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      Popcast (Deluxe): Billie Eilish Is Done Hiding

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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:The new Billie Eilish album, “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” and how it compares to her earlier workOther early-to-mid-career pop star pivotsEilish’s evolution as a vocalistEilish’s relationship to other unconventional pop stars like LordeSongs of the week, including how Tinashe’s “Nasty” went viralSnack 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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      Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan Saw a Gap in Pop, and Filled It

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      Two pure pop songs, “Espresso” and “Good Luck, Babe!,” may give the aspiring stars behind them a boost from music’s middle class to the big time.The caffeinated drink of the summer isn’t cold brew or iced matcha — it’s “me espresso,” a weird and strangely brilliant neologism coined by the pop singer Sabrina Carpenter in her ascendant hit “Espresso.” The track — sugary sweet, fiendishly catchy and meme-ready — has been out for only a month and change, but it is already one of the defining songs of 2024.It’s also one of the defining songs of Carpenter’s career so far. Last year, I described her as a member of “pop’s middle class”: a group of internet-beloved artists creating music that makes winking reference to pop history, whose celebrity vastly outmatches their commercial success. Although she is a new star in the minds of many, Carpenter, 25, is by no means a fresh arrival: “Espresso” was released almost 10 years to the day after her debut EP, “Can’t Blame a Girl for Trying.” Carpenter was 14 years old then; four more full-length albums have followed.Her career has been unusually slow-burning in the context of the well-oiled pop machine, and “Espresso” is a bullish breakthrough after a string of songs, including the Billboard-charting “Nonsense” and “Feather,” that had some radio and TikTok success but failed to permeate pop’s center. (“Espresso” reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and is still in the Top 10.)She’s not the only middle-class pop star having a brush with more tangible success. Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe!” has quickly become her first hit on the Billboard Hot 100. Roan, 26, loosely fits a similar mold: Her music is funny and oftentimes covertly acerbic, and on her 2023 debut album, “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess,” as Carpenter did with her 2022 breakthrough “Emails I Can’t Send,” Roan tried on a variety of styles that each seemed to pay tribute to a different era of pop, sometimes even a specific diva.Chappell Roan leveraged the spectacle of her live shows to make herself omnipresent on short-form video platforms over the past year. Scott Kowalchyk/CBS, via Getty ImagesRoan first signed to a major label at 17 and was dropped five years later, a setback that compelled her to move back to her Missouri hometown and work as a barista to fund her career. She has since signed to Amusement, an imprint of Universal Music Group started by the producer Daniel Nigro specifically to release Roan’s music. “Good Luck, Babe!,” a kiss-off to an ex with a queer twist, has been streamed over 106 million times on Spotify since its early April release; for context, that’s far more than any song on Beyoncé’s splashy “Cowboy Carter,” which arrived a week earlier, with the exception of its lead single, “Texas Hold ’Em.”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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      Sean Combs Accused of Sexual Assault in New Lawsuit

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      A former model sued the hip-hop mogul and accused him of forcing her to perform oral sex in 2003 at his recording studio. Mr. Combs has not yet responded.A former model filed a lawsuit on Tuesday accusing the hip-hop mogul Sean Combs of forcing her to perform oral sex on him at his New York City recording studio in 2003.In the complaint, Crystal McKinney says that when she was 22, an unnamed fashion designer invited her to attend a Men’s Fashion Week event at a restaurant in Manhattan, where she met Mr. Combs, who was a well-known record label impresario and host of the MTV reality show “Making the Band.”Later that night, according to the lawsuit, Mr. Combs invited her to his recording studio, where Ms. McKinney says she was given alcohol and marijuana that she later came to believe was laced. She says Mr. Combs led her to the bathroom, shoved her head down to his crotch and, after she refused, forced her to perform oral sex on him. Soon after, the lawsuit says, she lost consciousness, later awakening in a cab and realizing that she had been sexually assaulted.Representatives for Mr. Combs did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit.Mr. Combs, 54, has been facing deepening legal troubles since his former girlfriend, Casandra Ventura, known as Cassie, filed a lawsuit against him last year in which she accused him of sexually and physically abusing her for years. The lawsuit was settled in one day, but three more suits followed from women who accused him of rape. In March, two of Mr. Combs’s homes were raided as part of an investigation that officials said is at least in part a human trafficking inquiry.The producer and businessman, who is known as Puff Daddy and Diddy, has called the allegations against him false and “sickening,” and he has described the plaintiffs as looking for “a quick payday.”Mr. Combs’s conduct has come under intense scrutiny in recent days after CNN published footage from 2016 in which he is seen striking, kicking and dragging Ms. Ventura, corroborating part of her lawsuit filed last year. On Sunday, he apologized, saying in a video posted to Instagram, “My behavior on that video is inexcusable.”Ms. McKinney, who filed her lawsuit in Federal District Court in Manhattan, said learning of the other lawsuits against Mr. Combs led her to file her own. Because the allegations are more than two decades old, which is outside the statute of limitations, the lawsuit is bringing the claim under New York City’s Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Act, which, for a limited period of time, allows accusers to file civil complaints involving claims after the statute of limitations has run out.A lawyer representing Mr. Combs, Jonathan Davis, argued in a separate assault lawsuit that the gender violence act should not be used to allow such suits to go forward because another state law specifically extending the statute of limitations for sexual assault had expired. More

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      Elvis Presley’s Granddaughter, Riley Keough, Sues to Block Graceland Sale

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      His granddaughter, the actress Riley Keough, claims that a company is fraudulently planning to auction off Elvis’s home in Memphis.Lawyers for the actress Riley Keough, the granddaughter of Elvis Presley, have sued to stop what they say is a fraudulent scheme to sell Graceland, the family’s cherished former home in Memphis.Court papers that Ms. Keough’s lawyers filed this month claim that a company planning to auction off Graceland is fraudulently claiming that her mother — Elvis’s daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, who died in 2023 — had borrowed money and put Graceland up as collateral. The papers say that the company, Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC, “appears to be a false entity” and that the documents it presented about the loan were also fake.“There is no foreclosure sale,” Elvis Presley Enterprises, which operates Graceland, said in a statement, in which it also said that the lawsuit had been filed to “stop the fraud.”Graceland, a popular tourist attraction, is a major source of income for Elvis Presley Enterprises and the family trust.A representative for Ms. Keough, who controls her family’s trust, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. A lawyer representing Ms. Keough in the case also did not respond.Months after Lisa Marie Presley died, Naussany Investments presented documents claiming that she had borrowed $3.8 million from the company and “gave a deed of trust encumbering Graceland as security,” according to court papers filed in Shelby County, Tenn. Copies of the documents were provided to The New York Times by Elvis Presley Enterprises.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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      He Made the Met Opera’s Chorus the Best in the World

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      During the second intermission of the Metropolitan Opera’s gilded, gargantuan production of “Turandot” one Friday last month, Donald Palumbo raced up to a tiny broadcast studio on the top floor for an interview.Then he raced downstairs again. There was something he needed to do backstage before the curtain rose.Palumbo, 75, who is retiring this spring after 17 years as the company’s chorus master, wanted to run through the start of Act III with the quartet of heralds, drawn from the chorus, who hauntingly call out a warning from Princess Turandot.It was 13 performances into the season’s “Turandot” run, at 10 o’clock at night. But Palumbo, one of opera’s most mild-mannered yet most unrelenting perfectionists, was still making sure that the singers’ intonation was flawless, still fine-tuning the placement of the first note in a certain phrase.Palumbo conducting from the wings during a performance of “Turandot” at the Metropolitan Opera in April. Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. for The New York Times“You have to be very specific,” he had said earlier about the way he coaches his choristers, “but you can’t micromanage.”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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      Sexual Assault Suit Against Neil Portnow, Ex-Grammys Chief, Is Dismissed

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      The plaintiff, who had filed her suit anonymously, told a judge that she feared the consequences if efforts to reveal her name during the proceeding were successful.A federal judge has dismissed a sexual assault lawsuit against the former head of the Grammy Awards, after the plaintiff fell out with her lawyers and said in court papers that she feared for her safety and well-being if her real name were revealed during the case.The suit was dismissed on Friday “without prejudice” by Judge Analisa Torres of Federal District Court in Manhattan, meaning it could be refiled again in the future.The plaintiff filed her suit anonymously in New York State Supreme Court in November, saying that Neil Portnow, the former chief executive of the Recording Academy, had drugged and raped her in a New York hotel room in 2018. Mr. Portnow, who led the Grammy organization from 2002 to 2019, denied the accusation, and in court papers his lawyers have said his encounter with the woman was consensual.The case was removed to federal court in January, and in April, Mr. Portnow’s lawyers said they would file a motion to compel the woman — who is described in court papers only as a musician from outside the United States — to use her real name.In response, the woman filed an unusual direct appeal to the judge, asking to have her case dismissed, and saying that she feared “potential grave harm” if her name became known. Her lawyers then asked permission to withdraw as her counsel, saying that “the attorney-client relationship has deteriorated beyond repair.”In her letter to the judge, the woman said that her lead attorney, Jeffrey R. Anderson, had actually resigned days earlier and told her in a letter: “Now that the defendants brought your case into the federal court where your anonymity and your name can no longer be protected, you are faced and we are faced with the possibility of grave further harm.”Lawyers for Mr. Portnow wrote to the judge saying that any dismissal of the case should be “with prejudice,” which would prevent her from bringing it again.The woman, they wrote, had engaged in “vexatious and harassing behavior that has caused substantial harm” to Mr. Portnow. Their response included what they said were excerpts from text messages and emails; they said the woman had proposed marriage to Mr. Portnow and asked him to write a letter of recommendation for an immigration application.In rejecting Mr. Portnow’s request, Judge Torres said that Mr. Portnow would not suffer “plain legal prejudice” if another case were brought. The judge also noted the text messages and emails he cited, saying: “Portnow’s one-sided characterization of the events at issue precedes discovery, and Portnow has not offered evidence that the litigation itself was filed with an ‘ill motive.’”In a statement, Mr. Portnow said, “These latest developments confirm what I have said over the past five years since the inception of these outrageous and damaging allegations: The claims against me were false and without merit. I look forward to moving on with my life and continuing to work on meaningful projects.” More

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      ‘Stax: Soulsville, U.S.A.’ Review: Looking for a Little Respect

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      An HBO series tells the triumphant, tragic story of the record label Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes and the Staple Singers called home.Multipart music documentaries come at us these days with the insistence and abundance of the old K-tel collections, scrambling to satisfy the cravings of every variety of pop nostalgist. Recent months have added “James Brown: Say It Loud” (A&E), “In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon” (MGM+), “Kings From Queens: The Run DMC Story” (Peacock) and “Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story” (Hulu), among others, to the rotation.That’s four Rock & Roll Hall of Fame acts right there. But if you are looking for something even bigger — the arc of America across the 1960s and ’70s, set to a rough and infectious soundtrack — I know a place: “Stax: Soulsville, U.S.A.,” premiering Monday on HBO.The stormy, relatively short history of Stax Records (it went from founding to bankruptcy in 18 years) is rich material, shaped by a serendipitous blend of personality, geography and studio acoustics and propelled by the regional dynamics of race, class and music in Memphis, away from the record-industry centers of New York and Los Angeles.The director Jamila Wignot, who has profiled Alvin Ailey for “American Masters” and directed episodes of Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s “Finding Your Roots,” brings more organizational sense than imaginative flair to the four-episode series. “Soulsville, U.S.A.” gives a conventional talking-heads treatment to a story that calls out for more. But that story, tracking from innocence to cynicism and triumph to calamity, is so involving that Wignot’s straightforward approach isn’t fatal.And the interviewees doing the talking are a notably varied and engaging group. They include the white farm boy Jim Stewart, earnest, folksy and disastrously naïve, who founded the label with his sister Estelle Axton; the charismatic Black businessman Al Bell, who came on as promotions director and saved the company when it seemed doomed, only to preside over its eventual demise; and Booker T. Jones, leader of the house band Booker T. and the M.G.’s, who looms over the early episodes like a cool, cryptic, scholarly guru of soul.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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      Taylor Swift Beats Gunna on the Chart. Her Next Rival? Billie Eilish.

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      “The Tortured Poets Department” logs a fourth week at No. 1. Next week’s competition is a battle between two stars with multiple versions of their LPs for sale.Taylor Swift stays at No. 1 on Billboard’s album chart for a fourth time, easily holding off a new release by the Atlanta rapper Gunna. But next week she may face a challenge from Billie Eilish — and its result could come down to fans’ appetites for buying multiple “versions” of the stars’ albums.“The Tortured Poets Department,” Swift’s latest studio album, holds atop the Billboard 200 with the equivalent of 260,000 sales in the United States, including 282 million streams and 41,000 copies sold as a complete package, according to Luminate, a data tracking service. Since its record-breaking opening last month, “Tortured Poets” has racked up about 3.6 million equivalent album sales.Gunna’s “One of Wun,” released only in digital form — though Gunna’s website also sold CDs and vinyl LPs that it said would be sent to fans later this year — starts at No. 2 with the equivalent of 91,000 sales, most from its 119 million streams.On Friday, Eilish released “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” her third LP, and the first since she won two Oscars and added two more Grammys to the seven she already had. The music industry is watching the album’s progress closely, in part to see if Eilish’s latest can end Swift’s dominance on the chart.Most of the 31 tracks on “Tortured Poets” have begun to trickle down the daily charts of the major streaming services, while Eilish’s new songs — there are only 10 — have opened strong. For next week’s chart, the key differentiator may be both women’s releases of multiple versions of their albums, on rainbows of vinyl or in digital editions with extra goodies to goose fans’ interest.Swift made “Tortured Poets” available in four variants across physical formats, each with an extra track; these were also sold in special editions from Swift’s website with autographs and collectibles like magnets and engraved bookmarks. Eilish, who has complained about artists’ excessive marketing of physical media — saying in a recent Billboard interview that it was “wasteful” to release “40 different vinyl packages that have a different unique thing just to get you to keep buying more” — put “Hit Me” out in eight colored vinyl variants, as well as other formats like a CD decorated with paint “splattered by Billie.” (Eilish defended her release plans by promoting an “eco-friendly” approach to manufacturing, saying her releases would use recycled materials.)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