Music

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Billie Eilish, Lorde and More Are Singing Out About Body Image

      by

      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

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Music

      Meet the Woman Behind Laufey’s Romantic Style: Her Twin Sister, Junia

      by

      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

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      The Composer Who Changed Opera With ‘a Beautiful Simplicity’

      by

      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

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      The Brokes Play the Strokes in a New York Rock Club

      by

      A cover band from Toronto brings some 2000s nostalgia to the home city of their indie rock heroes.More than two decades after the Strokes led an indie rock renaissance in New York City, a Strokes cover band called the Brokes played a sold-out show at Arlene’s Grocery, a small venue on the Lower East Side.Hailing from Toronto, the Brokes were on their first American tour, and this gig held special meaning: The Strokes used to play Arlene’s back when they were the garage rock princes of downtown Manhattan honing their act at clubs like this one.During a 45-minute set, the Brokes blazed through early Strokes hits like “The Modern Age” and “Last Nite” as fans chanted lyrics and pumped their fists into the air. The frontman, Marlon Chaplin, wore sunglasses and fingerless gloves while singing through a distortion effect to match Julian Casablancas’ vocal style.The Brokes guitarist Adrian Traub-Rees, wearing a white suit and Converse sneakers, looked and sounded like Albert Hammond Jr. as he played a white Fender Stratocaster. The crowd roared when he traded licks with Brandon Wall, who plays Nick Valensi’s guitar parts, during another Strokes fan favorite, “Reptilia.”Mr. Chaplin addressed the crowd in his Casablancas-esque tone: “We’re taking you back to ‘Room on Fire’ with this next tune.”Many people in the crowd at Arlene’s Grocery on Friday were too young to have seen the Strokes in the group’s early years.Graham DickieWe 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

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      The Story Behind Juvenile’s ‘Back That Azz Up’

      by

      Juvenile’s “Back That Azz Up” was a 1999 hit that brought twerking and New Orleans bounce into the mainstream. Here’s the story of how it became a sensation.Twenty-five hot summers ago, Juvenile threw out a command and booties everywhere have never been the same. That’s when “Back That Azz Up,” the second single from the New Orleans rapper’s album “400 Degreez,” was released and almost instantly became the national anthem of twerking — before the word even entered the American vocabulary.Arguments can be made that the song is misogynistic, endearing or both. But the track — built around Juvenile hypnotically rapping the song’s title instruction, a raunchy verse from its producer, Mannie Fresh, and a syrupy outro from an ascendant, teenage Lil Wayne — has definitely proven to have staying power.From left: Birdman, Turk, Juvenile, Lil Wayne, Mannie Fresh and B.G. attend the 1999 Billboard Music Awards. Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection, via Getty ImagesJuvenile, 49, initially doubted the song would succeed as a single, and it took a last-minute trip to Nashville’s Music Row to finish the recording. Ultimately, the song helped usher bounce music, the New Orleans branch of hip-hop featuring fast beats and call-and-response chants, into the mainstream while strengthening the South as an epicenter of hip-hop. In interviews, the artists and key figures behind the song explained how it all came to be. These are edited excerpts from the conversations.JUVENILE I sung the “Back that Azz Up,” hook, probably half a year, about five, six months knowing that I was working on my album.MANNIE FRESH I heard the lyrics first. I was just like, “You know what? This is already magical.” So the beat got to marry 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

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      Rob Stone, Master Marketer of Hip-Hop, Is Dead at 55

      by

      A founder of the influential music magazine The Fader, he also bridged the worlds of hip-hop and the Fortune 500 with his innovative marketing agency.Rob Stone, who as a founder of the music magazine The Fader and the brand-strategy firm Cornerstone Agency bridged the sounds of the streets and the corporate suites, giving early exposure to rappers like Kanye West and Drake while brokering lucrative endorsements at a time when corporate America was still resistant to hip-hop, died on June 24 in Mount Kisco, N.Y. He was 55.His longtime professional partner, Jon Cohen, said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was lung cancer.Early in his music business career, first at SBK Records and later at Arista, Mr. Stone was charged with finding exposure and radio airplay for new artists. He began to establish himself as a hip-hop insider, working with performers like the Notorious B.I.G. and Craig Mack, as well as with Sean Combs, whose label, Bad Boy Records, had entered into a joint venture with Arista.Before long Mr. Stone decided to set out on his own, and in 1996 he started Cornerstone with Steve Rifkind, the founder of the hip-hop label Loud Records. Mr. Rifkind left the agency after a year and a half and was replaced by Mr. Cohen, who had also worked at SBK and had been Mr. Stone’s best friend since middle school on Long Island.Mr. Stone and Mr. Cohen went on to create eye-opening campaigns for brands like Sprite, Converse and Johnnie Walker that leveraged their relationships with labels and with new artists, who in the early days were all too sensitive to charges of selling out.Mr. Stone, left, in an undated photo with the musician and producer Pharrell Williams and Jon Cohen, who founded The Fader with Mr. Stone.via Jon CohenWe 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

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Wayne Shorter

      by

      “He always was a genius,” Herbie Hancock says of his friend and collaborator. Hear a sampling of that genius in these 13 tracks.This month we feature Wayne Shorter, the iconoclastic composer and tenor saxophonist whose work with Art Blakey, Miles Davis, Weather Report and through his own solo discography has influenced generations of like-minded visionaries to push the boundaries of jazz. Since his death in 2023 at 89, it’s felt like he’s still around. That’s because his music always felt so otherworldly and progressive, as if it were beamed in from outer space or somewhere deep into the future.Shorter rose to prominence in the late 1950s and early ’60s as a member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, where his husky and complex sound proved a worthy complement to Blakey’s propulsive rhythms. By 1964, Miles came calling: He wanted Shorter to join his quintet — an all-star squad that included Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams — but it was no easy sell. Davis “had even gone as far as telephoning Art Blakey’s backstage dressing areas to speak to the saxophonist,” the author Ian Carr wrote in his definitive Miles Davis biography. As a member of the quintet, Shorter once said, “it wasn’t the bish-bash, sock-’em-dead routine we had with Blakey, with every solo a climax. With Miles, I felt like a cello, I felt viola, I felt liquid, dot-dash … and colors started really coming.”Shorter was thought to be a catalyst for one of Davis’s most fruitful creative periods. “All of us wrote some songs, I wrote a couple of things myself, but the main writer: Wayne,” Hancock told me over the phone recently. “If we were going to go to a recording session, Miles would ask Wayne, ‘Did you bring the book?’ Once in a while, we would play things written by Charlie Parker or Dizzy Gillespie. But most of the things we recorded were written by Wayne.” The quintet broke up in 1968; Shorter worked with Davis until 1970.In 1971, Shorter helped pioneer jazz fusion, releasing the first album by the group Weather Report with the keyboardist Joe Zawinul. The group created a genre-bending style of music that incorporated jazz, rock, funk and improvised electronic arrangements. By the late ’80s and ’90s, Shorter’s output didn’t slow down, but his focus shifted to deeper spiritual enlightenment, which led to a deeper friendship with Hancock, who was also a practicing Buddhist. In recent years, even though they’d been collaborators for several decades, Hancock and Shorter became best friends.“He always was a genius, just an amazing human being,” Hancock said. “Most jazz players are composers, too. But I would say that the majority of us who are still living and were around during the major part of Wayne’s life, if we had to pick someone to be No. 1, I think we all would probably pick Wayne.“Even though I know Wayne passed away,” he continued, “he’s been in my heart for a long time and he’s still there. So in a certain way I don’t see him anymore. But he hasn’t died for me. It’s not gone forever. He’s still there.”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

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      San Francisco’s Arts Institutions Are Slowly Building Back

      by

      Although attendance remains down from prepandemic levels, the city’s arts groups are having some success getting audiences to return.On a recent clear day, visitors were wandering through the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to gawk at works by Yayoi Kusama and Alexander Calder, and, a few blocks away, making their way through the galleries at the Contemporary Jewish Museum and the Museum of the African Diaspora.That evening, music lovers poured in to Davies Symphony Hall to hear Esa-Pekka Salonen conduct the San Francisco Symphony and into the War Memorial Opera House across the street, where the San Francisco Opera was giving the American premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s “Innocence.”Although attendance at the city’s arts institutions remains down from prepandemic levels — with tourism, hotel occupancy and office attendance yet to fully recover — its cultural ecosystem has been showing signs of inching its way back.Arts organizations around the nation have been struggling to regain audiences since the pandemic, with Broadway attendance about 17 percent lower than before and precipitous declines at many regional theaters, museums, orchestras and opera companies.San Francisco has its own particular challenges: People are returning to work, but the city’s office buildings remain emptier than those in Los Angeles or New York. Fewer people are taking Bay Area Rapid Transit downtown; the number of riders exiting at downtown stations is still down by more than half since 2019.The city and its cultural organizations have been struggling to overcome what Thomas P. Campbell, director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, referred to as the “doom narrative,” the widespread media coverage of the city’s challenges, both real and exaggerated.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