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      Beyoncé Rolls Into Her Country Era, and 10 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Vampire Weekend, Pearl Jam, Saya Gray 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 sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Beyoncé, ‘16 Carriages’In a flex of genre-spanning musicianship that’s also a workaholic’s lament, Beyoncé announces her next realm to conquer — country, one of her birthrights as a Texan — while she recalls her past and doubles down on her ambition, singing, “Ain’t got time to waste, I got art to make.” The music is an arena-country crescendo, from acoustic-guitar strum to full-band impact topped by pedal-steel guitar, along with gospel-organ underpinnings and country quavers in Beyoncé’s vocal lines. At a moment when country music is being pushed to acknowledge Black roots and current Black musicians, Beyoncé is not only claiming an expanded demographic base. She’s also using her celebrity clout to force some doors open. JON PARELESVampire Weekend, ‘Capricorn’Vampire Weekend channels a generation’s exhaustion, disillusionment and overload in “Capricorn,” a stubbornly slow ballad about being “too old for dying young” and “sifting through centuries for moments of your own” from “Only God Was Above Us,” a new album due April 5. The music layers stately chamber-pop with heaving, squealing noise, then eases toward folky resignation. PARELESWaxahatchee, ‘Bored’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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      Young Artists Make Back-to-Back Debuts at the Philharmonic

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      The conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali’s two-week Philharmonic residency included the arrivals of the violinist Esther Yoo and the pianist Bruce Liu.For the past two weeks, the New York Philharmonic’s podium has been occupied by Santtu-Matias Rouvali, a Finnish conductor who with a little spontaneity and a lot of sprezzatura offers a jolt to whatever orchestra he encounters.But that’s not what has made these two weeks interesting.Rouvali, after all, led multiple programs last season, making a long-awaited return after his debut in late 2019. Having proven himself as a guest worth keeping around, he has become comfortably part of the orchestra. His latest residency, though, has been more notable for the appearances of other artists: the violinist Esther Yoo and the much-hyped pianist Bruce Liu, both in their debuts, who with any luck will be just as present as Rouvali in the years to come.Liu’s Philharmonic debut at David Geffen Hall on Thursday followed a stop last season at Carnegie Hall, where he performed works by Chopin in a nod to his winning the top prize at the International Chopin Piano Competition in 2021. As if to signal that he wasn’t at all nervous about the sudden spotlight, at Carnegie he blazed past the concert’s two-hour running time, returning to the stage for no fewer than seven encores.There was some showmanship, too, in his appearance with the Philharmonic, as the soloist in Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.” In the opening, his large hands, redolent of the composer’s, sprang high above the keyboard, more than was necessary; but as he settled into the performance, mannerisms like that cooled, and Liu revealed the depth behind his theatricality.He played with feline agility and lightness of touch. But, as a cat can be lethally powerful when necessary, he can also take on a muscularity that turns sensitive phrasing into tintinnabular resonance. That nimble versatility also made for fluid shifts between limpid precision and alluring rubato, between concerto virtuosity and the recital-like intimacy with which he opened the famous 18th Variation. (Liu demonstrated something similar in the pairing he made with his encores: crowd-pleasing dazzle in Liszt’s “La Campanella” and meditative warmth in Alexander Siloti’s B-minor transcription of Bach’s Prelude in E minor.)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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      7 Stellar Songs for a Saturn Return

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      Inspired by Kacey Musgraves’s latest single, hear tracks by No Doubt, Stevie Wonder, R.E.M. and more.Gwen Stefani.Kevin Lamarque/ReutersDear listeners,“My Saturn has returned,” the 35-year-old singer-songwriter Kacey Musgraves announces at the beginning of her stirring new single “Deeper Well,” the title track from her upcoming fifth album. “When I turned 27, everything started to change.”I know what she means. While I’m not much of an astrology person, I am something of an expert on the Saturn Return, the time when the ringed planet approaches the spot it was located when a person was born. It’s generally thought to be a moment of tumultuous upheaval and, eventually, of great personal transformation. Since Saturn’s orbit around the sun takes about 29-and-a-half years and stays in a particular sign for two-and-a -half years, the first return begins around one’s 27th birthday.It was music that first taught me about this concept: specifically No Doubt’s searching 2000 album “Return of Saturn,” which I listened to obsessively when it first came out. Gwen Stefani had written much of the material while she was going through her own Saturn Return, uncharacteristically depressed and questioning her place in the world. At 13, this sounded quite profound and adult to me.When I began mine years later, I researched the concept extensively and wrote an essay trying to understand why the idea has been so resonant for so many people. Is the Saturn Return just a fancy astrological name for the existential anxiety of turning 30? I’ll leave that for you to answer. But I tend to think that any framework that provokes self-reflection and a consideration of ourselves as part of a larger whole can’t be all bad. Plus, over the years, it’s inspired some pretty great music.Today’s playlist is a short compilation of songs either directly or indirectly inspired by this astrological event. It includes the aforementioned Musgraves and No Doubt, but also R.E.M., Hayley Williams and Stevie Wonder. It does contain a few notable omissions from this very specific musical canon, but I personally — forgive me — am not a fan of Katy Perry’s saturnine ballad “By the Grace of God,” and I also felt that an eight-and-a-half-minute Tool song would disrupt the flow of this particular playlist, even if it does feature Maynard James Keenan growling, “Saturn comes back around again to show you everything.” You are of course welcome to listen to those songs on your own time.I did, however, want to highlight a lesser discussed aspect of the Saturn Return: It does indeed keep coming back around, so you can expect a second one in your late 50s and, if you’re lucky, a third in your mid-80s — which means we’re in for a doozy of a Kacey Musgraves album in approximately 2074.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 Paul McCartney’s Lost Bass Guitar Was Found Five Decades Later

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      The Höfner violin bass that accompanied the Beatles to fame went missing more than 50 years ago. Two journalists and a Höfner expert were determined to find it.No one seemed to know what had happened to one of the most important bass guitars in music history, though in the decades since it went missing there had been some dramatic rumors.Was the Höfner violin bass, which had accompanied Paul McCartney and the Beatles to worldwide fame, tucked away in a private collection? Had it been secretly shipped to a wealthy fan in Japan?It turned out the bass was passing time in a more unassuming locale: the loft of a family home in East Sussex, England. The family reported the guitar in late September, after a couple of journalists and a guitar expert started a new campaign looking for it in 2023, more than 50 years after it was last seen.The guitar, which has been authenticated by its manufacturer, has been returned to Mr. McCartney, according to a statement posted on his website on Thursday. “Paul is incredibly grateful to all those involved,” it said.It was the denouement to an enduring mystery that had gripped Beatles fans, including one group who pooled their skills to help find it.‘It started Beatlemania’The Höfner 500/1 guitar is a precious part of Beatles lore. It can be heard on recordings of hit songs including “Love Me Do,” “She Loves You” and “Twist and Shout.”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): Usher, Beyoncé and Ye Lead a Busy Week in Pop

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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:Usher’s Super Bowl halftime show performance, which was a showcase for his biggest hits and his obsession with small detailsThe announcement of Beyoncé’s imminent return with a pair of songs suggesting her long rumored country turn is afootTaylor Swift’s big day at the Super Bowl“Vultures 1,” the new album from Ye and Ty Dolla $ign (or ¥$) and how it intersects with Ye’s recent public misbehaviorsNew songs from Mk.gee and Chief Keef & Mike Will Made-ItSnack 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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      Apple Music Removes Ye’s “Vultures 1” Amid Distributor Dispute

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      On Thursday, the streaming platform took down “Vultures 1” after the LP’s distributor, Fuga, said its upload violated a service agreement. The album, which is on pace to hit No. 1, later returned to the service.Ye, the rapper, producer and provocateur formerly known as Kanye West, has what will likely be the No. 1 album on next week’s Billboard chart, with “Vultures 1.” But on Thursday, the LP briefly disappeared from Apple Music, one of the world’s top streaming platforms.Apple gave no explanation for the removal. But since its release, the album has been dogged by accusations of unauthorized samples, and earlier on Thursday an independent distribution outlet complained that its system had been used to release the music in violation of its service terms.“Vultures 1,” a joint release with the R&B singer Ty Dolla Sign, was set to be Ye’s comeback after a series of antisemitic remarks in 2022 made him a pariah in music and fashion — without a record label or booking agent, and with his lucrative partnership with Adidas canceled. In December, he apologized for those remarks in a social media post written in Hebrew.After listening events last week at arenas in Chicago and on Long Island — where young fans flocked to hear his new music, and some shrugged off his past controversies — Ye released the 16-track “Vultures 1” last Friday.It quickly became a hit at streaming platforms, despite problems like another brief disappearance online shortly after release, and accusations from Ozzy Osbourne and the estate of Donna Summer that songs on the album used those artists’ music without permission.One track, “Good (Don’t Die),” used a portion of Summer’s 1977 song “I Feel Love,” a pulsating classic of early electronic dance music. That track had been removed from Ye’s album on Spotify on Wednesday, according to reports.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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      ‘Blind Injustice’ Opera Spotlights Wrongful Imprisonment

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      “Blind Injustice,” which is being staged at Montclair State University, tells the stories of people freed with the help of the Ohio Innocence Project.Near the end of “Blind Injustice,” an opera about six people who were wrongfully convicted of crimes and later freed, the exonerees reflect on the time they have spent behind bars.“What makes a person strong enough to endure injustice?” they sing. “What makes a person free?”Questions of prejudice, guilt and resilience run throughout “Blind Injustice,” composed by Scott Davenport Richards to a libretto by David Cote, which has its East Coast premiere on Friday at Peak Performances at Montclair State University.The work, which was commissioned by Cincinnati Opera and premiered there in 2019, explores the effects of wrongful convictions on the prisoners and their families, and the help to overturn their convictions that they received from the Ohio Innocence Project, a nonprofit organization at the University of Cincinnati College of Law.One man who was sent to death row describes spending 39 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of murder. A bus driver falsely accused of sexual abuse describes the pain of being separated from her four children. “Oh Lord, protect them!” she sings. “Oh, God! Deliver me!”And a mother of a young man accused of murder pleads for his release. “Smash bricks into dust!” she sings. “Bust it! Bust it! Bust it! Bust this goddamned prison down!”The creators of “Blind Injustice,” from left: Scott Davenport Richards, Robin Guarino and David Cote.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesWe 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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      Schubert’s Operas Were Failures. Is Their Music Worth Saving?

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      “I feel myself the most unhappy and wretched creature in the world,” Franz Schubert, suffering from syphilis and reeling from professional failures, wrote in March 1824 to his friend, the painter Leopold Kupelwieser. Imagine a man, he said, who will never be healthy again, and “whose most brilliant hopes have perished.”In the same breath, Schubert expressed sorrow over the fate of his attempt at a grand Romantic opera, “Fierrabras,” which had been canceled in Vienna, and that of another stage work, “Die Verschworenen,” which didn’t make it past a private performance. “I seem once again,” Schubert, then 27, wrote in his letter, “to have composed two operas for nothing.”He wouldn’t return to the genre again. And even after his death in 1828, at 31, when many of his works enjoyed posthumous adulation and were performed widely, none of his theatrical undertakings entered the standard repertoire.It’s surprising that opera eluded Schubert, who by most counts started about 20 stage works, completed fewer than a dozen and saw the premieres of just two. After all, he wrote some of the most beautiful vocal music in the repertoire: the song cycles “Die Schöne Müllerin” and “Winterreise,” and hundreds of beloved lieder like “Gretchen am Spinnrade” and “Ave Maria.”And yet the operas remain curiosities better heard than seen, often composed to clumsy librettos and denied the revisions that could have accompanied rehearsals.A scene from “L’Autre Voyage” at the Opéra Comique in Paris. Stéphane Degout, left, and Siobhan Stagg.Stefan BrionWe 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