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      Toni Stern, Who Wrote Songs With Carole King, Dies at 79

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      A sunny California poet, she provided the words to songs on “Tapestry” and other albums, including the enduring hit “It’s Too Late.”Toni Stern, a breezy young Californian who became a trusted lyricist for Carole King, providing the words for the enduring standard “It’s Too Late” and many other songs during Ms. King’s flowering as a chart-topping solo artist, died on Jan. 17 at her home in Santa Ynez, Calif., near Santa Barbara. She was 79.Her husband and only immediate survivor, Jerry Rounds, confirmed the death. He did not specify the cause.Ms. Stern, a Los Angeles native, was an aspiring painter and poet living in Laurel Canyon, an enclave popular with the Los Angeles rock elite, in the late 1960s. It was there that she met Ms. King, who had moved west from New Jersey after a painful breakup with her husband and songwriting partner, Gerry Goffin, with whom she had formed one of the decade’s powerhouse hit-making duos.The two hit it off immediately. “When I moved to California in 1968, she was the epitome of a free-spirited Laurel Canyon woman,” Ms. King wrote in a Facebook post after Ms. Stern’s death. “She lived in a hillside house with her dog, Arf, surrounded by books, record albums, plants and macramé.”The two would soon share songwriting credits. When Ms. King stepped into the limelight as a solo performer, Ms. Stern provided lyrics to the songs “What Have You Got to Lose” and “Raspberry Jam” on her first solo album, “Writer,” released in 1970.Their partnership continued on the follow-up, “Tapestry” (1971), a pop music colossus that topped the Billboard 200 for 15 weeks and went on to become one of the best-selling albums of all time. Ms. Stern provided the words for “It’s Too Late,” which was No. 1 on the Billboard singles chart for five weeks, and “Where You Lead.”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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      Is TikTok Over?

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      The app once offered seemingly endless chances to be charmed by music, dances, personalities and products. But in only a few short years, its promise of kismet is evaporating.How much time do I spend on TikTok? I can tell you which chiropractor is demonstrating their technique without even seeing their face. I know which fashion content creator is partial to Rei Kawakubo, and who has a preposterous Carol Christian Poell collection. I know which New York City microinfluencers go on vacation together, and which creators are building a modest following joking about the music of a small scene of rappers who make Playboi Carti sound like Kendrick Lamar.Through endless hours of scrolling — an hour a day, at least, for several years now — I’ve been accumulating hyperniche expertise predicated on my interests, conscious and subconscious. The result has been a gathering of online characters that, at this point, shape my cultural consumption far more than any celebrity or news source.This is what TikTok intends to do, tapping into pure id, drilling down on what you know and what you might want to know in hopes that you never leave the app’s forever scroll. Of all the social media platforms, it holds the greatest promise of kismet. It’s the one that has seemed most in tune with individual taste and most capable of shaping emerging monoculture.But increasingly in recent months, scrolling the feed has come to resemble fumbling in the junk drawer: navigating a collection of abandoned desires, who-put-that-here fluff and things that take up awkward space in a way that blocks access to what you’re actually looking for.This has happened before, of course — the moment when Twitter turned from good-faith salon to sinister outrage derby, or when Instagram, and its army of influencers, learned to homogenize joy and beauty. (Some apps, like the TikTok precursor Vine, were shuttered before ever becoming truly tiresome.) Similarly, the malaise that has begun to suffuse TikTok feels systemic, market-driven and also potentially existential, suggesting the end of a flourishing era and the precipice of a wasteland period.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?  More

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      Universal Music Group Threatens to Remove Music From TikTok

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      The company has been renegotiating the contract that licenses its vast catalog of songs to the social media platform. The agreement expires on Wednesday.Universal Music Group, the world’s largest music company, said it would revoke the licenses for its vast catalog of songs from TikTok after its current contract expires on Wednesday if the two companies could not reach a new deal addressing Universal’s concerns over artist compensation, artificial intelligence and other issues.In an open letter posted late Tuesday, Universal accused TikTok of responding to its requests with “indifference, and then with intimidation,” creating a public squabble in the remaining hours of the two companies’ existing contract. If the talks fail, TikTok users would be unable to use music by Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, U2, Bad Bunny and thousands of other artists in their videos.TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, is one of the world’s most popular and fastest-growing social media platforms, with more than a billion users, and its influence on youth culture around the world is unmatched. The company says it is used by more than 150 million Americans. For a majority of TikTok users, music is an integral part of the experience, with songs — often comically sped up — playing over the short clips that fill users’ feeds.In its public letter, Universal said that during negotiations it asked TikTok to address its concerns over three issues: compensation for artists and songwriters, online safety for TikTok’s users and “protecting human artists from the harmful effects of A.I.” Universal accused TikTok of allowing the platform to be “flooded” with songs created by artificial intelligence, which Universal said dilutes royalties for real, human artists and amounts to “sponsoring artist replacement by A.I.”In response, TikTok accused Universal of putting “their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters.”“Despite Universal’s false narrative and rhetoric, the fact is they have chosen to walk away from the powerful support of a platform with well over a billion users that serves as a free promotional and discovery vehicle for their talent,” TikTok said in a statement.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?  More

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      Can a Piano Capture the Grandeur of Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Music?

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      Inon Barnatan has created a solo transcription of “Symphonic Dances” in which he tries “not to imitate an orchestra, but to embody it.”Sergei Rachmaninoff composed two versions of “Symphonic Dances,” his last major work. One was the grand, orchestral score most often performed today; the other, a piano duet.But could it also work on one piano?Solo transcriptions have popped up in the decades since the 1941 premiere of “Symphonic Dances” — a colorful, harmonically adventurous journey through nostalgic melodies and grotesque waltzes, culminating in a cosmic showdown between life and death. And there exists a poor but precious recording of Rachmaninoff playing through the piece at the piano, vocalizing with his music as he ran through it for the conductor Eugene Ormandy in 1940.Now, the pianist Inon Barnatan has made a fresh case for the score’s viability as a solo transcription, through a new version of his own that he recorded for the Pentatone label — and that he will perform at the 92nd Street Y, New York on Friday.Barnatan, who has long loved the “Symphonic Dances,” has played the four-hands version in concert. But after hearing the Rachmaninoff recording, he wanted to try something similar, and the early, homebound days of the pandemic presented an opportunity.“I thought, this is my chance to see if this thing can work,” Barnatan, 44, said over coffee in his SoHo apartment. He gestured nearby and added: “I basically sat at that window with it from 9 a.m. to 1 a.m. I didn’t look up, I was so engrossed.”In the interview, Barnatan explained why the piece lends itself to piano, and how it has changed his relationship with Rachmaninoff and his own playing. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.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?  More

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      Popcast (Deluxe): Will Taylor, SZA or Olivia Win Big at the Grammys?

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on the 2024 Grammy Awards, which will take place on Sunday. The hosts discuss who is likely to win (and who deserves to win) in the major competitions — album of the year, record of the year, song of the year and best new artist — as well as awards in the country, rap, pop and Latin categories.Connect 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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      Review: The Boston Symphony Plays a Sober ‘Lady Macbeth’

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      The orchestra, under Andris Nelsons, gave a clear and controlled concert performance of Shostakovich’s crushing opera at Carnegie Hall.The Metropolitan Opera’s production of Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” is a garish explosion, its imagery drawn from cartoons and the Keystone Kops, its madcap energy never-ending. It’s fabulous, but the score can feel whooshed into a blender’s whirlwind.That was very much not the case on Tuesday at Carnegie Hall, when the Boston Symphony Orchestra played “Lady Macbeth” in concert. Even with some bits of staging, Boston’s performance under its music director, Andris Nelsons, was undistracted: firmly, soberly clear and controlled.Shostakovich has been a yearslong focus of this ensemble and conductor. They approach the composer with a poise that reveals just how much of this opera’s score is sheerly lovely, tender and melancholy; the frenetic, exaggerated jokiness for which it became best known is less omnipresent than you might have recalled.“Lady Macbeth,” about a 19th-century housewife in the Russian provinces who is surrounded by boorish men and turns to murder, was written in the early 1930s, when Shostakovich was still a budding brilliance. The work’s initial good fortunes — and its composer’s bright future — were infamously derailed in 1936, when Joseph Stalin walked out of a production in Moscow and an unsigned editorial appeared in Pravda, condemning the “stream of deliberately discordant sounds” and the “fidgeting, screaming neurasthenic music.”Often you can listen to the work and nod along to those words, even if today we may mean the judgment as praise. But on Tuesday, remarkably little sounded discordant, fidgeting, screaming or neurasthenic. Even a notorious effect at the end of Shostakovich’s raucous sonic depiction of sex, a slow trombone slide to evoke — well, you can decide what it evokes — was so understated that it didn’t arouse the usual audience laughter.Instead, the most memorable moments were quiet ones. Mellow strings and an almost pastoral flute combining under the protagonist’s father-in-law’s warning against workers trying to seduce her. A timpani’s rumble rising softly off growling cellos.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?  More

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      Taylor Swift, SZA, Billie Eilish: Who Will Have a Big Grammys?

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      Taylor Swift and SZA could make history at the 66th annual awards on Sunday night, where young women dominate the nominations, and revered older artists will take the stage.The 66th annual Grammy Awards on Sunday are poised to be a celebration of a dominant year for women in pop music, with female stars like SZA, Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish facing off in the major categories.SZA, whose “SOS” was a critical and chart smash, leads with nine nominations; the pop and R&B singer and songwriter Victoria Monét has seven; and Swift, Rodrigo, Eilish, Miley Cyrus and the indie-rock trio boygenius have six apiece. Swift and SZA each have the potential for landmark wins.For an award show that in the past has been criticized for its treatment of female stars, its lineup alone is being interpreted as a sign of progress. But the show this year is taking place in the shadow of lawsuits against two former Grammy leaders, accusing each of sexual assault. Neil Portnow, a former Recording Academy president, has denied the allegations against him; Michael Greene, his predecessor, has not commented.Never bet on the Grammys’ being too predictable. Industry politics, vote-splitting and a shifting membership have the potential, as always, to scramble outcomes, despite expectations about who may win or lose.Whoever wins, the night will have a roster of performers that mixes young and old, fresh faces and classics, including SZA, Eilish, Rodrigo, Joni Mitchell, Luke Combs, Dua Lipa, Travis Scott, Burna Boy, Billy Joel and U2. The host, for a fourth straight year, is the comedian Trevor Noah.Here is a look at some of the night’s major story lines.Will Taylor Swift Make History?Swift was a gale-force power in pop culture last year, and she has the potential to make a major mark at the Grammys.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?  More

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      Melinda Wilson, Wife of Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, Dies at 77

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      Ms. Wilson’s relationship with her husband, a co-founder of the Beach Boys, was portrayed in the 2014 film “Love & Mercy.”Melinda Wilson, who rescued her future husband, the Beach Boys co-founder Brian Wilson, from psychological ruin when they were dating in the 1980s, died on Tuesday. She was 77.Mr. Wilson confirmed her death on Instagram, saying that they had been married for 28 years. No cause of death was given.Jean Sievers, Mr. Wilson’s manager, said that Ms. Wilson had died suddenly at her home in Beverly Hills, Calif. She added that the couple has five adopted children — Dakota Rose, Daria Rose, Dash, Dylan and Delanie Rae — who all survive her and carry Mr. Wilson’s surname.The couple’s relationship was portrayed in the 2014 biopic “Love & Mercy.” The film shows Ms. Wilson (Elizabeth Banks) meeting Mr. Wilson, played by both John Cusack and Paul Dano, in a Cadillac showroom in Los Angeles where she was working as a saleswoman.After the film was released, Ms. Banks said in an interview with ABC News that she had met Ms. Wilson while preparing for the role.“She said to me, ‘Music is his first love,’” Ms. Banks told ABC. “‘Nothing can replace it. It’s his being, it’s his essence, it’s his everything. So I’m settling for second, but it’s a pretty good — it’s a pretty good second.’”The film shows Ms. Wilson helping her then boyfriend navigate a bout of mental illness in the 1980s. That effort, and their courtship, is complicated by the presence of Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti), a psychologist who had helped Mr. Wilson fight off depression and substance abuse to stage a professional comeback.Mr. Landy, whose team of professional minders at one point lived with Mr. Wilson 24 hours a day, insinuated himself into the musician’s life to the point where the therapist was at one point acting as his Mr. Wilson’s business partner, record producer and occasional songwriting partner.In 1992, a lawsuit by Mr. Wilson’s family resulted in a court order that barred Mr. Landy from contacting Mr. Wilson. Mr. Landy died in 2006.John Cusack as Brian Wilson and Elizabeth Banks as Melinda Ledbetter in the 2014 film “Love & Mercy.”François DuhamelMelinda Kae Ledbetter was born on Oct. 3, 1946, in Pueblo, Colo. She grew up in Whittier, Calif., and went to college there before becoming a model, Ms. Sievers said.She also worked as a producer on several films related to her husband’s music, including “Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road” (2021) and “Pet Sounds Live at Royce Hall” (2006). The latter title refers to “Pet Sounds,” a landmark 1966 Beach Boys album.When the couple saw the film “Love & Mercy” for the first time, Ms. Wilson told ABC News, she did not know how tough the experience would be.“I think I was more nervous than him when I took him to see it, and after, I said, ‘So what did you think?’” she said. “And he goes, ‘Oh, it was really a lot worse in real life.’” More