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      CMAT Makes Country Music Sad, Smart and Strange

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      In April 2020, a new force in Irish music announced herself with a song about love, loss and fried chicken.The video for “Another Day (KFC),” CMAT’s debut single, opens with the singer dancing cheerfully in front of a blue screen. “Baby give me something else to do,” she sings, in a style pitched between country twang and ‘60s pop, “I cried in KFC again over you.” Then, suddenly, the camera swerves to a dark room where the man this song is addressed to sits gagged and tied to a chair. CMAT, still grinning, dances over and slaps him in the face, then eats a bucket of chicken while sitting on his lap.Since the video came out, CMAT — an acronym for the 27-year-old artist’s name, Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson — has become a huge star in Ireland and won fans further afield with country-pop songs that are irreverent, vulnerable, sad, smart — and decidedly strange.Her 2022 debut album, “If My Wife New I’d Be Dead,” went straight to No. 1 in Ireland, and was awarded the RTE Choice Music Prize, Ireland’s equivalent to the Grammys. A follow-up, with another grammatically wayward name, “Crazymad, For Me,” arrives Friday, and she has tour dates scheduled in Ireland, Britain and the United States.The connection between Ireland and country music is longstanding: The “singing cowboy” Gene Autry toured the country in the ’30s, and the genre was further popularized in the ’60s by groups known as showbands that played in rural dance halls. In the ’90s, Garth Brooks’s stadium gigs in Dublin triggered a nationwide craze for line dancing. CMAT brings this tradition up-to-date, combining the enduring country themes of heartbreak and self-destruction with camp humor and a distinctly Irish sense of the absurd.“I think the structure of everything I do is probably always going to come from country music,” Thompson said in a recent interview. “I’m always going to sing like a country singer.”CMAT’s country-pop songs are irreverent, vulnerable, sad, smart — and militantly strange.Ellius Grace for The New York Times“Crazymad, For Me,” however, also branches into psychedelia, anthemic pop and rock ‘n’ roll. For this album, Thompson said, she “wanted to make something that sounded very theatrical,” like Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell.”The Meatloaf influence is clear in the slow-burning, claustrophobic ballad “Rent” which builds to a rock ‘n’ roll chorus with a spiraling piano line and howling vocals — but there is also “Have Fun,” a pop anthem showcasing an Irish fiddle.Mattias Tellez, the album’s producer, said Thompson’s voice was “timeless, and powerful, and so distinct,” displaying “qualities I hear in the likes of Billie Holiday, or Ella Fitzgerald — that power, and control, and spontaneous humor.”The new album draws on Thompson’s life, looking back on a tumultuous relationship the singer began with an older man when she was in her late teens. It follows her from her lowest and messiest point, before she reckons with the past and decides to move on.Along the way, she weaves in references to St. Anthony (the finder of lost things — a favorite of Irish mothers), Miranda from “Sex and the City” and the “Wagatha Christie” trial that recently gripped Britain’s tabloids.The single “Where Are Your Kids Tonight?” sees CMAT collaborate with the singer-songwriter John Grant. The two appeared onstage together in September, at Dublin’s National Concert Hall, where Grant was performing a concert of Patsy Cline covers. CMAT was the guest star, singing “Walkin’ After Midnight” and “She’s Got You.”In an email, Grant said working with Thompson was “a blast.”“They absolutely love her in Ireland, and with good reason,” Grant said. “Looks like the rest of the world is catching on.”CMAT began her career describing herself online, ironically, as “a global pop star” who “lives in Dublin with her grandparents.” Prepandemic, she was working in a cafe: She had no money, and was recovering from a period of depression and disillusionment, after the band she’d formed at 18, Bad Sea, failed to gain traction and split.She reinvented herself as a solo act, self-releasing singles including “I Wanna Be a Cowboy, Baby!” and “Nashville,” a dreamy (and surprisingly exhilarating) song about suicidal ideation. She rapidly gained fans, in particular among young Irish L.G.B.T.Q. people. (Thompson, who is bisexual, once told an interviewer that she’s “making music for the girls and the gays, and that’s it.”)“I think the structure of everything I do is probably always going to come from country music,” Thompson said in a recent interview. “I’m always going to sing like a country singer.”Ellius Grace for The New York TimesHer career took off just in time for Covid-19 to rule out the chance of touring. “Everyone was stuck at home, and had nothing to do, and didn’t know how to exist on the internet,” she said. “But I did, because I’d been there. I’d spent a lot of time in a room by myself.”As a teenager, Thompson was an avid Tumblr user, and wrote fan fiction about Bombay Bicycle Club, an English indie band. She focused on building her own online following, with live streamed events including “CMAT’s Very Nice Christmas,” and the “CMAT Confessional Line,” during which fans called in with life dilemmas for her to solve.Thompson has since swapped Dublin for Brighton, England, and has reached a point of success where the “pop star” line is no longer a joke. She has even won the recognition of her idols: On the track “So Lonely” she asked “Who needs God, when I have Robbie Williams?,” attracting the online attention of the man himself. Writing on X, formerly Twitter, Williams called the duet with Grant “majestic.”“Now I am actually kind of living like a pop star,” Thompson said. “And now, trying to keep up the pop star thing, and having a fake life, and a fake personality to go with it, just feels wrong.” Instead, she is steadily cultivating a unique brand of anti-glamour, appearing in videos in clown costumes, elaborate wigs and male drag, or with facial prosthetics, bleached eyebrows and gems stuck to her teeth.The intimacy she has forged with fans has only intensified: Recently, Thompson promised on X that if “Crazymad” reaches the Top 10 in Britain, she would send her wisdom teeth, freshly removed, to a lucky follower.In the same spirit of authenticity, the album shows its creator’s flaws, as well as her triumphs. “When I was making this record, two things happened,” Thompson said. “I got angrier about some things, but then I also realized that I had done some things wrong in my life.” Across its 12 tracks, the album shifts from blaming her ex to forgiving herself for her own mistakes.“I feel like no one is trying to make themselves look bad anymore in their music,” she added, “but we’ve all done things wrong in our lives. I’m an embarrassing person who’s done some very embarrassing things.”The album’s ecstatic final tracks, “Have Fun” and “Stay For Something,” complete this journey from resentment to regret, through self-acceptance to, ultimately, optimism.“There’s no point in suffering,” Thompson said. “You could just have been having a good time. Because life is very short.” More

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      How Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour Was Turned Into a Movie

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      Movies like “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” rely on savvy tricks and sophisticated techniques to capture a semblance of the live experience.Taylor Swift’s globe-spanning Eras Tour is one of the musical events of the year, drawing record-breaking crowds and making headlines the world over since it kicked off in Glendale, Ariz., in March. Rabid demand has made procuring a ticket notoriously difficult, if not practically impossible. But starting Friday, Swifties will have a more accessible opportunity to catch a glimpse of the live phenomenon, when the concert film “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” is released by AMC Theaters — a moviegoing event that is widely expected to be a box office smash.Filmed over three nights in August at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., and directed by Sam Wrench, “The Eras Tour,” like most concert films, aims to capture some of the magic of seeing the artist perform live. “The main thing we’re trying to do is provide the theatrical audience with the best seat in the house,” John Ross, the rerecording mixer on “The Eras Tour” and a veteran of many other hit concert films, including Jonathan Demme’s “Justin Timberlake + The Tennessee Kids,” said by phone. “If you were to attend a concert and get the premium seat, that’s my job, to convey that image sonically and situationally.”A scene from “Justin Timberlake + the Tennessee Kids.” John Ross, who worked on that film and the new Taylor Swift one, said, “If you were to attend a concert and get the premium seat, that’s my job, to convey that image sonically and situationally.”NetflixBut capturing a live performance is not as straightforward as simply setting up some cameras and microphones and recording what transpires onstage. The demands of a film are incredibly complicated, and faithfully reproducing the look and sound of a concert for the screen is an arduous and painstaking process for the filmmakers and their crews. It’s a delicate proposition — a proposition some filmmakers believe is inherently doomed.“The idea itself, to film a concert, is a bad idea,” said Jonas Akerlund, a film and music video director who made the concert movies “On the Run Tour: Beyoncé and Jay-Z Live” and “Taylor Swift: The 1989 World Tour Live.”He explained, “It will never, ever be as good as the live experience. It’s basically like trying to film fireworks — everybody knows that seeing it live is not the same as seeing it on a TV screen.” But, Akerlund added, the concert film can have value, if looked at in a different way. “You can make it an equally good experience, but it has to be a filmic or cinematic experience rather than trying to compete with the live experience.”The secret to cinematic merit, he said, is having the time and means to shoot it like a proper movie. That means hiring upward of 40 camera operators; shooting over multiple nights; deploying drones, Spidercams and GoPros; and setting aside a separate dress rehearsal day, when the artist plays without a crowd to shoot extra footage, like close-ups that might not have been possible during the live show. All of the footage is assembled in the editing room “with the precision of a four-minute music video” to create the illusion that what you’re seeing was unfolding in real time. “I guess it’s cheating a little bit,” Akerlund said.These kinds of cheats are common and, to hear filmmakers tell it, necessary. When the “Crazy Rich Asians” director Jon M. Chu made “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never,” he shot the performance and the audience on separate nights, then edited them together because that, paradoxically, made the audience’s reaction feel more authentic. “I always love concert films where it feels like the audience is really there,” he said. But because of the cameras, the sound recording equipment and the lighting, “audiences don’t react as big” as they would on an ordinary night. “You try to emulate what it feels like,” he said.One of the most surprising things about the making of concert films is just how much tends to be emulated, even simulated, rather than merely captured as is. The actual sound of music being played live in an arena can’t merely be taped: “just a recording of the room would be useless,” Ross said. Instead, dozens of microphones — sometimes more than 100 for larger sites — record the vocals, instruments and crowd on separate tracks, and a rerecording mixer carefully blends them together, adding reverb and echo to simulate the sound of the space.Beyoncé and Jay-Z in the “On the Run Tour” movie. The director Jonas Akerlund acknowledged that the film can never be as good as the live experience.HBOIn other words, the tone of the room is essentially applied like a filter to the raw sounds recorded from the artist onstage. This filter, known as impulse response, takes readings from actual physical places, then “synthetically reproduces the sound of a real space like a club or stadium,” said Jake Davis, the lead mix engineer at SeisMic Sound, an audio facility in Nashville that specializes in concert films.Mixers like Jake and his father, Tom Davis, the SeisMic founder, have a lot of control over the sound in a concert film, and making adjustments is a large part of their job. Some are minor refinements. Others are more like corrections: They make the concert film sound more like what the artist wanted than what necessarily occurred on the night it was filmed. “When you lock something down for a DVD or for streaming or whatever it is, once it’s done, it lives forever,” Tom Davis said. “It never goes away. So you kind of want it to be as good as it can be.”Mixers can blend parts of a song recorded on one night with parts from another night to create the best combined version. They can fix an errant flat note in a guitar solo by manipulating it in postproduction, or they can ask an artist to rerecord a weak vocal in a studio, layering it into the mix so that it sounds as if it had been delivered live. “We copy, cut and paste, like you do on a word processor,” Davis said. “If there was a little clam in the first chorus, but he did it fine in the second chorus in the same part, we can cut and paste that. We can do vocal maintenance. We can fix a little pitch issue, or bend a note a little bit.”Although sound mixers record the crowd with a bevy of microphones hidden around the arena, it’s possible — and indeed, common — to exaggerate the sound of that audience, to artificially give the cheering fans some extra kick. “It’s kind of a dirty secret,” Davis said. “But the sound of the real audience is weak. It’s not enough. You end up adding to it, pumping it up. There’s something psychological to hearing other humans having a good time and reacting — it’s like a sitcom and a laugh track.” Jake Davis said that the ideal balance is to “start with the real reaction” and then simply “make it bigger and more obvious.”Of course, part of the appeal of a live show, even on film, is the impression of reality, and a sense of truth is critical. “The goal of the mix is to enhance the energy of the performance that exists as it went down in the best way possible,” Jake Davis said. “You maintain some element of rawness while taking out things that are distracting, the nuances of a wrong note or a background singer being a little bit off.”Swift at the Metlife Stadium show. Dozens and sometimes hundreds of microphones are placed throughout the site to capture the sound for film.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesWhile the film version strives to be “as good as it can be for the rest of history,” he said, “there’s a fine line between correcting something a little bit and making it perfect, because it’s not going to be perfect live.” It’s a bit like touching up a portrait in Photoshop: it’s tempting to clear blemishes, but too much airbrushing can make you look fake.Paul Dugdale, the director of “Shawn Mendes: Live in Concert” and “Taylor Swift: Reputation Stadium Tour,” said that while some live shows might lend themselves to “maximum authenticity” as an approach, other huge pop concerts don’t emphasize the authentic in the same way. “For shows that are quite theatrical, there’s a level of artifice — they’ve got screens, they’ve got pyrotechnics, they’ve got costumes, all that kind of stuff,” he said. “For someone like Taylor, I think that allows you to explore further in terms of camera angles and putting the audience in different positions.”A Swift concert, Dugdale pointed out, can last more than three hours, which affords the director more latitude in how to approach the film formally. “You can create texture just like the live show has texture,” he said. “Sometimes you can go heavy-handed with the director’s hand, and sometimes you can completely let go of the steering wheel and let the artist take over.”Despite the high level of difficulty, the job for filmmakers and sound engineers is quite thankless. The best concert films will, to the unwitting viewer, seem like nothing more than filmed concerts — the filmmaking itself remains invisible.“The goal is that you don’t want people thinking about the fact that this was worked on or changed at all from what it was live,” Jake Davis told me. “You just want the audience to be immersed in the experience and to accept that it’s happening in front of them — to feel like they’re there.” But Dugdale noted that however much he tries to plan out a concert shoot, the live aspect will always prove unpredictable. “Making these films, you can be as prepared as you can possibly be, but in the end you have to hold on for dear life and see how it turns out.” More

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      Rudolph Isley, an Original and Enduring Isley Brother, Dies at 84

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      He provided harmony vocals and the occasional lead. He also helped write some of the group’s biggest hits, including “Shout,” “Fight the Power” and “That Lady.”Rudolph Isley, who held dual roles in the influential vocal group the Isley Brothers as a mellifluous harmony singer and co-writer of many of their greatest hits, died on Wednesday at his home in Chicago. He was 84.He died in his sleep, his brother Ernie said, adding that he was unaware of any health issues his brother might have had.Mr. Isley spent much of his three decades with the Isley Brothers harmonizing with his brother O’Kelly in support of Ronald Isley’s lead vocals. But he also sang lead on some notable tracks. On “I’ve Got to Get Myself Together,” recorded in 1969, his gentlemanly tone gave the song a touch of grace. He also lent a suave lead to the group’s fleeting entry into the disco field, “It’s a Disco Night (Rock Don’t Stop),” which was a club hit in the United States in 1979 and reached the Top 20 in Britain.The Isley Brothers were always fashionable, and in the 1970s and ’80s Mr. Isley made a fashion statement of his own by wearing hats and furs and carrying a bejeweled cane, giving the Isleys added panache.He and his brothers wrote a number of pivotal hits, beginning with “Shout,” the group’s 1959 breakthrough, which applied the dynamic of gospel music’s call-and-response to a pop context. They also wrote the enduring political anthem “Fight the Power,” a Top Five Billboard hit, as well as the Top 10 pop hits “It’s Your Thing” and “That Lady.”The always fashionable Isleys (from left, Rudolph, Ronald and O’Kelly) in the 1970s.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesSixteen of the Isley Brothers’ albums cracked the Billboard Top 40, 13 were certified gold and nine went platinum or multiplatinum.In 1989, Mr. Isley retired from the mainstream music industry to pursue his long-deferred dream of a career in the ministry, although he continued to sing in church. He also recorded some gospel songs, and in 1996 released a religious album titled “Shouting for Jesus: A Loud Joyful Noise.” He and his brothers were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1992.Rudolph Bernard Isley was born on April 1, 1939, in Cincinnati, the second of six sons of Sallye (Bell) and O’Kelly Isley. He began singing in church as a child, and during his teen years he and three of the other older Isleys performed together and toured locally.”I have some very special memories of listening to music with my brothers when we were young,” Mr. Isley told the music journalist Leo Sacks for the liner notes to a 1999 boxed set that Mr. Sacks produced, “It’s Your Thing: The Story of the Isley Brothers.” He added: “Billy Ward and the Dominoes, now that was a group. We idolized them. We got our own thing together because we never lost that harmony group dynamic.”In the group’s early days, the eldest brother, Vernon, sang lead. He was killed at age 13 when the bicycle he was riding was struck by a car, and Ronald became the lead singer.The Isleys were still quite young when Rudolph, O’Kelly and Ronald moved to New York to pursue a record deal. Contracts with small labels led to one with RCA, one of the biggest in the business, in 1959, and shortly after that the Isleys wrote and recorded “Shout.” It sold over a million copies and came to be acknowledged as a rock ’n’ roll classic, spawning covers by Dion, Bruce Springsteen, Garth Brooks and many others. (It was also heard in “National Lampoon’s Animal House” and other movies.)In 1962, the Isleys had a Top 40 hit with their cover of “Twist and Shout,” written by Bert Berns and Phil Medley and originally recorded a year earlier by the Top Notes. Their recording provided a template for the far more popular version recorded by the Beatles in 1963.For a brief time in 1964, the Isley Brothers’ band included a young guitarist named Jimmy James, who would later be known as Jimi Hendrix.The Isleys signed with Motown in 1965. But despite the label’s reputation for generating hits, they had just one in their brief tenure there, “This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You),” written by the label’s top songwriting team, Lamont Dozier and Brian and Eddie Holland (with Sylvia Moy). It reached No. 12 on the Billboard chart and No. 3 in Britain. Frustrated by Motown’s controlling approach, the brothers, in an unusual move for an African American act at the time, left the label to form their own, T-Neck Records, named after Teaneck, N.J., where they were based.Switching to a rawer and funkier style influenced by James Brown and Sly Stone, the trio found a new métier, and a new commercial connection. Their 1969 single “It’s Your Thing” rose to No. 2 on Billboard’s pop chart and No. 1 on the magazine’s R&B list.The Isley Brothers on the British television show “Ready Steady Go!” in 1964.Chris Ware/Keystone Features/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesAt the start of the 1970s, the group expanded to include the two youngest siblings, Ernie and Marvin, along with Rudolph’s brother-in-law, Chris Jasper; all three contributed instrumental work, and Mr. Jasper also sang. The result was a mostly self-contained band, another rarity for Black artists of the day. Together, they pioneered a unique rock ’n’ roll-tinged brand of funk and soul. Over the years, their music covered a wide range of genres, from doo-wop to gospel to quiet-storm ballads.From 1973 through 1981, all the group’s albums went gold, platinum or multiplatinum. Most of the tracks on those albums were co-written by Mr. Isley and the other members.The group also scored a platinum album in 1986 with “Between the Sheets,” whose title track offered their sensual answer to Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing.” Rudolph Isley shared lead vocals with his brother Ronald on two tracks of that album, the spacey funk number “Way Out Love” and the sensual grind “Slow Down Children.”With the rise of hip-hop, the Isleys’ classic material provided the source for more samples than any act other than James Brown and George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic.The death of O’Kelly Isley from a heart attack in 1986 hit Rudolph particularly hard. The group’s next album, “Smooth Sailin’” (1987), featured just him and Ronald on the cover and was dedicated to O’Kelly. Two years later, Rudolph quit the music business.Still, the ever-resourceful, forward-looking group endured and made a successful comeback in 1996 with the album “Mission to Please,” buoyed by production and writing from R. Kelly. Rudolph Isley reunited with his brothers for one night in 2004, when the group was given a lifetime achievement honor at the BET Awards.In March, Rudolph sued his brother Ronald, claiming that he had sought to secure a trademark for the group under his own name exclusively. The suit claimed that the founding members were “at all times” a “common-law partnership.”Marvin Isley died in 2010 from complications of diabetes.In addition to his brother Ernie, Rudolph Isley’s survivors include his wife, Elaine Jasper, whom he married in 1958; their children, Rudy Jr., Elizabeth, Valerie and Elaine; his brother Ronald; and several grandchildren.“Music and faith, they just run through our blood,” Mr. Isley was quoted as saying in the “It’s Your Thing” liner notes. “I may have stopped singing pop music, but I will always be an Isley Brother.”Bernard Mokam More

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      How the Agushto Papa Podcast Chronicles Musica Mexicana

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      The Agushto Papa podcast has become the go-to media outlet for the rising stars of música mexicana.When the four hosts of the Agushto Papa podcast — all Mexican Americans in their early to mid 20s — were teenagers, they wrestled with, as all young people do, the music of their parents’ generation. The varying styles that are termed, broadly, regional Mexican music, have remained emphatically traditional in presentation and sound for decades. For young men growing up very differently from their parents, listening to it was a complicated proposition.“In middle school, I was kind of scared to tell people that I would listen to it, because back then, it wasn’t cool,” said Diego Mondragon, one of the show’s founders. Angel Lopez, one of his co-hosts, echoed the sentiment: “I feel like there was a negative stigma toward it.”Much has changed in the last five years, however, thanks to an influx of new talent with wide-ranging musical references, gestures borrowed from hip-hop, and increased global attention on Spanish-language music thanks to the rise of streaming. As a result, Mexican music is evolving quickly and being heard more broadly than ever. This movement, broadly referred to as música mexicana, has minted a whole new generation of stars in short order: Peso Pluma, Natanael Cano, Grupo Frontera, Ivan Cornejo, Fuerza Regida, DannyLux, Yahritza y Su Esencia, Eslabon Armado, Junior H and more.Agushto Papa, which released its first episode on YouTube in March 2021, and has since amassed over 270,000 subscribers on the platform, has become the most reliable and visible chronicler of this wave — showcasing new releases, hosting intimate performances, reporting news about established stars and rookies alike, chit-chatting about gossip and keeping an eye on tensions that have been developing between some of the movement’s biggest names.“As first-generation immigrants, we always felt, like it or not, a little bit out of place or a little bit like we’re intruding into something,” Lopez, left, said.Alex Welsh for The New York TimesFour months ago, the hosts — Lopez, 23; Mondragon, 23; Diego (Keko) Erazo, 24; and Jason Nuñez, 23 — each moved out of their respective families’ homes into a shared house in Stanton, Calif., after a long stretch filming the show largely in Nuñez’s family garage, in order to create a more focused environment for making their content. (Erazo, Mondragon and Nuñez grew up nearby, in Westminster, Calif., and played soccer together as children. They met Lopez in high school.)“As first-generation immigrants, we always felt, like it or not, a little bit out of place or a little bit like we’re intruding into something,” Lopez said. “And now, with the music, we heard people our age talking about issues that we have living here in the United States as Mexicans. So we really fell in love with that.” (For a time, Mondragon and Nuñez were in a band, Grupo Activo, managed by Erazo — the podcast’s title is from an inside joke from that era, riffing on the term “a gusto,” or relaxed.)Most of the show’s interview subjects are of a similar age and cultural background as the hosts, creating a built-in ease. “A lot of the new artists that are coming out, they’re Mexican American. They speak both Spanish and English,” Erazo said. Mondragon estimated that about 75 percent of the podcast’s interviews are conducted in English.Erazo added that the casualness of the setting contributes to the hosts’ ability to get unvarnished conversation from their subjects: “They needed somewhere where they could be themselves, be who they are, express their feelings, let it all out instead of going in and being like, ‘Yes sir, no sir.’” Many interviews are booked directly, over text or direct message, bypassing traditional intermediaries.Mondragon also emphasized that it’s not just the musicmakers who are changing, but the music as well, a far cry from what was on offer in his parents’ era. “Back then music was very strict with their rules. Like, ‘you need to dress like this, You need to sing like Vicente Fernández. You need to have this beautiful voice,’” he said. But the introduction of technology and techniques from other genres meant more stylistic entry points for artists.“I think a big reason why the younger generation fell in love with this music is you didn’t really have to have a singer’s voice to participate,” Nuñez said. “If you had like a regular monotone voice, you could still cultivate and create the new style of music.”As the scene has become more popular, there have been more internecine squabbles between artists — a primary one is between Peso Pluma and Jesus Ortiz Paz, the singer of Fuerza Regida — tensions that persist despite the fact that the genre’s rising tide is likely to lift all boats.The podcast’s casual setting is key to the hosts’ ability to get unvarnished conversation from their subjects.Alex Welsh for The New York Times“I think we just try to stay neutral and let the people decide,” Nuñez said. “Just give them the facts.” On the show, discussions about the artists’ barbs at each other are dissected with childlike awe and a layer of concern. (Occasionally the podcasters have tried to capitalize on the spats: They briefly sold “Make JOP and Peso Friends Again” shirts and hats.)Very quickly, the hosts themselves have become figures in the world they document. Occasionally, they’ll share videos which show them getting acknowledged at concerts by the artists they cover and admire. They have started a record label, which they hope to use to elevate new talent, and view the long-running radio and television personality Pepe Garza, and his interview and performance show “Pepe’s Office,” as a model for what Agushto Papa might develop into.There have been some hiccups in the crew’s quick ascent. Recently the show was demonetized by YouTube over a technical issue. And in a recent video, Lopez frankly discussed how the sudden success of the show had led to some disruptive life decisions, which prompted a group decision to stop drinking. “The whole honeymoon phase is over,” he said. When they began the podcast, Lopez said he had been happy just to receive invitations to artists’ parties. “But you’ve got to learn to say no and just to get to work.”Perhaps most crucially, though, not only have they fully reconciled their relationship with the music of their parents’ generation, but they’ve been able to convince their parents that the music of the current generation is valid, too.“A lot of older people were saying, ‘Oh, what is this? Turn it off. That’s not real Mexican music,’” Erazo said.Mondragon recalled his mother’s initial resistance to Cano, one of his favorite artists and a central figure in the movement’s increased visibility. “She would be like, ‘Why does he dress like that? Why does he talk like that? The tattoos are ugly,’” he recalled.She’s opened her mind, and her ears, though. “Now she understands that we need a Nata, we need a Peso — to put Mexico out there to the world, for us.” More

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      Do We Need Album Reviews Anymore?

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicIt is an increasingly fraught environment for music journalism and criticism. Recently, on Twitter, a conversation was initiated by the writer and musician Jamie Brooks about whether music journalism was too concerned with reviewing individual albums, and thereby focused less on more holistic, bigger-umbrella approaches to covering artists and scenes.Given the diminishing number of decently-paying options for journalists — particularly young ones — the question of how to deploy limited resources feels pointed and urgent.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the history of album reviews as a unit of music criticism, and the ways in which the growth of streaming have perhaps permanently altered how single-artist albums are made, and what they’re intended to achieve.Guest:Jamie Brooks, a musician and a columnist at The New InquiryConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      In Debut, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla Gets the Philharmonic

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      The New York Philharmonic’s renovated hall is a proving ground for guests to balance the orchestra. Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla did so with assurance.Welcome to Season 2 of the New York Philharmonic in its renovated David Geffen Hall. If there is one story line that has carried over from Season 1, it’s the sound.The new Geffen Hall’s acoustics are clearer, if chillier than before. Because every detail in the orchestral playing is more easily audible, so too is every choice about balance — making the hall a tough proving ground for conductors. Guests can find themselves neatly sifted into one of two categories: those who intuitively grasp how to steer the Philharmonic in this space, and those who don’t.Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, who made her Philharmonic debut on Wednesday night, gets it.This Lithuanian conductor led her first program at Geffen with assurance across varied styles — a feat that hasn’t been easily matched by some of her peers in the hall. Sometimes, modern or contemporary works can sound admirably chiseled, while 19th-century ones stint on warmth, and thus charm.The evening, which the Philharmonic dedicated “to those impacted by the conflict and humanitarian crisis in Israel and the Gaza Strip,” included music from a living composer, Raminta Serksnytė’s “De Profundis”; a repertory war horse, Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto; and a rarity from Sibelius, excerpts from the “Lemminkainen Suite.” But no era or style felt shortchanged on Wednesday. The strings in particular were hard-edged when they needed to be (in the Serksnyte), then icy and glinting (in the Sibelius).Schumann’s concerto was the lush highlight of the program. In the first movement, low strings and percussion had their forceful say, as expected. But subtler delicacies were plentiful: Winds collaborated on heavenly blends; trumpet notes came across as peppery without blaring; violins swooned alongside the soloist.That soloist was Daniil Trifonov, an artist constitutionally incapable of a wan take. He offered a personal, thrilling, at times idiosyncratic approach to Schumann’s famed binary of contrasting alter egos: Florestan and Eusebius. There was plenty of thrusting force in opening chords, representing Florestan and played with abandon reminiscent of Martha Argerich’s style in this concerto. Elsewhere, he delivered winning grace, embodying the moods of Eusebius.But Trifonov did more than run between those bases — he brought them into extended, unexpected dialogue. In quiet stretches, he practically halted his momentum, putting confrontational, 20th-century concepts of space and negation into the flow of the beautiful writing. Likewise, amid fierce tutti passages for piano and orchestra, the fine mechanisms of his playing reached a state of meditative delirium normally associated with Schumann’s dreamy, Eusebian side.Gražinytė-Tyla was alert to each new blend, and matched the orchestra to Trifonov’s prismatic turns. At the close of the first movement, she seemed to use the quick cutoff of Geffen’s acoustic to underline new rhythmic patterning in the score, helping familiar music feel sparkling and alive.Serksnyte’s “De Profundis,” an early work from 1998, opened with motivic boldness and some quickly roving ideas about rhythmic fragmentation, but spun its wheels a bit before a rousing-then-hissing finale. And the three sections of Sibelius’s suite had charm — including a mellow English horn solo from Ryan Roberts in “The Swan of Tuonela” — though it’s hardly material from this composer’s top drawer.And yet the orchestra, heard in its best form on Wednesday, found joy and merit throughout the program. For Gražinytė-Tyla, this was the kind of debut that immediately has you thinking about her future with the Philharmonic. She’s famously happy with freelancing. And, well, New York is a freelancer’s kind of town.New York PhilharmonicThis program continues through Saturday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

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      Review: Arca Struts the Catwalk Between Diva and Meta Diva

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      In “Mutant;Destrudo,” her show at the Park Avenue Armory, the experimental musician delivers what is essentially a traditional concert.Amid the boundaries that the musician Arca has explored over the past decade — between technology and nature, male and female, vulnerability and aggression — another has arisen recently: the line between a pop diva and an artist commenting on pop divas.As with those other binaries, Arca hovers somewhere in the blurry, ever-evolving middle of this one: a Schrödinger’s diva, simultaneously performing stardom and deconstructing it.“Mutant;Destrudo,” her four-performance show that opened on Wednesday at the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan, is essentially a traditional concert. There is a stage, a large screen behind it that shows a mixture of live and premade video, and a catwalk protruding into the crowd.Regularly during the two-hour show, a camera at the end of the runway relays a thighs-down view of Arca strutting in spike heels as she sings, à la Beyoncé. There’s a piano on one side of the stage, at which she sits for some quieter moments, à la Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift. There are reggaeton beats overlaid with flowing, easygoing raps, à la Rosalía or Bad Bunny. She takes selfies with phones handed up to her.If you squint, this is pop.That is a world in which Arca, the pseudonym of the Venezuelan-born Alejandra Ghersi, has spent time. She started as a producer for Kanye West, FKA twigs, Björk and others as she built a following for her own music, including the kaleidoscopic five-album cycle “Kick,” released in a flurry in 2020 and 2021.But if parts of “Kick” and “Mutant;Destrudo” seem like plays for mainstream eyes and ears, Arca stubbornly resists being too digestible. The Armory show, like Swift’s touring behemoth, picks and chooses from a catalog that is, after only 10 or so years, widely varied. But unlike Swift, Arca’s eras are spiky and hard to define; she doesn’t do anthems. “Destrudo” is billed as being structured in three acts, but the divisions between them are murky.This is restless, unsettled music, evoking both exhilaration and anxiety that a single person can produce — and can be — so many different things. Wednesday’s set began with murmured lullaby torch songs, in the airy yet sultry, prayerful, sometimes crooning voice of “Arca” (2017) and the fifth “Kick” album. The evening’s climax — long, seething, groaning, grinding synthesizer instrumentals — could hardly have been more different.Arca at the synthesizer where she made the kinds of sounds she specialized in at the beginning of her career: glitches, explosions, video-game-style machine-gun rounds, spacily stretched tones.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesBetween those extremes were hip-swaying bits of reggaeton, from the second “Kick,” and explosive electronics; in one number, smooth vocals and a low-slung beat were disrupted by metallic squeals. Songs seemed to end almost arbitrarily, as if Arca were simply ready to move on to something else. The mood was twitchy, fractured, a perpetual transformation.For all the arresting high-tech video imagery — psychedelic layers superimposed until they took on hologram-like pseudoreality — there was a studiedly rough, decidedly non-stadium aspect to the show.Arca’s first costume change — out of a slinky, shimmering black dress into a plastic breastplate with lights at the nipples and a patchwork miniskirt — took place in full view of the audience, without much rushing or showmanship. The awkwardness of how long it took, the lack of spectacle, seemed intentional: This, she seemed to be saying, is the glamorous drudgery we put female artists through. We sometimes saw Arca on video as she lay on an examining chair, as if our perspective was that of her surgeon.Her piano — unlike Swift’s or Lady Gaga’s — is prepared with magnets that turn it into an electroacoustic machine of woozy, otherworldly lyricism, tinged with buzz. And unlike most pop divas, Arca had a synthesizer setup on the other side of the stage, at which she grinned maniacally and made the kind of noise that she specialized in at the beginning of her career: harsh shards in wet earth, glitches, explosions, video-game-style machine-gun rounds, roars, spacily stretched tones.It was the kind of soundscape that fit the show’s title: “Destrudo” is a term relating to the Freudian death drive, a theme in keeping with Arca’s gothy-cyborg self-styling. But while the music occasionally got loud on Wednesday, there was little of the heavy, disorienting, oozingly morphing melancholy of her early work. Lacking the encompassing (if changeable) moods of the albums, this was a performance more endearing than emotional; even the dancey parts were too brief to build up much joy.“Destrudo” follows “Mutant;Faith,” her 2019 production at the Shed. In that period, when she began identifying as a nonbinary trans woman, pre-“Kick,” it landed more squarely on the side of experimental performance art. Arca did the show in a dirt pit, wore hoofed stilts, used a stripper-pole synthesizer and rode a mechanical bull.Now, trying more than ever to have it both pop and not, she is still fascinating, but — maybe inevitably — not fully satisfying.At the Armory, she was charming, game, sweetly grateful to the crowd. “This is fun, right?” she said, sincerely, as she paused to correct something wrong with the technology in her high heels that seemed meant to translate her steps into sounds. And it was fun — sort of.ArcaThrough Sunday at the Park Avenue Armory, Manhattan; armoryonpark.org More

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      Taylor Swift ‘Eras Tour’ Movie: 4 Takeaways

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      There’s something in the singer’s highly anticipated new concert documentary for newcomers and superfans alike.As she greeted the audience at the premiere of her new movie, Taylor Swift sounded a bit sheepish.“You’re stuck with me, because I’m going to sit with you and watch this thing,” she told the crowd at the packed premiere of “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” held at the sprawling Grove shopping complex on Wednesday night. Well, one of the crowds, anyway: Thirteen of the theaters at the Grove’s AMC multiplex were filled with eager fans, and Swift stopped by all of them to give a special introduction, eventually settling into an auditorium’s audience that included stars like Adam Sandler and Julia Garner.Regular moviegoers can only hope that an apologetic Swift shows up for more house calls as her concert documentary makes its way into theaters this week. Though it was originally set for release on Friday, Swift just announced that the film will begin screening one day early because of fan demand.Still, even if they can’t watch “The Eras Tour” alongside the singer herself — who came to the premiere in a pale blue Oscar de la Renta gown and danced in her seat for most of its running time — the movie is poised to deliver in a major way.For theatrical exhibitors, whose business has been in jeopardy since the actors strike scuttled plans to release tentpole movies like “Dune” this fall, “The Eras Tour” is being likened to the second coming of Barbenheimer: It’s got the grab-your-besties-and-go appeal of “Barbie,” the shock-and-awe soundscape of “Oppenheimer” and the box-office tracking to rival them both. Bullish film analysts expect an opening weekend between $150 to $200 million, meaning “The Eras Tour” has a shot at taking this year’s box-office tiara from “Barbie,” which notched a $162 million debut.In the meantime, here are four of the takeaways from the premiere.Expect no extras, though you’ll get a front-row seatIf fans are looking for insight into how Swift put her show together, or what was going on in her life behind the scenes, they won’t find it in “The Eras Tour”: There is no additional embroidering in this concert documentary, which was culled from Swift’s six-night August stint at the SoFi stadium in Inglewood, a suburb of Los Angeles. For those who caught one of the 53 shows Swift played in North American this past year, or for the fans hoping to see Swift in her remaining American dates (an international tour begins in February), this film is more or less the same thing as buying a concert ticket.Swift stopped by all 13 screens in the multiplex of them to give each audience a special introduction.Valerie Macon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThere’s one crucial difference, of course: No stadium seat could offer as close a look at Swift’s performance as this documentary, which is vigorously shot and directed by Sam Wrench. And since the 33-year-old singer designed “The Eras Tour” as a journey through the shifting musical genres of her past 10 albums — from the country-pop “Fearless” all the way up to the recent, stripped-down records “Folklore,” “Evermore” and “Midnights” — this film is the closest thing that exists to a definitive document of one of the world’s biggest performers.In that way, it’s perfect viewing for newcomers and superfans alike: Curious people who were unwilling to shell out for tour prices can now check out Swift at a reduced rate, while Swifties who’ve already attended the concert can relive it in a compelling close-up. My teenage niece, who went to one of the SoFi shows, accompanied me to the premiere and was thrilled by the better look at Swift’s facial expressions and choreography. I noticed that hardly a song goes by without some big smiles from Swift and her backup singers: There’s enough joy on these faces to power entire blocks of Barbie Land.Only a few songs get snipped“The Eras Tour” runs a robust two hours and forty-eight minutes, and though that’s nearly as long as “Oppenheimer,” Swift’s real-life concerts during this tour were even more mammoth, typically clocking in just shy of three and a half hours. Do fans have reason to fear there have been major cuts to the set list?By my count, only a handful of her regular songs go missing on the way to the big screen, including “The Archer,” “Cardigan,” “Wildest Dreams,” and “no body no crime,” which Swift performed at SoFi with the band Haim.Taylor Swift fans Karen Boncan, left, and Petrushka Seville at the premiere on Wednesday.Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated PressStill, fans will get plenty of bang for their buck, since Swift performs nearly 40 songs during the movie, including a 10-minute version of “All Too Well” and two other bonus tunes, “Our Song” and “You’re On Your Own, Kid,” that Swift plucked from a rotating selection of surprise songs during her tour. And another trim is sure to be appreciated: Swift now moves between the different eras and costume changes in the blink of an eye onscreen, eliding all the time those segues took onstage.In Hollywood, everyone is a SwiftieBlockbuster premieres have been hard to come by since the actors strike began, and an eclectic cross-section of celebrities turned out for the “Eras Tour” premiere, including Sandler, Mariska Hargitay and the singers Maren Morris and Hayley Kiyoko. Fashion choices ran the gamut from silver sequins to cowgirl fringe, and Alex Atallah, a co-founder of the NFT marketplace OpenSea, entered the theater lobby sporting the colorful, tie-dyed “I Am Kenough” hoodie seen on Ryan Gosling in “Barbie.”“I have very few shirts with this many pastel colors,” Atallah told me before posing for a photo with the “Barbie” co-star Simu Liu.Nearby, I caught Flavor Flav deep in conversation with Swift’s father, Scott. Though they made for an unlikely duo, the 64-year-old rap icon is no fly-by-night fan: He said that he’d seen the “awesome” Swift on two previous tours.“I’ve been a Swiftie for the longest, bro,” Flav insisted.“I’ve been a Swiftie for the longest, bro,” said the rapper Flavor Flav.Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty ImagesBut Swift’s biggest invite was reserved for another A-lister (and no, it wasn’t her new beau Travis Kelce, busy with a football game the next day): Before the premiere began, Swift dined and posed for pictures with Beyoncé, who has her own concert movie “Renaissance: A Film By Beyoncé” due for release on Dec. 1. Like “The Eras Tour,” Beyoncé’s film bypassed traditional Hollywood studios and will be distributed by AMC Theaters.Finally, Swift will enjoy some big-screen successThough she’s a superstar in the music industry, Swift’s forays into film haven’t been as well-received. Her last three movie credits as an actress include the minor young-adult drama “The Giver,” the memorably cataclysmic adaptation of “Cats,” and last year’s David O. Russell-directed “Amsterdam,” which coaxed Swift to pop in for a quick cameo and then promptly ran her over.Unlike Lady Gaga, who has lately toggled between music and movies in equal measure, Swift has treated Hollywood as more of a side hustle, only committing to the occasional supporting role. But last year, after she signed a deal with Searchlight to write and direct an upcoming original film, eyebrows were raised all over town: Was Swift ready to take her movie career a bit more seriously?Bullish film analysts expect opening weekend box office takings between $150 to $200 million for the movie.Valerie Macon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt remains to be seen whether Swift will star in her feature directorial debut, but “The Eras Tour” still supplies her with some much-needed big-screen juice. A fun presence in her biggest numbers, like the bouncy “Shake It Off” and rocking “Look What You Made Me Do,” Swift is even more appealing in acoustic numbers that trade busy choreography for simple guitar playing. And in the centerpiece song “Tolerate It,” she shows acting chops during a well-choreographed routine about a dinner date gone wrong: It begins with her beseeching an inexpressive lover and ends with her swatting a vase of roses off the table.Her real talent, though, is selling humility with a megawatt charisma that few celebrities can muster. Introducing one song, Swift insists she had to invent an outsized version of herself in order to write it: “In my fantasy, I’m not a lonely millennial woman covered in cat hair,” the singer says, even though she’s spent the whole film looking impossibly glamorous in sky-high Christian Louboutin heelsAnd yet, you’re still tempted to believe her. What is that, if not a movie star? More