inside. I cannot just go and play a tour of beautiful concerts.”Harrison W. Fields, a White House spokesman, offered a two-word response to Mr. Tetzlaff’s cancellation: “America first.”Mr. Tetzlaff is one of the first major foreign artists to try to use a cultural boycott to influence Mr. Trump’s policies during his second term.For decades, American artists have canceled tours as a means of protesting war, autocracy, injustice and discrimination abroad. There were cultural boycotts of South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s in protest of its policy of apartheid, and more recently, artists have refused to perform in Russia since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.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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      Lizzo Returns With a Throwback-Rock Bop, and 11 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Benson Boone, Jenny Hval, J. Cole and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Lizzo, ‘Love in Real Life’“It’s been a while,” Lizzo sings in “Love in Real Life,” after more than a year of commotion involving her social media, her weight and lawsuits from employees. The video (though not the song itself) opens with Lizzo saying she needs “no views, no likes, real love in real life.” Backed by a swinging beat and rock guitars, Lizzo heads out for a drunken night at a dance club, with a chorus topped by a Prince-like scream. For a few minutes, pleasure solves everything. JON PARELESBenson Boone, ‘Sorry I’m Here for Someone Else’The back-flipping upstart Benson Boone runs into a former flame who upends his current relationship on the lively new single “Sorry I’m Here for Someone Else.” Amid driving percussion, pulsating synths and an escalating sense of urgency, Boone unfurls a satisfying narrative of love lost and regained in a sudden moment of clarity. The only problem is that he has to break another girl’s heart in the process. “Benny, don’t do it, Benny don’t do it!” he tells himself — but he does it, and lets her down easy with that classic line, “It’s not personal.” LINDSAY ZOLADZLittle Simz featuring Obongjayar and Moonchild Sanelly, ‘Flood’“Flood” exults in percussive low end: a Bo Diddley drumbeat meshed with a syncopated bass line, below Little Simz rapping in her most hard-nosed bottom range. She lashes out at anyone who’d interfere with “my genius plan, and that’s being as free as I can” and offers career advice: “Don’t trust all the hands you shake.” She’s righteous and cynical, with her defenses well fortified by rhythm. PARELESModel/Actriz, ‘Cinderella’Agitation is built in to “Cinderella,” from the where’s-the-downbeat intro to the dissonant note that repeats — irregularly — through nearly the entire track. As an industrial dance beat assembles itself, crumbles, and reappears, the vocalist Cole Haden wrestles with the vulnerability of revealing himself to a partner, finally deciding, “I won’t leave as I came.” PARELESJenny Hval, ‘To Be a Rose’The Norwegian pop experimentalist Jenny Hval takes on a familiar lyrical image — the rose — and turns it into something highly specific and alluringly strange on this first single from her upcoming album, “Iris Silver Mist.” “A rose is a rose is a rose is a cigarette,” she sings atop a spare track that features light, hypnotic percussion and subtle blasts of brass. As the arrangement gradually builds into something fuller, Hval sketches a vivid childhood memory of her mother smoking on a balcony, “long inhales and long exhales performed in choreography over our dead-end town.” ZOLADZWe 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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      Katy Perry and Gayle King Are Among Blue Origin’s All-Female Space Crew

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      They will be aboard the New Shepard, the centerpiece rocket of Blue Origin’s space tourism business, in a launch this spring.The singer and songwriter Katy Perry and the broadcast journalist and show host Gayle King will be among the all-female crew on the next mission of New Shepard, the space tourism rocket that is operated by Jeff Bezos’ private company, Blue Origin.Blue Origin announced the lineup on Thursday, ahead of a planned spaceflight this spring, though no specific date has been announced for the launch. It will also include Aisha Bowe, a former NASA engineer; Amanda Nguyen, a research scientist; Kerianne Flynn, a film producer; and Lauren Sánchez, who is Mr. Bezos’ fiancée and a helicopter pilot.The company has garnered attention for its flights by including celebrities or highlighting new milestones in spaceflight.The spring launch will be the 11th flight carrying passengers and the 31st mission overall for New Shepard. The suborbital rocket is named after Alan Shepard, the first American to reach space in 1961 and one of the astronauts who walked on the moon.Flights on the fully reusable vehicle last just over 10 minutes and take participants to an altitude higher than 62 miles. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station, by contrast, orbit about 250 miles above the Earth.Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon and one of the wealthiest men on the planet, was among the first passengers on New Shepard in 2021, the year of Blue Origin’s first crewed flight.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