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      QI.X, a Queer K-Pop Group, Wants to Change South Korea

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      In conservative South Korea, few L.G.B.T.Q. entertainers have ever come out. The young members of QI.X don’t see the point of staying in.At a bar in Euljiro, one of Seoul’s up-and-coming hip neighborhoods, two voices intertwined in a duet. One was high-pitched, the other an octave lower.But there was only one singer, a 27-year-old named jiGook. The other voice was a recording made years ago, before he began his transition and hormone therapy deepened his voice.“I don’t want to forget about my old self,” he told the 50 or so people at the performance, a fund-raiser for a group that supports young L.G.B.T.Q. Koreans. “I love myself before I started hormone therapy, and I love myself as who I am now.”jiGook performing at a bar in the Euljiro district of Seoul.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesLike many other South Korean singers, jiGook, who considers himself gender fluid, transmale and nonbinary, wants to be a K-pop star. So do Prin and SEN, his bandmates in QI.X, a fledgling group that has released two singles.What makes them unusual is that they are proudly out — in their music, their relationship with their fans and their social activism. They call themselves one of the first openly queer, transgender K-pop acts, and their mission has as much to do with changing South Korea’s still-conservative society as with making music.In the group’s name — pronounced by spelling out the letters — Q stands for queer, I for idol and X for limitless possibilities. Park Ji-yeon, the K-pop producer who started QI.X, says it is “tearing down the heteronormative walls of society.”Very few K-pop artists, or South Korean entertainers in general, have ever been open about being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer. Though the country has become somewhat more accepting of sexual diversity, homophobia is still prevalent, and there are no legal protections against discrimination.The bandmates saying goodbye after a livestreaming session in Seoul. “Someday, we want to be on everyone’s streaming playlist,” Prin said.For entertainers, coming out is seen as a potential career killer, said Cha Woo-jin, a music critic in Seoul. That applies even to K-pop, despite its young, increasingly international fan base and its occasional flirtation with androgyny and same-sex attraction.“K-pop fans seem to accept the queer community and imagery so long as their favorite stars don’t come out explicitly,” Mr. Cha said.That’s not a compromise that QI.X is willing to make.The bandmates’ social media accounts, which promote their causes along with their music, are up front about who they are. So are their singles, “Lights Up” (“The hidden colors in you / I see all the colors in you”) and “Walk & Shine,” which Mx. Park says “celebrates the lives and joy of minorities.”“Someday, we want to be on everyone’s streaming playlist,” said Prin, 22.SEN dancing before the start of a recording session in Seoul for Q Planet, an online show, as jiGook and QI.X’s producer, Park Ji-yeon, watched. As a producer, Mx. Park, 37, who identifies as queer and nonbinary, has worked on hits for well-known K-pop acts like GOT7 and Monsta X. But she wanted to make music that spoke directly to people like her, with “an artist who could encapsulate our lives, love, friendships and farewells.”She met some of the QI.X members through a K-pop music class she started in 2019, designed with queer performers in mind. (In other classes, she said, “It was assumed that female participants only wanted to learn girl-group songs and male participants only boy-group songs.”)SEN, 23, said that when Mx. Park asked her to join QI.X, “it was as if a genie in a bottle had come to me.”SEN had been a dancer and a choreographer for several K-pop management agencies, including BTS’s agency, Big Hit Entertainment, now known as HYBE. The people she worked with knew she was queer, and they were welcoming.Mx. Park, leaning against the mirror, with SEN and other QI.X members during a rehearsal in June. In the red shirt is Maek, an original member who has since taken a break from the group. But whenever she auditioned to join an idol group, she said, she “never fit the bill for what they wanted.” People would say she was too short or boyish, or comment about her cropped hair.That’s not an issue for QI.X, which doesn’t aspire to the immaculately styled look of the typical K-pop act (and, in any case, couldn’t afford the ensemble of stylists those groups have). Individuality, they say, is part of the point.QI.X often performs at fund-raisers, for L.G.B.T.Q. and other causes, and sees its music as inseparable from its activism. Maek, for instance, an original member who sang on both singles but is on hiatus from the group, works for the Seoul Disabled People’s Rights Film Festival and volunteers for a transgender rights organization.With no support from a management agency, Mx. Park and the group do everything themselves. They handle their own bookings and manage their social media presence, recording videos themselves to post on TikTok and Instagram.Many of the videos are shot at LesVos, an L.G.B.T.Q. bar in Seoul that often serves as QI.X’s studio and rehearsal hall. Myoung-woo YoonKim, 68, who has run LesVos since the late 1990s, grew up at a time when lesbians were practically invisible in South Korea. “I would often think, ‘Am I the only woman who loves women?” they said.Rehearsing at LesVos, an L.G.B.T.Q. bar in Seoul, as its manager, Myoung-woo YoonKim, and Mx. Park look on.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesThe QI.X members adore Mx. YoonKim, whom they call hyung, a Korean word for older brother. During a recent video session at LesVos, after dozens of increasingly comical lip-syncing takes of “Walk & Shine,” Mx. YoonKim started to join in. Before long, everyone was bent over with laughter.To a casual observer of K-pop, it might seem surprising that so few of its artists are out. As Mr. Cha, the music critic, notes, L.G.B.T.Q. imagery has been known to surface in K-pop videos and in ads featuring its stars.Some critics see this phenomenon as “queerbaiting,” a cynical attempt to attract nonconformist fans — or to deploy gender-bending imagery because it’s seen as trendy — without actually identifying with them. To Mr. Cha, it suggests that K-pop has a substantial queer fan base, and that some artists might simply be expressing their identities to the extent they can.From left, SEN, Prin, Maek and jiGook livestreaming on YouTube in June. Many of QI.X’s fans live outside South Korea and follow the group online.Mr. Cha thinks the taboo against entertainers’ coming out reflects a general attitude toward pop culture in South Korea: “We pay for you, therefore don’t make us uncomfortable.” (Similar attitudes seem to prevail in Japan, where one pop idol recently made news by telling fans he was gay.)QI.X’s fans, who call themselves QTZ (a play on “cuties”), love the group for charging over that boundary. Many are overseas and follow the group online, leaving enthusiastic messages. “I’m so happy I can finally have an artist in the K-pop industry that I can relate to on a gender level, on a queer level,” one said in a video message to the group. “I’m so excited for you!”The band also gets hateful messages, which its members do their best to ignore. Prin, 22, is optimistic that attitudes in South Korea are changing. (Joining QI.X was Prin’s way of coming out as gender queer, but friends were much more surprised by the news that Prin was in an idol group.)The biggest show of QI.X’s career, so far, was in July at a Pride event, the Seoul Queer Culture Festival. In recent years, it had been held at Seoul Plaza, a major public square. But this year, the city denied organizers permission to hold it there, letting a Christian group use the space for a youth concert instead.QI.X onstage at the Seoul Queer Culture Festival in July.Activists saw that as discrimination, though the city denied it. Conservative Christians are a powerful force in South Korean politics, having lobbied successfully for years to block a bill that would prevent discrimination against gay, lesbian and transgender people. Organizers held the festival in Euljiro.For its set, QI.X had about 20 backup performers, some of whom were their friends (Mx. YoonKim was one of them). They had rehearsed only once together, on the festival stage that morning, because they hadn’t had the money to rent a big studio.Christian protesters were picketing the festival, some with signs that read “Homosexuality not human rights but SIN.” But fans were there, too. As QI.X sang “Lights Up” and “Walk & Shine,” hundreds crowded in front of the stage, many wearing headbands that were purple, the group’s color. There were Pride flags, and signs that read “We only see you QI.X.”A Pride parade was part of the festival. Hours later, the excitement still hadn’t faded for QI.X. “I felt alive for the first time in a while,” SEN said. More

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      John Cage Shock: When Japan Fell for Cage and Vice Versa

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      After a 1962 visit, a mutual love affair began between the composer and the country’s musicians. A new series at the Japan Society explores this relationship.About 30 miles south of Tokyo is the city of Kamakura, where the American composer John Cage was taken soon after arriving on his first visit to Japan, in 1962.There, D.T. Suzuki, the Zen authority from whom Cage had learned about Buddhism a decade earlier, greeted him and his close collaborator David Tudor at Tokei-ji, an ancient temple. Cage was given special permission to ring the temple bell; a photograph captures him inside the bell, slightly bent over and smiling a little as he listens to the reverberations.As Serena Yang writes in a recent dissertation on Cage and Japan, the discussion at Tokei-ji turned to the music of a Zen ceremony at another temple, near Kyoto. Cage exclaimed “this ceremony must be dominated by silence” — in other words, it must be similar to the works that had, by then, made him one of the world’s most important experimental composers.The similarity was, indeed, profound. The overlap between Cage and Japan went deep; for us today, suspicious of appropriation, it is a precious example of a truly mutual cultural exchange. And it has inspired a four-part series at the Japan Society in New York that begins on Sept. 28 and continues into December.Cage’s vision of life and music — his embrace of indeterminacy and chance; his use of and trust in silence — was shaped by Japanese philosophy, religion and aesthetics. And the influence of his 1962 visit on Japanese composers was such that it came to be referred to as “Jon Keji shokku”: John Cage Shock.His liberating example helped those composers — who had largely been in thrall to European modernism in the years after World War II — broaden their style, including to use traditional music as source material.John Cage conducting Toshi Ichiyanagi’s “Sapporo” at Hokkaido Broadcasting Company in 1962. From left: Yoko Ono, Yuji Takahashi (behind her), Kenji Kobayashi, Ryu Noguchi, Toshinari Ohashi, Toru Konishi, John Cage (with his back to camera), David Tudor and Ichiyanagi at the piano.Yasuhiro Yoshioka, via Sogetsu Foundation“I think that what we played for them gave them the chance to discover a music that was their own, rather than a 12-tone music,” Cage said, referring to the radical path away from traditional tonality that Arnold Schoenberg had charted a few decades earlier. “Before our arrival, they had no alternative other than dodecaphony.”Toru Takemitsu, the eminent composer who became close with Cage, later recalled: “In my own life, in my own development, for a long period I struggled to avoid being ‘Japanese,’ to avoid ‘Japanese’ qualities. It was largely through my contact with John Cage that I came to recognize the value of my own tradition.”As Yang emphasizes, the meeting of Cage and Japan did not begin with his arrival in 1962. Avant-garde Japanese musicians had been aware of Cage, who was born in 1912, from the late ’40s, through journalistic accounts of his work and, eventually, scores.“I felt an ‘Eastern’ sense from Cage’s music,” the composer Kejiro Sato wrote in the mid-’50s.In a 1952 letter to the critic Kuniharu Akiyama, Cage wrote, “I have always had the desire to come one day to Japan.” He later wrote to Akiyama that Japan “is the country of the whole world whose art and thought has most vitality for me.”After his early studies with Schoenberg, the prophet of 12-tone technique, Cage had undergone a transformation: a “great leap of the heart,” as the critic Kay Larson put it in “Where the Heart Beats,” her 2012 book on Cage and Zen. Starting in the mid-1940s, he delved into Indian music and philosophy; attended some of Suzuki’s American university lectures on Zen Buddhism; and discovered the “I Ching,” the Chinese text which he began to use as a stimulus for chance techniques in his music. His new course diverged from both tonality and dodecaphony.In 1952, this great leap culminated in a piece that asked a pianist merely to sit at his or her instrument for four minutes and 33 seconds. The music would be all the sound in the performance space that was not music; “4’33,” Cage’s most famous artistic statement, was more a philosophical inquiry into the passage of time, the nature of silence and the distinction between individual and collective experience than a standard concert event.As the ’50s went on, some of the fruits of his innovations began to filter into Japanese publications, which wrote about Cage’s embrace of Eastern art and ideas. Avant-garde critics observed that Cage’s musical choices (like his use of percussion rather than the traditional Western orchestra), his rhythms and his adoption of randomness as a compositional tool were influenced by Eastern examples, including the Japanese concept of “ma,” the notion of empty space or silence.Cage at Nanzenji Temple in Kyoto in 1962. He would return to Japan many times after ’62, including with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.Yasuhiro Yoshioka, via Sogetsu FoundationFor Cage, Zen was not only an aesthetic inspiration; it also spoke to his more general desire to re-energize a Western world he perceived as in serious crisis. At the 1954 Donaueschingen Festival in Germany, he told the critic Hidekazu Yoshida that “America is a mixed nation and has no unified spiritual basis. We rely on material culture and therefore have less and less spirituality. Yet I think the East is totally the opposite. My interest in Zen is based on my hope to recover Americans’ lost spirit.”Inspired by Cage and by European musicians making similar investigations, such as Stockhausen, composers like Takemitsu, Toshiro Mayuzumi and Yuji Takahashi had begun to work with chance; graphic scores, rather than traditional Western notation; and Cagean instruments like the “prepared” piano, adjusted with objects that affected the sounding of its strings. A contemporary music festival in Osaka in 1961, which included works by Cage, brought his brand of indeterminate, malleable music to Japanese audiences for the first time. (The response was decidedly mixed.)This all laid the groundwork for Takemitsu, Mayuzumi and Toshi Ichiyanagi, a composer who had studied with Cage in New York, to invite Cage to visit Japan, under the auspices of the Sogetsu Art Center in Tokyo, a nexus of experimental performance in the 1960s. He and Tudor spent six weeks there: In addition to their trip to Tokei-ji, they toured widely, including Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Sapporo; had the rare honor of viewing a geisha banquet; spent the night at a monastery; and even used a chance procedure to choose the color of a necktie to buy.In Kyoto, they were shown the Zen temple Ryoanji, renowned for a rock garden with 15 stones arranged in a geometric pattern. Cage’s drawings based on the stones, made 20 years after the trip, inspired his highly mutable ensemble piece “Ryoanji,” which will be performed at the Japan Society on Oct. 21 — with some of the performers streaming live from Japan.Cage and Tudor’s concerts during their visit had a galvanizing effect. Performing Cage’s “Music Walk” in Tokyo, Tudor lay under the piano; Yoko Ono, already an important artist and musician who was married to Ichiyanagi at the time, put her body on top on the piano strings. In “Theater Piece,” Tudor cooked rice and stir-fried, with contact microphones attached to objects around the stage: the cookware, a piano, toys.For the premiere of “0’00,” a follow-up silence exercise to “4’33,” Cage sat at a desk and wrote a sentence: “In a situation provided with maximum amplification (no feedback), perform a disciplined action.” Contact microphones had been attached to his pen and glasses, so, as the Cage scholar James Pritchett writes, his action “was both the creation of the score and its first performance.”“0’00,” dedicated to Ichiyanagi and Ono, will be among the works performed at the Japan Society on Dec. 7 in “Cage Shock,” a program meant to convey a sense of the 1962 visit. It was not until 1969 that Hidekazu Yoshida, the critic, used that phrase, and some have suggested it overstates the suddenness of what was actually a more gradual influence.But it is clear that experimental work in a Cagean spirit grew more common in Japan after the visit. Even a composer like Makoto Moroi, who was skeptical about the 1962 performances, took to working with indeterminacy and graphic notation — as well as traditional Japanese instruments — in the wake of Cage Shock.For Cage’s part, Yang writes that visiting the country “corrected his image of Japan. Where he had pictured a Zen-like, ancient Eastern country, he found a vibrant, modern society.” Both sides of the exchange had their ideas of the other refined and deepened.Cage and Tudor returned to Japan two years later on tour with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and again with Cunningham in 1976 — and then five times in the 1980s. His last visit, in 1989, was to receive the prestigious Kyoto Prize. The citation called him “a prophet who has foretold the spirit of the coming era” through “a new style of contemporary music by his new concept of chance music and non-western musical thought.”By then, Cage was mulling what he called a “Noh-opera,” possibly to be based on works by Marcel Duchamp. But Cage died, in 1992, before he could realize the project. On Nov. 16 at the Japan Society, a team led by the composer and performer Tomomi Adachi will offer a kind of completion of the idea — which, like so much of Cage’s work, transcends traditional boundaries of genre and culture.“It was Cage,” Takemitsu said, “who could ignore all restraints and do whatever he liked, who helped me make up my mind to get out of my own restraints.” More

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      Capturing John Zorn at 70: One Concert Is Just a Start

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      The Miller Theater at Columbia University began a series of programs to celebrate this restless and eclectic musician’s milestone year.John Zorn may have turned 70 this month, but he looks younger.He sounds younger, too — energetic and irrepressible. Recent recordings of Zorn’s music, issued on his Tzadik label, include the swinging, mystic patterns of “Homenaje a Remedios Varo” and the brightly, largely consonant chamber guitar writing of “Nothing Is as Real as Nothing.” The coming “Parrhesiastes” showcases his trademark ferocity.Zorn has been taking his stylistically varied live performances on the road to celebrate this birthday. His packed calendar includes a recent multiday festival in San Francisco, a daylong marathon at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and appearances at Roulette in Brooklyn.On Thursday, the Miller Theater at Columbia University took its turn, with the first in a series of “composer portrait” concerts that continue into November. Throughout the evening, this most hyperactive of American composers could be seen bounding with ease between the stage and his seat in the audience.With a ringleader’s zeal, Zorn introduced different groupings of musicians. During the changes between pieces, he leaped up onstage to describe his childhood interest in, say, the Dada writer Tristan Tzara, whose theatrical work “The Gas Heart” provided inspiration for Zorn’s mini-opera of the same name, performed on Thursday.Befitting his reputation, the pacing of motivic events inside that work and others tended to be fast and furious. Yet each piece also communicated joy — and a certain fellowship among the interpreters who had spent time together mastering Zorn’s rigorous, change-on-a-dime aesthetic.Here, the music featured the barreling riffs familiar from a lot of his chamber works, jazz tunes and extreme rock. But I came away from the Miller show dazzled by way in which a supple new approach to beauty has established itself in the past decade or two of his output. (Something similar has been going on with Zorn’s saxophone playing — not least in his New Masada Quartet, which has held crowds rapt at the Village Vanguard and Roulette in recent seasons.)Thursday’s concert began with a two-trumpet fanfare, “Circe” (2019), rendered with panache by Peter Evans and Sam Jones. The shortest piece on the program at a mere three minutes, it was also the most consistently hardcore. Yet its aggressive motifs were precisely coordinated — and given the independence to roam, even amid the overall feel of maelstrom. In between piercing trills, you could perceive and appreciate the way units of melody passed between the players.From left, the violinists Christopher Otto and David Fulmer, the cellists Jay Campbell and Michael Nicolas, and the violist John Pickford Richards, who formed a quintet for Zorn’s “Sigil Magick.”Rob Davidson for Miller Theatre at Columbia UniversityThe three other pieces on the program, all from 2020, focused on Zorn’s writing for strings. Each involved one or more members of the JACK Quartet. (Austin Wulliman, a violinist with the group, was not available, but David Fulmer substituted with aplomb.) And there were other guests, including the cellist Michael Nicolas in the string quintet “Sigil Magick.”In that work, listeners were offered short, droning chords, as well as polyphonic ensemble passages of whipsawing extended technique. But players within the quintet also diverged to present deliriously contrasting material: At one such juncture, while two parts held down a static pattern with a parched, brittle approach to sound production, the violinist Christopher Otto launched into sumptuously singing parlando.At the end of the concert, the violist Yura Lee joined the JACK players and Nicolas to create a sextet for — deep breath — “Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Present Itself as a Science.” At over 20 packed minutes, this struck me as one of the loveliest and most widely ranging chamber music pieces in Zorn’s considerable catalog.In addition to moments of chromatic density, the work welcomed gently strummed early music melody into its soundscape. At another point, both cellists bowed doleful yet gorgeous patterns near the top of the necks of their instruments, close to the tuning pegs, collaborating on a slightly sour intonation that seemed in line with medieval tunings. Given this range, “Prolegomena” shares something with recent Zorn string quartets, like “The Alchemist,” which JACK has recorded with his other quartets (for a planned release on Tzadik in 2024).In between the quintet and sextet came Zorn’s adaptation of “The Gas Heart.” This was Zorn in absurdist-opera mode. Here, the JACK cellist Jay Campbell and Nichols joined two percussionists — Sae Hashimoto and Ches Smith — to form the cast. Smith provided expertly swinging rhythms at a traditional kit, but also slurped water and appeared to be operating a device that played back giddy laughter; when not playing vibraphone or other pitched percussion, Hashimoto could be seen torturing a pillow with a long whip or sawing a wooden board.The cello music — often smartly, subtly amplified — was sometimes grim and gravely, and produced by bowing below the bridge. But there were also delicate moments for the strings, often positioned in contrast to some of the wildness of the percussionists. This was all funny, as intended. Every bar, though, seemed as carefully deliberate as in the more obviously “profound” string music of “Prolegomena.”And here may be a secret of Zorn’s longevity: A piece may tend comic or grave, but every moment is intensely felt.Earlier on Thursday, rumors had swirled online about the possible arrival of the Tzadik catalog on streaming services. On Friday, Zorn’s distributor, Redeye, confirmed that the move would happen, next week. This is big news, given how long Zorn has held out against streaming — and given the amount of care he takes in designing his physical releases.However you access it — on recordings or in person — Zorn’s recent catalog is worth seeking out. This fall, the Miller will host Zorn and his New Masada Quartet, on a bill with one of his great metal groups, Simulacrum. Then comes a program of his music with the star soprano Barbara Hannigan.The implicit message: One night is probably insufficient in encapsulating this artist’s range. But it could, as on Thursday, provide a riotously good start. More

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      The Chaos and Clarity of the Replacements’ ‘Tim’

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      Listening to a remaster of the band’s 1985 album with fresh ears.Deborah FeingoldDear listeners,I have adored “Tim,” the 1985 album by the Minnesota rockers the Replacements, for decades — nearly every growl, guitar lick and snare hit have been imprinted upon my memory since I discovered it as a teenager — and yet I just learned some of its lyrics last week.That was what happened when I first heard a wildly illuminating new mix of the album being released today under the name “Tim: The Let It Bleed Edition.” If you already know “Tim” as well as I did, this mix is a revelation: Phantom riffs emerge from the ether, once-muted drums sound stadium-sized, Paul Westerberg’s singing is often (if not always) understandable. It’s a fascinating opportunity to hear the importance of mixing and to compare different production styles.And if you’ve never heard “Tim” before? I’m almost jealous, because now you get to bypass all the baggage and what-if’s and experience one of the greatest American rock records of the 1980s on its own terms.When we fall in love with an album, we often become affectionate toward — maybe even defensive of — its imperfections. But “Tim” is a special case: The original album sounded thin, compressed and distant, as though the band were playing on the other end of a kid’s string-and-tin-can telephone. It was hardly the best way to present these songs. Produced by Tommy Erdelyi, a founding member and later studio wizard of the Ramones, “Tim” didn’t pack the sonic punch of the Replacements’ previous album, the cheekily titled 1984 masterpiece “Let It Be,” though Westerberg’s songwriting had grown stronger.Formed in Minneapolis in 1979, the Replacements combined the anarchic fury of punk and hard rock with the sorts of timeless pop melodies written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney — or by the unsung musical hero to whom they’d later dedicate one of their best songs, Alex Chilton of Big Star. By 1985, the Replacements were critical darlings with a cult following and three increasingly ambitious albums under their belt, but mainstream success still eluded them. There was a feeling that “Tim,” their major-label debut for Seymour Stein’s Sire Records, might change that.It didn’t. The Replacements had a perpetual self-destructive streak that was equal parts frustrating and endearing, and they found the promotional process too corny to take seriously. The album’s title, for one thing, is a head-scratcher.* The music video for the “Tim” single “Bastards of Young” was just a long, slow zoom shot of a speaker. Their notorious “Saturday Night Live” performance in early 1986 got them banned from the show.“Tim” was hardly the commercial breakthrough that the label had hoped for — it peaked at No. 183 on the Billboard album chart. The lead guitarist Bob Stinson already had one foot out of the band during the recording sessions, and it would be his last Replacements album. The LP has served as an enduring snapshot of the original lineup’s final days, and over time it has found its own intergenerational legion of devotees.Now, 38 years after its initial release, the record has gotten the warm, muscular mix it always deserved at the hands of Erdelyi’s frequent collaborator Ed Stasium, a veteran producer and engineer. If the original mix of “Tim” sounded like eavesdropping on the band performing on the other side of a wall, Stasium’s new mix makes it feel like you’re in the middle of the room, dodging Westerberg’s spittle and catching whiffs of the Replacements’ ever-present aura of cigarettes and booze.If you couldn’t already tell, I’m quite excited about this new mix. With this playlist, I’ve cobbled together a kind of alternate version of “Tim” that leans heavily on the Stasium mix but also includes a couple of bonus tracks, demos and a few instances where I think the original Erdelyi mix works best.I’d encourage you to listen to Stasium’s version of “Tim” in its entirety; even if I don’t agree with every single choice he made, the overall spirit of the project makes me grateful that it now exists.But if you want to dig a little deeper into the album’s lore, or just learn a bit about production choices and mixing, turn your dial to the left and crank up this playlist.Listen along on Spotify while you read.1. “Hold My Life (Ed Stasium Mix)”Here is the ultimate Westerbergian mantra of arrested development: “Hold my life until I’m ready to use it.” (It was also my unofficial theme song during a monthslong stretch of post-collegiate unemployment.) Since this is a song about indecision and stasis, Westerberg’s delivery is appropriately mumbled, but Stasium’s new mix makes the guitars ring out loud and clear. (Listen on YouTube)2. “I’ll Buy (Ed Stasium Mix)”The original mix of “Tim” leaned heavily on reverb, and this new version of the rockabilly show tune “I’ll Buy” shows what a disservice that did to Chris Mars’s sharp, energetic drumming. The percussion really pops here, as does Westerberg’s enunciation: I truly did not realize he was saying “it’s fine, fine, fine, fine, fine” in the first part of the chorus, despite having heard this song approximately one million times. (Listen on YouTube)3. “Kiss Me on the Bus (2023 Remaster of the Original Mix)”Possibly a contrarian opinion, but I like the compressed, faraway sound of the original best. That gauzy remove makes the song feel that much more like a romantic reverie. (Listen on YouTube)4. “Dose of Thunder (Ed Stasium Mix)”Bob Stinson was growing estranged from the band by the time “Tim” was recorded, and he plays on just five of the album’s 11 tracks. His presence on this version of the hard-hitting, storm-chasing “Dose of Thunder” finally looms as large as it should have all along. Plus, who knew that Westerberg was making a “Wizard of Oz” reference on the bridge? Not I. (Listen on YouTube)5. “Waitress in the Sky (Alternate Version)”The album’s catchiest, most tongue-in-cheek tune — an affectionately irreverent ode to Westerberg’s flight attendant sister — is a bit of a lark, so I like this alternate version, first heard on the 2008 expanded edition of “Tim,” because it doesn’t take itself seriously. That Westerberg flubs one of the lyrics is totally in line with the song’s spirit. (Listen on YouTube)6. “Swingin Party (Ed Stasium Mix)”On the new mix, the atmosphere of this introspective, mid-tempo number — covered many years later by the alt-pop star Lorde — provides plenty of space for Westerberg’s aching vocal and some floating guitar flourishes not heard on the original. (Listen on YouTube)7. “Bastards of Young (2023 Remaster of the Original Mix)”Stasium’s mix makes this anthem of young-adult disillusionment sound like the huge hit it always deserved to be. But I believe “Bastards of Young” to already be a perfect, A+, 10-out-of-10 rock ’n’ roll song, with no possible room for improvement, even when it sounds like it’s coming out of the blown-out speaker from the audaciously low-concept music video. (Listen on YouTube)8. “Lay It Down Clown (Ed Stasium Mix)”As with “Dose of Thunder,” some of the most revelatory moments of Stasium’s work come on the album’s heaviest songs. “Lay It Down Clown” has never sounded so wonderfully shambolic. (Listen on YouTube)9. “Left of the Dial (Alternate Version)”Shortly before the proper “Tim” sessions began, the band got a chance to work through new material and record some demos produced by its hero, Alex Chilton. None of the Chilton sessions made the final album, but this expanded edition premieres some of those recordings. I like the loose, unpolished sound he captured on this early cut of the band’s classic ode to the indie underground. (Listen on YouTube)10. “Little Mascara (Ed Stasium Mix)”Stasium really punches up Bob Stinson’s presence on this song, a Westerbergian character study of marital dissatisfaction that draws equally from Tennessee Williams and the Who. (Listen on YouTube)11. “Here Comes a Regular (2023 Remaster of the Original Mix)”The gut-wrenching closing track on “Tim” marks a crucial step in the band’s inevitable shift from playing party songs to playing my-drinking-is-taking-a-toll songs. Again, there’s something about the hazy glow of the original that works, as if it’s taking place in those haunting moments just before sunrise. (Listen on YouTube)12. “Nowhere Is My Home (Alternate Version)”This recording of the fan-favorite rarity provides a clear example of how the raw, atmospheric sound Chilton captured in his sessions differed from the tinnier and echoing feel of the finished album. (Listen on YouTube)13. “Can’t Hardly Wait (Electric Demo)”Destined to become one of the band’s best-known songs when a more polished arrangement with string and horn parts appeared on the 1987 album “Pleased to Meet Me,” Westerberg was actually tweaking “Can’t Hardly Wait” during the “Tim” era. I prefer these early versions to the finished track, which allow us to imagine what would have happened if yet another one of the Replacements’ greatest songs had appeared on “Tim.” (Listen on YouTube)Take it it’s yours take it it’s yours take it it’s yours,Lindsay* Who is the mysterious Tim? Just a name embroidered on a thrift-store jacket that Bob liked to wear. As his brother and the band’s bassist, Tommy, put it in the new edition’s liner notes, with classic Replacements logic, “Like most of the titles of the records, it started off as an inside joke. Calling a record ‘Tim’ — after a bunch of drinks it was funny. The next day it wasn’t so funny. But if you had more drinks, it became funny again.”The Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“The Chaos and Clarity of the Replacements’ ‘Tim’” track listTrack 1: “Hold My Life (Ed Stasium Mix)”Track 2: “I’ll Buy (Ed Stasium Mix)”Track 3: “Kiss Me on the Bus (2023 Remaster)”Track 4: “Dose of Thunder (Ed Stasium Mix)”Track 5: “Waitress in the Sky (Alternate Version)”Track 6: “Swingin Party (Ed Stasium Mix)”Track 7: “Bastards of Young (2023 Remaster)”Track 8: “Lay It Down Clown (Ed Stasium Mix)”Track 9: “Left of the Dial (Alternate Version)”Track 10: “Little Mascara (Ed Stasium Mix)”Track 11: “Here Comes a Regular (2023 Remaster)”Track 12: “Nowhere Is My Home (Alternate Version)”Track 13: “Can’t Hardly Wait (Electric Demo)”Bonus TracksI highly recommend seeking out that fabled “Saturday Night Live” performance of “Bastards of Young.” Lorne Michaels was irked that Westerberg muttered a barely audible f-bomb, sure, but the performance is infinitely cooler and livelier than most of the overly rehearsed fare that gets played on that stage.Also, from a 1986 live concert featured on the new edition of “Tim”: A delightfully chaotic cover of the Beatles’ “Nowhere Man.”And, finally, if you’re looking for some music released more recently than the mid-1980s, might I recommend our weekly Playlist? This week, we’ve got fresh tracks from Zach Bryan and Bon Iver, Laurel Halo and Shakira. More

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      Zach Bryan’s Melancholy Bon Iver Duet, and 9 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Holly Humberstone, Byron Messia, Laurel Halo and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage, and The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Zach Bryan featuring Bon Iver, ‘Boys of Faith’The memorably wistful title track from the new Zach Bryan EP — which arrives just a few weeks after his most recent album — is a collaboration with Bon Iver, which means a couple of very pointed things. First, Bryan is making kin with fellow roots-adjacent cult heroes. Though he has become wildly successful improbably quickly, Bryan still fancies himself outside of the mainstream, stubbornly stomping to his own drum. That parallels the story of Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, who likely could fill arenas if he was interested. Both singers are vividly emotional, too, building whole houses upon sadness. Where the two acts diverge is in tone — Bryan sings with raspy jabs, and Vernon buries himself behind echo and fog. Bryan is such a force, though, that he pulls Vernon in his direction on this song; when the two sing in harmony, Vernon sounds as if he’s chasing after Bryan ever so slightly, following his bark with moon-aimed howls. A lament followed by a hug. JON CARAMANICAHolly Humberstone, ‘Into Your Room’On her latest single, the warm, synth-pop tune “Into Your Room,” the English singer-songwriter Holly Humberstone oscillates between sincere yearning and wry, self-deprecating humor: “You’re the center of this universe, my sorry ass revolves around you,” she sings, begging forgiveness from someone she’s mistreated. There’s a casually tossed-off, conversational appeal to her lyrics and delivery, but when the chorus surges, she’s suddenly leading with her heart. LINDSAY ZOLADZTroye Sivan, ‘Get Me Started’Following the lusty thrill of his summertime single “Rush,” Troye Sivan starts catching feelings on “Get Me Started,” the second song released from his forthcoming album “Something to Give Each Other.” “He’s got the personality, not even gravity could ever hold him down,” Sivan sings atop an insistent, club-ready beat, aglow with the agony and ecstasy of a new crush. ZOLADZLandon Barker, ‘Friends With Your Ex’A disarmingly refined pop-punk debut single from Landon Barker — the son of Travis Barker, who plays drums here, and whose label is putting out the song. That teen-angst pop-punk became the de facto sonic landing place for the first wave of TikTok superstar pretty boys was about finding the safest available package of rebellion (and one that largely skirted issues of race). Barker is perhaps that movement’s third wave, following early adopters like Jaden Hossler and Chase Hudson, and then the mainstream carpetbagging of Machine Gun Kelly. Which is to say there is a lot to emulate — the blueprint is loud and easy to follow. It hardly almost matters who’s coloring in between the lines. CARAMANICAShakira and Fuerza Regida, ‘El Jefe’“Stick it to the man,” Shakira advises, in English, at the beginning of “El Jefe” (“The Man” or “The Boss”), a brisk polka-ska hybrid that teams Shakira — the paragon of Pan-American crossover — with Fuerza Regida, a regional Mexican band from California. Backed by crisply syncopated guitars and horns, the song is a worker’s gripe, in Spanish, about a grueling, underpaid, dead-end job with a lousy boss; “I arrive on foot, him in a Mercedes,” growls Fuerza Regida’s lead singer, Jesús Ortiz Paz. It’s peppy class warfare. JON PARELESByron Messia, ‘Mad Dawgs’Byron Messia’s breakout single, “Talibans,” is one of the year’s defining reggae songs, so saccharine you might miss its tough talk. Messia has a sweet voice that gets feistier the more clipped his singing becomes, and on his boastful new single “Mad Dawgs,” he comes almost all the way around to blustery, trading in much of his considered honeyed singing for a choppier rhythm more in key with the chest-puffing lyrics. CARAMANICAChelsea Wolfe, ‘Dusk’The goth crooner Chelsea Wolfe conjures a thick atmosphere on “Dusk,” her first new solo track since composing the score for Ti West’s 2022 slasher flick “X.” Produced by David Andrew Sitek of TV on the Radio, “Dusk” is centered around a slow, methodical beat, murky guitar chords and Wolfe’s breathy, eerie voice. “I will go through fire to get to you,” she sings with a haunting determination. ZOLADZLaurel Halo, ‘Sick Eros’Laurel Halo has a gift for the hallucinatory. “Atlas,” her first new album in five years, is a submersion into abstract imagination, resembling a head-spinning dream that shifts between epochs, story lines and locations. The Los Angeles-based conceptualist has explored Detroit techno, musique concrète and even left-field pop in the past, and was recently appointed to the faculty of Composition and Experimental Sound Practices at CalArts. But “Atlas” traces a new path, slithering between the textures of jazz, ambient and classical. On the highlight “Sick Eros,” a bass trembles and creaks, beats shiver and gurgle, synths groan and swell. There’s a Hitchcockian foreboding — a sense that someone is about to open a shadowy door and never return, or trip over an edge that will lead to oblivion. Discordant strings ache and decay, stretching over waves of vibration. By the song’s end, you can almost picture yourself at the Dead Marshes in the “Lord of the Rings,” gazing upon the corpses floating in the swamp, their spirits emerging from the water with a ghoulish menace. ISABELIA HERRERAColleen, ‘Be Without Being Seen — Movement I’A sense of peace is immanent to the music of Colleen, but especially the work she’s been making since putting aside her viola da gamba in 2017 and adopting an all-electronics approach, centered on modular synthesizers. Her new double LP, “Le Jour et la Nuit du Réel,” is a time-flattening work of minimalism, created with just a monophonic synth (that is, playing one note at a time) and two delay units. Toward the center of the album, the first of three short movements in “Be Without Being Seen” introduces a quizzical pattern of arpeggiated chords, and simply lets it hang in the air. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOMicah Thomas, ‘Eros’Listeners to Immanuel Wilkins will recognize Micah Thomas’s piano playing almost immediately: the elastic-band rhythmic tension and snap, the gloriously spilled-out harmonic delivery, his imaginatively redistributed roles for the left and right hands. Thomas is both the binding agent and the stirrer of chaos in Wilkins’s quartet, which for the past few years has been the most praised young band in jazz. On “Eros,” from Thomas’s new trio album, “Reveal,” the bassist Dean Torrey and the drummer Kayvon Gordon cooperate at cross-purposes, a six-beat flow emerging beneath a web of syncopation. Let the drums guide the rhythm of your body; then see how it changes when you let the bass. Then find Thomas within that combination, absorbing it all. RUSSONELLO More

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      ‘Dead Man Walking’ Makes Its Way to the Met Opera

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      When the composer Jake Heggie wrote his first opera, “Dead Man Walking,” in the late 1990s, he never thought it would appear onstage at the Metropolitan Opera.“The Met was not doing new opera, particularly; it was not featuring or focusing them,” he said. “It just seemed a distant dream.”But next week, 23 years after its premiere at San Francisco Opera, “Dead Man Walking,” with a score by Heggie and a libretto by Terrence McNally, will finally come to the Met — opening a season in which contemporary works are front and center as the company tries to attract new audiences.Ryan McKinny, center, as Joseph De Rocher.Lila Barth for The New York TimesThe Met, which is grappling with weak ticket revenues and other financial problems, is placing a big bet on modern opera: Works by living composers, which recently have outsold the classics, make up about a third of the coming season. And although it’s still early, ticket sales for the first three weeks of the season are so far about 12 percent higher compared with the same period last year, the company said.DiDonato, center, will be singing the role of Sister Helen Prejean for the fourth time.Lila Barth for The New York TimesPeter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, said he was drawn to “Dead Man Walking,” one of the few contemporary operas to have found a place in the repertory worldwide, in part because of its record of success.“Bringing it to the Met was overdue,” Gelb said. “It symbolizes the efforts that we’re making to really transform the art form and to appeal to a much broader audience base that we have to appeal to for opera to succeed and ultimately survive.”The opera — based on the 1993 memoir by Sister Helen Prejean, which was also adapted into the 1995 movie starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn — portrays Sister Helen’s struggle to save the soul of a convicted murderer.Van Hove, second from right, rehearsing his production, which features a spare set by Jan Versweyveld.Lila Barth for The New York TimesIvo van Hove’s austere staging for the Met opens with a short film depicting the attack by Joseph De Rocher and his brother on a teenage boy and girl in Louisiana. The focus shifts to Sister Helen, who has been corresponding with De Rocher, now a death-row inmate, and sets out to meet him at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.The Met has assembled a starry cast, including the mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, who is singing the role of Sister Helen for the fourth time, and the bass-baritone Ryan McKinny, who performed the role of De Rocher at Lyric Opera of Chicago in 2019. The mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, who originated the role of Sister Helen in the premiere, makes a cameo as De Rocher’s mother, and the soprano Latonia Moore plays Sister Rose, while the Met’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conducts.Van Hove’s production includes live video projected on a large screen above the stage.Lila Barth for The New York TimesDiDonato said that the opera resonated not because of its discussion of the death penalty but because it was a “love story.”“It’s an opera about looking at the dark side of who we are, or who others are, and asking, ‘And now how do we relate?’” she said. “Now how do we connect with each other? Do I dismiss you outright because of who you are or what you did or what you stand for? Or is there a way I can still open my heart and connect to you?”“It becomes,” she added, “a question of ultimately who is worthy of love and redemption.”McKinny, right, described the production as “a more emotional and psychological space” than previous ones he has performed in.Lila Barth for The New York TimesVan Hove, who made his Met debut last season with Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” said he was drawn to direct “Dead Man Walking” because it was a “very American story,” combining individual struggles with broader societal questions. In preparation for the opera, which was originally scheduled for the 2020-21 season but was delayed by the pandemic, he said he had read Sister Helen’s book but did not watch the movie.He stripped “Dead Man Walking” of many of its traditional elements, including partitions, steel bars and shackles. In his production, Sister Helen and De Rocher sometimes roam freely around the set, designed by Jan Versweyveld, with no barriers between them. Live video, a van Hove hallmark, is widely used, with onstage cameramen following around singers, whose faces are projected onto a large screen.That approach, van Hove said, is meant to highlight the story’s emotion. “A lot of the opera is situated in the minds of the people,” he added. “This mental space became, for us, like a prison.”Some of the singers initially struggled with the minimalist style, including McKinny, who had been accustomed to wearing shackles throughout the opera.“In the beginning it was like, wow, it’s hard for me to understand the isolation of death row if we don’t have death-row elements,” he said. “But actually, this stage is so open and so nothing, that it feels isolating on its own, in a more emotional and psychological space.”DiDonato said that this opera is “about looking at the dark side of who we are, or who others are, and asking, ‘And now how do we relate?’”Lila Barth for The New York TimesVan Hove has reworked other elements of the opera, including a scene in which fighting erupts as Sister Helen enters the prison. That moment is typically portrayed as a scuffle, but in this production, it unfolds as part of a basketball game, with cameramen moving among the inmates.On a recent morning, male members of the Met chorus took their places onstage and prepared to rehearse at half-speed — stretching, doing squats and jumping up and down. In performance, the scene lasts only 50 seconds but is pivotal, van Hove said.“For Helen, when she enters that prison, she enters hell,” he said. “We feel in the audience the visceral aggressiveness and the visceral violence that is in the prison there all the time.”Graham, who plays De Rocher’s mother, singing an emotional plea before the pardon board, said that the opera “really got into my DNA” after she sang the role of Sister Helen in 2000. She avoided the work in the years that followed because she found it too painful; her father died during the original run. But more recently, she has taken up the role of the mother, seeing it is a way for her to reconnect with the piece.“Dead Man Walking” is among the contemporary works that make up about a third of the Met’s season.Lila Barth for The New York Times“Getting into it from this role is almost like the other side of the coin,” she said. “Sister Helen has to keep it together and be strong for everybody. But Mama gets to wail and cry and holler. She gets to let it all hang out. In that way, it’s very cathartic.”Even though the opera, with more than 75 productions, has been performed in many of the world’s leading opera houses, Heggie said he still got emotional going to the Met for rehearsals.“I couldn’t have imagined when we wrote the piece that it would have this kind of life or power,” he said. “And so to be in the room with these literally genius creators was a real jolt. I just felt electricity in the room. I felt nervousness. I felt great power and I felt a lot of ideas vibrating.” More

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      Designer Files New Lawsuit Against Lizzo and Her Wardrobe Manager

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      The singer, who already faces one lawsuit alleging a hostile work environment, has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.A former wardrobe designer who worked briefly on Lizzo’s 2023 tour before being dismissed filed a lawsuit on Thursday alleging that the tour’s wardrobe manager had created a hostile work environment that tour management and Lizzo failed to address.In the complaint the plaintiff, Asha Daniels, who worked on the tour for less than a month, names Lizzo as a defendant, but does not accuse her directly of harassing behavior. In a news release accompanying the lawsuit, Ron Zambrano, her lawyer, said, “Lizzo is the boss so the buck stops with her.”The filing comes more than a month after three of Lizzo’s former dancers, who are also represented by Zambrano, sued the singer and her production company, accusing them of creating a hostile work environment. Lizzo has denied the allegations, and her lawyer has said she plans to countersue. On Thursday, a spokesman for Lizzo called the latest suit an “absurd publicity stunt” and noted that the singer had never met the plaintiff.In the court papers submitted on Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court, Daniels said she was asked to join the tour in early 2023 by the wardrobe manager, Amanda Nomura. The lawsuit alleges that throughout Daniels’s employment, Nomura had made “racist and fatphobic” comments and mocked both Lizzo and Lizzo’s background dancers “by doing an offensive stereotypical impression of a Black woman.”The lawsuit also alleged that a backstage manager on the tour sent a photo “graphically depicting male genitalia” to a group text message that included the plaintiff, tour management and other crew members; the lawsuit said the singer’s management failed to properly address the message, responding to it with humor in a way that encouraged an “unsafe, sexually charged workplace culture.”The plaintiff also said she was subjected to long hours and frequently denied breaks, alleging that Nomura required her to be on her feet all day despite an ankle injury.Attempts to reach Nomura on Thursday were not immediately successful.In response to the lawsuit, a spokesman for Lizzo, Stefan Friedman, said that Daniels never had any contact with the pop star during her time with the tour.“As Lizzo receives a humanitarian award tonight from the Black Music Action Coalition for the incredible charitable work she has done to lift up all people, an ambulance-chasing lawyer tries to sully this honor by recruiting someone to file a bogus, absurd publicity-stunt lawsuit,” Friedman said.He went on, “We will pay this as much attention as it deserves. None.” More

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      Remembering Jimmy Buffett, Beach Bum Bard

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicJimmy Buffett, who died this month at 76, was best known for one thing: making an island-friendly country-rock concoction that millions of listeners found to be a balm. He turned that balm into big business — “Margaritaville,” the song, was his lone Top 10 hit, and Margaritaville, the business he built atop it, became a licensing juggernaut and netted countless millions in revenue.But Buffett was other things as well — a clever, cheeky songwriter; a musician who fused styles from various regions; someone who held firm to his political values even if he only sometimes infused his songs with them.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Buffett’s unlikely rise to niche stardom; how he turned a way of life into a song, and that song back into a very profitable way of life; and the way in which his music sometimes extends beyond lifestyle soundtrack and into knottier emotional (and sometimes) political territory.Guest:Jon Pareles, The New York Times’s chief pop music criticConnect 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