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      Fans Celebrate Hip-Hop’s 50th Anniversary

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      The start of hip-hop dates to Aug. 11, 1973, when DJ Kool Herc created continuous break-beats by working two turntables during a party in a rec room at 1520 Sedgwick Ave in the Bronx. On Friday night, exactly 50 years later, a concert was held at Yankee Stadium — roughly a mile and a half from hip-hop’s birthplace — to honor the occasion, featuring Run-DMC, Slick Rick, Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, Lil’ Kim and Nas. DJ Kool Herc, 68, also appeared onstage to accept an award.Before the show, which was billed as “Hip Hop 50 Live,” the scene outside the stadium was heavy with fans of the sounds from the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. Middle-aged couples on date nights arrived wearing matching Adidas track suits. A man strolled the promenade carrying a boombox and wearing a Kangol hat. Hawkers sold pins with pictures of Biz Markie and The Notorious B.I.G.Outside a McDonald’s opposite the stadium, a street musician performed Tupac Shakur hits, while an in-line skater entertained the crowd with basketball tricks. Stationed beside a subway entrance was an 8-year-old rapper, Hetep BarBoy, who, accompanied by his father, was selling CDs of his album. “I prefer old-school hip-hop,” Hetep said. “I like Rakim because of his flow and the clean message he was putting into the world. He rapped about positivity, and that’s also what my music is about.”In the edited interviews below, attendees reflected on hip-hop’s 50th. Some recalled witnessing the park jams and parties that defined the genre’s beginnings.Tamika TalbotExecutive assistantJutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesPick a side: Old-school hip-hop or new? Old-school all day. I was at the rap battles in the parks. Hip-hop came from the dirt. You had to be a lyrical assassin then. If you weren’t, you were trash. I feel if you have something to say now, you’re seen as wack. Back then your flow had to be intact.Your old-school hero? Big Daddy Kane was once the prince of hip-hop. He had crazy lyrical flow. He was super-duper fly. He was unmatched.Richard ByarsCelebrity chefJutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesWhich old-school hero are you here to see? Ice Cube. To me he represents the beginning of hip-hop’s renaissance. But I’d never use the term “old-school.” I call artists like him “true-school.”What’s a significant hip-hop history moment for you? The public access television show “Video Music Box” was essential to hip-hop’s growth in the 1980s. All the forefathers appeared on that show.Adam JenkinsFiber optics specialistJutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesOld-school or new? I saw the birth of hip-hop as a kid growing up in the Bronx. I was at those Sedgwick Avenue parties. I saw Cold Crush Brothers and Afrika Bambaataa. So this all goes way back for me. It’s amazing to see how hip-hop has become a global force, but when I was a kid, it was just about having fun in the park. It wasn’t about how nice your car was or how much money you had.Do you ever boast about seeing hip-hop’s birth? I do sometimes tell young people that I saw the beginning of all this, but it usually falls on deaf ears, and they don’t get it. But that kind of response is also part of hip-hop to me, because it’s a genre that’s supposed to be always evolving from its past.Lesley SmithHome-care aideJutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesOld-school or new? For me it’s still all about Melle Mel, the Sugarhill Gang and Kurtis Blow. They’re the originals. Back in the day hip-hop was wholesome and fun. I don’t even understand it now. Primo GonzalezSecurity guardJutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesWhat’s a significant hip-hop history moment for you? I remember seeing “Beat Street” in the movie theater in the 1980s. It was a world I already knew from seeing B-Boys on University Avenue, but for many people, that was the first time they ever saw break dancing culture.Mary Olivette BookmanFordham University music studentJutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesWho do you consider a pioneer? Missy Elliott. She had something to say. What she was doing was sonically unique, and her skill and individuality were always immediately visible in her rap style.Who are you here to see tonight? I’m here to see them all. I want to see hip-hop history. Tonight is music education for me.Gearni ThompsonMusic marketing professionalJutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesWhat’s a significant hip-hop moment for you? I can still remember riding in a car with my friends when I heard “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugarhill Gang for the first time.Old-school or new? I love the old-school. I feel like the new school is about all the wrong stuff, like buying jewelry and expensive cars. Grandmaster Flash was reaching the kids in a good way. Old-school rap was about community and where we came from. It changed our lives.Ricardo VaronaStreet ball entertainerJutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesYour old-school hero? Snoop Dogg. When he and Dr. Dre came out with “The Chronic” it shook the world. Everyone followed their way after that.What’s a significant hip-hop moment for you? An important artist who I feel is too little known now is Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam. Her hit “Can You Feel the Beat” was impossible to not want to sing and dance to when it came out.Wisdom McClurkinHospitality professionalJutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesWho do you want to see tonight? Lil’ Kim. She’s a pioneer. She’s from the block. She’s the queen of everything. She was the blueprint. If it wasn’t for her, there would be no Nicki Minaj.William GainesRetired chefJutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesOld-school or new? I grew up in the boogie-down Bronx, so I went to all those legendary park jams. They’d hook up the turntables and speakers, and the cops would eventually come to turn it all off. You’d see Biz Markie and Doug E. Fresh. It was a good time. It all started from nothing and became something. But it all began with us just saying to each other: “Yo, they’re having a party on Sedgwick Avenue tonight. Want to go?” More

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      Taking in Jennifer Walshe and Anthony Braxton at Darmstadt

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      In between the four operas of the “Ring,” a critic traveled to take in world premieres by Jennifer Walshe and Anthony Braxton.It’s not a typical week in Germany when a staging of Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung” on the composer’s own turf at the Bayreuth Festival finds itself outdone for world-consuming sadness, rage and the possibility of redemption.But that’s what I experienced recently when I traveled between the four operas of the “Ring” at the festival and the Darmstadt Summer Course, a hotbed of avant-garde works since 1946.On Wednesday in Darmstadt — during a day off between “Siegfried” and “Götterdämmerung” in Bayreuth — Ensemble Nikel backed the Irish experimental singer and composer Jennifer Walshe in the world premiere of the complete song cycle “Minor Characters,” which she co-wrote with Matthew Shlomowitz.The morning after “Minor Characters,” I traveled back to Bayreuth for “Götterdämmerung” as staged (to much polarization) by Valentin Schwarz. Experiencing both back-to-back, I had the feeling that the song cycle had managed to steal the fire of the “Ring” cycle.I had expected “Minor Characters” to have a keyed-up, smash-cut musical aesthetic. Shlomowitz’s “Popular Contexts” series, for piano and “sampler keyboard,” after all, uses snatches of vocal growls, drooping water sources and Ping-Pong volleys, plus piano and beat-work, to create a disorientating, groovy effect; then nervier piano marches, alarming synths and distorted guitar samples.

      Popular Contexts / Performed by Mark Knoop by Matthew Shlomowitz / Peter AblingerWalshe’s compositional practice often revolves around her wide range of vocal inflections. Her approach incorporates extended technique experimentalism and free improvisation in addition to composed elements.But also many, many accents. In a 2020 profile, the New Yorker critic Alex Ross celebrated her ability to channel “Irish bard” and “California surfer girl” alike — a style which reaches a high state of refinement on solo Walshe efforts like “All the Many Peopls.”

      ALL THE MANY PEOPLS by Jennifer Walshe“Minor Characters” hits a new level of development for Walshe and Shlomowitz. He seems to pull her a bit closer toward more typical song forms; she puts some critical distance between his synths and the way they can seem to self-consciously emulate Muzak. And they put to use, through the piece’s dramatic interrogation of the pleasures and ills of our too-online present, the ferocious chops of Ensemble Nikel — a group made up of a percussionist, guitarist, saxophonist and keyboardist.Walshe’s text moves fast, and the music moves at the speed of thought. One moment, her vocals may seem to be celebrating internet memes — or the “minor characters” who become “main characters” for a day on social media. But before long, she’s chiding the world, or herself, for ignoring weightier matters. The music rockets back and forth between amiable, unhurried rhythms and black-metal blast beasts; between ad-jingle saxophone riffs and free-jazz skronk; between even-keeled, Eddie Van Halen-style finger-tapped motifs on electric guitar and less orderly plumes of distorted noise.She toys with audience expectations, too. Early on, she begins in a confessional mode, relating a #MeToo-style narrative involving a professor luring one of his students down to his basement. But before long, Walshe leaves the audience there, narratively, with no resolution and the professor screaming to no one in particular, in perpetuity.Instead, “Minor Characters” pivots to new fascinations and horrors — an exorcism in a rural country field, reports on a burning planet — as online life tends to do. When Walshe gave wild voice to lines like “they knew, we all knew, and we did nothing about it,” her self-implicating understanding of the climate crisis had a Brünnhilde-like edge — with traces of grace and good humor leavening her grave understanding, similar to Wotan in the “Ring,” of a world order’s undoing by its own designs.Walshe has a wide range of literary inspiration, Wagner included; her contributions to the liner notes for “Peopls” refer to “certain sections from ‘Watt’ by Samuel Beckett,” the rapper KRS-One and “the cast of ‘Lohengrin.’” That Wagnerian citation is no joke. “I don’t do anything ironically,” Walshe said in a brief interview after the performance of “Minor Characters.” “I don’t like any music ironically. But it has to mean something. There has to be something at stake.”“Minor Characters” seems to ask: If everyone is distracted online, following their own taste, how do we solve problems together? Even though the show feels complete, there is no true resolution.It felt more satisfying, even, than the “Götterdämmerung” in Bayreuth. Schwarz’s risky staging seems to run aground in the final opera. He has interesting ideas in the lead-up: making Wotan an even bigger cheater than usual; depicting Fafner’s dragon form as a hospice patient at home, sitting on the hoard of gold as a member of the gerontocracy.And Schwarz offers bleak humor, such as in Mime trying to teach Siegfried fear by introducing him to sex through pornography. But by “Götterdämmerung” none of that seems to have mattered as the opera’s telling sputters in its final moments.Still, there was much fine singing and orchestral playing. The bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny’s Wotan had some of Walshe’s gloriously unhinged energy. In both “Die Walküre” and “Siegfried,” during moments of self-pity, he would crumple to the ground, offering aspirated whimpers; the next moment he would be raging, spurred on by a just as quickly extinguished explosion from the orchestra, led with fire by Pietari Inkinen.And Inkinen’s way with quieter textures provided a ravishing experience of Bayreuth’s fabled acoustics: He and the orchestra produced soft-grained marvel after marvel in the second, contemplative act of “Walküre,” then, as if with whip in hand, he blazed through the final act of that opera and the first act of “Siegfried” with what seemed like one complete surge of momentum.Anthony Braxton, whose new “Thunder Music” system debuted in Darmstadt.Kristof LempIn between those two shows, I traveled to Darmstadt for another world premiere: the debut of American saxophonist-composer Anthony Braxton’s new “Thunder Music” system, which came courtesy of a performance, led by him, of his Composition No. 443.While not strictly dramatic in nature, “Thunder Music” suggested a stagelike feel. In this new category of his compositional practice, individual musicians are responsible for making choices about how to merge their own sound with prerecorded sounds of thunder and nature.At Darmstadt, the musicians in this chamber ensemble — including singers, woodwinds, brasses, an accordion and two double basses — prerecorded a take on No. 443 the day before the concert. Then, at the show, the performers could control the extent to which their own prerecorded material was mixed with thunderstorms or swarms of birds (controlled through an app designed for their phones). Simultaneously, they played Composition No. 443 again — live, this time with the ability to network with other musicians in improvisations, or interpolations of past Braxton pieces.At one point, when the saxophonist James Fei and the trombonist Roland Dahinden collaborated on the theme of Braxton’s Composition No. 131 — in which frenetic riffs are capped with a sashaying figure that seems to wink at listeners — they put a jolt of Braxton’s bebop-tinged catalog into what had been an airy stretch of No. 443.Braxton has in the past declared himself “a complete fool for the music of Richard Wagner” — something that you can sense in operas like “Trillium X,” which I reviewed earlier this month from Prague. But you can also sense Braxton’s affection in the way he encourages musicians to layer his various compositions during the same moment in performance. That bit of No. 131 that cropped up during No. 443? Call it a Braxtonian leitmotif for Charlie Parker. More

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      Taylor Swift’s Viral Era: a Timeline

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      Fan demand broke Ticketmaster, and that was just the prologue. These are the moments that turned the Eras Tour into a phenomenon: March 17 Glendale, Ariz. Taylor returns to the stage. After five years away, she dives right in. Taylor Swift, wearing a long green gown, takes a swan dive pose and jumps into a […] More

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      Jamie Reid, 76, Dies; His Anarchic Graphics Helped Define the Sex Pistols

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      He created some of the most controversial — and celebrated — artwork of the punk era, which outraged polite British society almost as much as the band’s music did.Jamie Reid, whose searing cover art and other graphics for the Sex Pistols, featuring ransom-note lettering and defaced images of the queen, outraged polite British society nearly as much as the seminal punk band’s anarchic anthems and obscenity-laced tirades, died on Tuesday at his home in Liverpool. He was 76.His death was confirmed by John Marchant, a London gallerist who represents Mr. Reid’s archive. No cause was given.Mr. Reid was a product of the radical left of the 1960s, and his fiery political attitudes matched his incendiary art over a career that spanned more than six decades. He was eventually embraced by the art establishment: His work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tate Britain and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.But in 1970s Britain, a more proper era when bowler hats were still seen on the streets of London, his agitprop graphics on behalf of a band of musical Visigoths, doing their part to ransack the rock-industrial complex and the British class system, were enough to cause scandal.His sleeve for the single “God Save the Queen,” released in 1977 as Britons were preparing to celebrate the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, featured a stately photo of the queen with her eyes and mouth torn away, replaced by the band’s name and the song’s title. It hit with all the subtlety of a car bomb.“It was very shocking,” Jon Savage, the British music writer who collaborated with Mr. Reid on the 1987 book “Up They Rise: The Incomplete Works of Jamie Reid,” said in a phone interview. “The printers refused to print the sleeve at first.”Mr. Reid used the same image, superimposed over the British flag, for a promotional poster for the single. It became an enduring logo for the band, a punk equivalent of the Rolling Stones’ omnipresent tongue graphic.With the Pistols, there was also a heavy dash of pranksterism. “A lot of people completely misconstrue what we were trying to do with the Sex Pistols,” Mr. Reid said in a 2018 interview with Another Man, a British style and culture magazine. He noted that he and Malcolm McLaren, the band’s manager, “were very much into the politics, but I was bringing a lot of humor into it, too.”The cover for the Sex Pistols’ first and only album conveyed menace, thanks to Mr. Reid’s trademark ransom-note lettering.Jamie Reid and Sex Pistols Residuals. DACS 2023. John Marchant GalleryFor “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols” (1977), the band’s only album before they broke up in 1978, he conjured a sense of mystery and malevolence using cutout letters. In 1991, Rolling Stone magazine named it the second-best cover in rock history, behind the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”Discordant and disruptive, like the band itself, Mr. Reid’s indelible work became as central to the Sex Pistols’ ferocious image as the rag-doll shirts, bondage pants and safety pins worn by John Lydon, the lead singer better known as Johnny Rotten, courtesy of the iconoclastic designer Vivienne Westwood, or the sleeveless swastika T-shirt worn by the bassist Sid Vicious.The Sex Pistols in performance in Atlanta in 1978 during what turned out to be their final tour. From left: Sid Vicious, Steve Jones and Johnny Rotten. (The band’s drummer, Paul Cook, is not in the photo.)Rick Diamond/Getty ImagesBrilliant marketing in the guise of anti-marketing, Mr. Reid’s designs sold the essence of punk to a baffled public.“Punk was a very complex package, and it was difficult for a lot of people to get ahold of by the music alone, particularly with a group as confrontational as the Sex Pistols,” Mr. Savage said. “Visuals were another way in.”And a necessary one, given the efforts to stamp out the band’s music (its debut single, “Anarchy in the U.K,” managed to rise to No. 38 on the British charts, despite being banned from the airwaves and pulled by its record company). “You couldn’t hear the group on the radio or see them on the television,” Mr. Savage said. “The visuals were like a samizdat, forbidden knowledge.”Mr. Reid’s covers and artwork also did their fundamental job: selling records. “Interestingly,” he said in a 1998 interview with Index magazine, “with the two or three times that the artwork was actually banned and the records went on sale in white bags, they didn’t sell.”Jamie MacGregor Reid was born on Jan. 16, 1947, in London, one of two sons of Jack and Nora (Gardner) Reid, and grew up in Croydon, south of London. His father was the city editor of The Daily Sketch, a tabloid newspaper.Mr. Reid’s defaced image of Queen Elizabeth II superimposed on a Union Jack became an enduring logo for the Sex Pistols.Jamie Reid and Sex Pistols Residuals. DACS 2023. John Marchant GalleryJaime’s parents were committed socialists, and at 7 he was already marching for nuclear disarmament and other causes. He also developed a lifelong interest in mysticism, thanks to a great-uncle who founded the Ancient Druid Order.“It’s part of who I am,” he told Another Man, referring to his druid heritage. “It’s so important that we reconnect with the planet. We need spiritual as much as political change in this country.”Artistically gifted, Mr. Reid eventually enrolled at Wimbledon School of Art (now Wimbledon College of Arts) and later transferred to Croydon College of Art, where he found himself at sit-ins with Mr. McLaren. Both were heavily influenced by the Situationist International, an anticapitalist aesthetic movement in postwar Europe that blended surrealism with Marxism and trafficked in mottos like “We will not lead; we will only detonate.” After college, he helped found a fierce low-budget political magazine called Suburban Press in Croydon. It was there that he first developed his ransom-note style.“In terms of graphic design, I probably learned more from the printing press than I did in art school,” Mr. Reid told Index. “You start developing an appreciation for what actually looks good out of sheer necessity, from having no money.”Around the same time, Mr. McLaren was seeding a punk revolution in London, running, with Ms. Westwood, a storied boutique on King’s Road under a series of impish names, including Sex, which sold fetish wear and clothing inspired by Britain’s Teddy Boy craze of the 1950s.By the middle of the decade Mr. Reid was living in the Scottish Hebrides, helping friends set up a small farm, when a telegram arrived from Mr. McLaren: “Come down, we’ve got this project in London we want you to work on.”“I was living in the middle of mountains and lochs and, suddenly — boom — I started working with the Pistols,” Mr. Reid told Index.The Sex Pistols imploded in 1978 after a brief and chaotic United States tour, capping their final show in San Francisco with one final sneer from Mr. Lydon: “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”Mr. Reid carried the torch over the ensuing years, lending his energies to support the dissident Russian punk band Pussy Riot, the Occupy movement and Extinction Rebellion, an environmental group known for its nonviolent civil disobedience.In the years after the Sex Pistols imploded, Mr. Reid turned his talents to other causes, including the dissident Russian punk band Pussy Riot.Jamie Reid, courtesy of John Marchant Gallery He also produced artwork for new generations of subversive bands, including the KLF, an avant-garde electronica group, and Afro Celt Sound System.Mr. Reid is survived by his wife, Maria Hughes; a daughter, Rowan MacGregor Reid; and a granddaughter.Though he considered himself an anarchist, Mr. Reid was also a realist who understood the inexorable creep of commercialism into radical culture. In 2015, Virgin Money — the bank backed by Richard Branson, who founded Virgin Records, one of the Sex Pistols’ labels — released a line of Sex Pistols credit cards featuring Mr. Reid’s famous cover art. He expressed “complete disgust” for the cards, but he had no power to stop then.“Radical ideas will always get appropriated by the mainstream,” Mr. Reid told Another Man. “A lot of it is to do with the fact that the establishment and the people in authority actually lack the ability to be creative. They rob everything they can.”“That’s why,” he added, “you have to keep moving on to new things.” More

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      How Hip-Hop Changed the English Language Forever

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      In 50 years, rap transformed the English language, bringing the Black vernacular’s vibrancy to the world. “Dave, the dope fiend shootin’ dope.” — Slick Rick, “Children’s Story” (1988) “Dopeman, dopeman!” — N.W.A, “Dope Man” (1987) Did you ghost me? 👻 Read 10:28 PM Homer Simpson going ghost. We unpacked five words — dope, woke, cake, […] More

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      ‘Fast Car’ and 5 More Cross-Generational Covers

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      With Luke Combs’s version of Tracy Chapman’s hit at No. 2 on the Hot 100, revisit the origins of Björk, the Clash and Nirvana songs.Tracy Chapman in 1988.John Redman/Associated PressDear listeners,This summer, a lot of people who were born after 1988 are discovering who Tracy Chapman is thanks to Luke Combs’s hit cover of her classic “Fast Car,” which currently sits at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100.Often, when an artist has a hit with a song from the past, a major stylistic reboot is necessary to appeal to a new generation — think Soft Cell, in 1981, turning Gloria Jones’s 1964 Northern Soul jam “Tainted Love” into a ubiquitous new wave smash. But the strangest thing about Combs’s “Fast Car” is how faithful it is to Chapman’s original: same acoustic-guitar riff, same sparse arrangement (though Combs kicks up the rhythm section to something a little more arena-ready), same dynamic surging of emotion in the song’s anthemic chorus.The fact that “Fast Car” didn’t need to get souped up to once again connect with listeners 35 years after its release is a testament to Chapman’s timeless songwriting. It also earned her a rather double-edged accolade: Last month, when Combs’s “Fast Car” climbed to No. 1 on the country charts, it made her the first Black woman in history to write a No. 1 country hit.But is “Fast Car” a country song? It wasn’t considered one in 1988, and it’s hard to believe that the grainy North Carolina twang in Combs’s voice is enough to completely transform the song’s genre. Modern, mainstream country music, though — and especially country radio, which can still help boost a song to No. 1 like almost nothing else — is still largely perceived as a straight white man’s game, despite the many (many, many) more diverse artists releasing excellent country singles on a regular basis.In a time of kneejerk polarization, weaponized identity politics and another country song pitting groups of people against one another (ahem), there’s another way to consider the “Fast Car” resurgence. What if it’s also a story of a great song’s essential humanity? A Black woman from Ohio wrote a song that reflected back to a younger white man from the South something true about himself and his own community’s struggle. And in one of the most culturally divided moments in either of their lifetimes, something about that song is resonating with people hearing it again, or maybe for the first time.As Combs said recently, “I have played it in my live show now for six-plus years and everyone — I mean everyone — across all these stadiums relates to this song and sings along.” The power of that chorus, after all, comes from its plain-spoken reminder of what so many of us want, deep down: “I had a feeling that I belonged/I had a feeling I could be someone.”I have listened to, shouted along with and occasionally cried over Chapman’s “Fast Car” so many times that I cannot imagine people not being familiar with it. But that’s the thing about music fans: They keep being born, farther and farther from the date that I was. Discovering older artists should be celebrated. So should the covers that point the way. So in honor of “Fast Car,” today’s playlist is a collection of what I’m calling cross-generational covers.Yes, the aforementioned “Tainted Love” is on there. So is the greatest Nirvana song that David Bowie ever wrote, a proto-punk song that transformed into an actual punk song, and so much more.Listen along on Spotify as you read. (YouTube links are included on each artist name.)1. Tracy Chapman (1988)2. Luke Combs (2023): “Fast Car”Chapman has stayed out of the public eye in recent years, and even given the unexpected attention to “Fast Car,” she has kept to herself. She did, however, issue a brief statement last month: “I never expected to find myself on the country charts, but I’m honored to be there. I’m happy for Luke and his success and grateful that new fans have found and embraced ‘Fast Car.’” Bless her, and her bank account.3. David Bowie (1970)4. Nirvana (1993): “The Man Who Sold the World”Kurt Cobain often used the platform of his success to point his fans toward artists he admired. During Nirvana’s famous November 1993 “MTV Unplugged” performance, recorded a few months before he died, the band played a set heavy on obscure covers from the likes of the Vaselines, the Meat Puppets and Lead Belly that included the title track from an early, underappreciated Bowie album. Bowie and Cobain never got to meet, a fact that Bowie later bemoaned: “I was simply blown away when I found that Kurt Cobain liked my work, and have always wanted to talk to him about his reasons for covering ‘The Man Who Sold the World.’”5. Gloria Jones (1964)6. Soft Cell (1981): “Tainted Love”The soul singer-songwriter Gloria Jones — later the partner of T. Rex leader Marc Bolan — first recorded a jumping, brassy rendition of this song in 1964. It became a kind of underground hit in the U.K. a decade later, when it became a staple of the Northern Soul scene. Then in the early 1980s, as new wave and synth-pop hit the mainstream, the British duo Soft Cell made it a global smash. (The song’s extended mix featured an interpolation of another ’60s classic, the Supremes’ “Where Did Our Love Go?”) Soft Cell’s rendition of “Tainted Love” set the record, at the time, for the longest consecutive run on the Billboard Hot 100 chart (43 weeks), and was later sampled on Rihanna’s No. 1 single “SOS.”7. The Bobby Fuller Four (1965)8. The Clash (1979): “I Fought the Law”First recorded by a post-Buddy Holly Crickets in 1959, “I Fought the Law” didn’t become a hit until Bobby Fuller’s eponymous rock band covered it in 1965. Sadly, like his hero and fellow Texan Holly, Fuller died tragically young. The Clash introduced his music to a new generation — and also demonstrated how punk a lot of early rock ’n’ roll was — when it released a sneering, revved-up cover of this classic outlaw anthem in 1979.9. Betty Hutton (1951)10. Björk (1995): “It’s Oh So Quiet”Thanks in part to its indelible, Spike Jonze-directed music video, Björk’s biggest and most recognizable hit is still her faithful cover of this zany 1951 B-side recorded by the actress and singer Betty Hutton. Spiritually true to the original, Björk has a blast accentuating the song’s contrasting dynamics from its hushed verses to its joyful, explosive chorus. Shhhh!11. Leonard Cohen (1984) and … well, everyone, but mostly12. Jeff Buckley (1994): “Hallelujah”“Hallelujah” is at once the apex and the nadir of the cross-generational cover. Plucked from semi-obscurity by a series of artists including John Cale and Jeff Buckley, Cohen’s long-toiled-over opus has transformed from an if-you-know-you-know secret track to one of the most over-covered songs in pop musical history. And yet — with all due respect to the wounded beauty of Buckley’s interpretation — there’s still a lived-in wisdom and a wry humor that remains unique to Cohen’s original version, and that no one else may ever capture. Nor should they try.I remember when we were driving,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Cross-Generational Covers” track listTrack 1: Tracy Chapman, “Fast Car”Track 2: Luke Combs, “Fast Car”Track 3: David Bowie, “The Man Who Sold the World”Track 4: Nirvana, “The Man Who Sold the World”Track 5: Gloria Jones, “Tainted Love”Track 6: Soft Cell, “Tainted Love”Track 7: The Bobby Fuller Four, “I Fought the Law”Track 8: The Clash, “I Fought the Law”Track 9: Betty Hutton, “It’s Oh So Quiet”Track 10: Björk, “It’s Oh So Quiet”Track 11: Leonard Cohen, “Hallelujah”Track 12: Jeff Buckley, “Hallelujah”Bonus tracksSpeaking of artists who introduced older songs and styles of music to a new generation of listeners: Rest in peace, Robbie Robertson. Jon Pareles put together a fantastic playlist of 16 of Robertson’s essential tracks, and Rob Tannenbaum wrote an ode to a movie I’m sure some of us will be rewatching this weekend, “The Last Waltz.”Also, I cannot stop watching these very joyful videos of Carly Rae Jepsen performing multiple sets for a rotating crop of fans at the tiny Rockwood Music Hall, after bad weather cut short her Monday night show at the outdoor venue Pier 17. Jepfriends, unite!And on this week’s new music Playlist, the pop phenom Olivia Rodrigo is back! Hear her fun new single “Bad Idea Right?” along with fresh tracks from Noname, Ian Sweet and more. More

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      Robbie Robertson, 80, Dies; Canadian Songwriter Captured American Spirit

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      As the chief songwriter and guitarist for the Band, he offered a rustic vision of his adopted country that helped inspire the genre that came to be known as Americana.Robbie Robertson, the chief composer and lead guitarist for the Band, whose work offered a rustic vision of America that seemed at once mythic and authentic, in the process helping to inspire the genre that came to be known as Americana, died on Wednesday in Los Angeles. He was 80.His manager, Jared Levine, said he died after a long illness.The songs that Mr. Robertson, a Canadian, wrote for the Band used enigmatic lyrics to evoke a hard and colorful America of yore, a feat coming from someone not born in the United States. With uncommon conviction, they conjured a wild place, often centered in the South, peopled by rough-hewed characters, from the defeated Confederate soldier in “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” to the tough union worker of “King Harvest Has Surely Come” to the shady creatures in “Life Is a Carnival.”The music he matched to his passionate yarns mined the roots of every essential American genre, including folk, country, blues and gospel. Yet when his history-minded compositions first appeared on albums by the Band in the late 1960s, they felt vital as well as vintage.“I wanted to write music that felt like it could’ve been written 50 years ago, tomorrow, yesterday — that had this lost-in-time quality,” Mr. Robertson said in a 1995 interview for “Shakespeares in the Alley,” an episode of the public television series “Rock & Roll.”Speaking of the Band in the 2020 documentary “Once Were Brothers,” Bruce Springsteen said, “It’s like you’d never heard them before and like they’d always been there.”In its day, the Band’s music also stood out by inverting the increasing volume and mania of psychedelic rock, and also by sidestepping its accent on youthful rebellion. “We just went completely left when everyone else went right,” Mr. Robertson said.The ripple effect of that sound and image — unveiled on the Band’s first album, “Music From Big Pink,” released in 1968 — went wide on impact, landing the group on the cover of Time magazine in 1970 and inspiring a host of major artists to create their own homespun amalgams, from the Grateful Dead’s album “American Beauty” (1970) to Elton John’s “Tumbleweed Connection,” released the next year.The Band’s music so affected Mr. Robertson’s fellow guitarist Eric Clapton that he lobbied for entry into their ranks. (The offer was politely declined.) A quarter-century later, the Band’s music provided a key template for the acts first labeled Americana, including Son Volt, Wilco and Lucinda Williams, as well as for their sonic heirs.Though Mr. Robertson dominated the Band’s writing credits, he frequently emphasized the importance of all five members. “Everybody did something that raised the level of what we were doing to a stronger place,” he told The Guardian in 2019. “They’re all unique characters you could read about in a book,” he told Musician magazine in 1982.The Band in the late 1960s, from left: Garth Hudson, Levon Helm, Richard Manuel, Mr. Robertson and Rick Danko. Though Mr. Robertson dominated the group’s songwriting credits, he frequently emphasized the importance of all five members.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesThree of his fellow members — the drummer Levon Helm, the pianist Richard Manuel and the bassist Rick Danko — expressed those characters in distinctly aching vocals. Mr. Robertson rarely sang lead, instead finding his voice in the guitar.A Southern MuseWhile the texture of his playing was often flinty, his licks and leads were flush with feeling. In Mr. Helm, Mr. Robertson found a special muse, as well as a true link to the South; born in Arkansas, Mr. Helm was the only member of the Band not born in Canada.“I know at the time that it seemed strange that somebody from Canada would be writing this Southern anthem,” Mr. Robertson said in “Shakespeares in the Alley,” referring to “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” which Mr. Helm sang. “It took somebody coming in the from the outside to really see these things.”The lofty stature of the Band was further burnished by their participation in several seminal events in the history of Bob Dylan. They served as his backing group during the historic 1965-66 tour that found him “going electric,” to the horror of folk fundamentalists who booed his move away from his original acoustic style. “When people boo you night after night, it can affect your confidence,” Mr. Robertson told The Guardian. But, he added, “We didn’t budge. The more they booed, the louder we got.”In “Once Were Brothers,” Mr. Dylan called the group “gallant knights” for sticking with him.In the summer of 1967, the Band went to live near Mr. Dylan’s home in Woodstock, N.Y., and together they recorded a trove of important songs, some of which later leaked out in the form of the first significant bootleg record, nicknamed “The Great White Wonder.” Key songs from those sessions, mainly written by Mr. Dylan but augmented by pieces written by members of the Band, including Mr. Robertson, didn’t enjoy an official release until 1975, as the double album “The Basement Tapes.” It became a Top 10 hit and inspired the New York Times critic John Rockwell to call it “one of the greatest albums in the history of American popular music.”In 1974, the Band reunited with Mr. Dylan, backing him on the album “Planet Waves,” which became a No. 1 Billboard hit, and then launching a tour that yielded the gold concert recording “Before the Flood.”Two years later, the Band gave what at the time was called its final concert, held in San Francisco and billed as “The Last Waltz.” An all-star affair, it featured guest artists from Joni Mitchell and Van Morrison to Muddy Waters and Neil Young, as well as Mr. Dylan. A film of the show, released in 1978 and directed by Martin Scorsese, was lionized by Rolling Stone magazine in 2020 as “the greatest concert movie of all time.” The Band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.From left, Van Morrison, Bob Dylan and Mr. Robertson in Martin Scorsese’s film “The Last Waltz,” which documented what was billed as the Band’s last concert and featured an all-star cast of guest artists. United Artists/Getty ImagesSome years after the group’s demise, in 1987, Mr. Robertson began a solo career with an album simply titled “Robbie Robertson.” In the decades that followed, he released four more solo albums, though only the first one went gold.Most of his post-Band professional efforts were devoted to work in film, often in collaboration with Mr. Scorsese, as either a music producer or supervisor or as a composer of scores. The two worked together on noted films like “Raging Bull” and “Casino.” Mr. Robertson also served as a music producer or composer on scores of soundtracks for film and television projects, and even did some acting, co-starring with Jodie Foster and Gary Busey in the 1980 film “Carny.”‘The Guitar Looks Pretty Cool’Jaime Royal Robertson was born on July 5, 1943, in Toronto. His mother, Rosemary Dolly Chrysler, was a Mohawk who had been raised on the Six Nations Reserve near Toronto. The man whom he believed to be his father and who raised him until he was in his early teens, James Robertson, was a factory worker.When he was a child, his mother often took him to the Six Nations Reserve where, Mr. Robertson told The Guardian, “it seemed to me that everyone played a musical instrument or sang or danced. I thought, ‘I’ve got to get into this club. I said, ‘I think the guitar looks pretty cool.’”His mother bought him one.“Rock ‘n’ roll suddenly hit me when I was 13 years old,” he told Classic Rock magazine in 2019. “That was it for me. Within weeks I was in my first band.”Around that time his parents separated, and his mother told him that his biological father was a Jewish professional gambler named Alexander David Klegerman, who had been killed in a hit-and-run accident before she met James Robertson. In his memoir, “Testimony” (2016), Mr. Robertson wryly commented on his Indian and Jewish heritage.“You could say I’m an expert when it comes to persecution,” he wrote.Martin Scorsese with Mr. Robertson in 1978 at the Cannes International Film Festival in France, where they presented “The Last Waltz.” Associated PressHis first band, Little Caesar and the Consuls, performed covers of the current hits. A group he joined three years later, in 1959, the Suedes, got a crucial break when they were seen by the Arkansas-based rockabilly star Ronnie Hawkins.Mr. Hawkins saw enough in Mr. Robertson to write two songs with him, which he recorded, and he later invited the teenage guitarist to join his band, the Hawks, initially on bass. The Hawks also included Levon Helm on drums; by 1961, the other future members of the Band were also in the fold. They toured with Mr. Hawkins for two more years and recorded for Roulette Records. By 1964, they had gone off on their own as Levon and the Hawks.Enter Bob DylanThat group recorded a few singles for Atco, all written by Mr. Robertson, and in 1965 he was contacted by Mr. Dylan’s management and invited to be part of his backing group. While he initially refused, he did perform with Mr. Dylan in New York and Los Angeles, bringing along Mr. Helm for those gigs. At Mr. Robertson’s insistence, Mr. Dylan wound up hiring most of the other future members of the Band for the full tour.He also invited Mr. Robertson to perform on a session in 1966 for his album “Blonde on Blonde.” The next year, he asked the Hawks to move to his new base in the Woodstock area, and they rented a house in nearby Saugerties that was later known as Big Pink. It was there that they recorded the music later released as “The Basement Tapes” and worked on the songs that would be included on “Music From Big Pink.”“It was like a clubhouse where we could shut out the outside world,” Mr. Robertson wrote in his memoir. “It was my belief something magical would happen. And some true magic did happen.”When “Music From Big Pink” was released in the summer of 1968, it boasted seminal songs written by Mr. Robertson like “The Weight” and “Chest Fever,” along with strong pieces composed by other members of the Band and by Mr. Dylan. “This album was recorded in approximately two weeks,” another close Dylan associate, Al Kooper, wrote in a review in Rolling Stone. “There are people who will work their lives away in vain and not touch it.”For the Band’s follow-up album, “The Band,” released in 1969, Mr. Robertson either wrote or co-wrote every song, including some of his most enduring creations, among them “Up On Cripple Creek,” “Rag Mama Rag,” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” which became a Top Five Billboard hit in a version recorded by Joan Baez. The album reached No. 9 on the magazine’s chart.The Band’s next effort, “Stage Fright,” released in 1970, shot even higher, peaking at No. 5, buoyed by Robertson compositions like the title track and “The Shape I’m In.” Those songs, like many on the album, expressed deep anxiety and doubt, a theme that carried over to “Cahoots,” released in 1971. And while that album broke Billboard’s Top 20, it wasn’t as rapturously received as its predecessors.A collection of blues and R&B covers, “Moondog Matinee,” was released in 1973, and Mr. Robertson’s muse fully returned in 1975 on the album “Northern Lights — Southern Cross,” which included “Acadian Driftwood,” his first composition with a Canadian theme. The original group’s final release, “Islands” (1977), consisted of leftover pieces and was issued mainly to fulfill the group’s contract with its label, Capitol Records.Mr. Robertson in 2015. After the Band’s demise in 1987, he released five solo albums but devoted most of his effort to movies, as a music producer or score composer.Evan Agostini/Invision, via Associated PressThe same year as “The Last Waltz,” Mr. Robertson produced a Top Five platinum album for Neil Diamond, “Beautiful Noise,” and a double live album by Mr. Diamond, “Live at the Greek,” which made Billboard’s Top Ten and sold more than two million copies.Mr. Robertson told Musician magazine that he broke up the Band because “we had done it for 16 years and there was really nothing else to learn from it.” Another strong factor was Mr. Robertson’s frustration over hard drug use by most of the other members.Without Mr. Robertson, the other members of the Band released three albums in the 1990s; the last, “Jubilation” in 1998, was without Mr. Manuel, who had died by suicide 12 years earlier at 40. Mr. Danko died of heart failure in 1999 at 56, Mr. Helm of throat cancer in 2012 at 71.Over the years, other members of the Band accused Mr. Robertson of taking more songwriting credits than he deserved. To them, it was a cooperative effort, with the other members adding important arrangements and contributing elements that helped define the essential character of the recordings. Mr. Helm was particularly vociferous in his condemnation, amplified by his furious 1993 memoir, “This Wheel’s on Fire.”In his own memoir, Mr. Robertson wrote of Mr. Helm, “it was like some demon had crawled into my friend’s soul and pushed a crazy, angry button.”Mr. Robertson’s final solo album appeared in 2019 with a title, “Sinematic,” which underscored his devotion to film work in the last four decades of his life. He recently completed the score for his 14th film project, Mr. Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which is to be released this fall.Mr. Robertson is survived by his wife, Janet; his children, Alexandra, Sebastian and Delphine; and five grandchildren. His marriage to Dominique Bourgeois ended in divorce.Marveling over where life had taken him, Mr. Robertson once told Classic Rock magazine: “People used to say to me, ‘You’re just a dreamer. You’re gonna end up working down the street, just like me.’ Part of that was crushing, and the other part is, ‘Oh yeah? I’m on a mission. I’m moving on. And if you look for me, there’s only going to be dust.’” More

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      Taylor Swift Announces Fourth Album Rerecording During Eras Tour

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      Swift announced the October release of “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” during a concert in California on Wednesday.It’s Taylor Swift’s summer. We’re all just living in it.During a concert for her Eras Tour in California on Wednesday night, Swift announced the release date of “1989 (Taylor’s Version),” a rerecording of her 2014 album, “1989.” It will come out on Oct. 27, the same date that the original album was released nine years ago.It should come as no surprise that fans, both in the stadium and on the internet, freaked out.“Surprise!!” Swift wrote on social media. “The 1989 album changed my life in countless ways, and it fills me with such excitement to announce that my version of it will be out October 27th.” She added that this was her “most FAVORITE rerecord I’ve ever done.”The album includes hits like “Shake It Off” and “Blank Space.”Taylor Swift announcing #1989TaylorsVersion tonight at SoFi Stadium! #LATStheerastour #TSTheErasTour pic.twitter.com/zCSzcEWT2b— The Eras Tour (@TSTheErasTour) August 10, 2023
      Swift has been rerecording her first six albums to regain control of them after the master recordings were sold. In 2019, the music executive Scooter Braun purchased Big Machine, Swift’s old label — and with it, the original recordings for Swift’s first six albums. The sale, Swift said at the time, had “stripped me of my life’s work.”Since then, the back catalog has changed hands again. Braun’s company sold the rights to Swift’s music to Shamrock Capital, an investment firm founded by Roy E. Disney, a nephew of Walt Disney, for more than $300 million.In 2019, Swift announced her plan to rerecord the albums, and she has since released “Fearless,” “Red” and “Speak Now.”Announcing the new version of “Fearless” in 2021, Swift wrote on Twitter that, “Artists should own their own work for so many reasons, but the most screamingly obvious one is that the artist is the only one who really knows that body of work.”That album, called “Fearless (Taylor’s Version),” came with six additional songs that were not featured on the original “Fearless,” Swift’s 2009 mainstream breakthrough that won four Grammy Awards.Now, Swift is in the middle of her Eras Tour, which has become an international business and cultural juggernaut this summer, with fans clamoring for tickets and demand putting ticketing systems under stress.The show Wednesday night was the sixth at SoFi stadium outside Los Angeles, and the final one in the first United States leg of the tour. (More shows are planned in the United States in fall 2024.) Swift’s next shows will be in Mexico this month, with later dates in Argentina, Brazil, Japan and Europe. In total, 146 stadium dates have been booked for the Eras Tour.Although Swift’s box office numbers aren’t publicly released, the trade publication Pollstar has estimated that Eras Tour earnings will surpass $1 billion when she gets to Singapore in March.Swift fans — or “Swifties” — are known to see signs in everything Swift does or posts online, and they had speculated that she might announce her rerecording of “1989” on Wednesday night. SoFi Stadium had also teased a “surprise” on social media. More