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      Best Songs of 2023

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      Seventy-one tracks that asked big questions, found new kinship between genres and helped us see the good in Ken.Jon Pareles | Jon Caramanica | Lindsay ZoladzJon ParelesFumbling Toward EcstasyThe album may be imperiled; people have been saying so for decades, even though the form has resisted extinction. Meanwhile, songs flourish, whether or not they’re destined for albums, and are ever more flexible. Some maintain the pop conventions of verse-chorus-verse; others distill themselves down to TikTok-ready hooks or sprawl across digital time frames. Here are 30 of my favorite songs from 2023 — less a ranking than a playlist, a tribute to creative abundance.1. Allison Russell, ‘Eve Was Black’The tune could be a toe-tapping Appalachian hoedown. But the title’s blunt, irrefutable statement carries Allison Russell toward harsh thoughts about racism, slavery, exploitation, lynching and sin — and then to an unexpected coda.2. Peter Gabriel, ‘Road to Joy (Bright-Side Mix)’Like many Peter Gabriel songs, this one has a scenario. The narrator is waking from a coma into an overload of sensory experiences, getting “back in the world”; the music is a funk carnival that keeps adding euphoric layers.3. 100 gecs, ‘Dumbest Girl Alive’No band walks Spinal Tap’s “fine line between clever and stupid” like the duo 100 gecs. “Dumbest Girl Alive” has a primal stomp for a beat, an up-and-down guitar riff that whimsically hops around instruments, and filtered hyperpop vocals with 21st-century lines like “put emojis on my grave” — just the thing for an utterly knowing, utterly meta bash.4. Sampha, ‘Suspended’Sampha’s “Lahai” was brighter and more expansive than his previous LPs.Ayesha Kazim for The New York TimesSampha gathers ideas from R&B, classical Minimalism, twitchy hyperpop and more around the androgynous melancholy of his voice. He conjures a rapturous infatuation and the need it leaves behind in “Suspended,” three minutes of vertigo from his album “Lahai.”5. The Rolling Stones featuring Lady Gaga and Stevie Wonder, ‘Sweet Sounds of Heaven’The peak of the Rolling Stones’ resurgent album “Hackney Diamonds” is an all-star concoction that sounds like a raw studio jam. Mick Jagger extols the glories of music and the song climbs to a big, gospelly finish, with Jagger and Lady Gaga goading each other to belt more. When it winds up, they catch their breath but they don’t want to quit — and the song builds even higher.6. Yahritza y Su Esencia and Grupo Frontera, ‘Frágil’Two Mexican American groups — from Washington state and Texas — unite for “Frágil,” a cumbia complaint about a heartless partner. While the men in Grupo Frontera sound mildly apologetic, Yahritza Martinez sings as if her heart might burst at any moment.7. Baby Rose, ‘Stop the Bleeding’With her low, tremulous, gripping voice, Baby Rose sings about love as self-sabotage, trying to break free while an orchestra underlines her despair.8. Shakira, ‘BZRP Music Sessions #53’In one of Shakira’s canny 2023 collaborations — others were with Karol G and the regional Mexican band Fuerza Regida — she enlisted the hitmaking Argentine electro producer Bizarrap to take revenge on her ex, with pointed wordplay and an airborne hook denouncing “guys like you.”9. Killer Mike featuring Future, André 3000 and Eryn Allen Kane, ‘Scientists & Engineers’In a track that roves from electro to guitar ballad to bursts of gospel, Killer Mike convenes fellow Atlanta rappers — the prolific Future and the elusive André 3000 — to address art, ambition, luxury, tenacity and paying dues, culminating in a marathon verse from Killer Mike himself.10. Brittany Howard, ‘What Now’Choppy, distorted, splintered hard funk pulses around Brittany Howard as she sorts through all the conflicting impulses of a breakup: taking blame and lashing out, feeling regret and relief, wanting to stay and knowing she needs to go.11. Jorja Smith, ‘Try Me’Jorja Smith used vocal nuance instead of volume to stir things up on her second studio album.Jose Sena Goulao/EPA, via ShutterstockA wounded, defensive Jorja Smith confronts someone who had put her down, in a track that evolves from pinging, percussive defiance to orchestral contemplation.12. Caroline Polachek, ‘Dang’One percussive syllable — “dang” — inspires an entire brittle production apparatus around Caroline Polachek’s deadpan voice. She sings about irreversible events, like shipwrecks and spilled milk, amid plinks, clangs, crashes, swooping strings and sampled screams, nonchalant amid the non sequiturs.13. aespa, ‘Better Things’Cowbells, handclaps and piano chords drive “Better Things,” a K-pop kiss-off with ingeniously cascading vocal harmonies and absolutely no regrets.14. Janelle Monáe featuring Doechii, ‘Phenomenal’Janelle Monáe’s 2023 album, “The Age of Pleasure,” exults in carnality while segueing through R&B, jazz and Caribbean styles. “Phenomenal” is a raunchy acclamation of lust and self-love, rapped and sung over springy, changeable Latin jazz grooves.15. Noname, ‘Namesake’Noname reels off brisk, matter-of-fact rhymes over a jazzy bass line as she strives to reconcile her personal comfort with all the world’s problems. She worries about complacency, complicity and hypocrisy; she doesn’t spare herself.16. Irreversible Entanglements, ‘Root Branch’Irreversible Entanglements is a fiercely riffing jazz band fronted by the low-voiced spoken-word poet Moor Mother. “We can be free — let’s fly,” she intones over the six-beat vamp of “Root Branch,” demanding something basic and essential.17. Jaimie Branch, ‘Take Over the World’The trumpeter and bandleader Jaimie Branch sets up a pummeling beat behind an environmental battle chant in “Take Over the World,” veers into a swirl of psychedelia, then whoops it up even harder.18. Dolly Parton, ‘World on Fire’Dolly Parton, of all people, delivers a full-fledged power ballad and stadium stomp to consider the dire state of the world. She counsels love, healing and kindness, but at the end she’s still wondering: “Whatcha gonna do when it all burns down?”19. Kylie Minogue, ‘Padam Padam’Kylie Minogue’s “Padam Padam” had a moment — during Pride celebrations and beyond — in 2023.Maggie Shannon for The New York TimesFor Kylie Minogue, “Padam Padam” is the sound of a heartbeat during a mutual flirtation at a club. The beat — a TikTok favorite — is a cheerful club thump, and a hint of Bollywood perks up the melody for three minutes of computerized bliss20. L’Rain, ‘I Killed Your Dog’L’Rain — the songwriter and performer Taja Cheek — ponders vengeful, destructive impulses in a near-lullaby that wanders through a chromatic chord progression, building ambivalence into the harmonies.21. Jamila Woods featuring duendita, ‘Tiny Garden’Jamila Woods sings about love as an accumulation of small connections and growing trust, a work in progress: “It’s not butterflies or fireworks.” The arc of the music, from isolated percussion and keyboards to multilayered, gospel-tinged vocals, radiates optimism.22. Olivia Dean featuring Leon Bridges, ‘The Hardest Part’With vintage soul chords and modern electronic subtleties, the English songwriter Olivia Dean and her American duet partner, Leon Bridges, sing about growing apart and moving on, grappling with second thoughts.23. Nkosazana Daughter, Master KG and Lowsheen featuring Murumba, ‘Ring Ring Ring’In an amapiano track full of echoey, lonely spaces, the South African singer Nkosazana Daughter and guests lament the uncertainty and sorrow of an unanswered phone call.24. Margo Price, ‘Lydia’Margo Price turned her lens outward to characters other than herself on her album “Strays.”Sara Messinger for The New York TimesIn this unblinking character study, a woman named Lydia, with “an ex-husband and a midlife crisis,” smokes a cigarette outside a clinic, thinking back through a life of hard luck and rough decisions and trying to decide whether to end her pregnancy. Margo Price sets the story to simple guitar chords and an understated string arrangement, pondering the choices.25. Mitski, ‘Bug Like an Angel’A squashed bug on the bottom of a cocktail glass leads Mitski to fragmentary epiphanies about addiction, trust and sex, with a choir bursting in to affirm each cryptic insight.26. Margaret Glaspy, ‘Memories’Over a waltz of simple guitar chords, Margaret Glaspy blurts out unvarnished grief in a torn voice, bereft yet struggling to go on.27. The Smile, ‘Bending Hectic’A guitar meditation melts into an ecstatic death wish during the eight minutes of “Bending Hectic.” Thom Yorke sings about driving along a curvy Italian mountain road with a sheer drop, and “letting go of the wheel”; Jonny Greenwood’s string arrangement envisions the plunge, and then electric guitars careen to a finish.28. Lankum, ‘Go Dig My Grave’The Irish band Lankum connects the fatalistic, death-haunted side of Celtic tradition to something like black metal in this nine-minute dirge about dying for love. It’s an inexorable crescendo from a solo a cappella vocal to a tolling, clanging drone topped by a howling fiddle, haunted and bleak.29. Caroline Rose, ‘Love/Lover/Friend’In a flurry of plucked and orchestral strings, Caroline Rose affirms her love by ruling out other possibilities, then basks in wordless choral ecstasy.30. André 3000, ‘That Night in Hawaii When I Turned Into a Panther and Started Making These Low Register Purring Tones That I Couldn’t Control … Sh¥t Was Wild’In a 10-minute instrumental for muffled drums, percussion and prowling parallel flute lines, André 3000 maintains an aura of calm vigilance, contemplative but still on edge.Jon CaramanicaAnything GoesIt was a year in which the best pop music truly made it up as it went along. Off-the-cuff collaborations? Sure. Songs by fictional characters? Why not. A guy filmed singing in a field by a West Virginia public radio outlet? Absolutely. Microscene classics that clock in at 75 seconds and might be forgotten tomorrow? Always. (In the interest of avoiding redundancy, I’ve only included songs that aren’t on albums that made my best of the year list.)1. Central Cee & Dave, ‘Sprinter’This British rap tag team is about improbable wealth, bounteous opportunities, living so fast that what’s slipping by is almost as good as what you manage to grab hold of. As celebrations go, this is a controlled, pensive one — a relaxed ramble for the moments when the money’s so new, it sparkles.2. Jocelyn (Lily-Rose Depp), ‘World Class Sinner/I’m a Freak’A paean to emotional vacancy sung with emotional vacancy from a television show rife with emotional vacancy ends up … positively glistening. A cause for surrender.3. Oliver Anthony Music, ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’A great song, sure. More than that, though, a sense of great exasperation. The quick and strong embrace of this song suggests an ocean of frustration that pop music leaves largely untapped and unvoiced, and a grass-roots resistance that it has almost no hope of replicating.4. Mustafa, ‘Name of God’Few artists conjure a richness of sorrow the way the Canadian folk singer Mustafa does. Here, his singing is beautiful and a little distant, as if flinching ever so slightly from a pain that will never be anything but raw.5. PinkPantheress featuring Ice Spice, ‘Boy’s a Liar Pt. 2’PinkPantheress took her songs from her bedroom to bigger stages after a viral hit.Adama Jalloh for The New York TimesA glimpse at how pop might — should? — sound in the coming few years. Two stars of the internet of 12 to 24 months ago who found themselves at the vanguards of their respective scenes come together for a collaboration in which neither has to concede an inch.6. Jelly Roll with Lainey Wilson, ‘Save Me’What makes Jelly Roll so effective is the way the intensity of his howl only amplifies the potency of his scars. It’s perhaps most pointed on this duet with Lainey Wilson, whose crisp and clear tone initially seems like an antidote, but is quickly revealed as equally bruised.7. That Mexican OT featuring Paul Wall and Drodi, ‘Johnny Dang’An effortless blend of Texas rap generations, fusing the tongue-twisting with the slow-rolling.8. Cody Johnson, ‘The Painter’When someone is effusive, it might not mean as much when they gush. But when a stoic drops his guard, it can feel seismic.9. Ken (Ryan Gosling), ‘I’m Just Ken’When this stridently sad song from the “Barbie” movie hits its apogee, it’s channeling Dashboard Confessional, Meat Loaf, the Phantom (of the Opera) and maybe even Scott Stapp. Slash plays guitar, salting the melodrama hard.10. Gunna, ‘Fukumean’The Atlanta rapper Gunna quickly returned to work after accepting a plea deal in a wide-sweeping ongoing case.Craig Barritt/Getty Images For GunnaA year ago, Gunna accepted a plea deal that untethered him from the RICO trial that has ensnared his mentor, Young Thug. Relatively quickly, he returned to his familiar slippery garble with a hit so ubiquitous it felt like a memory of how things once were.11. YoungBoy Never Broke Again, ‘Dirty Thug’The best of another slew of lonely anthems from the most important and least publicly visible hip-hop star of the past few years.12. Kylie Minogue, ‘Padam Padam’A cool blast of not-quite-exuberance, this club-pop anthem is a continuation of Kylie Minogue’s sometime-diva legacy, a relentless queer anthem, a cheeky flirtation and a thump that just won’t quit.13. Doja Cat, ‘Agora Hills’It has been 11 and a half years since Kitty Pryde released “Okay Cupid,” plenty of time for a re-embrace.14. Chino Pacas, ‘El Gordo Trae el Mando’A meaty, beatifically meandering boast by one of the rising stars of corridos tumbados.15. Lil Uzi Vert, ‘Just Wanna Rock’Grandfathered in from late 2022, this song broke TikTok, broke dancing, broke the Grammys and maybe even broke hip-hop.And 10 More:Corpse, “Disdain”Miley Cyrus, “Used to be Young”Emilia, “GTA.mp3”evvls, “Belikeme?”Jack Harlow, “Lovin on Me”Sam Hunt, “Walmart”Byron Messia, “Talibans”Militarie Gun, “Very High”Nettspend, “Shine N Peace”Odetari, “Good Loyal Thots”Lindsay ZoladzBeautiful DisastersSo many of my favorite tracks of the year flipped scripts, turned tables and reimagined weaknesses as strengths. By no means a complete list of the songs I enjoyed the past 12 months, these are 20 I couldn’t stop listening to — most of them reminders of music’s ability to turn mess into meaning, anxiety into energy and heartache into a great song.1. Olivia Rodrigo, ‘Vampire’Olivia Rodrigo confronts a new class of villain on “Vampire,” the incisive first single that heralded her second album, “Guts,” but she also proves she has learned new ways to slay. “Vampire” is wrenching and formally restless, at first masquerading as a piano ballad, only to ramp up into a miniature rock opera complete with a showstopping high note worthy of a tragic heroine. But don’t cry for Rodrigo — she doesn’t need protection. Her words, her observations and her stylistic flair all have plenty of bite.2. PinkPantheress featuring Ice Spice, ‘Boy’s a Liar Pt. 2’In a previous millennium, two of pop’s main young girlies joined forces to each assert that “The Boy Is Mine,” but PinkPantheress (b. 2001) and Ice Spice (b. 2000) were not alive when that song was released. On their bubbly and utterly infectious collaboration, they sidestep any hint of rivalry and turn against the guy, deciding he’s not worth the drama. “What’s the point of crying?” they shrug blithely. “It was never even love.”3. Lana Del Rey, ‘A&W’The year’s best song about telling an ex-boyfriend’s mom that her son is a disaster (runner-up: Rodrigo’s “Get Him Back!”), the sprawling, portentous seven-minute “A&W” is an unfiltered look into Lana Del Rey’s stream of consciousness: misremembered movie titles, sexually frank admissions, inside jokes about Californian geography (“I say I live in Rosemead, really, I’m at the Ramada”) and all manner of other oddly juxtaposed American flotsam. “Maybe,” she reasons with a weary sigh, arriving at some self-knowledge, “I’m just kinda like this.”4. boygenius, ‘Not Strong Enough’Everyone’s favorite musical besties — Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus — riff on pop clichés and gender roles in this highlight from their breakout year, succinctly summing up their individual songwriting personalities and demonstrating the magic that happens when they combine their powers.5. Romy, ‘Enjoy Your Life’Romy Madley Croft was the final member of the xx to release a solo album.Charlotte Hadden for The New York TimesThe xx’s Romy Madley Croft finds a solution for anxiety and self-doubt on this thumping, compassionate club banger: What if she looked at her life through the eyes of a benevolent mother? A luminous sample from the synth pioneer Beverly Glenn-Copeland — “my mother says to me, enjoy your life” — guides the way.6. Mitski, ‘My Love Mine All Mine’TikTok’s reluctant darling Mitski has released her share of songs that sound destined for pop crossover — last year’s sleek, synthy “Laurel Hell” was full of them — but, unexpectedly, she became a fixture on this year’s Hot 100 for the first time ever with this slow, moony ballad that sounds unlike anything else on the charts. Oblique, poetic and sumptuously sung, it’s a welcome moment of Zen.7. Zach Bryan featuring Kacey Musgraves, ‘I Remember Everything’An old-fashioned he-said/she-said country duet cut through with a chill of bleak finality. Zach Bryan and Kacey Musgraves are both at their emotive best on this bruised-hearted crossover hit.8. Doja Cat, ‘Agora Hills’An arsenic-laced confection that shows off Doja Cat’s multiple personalities — a romantic and an ironist, an angel and a devil, a singer fluent in dreamy hooks and a rapper with razor-sharp teeth.9. Jess Williamson, ‘Hunter’The indie singer-songwriter Jess Williamson chronicles both the promise and fatigue of looking for love in this bittersweet, poetically rendered reflection, her twangy voice brimming with a weary hope.10. Olivia Rodrigo, ‘Bad Idea, Right?’Olivia Rodrigo sings about mistakes in serious and humorous ways on her second album, “Guts.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesWith the possession of a driver’s license comes the ability to drive to an ex’s house in the middle of the night for an ill-advised hookup. That’s the trade-off. At least such circumstances gave us one of Rodrigo’s spunkiest, funniest and most irresistible singles yet.11. Palehound, ‘Independence Day’El Kempner has a keen eye for tragicomic detail on this ramshackle rocker about regret, denial and long-simmering incompatibility that results in a July 4 breakup. “I’m living life like writing my first draft,” they sing. Aren’t we all.12. Water From Your Eyes, ‘Barley’All year I have been describing this zany, looping song from the Brooklyn art-rockers Water From Your Eyes as “what it would sound like if Sonic Youth had made an appearance on ‘Sesame Street,’” and I’m not going to stop now.13. Noname, ‘Namesake’The Chicago rapper Noname says the quiet part loud — and oh so dexterously — on this refreshingly honest track, an incisive examination of pop-cultural ethics unafraid to name names, including (in addition to Beyoncé, Rihanna and Kendrick Lamar) her own.14. Wednesday, ‘Chosen to Deserve’In her cracked wail, the Southern rock band Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman — “the girl that you’ve chosen to deserve” — paints an achingly vivid portrait of suburban boredom and young adult malaise, finding just the right surface details to express something deep: “I was out late, sneaking into the neighborhood pool,” she sings. “Then I woke up early and taught at the Sunday school.”15. Mandy, Indiana, ‘Pinking Shears’Comment dit-on “hypnotic, endlessly loopable industrial banger”?16. Jenn Champion, ‘Jessica’There’s no right or wrong way to grieve, Jenn Champion reminds us on this icy, arresting piano ballad, as she rages against a friend’s overdose in lacerating detail.17. Jamila Woods featuring duendita, ‘Tiny Garden’Jamila Woods’s album “Water Made Us” achieves the musician’s greatest synthesis yet between her voices as a poet and as a songwriter.Bennett Raglin/Getty Images For Slow FactoryA warm, wise ode to incremental progress and tiny, beautiful things from R&B’s resident poet laureate.18. Yo La Tengo, ‘Fallout’Still knitting aural autumn sweaters, after all these years.19. Sufjan Stevens, ‘So You Are Tired’What state is he on now? Alaska? Disrepair? Grace? Regardless, this song is a quiet doozy that watches a long-term love unravel in slow motion like a spool of ribbon underwater.20. Drake featuring Sexyy Red and SZA, ‘Rich Baby Daddy’Exhibit Z that Drake is at his best not when he tsk-tsks grown women, but when he risks being outshone by inviting them on the track. More

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      Jay Schwartz’s Music Reflects a Past of Oceans and Deserts

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      The composer’s latest work, “Theta,” born of the pandemic, loss and long swims in open water, is premiering in Germany.In early March 2020, the composer Jay Schwartz traveled to San Diego from his home in Cologne, Germany, to attend the funeral for Don Bukovich — his stepfather and the only person in his extended family with an affinity for classical music.Bukovich was especially fond of music by Bach. And, when the pandemic hit and Schwartz got stuck in San Diego and stayed with his brother, he found himself playing Bach’s “Komm, süßer Tod” (“Come, Sweet Death”) over and over at the piano. He also went for long swims in the Pacific Ocean, far from the shoreline.“You reach a kind of euphoric state,” Schwartz said in an interview. “You’re in the ocean and you’re euphoric because of the natural beauty, but also because you’re on the cusp of extreme danger.”As Schwartz swam, he thought about musical ideas: an unusual chord progression in the Bach piece; glissandos, the sliding from one note to another; and an aural illusion known as the Shepard tone, the sonic equivalent of a barber’s pole.“I started to superimpose those things in an intuitive way, not thinking it was a concept,” Schwartz said. “It just happened while in the ocean.”By June 2020, Schwartz had finished a new piece for orchestra based on those ideas. He called it “Theta,” after the Greek letter once used as a symbol for death.No one had commissioned the work. But a week after it was completed, Schwartz received a call from the Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra. Its music director, Teodor Currentzis, was planning a program built around Gustav Mahler’s final, incomplete Symphony No. 10, and wanted Schwartz to compose a piece.Schwartz considered writing something new. But, as he researched the end of Mahler’s life, Schwartz realized that the symphony and “Theta” had both been inspired by Bach works related to death. The pieces also shared an interest in mortality’s release: As he composed, Mahler wrote in a poem to his wife, Alma, that he hoped for “the bliss of death in the most painful hours.”On Thursday, Currentzis and the Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra will premiere “Theta” and other responses to Mahler’s Symphony No. 10 in Stuttgart, followed by performances in Hamburg, Freiburg and Berlin. The concerts are a milestone for Schwartz, 58, an artist with no formal composition training who has forged a career largely parallel to the structures of contemporary classical music in Germany.Schwartz, behind at right, at a recent rehearsal led by the conductor Teodor Currentzis, at the podium.Felix Broede for The New York TimesDespite — or, as Schwartz sees it, because of — his lack of academic education, his music is unmistakable. All his pieces include glissandos, which he uses to create arresting parabolas of texture. “There is no glissando without dissonance,” Currentzis said in an interview. “Always he puts a note that keeps, and then the glissando creates the nirvana of the dissonance, of falling apart.” At key moments, these tendrils of sound alight on major and minor chords: familiar harmonies rendered new.Schwartz’s pieces have clearly audible forms and stark climaxes, taking obvious pleasure in sound. “Musical events happen that achieve a kind of breathing or wave-shaped forms,” Bernd Feuchtner, a writer and the artistic director of the Handel Festival in Halle, Germany, said in a phone interview. He added that when he hears a new Schwartz piece, “I’m always sitting on the edge of my seat.”The conductor Matthias Pintscher has said of Schwartz, “For me, he’s a Schubert of our time.”SCHWARTZ’S FATHER was a boxer turned pool maintenance worker; his mother, a homemaker who later worked as a schoolteacher. Schwartz, who was born in San Diego, showed musical talent early: At 4, he would pick out snatches of the easy listening music his parents liked on his plastic toy piano. At 7, he began formal lessons.His parents divorced in 1979, and his mother moved Schwartz and his two brothers to Deming, N.M., whose desert landscape he loved. He began practicing to become a classical pianist. Schwartz studied music at Arizona State University, where he won his first and only piano competition.“The best art, at least that I’ve done, I don’t feel like I’m inventing it,” Schwartz said. “I find it, in the sense of excavating, going into something, and digging something up.”Felix Broede for The New York Times “I was taught that that was the thing I should be doing: playing Rachmaninoff concerti, and not making them up myself,” Schwartz said. “I actually did play a Rachmaninoff concerto with the college orchestra. And at the end it was like, ‘Did that, got the T-shirt. I’m out of here.’”In 1989, Schwartz traveled to the university town of Tübingen, Germany, for what was supposed to be a one-year exchange program as part of his graduate school studies in Arizona. He has lived in Germany ever since.Schwartz considered studying musicology, but a professor, citing his then-rudimentary German, discouraged him. Instead, Schwartz practiced the language and worked on the assembly line of a Mercedes-Benz factory. “I was either listening to German grammar or to music, because the job was super boring,” he said. “You could sit there for hours and not have a single part come by.” (He now speaks German so fluently he sometimes needs a moment to find an English word.)In 1990, Schwartz became an assistant in the musical archives of the Stuttgart State Theater, where he did what he described as “menial tasks.” Later, the theater noticed his composition skill, and hired him to write small pieces of incidental music. The job wasn’t for him. “I don’t like being subordinate to some director saying, ‘I need four bars of minor’ and those kinds of ridiculous demands,” Schwartz said.But he did take advantage of free tickets to everything at the theater. He saw opera, ballet or theater nearly every night, and listened to contemporary music on public radio. He made some of his closest friends in those years. Still, it was a time of soul-searching. “An identity crisis comes with entering a foreign country,” Schwartz said. “And that whole identity crisis is super important for forming an artist. I had years when I couldn’t compose. When it did happen, it was a flood.”His catalog includes 16 pieces of chamber music, five vocal works, an opera, a recent recomposition of Schubert’s “Winterreise” for voice and saxophone ensemble, a piece for voices and orchestra, and eight pieces in the series “Music for Orchestra,” of which “Theta” is the most recent.Schwartz began the “Music for Orchestra” series in 2002, when a cellist friend asked him to write a piece for 12 of his students and a semiprofessional string quintet, “Music for 17 String Instruments.” A year later, the artistic director of the German National Theater in Weimar commissioned him to compose incidental music for a stage adaptation of Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther,” with a full orchestra at Schwartz’s disposal.“He wanted me to copy Tchaikovsky, which I did,” Schwartz said. “At the same time, I looked at the recording plan, and I had a ridiculous amount of time in the recording studio.” He took the opportunity to orchestrate “Music for 17 String Instruments” and record it.“I put it on their stands, and they did it, like, ‘This is part of the play,’” Schwartz said. “It never entered the play.”That work became the first “Music for Orchestra.” In a phone interview, Eric Marinitsch, the former head of promotion for Universal Edition, Schwartz’s publisher, described hearing the music as a “big bang.”“The piece was so clear in its dramaturgy,” Marinitsch said, “and yet composed with such complex means.”Composed over the past two decades, the pieces of “Music for Orchestra” evoke the austere, ominous beauty and subtle gradations of the environments where Schwartz was raised: the ocean and the desert. “The best art, at least that I’ve done, I don’t feel like I’m inventing it,” he said. “I find it, in the sense of excavating, going into something, and digging something up.”In late November, Schwartz traveled from Cologne, where he lives with his husband, to rehearsals for “Theta.” In an early rehearsal, Schwartz and Currentzis worked to make the individual parts coalesce into a unified texture. “I hear fragments,” Currentzis told the timpanist as he tried to smooth out a long, slow glissando.Working together with visible joy, the conductor and the composer added Mahlerian touches — winds playing with their bells up, a dramatic hammer stroke — to the piece. They sang bits of “Komm, süßer Tod” to demonstrate musical shapes.In a section of frothy trills, Schwartz addressed the woodwinds. “Realize,” he told them, “that you’re part of the wave.” More

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      Humberto Leon’s Making of a Girl Group

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      Last year, it became Humberto Leon’s job to shape the appearances of 20 young women, whose ages ranged from 14 to 21.He decided what kind of clothing, shoes and jewelry they would wear. He told them how their hair should be cut and their makeup applied.“You have to imagine, with 20 girls, I want each and every one of them to stand out,” Mr. Leon said.Still, young women do not always take kindly to being told how to dress. There were tears. “That’s not how I like to do my hair,” some of them told Mr. Leon.“I said, ‘I know, but trust me. I’m helping you own your personality,’” Mr. Leon recalled. “They think they know what’s best for them. And I have to give them an objective opinion of what I think would look great on them.”Professionally, it was in their best interest to listen to Mr. Leon. Under his guidance, they could become the main characters in their own makeover montage — a tradition stretching from “Pygmalion” to “The Princess Diaries” to, perhaps more relevant to this group, “The Hunger Games.”Mr. Leon rose to prominence in the aughts with Opening Ceremony, which he founded in 2002 with Carol Lim, a college friend. After the pandemic, he decided to expand his horizons.Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesThese 20 girls were in direct competition with one another. Six of them would eventually be named members of a new pop group. Upon its debut, this group would already have the support of Hybe, the company that brought K-pop to the world, and Universal Music Group, the world’s largest record company. The competition would also be the subject of a Netflix documentary series.Throughout it all, the contestants’ public image would be in the hands of Mr. Leon, a 48-year-old fashion designer who rose to prominence in downtown New York during the 2000s with his store Opening Ceremony — a popular boutique for up-and-coming labels — then was recruited to reinvigorate a luxury brand in Paris, then started opening restaurants with his family during the pandemic in Los Angeles.In September 2022, he was brought on as creative director for this girl group competition — a partnership between Hybe and Geffen Records, which is owned by Universal Music Group — in which 120,000 applicants from around the world were narrowed down to 20 contestants, or “trainees,” all of whom were relocated to Los Angeles to train intensively in singing and dancing.When those contestants were announced in August, Mr. Leon dressed them for their first group photo shoot in matching gray schoolgirl uniforms. They wore blazers bearing the name of their competition: Dream Academy.By November, half of this group was eliminated through a combination of fan voting and judges’ evaluations. The culling was chronicled on YouTube. (“We’re not forming a friend group, we’re forming a girl group,” one young woman said during a particularly tense elimination round.)For the final photo shoot before the six winners were announced, Mr. Leon dressed the trainees now as “elevated” schoolgirls. This time they showed more skin in tailored gray sets, trading their chunky white socks for black mesh, looking like more polished, modern versions of Britney Spears in “ … Baby One More Time,” the music video that made a 16-year-old girl a star.One morning in Hollywood, I watched as Mr. Leon oversaw these final portraits. He reminded one 17-year-old contestant, Megan, to correct her stance. She had a tendency to stand with her legs wide apart, which Mr. Leon had nicknamed “the Megan.” As in, “Don’t do ‘the Megan,’ Megan.”Later, while the 10 remaining trainees filmed a music video, I noticed that Megan had a way of staring down the camera with a cool, come-hither expression — similar to the seductive one Ms. Spears adopted. (Megan, of course, was not yet born when “ … Baby One More Time” was released.)This tendency was not corrected.When it came to being sexy, Mr. Leon said he had always told the girls, “Whatever you’re doing, do it for yourself, because you want to feel that way.”A “Dream Academy” trainee poses at a Hollywood studio days before the final six winners were announced.Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesK-pop, But Not“Dream Academy” was not Mr. Leon’s first time working with a girl group.In 2021, he met the Linda Lindas, a punk quartet that went viral after performing at the Los Angeles Public Library. At the time, its members were between 10 and 16 years old. They had come to eat at Mr. Leon’s restaurant Chifa, named for a Chinese restaurant his mother, Wendy, opened in Peru in the 1970s before the family moved to the United States. When Mr. Leon offered to direct their first music video, the group said yes. “Growing Up” showed the four girls and four cats shredding in a suburban home, dressed in 1970s-inspired outfits.When she saw the video, Michelle An, now president of creative strategy at Interscope Geffen A&M, said she thought it was “so cute and so innovative and so appropriate for their age.” She was particularly taken with the illustrations of cats painted on the girls’ closed eyelids.The final 10 trainees rehearse an original song, “All the Same.” Their outfits, hair and makeup choices were directed by Mr. Leon and his team.Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesMs. An’s job is to help her labels’ artists, like Billie Eilish, with “visual world building,” she said. “You make this music — what imagery do you want out there to help your fans understand what this song is trying to say?”Geffen had an unusual project in the works with Hybe, a Korean entertainment powerhouse. What began as a conversation about music distribution ended with Bang Si-hyuk, the chairman of Hybe, proposing that they build a group together. Hybe would bring elements of K-pop’s famously rigorous training and development program — the same system with which Hybe built BTS — to the United States for the first time, filling it with trainees from various regions, not just East Asia.One hurdle, though, was the Americans’ concern that the group could seem too factory-produced. “K-pop has a reputation of being manufactured,” Ms. An said. Even outside K-pop, the history of boy bands and girl groups reeks of “not being as organic and real,” said John Janick, the chief executive of Interscope Geffen A&M, pointing to glossy reality shows of the 2000s, like “Making the Band.”In order to make the group feel real, the executives said, the girls had to feel real. Their personalities couldn’t be forced; there would be no extreme archetypes, no Posh or Sporty or Baby Spice. They needed someone who could draw out the girls’ distinct backgrounds and abilities but also make them cohere visually as a group. They were convinced Mr. Leon could be that person.“In the entertainment business,” Mr. Janick said, “everybody wants to have taste, but not all people do.”‘A Curious Mind’Instead of going to fashion school, Mr. Leon likes to say, he worked at the Gap for 10 years.At 14, he was hired at a store in West Covina, Calif., and learned he had a skill for designing windows. He continued working on visual displays for Gap while attending the University of California, Berkeley. After graduating in 1997, he accepted a corporate job with Old Navy in San Francisco.In 2000, Mr. Leon left for New York, working at Burberry as the director of visual merchandising. Mr. Leon called Lara one of the most “fashion savvy” of the group.Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesA selection of shoes. Some trainees were more confident performing in heels than others.Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesIn 2002, he founded Opening Ceremony with Carol Lim, a college friend.“We have a similar approach to life,” said Ms. Lim, who was the business-minded chief executive to Mr. Leon’s creative director. “A curious mind,” she called him.A decade later, having cultivated a Midas-touch reputation for coolness, the duo became design directors at Kenzo, a LVMH-owned brand in Paris.At Kenzo, Mr. Leon took a particular interest in marketing visuals. Mr. Bang, the Hybe chairman, called a 2016 fragrance advertisement starring a frenetic dancing Margaret Qualley, directed by Spike Jonze, one of his “favorite fashion artworks.”Mr. Leon and Ms. Lim left Kenzo in 2019, then sold Opening Ceremony and closed its stores in 2020, moving to the same neighborhood in Los Angeles to raise their families.Around this time, Mr. Leon said he had an epiphany: Even if he was “good” at it, he didn’t have to keep working in fashion. “I was able to create a feeling, and a feeling can transfer,” he said. “I decided to open up my world a bit.”Sometimes Mr. Leon still designs clothes; recently he got a call from the choreographer Justin Peck about creating costumes for a spring performance of the New York City Ballet. But what appeals to him now is making things not for runways but for culture. For example, when Heidi Bivens, the costume designer for “Euphoria,” was working on the teen drama’s first season, she sourced several outfits from Opening Ceremony. The “‘Euphoria’ effect” became a phenomenon, inspiring trends in fashion and beauty.The label hoped that given Mr. Leon’s experience raising daughters, he would be sensitive in guiding the young women, here with Megan, through the competition.Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York Times“I went to them, and I said, ‘For Season 2, let’s design this from scratch, so everything you see on ‘Euphoria’ is something we’ve never seen before,’” Mr. Leon said. Consumers could then directly buy the clothes they saw onscreen.That pitch didn’t work out, but it’s an idea Mr. Leon still wants to explore. .‘Trust Me’In November, Mr. Leon showed me a video of his twin daughters at their 10th birthday sleepover. In matching pajamas, the girls recreated choreography from a “Dream Academy” mission. (Missions were essentially live music videos in which the trainees’ singing and dancing skills were tested.) Five of the trainees had participated in a rump-shaking cover of “Buttons” by the Pussycat Dolls.The twins had become invested in who would win the competition. So had fans around the world, some of whom paid for billboards in an effort to drum up votes for their favorites, like Sophia (20, Filipina) and Manon (21, Swiss-Ghanaian).Still, during the 12 weeks that the competition unfolded on YouTube, “Dream Academy” did not exactly become an international phenomenon. Just three of the trainees’ 15 missions cracked more than one million views — somewhat underwhelming by K-pop viewership standards.Next year, around the time the six winners will release music under their new name, Katseye, the project has another chance to break through. In summer 2024, Netflix will release a documentary series about the competition by Nadia Hallgren, who directed the Michelle Obama documentary “Becoming.” This may be the ideal format for capturing the drama, major and minor, of the process.When the 20 contestants were introduced in August, Mr. Leon dressed them for a group photo in matching gray schoolgirl uniforms.HYBE x Geffen RecordsThe six winning members of Katseye come from the United States, South Korea, the Philippines and Switzerland: Daniela, Yoonchae, Lara, Sophia, Manon and Megan.Kanya IwanaWithin just an hour on set, I watched a trainee in a silver paillette minidress with tendinitis in her knees fight back tears, take after take, while filming a video for an original song called “Dirty Water.” I watched another in a tube top and reflective wide-leg pants be told to exert better control over her hair flipping.I also watched the adults in the room engage in a delicate dance of evaluating, correcting and handling these young women, while trying to be sensitive to the fact that they were young women. (The youngest was 15.)“Tell the girls it’s us, it’s not them,” the director of one music video instructed an assistant during a technical delay.In hiring Mr. Leon for the project, Ms. An hoped his experience raising two girls would help in this regard. His first self-appointed task was interviewing each contestant individually before making any decisions on their new looks.“I wanted to look in their eyes,” Mr. Leon said. “I wanted to ask them the hard questions about their upbringing.”He told the trainees who came in wearing heavy makeup to take it off. “I want you to look gorgeous and beautiful, and I want you to be yourself,” Mr. Leon recalled saying.“I think it’s hard for people to see themselves,” Mr. Leon continued. “You need somebody to tell you that you look amazing without much.”To assist in the makeovers, he brought in stylists who worked on the “The Idol” — an HBO show about the relationship between a pop star and a cult leader. He brought in the hairstylist to Bella Hadid.To the 14 trainees who didn’t make the final group, he seemed to want to send a message: “I did the best thing I could for you. And you have to trust me.” More

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      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Jazz Flute

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      The flute is one of the more overlooked instruments in jazz, but it’s been making an impact on improvised music for more than 50 years. Let 10 experts take you on a guided tour.We’ve taken you through the great jazz pianists, the vocalists, the careers of Alice Coltrane and Ornette Coleman and Mary Lou Williams. This month, we thought we’d go down a less-trodden path, taking a look at one of the more overlooked instruments in jazz: the flute.Sure, we were prepared for a few Will Ferrell jokes to crop up in the comments (or maybe jump up on the table?), but we had no idea that this piece would land in the biggest cultural moment the instrument had seen in years. Then André 3000 dropped his flute-laden album, “New Blue Sun,” and our timing became all too perfect.The flute doesn’t have the gravitas or the boisterous sound of a saxophone or a trumpet, and it didn’t fully infiltrate the realm of improvised music until the 1960s, with the likes of Yusef Lateef, Eric Dolphy, Herbie Mann and Hubert Laws — not to mention the salsa and pachanga scene in New York, where the flutist, bandleader and record executive Johnny Pacheco was a major presence.Since then, as you’ll see below, the instrument has found a home everywhere from the avant-garde to fusion to straight-ahead. Read on for a guided tour of the flute’s role in jazz, brought to you by 10 writers, musicians and educators. You’ll find a playlist at the bottom of the article, and be sure to leave your own favorites in the comments.◆ ◆ ◆Melanie Charles, flutist and vocalist“Land of Passion” by Hubert LawsWhen I think of incredible flute playing, I think of the great Hubert Laws, and specifically his playing on his original composition “Land of Passion,” released in 1979. The song grooves very hard with a modern drum feel and a sparse yet precise vocal melody. You wonder where the flute will fit in all of this sauce. After the opening verse, the way is cleared for Hubert to “sing.” His playing begins conversational, showing off his round sound and in-the-pocket phrasing. As the solo continues, however, he opens up the portal with what every flute lover craves: complex trills and runs that display his dexterity and crazy classical chops. Laws’s playing on this tune is a beautiful example of what happens when you combine a warm tone, unmatched technique, an undeniable groove and swag. Many of my fave artists such as Mndsgn and Ari Lennox have sampled this piece as it’s a specimen of all the best elements of Black American music.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Nicole Mitchell, flutist and composer“Sophisticated Lady” by James NewtonCan the flute pour out gut-wrenching blues, penetrate with sonic sunlight, sing multi-phonics and then dart from Buddy Collette’s swag to Eric Dolphy’s virtuosity? My main flute inspiration, James Newton, makes it happen. His flute artistry is charismatically innovative and timeless. So, if you take the winding path from André 3000’s and Shabaka’s meditative multi-flute excursions down the way through Lizzo’s trills, from there, at the edge of Douglas Ewart’s wondrous bamboo forest is Newton’s magical echo canyon of endless possibilities. His breathtaking solo tribute to Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady” says it all. Sound truth and power.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Ron Scott, jazz critic“Yesterdays” by Yusef LateefThe first time I heard Yusef Lateef’s rendition of “Yesterdays” on flute, it took my breath away. His tonal fluctuations reflect the haunting notes of a lonely soprano voice in the wind, or a soothing tenor falsetto sighing of lost love in an empty tenement hallway. “Yesterdays” is an emotional state of rhythmic swing, it’s the blues, a peep of Africa at sunrise — all that jazz. It is by no means a sad song. But haunting? Yes. The tune drifts quietly through the ear canal, tingling your entire body right down to the “souls” of your feet. The flute is a mesmerizing instrument, a serene babbling brook of beautiful infinite tones — highs, lows and many in between. Lateef’s exquisite playing is only enhanced by the tapestry of delightful romps by the pianist Kenny Barron, the melodic lyricism of the bassist Bob Cunningham and the dusting brushes of the drummer Albert Heath.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Jamie Baum, flutist and composer“You Don’t Know What Love Is” by Eric DolphyEric Dolphy recorded “Last Date” in 1964, for a radio program in Hilversum, the Netherlands, and many believe it was his actual last, as he died shortly thereafter. His performance of “You Don’t Know What Love Is” shows clearly his singular style on the flute. With only the acoustic bass accompanying him, there’s plenty of space to hear his very personal and expressive sound. He starts off interpreting the melody, embellishing it and the chord changes with his “in-and-out” chromatic approach, while making use of the entire range of the flute. He continues this when the piano and drums enter on the bridge, taking advantage of a cadenza at the end to express his ideas even further.At that time there were relatively few “dedicated” jazz flutists (those who specialized on flute), including Herbie Mann and Hubert Laws, though both had initially also played sax (Hubert even recorded with Mongo Santamaria on tenor); almost all recorded jazz flutists were sax players who “doubled” on flute. While there were several who took the flute seriously and played well, most did not master the entire range in sound and variety of articulation, or use the advanced harmonic approach, that Eric Dolphy did. He continues to be an influence in the trajectory of modern jazz flute playing.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Marcus J. Moore, jazz writer“Just a Love Child” by Bobbi Humphrey“Love child, falling off your cloud, for just a minute. Running around love, and then you’re in it.” I keep coming back to this line as a reset for life in general: The first half contextualizes our existence. We’re all here, floating around and doing stuff for a little while. Now take the whole bar: You’re so focused on said stuff that love sneaks up on you, reshaping your focus. I’ve always loved this song because it exemplifies the tenderness that Bobbi Humphrey must’ve felt in the moment. The way it morphs and slowly ascends, building utopia. While Humphrey was a flutist, the song conveyed her aptitude as a singer and arranger, and introduced her as a well-rounded musician, not just an instrumentalist. That’s not to deny the flute solo here: Around the song’s midpoint, Humphrey arises with upper-register chords that bend around the track, almost nudging the piano and percussion to intensify. A great song on an excellent album, “Just a Love Child” is a master class of entry points and emotions. Not quite soul, not quite funk and not quite jazz, it synthesizes all these genres while accentuating Humphrey’s singular voice.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆T.K. Blue, flutist“Cherokee” by James MoodyI started playing flute as a student in high school on Long Island, and under the guidance of Eddie Jefferson (a close friend of my mentor, the tap dancer Little Buck) I was instructed to travel to New York City for my first “jazz” flute lesson. When I arrived at a hotel in Midtown, I was greeted by none other than Master James Moody! Having an obeisant attitude toward my elders I listened quite ebulliently as Moody spoke with encyclopedic erudition of jazz performance and all its major innovators. Though he was quite prosaic in his approach, he shared tremendous insight regarding flute improvisational technique. This experience changed my life forever! Please check out Moody’s rendition of the standard “Cherokee” from 1968. It’s nothing short of splendiferous! Moody’s warm tone, impeccable articulation with execution, creative ideas, high velocity, and dexterity on the flute puts him on Mount Rushmore! Not to mention he was the very first I heard use the circular breathing technique on flute, which is a herculean task indeed!Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Gabrielle Garo, flutist“Obsession” by Dave Valentin and Herbie MannThe flute is a diverse voice, in my eyes. Through various genres and settings, the flute can be utilized in any capacity. It can paint pictures in classical, jazz and Latin jazz, for example. And that’s what Dave Valentin has done. He has managed to draw a connection between melody and percussion through his expressive approach and soft tone. From quite literally singing into the flute, to his piercing notes that cut through the octave, to his crisp flutter-tongue technique — Valentin’s ideas have been endless, always reshaping the perception of how a flute can be played. These concepts can be heard in this rendition of “Obsession” from the duo album “Two Amigos” of Valentin and another wonderful flutist, Herbie Mann.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Giovanni Russonello, Times jazz critic“Winter in America” by Gil Scott-Heron and Brian JacksonAs half of one of the most meaningful musical duos of the 1970s, the flutist, pianist and composer Brian Jackson co-wrote many of Gil Scott-Heron’s famous songs of social awareness and resistance. Not “Winter in America” — the poet-singer penned this one himself, in spring 1974, as the Watergate scandal dragged toward a close and major American cities went bankrupt — but Jackson still made it complete: with a somber-yet-graceful arrangement, coasting on a pair of quivering flutes. Jackson’s and Bilal Sunni-Ali’s trills become “the robins perched on barren treetops,” or maybe that “noble piece of paper,” the Constitution, fluttering in the wind as it “died in vain.” After Scott-Heron sings his devastating chorus for the second time (“Ain’t nobody fighting/’Cause nobody knows what to save”), Jackson’s flute solo emerges, dug into the groove but rising, tracing a strand of hope through the bleak panorama.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Amber Navran, vocalist and flutist“As You Are” by Taylor McFerrin featuring Elena PinderhughesAnything Elena Pinderhughes touches turns to golden velvet! You can hear her play with fellow greats from jazz, hip-hop and R&B like Common, Terrace Martin, Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah, Terri Lyne Carrington, and this track’s collaborator, Taylor McFerrin. Pinderhughes’s sound, melodic sense, phrasing and feel are perfection over every and any blend of Black American music. Although her flute flourishes are often in the background behind vocals, a la Erykah Badu and Dwayne Kerr, this track features her front and center over a lush bed of warm, enveloping synth sounds and delicious, grooving drums. I especially love the moments where it breaks down to drums and flute, giving her velvet tone and rhythmic melodies a chance to shine.This song is a gorgeous display of everything I love about both Elena Pinderhughes and Taylor McFerrin. They are a dream team for your day dreaming! I could listen to it on repeat no matter what the vibe — soaking up the sun shining through the leaves on a nature walk, sipping drinks and swaying to the beat in a dimly lit bar, or sitting down with a fresh notebook and a hot coffee to dream and scheme for the future.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Fernando Brandao, flutist and professor“Mai Pinheiros!” by Maiara Moraes with Teco CardosoThis captivating recording captures the magic of Maiara Moraes’s live concert, featuring Teco Cardoso as a guest, so it’s really a two-in-one flute experience. Jazz improvisation in Brazilian music is mostly associated with the bossa nova genre. This particular piece spotlights a genre less known to the American audience: frevo, a traditional vibrant dance and rhythm from the northeastern Brazilian state of Pernambuco, brought to life here with fervor and expertise. A fusion of European and African musical influences, frevo has its dance roots in the Brazilian martial art capoeira. This genre, whether presented vocally or instrumentally, demands a remarkable level of technical skill. Similar to choro and samba, frevo serves as an artistic school for young musicians. It’s not just music; it’s a celebration of cultural richness and artistic prowess.Maiara Moraes and Teco Cardoso close this concert with a high-energy, intricately arranged composition where jazz meets street carnival music. Maiara improvises on flute and Teco on piccolo. Both players masterfully and creatively display the frevo phrasing and style combining developing motifs with through-composed passages. The culmination sees the theme brought back with the two playing dueling piccolos, evoking the frenzied energy of a celebrative Brazilian carnival, and creating a memorable and immersive musical experience for the audience.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆ More

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      The World Loves Corridos Tumbados. In Mexico, It’s Complicated.

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      Inspired by a century-old genre from the Mexican countryside, the latest pop music phenomenon is drawing thousands of young fans — and criticism for its violent references.In many Mexican towns where wars between drug cartels continue to wreak havoc, the sight of a young man at night dressed in black and donning a balaclava would be terrifying. On a recent Saturday in Mexico City, Peso Pluma strutted across the stage in the same outfit, to excited cheers: It was time for the corrido tumbado concert.The 24-year-old breakout star, who makes a modern take on traditional Mexican music, wore a glamorous Fendi version of a sicario (or hit man) uniform. He faced a stadium full of fans and shouted, “Are you ready to witness the most warlike concert of your life?”The crowd roared back: It was ready. Later, during “El Gavilán,” the audience sang in unison, “I’m of the people of Chapo Guzmán,” a reference to one of Mexico’s most notorious drug lords.Peso Pluma, along with acts like Natanael Cano, Grupo Firme, Eslabon Armado and Banda MS, is at the forefront of a musical movement that has found growing audiences this year in the United States and beyond. The artists perform corridos tumbados (or trap corridos), which combine singing and rapping familiar to fans of hip-hop and reggaeton with instrumentation and melodies common to traditional Mexican music, along with lyrics inspired by narcocorridos — songs that tell stories of the drug trade.But even as Peso Pluma racks up millions of streams and Grupo Firme tours arenas in the United States, these artists often find themselves in contested territory at home, where the drug war isn’t a dramatic fantasy but a bloody daily reality.“They are striking a nerve of Mexican culture,” said Camilo Lara, 48, a music producer, composer and former label executive with extensive film credits. He cited how the artists have tapped into “the relationship with violence, the relationship with the street, with politics, with what’s happening with fashion,” and added, “It’s the most exciting moment in Mexican music in 20 or 30 years.”Peso Pluma’s stadium show at Foro Sol, a venue that holds more than 60,000 people, was the last of his concerts in his home country after several cancellations over security threats. Days earlier, authorities in Tijuana had banned corridos tumbados in all public spaces with fines of up to $70,000.While the sounds and the faces may be fresh, these artists are heirs of a musical tradition that has long attracted controversy. In 1987, the governor of Sinaloa asked local news media to stop the broadcast of music that made reference to drug trafficking. In 2002, radio stations in the border state of Baja California agreed not to play songs that exalted narcos and asked their U.S. counterparts to do the same. In 2010, conservative Mexican lawmakers presented a bill that would have sent artists who glorified criminals to prison.Natanael Cano onstage at Coachella in April 2022. Cano is known as a pioneer of corridos tumbados, which contain many elements of old-fashioned corridos.Scott Dudelson/Getty Images“The decision to ban these corridos tumbados is to protect the mental health of Tijuana’s children,” the city’s mayor, Montserrat Caballero Ramírez, said last month through a spokesman. In May, Cancun banned public shows “that foster violence,” saying such events contradicted the pursuit of peace and security; Grupo Firme canceled a concert there shortly after. Two months later, Chihuahua’s City Council voted unanimously to fine public shows promoting violence.Officials contend it is not censorship. “They can sing whatever they want,” Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said this summer, “but we are not going to keep quiet when they say that Ecstasy is good, that they have a .50 caliber gun and the most famous narcos are their idols.” A month later, perhaps in tacit recognition of the influence of corridos tumbados, the government released its own kind of tumbado: a song warning of the dangers of fentanyl.The artists have pointed out that their lyrics aren’t aimed at children. “I know sometimes it’s not OK for kids to see or hear this,” Peso Pluma said in an interview, “but it’s a reality.”The reality is also that this type of music, once very locally rooted and associated with an older generation, is attracting global attention for its catchiness and cachet. The songs are not only fixtures of radio stations in Los Angeles, but are draws for concertgoers in Lima and Madrid and have made fans of celebrities like Mike Tyson and the band Maneskin.“I heard it at a wedding,” said Javier Nuño, a partner at Indice, a company that has licensed Peso Pluma’s and Cano’s songs for HBO. Once you cross over into wedding D.J. playlists, “you are at another level,” he added.At Peso Pluma’s Mexico City show, kids arrived in droves — mostly teenage boys dressed in Air Jordans, oversize hoodies and outfits featuring Nike, Gucci, Fendi and Burberry logos in models, colors and materials Nike, Gucci, Fendi and Burberry have probably never manufactured. Some dared to sport Peso Pluma’s signature mullet.Oliver Medrano, 35, said his 9-year-old, Sofía, had asked for tickets. The two gave up their seats close to the stage and watched instead from the bleachers after the girl’s mother protested. “They say the songs are too war-driven,” Medrano said. Sofía said she had become hooked on “El Belicón” (“The Belligerent”), Peso Pluma’s song about a man who boasts of owning sports cars, bazookas and Kalashnikovs.“I was a bit worried about security,” Medrano said. But mid-concert he felt confident enough to ask the couple next to him to watch his daughter while he made a quick bathroom run.Leonardo Manuel, 12, attended the show in a blue velour tracksuit with rhinestones arranged in the Fendi logo with his aunt, Elizabeth Rubí Cruz, who works at a jewelry store; she said there was a high demand for Cuban-style chains, thanks to the influence of Peso Pluma. Clients “like how he dresses,” she said. The pair’s favorite song? “Lady Gaga,” about a dealer hanging out with influencers (“none of them post to Instagram”), with mentions of Cartier, pink cocaine and Louis Vuitton.The excitement, and controversy, surrounding the lyrical content of corridos tumbados in Mexico in many ways mirrors decades of debate in the United States over the real-life implications of rap lyrics. From N.W.A to Jay-Z and Rick Ross, many of the most popular hip-hop artists have relied on the imagery of drug kingpins for both glitz and grit. Beginning with the gangster rap of the 1980s and ’90s and continuing through the 21st-century hip-hop subgenres of trap and drill, lyrics that document — and some say glorify — the drug trade, its attendant violence and its spoils have remained a cultural and political battleground. Currently in Atlanta, music by the rapper Young Thug is being used in court as evidence of his membership in a criminal street gang.“You see these guys partying with these luxuries and suddenly it’s, ‘How can I get this?’ especially in this country, our country, which has some very strong social limitations,” said Graciela Flores, a professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila.Dr. Flores, who specializes in 19th-century crime and justice in the Mexican borderlands, organized a series of events this past fall at the university focused on corridos tumbados at the behest of one of her students. She was overwhelmed by the attendance. “People were eager to talk about what they had seen” in terms of daily violence in their communities, she explained. The songs had moved people to share their experiences, something that Dr. Flores found “valuable, but at the same time very disturbing.”This past spring, the steps of the National Auditorium in Mexico City were filled with mothers waiting while their children attended a Natanael Cano concert. Cano, 22, is recognized as a pioneer of corridos tumbados, which absorb many elements of old-fashioned corridos: nasal voices, tololoche, accordion or brass instruments, strummed guitars.“At the beginning I was freaked out a bit” by the lyrics, said Dolores Saldívar, 47, who sells balloons. “But now I like them.” She had paid about $120 each for her two teenage children to attend.Juan Bosco de la Cruz Rangel, 23, the student who had urged Dr. Flores to put on the conference, said that when he and his friends started listening to tumbados, he looked up the artists online and found them relatable — skinny guys who liked to party and saw the police as hostile — to a point: “We’re literally them,” he said. “We’re their age, but without money, bands and that life.” Though he faces daily dangers, he finds songs about gangs and guns provocative and unsettling. Still, he added, he understands where the lyrics are coming from. Critics of the genre “that have never been hungry, it’s easy for them to say ‘there’s a different way’” to make a livelihood, he said.Bringing Cano to the stage in Mexico City, Peso Pluma proclaimed that his fellow artist had “paved a road so all of us could be here” to wild cheers. Just a few days earlier, Peso Pluma had notched another milestone: his first ever Grammy nomination. More

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      They’re Great Songs. Are They Christmas Songs?

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      Nine tracks from Barbra Streisand, the 1975, Fleet Foxes and more get put to the Lindsay Test.Barbra Streisand, another (unlikely) queen of Christmas.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press, via Associated PressDear listeners,What makes a Christmas song … a Christmas song? Sleigh bells? Yuletide imagery? A certain indefinable, know-it-when-you-hear-it sense of reverence and good cheer?My personal standard might sound a bit humbuggy: To me, a true Christmas song is one that I would not want to hear any month other than December. Even a song as brilliant and beloved as “All I Want for Christmas Is You” loses some of its power in March or August. With all due respect to Mariah Carey, please wait until all the Thanksgiving leftovers have been consumed.But what about those cuspy, sort-of-Christmas songs? Well, at least they’re fun to argue about. “River” by Joni Mitchell — which begins with a melancholic piano interpolation of “Jingle Bells” — might be the quintessential example, and I believe with all my heart that it’s not a Christmas song, not only because it’s about feeling unable to get into the holiday mood, but also because it passes my test: I can, and do, listen to it during any and all months of the year. (Plus, it’s perfectly sequenced on “Blue,” which is definitely not a seasonal album.) The Waitresses’ “Christmas Wrapping,” on the other hand? Also a song I love, but one that I am only in the mood for one-twelfth of the year.Some songs really do have it both ways, though: Christmas-appropriate, but also perennially listenable. For today’s playlist, I’ve picked nine tracks that I’m calling Questionable Christmas Songs.Some tell stories that happen to take place around the holidays (“If We Make It Through December,” “’Tis the Damn Season”) and others have simply experienced a gradual shift in public perception so that, for some reason, people now consider them seasonally appropriate (“Holiday Road,” “Hallelujah,” “My Favorite Things”). All of them might be Christmas songs, depending on whom you ask, but they also might not be because I will not get mad if I hear any of them in April. Consider it my early gift to you: something to apolitically argue about at the holiday dinner table.Also, speaking of Christmas songs: Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” officially hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100! If you read Friday’s Amplifier, you will understand how exciting this is — and you’ll be able to impress your friends by name-dropping a bunch of other great Brenda Lee songs. Congrats to Little Miss Dynamite!Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Merle Haggard & the Strangers: “If We Make It Through December”OK, this one might be a Christmas song because it appears on a Christmas album (“Merle Haggard’s Christmas Present”; please note the cover art), but Merle Haggard only decided to cut that album after the success of this stand-alone single — the biggest pop crossover hit of his entire career. There’s mention of gifts under the tree (or rather, a lack thereof), but the true subject of this melancholy tune is the plight of the down-and-out working man, meaning it is, first and foremost, a Merle Haggard song. (Listen on YouTube)2. Lindsey Buckingham: “Holiday Road”This delightful ditty was written for the 1983 film “National Lampoon’s Vacation” — not “Christmas Vacation.” But thanks to some version of the Mandela Effect, plus the fact that the word “holiday” is right there in the title, some confused people have started to insist that “Holiday Road” is a Christmas song. The country singer Chris Janson is vocal among them; he performed his cover of Lindsey Buckingham’s track on last year’s “Opry Country Christmas” broadcast, and he’s since released that cover with an extra festive lyric video. (Listen on YouTube)3. Fleet Foxes: “White Winter Hymnal”When a non-holiday song is suddenly reclassified in the cultural imagination as a holiday song, often, one must blame Pentatonix. On its popular holiday albums, the a cappella group has Christmas-ified such classics as “God Only Knows,” “Hallelujah” and, most recently and most puzzlingly, “Kiss From a Rose.” (We must resist this with all our might. We are not going to let Pentatonix convince us that “Kiss From a Rose” is a Christmas song.) The group’s version of this admittedly wintry 2008 Fleet Foxes tune appeared on “That’s Christmas to Me,” a 2014 Pentatonix album with an appropriately subjective title, but (can you tell?) I prefer the original. (Listen on YouTube)4. The Handsome Family: “So Much Wine”I have Phoebe Bridgers to thank for this one: It was her pick last year in her annual Christmas covers series. I’d never heard the original, and when I went back to check it out, I found that I actually preferred it to Bridgers’s more mournful rendition. Her version of this ballad of seasonal alcoholism is an out-and-out tear-jerker, but the Handsome Family manage to tell the same story with some dark comic relief. (Listen on YouTube)5. Taylor Swift: “’Tis the Damn Season”I believe it was my colleague Joe Coscarelli who, on an episode of Popcast, came up with one of my favorite Taylor Swift conspiracy theories: That “Evermore,” her second and decidedly more wintry 2020 album, was originally supposed to be a Christmas-themed release. This finely wrought ode to hometown what-ifs and temporarily rekindled romance is probably the strongest argument for that case. (Listen on YouTube)6. The 1975: “Wintering”Here’s another song about regressing at one’s parents’ house for a long weekend, a curiously season-specific track on the 1975’s excellent 2022 album “Being Funny in a Foreign Language.” I often appreciate the details in Matty Healy’s writing, and there are some particularly vivid ones here: a precocious, vegan sister; a fleece that doesn’t warm as well as advertised; a mother with a sore back who objects to being mentioned in the song. “I just came for the stuffing, not to argue about nothing,” Healy sings. “But mark my words, I’ll be home on the 23rd.” (Listen on YouTube)7. Barbra Streisand: “My Favorite Things”Written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein for the 1959 Broadway production “The Sound of Music,” “My Favorite Things” didn’t begin life as a holiday song. Julie Andrews performed it on a 1961 Christmas special, though, and since then its mentions of mittens, snowflakes and brown paper packages tied up with strings have made it sound at home on many a Christmas album — including Barbra Streisand’s. (Listen on YouTube)8. Leonard Cohen: “Hallelujah”Speaking of famous Jews singing are-they-really-Christmas songs, the endlessly over-covered, richly poetic, mordantly hilarious “Hallelujah” is in so many ways one of the most misunderstood songs in popular culture — so of course some people have turned it into a holiday standard. But as Stereogum’s Chris DeVille wrote in a 2019 essay, vehemently and correctly, “Whatever context it belongs in, Christmas ain’t it.” (Listen on YouTube)9. The Pogues featuring Kirsty MacColl: “Fairytale of New York”This is probably the only true Christmas song on the list, but it’s certainly an unconventional one — and of course I had to include it in honor of the Pogues’ Shane MacGowan, who died last week. Over the weekend, Rob Tannenbaum (a journalist with a very appropriate name for this purpose) published a fascinating piece about the making of the song, and the push to send it to the top of the charts in the United Kingdom. Might “Fairytale” be the next Christmas song to belatedly hit No. 1? (Listen on YouTube)I get home on the 23rd,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“I’ll Have a Questionable Christmas” track listTrack 1: Merle Haggard & the Strangers, “If We Make It Through December”Track 2: Lindsey Buckingham, “Holiday Road”Track 3: Fleet Foxes, “White Winter Hymnal”Track 4: The Handsome Family, “So Much Wine”Track 5: Taylor Swift, “‘Tis the Damn Season”Track 6: The 1975, “Wintering”Track 7: Barbra Streisand, “My Favorite Things”Track 8: Leonard Cohen, “Hallelujah”Track 9: The Pogues, “Fairytale of New York” More

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      Under Pressure, English National Opera Will Move to Manchester

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      Urged to develop a new model by Arts Council England, the opera company will move its base out of London, but it still plans to present opera there.For decades, English National Opera, the acclaimed British opera company, has made its home in London. There, it has drawn audiences, nurtured singers and developed a host of major productions, many of which have traveled the world.But facing financial woes — and pressure from Arts Council England, which cut off its vital government subsidy last year and urged it to develop “a new business model” that might include a move away from London — English National Opera announced on Tuesday that it would move its main base about 200 miles north to Manchester by 2029.The company said in a news release that it would still present a “substantial opera season” at the London Coliseum, its home since 1968, which it owns and operates. But it will now work to develop new audiences and programs in Manchester.Jenny Mollica, interim chief executive of English National Opera, said the company and Manchester shared a vision of working to “open up new possibilities for opera in people’s lives.”“We look forward to embarking on new adventures with partners, artists and audiences across Greater Manchester as we create a range of operatic repertoire at a local, national and international scale,” she said in a statement.English National Opera has been in a state of flux since Arts Council England announced last year that it was shutting off its grant to the company, which was worth 12.4 million pounds a year, or about $15.6 million. The Arts Council instead gave it one-time grant to help it develop a new model, possibly away from London.At the time, English National Opera’s leaders, as well as many artists and audience members, voiced opposition to the idea of relocating the company, which traces its roots to 1931, when Lilian Baylis, a theater owner, established the Sadler’s Wells Opera Company to bring the art form to a wider audience. In 1945 the company gave the premiere of the groundbreaking Benjamin Britten opera “Peter Grimes.” The company found a way to serve audiences, even while competing with the bigger Royal Opera.The move out of London was resisted by many. Stuart Murphy, who served as English National Opera’s chief executive until the end of August, initially described the plan as “absurd” and “insane,” the BBC reported last year.The uproar soured relations with officials in Manchester, which made the short list for the company’s new base, along with Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool and Nottingham. It revived debate about whether smaller cities could support a major opera company.Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, said last year that English National Opera was not welcome if the company was having doubts.“If they think we are all heathens here, that nobody would go, I’m afraid it doesn’t understand us and therefore it doesn’t deserve to come here,” Burnham was quoted as saying in a report in The Guardian.But the company and Manchester eventually found a path forward. Burnham on Tuesday described English National Opera as “one of the most exciting cultural institutions in the country.”“We’re immensely proud to be able to bring them to a new home here,” he said in a statement. “Greater Manchester’s world-renowned history of radical art, activism and affecting change, and the cultural renaissance taking place across our towns and cities, makes it the ideal home.”English National Opera has long played an important role in the global opera industry. After the cuts by the Arts Council were announced last year, dozens of leading cultural figures — including Peter Gelb, the Metropolitan Opera’s general manager, and Yuval Sharon, the artistic director of Detroit Opera — signed a letter to The Times of London, warning of a wider impact.The company has faced leadership churn in recent years. In October, Martyn Brabbins, English National Opera’s music director since 2016, resigned suddenly. He said that he could not “in all conscience continue to support the board and management’s strategy for the future of the company,” including cuts to the orchestra and chorus. More

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      Alicia Keys’s ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ to Open on Broadway This Spring

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      The musical, now midway through a sold-out Off Broadway run at the Public Theater, will transfer to the Shubert Theater in March.Alicia Keys’s semi-autobiographical coming-of-age musical, “Hell’s Kitchen,” has been selling out night after night during its Off Broadway run at the Public Theater. Next up, to no one’s surprise: The show is transferring to Broadway.Keys, a singer-songwriter who has sold millions of albums and has won 15 Grammy Awards, announced at a Public Theater fund-raiser on Monday night that the musical, which ends its 12-week downtown run on Jan. 14, will transfer to the Shubert Theater — one of Broadway’s most desirable houses. The first preview is scheduled for March 28, and opening night is set for April 20.“I’m out of my mind with joy, excitement, thrill,” Keys said in a telephone interview. She noted that her mother, as a teenager, had moved to New York from Ohio to pursue an acting career, and said she saw in this moment the arrival at a long-sought destination for her family.“We get to announce the ultimate dream — the dream that my mother chased from a little girl, that brought her here, which is the reason why I’m here, which is the reason why this city raised me, and the reason why I can even tell this story,” she said. “Hell’s Kitchen,” a loosely fictionalized story inspired by Keys’s own childhood, depicts a short chapter in the life of a 17-year-old growing up surrounded by artists in a New York housing development where most of the units are subsidized for performers. The protagonist, a girl being raised by her single mother, discovers a love for piano, and an attraction to an adult man, while chafing at her mother’s efforts to keep her safe in a gritty neighborhood.The musical features new arrangements of Keys’s biggest hits, including “Fallin’,” “Girl on Fire,” “No One” and “Empire State of Mind,” as well as several new songs the pop star wrote for this show. Keys, who does not perform in “Hell’s Kitchen,” has been working on it for more than a decade with the playwright Kristoffer Diaz, who wrote the book.In an unusual move that demonstrates Keys’s long determination to retain control of her own intellectual property and career arc, the musical’s lead producer will be AKW Productions, which is a company Keys owns and describes as “focused on creating diverse, real, authentic and genuine stories in film, television, theater and music.” Asked whether the stage production, like most commercial Broadway musicals, would also have investors, Keys said, “Yes, there’s going to be some really special people that are coming along for the ride.”The musical is directed by Michael Greif, and choreographed by Camille A. Brown. The downtown cast is led by Maleah Joi Moon as the protagonist, joined by Shoshana Bean as the mother, Brandon Victor Dixon as the absentee father, and Kecia Lewis as the piano teacher. The Broadway cast has not yet been announced.Reviews were mixed, with many critics praising the performances and the production but saying they wanted more from the story. Writing in The New York Times, the critic Jesse Green called the first act “thrilling,” but said it “disappoints after the mid-show break.” In The Washington Post, the critic Peter Marks was underwhelmed, calling it “a perfectly nice musical,” but in The Los Angeles Times, the critic Charles McNulty was far more enthusiastic, writing, “I was surprised by how rapturously I fell under the musical’s spell.”Keys said she does not concern herself with reviews.“I’m not a huge, huge review reader — that’s been a practice of mine since I did my second album, because I’ve realized everybody’s going to have a thought, everybody’s going to have an opinion,” she said. “The true critics, to me, are the people in the seats, and when they come away feeling uplifted, inspired, ignited, transformed — they’re crying because they feel so connected to the stories in their lives — those are the critics that I really pay attention to.”Having said that, Keys also added that the creative team would continue to work on the show.“Of course, you always are able to refine, you’re always able to find places that you want to bring more, bring less, try this, do that, and that’s going to, of course, happen as we transfer to make it just better and better and better,” she said. “But I’m really proud that the spirit is there. It’s been there since the beginning of it, and now the goal is to keep that spirit and make it even better.” More