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      Music Catalog Giant Hipgnosis Is Sold, and Merck Mercuriadis Exits

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      The company, whose pricey acquisitions kicked off a rush on catalog sales, sold its assets to Blackstone for $1.6 billion, and its outspoken leader will step down.Six years ago, an outspoken music executive named Merck Mercuriadis kicked off a new wave of dealmaking in the industry when his company, Hipgnosis, began buying up the song catalogs of artists like Neil Young, Shakira, Justin Bieber and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.Now, Mercuriadis, who once managed Beyoncé and Elton John, is stepping down from the company after its assets have been sold to the private equity giant Blackstone, following a tumultuous year that has involved a shareholder revolt, an accounting scandal and a bidding war.In the company’s complex structure, Hipgnosis Songs Fund is an “investment trust,” which is listed on the London Stock Exchange and owns the rights to tens of thousands of songs. A separate company, Hipgnosis Song Management — which has been run by Mercuriadis — is its “investment adviser,” doing much of the dealmaking and administration work for those songs. In 2021, Blackstone invested $1 billion to take majority control over the adviser firm.The board of Hipgnosis Songs Fund voted on Monday to accept Blackstone’s offer of $1.6 billion for the company’s assets, the company announced early Tuesday.After going public in 2018, Hipgnosis got off to a bright start, beginning a spending spree for artists’ song rights that ultimately exceeded $2 billion, and making an attention-getting pitch to investors that the royalties from pop songs could be “more valuable than gold or oil.”Mercuriadis also regularly attacked the corporate conglomerates that dominate the music industry, portraying them as owning too much content to properly manage it. Privately, others in the industry complained that Hipgnosis was overpaying for catalogs, driving up prices all around. In 2021 alone, the music industry had $5.3 billion in catalog transactions, many from deals with individual artists, according to an estimate by Midia, which studies digital media and the music industry.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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      Cassandra Jenkins Finds a Way to Follow Her Surprise Breakthrough LP

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      Cassandra Jenkins had been ready to quit music in 2020 when a record she was unsure of releasing became an unexpected hit. Then, she had to figure out how to follow it up.During a winter walk in Central Park in late 2020, Cassandra Jenkins made a confession to her occasional bandleader, Lola Kirke: She had sold much of her music gear and didn’t plan to return to the road.A multi-instrumentalist and versatile singer, Jenkins had performed on stages for a quarter-century. Her parents had doggedly worked the New England hotel circuit as part of a trio that covered four decades of hits. As a teen, Jenkins and the family band played folk festivals, roaming in a hulking silver bus. After art school, she had balanced stints as an editorial assistant at The New Yorker, a farmer and a teacher with short gigs in so many bands she cannot remember them all.It was draining. During a festival run in 2019, she’d maintained her sanity amid the throng by snapping a photo series called “Butts of Bonnaroo.” She had been set to tour as part of Purple Mountains, the band of Silver Jews’ David Berman, when he died by suicide days before it was scheduled to begin.“I wasn’t quitting as much as letting go of the burden of certain expectations I put on myself in terms of how a career should look,” Jenkins, 40, said during a series of video interviews. “I was going to quit that narrow hope for a lot of mystery, a lot of unknowns.”Jenkins had more news for Kirke: She had finished her second album, an idiosyncratic and frank reckoning with grief, disappointment and tenuous attempts to heal that she called “An Overview on Phenomenal Nature.” She was uncertain if she wanted to release it, but a little label had picked it up. She name-checked Kirke in the lyrics, so she said she’d send it over.“I was gobsmacked, a perfect record,” Kirke said in a phone interview, recalling her first listen. “I wrote to her and didn’t hear back for a really long time. I knew she was being welcomed into spaces that should have welcomed her well before.”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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      How Swizz Beatz Climbed to the Top of Saudi Arabia’s Camel Racing Scene

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      “I’m just bringing the cool factor to it,” said the American hip-hop producer, who has spent millions of dollars on 48 camels for a team he calls “Saudi Bronx.”As the Arabian Peninsula’s fastest camels galloped around a track in the Saudi desert, Kasseem Dean, a Grammy Award-winning hip-hop producer from the Bronx, watched nervously from an air-conditioned V.I.P. viewing hall.Waiters in black vests plied the crowd with lemonade and red velvet cupcakes. Women in sundresses milled around off-white sofas, sipping fizzy mocktails.Though the camels sprinting past were the main event, Mr. Dean, better known as Swizz Beatz, felt as if all eyes in the room were on him — one of the newest competitors in Saudi Arabia’s deep-pocketed camel racing scene. Four years since he entered and won his first race, he has spent millions of dollars to buy 48 racing camels, ascending into the most elite circles of the sport.“When you discover it, you enter into a whole other world,” said Mr. Dean, 45, whose team of camels, “Saudi Bronx,” has won trophies across the region and deepened his attachment to the kingdom, which he first visited in 2006.He now travels to Saudi Arabia so often that he considers it a second home. He is a co-founder of a roller-skating rink in the desert retreat of AlUla, where the camel race was held, and keeps an apartment in the capital, Riyadh; a few years ago, he was granted Saudi citizenship.The competitors with robot jockeys on their backs, followed by trainers in SUVs who remotely control the robots.Saudi Camel Racing Federation More

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      Taylor Swift’s ‘Poets’ Ties Her Record for Most Weeks at No. 1

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      Both “Fearless” and “1989” spent 11 weeks atop the Billboard 200, but the 11-week reign of “The Tortured Poets Department” has been uninterrupted.Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” has notched its 11th straight week at No. 1, holding off all challengers once again.“Tortured Poets” now ties Swift’s career total for the most weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart. Both “Fearless” (2008) and “1989” (2014) reached the peak 11 times. But unlike those, which bobbed in and out of the top slot, the reign of “Tortured Poets” has so far been consecutive and uninterrupted. It started at No. 1 — way back in April — with record-breaking numbers, and has never left that position, beating out releases from Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, the Atlanta rapper Gunna and the K-pop group Ateez.According to Billboard, the last LP by a woman to spend at least 11 weeks in a row at No. 1 was Whitney Houston’s soundtrack to “The Bodyguard,” which posted 13 consecutive toppers (out of 20 total) in 1992 and 1993. Last year, Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” had 12 straight weeks at No. 1, and eventually crowned the chart 19 times.Last week, “Tortured Poets” had the equivalent of 114,000 sales in the United States, nearly flat from the week before. That includes 102 million streams and 35,000 sales as a complete package, according to the tracking service Luminate.Throughout its run, the weekly sales of “Tortured Poets” have benefited from strategic drops of new “versions” of the album, offered with bonus tracks and for limited times. But Swift’s streaming numbers have remained strong, at least in aggregate, with the 31-track album never falling below 100 million weekly clicks.Also this week, Megan Thee Stallion’s “Megan” opens at No. 3 with the equivalent of 74,000 sales, and Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time,” now in its 71st week on the chart, is No. 2. Eilish’s “Hit Me Hard and Soft” holds in fourth place, while Chappell Roan’s “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess” rises to No. 5, a new peak nearly 10 months after its release. More

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      A Lost Masterpiece of Opera Returns, Kind Of

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      The Aix Festival is presenting a new version of “Samson,” a never-performed work by Rameau and Voltaire, two of France’s most important cultural figures.Voltaire and Rameau looked so much alike, how could they not have ended up as collaborators? An 18th-century drawing shows them bowing to each other, mirror images of gangly bodies and jutting chins.Sealed by resemblance, the pairing of this pioneering philosopher and pioneering composer, two of Enlightenment France’s most important cultural figures, was exuberant — at least at first. “Don’t have children with Madame Rameau, have them with me,” Voltaire wrote to his partner, in a sly allusion to the works he wanted to create together.Their first opera, “Samson,” opened on Thursday in an intense and moving performance at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, set in the crumbling ruin of a once-grand hall. But this “Samson” is not the one Rameau and Voltaire wrote. The original score was lost some 250 years ago, so the Aix production — the work of the conductor Raphaël Pichon and the director Claus Guth — is a quiltlike assemblage drawn from other Rameau pieces, with a largely new text inspired by the biblical Samson story.Jarrett Ott as Samson and Jacquelyn Stucker as Dalila in “Samson,” set in the bombed-out ruin of a once-great hall.Monika RittershausThe crucial challenge of such a pastiche is making a sewn-together amalgam feel like an organically flowing work. “There are questions of connection,” Pichon said in an interview. “The tonal relationships between everything, the harmonic journey, the details of orchestration.”But performed with relish by Pygmalion, Pichon’s period-instrument orchestra and choir, this “Samson” retains the hypnotic continuity of Rameau’s complete operas, their steadiness and also their variety, veering from festive to soulful, from raucous dances to hushed, hovering arias and radiant choruses.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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      Billie Eilish, Lorde and More Are Singing Out About Body Image

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      Billie Eilish, Charli XCX and Lorde are among a group of young women who are revealing, in their music, the pressure they have felt to look thin.Taken together, the first two song titles on Billie Eilish’s third album, “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” form a provocative pair: “Skinny” and “Lunch.”“People say I look happy/Just because I got skinny,” Eilish sings on the opener, her melancholic croon accompanied by a single, murky guitar. “But the old me is still me and maybe the real me,” she adds, “and I think she’s pretty.”That lyric is a gut punch. It’s also indicative of a subtle shift among the current generation of female pop stars, who have recently been acknowledging — often in stark, striking and possibly triggering language — the pressure they have felt to look thin.Taylor Swift, who first opened up about her past struggles with disordered eating in a powerful sequence in her 2020 documentary, “Miss Americana,” sings about it on her 2022 track “You’re on Your Own, Kid,” a compassionate ode to her younger self: “I hosted parties and starved my body, like I’d be saved by the perfect kiss.” Last month, in a guest appearance on the remix of Charli XCX’s “Girl, So Confusing,” Lorde confessed that fluctuations in her weight had led her to stay out of the public eye. “For the last couple years, I’ve been at war in my body,” she sings, heartbreakingly. “I tried to starve myself thinner, and then I gained all the weight back.”For several years, conversations about weight in mainstream pop have centered around an artist bold enough to speak up about it and absorb the stinging backlash: Lizzo. In her lyrics, on social media, and in her shapewear line, the singer and rapper has played up self-love, becoming a face of the body positivity movement. Earlier this year, however, she told The New York Times that she had “evolved into body neutrality.” “I’m not going to lie and say I love my body every day,” she said.Part of the vitriol Lizzo has faced is rooted in racism, and it is impossible to divorce a dialogue about body image from race, and the different ways Black, brown and white bodies are dissected, denigrated and idolized. Latto recently spoke out about how online criticism led her to have plastic surgery at 21 to enhance her buttocks. Last year the rapper, who is biracial, said, “When I didn’t have my surgery, they’re like, ‘Oh, she shaped like her white side.’” SZA, speaking to Elle about her own, similar, procedure (which she sang about on her hit 2022 album, “SOS”), said, “I didn’t succumb to industry pressure. I succumbed to my own eyes in the mirror.”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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      Meet the Woman Behind Laufey’s Romantic Style: Her Twin Sister, Junia

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      Junia Lin Jonsdottir helped create the romantic visual world inhabited by her sister, the singer-songwriter Laufey. Please stop asking if she’s jealous.“Are you Laufey?”A fan approached the table at a cafe in the East Village, hoping for a picture with Laufey (pronounced LAY-vay), the musician beloved among Gen Z listeners for her nostalgic combination of pop and jazz.The woman dining there had the singer’s middle part, her mannerisms and her retro-femme style of dress. She was not Laufey, but her identical twin, Junia.The fan recovered quickly: “Do you steal all of her shoes?”This resemblance comes in handy, Junia (pronounced YOO-nia) explained last month over eggs and kimchi on a thick slice of sourdough. She can test camera angles while her sister is hydrating before a performance, or sub in for fittings on a moment’s notice. And they do swipe each other’s shoes.“She just got new Chanel ballet flats — of course I was going to steal them,” Junia told the fan.But Junia, 25, whose full name is Junia Lin Jonsdottir, is more than her famous sister’s body double. She works as Laufey’s creative director, shaping the romantic visual style the singer’s fans call “Laufeycore.” She has nearly two million TikTok followers of her own who consume her fashion recommendations and her occasional tours of Iceland, where the sisters grew up.Laufey, left, and Junia, backstage in Dallas. Though the sisters technically live in Los Angeles and London, they have a funny way of ending up side by side.Nicole MagoShe is also a young person trying to cement her own creative identity while her twin is in the midst of a professional breakthrough. So far this year, Laufey has won her first Grammy, attended her first Met Gala and sold out Radio City twice.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 Composer Who Changed Opera With ‘a Beautiful Simplicity’

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      In the mid-1700s, Christoph Willibald Gluck overthrew the musical excesses around him. A marathon double bill in France shows the vibrancy of his vision.A young woman is offered as a sacrifice to save her people before being rescued by divine intervention. Then a war is fought. Years pass, and, now living some 2,000 miles away, the same woman receives an agonizing order to perform a sacrifice herself, another bloody gift to the gods.That is a summary of two operas, both by Christoph Willibald Gluck: “Iphigénie en Aulide” and “Iphigénie en Tauride.” They were written five years apart and were never intended to be performed together. Each is a full-length score of about two hours, and while they share a protagonist, the vocal range for the character isn’t quite the same in both.But their plots — which tell the story of Greek myth’s Iphigenia, first in Aulis as a would-be victim, then in Tauris as a would-be murderer — flow together with uncanny ease. And on Wednesday, the Aix-en-Provence Festival in France opened a production that pairs the works in a marathon double bill, directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov as a brooding reflection on the numbness of endless conflict.Tcherniakov sets the two operas in a stage-filling, prisonlike skeleton of a house, with “Aulide” as the last gasp of a frivolous prewar elite. His “Tauride” depicts the somber aftermath of years of brutal battles, and the physical and emotional toll — the paranoia, the twisted fantasies — on those who remain.Today, Gluck suffers a little from a reputation for formality, even stodginess. But with the period instrument ensemble Le Concert d’Astrée conducted gracefully yet energetically by Emmanuelle Haïm, the Aix double bill was a reminder of the vibrancy of his vision, a majestic yet vigorous directness.This rare juxtaposition offers an immersion in Gluck’s revolutionary innovations — what became known as his reform of opera, paving the way for Wagner and modernity. By the middle of the 18th century, bloated extravagance was the mainstream of Italian opera, dominated by singers burbling mindless coloratura in an endless parade of arias that barely held together as narrative.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