Music

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      Kendrick Lamar’s Bell Bottoms Steal the Super Bowl Halftime Show

      by

      Could it be that the lasting impact of Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show will be … the return of bell bottoms?At halftime of a fairly dull game (unless, well, you’re an Eagles fan), the rapper materialized onstage, flanked by dancers in monotonal outfits of either blue, red or white, dressed in clothes that clearly repped team Lamar.His varsity jacket, custom-made by Martine Rose, a British designer known for her witty and warped sportswear, was coated with patches to please the Lamarologists in the Superdome. The front read “Gloria,” seemingly a reference to the last song on his latest album “GNX.” The back had a “pgLang” insignia, the creative agency Mr. Lamar co-runs with Dave Free.Mr. Lamar’s jacket was made by Martine Rose, a British designer.Emily Kask for The New York TimesThere were other delectable elements to his outfit: a tilted fitted cap with a feather brooch pinned on the side, as well as a conspicuous “a” chain that some online took to be a head nod to the villainous “A Minor” line in Mr. Lamar’s Grammy-gathering “Not Like Us” — a line that the stadium hollered in unison at the appointed time. (Others offered that the “a” could be some sort of nod to pgLang, though it also looked a little like the Amazon logo.)But the pièce de résistance, the item that people started texting me about, oh, two minutes into his performance, were those jeans, which came from the French fashion house Celine. Their official product name is the “flared surf jean in summer dazed wash.” At $1,300 they do not come cheap.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Music

      The Bangles, One of the Biggest All-Girl Bands, Want to Reclaim Their Legacy

      by

      The music industry pushed the group behind hits like “Manic Monday” and “Eternal Flame” hard, then pulled them apart. A new book tells their story.The first time Susanna Hoffs and the Peterson sisters sang together and their voices blended, the frisson was unmistakable. “We knew we had something,” Hoffs said. “We created a band in that moment.”Hoffs, 66, beamed at the memory, sitting in her kitchen on a late January afternoon. Dressed in a sweater and slacks, the diminutive singer and guitarist sipped coffee, an old Margaret Keane painting hanging above her. Her airy Brentwood, Calif., home is just a few blocks from where the Bangles were born, on a cool evening in early 1981 in her parents’ garage.“It’s an overused word, but we were organic,” the guitarist Vicki Peterson, 67, said. “We formed ourselves, played the music we loved, we really were a garage band.” But a garage band “that somehow became pop stars,” the drummer Debbi Peterson, 63, noted. Both sisters were interviewed in video conversations.The Bangles broke big, scoring five Top 5 hits and storming MTV with inescapable songs like “Manic Monday” and “Eternal Flame.” They were one of the era’s rare all-girl groups — and became one of the most successful female bands of all time — a crew of puckish 20-somethings showcasing their collective songwriting and vocal chops.But one of the defining bands of the 1980s also ended in spectacular fashion. Less than a decade after its birth, the group imploded in its manager’s Hollywood mansion, the sisterhood of its members lost amid a farrago of fame and mental fatigue.That story plays out vividly in “Eternal Flame: The Authorized Biography of the Bangles” by Jennifer Otter Bickerdike, out on Feb. 18. Bickerdike — the author of books about Nico and Britney Spears — fashioned a history of a bygone era in the music business, one in which the outsize influence of major labels, domineering producers and Machiavellian managers could routinely make or break a band.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl Halftime Show: The Peak of All Rap Battles?

      by

      The first rapper to headline the N.F.L.’s biggest stage solo made his Drake diss “Not Like Us” the centerpiece of his set at the expense of a larger statement.Of course he performed “Not Like Us.”In the lead-up to Kendrick Lamar’s headline performance at the Super Bowl LIX halftime show on Sunday night, most of the chatter focused on whether he would play the song that was effectively the knockout blow in his monthslong battle with Drake last year. The song that became Lamar’s signature hit, and a generational anthem. The song that won both record and song of the year at the Grammys just a week ago. The song that appeared to recalibrate hip-hop’s power rankings, perhaps permanently.So yes, Lamar played the song. Toward the end of the set, of course, building up anticipation with a couple of brief musical nods to it, toying with the audience’s emotions and thirst.Lamar leaned on songs from his most recent album, “GNX,” like “Man at the Garden” and “Peekaboo.”Doug Mills/The New York TimesBut what will always be remembered from this performance is not the musical choices Lamar made, or the aesthetics of his choreography, or the silhouettes of his outfit. What will remain is his grin when he finally began rapping that song. It was wide, persistent, almost cartoonish in shape. The grin of a man having the time of his life at the expense of an enemy.Lamar is perhaps the most sober of all of hip-hop’s contemporary greats, a ferocious storyteller who values tongue-tripping polemics and introspection; he is not exactly a beacon of joy. During the beef, he appeared to take on the dismantling of Drake as necessary homework.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Monica Getz, Advocate for Divorce Court Reform, Dies at 90

      by

      Her troubled marriage to the jazz star Stan Getz led to a headline-making divorce case. The result of the trial gave her a cause to fight for.Monica Getz, whose tempestuous 24-year marriage to the jazz star Stan Getz was whipsawed by his addictions and who, after losing a protracted legal fight to save the marriage, became an advocate for divorce court reform, died on Jan. 5 in Irvington, N.Y. She was 90.Her son Nicolaus Getz said the cause of her death, in a hospital, was bile duct cancer.The Swedish-born Ms. Getz was a student at George Washington University when Mr. Getz, one of the most revered jazz saxophonists of the 20th century, met her backstage at a campus concert and pursued her even though he was married. When they wed in 1956, the actress Donna Reed was the maid of honor at the nuptials in Las Vegas.The Getzes lived in a 27-room mansion called Shadowbrook, overlooking the Hudson River in Tarrytown, N.Y. They bought it in the mid-1960s when Mr. Getz’s fame was at an apex as a result of his bossa nova recordings: the album “Jazz Samba,” with the guitarist Charlie Byrd, and the hit single “The Girl From Ipanema,” on which his mellifluous tenor sax backed the breathy singing of Astrud Gilberto.Drugs and alcohol, however, created havoc in the Getzes’ marriage. Mr. Getz had begun using heroin at 16 and was arrested two years before the marriage for attempting to rob a pharmacy to get narcotics. At the insistence of his wife, a teetotaler, he would seek medical help and enter rehabilitation programs, but relapses invariably followed.Stan and Monica Getz in 1975.via Getz familyAt the couple’s divorce trial in 1987, Mr. Getz said he often drank to the point of blacking out. “I have a discography of 2,010 records,” he said, but “some of them I can’t even remember making.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      A 311-Year-Old Stradivarius Violin Sells for $11.25 Million at Sotheby’s

      by

      The money from the sale of the violin, which was once owned by the 19th-century virtuoso Joseph Joachim, will benefit a scholarship program at the New England Conservatory.A 311-year-old Stradivarius violin sold for $11.25 million at Sotheby’s on Friday, in a closely watched auction that drew interest from investors, collectors and classical musicians.The violin was made by the famed Italian luthier Antonio Stradivari in 1714, during the so-called golden period of violin making. It was later owned by one of the greatest violinists of the 19th century, the Hungarian-born virtuoso Joseph Joachim, a close associate of Johannes Brahms.The Stradivarius was sold by the New England Conservatory, which plans to use the proceeds of the sale to endow a student scholarship program. The instrument was previously owned by an alumnus of the school, Si-Hon Ma, who died in 2009. His estate donated the instrument to the New England Conservatory in 2015 with a provision that it could one day be sold to finance student scholarships.“Now we really have the chance to have it benefit so many more students — generations of students to come,” said Andrea Kalyn, the president of the conservatory.Sotheby’s said the buyer wished to remain anonymous.Among violins sold publicly at auction, the current record is held by the so-called “Lady Blunt” Stradivarius, once owned by the granddaughter of Lord Byron, which sold in 2011 for $15.9 million.The instrument sold on Friday was one of several violins owned by Joachim, who premiered the Brahms violin concerto in 1879.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 63 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      9 Spellbinding Songs About Magic

      by

      Lady Gaga’s latest has inspired a playlist.Lady Gaga debuted her madcap video for “Abracadabra” in a Mastercard commercial during the Grammy Awards on Sunday night.Dear listeners,If you’ve noticed anyone walking around with their paws up, speaking in tongues and raving about the floor being on fire, allow me to explain: In an ad Sunday night during the Grammy Awards, Lady Gaga debuted a new single. It’s called “Abracadabra,” and it’s a gloriously nostalgic return to form, reminiscent of the infectious gibberish hook of “Bad Romance” and the go-for-broke electro-sleaze she perfected on “The Fame Monster” and “Born This Way.” Rejoice, ye elder millennials: A star has been reborn.As I’ve been strutting around all week with “abracadabra, abra-cadaaaabra” on an endless loop in my head, I’ve been thinking about how many great songs throughout pop music reference magic — as a tried-and-true metaphor for the mysteries of love, or just as a thematic excuse to get a little weird. (For Gaga, it’s a little bit of both, but always with emphasis on the latter.)The ’60s gave us spellbinding classics like the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Do You Believe in Magic?” and the Drifters’ “This Magic Moment.” But “Abracadabra” is just the latest proof that pop still has magic on the mind: In the last year or so, there have been not one but two Top 20 hits called “Houdini.” (Though never forget that Kate Bush beat them both to it.)Since a definitive playlist of every song ever to conjure magic would be incredibly long and contain quite a few overindulgent duds, this collection reflects my own tastes. Which is to say that it omits Eminem’s “Houdini,” as well as the song it samples, that other “Abracadabra,” by the Steve Miller Band. Personal preference! But it does feature enchanting tunes from Electric Light Orchestra, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and, of course, Gaga’s latest incantation.Like a poem said by a lady in red,LindsayListen along while you read.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 75 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Review: Heartbeat Opera Compresses Strauss’s ‘Salome’

      by

      Heartbeat Opera specializes in daring reductions of the classics, and this may be its most implausible undertaking yet.Strauss’s “Salome” begins with a swiftly slithering clarinet flourish, like a snake darting into the undergrowth almost before you see it. The passage is over in a couple of seconds, but it sets the stage for what’s to come: sinuous, nocturnal, elusive.This germ of music ends up infecting one of the sickliest scores in opera: a 1905 one-act setting of Oscar Wilde’s languorously decadent, gleefully fetid fin-de-siècle play about a society slow-dancing toward self-destruction.It’s obvious, then, where Heartbeat Opera got the batty, witty idea of doing the work almost only with clarinets. The vividly unvarnished results, which opened on Thursday at the Space at Irondale in Brooklyn, may be the most implausible yet of this feisty company’s chamber-scale takes on the classics.Heartbeat’s productions don’t reduce canonical compositions so much as reinvent them, with orchestras that could fit around a dining table. Over the past decade, it has given us a six-instrument “Madama Butterfly” and a jazz-infused “Carmen,” both trimmed to an hour and a half. Beethoven’s “Fidelio” was pared to two pianos, two cellos, two horns and percussion.But even compressing the grandeur of “Tosca” to a few cellos, bass, piano, flute, trumpet and horn isn’t as out-there as imagining “Salome” for an octet of clarinetists. (To be precise, those eight musicians play a total of 28 instruments, including a handful of saxophones, and they’re buttressed by two busy percussionists.)The concept is radical because Strauss’s breakthrough opera is defined like few others by the expressionistic power of its huge orchestra. The score’s brilliance, though, lies in a paradox: For much of the piece, the sprawling forces are meant to sound seductively diaphanous, a Mack truck navigating curves with eerily catlike grace.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Ye Takes Back Apology and Calls Himself a Nazi in Social Media Rant

      by

      The rapper praised Hitler and took back an apology he made in 2023 for his past antisemitic remarks.Ye, the rapper and designer formerly known as Kanye West, took back the apology he made in 2023 for his past antisemitic statements, declared that he was a Nazi and professed his love for Adolf Hitler in an hourslong rant on social media.“I’m never apologizing for my Jewish comments,” he said in a post laced with vulgar language on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, as part of a barrage that began late Thursday night and lasted into Friday morning.The taunting statements were in stark contrast to an apology he made in 2023 after he had come under fire for making a series of antisemitic and pro-Nazi remarks, prompting businesses including Adidas to cut ties with him. In his 2023 apology, which was written in Hebrew, Ye asked forgiveness and said it “was not my intention to offend or demean, and I deeply regret any pain I may have caused.”Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a statement on Friday morning that the organization had condemned Ye’s “dangerous behavior” and called the rapper’s recent posts on X “a flagrant and unequivocal display of hate.”“We know this game all too well,” Greenblatt said. “Let’s call Ye’s hate-filled public rant for what it really is: a sad attempt for attention that uses Jews as a scapegoat. But unfortunately, it does get attention because Kanye has a far-reaching platform on which to spread his antisemitism and hate. Words matter. And as we’ve seen too many times before, hateful rhetoric can prompt real-world consequences.”A representative for Ye did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.Ye’s other posts touched on a series of topics, including Elon Musk, President Trump’s inauguration, and the see-through dress his wife, Bianca Censori, wore on the red carpet at the Grammy Awards last Sunday. “I have dominion over my wife,” he said.Over the years, Ye had mentioned several times a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, but in a podcast interview this week, he said that he had been misdiagnosed and that he has autism. More