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      South Korean R&B Singer Wheesung Is Found Dead at 43

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      The artist was known for popularizing the musical genre in the country, but convictions for drug abuse damaged his image.The South Korean singer-songwriter Wheesung, who popularized R&B music in the country but had documented struggles with drug abuse, was found dead in his home in Seoul on Monday evening, police said. He was 43.Fire department officials found the singer, whose birth name was Choi Whee-sung, in a state of cardiac arrest in his apartment around 6:30 p.m. on Monday. An officer at Seoul Gwangjin Police Station said there was no evidence of a break-in or foul play, and that the authorities were investigating the possibility of a drug overdose.The death is the latest in a string of tragedies to strike the country’s booming entertainment industry. Several South Korean celebrities have died including Kim Sae-ron, a young actress who was found dead at her home a few weeks ago. Police ruled Ms. Kim’s death a suicide.Mr. Choi, who also went by Realslow, began his career in 2002 with the album “Like a Movie” and quickly gained critical and popular acclaim, winning several South Korean music awards in the same year. `He released around a dozen albums and also starred in musicals, playing iconic roles including Zorro and Elvis Presley. Mr. Choi also helped write music for some of South Korea’s most successful K-pop bands, including Twice and Super Junior.His career suffered a setback in 2021, after he was found guilty of purchasing and using propofol, a powerful sedative that is a controlled substance in South Korea, on several occasions. He received a suspended sentence of one year in prison, avoiding jail time on the condition that he didn’t reoffend. He was also fined 60.5 million won (around $41,000), ordered to perform community service, and undergo drug treatment.With the drug charge, Mr. Choi came under scrutiny from the media and faced harsh public criticism, with some people posting hateful comments online. In South Korea, the social standing of celebrities usually hinges on having a blemish-free reputation and blameless character.Singers in South Korea posted tributes in honor of Wheesung on their social media accounts. “His music was a big part of my 20s,” the rapper Paloalto wrote on Instagram along with a picture of Mr. Choi’s first album cover. “Thank you for being there with me.”Wheesung had been scheduled to perform on March 15 with the singer KCM in Daegu, a city in the country’s south.Tajoy Entertainment, the company that managed Wheesung, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.In South Korea, call 109 for the health ministry’s suicide prevention hotline, or visit the Korean-language site 129.go.kr/109. More

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      Fashion? Rockets? Yachts? A Trump Ally Has Ideas for the Kennedy Center

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      Paolo Zampolli, a Trump appointee on the center’s board, wants the institution to host Valentino fashion shows, send art into space and open a marina and a Cipriani restaurant.The businessman Paolo Zampolli has counted Donald J. Trump as a friend for decades. In the 1990s, when Mr. Zampolli ran a modeling agency, he played matchmaker for Mr. Trump, introducing him at a party to his future wife, Melania.Now Mr. Zampolli, 55, is helping Mr. Trump in another way: reshaping the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.Mr. Zampolli has served on the center’s board since Mr. Trump appointed him toward the end of his first term. But things have changed rapidly since Mr. Trump began his second term with the stunning takeover of the historically bipartisan institution, firing all of the Biden appointees on its board and having himself elected chairman.Exactly what it all means is still coming into focus. A number of artists have canceled appearances there, and the musical “Hamilton” scrapped a planned tour there next year. Richard Grenell, whom Mr. Trump named as its new president, recently said that the center planned “a big, huge celebration of the birth of Christ at Christmas.”Mr. Zampolli, who shares Mr. Trump’s attention-grabbing instincts, has his own ideas. He wants the center to launch art into space with the help of Elon Musk, host Valentino fashion shows and to open a marina on the Potomac and a Cipriani restaurant.“We need to make the Kennedy Center a destination,” Mr. Zampolli, a special envoy for Mr. Trump who once served as a United Nations ambassador of Dominica, said in a recent interview. “It has the hugest potential ever.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jam Like a King: Charles Releases a Playlist

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      King Charles III showcased 17 artists, mostly from Commonwealth countries, in a personal playlist. Beyoncé, Bob Marley and Diana Ross made the cut.King Charles III, a classical music fan who has studied the cello, piano and trumpet, released an eclectic playlist on Monday featuring 17 artists, including Beyoncé, Bob Marley and Grace Jones.Music “has that remarkable ability to bring happy memories flooding back from the deepest recesses of our memory, to comfort us in times of sadness, and to take us to distant places,” Charles said in a podcast on Apple Music, “The King’s Music Room,” released in conjunction with the playlist.Charles, who as the British monarch is head of the Commonwealth, a club of 56 nations that were mostly part of the British Empire, put out the playlist to mark Commonwealth Day, celebrated on the second Monday in March with events across member countries.The king, 76, may have had some help in choosing the songs from Errollyn Wallen, a Belize-born artist who was last year appointed Master of the King’s Music. The honorary role was created during the reign of King Charles I in the 17th century.In 2008, Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, played the bongo drums at Bob Marley’s former home, now a museum, in Kingston, Jamaica.Anwar Hussein/WireImageHere are some of the king’s song choices.Beyoncé, “Crazy in Love”While the playlist primarily featured artists from the Commonwealth, he included a few from outside the group, citing a personal connection to their music. Beyoncé made the cut.Charles and Beyoncé at the Royal Albert Hall in London in 2003.Anwar Hussein/WireImageDaddy Lumba, “Mpempem Do Me”In the podcast, recorded at Buckingham Palace, the king recalled a 2018 visit to Ghana, a Commonwealth nation, where he danced to the music of Ghanaian singer Daddy Lumba.Miriam Makeba, “The Click Song”The South African singer Miriam Makeba, widely known as “Mama Africa,” was a prominent opponent of apartheid. “I shan’t try too much to pronounce the title, as it requires a great deal of practice,” Charles said of her 1960s hit “Qongqothwane,” known in English as “The Click Song.”Diana Ross, “Upside Down”“When I was much younger, it was absolutely impossible not to get up and dance when it was played,” King Charles said of Ms. Ross’s 1980 song. “So, I wonder if I can still just manage it?”Kylie Minogue, “The Loco-Motion”Ms. Minogue came to St. James’s Palace to perform this song in 2012. “This is music for dancing,” Charles said of the Australian singer’s rendition of the song, written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin. “It has that infectious energy which makes it, I find, incredibly hard to sit still.”Kylie Minogue met Charles and Camilla at St James’s Palace in London in 2012.Pool photo by Carl Court More

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      ‘Mayhem’ Review: Lady Gaga Wants You to Party Like It’s 2009

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      She dances on the line between clever self-referentiality and less inspired rehashing on her new LP, committing to the over-the-top excess that first made her a star.Even throughout Lady Gaga’s requisite ups and downs as a singer, songwriter and actress (the less said about last year’s “Joker: Folie à Deux,” the better), the 38-year-old New Yorker born Stefani Germanotta has remained imperially famous for so long, it can be difficult to recall the subversive thrill of her initial rise.When she ascended to superstardom in 2009, Gaga was an unabashed striver of a downtown club kid who cut her crowd-pleasing electro-pop with a deadpan, Warholian affect and an old-fashioned sense of musical showmanship. Whether dressed like an alien, an evil monarch or a butcher shop’s display window, she reveled in artifice and rewrote the script for the female pop star, reimagining sexuality as something weirder and more expansive — for both herself and her fervent fan base — than it had been in the Britney-and-Christina era. She was a welcome shock to pop’s system in the risk-averse late aughts — a romanticized era she mines for self-mythologizing nostalgia on her emphatic new album, “Mayhem.”“Mayhem” is a bright, shiny and thoroughly sleek pop record, produced by Gaga, the rock-star whisperer Andrew Watt and the Max Martin protégé Cirkut. Even at its dirtiest — the digital grunge of “Perfect Celebrity,” the slithering liquid funk of “Killah” — every sound is etched in clean, bold lines.It’s considerably sharper than her previous two pop solo efforts, the tepid 2016 quasi-country album, “Joanne,” and her unfortunately timed 2020 return to the dance floor, “Chromatica,” a mixed bag that now sounds overly dated thanks to its embrace of pop’s then-trendy obsession with sound-alike house samples and beats. (Gaga recently admitted in a New York Times Magazine interview that she wasn’t operating at her highest level in the “Chromatica” era: “I was in a really dark place,” she said, “and I wouldn’t say I made my best music during that time.”)But over the past few months, Gaga has stoked anticipation for her sixth pop LP with a wildly successful (if relatively anodyne), chart-topping Bruno Mars duet, “Die With a Smile,” and two of her hardest-hitting singles in a decade: the deliciously warped “Disease,” a churning, industrial pop dirge that highlights Nine Inch Nails as an influence on this album, and “Abracadabra,” a latex-tight dance-floor incantation with a chorus that finds her speaking in tongues like the high priestess of her own self-referential religion: “Abracadabra, amor ooh na na / Abracadabra morta ooh Gaga.” It is, of course, an expertly executed sequel to her 2009 smash “Bad Romance,” just as the following track, the skronky, gloriously hedonistic “Garden of Eden” plays out like an even more vivid return to the club she visited on her first hit, “Just Dance.”Throughout its 14 tracks, “Mayhem” dances on the line between clever self-referentiality and less inspired rehashing. The corrosive “Perfect Celebrity” is a sonic highlight that nonetheless butts up against the album’s thematic and lyrical limitations, returning to one of her favorite, and now tired, topics: the damage inflicted by fame. Is the opening line — “I’m made of plastic like a human doll” — a winking throwback to the “Chromatica” track “Plastic Doll,” or a bit of recycled imagery?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Joey Molland of the Power-Pop Band Badfinger Dies at 77

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      He was the last remaining core member of a group that was both propelled and pigeonholed in the 1970s by its close association with the Beatles.Joey Molland, a guitarist and songwriter who was the last surviving member of Badfinger, one of the first acts signed to the Beatles’ Apple Records and a power-pop force in the early 1970s on the strength of hits like “Day After Day” and “No Matter What,” died on March 1 in St. Louis Park, Minn. He was 77.His partner, Mary Joyce, said he died in a hospital from complications of diabetes.Mr. Molland joined Badfinger — originally called the Iveys — in 1969. The band had been signed the year before as a marquee act for Apple Records, the much-publicized label formed by the Beatles in 1968 as part of the parent company Apple Corps.“Badfinger gave me the opportunity to do everything a musician could want,” Mr. Molland said in a 2020 interview with Guitar World magazine. “I got to make records. I heard my music on the radio, and I toured all over. I couldn’t believe the luck we were having. For a time, everything was great.”Apple Corps was a high-minded, if financially dubious, initiative to tap the Beatles’ millions to fund unknown talents in music, film and electronics. It was created so that, as John Lennon said at the news conference announcing the venture, “people who just want to make a film about anything don’t have to go on their knees in somebody’s office — probably yours.”This experiment in “Western Communism,” as Paul McCartney called it, involved no shortage of misfires. (The company’s retail shop, known as the Apple Boutique, hemorrhaged 200,000 pounds — the equivalent of millions in today’s dollars — in a little more than a year.) But Badfinger was a gamble that worked, and its members enjoyed their new status as rock stars.Badfinger in about 1970. From left: Pete Ham, Tommy Evans, Mike Gibbins and Mr. Molland.via Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Inside the Sean ’Diddy’ Combs Hotline: The Makings of a Mass Tort

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      In a room full of cubicles, workers in headsets read from their computer screens, addressing callers who dialed a 1-800 number. They have a script.“Were you or your loved one sexually abused by Sean ‘Love’ Combs, known as Diddy, Puff Daddy and P. Diddy?”“If the abuse occurred at a party, please list the name of the party. What kind of party was it?”Their employer, Reciprocity Industries, is a legal services company located in a low-slung building in Billings, Mont., more than 2,000 miles from the Brooklyn jail where Mr. Combs awaits trial on federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges.For years, the company has helped seed litigation by fielding complaints from people hurt by natural disasters, weedkillers or abusive clergy.Now it’s the central collection point for sexual assault allegations against Mr. Combs.When a call related to Mr. Combs comes in, Reciprocity employees walk callers through a questionnaire that asks them to share the details of their complaints, including potential witnesses.Janie Osborne for The New York TimesSome complaints come in through the phone, others arrive online in response to ads promoted on Facebook and Instagram. (A news conference where a backdrop displayed the hotline in large red numbers made headlines last October.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gwen McCrae, 81, Dies; Singer Helped Open the Dance Floor to Disco

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      Originally a gospel singer, she went on to meld soulful melodies with dance-floor-friendly grooves on songs like the 1975 Top 10 hit “Rockin’ Chair.”Gwen McCrae, whose gospel-infused R&B hits of the early 1970s like “Lead Me On” and “Rockin’ Chair” featured bouncing, dance-floor-friendly grooves that helped open the door to disco, died on Feb. 21 in Miami. She was 81.Her former husband and frequent singing partner, George McCrae, said she died in a care facility from complications of a stroke she had in 2012.Though she had her share of nationwide hits, Ms. McCrae was best known on the music scene in the Miami area, where her upbeat R&B fit perfectly with the hot nights and subtropical vibe.She released most of her best-known songs through TK Records, a regional powerhouse founded by Henry Stone that counted other proto-disco acts, like Betty Wright and KC and the Sunshine Band, among its stable.Ms. McCrae and her husband, George McCrae, in the early 1970s. After the worldwide success of his signature hit, “Rock Your Baby,” she recorded her own hit, “Rockin’ Chair.”GAB Archive/Redferns, via Getty ImagesShe began performing with Mr. McCrae as a duo. They recorded their own albums, sang backup on others and carved a presence for themselves in the clubs of South Florida.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Interview’: Lady Gaga’s Latest Experiment? Happiness.

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      Over the course of her long career, Lady Gaga has proved herself to be one of music’s great shape-shifters. She has gone from the dance pop of her earliest albums, like “The Fame” (2008), to the rockier “Born This Way” (2011), to country-inflected sounds on “Joanne” (2016), to singing American Songbook standards alongside her friend Tony Bennett. Despite surely making her record label nervous a few times, the mercurial nature of Lady Gaga’s gift has come at no discernible cost to her career. She is one of only three solo artists — Michael and Janet Jackson being the others — to have hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart multiple times across three different decades. She has also earned 14 Grammy Awards, including one earlier this year for her duet with Bruno Mars, “Die With a Smile.”All that success made it especially intriguing to learn that her new album, “Mayhem,” which arrived this week, would be a return to the pop sounds of her early work. A step into familiar territory is a curious one for someone so steadfastly set on surprise. Was she hoping to capture some nostalgia? Looking for back-to-basics rejuvenation? Or could it be that making a “classic-sounding” Lady Gaga album was going to be some sort of meta examination of her own music and image?As she explained it when we spoke in February, the answer is, in a way, all of the above. At 38 years old, and after some time lost to fibromyalgia and personal trauma, Gaga finally felt ready to reclaim a sound that belonged to her. She also, thanks in no small part to her fiancé, the entrepreneur Michael Polansky, felt supported enough to do it. Which is proof that, for a world-famous pop star anyway, a little normalcy can be the most productive change of all.Listen to the Conversation With Lady GagaThe pop superstar reflects on her struggles with mental health, the pressures of the music industry and why she’s returned to the sound that made her famous.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon | iHeart | NYT Audio AppIn an announcement for “Mayhem,” you referred to your “fear” of going back to the pop music that your earliest fans loved. Why were you scared of that? You know, I made my artistic way living on the Lower East Side starting around 17 years old, and worked the New York music scene as much as I could. Ultimately that landed me into making “The Fame,” my first studio album. That music came out of the culture of people that I was living with at the time. I was surrounded by musicians, photographers, club promoters, people that lived and breathed art. It was a community of support, and one of the reasons I was afraid was I was so far away now from that community. It also felt like maybe I would just be recycling something that I had done before. But ultimately I decided that I really wanted to do it and that this sonic style and aesthetic really did belong to me.How do you characterize that sound? My sound is an amalgamation of the music that helped me fall in love with music. So it’s got classic rock in it, disco, electronic music, ’80s synth. It’s sort of like picking and choosing my favorite fragments of songs that I loved throughout my childhood. It is everything I love about music but all in one place. I didn’t always do that. Sometimes, in my records, I decided, OK, I’m going to make my version of a country record. More