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      Roger Nichols, Songwriter Behind Carpenters Hits, Dies at 84

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      With Paul Williams, he wrote enduring 1970s soft-rock classics like “We’ve Only Just Begun” and “Rainy Days and Mondays.”Roger Nichols, a California songwriter and musician who, with his pop-alchemist partner Paul Williams, wrote an advertising jingle for a bank that turned into “We’ve Only Just Begun,” a milestone hit for the Carpenters and a timeless wedding weeper, died on May 17 at his home in Bend, Ore. He was 84.His death, from pneumonia, was confirmed by his daughter Caroline Nichols.Mr. Nichols was best known for his collaborations with Paul Williams, the songwriter, lyricist and all-around celebrity known for songs like “Rainbow Connection,” Kermit the Frog’s forlorn anthem from “The Muppet Movie” (1979).With Mr. Nichols focusing on the music and Mr. Williams conjuring up the words, the duo churned out silky pop nuggets like Three Dog Night’s “Out in the Country” (1970), which rose to No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100; “Traveling Boy,” which Art Garfunkel released in 1973; and “I Never Had It So Good,” recorded by Barbra Streisand in 1975.But it was with their work for the Carpenters, the hit-machine sibling duo Karen and Richard Carpenter, that Mr. Nichols and Mr. Williams scaled the heights of pop success.“We’ve Only Just Begun” peaked at No. 2 in 1970, sold more than a million copies of sheet music and served as a timeless showcase for Ms. Carpenter’s spellbinding contralto vocal stylings.The single “We’ve Only Just Begun,” by Mr. Nichols and Paul Williams, rose to No. 2 on he music charts and became a staple of weddings. A&M RecordsWe 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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      Why Beyoncé and BET Keep Calling Jesse Collins

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      There’s a memorable scene in Beyoncé’s “Homecoming” documentary about her headlining performance at Coachella in 2018, when she asks a production crew member for a 30-foot-wide camera track. He tells her it doesn’t exist. She then proves him wrong.The Emmy-winning television producer Jesse Collins remembers that moment well, so when the pop superstar called on him to produce her Christmas Day N.F.L. halftime extravaganza “Beyoncé Bowl” for Netflix, he was ready to meet her demands.“Hell no, I will never tell her something doesn’t exist unless it really doesn’t exist,” he said recently with a laugh, “because she’ll Google it and she keeps up with technology. If it can’t happen, I am 1,000 percent certain it can’t happen.”Collins, 54, has worked closely with Beyoncé on awards show performances, including her raucous rendition of “Freedom” at the 2016 BET Awards, when she danced and kicked in a shallow pool of water.“The water was one of the most complicated things that I’ve ever done on any award show,” Collins recalled in a video interview from his office in Burbank, Calif., in a comfy black hoodie as the sun beamed behind him. “Most people try to get away from water,” he said, but an executive had promised it. “When you start the conversation with, ‘This was promised to Beyoncé,’ everybody’s like, ‘We’re going to make this happen.’”Making things happen is Collins’s specialty, and it’s why heavyweights like Oprah Winfrey and Jay-Z have recruited him for their projects.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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      Andy Bell of Erasure’s Magical Mystery World

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      The frontman, whose first solo album in 15 years recently arrived, explains why he’s a fan of gems, psychics and snails.For years, Andy Bell of Erasure has been drawn to women of a certain age. “Women like Catherine Deneuve or Deborah Harry have this innate royalness about them, this sense of fully being,” he said. “I’ve always admired that.”Imagine his joy, then, when, upon turning 60 last year, he began to feel that way about himself. “It’s almost like seeing yourself from the outside and appreciating who you are,” Bell said by video call from his vacation home in Majorca, Spain. “How lovely to feel that way!”The feeling gave Bell so much confidence, it helped inspire him to release his first solo album outside of his hit band in 15 years. Titled “Ten Crowns,” after the Tarot card that signifies finding balance in your life, the album extends Bell’s legacy of making effervescent dance music, but with a twist. Instead of working with Vince Clarke, his usual partner in Erasure, he paired with the songwriter, producer and remixer Dave Audé. “It did feel a bit like cheating,” Bell said with a laugh.The prime subject of the songs — love — echoes the theme of Erasure’s classic synth-pop hits of the ’80s like “Oh, L’Amour” and “Chains of Love.” (The band will celebrate its 40th anniversary next year.) As usual, the new songs sharply contrast ecstatic music with yearning lyrics. “For me, love is an unreachable destination,” Bell said. “To love someone unconditionally is almost an impossible task.”It’s far easier, he finds, to love the things that make up his list of 10 essential inspirations. Interestingly, none have anything to do with music. Instead, they show a heightened sense of the visual world though, to Bell, they’re intimately related. “I definitely see things as sounds,” he said. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Anything 3-DI love that illusion. It brings you to a place where reality meets fantasy. I think my interest stems from when I first saw Andy Warhol’s “Flesh for Frankenstein” with Joe Dallesandro. What’s not to like?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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      Why Luxury Brands and Performers Like Beyoncé Are Seeking Willo Perron’s Designs

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      Perhaps you’ve seen Beyoncé soaring over crowds in a floating horseshoe at her Cowboy Carter tour performances, or riding a metallic mechanical bull. If you’ve wondered who came up with those stunts, the answer involves Willo Perron.“She really is, in my eyes, the last of a type of an entertainer-performer,” Mr. Perron, the tour’s stage designer, said over tea at Corner Bar, a restaurant on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, in April. “Really, I’ve never seen somebody work so diligently.”He was speaking with the perspective of someone who has also worked with Rihanna (on her Super Bowl LVII halftime show), with Drake (on the Aubrey and the Three Migos tour) and with Florence and the Machine (on the group’s High As Hope tour).“It makes you have to kind of show up at such a high level all the time,” Mr. Perron said of working with Beyoncé. “And it’s good, it’s like playing a sport with somebody who is much better than you. Hopefully, it makes you a little bit better yourself.”Mr. Perron, 51, is one of those people who is hard to put a label on professionally — the type of creative mind whose fluency in various mediums has led some to call him a cultural polymath and others a world builder.“What I do is like planting seeds with no expectations,” he said. “Just constantly planting seeds and planting seeds. And then if something grows, then I give it attention. And then simultaneously, this thing will grow over here and I’ll give that a little bit of attention.”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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      Lil Wayne Gets Earnest With Bono, and 9 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Sabrina Carpenter, Ethel Cain, Sudan Archives 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.Lil Wayne featuring Bono, ‘The Days’“I ain’t gettin’ younger, but I’m gettin’ better,” Lil Wayne declares in “The Days,” a rock anthem about survival and seizing the moment: “If my days are numbered, treat every day like Day One.” None other than Bono shares the song, starting and ending it and singing about “the days that tell you what life is for,” while the production emulates U2’s grand marches. Elsewhere on his new album, “Tha Carter VI,” Lil Wayne offers his usual punchlines and free associations; here, he’s unabashedly earnest.Water From Your Eyes, ‘Life Signs’The Brooklyn duo Water From Your Eyes revels in musical jump cuts and not-quite-sequiturs. “I am coming apart / I’m becoming together, true to form,” Rachel Brown sings in “Life Signs” from an album due in August. Nate Amos’s guitars leap from wiry, hopscotching math-rock lines to brute-force distortion and back; Brown deadpans through monotone verses, but offers a wistful melody in the chorus. By the end of the song, somehow it all makes sense.Sabrina Carpenter, ‘Manchild’Sabrina Carpenter lightheartedly and brutally dissects what might be called a himbo in “Manchild.” In a track that starts as synth-pop and ends up as country-rock, she mock-appreciates how “your brain just ain’t there” with a guy who can’t charge a phone, much less satisfy her. “I like my men all incompetent,” she claims, barely suppressing a giggle.Addison Rae, ‘Fame Is a Gun’Who could be better than Addison Rae, the TikTok sensation turned pop songwriter, to sing about craving attention, achieving the “glamorous life” and dealing with all the parasocial fallout? “I live for the appeal,” she sings, adding, “It never was enough / I always wanted more.” Yet she also realizes, “I’m your dream girl, but you’re not my type.” The production cycles through its three chords with an insistent pulse that hints at the pressure to keep generating more content.Sudan Archives, ‘Dead’Sudan Archives — the songwriter, violinist and producer Brittney Parks — powers through an identity crisis with the shape-shifting, maximalist, ultimately unstoppable track “Dead.” She asks “Where my old self at?” and “Where my new self at?” and teases “Did you miss me?” and “Do you miss me?” In four minutes, the song morphs among quasi-orchestral string arrangements, spacey electronics and walloping dance beats, then merges them all in a triumphant closing stomp.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 ‘Diddy’ Combs’s Ex-Girlfriend Will Continue Testimony About Unwanted Sex

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      Testifying under a pseudonym, “Jane,” the woman has described “hotel nights” involving drugs and encounters with escorts that she told the mogul she did not want to continue.The 18th day of testimony in the federal trial of Sean Combs will continue on Friday with a woman who described the encounters she had with a succession of men at the music mogul’s direction as a “Pandora’s box” of unwanted sex.The woman, who is testifying under the pseudonym “Jane,” is the second witness put forward by prosecutors as a victim of sex trafficking by Mr. Combs, who also faces charges of racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. Mr. Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to all charges, and his lawyers have strongly denied that any of his sexual arrangements were nonconsensual.The first of those witnesses, Casandra Ventura — the singer known as Cassie, who was in an off-and-on relationship with Mr. Combs for 11 years — has played a prominent role in Mr. Combs’s legal troubles over the last year and a half. Her bombshell lawsuit, filed in November 2023, led to the government’s investigation, and a leaked hotel security video showing Mr. Combs brutally assaulting her has been a key piece of evidence, shown to jurors repeatedly since the trial began four weeks ago.Before Jane took the stand on Thursday afternoon — under strict conditions from the court to protect her privacy — little had been known about her. In filings before the trial began, prosecutors referred to her in filings only as “Victim-2,” saying that the “financial losses, dependency and social isolation” she experienced during her relationship with Mr. Combs from 2021 to 2024 “made her more vulnerable to his coercion.”At the start of her testimony, she described herself as a single mother who was earning her living through social media promotions when she met Mr. Combs in 2020 on a trip to Florida. They began flirting, and gave each other nicknames: She was Bert and he was Ernie, after the “Sesame Street” characters. By early 2021, she said, they were in a passionate, intimate relationship (though Mr. Combs was clear that he was seeing other women at the same time).What she says happened next parallels parts of Ms. Ventura’s testimony. Mr. Combs brought Jane to a Miami hotel suite where she said she saw “assistants” setting up with lights and beverages, and draping bedsheets over the furniture. Mr. Combs invited a male escort to the room and gave the two detailed sexual directions, she testified, while the famed music producer watched and masturbated.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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      Watch Five Highlights From the Met Opera Season

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      There were some great shows at the Metropolitan Opera this season. I went three times to a vividly grim new production of Strauss’s “Salome” and to a revival of his sprawling “Die Frau Ohne Schatten,” and I would have happily returned to either one.But overall the season, which ends on Saturday with a final performance of John Adams’s “Antony and Cleopatra,” had considerably more misses than hits.Lately, the company has given more resources to contemporary work. That’s an admirable endeavor — and a risky one, both financially and creatively. This season the Met presented four recent operas, none of them box office home runs or truly satisfying artistically.“Antony and Cleopatra” had passages of Adams’s enigmatic melancholy, but the piece slogged under reams of dense Shakespearean verse. “Grounded,” by Jeanine Tesori and George Brant, which opened the season in September, starred a potent Emily D’Angelo as a drone operator, but couldn’t rise above a thin score. Osvaldo Golijov and David Henry Hwang’s “Ainadamar,” its music raucously eclectic, struggled to make its dreamlike account of Federico García Lorca’s death into compelling drama.Best of the bunch was “Moby-Dick,” by Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer, a bit bland musically but at least clear and convincingly moody. The tenor Brandon Jovanovich’s world-weary Ahab, stalking the stage with a belted-on peg leg, has stayed with me.So too has the pairing of a volatile Julia Bullock and Gerald Finley, the embodiment of weathered authority, as Adams’s Cleopatra and Antony. Among other strong performances, Ben Bliss and Golda Schultz, the two leads in a revival of a scruffy staging of Mozart’s “Die Zauberflöte,” sang with melting poise.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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      Everything Millennial Is Cool Again

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      JNCO Jeans, big hair, “Sex and the City” and recession pop: Peak Millennial is back and the era’s trends are taking on a new life.They trolled us for being old when we hit our 30s, old-fashioned for remembering a time before email and for being “cringe” as we kept wearing our skinny jeans and ankle socks.Oh, how the tables have turned.Gen Z and younger generations are picking up where we, their (slightly) older counterparts, left off in the 2000s.The Gen Z girlies are watching “Sex and the City” and living their best Carrie Bradshaw lifestyles. Those Facebook albums of blurry photos of a night out? They’re back, repackaged as an Instagram “photo dump.” Ditto for big hair and wired headphones.“I do like seeing how a younger generation interprets an older trend when it comes back around,” said Erin Miller, 35, a TikTok creator and self-proclaimed 1990s and 2000s historian. She wasn’t surprised that many trends loved by millennials were making a comeback. “Does it remind me of my age? Yes.”But that’s not to say everything is the same. Millennials (typically those born from the early 1980s to the late ’90s) had infomercials and mail-order. Gen Z and Alpha have TikTok makeup tutorials and fast fashion. Bradshaw’s cosmopolitan has been exchanged for an Aperol spritz.Members of generations Z and Alpha are putting their own mark on once-ubiquitous phenomena, and according to Ms. Miller, they’re the winners: “I think they are doing it better.”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