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      Esperanza Spalding’s Latest Surprise, and 10 More New Songs

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      Hear the jazz musician’s team-up with the Brazilian songwriter Milton Nascimento, plus tracks from Saweetie, Omar Apollo 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 at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Milton Nascimento and Esperanza Spalding, ‘Outubro’The ever-surprising bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding persuaded the mystical and ingeniously tuneful Brazilian songwriter Milton Nascimento, 81, to collaborate on a full album that was recorded in 2023 and is due in August. Its preview single is “Outubro” (“October”), a song that Nascimento originally wrote and recorded in the 1960s. Its asymmetrical melody carries lyrics that reflect on solitude, mortality and the possibility of joy. Nascimento no longer has the pure, otherworldly vocal tone of his youth, but Spalding bolsters him, singing in Portuguese alongside him and probing the harmonies with springy bass lines. Near the end, she comes up with a leaping, scat-singing line that he eventually joins, still enjoying what his composition can inspire. JON PARELESCassandra Jenkins, ‘Delphinium Blue’The Brooklyn singer-songwriter Cassandra Jenkins delivers “Delphinium Blue,” the second single from her upcoming third album, “My Light, My Destroyer,” with a slow, cleareyed poise. Among glacially paced synthesizers and gentle percussion, she describes the sensory overload of working in a flower shop, and daydreaming about someone special when business is light. “I see your eyes in the delphinium, too,” she sings, as beauty blooms all around her. “I’ve become a servant to their blue.” LINDSAY ZOLADZOmar Apollo, ‘Dispose of Me’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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      Avril Lavigne Is Back. If You Believe That.

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      The Canadian singer, with a new album and a tour, this week addressed a bizarre conspiracy theory that she has been replaced with a doppelgänger.Goodbye, online conspiracy theory. Welcome back, Avril Lavigne.Lavigne — the Canadian singer whose hits like “Sk8er Boi” and “Complicated” made her a mainstay of the early 2000s — appeared on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast this week to promote a greatest hits album out next month, a new tour and a performance at Glastonbury, Britain’s biggest music festival.She also used the appearance to tell fans that she is alive and herself.And that she was most definitely not replaced by a body double named Melissa Vandella after dying more than 20 years ago.The power of the internetThe bizarre conspiracy theory has popped up occasionally, yet consistently, around the internet for much of Lavigne’s career, and the publicity around her new tour has ignited another round of attention.Many online explainers have traced its origin to Brazil, and a 2011 blog post that uses Lavigne’s lyrics and photos of her to make an argument that “Melissa” took Lavigne’s place after the success of her debut album “Let Go.”After a BuzzFeed News report drew attention to the theory, it appeared in mainstream press roundups of conspiracy theories, from the Guardian, to Rolling Stone, to the BBC. It also has its own Wikipedia entry.For the record: There is no proof for this conspiracy theory.‘So. Your name is Avril Lavigne.’On “Call Her Daddy,” hosted by Alex Cooper — herself an icon of the 2020s who said she grew up listening to Lavigne’s music — the singer said she didn’t think the conspiracy theory was that bad in the grand scheme of things.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 Dares to Write (Twisted) Love Songs on ‘Hit Me Hard and Soft’

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      “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” her third album, is both concise and far-reaching.“Twenty-one took a lifetime,” Billie Eilish, 22, sings in “Skinny,” the song that opens her third album, “Hit Me Hard and Soft.”Any woman her age could say that; it’s just math. But even before she was old enough to vote, Eilish had packed a lifetime of accomplishments into a career that she began in 2015 as a teenager uploading songs to SoundCloud. Since then, Eilish has racked up billions of streams, an armload of Grammy Awards, two Oscars and a full-length documentary. On “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” she deliberately tamps down some pop expectations while she warily embraces others.Eilish has both the time-honored musicianship that awards shows admire and the metanarrative savvy of her digital-era generation. Countless imitators have learned from — and been emboldened by — her blend of raw revelations, graceful melodies and wily productions, abetted by her brother and songwriting partner, Finneas.Their historically grounded pop recombines musical theater, parlor songs, punk, folk, electronica, soundtracks, bossa nova, industrial rock and more. Eilish brings to all of them the poise of a vintage crooner: the capacity to float above beats and jolts, to treat a microphone as a confidant. Her voice can be breathy and intimate or eye-rolling and sardonic; at very strategic moments, she reveals her power to belt.Eilish’s 2019 debut album, “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?,” mapped gothic nightmares, adolescent obsessions and lingering traumas along with an occasional giggle. Her second, “Happier Than Ever” in 2021, reacted directly to the attention, shock, exploitation, stalking, exhaustion and newfound power that success brought her.“Skinny” is a hushed update on Eilish’s superstardom. “Am I acting my age now?/Am I already on the way out?,” she sings, along with thoughts on her body shape, finding nontoxic love, her sense of isolation and a resigned reaction to social media: “The internet is hungry for the meanest kind of funny/and somebody’s gotta feed 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

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      After Outcry, Concertgebouw Will Allow Jerusalem Quartet to Perform

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      The Dutch concert hall reversed course after facing criticism for canceling performances by the Israeli ensemble because of security concerns.The Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, one of the world’s most prestigious concert halls, said Thursday that it would allow the Jerusalem Quartet to perform, two days after it had canceled the ensemble’s concerts amid security concerns related to threatened protests.The Concertgebouw said in a statement that the Jerusalem Quartet would be allowed to perform on Saturday after all, with expanded security measures and a more robust police presence. The ensemble had originally been scheduled to perform on Thursday and Saturday, but the Concertgebouw canceled the engagement, saying it could not ensure the safety of audience members, musicians and employees because of the threat of protests related to the Israel-Gaza war. The cancellation prompted an outcry from musicians.Simon Reinink, general manager of the Concertgebouw, said in an interview that the hall had reversed course after securing commitments from the police.“Now we have enough confidence to go ahead with it,” he said. “It has everything to do with security. We were forced to crack the dilemma of security on the one hand and freedom on the other.”Reinink defended the hall’s handling of the situation, saying that the cancellation “had nothing to do with antisemitism.”“We fight and we fought we like hell to keep these concerts,” he added.The Jerusalem Quartet said in a statement that it had been “moved to tears by the outpouring of support worldwide from musicians of all profiles, from internationally famous names to anonymous amateurs.”“Every single voice has uplifted us,” it said. “It is overwhelming to experience this extraordinary community help remind the world of humanitarian values and artistic expression which underlie everything we do and believe in.”The controversy was the latest example of the Israel-Hamas war’s impact on the performing arts. Since the start of the war, cultural institutions have faced heavy scrutiny over artists, programming and funding.The Concertgebouw’s decision to cancel the concerts drew criticism from leading artists. A group of prominent musicians, including the conductor Simon Rattle, the pianist Martha Argerich and the violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter published a statement on Thursday condemning the hall, saying it was capitulating to protesters.“It is not the Jerusalem String Quartet’s performances that put our freedom in danger, but those who threaten public order unless their demands are met,” the musicians wrote. “Surrendering to those threats is not only an act of weakness, but a clear signal that we are not willing or prepared to defend our democratic values and our way of life.”Reinink said that the decision to call off the concerts was made in part because of recent pro-Palestinian demonstrations at the University of Amsterdam that had turned violent.“That was, for us, the game changer,” he said. “The risk was simply too high. As long as the police could not guarantee that they could handle this situation, we made the decision it was not a good idea to go ahead.” More

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      Review: Lise Davidsen Achieves Strauss’s Ideal in ‘Salome’

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      Strauss had seemingly impossible standards for a soprano in “Salome.” But Davidsen, making her role debut in Paris, is exactly what he intended.Richard Strauss’s criteria for the ideal interpreter of his opera “Salome” have haunted the piece for the better part of a century: a “16-year-old princess with the voice of Isolde.”As oxymorons go, it’s the operatic equivalent to Noam Chomsky’s famous syntactic puzzle “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” Clear, simple, impossible. And yet here is the 37-year-old Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen, in the middle of her role debut as Salome in Paris, launching her voice like a rocket that opens into a parachute in the cavern of the Opéra Bastille.With a teenager’s sly mockery of her parents and a blooming sexual awakening, Davidsen’s young Judean princess, seen on Wednesday, gradually matured in color and volume. But when she reached the determined outburst of “Gib mir den Kopf des Jochanaan!” (“Give me the head of John the Baptist!”), her top voice detonated with a force that sent shock waves of youthful, shimmery sound reverberating equally in all directions. She stepped into her 16-year-old Isolde, and held the audience rapt for 20 more minutes of epiphanic sumptuousness.I had never made the connection between Salome’s final scene and Isolde’s climactic Liebestod in Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde.” Usually, they don’t sound alike. Opera fans sometimes reach for Strauss’s one-liner to describe a soprano with some mix of the role’s beauty, lyricism, youth and power, but there is an implicit compromise, a sense that “this is as close as it gets.” As Davidsen unleashed huge arcs of exalting tone, though, her voice was soft and heavy like thickly piled velvet; she reveled in Salome’s obsessive love to music of apotheosizing grandeur and purified her desire of its murderous origins.This revival of Lydia Steier’s disturbingly powerful production gave Davidsen a profound context to explore her interpretation. Steier’s militarized hellscape felt both primitive and postapocalyptic. Violent orgies, stripped of ritual, set the stage for gleeful sadism and recreational murder. King Herod (Gerhard Siegel, a seasoned Wagnerian with technical security and confident point) is styled as a depraved chieftain in black lace, soiled robes and a feathered headdress, and he presides over a ruling class that delights in bludgeoning and asphyxiating sex slaves. Their crimes are visible through a large glass window high above the stage. The Dance of the Seven Veils is a scene of rape. It would all be crass, if it weren’t for the craft of the staging’s detailed movement choreography.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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      Portishead’s Beth Gibbons Returns Solo, Doleful Yet Determined

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      With “Lives Outgrown,” her first album of her own songs in 22 years, the pensive voice of the trip-hop group confronts maturity and mortality.“All trying but can’t escape/All going to nowhere,” Beth Gibbons sings in “Floating on a Moment” from her new album, “Lives Outgrown.” It’s an acknowledgment of mortality, of limitations, of inevitable endings. It’s also an insight that can be grim or oddly comforting. Gibbons leans tentatively toward comfort; as the song ends, children sing, “All going to nowhere” while minor chords give way to major ones and Gibbons concludes, “All we have is here and now.”For three decades, Gibbons, 59, has made herself a voice of melancholy yearning and shattered hopes. With Portishead in the 1990s and 2000s, and on her own very occasional solo projects, she has sung about alienation, grief, doubt, loneliness, fear, betrayal and tormented love. Now, on “Lives Outgrown,” Gibbons has matured without becoming complacent. “The burden of life just won’t leave us alone,” she sings in “Burden of Life.”Portishead’s two 1990s studio albums, “Dummy” (1994) and “Portishead” (1997), were foundations of trip-hop. They deployed atmospheric samples to conjure a foreboding netherworld, where Gibbons’s vocals could sound anxious, jazzy, witchy or utterly bereft. Portishead’s return in 2008, “Third,” was uncompromising, dissonant and volatile, bristling against the ways trip-hop had been smoothed into background music during the group’s hiatus.In between, Gibbons collaborated on an album with Paul Webb, a.k.a Rustin Man, the bassist of Talk Talk. “Out of Season,” released in 2002, placed her voice in more naturalistic settings, with studio bands and orchestral arrangements. “Lives Outgrown,” 22 years later, is its latter-day sequel.The album was assembled gradually over the last 10 years, while Gibbons occasionally resurfaced with other projects: composing film scores, performing Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No. 3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs) with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, collaborating with Kendrick Lamar on “Mother I Sober.”Produced by Gibbons and James Ford (of Simian Mobile Disco), “Lives Outgrown” relies on hand-played instruments, but it often juxtaposes them in surreal ways. Ford alone plays a huge assortment — guitars, dulcimer, keyboards, woodwinds, brasses, even musical saw — while the drummer Lee Harris (from Talk Talk), who shares some songwriting credits, uses all sorts of found percussion, including boxes and kitchenware. For the first time in her catalog, Gibbons allowed herself to layer on backup vocals, which materialize like a ghostly sisterhood.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): The Kendrick-Drake Beef Ends + Zendaya & Post Malone

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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 seeming conclusion of the beef between Drake and Kendrick LamarThe way in which Kendrick Lamar used the tools that Drake had long perfected against him, especially in the hit “Not Like Us,” now the No. 1 song in the countryHow the meme ecosystem turned on Drake, long its most effective weaponizer, owing in part to the crowdsourced takedowns recorded to Metro Boomin’s instrumental song “BBL Drizzy”What might be next for both Drake and Kendrick LamarZendaya’s star turn in the tennis film “Challengers”Whether Zendaya’s emergence as a red carpet fixture trumps her actingZendaya’s Disney pastSongs of the week from Post Malone featuring Morgan Wallen (“I Had Some Help”), plus Ian’s “Figure It Out” and Central Cee’s “CC Freestyle”Snack chat about hip-hop jewelry and blown-out mixesConnect 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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      Why Do People Make Music?

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      Music baffled Charles Darwin. Mankind’s ability to produce and enjoy melodies, he wrote in 1874, “must be ranked amongst the most mysterious with which he is endowed.”All human societies made music, and yet, for Darwin, it seemed to offer no advantage to our survival. He speculated that music evolved as a way to win over potential mates. Our “half-human ancestors,” as he called them, “aroused each other’s ardent passions during their courtship and rivalry.”Other Victorian scientists were skeptical. William James brushed off Darwin’s idea, arguing that music is simply a byproduct of how our minds work — a “mere incidental peculiarity of the nervous system.”That debate continues to this day. Some researchers are developing new evolutionary explanations for music. Others maintain that music is a cultural invention, like writing, that did not need natural selection to come into existence.In recent years, scientists have investigated these ideas with big data. They have analyzed the acoustic properties of thousands of songs recorded in dozens of cultures. On Wednesday, a team of 75 researchers published a more personal investigation of music. For the study, all of the researchers sang songs from their own cultures.The team, which comprised musicologists, psychologists, linguists, evolutionary biologists and professional musicians, recorded songs in 55 languages, including Arabic, Balinese, Basque, Cherokee, Maori, Ukrainian and Yoruba. Across cultures, the researchers found, songs share certain features not found in speech, suggesting that Darwin might have been right: Despite its diversity today, music might have evolved in our distant ancestors. More