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      Taylor Swift and Beyoncé Avoided a Collision on the Charts. (Again.)

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      Pop’s two reigning queens are often cast as rivals, but they have continually supported each other — and spaced out their album releases.In February, Taylor Swift took the stage at the Grammy Awards to accept the prize for best pop vocal album. After dutifully thanking the Recording Academy and her fans, she got down to business: “My brand-new album comes out April 19,” she said, in a surprise announcement revealing “The Tortured Poets Department.” It was a heads up for her loyal followers, as well as anyone else in the business with a spring release on the radar: If you want your new album to debut at No. 1, don’t release it on April 19. Or April 26. Or May 3, for that matter.A week later, following a teaser during a Super Bowl commercial, Beyoncé also dropped news of a new album: “Cowboy Carter” would arrive earlier than “Poets,” with breathing room, on March 29. Another pop powerhouse in the Grammy audience made her own announcement in early April: Billie Eilish will unveil her forthcoming third album, “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” a month after Swift’s release, on May 17.Beyoncé and Swift, the 21st century’s pre-eminent pop stars, have often been cast as competitors if not rivals, a story line partly rooted in misogyny and amplified by dueling fan armies filled with stans, or superfans.For their part, the two artists have regularly dispelled the notion over the years. They were first linked, through no fault of their own, at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, when Kanye West interrupted a Swift acceptance speech to advocate for her fellow nominee Beyoncé; later that night, Beyoncé brought Swift onstage to finish her remarks. In 2021, Swift shared on Instagram that Beyoncé had sent her congratulatory flowers after Swift won the album of the year Grammy for “Folklore,” calling Beyoncé “the queen of grace & greatness.” And last year, following their blockbuster stadium tours, they appeared at each other’s concert film premieres, a pointed rebuke to message-board zealots looking to sow discord.“Clearly, it’s very lucrative for the media and stan culture to pit two women against each other, even when the two artists in question refuse to participate in that discussion,” Swift told Time magazine. (Representatives for Swift and Beyoncé declined to comment.)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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      A Pathbreaking Singer Arrives at the Met, With Pearls and Tattoos

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      Dav­óne Tines, who stars in the oratorio “El Niño,” is challenging traditions in classical music and using art to confront social problems.The bass-baritone Dav­óne Tines, wearing Dr. Martens boots, a sleeveless black shirt and six vintage pearl rings, stood on a rehearsal stage at the Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan the other day and began to sing.“My soul’s above the sea and whistling a dream,” he sang, a passage from the Nativity oratorio “El Niño” by John Adams, in which Tines makes his Met debut this month. “Tell the shepherds the wind is saddling its horse.”Tines, 37, known for his raw intensity and thundering voice, has quickly become one of classical music’s brightest stars. He has won acclaim for performances of Bach, Handel and Stravinsky, and he has helped champion new music, originating roles in operas like Adams’s “Girls of the Golden West” and Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.”Tines has also used his art to confront social problems, including racism and police brutality. In 2018, he was a creator of and starred in “The Black Clown,” a searing rumination on Black history and identity inspired by a Langston Hughes poem. In 2020, he released a music video after the police killing of Breonna Taylor, calling for empathy and action.During a rehearsal break at the Met, he described his art as cathartic, saying his aim was to “pick apart the complicated, contentious existence that is knit into the American landscape.”“It’s a blessing to be a performing artist because you get an explicit place to put your feelings,” he said. “It’s the blessing of having a channel.”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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      Maurice El Medioni, Jewish Algerian Pianist, Dies at 95

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      He fused the music of his Sephardic roots with Arab traditions, incorporating boogie-woogie and other influences, to create a singular style.Maurice El Medioni, an Algerian-born pianist who fused Jewish and Arab musical traditions into a singular style he called “Pianoriental,” died on March 25 in Israel. He was 95.His death, at a nursing home in Herzliya, on Israel’s central coast, was confirmed by his manager, Yvonne Kahan.Mr. Medioni was a last representative of a once vibrant Jewish-Arab musical culture that flourished in North Africa before and after World War II and proudly drew from both heritages.In Oran, the Algerian port where he was born, he was sought after by Arabs and Jews alike to play at weddings and at banquets, in the years between the war and 1961, when the threat of violence and Algeria’s new independence from France drove Mr. Medioni and thousands of other Jews to flee.With his bounding octaves, his quasi-microtonal shifts in the style of traditional Arab music, his cheeky rumba rhythms learned from American G.I.s after the 1942 Allied invasion and his roots in the Jewish-Arab musical heritage called andalous, Mr. Medioni had honed a distinctive piano style by his early 20s. The singers he accompanied often alternated phrases in French and Arabic in a style known as “Françarabe.” His uncle Messaoud El Medioni was the famous musician known as Saoud L’Oranais, a leading practitioner of andalous who was deported by the Germans to the Sobibor death camp in 1943.The Medioni style remained buried and nearly forgotten for four decades as he pursued his trade as a men’s tailor. He kept it alive in private, performing at weddings and bar mitzvahs after he was forced to flee to France, until he released a breakthrough album, “Café Oran,” in 1996 at the age of 68. That led to a belated second life as a star of so-called world music — concert tours in Europe, appearances in documentary films and a major role as mentor to a new generation of Israeli musicians anxious to recover the musical heritage of their Sephardic heritage. In 2017, he published an autobiography, “A Memoir: From Oran to Marseilles (1938-1992),” which reproduces Mr. Medioni’s cursive scrawl, with a translation from the French.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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      15 Looks That Did the Most at Coachella

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      There was no shortage of celebrities onstage last weekend at the first installment of this year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Southern California, where Doja Cat, Billie Eilish and even Will Smith performed.Ms. Eilish surprised spectators by joining Lana del Rey for the folk-rock singer’s first Coachella set since 2014. Mr. Smith, who started his career as a rapper, also shocked many in the audience by performing a rendition of his song “Men in Black” with dancers dressed as aliens during the reggaeton singer J Balvin’s set.But some of the highest-profile performers at the festival weren’t there to work: Rihanna and ASAP Rocky, along with Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, came as spectators, even if neither couple could exactly blend in with the crowd.At Coachella — an orgy of brand activations, parties and musical performances — celebrities are but one reliable component. Another is fashion, which typically tends toward the ostentatious. That was mostly the case last weekend, during which these 15 looks stood out — some for being opulent, others for being over-the-top and a couple for being surprisingly simple.Doja Cat: Most Harebrained!Hair with boots to match.Valerie Macon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOf the many outfits worn by the singer and rapper during her set, this get-up involving few clothes and strategically arranged extensions might have stolen the show — if only by a hair.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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      Philharmonic Sidelines 2 Players It Tried to Fire for Misconduct

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      The New York Philharmonic said the musicians would not perform for now, after a magazine article brought new attention to allegations of misconduct. They have denied wrongdoing.The New York Philharmonic said on Monday that two players it had tried to fire in 2018 — but was forced to rehire after the musicians’ union challenged their dismissal — would not take part in rehearsals or performances for the time being after a magazine article detailed the allegations of misconduct that had been made against them.The Philharmonic said that the players — the principal oboist, Liang Wang, and the associate principal trumpet, Matthew Muckey — would not appear as the orchestra deals with the fallout from a New York magazine article published on Friday.In the article Cara Kizer, a former Philharmonic horn player, came forward for the first time to publicly discuss an encounter that occurred when she was on tour with the Philharmonic in Vail, Colo., in 2010. She told the Vail Police Department then that she had been sexually assaulted after spending the evening with the two players and was given a drink she came to believe was drugged, according to police records.No charges were filed against the men and both have denied wrongdoing; their lawyers said they expect to return to the ensemble soon.In 2018 the Philharmonic moved to dismiss Mr. Wang and Mr. Muckey, who both joined the orchestra in 2006. It said at the time that it had received reports that the two players had “engaged in misconduct,” which it declined to describe, and that it had decided to fire them after commissioning an investigation. But the players’ union, Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, challenged their dismissals.The orchestra was forced to reinstate them in 2020 after an independent arbitrator found that they had been terminated without just cause.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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      Rico Wade and Organized Noize’s 10 Essential Songs

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      The producer helped shape and boost the sound of Atlanta rap starting in the mid-1990s. His death at 52 was announced last Saturday.The Atlanta producer Rico Wade was the de facto leader of the Dungeon Family, the loose collective of rappers and musicians that coalesced around his mother’s smoke-filled Georgia basement — a.k.a. the Dungeon — in the mid-90s. Wade’s open doors and nurturing vision became the engine of Atlanta’s creative explosion, tilting the spotlight away from New York and Los Angeles and toward the homegrown sounds of artists like Outkast, Goodie Mob, Killer Mike, Janelle Monáe and eventually Wade’s younger cousin Future. Wade’s death at 52 was announced on social media last Saturday.Beyond his roles as conceptualist and deal maker, Wade served as one-third of the adventurous production team Organized Noize. The crew’s red-clay-scuffed sound was steeped in vintage ’70s soul, cutting-edge electronica, murky noise, slurping hi-hats and the warmth of live instruments. Working alongside the melodic sensibilities of Sleepy Brown and the beatmaking prowess of Ray Murray, Wade was “the mouthpiece,” Outkast’s Big Boi said in the 2016 documentary “The Art of Organized Noize.” “He was the inspiration guy; he could sell it.”Here are 10 essential productions from Rico Wade and Organized Noize, who brought the “dirty South” to the world. (Listen on Spotify and Apple Music.)Outkast, “Player’s Ball” (1993)The slow-rolling breakout moment for the Atlanta sound emerged after the LaFace Records co-founder L.A. Reid tapped the teenage duo Outkast to fill the final spot on the R&B-heavy album “A LaFace Family Christmas.” Though initially reluctant to make a Christmas record, Outkast decided to focus on lived reality instead of holiday cheer. “Just talk about how we kick it on Christmas at the Dungeon, man,” Big Boi recalled for GQ. “There ain’t no chimneys in the ghetto. We won’t be hanging no socks on no chimneys.” A slightly less Christmas-themed version was released as the group’s debut single, and the Puff Daddy-directed video was filmed in Wade’s house. (Wade convinced André 3000 to wear an Atlanta Braves jersey for the clip.) “I remember the day they played it on the radio — everybody quit they job,” Goodie Mob’s Big Gipp said in “The Art of Organized Noize,” thinking, “‘If one of us’ll get in, all of us’ll get in.’”TLC, “Waterfalls” (1994)This indelible pop smash emerged from a moment of studio serendipity. The songwriter Marqueze Ethridge sang the hook to Wade in the middle of an Outkast session. Murray played a stuttering beat on the SP-1200 and LaMarquis Jefferson improvised some slippery bass licks. They called TLC’s T-Boz to come in and do a demo and a No. 1 hit was born. “The horns in the song was live,” Wade told Complex. “As you can tell, the horns were very pop. But we were at that point in our career where we wanted to bring everything back that was analog.”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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      Beyoncé’s ‘Cowboy Carter’ Spends a Second Week at No. 1

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      “Cowboy Carter” tops the Billboard 200 for a second week, boosted by physical sales of her album on CD and vinyl.Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” holds at No. 1 for a second week on the Billboard album chart, fending off new releases from J. Cole and the K-pop group Tomorrow X Together.“Cowboy Carter” stays at the top of the Billboard 200 with the equivalent of 125,500 sales in the United States, according to the tracking service Luminate. That total includes 133 million streams and 20,500 copies sold as a complete package. It is the first time Beyoncé has repeated at No. 1 since her self-titled “visual album” in 2013, which notched three consecutive times at the top and was initially available only as a download from iTunes.As in its opening week, Beyoncé’s total was helped by sales of physical copies of her album on CD and vinyl, which for the album’s first two weeks were available only through her website. Since then, retailers have started stocking “Cowboy Carter,” and — as she did with “Renaissance,” her last album, in 2022 — Beyoncé herself showed up for an in-store promo in Los Angeles, where fans could buy autographed LPs. (They quickly appeared on eBay for $2,000 and up.)“Might Delete Later,” a surprise release by the rapper J. Cole, comes in at second place with the equivalent of 115,000 sales, largely from streaming. The album got some attention for a diss track, “7 Minute Drill,” targeting Kendrick Lamar, which J. Cole promptly apologized for and removed from streaming versions of the album.Tomorrow X Together, a five-man South Korean group, opens at No. 3 with “Minisode 3: Tomorrow,” a seven-track mini album, which had 107,500 sales and was offered in 17 collectible CD editions. Also this week, Future and Metro Boomin’s joint album “We Don’t Trust You,” released three weeks ago, falls to No. 4 (a sequel, “We Still Don’t Trust You,” came out on Friday), and Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” is No. 5. More

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      How the Trumpeter Jeremy Pelt Became a Chronicler of Black Jazz History

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      Inspired by the drummer Arthur Taylor’s “Notes and Tones” collection of interviews with fellow musicians, Pelt started his own book series, “Griot.”The trumpeter Jeremy Pelt was sitting on his couch, browsing YouTube, when he decided to become an author.It was 2018, and Pelt, by then a fixture on the New York jazz scene for two decades, came across a 1994 interview with the jazz drumming great Arthur Taylor, conducted by a fellow percussionist, Warren Smith. “It could have been ‘Batman,’ or something,” Pelt recalled during a recent conversation in his Harlem apartment. “It was like an hour and 45 minutes, I remember, and I just was transfixed the whole time.”Pelt was especially taken with a section where Taylor discussed “Notes and Tones,” his landmark book of musician-to-musician interviews, first self-published in 1977 and later reissued more widely. In it, giants like Miles Davis, Nina Simone and Max Roach spoke with often bracing candor about race, the music business, their feelings about the term “jazz” and more. Pelt had first come across the book more than 20 years earlier at the Berklee College of Music library.“This is way before internet and all that,” he said, so listeners had no idea what their musical heroes’ “comportment was, how they sounded, anything. So what you have is these words that gave you this peek into their personality.”Pelt often found himself wishing for a sequel. Taylor noted in the 1993 paperback edition that he had recorded more than 200 interviews and intended to publish a follow-up; two years later, he died at 65. Watching the conversation between Taylor and Smith, Pelt made a resolution: “After wondering how come somebody hasn’t done such and such, I said, you know what? I’m going to go ahead and do it.”He started conducting interviews with elders, peers and younger artists, accelerating during the pandemic, when it was easy to reach musicians via Zoom. In 2021, he self-published the first volume of “Griot,” settling on that title after seeing the term — meaning a West African storyteller-musician who passes down the oral history of a tribe — in an old social-media handle used by the bassist Buster Williams. “I looked it up, and that’s when it hit me,” Pelt, 47, said. “That’s exactly what this project is, is really passing down the culture. It’s these stories.”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