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      When Connie Converse, the ‘Female Bob Dylan,’ Lived in N.Y.C.

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      There’s a resurgence of interest in the pioneering singer-songwriter who disappeared when she was 50.Connie Converse was a pioneer of what’s become known as the singer-songwriter era, making music in the predawn of a movement that had its roots in the Greenwich Village folk scene of the early 1960s.But her songs, created a decade earlier, arrived just a moment too soon. They didn’t catch on. And by the time the sun had come up in the form of a young Bob Dylan, she was already gone. Not simply retired. She had vanished from New York City, as she eventually would from the world, along with her music and legacy.It wasn’t until 2004, when an N.Y.U. graduate student heard a 1954 bootleg recording of Ms. Converse on WNYC, that her music started to get any of the attention and respect that had evaded her some 50 years before.The student, Dan Dzula, and his friend, David Herman, were spellbound by what they heard. They dug up more archival recordings, and assembled the 2009 album, “How Sad, How Lovely,” a compilation of songs that sound as though they could have been written today. It has been streamed over 16 million times on Spotify.Young musicians like Angel Olsen and Greta Kline now cite Ms. Converse as an influence, and musical acts from Big Thief to Laurie Anderson to the opera singer Julia Bullock have covered her songs.“She was the female Bob Dylan,” Ellen Stekert, a singer, folk music scholar and song collector told me during my research for a book about Ms. Converse. “She was even better than him, as a lyricist and composer, but she didn’t have his showbiz savvy, and she wasn’t interested in writing protest songs.”Seventy-five years ago, Ms. Converse was just another young artist trying to make ends meet in the city, singing at dinner parties and private salons, and passing a hat for her performances.She knew that her songs did not jibe with the saccharine pop of the day. “This type of thing always curdles me like a dentist’s appointment,” she wrote to her brother before an audition at Frank Loesser’s music publishing company, where she predicted what executives would say of her songs: “lovely, but not commercial.”In January 1961, the same month that Dylan arrived from the Midwest, Ms. Converse left New York for Ann Arbor, Mich., where she reinvented herself as an editor, a scholar and an activist.In 1974, a week after her 50th birthday, she disappeared and was never seen again.Ms. Converse lived in New York from 1945 to 1960, and though she was intensely private, she kept a diary, scrapbooks and voluminous correspondence that were left behind after she drove away for good, offering clues about what the Manhattan chapter of her life was like. Here are some of the neighborhoods, venues and sites around the city that provided the musician with a backdrop for her short but trailblazing stint as a songwriter.The 1940s: Bohemians of the Upper West SideRiverside ParkIn 1944, after dropping out of Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, Ms. Converse moved to New York. Her first job was at the American Institute of Pacific Relations, where she edited and wrote articles about international affairs. “I am struck by the breadth of the topics she covered,” said the contemporary international relations scholar Michael R. Anderson, who calls her writing and reporting “remarkable.”She lived on the Upper West Side. The image of her in Riverside Park, above, was found in an old filing cabinet that belonged to the photographer’s widow. It is one of the first known images of Ms. Converse in New York.The Lincoln ArcadeMs. Converse, left, plays for friends at the Lincoln Arcade.Lois AimeSome of Ms. Converse’s closest friends lived and hung around the bohemian enclave known as the Lincoln Arcade, a building on Broadway between West 65th and 66th Street. With a reputation as a haven for struggling artists, it had been home to the painters Robert Henri, Thomas Hart Benton and George Bellows, the last of whom had lived there with the playwright Eugene O’Neill.The group was a hard-drinking lot, given to holding court late at night. One surviving member of that crew, Edwin Bock, told me that Ms. Converse would often be clattering away at a typewriter, at a remove from the rest, though sometimes she did things he found shocking, like climbing out the front window well past midnight to stand on a ledge, several stories above the street.The 1950s: Making Music in the Village and Beyond23 Grove StreetPhotographs from Ms. Converse’s scrapbook show her studio apartment at 23 Grove Street, where she wrote almost all of her “guitar song” catalog.The Musick Group, Heroic Cities LLCMs. Converse lost her job when the institute landed in the cross hairs of the anti-Communist House Un-American Activities Committee. Sometime late in 1950, she moved to the West Village and began a new phase of her life as an aspiring composer and performer.She bought a Crestwood 404 reel-to-reel tape recorder and began making demos of herself singing new songs as she wrote them. It was here, while living alone in a studio apartment at 23 Grove Street that Ms. Converse wrote almost all of her “guitar song” catalog (including everything on “How Sad, How Lovely”).The Village at that time “was the Left Bank of Manhattan,” the writer Gay Talese told me, and it had “whiffs of the future in it” in terms of its permissiveness about lifestyle choices. Nicholas Pileggi, a writer and producer, suggested that given her address, Ms. Converse, a loner, would have had no problem hanging out by herself at Chumley’s, a former speakeasy.The upstart book publisher Grove Press was also just down the block, and she was close to The Nut Club at Sheridan Square, where jazz musicians often played, as well as the more respectable Village Vanguard.Grand CentralPhotographs from Ms. Converse’s scrapbook show her first and only appearance on live television: The Morning Show, with Walter Cronkite. There is no recording of the live performance. The Musick Group, Heroic Cities LLCHer first and only television appearance was in 1954, on the “The Morning Show” on CBS (hosted that year by Walter Cronkite), though how Ms. Converse secured the appearance and what she played and talked about may never be known (shows at this time were broadcast live; no archival footage exists). Because the program was staged in a studio above the main concourse at Grand Central and shown live on a big screen in the hall, everyone bustling through the station that morning could have looked up and caught the young musician’s one and only brush with success.Ms. Converse was extremely close to her younger brother, Phil. When he visited her in the city for the first time, Ms. Converse described the reunion in her irregularly kept diary, noting that the two “met like strangers at Grand Central, and fell to reminiscing over oysters.”Hamilton HeightsMs. Converse took a photograph of the street below her W. 138th St. apartment in 1958.The Musick Group, Heroic Cities LLCIn 1955, Ms. Converse took up residence at 605 West 138th Street, in Harlem, a block away from Strivers’ Row. There, she shared a three-bedroom flat with her older brother, Paul, his wife, Hyla, and their infant child, P. Bruce, a situation she called “a cost-saving measure.” The new apartment had an upright piano, which Ms. Converse used to compose an opera (now since lost), a series of settings for poems by writers like Dylan Thomas, E.E. Cummings and Edna St. Vincent Millay, and a song cycle based on the myth of Cassandra who, according to Greek mythology, was given the gift of prophesy and then cursed to be never understood.Circle in the SquareThe 1956 production of “The Iceman Cometh,” which Ms. Converse attended. Sam Falk/The New York TimesAn avid theatergoer, Ms. Converse attended Jose Quintero’s 1956 revival of “The Iceman Cometh,” which made Jason Robards a star and effectively launched the Off-Broadway movement. “Did I mention that I saw an in-the-round production of ‘The Iceman Cometh’ last month?” she wrote to Phil and his wife, Jean, that October. “Some four and a half hours of uncut O’Neill, but only the last 15 minutes found me squirming in my seat.”The Blue AngelAt this erstwhile nightclub on East 55th Street, unique at the time for being desegregated, Ms. Converse met the cabaret singer Annette Warren, who expressed interest in covering Ms. Converse’s songs, and who would make at least two of them, “The Playboy of The Western World” and “The Witch and the Wizard,” staples of her show for decades to come.1960: The Lost Tape; Goodbye, New YorkNational Recording StudiosNational Recording Studios, at 730 Fifth Avenue between West 56th and 57th Streets, had been open for only a year when Ms. Converse showed up in February 1960 to record an album. It was a solo session that, because she did just one or two takes of each tune, only took a few hours. The recording was a rumor until 2014, when Phil Converse unearthed a reel of it in his basement. An adman who was a fan of Ms. Converse’s music had procured the recording session for her for free. That album, the only one she made, remains unreleased.Upper West SideMs. Converse in her apartment on West 88th Street, her last known residence in New York. The Musick Group, Heroic Cities LLCMs. Converse closed the circle of her peripatetic Manhattan existence by moving back to where she’d started: the Upper West Side. This time, she lived in a brownstone on West 88th Street, a half block from Central Park. This was her last known New York address; by 1961, she was gone.Her music, mostly made in isolation or at small gatherings, was nearly lost but for the efforts of her brother Phil, who archived what he could; David Garland, who played her music on WNYC in 2004 and 2009; and Dan Dzula and David Herman, the students who, decades later, introduced her work to a new generation.“The first time I played a Connie Converse song for a friend, she sat silently and cried,” Mr. Dzula said. “From that moment I knew Connie’s magic would reach at least a few more people in a deeply personal and special way.”He added: “Could I have envisioned her blowing up like this when we first put out the record? Absolutely not. But also, yeah, kind of!”Howard Fishman is the author of the new book “To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse.” More

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      Lewis Capaldi Will Break Your Heart. (But Don’t Take Him Too Seriously.)

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      The joke-cracking Scottish musician’s melodramatic ballad “Someone You Loved” is a blockbuster. Figuring out his next moves became more complicated than he’d anticipated.The first thing you have to know about Lewis Capaldi is that he is kidding. The Scottish musician, who specializes in pop treacle, is foulmouthed the way a young child is — cheekily and cuddly, without a fleck of harm. He is anti-piety, a bloke on a punchline bender. Almost everything he says is accompanied by a wink.One Wednesday afternoon last month, Capaldi jumped out of a chauffeured SUV in Times Square, joined by his manager and a handful of associates. Up on a billboard — which one wasn’t immediately clear — was an ad for a documentary Capaldi had released on Netflix that day, and he was there to film some shocked-and-awed promotional content for social media.The first time the ad rotated in, Capaldi tried a couple of photos pointing up at himself — eh, not so funny. By the third time, after several interruptions from fans surprised to see the global superstar out and about, he’d figured out a mischievous plan.He hit record. “People over here are having orgasms left, right and center,” he shouted into his phone’s camera, while clips from the film played behind him. He gave the phone a serious, shocked look, then added, “Whenever they see my face.”He seemed pleased. The next day, he posted the video to his Instagram story, quickly followed by footage of someone wheat-pasting posters over his own ads. “My 15 minutes of fame are over,” he deadpanned.Those minutes, though — they have been very, very intense. In late 2018, Capaldi released “Someone You Loved,” a startlingly crisp and uncommonly beautiful jolt of nuclear-grade mush. It is lightly schlocky in the 1980s way — ultra-saccharine, hyper-melodramatic — a diminishing resource in the contemporary pop landscape. It has become the fourth most streamed song in Spotify history, with 2.76 billion streams.Just before his Times Square outing, Capaldi, 26, was nursing a Sprite at an outdoor table at the classic New York City dive bar the Ear Inn, musing over the weight of such a massive hit.“Such an anomaly,” he said. “I hate saying this because it makes me feel noxious almost. It’s becoming quite an evergreen song. I still hear it as much as I did when I first put it out.” For those who feel that they have been oppressed by the song, he understands: “You get to a point where people might just be like, We don’t want to hear you whine again about something. Can you do something that’s a bit less?”He was wearing a ruddy brown vintage Carhartt jacket, a black Nike sweatshirt, dark pants and Vans — simple and unglamorous. Around a dozen times over two hours on a block with almost no foot traffic, he was politely interrupted by fans — at one point, a car screeched over to the curb so the driver could hop out to tell Capaldi he’d seen him perform in Philadelphia the previous night. (“He jumped out his car, just like I told him to,” Capaldi joked.)“It’s fine if that’s my song forever, and I kind of expect that to be” — at this moment, he was interrupted by a young girl, maybe 6 or 7 years old, and her mother, asking for an autograph.“What name should I put on it?” he asked. “Just your name,” the girl replied, and Capaldi guffawed.Capaldi’s nominally less scarred second album, “Broken by Desire to Be Heavenly Sent,” will be released this month. Not every track on the album is a laser-targeted assault on the emotional stability of the listener, but the best ones are. Whether he’ll be able to unmoor his adoring public to the same degree he did the last go-round remains to be seen.Either way, Capaldi remains sanguine. “I went into releasing ‘Someone You Loved’ going, ‘This probably isn’t going to do that well.’ I’m going into this going, ‘This probably isn’t going to do as well as “Someone You Loved”’ — that’s a very big jump,” he said.“You get to a point where people might just be like, We don’t want to hear you whine again about something. Can you do something that’s a bit less?”Lyndon French for The New York TimesCapaldi has a scorched cannon of a voice, and it’s best deployed on songs about anguish. To date, his career has lurched forward one vocal bloodletting at a time. His debut single, “Bruises,” in 2017, was viral for that era. His debut album, “Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent,” was released in 2019 and featured “Someone You Loved” — which topped the Billboard Hot 100 and was nominated for a song of the year Grammy — and also “Before You Go,” another howling and deeply moving catalog of despair.While all of this was happening, on the internet and in the media, he was a relentless jester — hilariously self-deprecating on Instagram and, later, TikTok. (“In the U.K. it’s like, This [expletive] guy again,” Capaldi said of his musical success there, whereas in the United States, “There are people here who just know the TikTok.”)Capaldi has had umpteen small moments in which his comedic persona has been as loud as his songs. At the Grammys in 2020, he had an Andy Kaufmanesque face-off on the red carpet with an unsuspecting Ryan Seacrest.“I was throwing a baseball at a brick wall, so there was no recoil,” Capaldi said of the appealingly peculiar interaction, adding that he’d been enjoying the fruits of Grammy weekend partying. “It was like, oh, this is so bizarre. But then in my head I’m like, this is even funnier.”All the while, his health was precarious. Last year, he announced that he’d been given a diagnosis of Tourette’s syndrome — for Capaldi, it manifests in physical tics that arrive at random and can be made worse by stress. Sometimes, they happen when he’s onstage — at one recent concert, the crowd finished the songs that he couldn’t. But the tics subside when he’s at ease: When fans came up to him outside the Ear Inn to chat, they all but disappeared.“This sounds gross, but it’s become part of like a marketing strategy,” he said. “Every piece of content or thing I see with my name next to it is closely followed by Tourette’s. Which is mental, ’cause then I’m like, Billie Eilish has Tourette’s, and she doesn’t bang on about it like I do.”He continued, “It feels dirty. It feels odd.” Then he added with a laugh, “Whatever sells the records!”Capaldi’s diagnosis and the management of his illness is a major theme of his new documentary, “Lewis Capaldi: How I’m Feeling Now,” which was originally intended to capture him wrestling with how to navigate a musical answer to one of the biggest songs in recent years, but ended up also documenting a much darker and more worrisome stretch of events.The cameras hover over Capaldi at his most awkward — false starts in the songwriting room (“My insecurity was so sky high”), cold sores on his lips, his manager fretting about whether any of the songs he has recorded are a worthy follow-up to “Someone You Loved,” his parents critiquing his songs. And also the tics that have been a feature of his life since childhood, which he now understands are attributable to his Tourette’s. He talks about going on the medication sertraline, which gives him diarrhea and erectile dysfunction.“There’s so much on the line,” Capaldi said of following up his hit. “I totally get why people are nervous and jumpy.”Lyndon French for The New York TimesThe film ends on a lightly triumphant comeback note, but the original ending was more somber. Capaldi said watching it was disorienting: “I was like, ‘Do I die? Is this posthumous?’”The day after Capaldi’s Times Square adventure, he was performing at Radio City Music Hall. Backstage a few hours before the show, in between playing putt-putt and eating Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, he remarked that he was planning to take omeprazole pills before his upcoming appearance on the spicy wings challenge talk show “Hot Ones,” a booking that fulfilled what he called in a 2018 tweet “ma life long dream.”In this country, he is both very, very popular and, somehow, a bit of a cipher. Onstage at Radio City, he joked about how much smaller the room was than the shows he’d recently played in Europe. “Every minute I’m up here I’m losing money,” he said. “It’s really not worth it.” (The show was still his biggest American concert to date, a quirk of blowing up just before the pandemic.)Near the end of the set he played “Wish You the Best,” a song that is the logical inheritor of “Someone You Loved” — cataclysmically depressing, but somehow triumphant and engineered for universal acclamation. The video is primally gut-wrenching, if you’ll allow for it; on TikTok, Capaldi has been cheerfully reposting fans’ clips of themselves weeping uncontrollably at its ending.But he chose not to release it as the first single from the new album, because he wanted a bit of freedom from the success he’d earned for himself. “I mean, I would love to work with, like, the Thom Yorkes of this world, but unfortunately, I don’t think he’d answer the call,” Capaldi said. Lately he’s been listening to the Mount Eerie album “A Crow Looked at Me,” an anti-pop grief purge that arrives at the same affect as Capaldi’s music with absolutely none of the bombast.“There are ballads on the album for sure, and I think maybe the easy thing to do would’ve been to put them out first,” he said. “It’s not necessarily that I was trying not to be put in a box. I just felt it weird to come back straight in: Here’s a ballad. Again.”In the documentary, you see Capaldi and his manager grappling with the follow-up pressure. In the SUV heading to Times Square, Capaldi needled his manager for having a “major label mind-set.”He understands, though. “There’s so much on the line,” Capaldi explained. “I totally get why people are nervous and jumpy.”Capaldi closes the album with “How I’m Feeling Now,” an acoustic confession of his insecurities. “It’s like ‘The Elephant Man’ — ‘I am a human being!’” he said, emphasizing that he’s more than just a ballad automaton. “I wanted to suck the air out a little bit.”At Radio City, though, there was little sign that Capaldi was unhappy with his lot. “New York!” he shouted. “It feels so good to be inside of you!” At the merch stand, he was selling country-and-western-style T-shirts that read “America’s Sweetheart Returns: Stealing Hearts in Every State.” The Jonas Brothers joined him onstage for a song, and Capaldi shouted to the crowd about how … aroused he was.Before “Before You Go,” about the death of his aunt by suicide, he solemnly proclaimed, “I want to thank you, Pat, ’cause it made me a lot of money.” And during “Lost on You,” he playfully chided the crowd for singing along too enthusiastically — “The song’s not finished, shut the [expletive] up.”He paused, then gave the crowd a rascally grin: “It sounds much better when I sing it.” Everyone cheered. 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      Review: When the Philharmonic Applauds the Soloist

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      Without interplay from the musicians, Leonidas Kavakos found tension in his own playing in Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto.After the musicians of the New York Philharmonic finished Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto on Thursday night, they did something they don’t usually do: They applauded the soloist.With a violinist on the order of Leonidas Kavakos, that reaction felt justified. He is a wonder. The music flowed out of him like a river — big, glistening and unobstructed, but also tasteful in its frictionless subtleties.Shostakovich, under the watch of Soviet authorities and brought to heel at Stalin’s pleasure, completed the concerto in 1948 but, presumably fearing retribution for failing to glorify the nation and its people, shelved it until after Stalin’s death in 1953. The work is constructed as a suite of movements. It opens with a character piece, a murkily colored Nocturne that lives in the Upside Down of Chopin’s genre-defining works for piano, and reaches a climax in a Baroque-derived Passacaglia, at once august and austere, that leads into a fiendish five-minute cadenza for the soloist.Playing from memory, Kavakos cleared one hazard after another in Shostakovich’s stupendously original score. He didn’t just spin legato lines in the searching, conversational Nocturne; he expounded entire legato paragraphs in an eloquent, unbroken stream of consciousness. Shredding his way through the Scherzo, his tone was poised, even lavish. Where some violinists convey a sense of anguish in demanding passages — playing two melodies in duet or an endless seesaw of double stops — he sounded effortless. Even his harmonics had a juicy ping.The orchestra, led by Gianandrea Noseda, faded into the background. The players failed to envelop Kavakos in the Nocturne’s glimmering, unsettling darkness. The Scherzo had no abandon, and the Burlesque’s funhouse-mirror distortions of the concerto’s once-noble themes had no derision. Noseda fitfully ratcheted up the intensity of the Passacaglia with its implacable 17-bar pattern. As energy slacked, shy deference reigned.Without interplay from the orchestra, Kavakos found tension in his own playing. In the cadenza, he could have been a caged animal reacquainting itself with its own majesty. His encore, taken from Bach’s Partita No. 1, was spellbinding.It was hard to imagine how anything could follow Kavakos’s performance, and perhaps someone at the Philharmonic felt the same way. After he left the stage, an announcement was made that the next piece, George Walker’s Sinfonia No. 1, would be pushed to after intermission.During the break, I wondered if the clean, bright acoustics of the Philharmonic’s new hall were partly to blame for the orchestra’s showing in the Shostakovich. Each instrumental section sounded crisp, soloistic and unblended.The Walker, an imaginative exercise in disparate timbres, dispelled those suspicions. The orchestra, from the pointed brasses to the curling woodwinds, found its way to unanimity of utterance.The final piece, Respighi’s “Roman Festivals,” gave the Philharmonic an opportunity to demonstrate how far it has come in calibrating its sound to the enhanced acoustics of its new auditorium. A composer of sunny bombast, Respighi provided the stirring finale for the ensemble’s first subscription program of the season in October with “Pines of Rome,” the second piece in his Roman trilogy. At the time, colors practically bounced off the walls in the lively acoustic; climaxes, perhaps overshot, took on a fuzzy quality.On Thursday, the orchestra showed off the clarity of fortissimo passages, layering percussion, brass and strings in handsome tiers. Corrosive brasses and heated strings enlivened the Respighi’s first movement, and gray-toned woodwinds, transparent violins, and luxuriant cellos and basses colored the second.In something of a redo of Shostakovich’s Burlesque, “Roman Festivals” closes with a portrait of the antic, circuslike crowds of Piazza Navona in Rome. The Philharmonic’s players came alive in the coordinated chaos. It was the sound of revelers falling into a shared rhythm — and of an orchestra relearning how to play with itself.New York PhilharmonicThis program repeats through Saturday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

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      Did the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (Gasp) Get It Right?

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      Hear songs from the class of 2023’s seven inductees, including Sheryl Crow, Missy Elliott and Willie Nelson.Perhaps making the Rock Hall made Sheryl Crow happy (which can’t be that bad).Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesDear listeners,I don’t have much reverence for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame — a shadowy and arbitrary institution founded by record executives and music industry influencers who have historically hewed to a pretty narrow definition of rock ’n’ roll. However, this year’s inductees, which were announced earlier this week, represent one of the strongest classes in recent memory.This calls for a playlist.The group of seven artists who will join the institution in November contains both overdue legends (Willie Nelson, the Spinners) and iconoclastic innovators (Kate Bush, Rage Against the Machine). It’s a bit more diverse than the normal Rock Hall class, which isn’t saying much: According to the writer Evelyn McDonnell, who has long been covering the Hall’s glaring biases, women make up just 8.63 percent of its inductees. The great Missy Elliott will make history this year as not just the first female rapper to make it in, but also the first Black female artist inducted in her first year of eligibility. Such achievements are worth celebrating — as Elliott did, in an exuberant series of tweets — but we should also bemoan the fact that they took so long to happen in the first place.In sequencing today’s selections, I found some common threads: the way Bush and Elliott share an imaginative and ambitiously artful approach to composition; the way George Michael updates the intricate soulfulness of a group like the Spinners for the more self-aware ’90s; a certain sneer in Sheryl Crow’s delivery that, when it hits in a certain way, echoes the grit of Rage’s Zack De La Rocha.Purists can debate whether or not any of these artists can be classified as “rock,” but I prefer the more exciting definition Ice Cube put forth in his speech when he was inducted with the rap group N.W.A in 2016. “Rock ’n’ roll is not an instrument; rock ’n’ roll is not even a style of music,” he said. “Rock ’n’ roll is a spirit. Rock ’n’ roll is not conforming to the people who came before you, but creating your own path in music and in life.”Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Kate Bush: “The Big Sky”This year marked the fourth time Bush has been nominated for the Rock Hall, but it’s likely that the recent, “Stranger Things”-inspired resurgence in the popularity of “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” finally pushed her over the edge. You’ve probably heard that song plenty in the past year, so how about a less ubiquitous — but just as great — track from that same 1985 album, “Hounds of Love”? The 1-2-3-punch of “Running Up That Hill,” the title track and this one, “The Big Sky,” just might be one of the most visionary opening stretches of any pop album. (Listen on YouTube)2. Missy Elliott, “Work It”Sometimes the obvious choice is the correct choice. The hallucinatory “Work It” isn’t exactly an obscure B-side in Missy’s discography, but it’s one of the most obvious examples of her brash, otherworldly genius as both an M.C. and a producer, and of the gloriously outré sounds she was able to smuggle into the mainstream. Who else could run a chorus backward and still make its nonsense syllables sound so infectious? (Listen on YouTube)3. Rage Against the Machine, “Bulls on Parade”Does this mean the RATM superfan Guy Fieri is a Rock Hall voter? I kid. Rage is probably the most traditionally rock-leaning artist among this year’s inductees — which is certainly saying something, since “traditional” isn’t a word I’d normally use to describe this band’s politics or sound, its most recognizable hits (like the pummeling “Bulls on Parade”) included. (Listen on YouTube)4. Sheryl Crow, “Leaving Las Vegas”It feels weird to call any of the singles on Crow’s huge debut album “Tuesday Night Music Club” underrated, but … I think this one actually is? Sure, “All I Wanna Do” has been overplayed to oblivion, and “Strong Enough” has proved an important touchstone for a younger generation of female musicians like Haim and boygenius — but “Leaving Las Vegas” has bars. Her delivery of the line “There’s such a muddy line between the things you want and the things you have to do” (!) kills me every single time. (Listen on YouTube)5. The Spinners, “Could It Be I’m Falling in Love”The air is a little bit lighter in a Spinners song than it is back down here on Earth. Bobby Smith’s lead vocal seems to float just a few inches above the rest of the track, leaving no doubt about the answer to the question he poses in this timeless 1972 hit, by a group neglected by the Motown machine that rose to prominence anyway in its own time. (Listen on YouTube)6. George Michael, “Freedom! ’90”Some days, this is my answer to that impossible question, “What’s the best pop song of all time?” But any day of the week I’d tell you it’s the best song ever written about being a pop star — that strange contract between performer and fan that Michael knowingly interrogates from inside the machine and finally sets ablaze in a liberatory chorus. He more than deserves a place in the Rock Hall; I just wish he could have lived to attend his induction. (Listen on YouTube)7. Willie Nelson, “Tower of Song”Earlier this year, the newly 90-year-old Nelson beat out a bunch of young whippersnappers like Maren Morris, Miranda Lambert and Luke Combs to win the best country album Grammy for “A Beautiful Time.” It’s a lovely record with some strong original material, but the track I keep returning to is his lived-in rendition of Leonard Cohen’s wryly majestic “Tower of Song.” If this cover passed you by when the album first came out, well, you’re in for quite a treat. (Listen on YouTube)Pause for the chant,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Did the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (Gasp) Get It Right?” track listTrack 1: Kate Bush, “The Big Sky”Track 2: Missy Elliott, “Work It”Track 3: Rage Against the Machine, “Bulls on Parade”Track 4: Sheryl Crow, “Leaving Las Vegas”Track 5: The Spinners, “Could It Be I’m Falling in Love”Track 6: George Michael, “Freedom! ’90”Track 7: Willie Nelson, “Tower of Song”Bonus tracksJoe Kwaczala and Kristen Studard host the highly entertaining podcast “Who Cares About the Rock Hall?,” which strikes a balance between appropriately irreverent skepticism (both are professional comedians) and Kwaczala’s encyclopedic knowledge of Rock Hall history. Every year, they do an in-depth episode about each of the nominees; I found out about the show when they kindly asked me to talk Dolly Parton with them last season. Their episode about this year’s class of inductees was especially great, if full of playful jabs at my queen Crow (I forgive, but will take this opportunity to link to one more Sheryl banger).And, as always, check out our weekly Playlist for the latest songs worth your time. Today we’ve got fresh tracks from the post-punk legends Bush Tetras, the D.J.-turned-electro-pop-singer-songwriter Avalon Emerson and more. Listen here. More

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      Bush Tetras’ Defiant Return, and 10 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Bethany Cosentino, Avalon Emerson, Q and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage, and The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Bush Tetras, ‘Things I Put Together’Jagged, funky and scrappy, Bush Tetras emerged in 1979 as a quintessential Lower East Side post-punk band. They found a new round of respect with a 2021 retrospective, “Rhythm and Paranoia.” Its surviving founders, the singer Cynthia Sley and the guitarist Pat Place, have regrouped the band — joined by Steve Shelley from Sonic Youth on drums and production — for its first album since 2012, which is due in July. “Things I Put Together” reclaims Bush Tetras’ muscle, dissonance and die-hard contrarianism: “Still I won’t keep those things I put together,” Sley declares, going on to insist, “No never!” JON PARELESBethany Cosentino, ‘It’s Fine’It was a week of good news and bad news for Best Coast fans. First, the bad: the breezy indie-pop group’s longtime frontwoman Bethany Cosentino announced that the band (which is basically a two-person collaboration with the multi-instrumentalist Bobb Bruno) was going on an indefinite hiatus. But Cosentino also revealed she is releasing her first solo album, “Natural Disaster,” on July 28. The debut single, the light and lilting “It’s Fine,” has the gentle twang of midcareer Sheryl Crow and the bright gloss of Liz Phair’s pop era. “I am evolved, you’ve stayed the same,” Cosentino sings to someone who’s not moving forwards at the same pace that she is. But then with that titular shrug, on the chorus, she throws that caution to the wind. LINDSAY ZOLADZQ, ‘Sow’Q Stephen Marsden, who records and produces himself as Q, revisits broody 1980s electro pop — echoing the introspective-verging-on-depressive sides of Phil Collins, Prince and Michael Jackson — in “Sow,” a glum attempt at self-help delivered in a pleading tenor. Over pulsing minor chords, he wonders, “If I have today, should I let sorrow flow?” He urges, instead, “Gotta move on and sow your love,” as if he’s hoping to convince himself. PARELESAvalon Emerson, ‘Entombed in Ice’Avalon Emerson has established herself as a top techno D.J. But on her new album, “& the Charm,” she emerges as a singer and songwriter. Her co-producer is Bullion, who has worked with acts like Carly Rae Jepsen. “Entombed in Ice” isn’t as breezy as it sounds at first. Emerson sings about the contradictory impulses of a breakup, trying to cope with old feelings while telling herself to move on: “While one door closes another opens/There are some things you can do for yourself now.” The blippy, syncopated track merges her electronic expertise with pure pop craftsmanship, including nonsense-syllable vocal hooks. Emerson’s calm vocals and the upbeat ingenuity of the music promise to get her through any crisis. PARELESEd Sheeran, ‘Curtains’Ed Sheeran struggles with his demons on the somber but ultimately uplifting “Curtains,” the latest single from the British pop star’s new album, “–” (pronounced “Subtract”). A prickly electric guitar adds some fresh texture to the standard Sheeran sound on the song’s verses, as his relentless vocal cadence mimics the feel of racing thoughts. But a loved one steps in to offer a solution on the chorus: “That’s when you say to me, ‘Can you pull the curtains?’” Sheeran sings with newfound optimism. “‘Let me see the sunshine.’” ZOLADZDaymé Arocena, ‘Para Mover Los Pies’The title of this song translates as “To Move Your Feet,” and the horns-driven band gives it an unbeatable salsa groove rooted in Puerto Rican plena. But there’s more going on than dancing. “Para Mover Los Pies” is a song of exile: Arocena grew up in Cuba but left the island four years ago. She has happily relocated to Puerto Rico, with its own Afro-Caribbean culture, and in this song — produced by Eduardo Cabra from Calle 13 — she denounces Cuba’s dictatorship and urges Cubans to “Fight for your freedom/So that Cuba and Puerto Rico dance again.” PARELESwaterbaby, ‘911’The emergency number in Stockholm, the home of the songwriter who calls herself waterbaby, is 112. But in this drowsily understated bedroom-pop song, she clearly has an eye on an American audience: “Call me when you need someone/I could be your 911,” she sings, adding “we-ooh, we-ooh” like a two-note emergency siren. It’s a tentative, guarded offer of affection — “Maybe we could go somewhere/Maybe we could be something” — sung breathily and hesitantly, trying to keep expectations modest. PARELES​​feeo, ‘Iris’“Iris” unfolds more like a soliloquy than a song, as if it’s extrapolating from the jazziest impulses of Joni Mitchell. The lyrics speak to a longtime, distant friend, as feeo — the British songwriter Theodora Laird — ruminates on the passage of time, on feeling trapped by ambition, on fantasies of freedom and a new start. Caius Williams on acoustic bass grounds, nudges and counterpoints feeo’s voice; electronics and backup vocals materialize and vanish. It’s a complex composition that feels completely impulsive and open-ended. PARELESOlof Dreijer & Mount Sims, ‘Hybrid Fruit’Olof Dreijer, from the Knife, has found a new sound source: the steel drum, that remarkable percussion instrument that can also play and sustain melodies. Dreijer and a fellow electronic musician, Mount Sims, have collaborated on an album built from naturalistic and manipulated steel drum playing. “Hybrid Fruit” runs a leisurely 8:10 at a steady, insistent pace. Four-note and eight-note motifs appear, repeat and fall away; low chords and high countermelodies start to well up about halfway through, enfolded in turn by minimalistic, staccato, tuneful steel drum patterns. The track is cunningly repetitive even as it keeps changing. PARELESclaire rousay & Helena Deland, ‘Deceiver’Helena Deland and claire rousay are both fond of quiet, hazy soundscapes, and their collaboration, “Deceiver,” mixes the folky and the nebulous. It’s an acoustic-guitar ballad swathed in vocal harmonies and distant, edgeless, quasi-orchestral chords. And its seeming serenity belies lyrics about a lover’s quarrel that doesn’t clear the air. “I’m spending my time trying to convince you to believe me,” Deland sings. “You don’t believe me.” PARELESJFDR, ‘Sideways Moon’“Museum,” the new album by JFDR — the Icelandic songwriter Jofriour Akadottir — is full of ghostly waltzes, none of them more eerie and vulnerable than “Sideways Moon.” It’s a breathy, tremulous look back at a heartbreak: “Will you know I’m sorry taking what I took?/Will you know I truly gave you all I got?” The quiet piano lullaby at the core of the song is enveloped, almost buffeted, by echoes, electronic orchestrations and vocal apparitions, conjuring the larger feelings JFDR can’t yet control. PARELES More

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      Charles III’s Coronation: Music That Made Kings and Queens

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      The coronation ceremony of King Charles III and Camilla, the queen consort, on Saturday has been described as a millennium-old tradition of pomp and circumstance, reaching back to Charles’s most distant forebears.But while the service and liturgy of the coronation of English and British monarchs stretches back to the 10th century, the tradition of its sound is far more recent — and less noticed. Many of the accounts of coronations before the 19th century have been lost, and the ones that remain make very little mention of music, if at all.The sound of the British coronation that has become so affixed in the cultural landscape is, in fact, a 20th-century invention, in a concerted effort to present the past as the present.Charles III has commissioned new works for his coronation, adding to the rich tapestry of pieces composed for the occasion. Here is a brief history of that music, exploring the sound of the divine right of kings.A scene from Elizabeth II’s coronation. The sounds of this royal ceremony are largely an invention of the 20th century.Getty ImagesEarly CeremoniesThe first coronation of an English monarch that resembles what we see today was for Edgar in 973. This coronation provided the overall structure that has been filled out since the 10th century: the procession and recognition, the oath, the anointing, as well as the investiture, enthronement and homage. The coronation itself is a religious ceremony, centered around the Eucharist, and so, from 973 to 1603, the coronation ended with a Catholic mass.In 1382, the “Liber Regalis” (“Royal Book”) was written to provide a detailed account of the coronation order of service, likely for Anne of Bohemia. The book provides the coronation text but gives no information on the music itself; coronations would have music composed specifically for them, and some works only became fixed in later centuries. The first coronation music was likely sung chants, which, starting in 1603 with the coronation of James I, were refashioned into coronation anthems now with English text.James II, 1685Music by more familiar composers appears with the coronation of James II. One of Henry Purcell’s settings of “I was glad” is used for the entrance anthem. Also known by its Latin name, “Laetatus sum,” the text is a setting of Psalm 122. The anthem is in two parts, beginning with a bright and lilting section in triple meter marking James’s entrance into Westminster Abbey.As James ascended the stairs toward the Chair of Estate, the King’s Scholars from the Westminster School shouted “Vivat” (also known as the Acclamation); this was the first coronation where that tradition was present. The second section, now in minor and in duple time, acts as a solemn prayer of peace and prosperity for the monarch and the nation. The section ends with the “Gloria Patri” (“Glory be”), and it is this Purcell version that inspired the tripartite structure for C.H.H. Parry’s setting of “I was glad” in use today.George II and Queen Caroline, 1727George II’s coronation is perhaps best known for introducing George Frideric Handel’s coronation anthems, including “Zadok the Priest” (HWV 258), along with several others. It is unknown, however, where in the service each coronation anthem was performed. “Zadok the Priest” sets text from 1 Kings 1:38-40, text that has appeared in some form at every coronation since Edgar.The anthem begins with a lengthy orchestral introduction, building tension up to the entrance of the choir, accompanied by pealing brass and timpani. It is believed that the introduction was written to help provide flow in the order of service, specifically giving time for the monarchs to change robes in preparation for the anointing. The anthem also includes the acclamation “God save the King! Long live the King!” — linking the anointing to the later acclamation from the Homage of the Peers, where those with hereditary titles swear fealty to the monarch.Victoria, 1838The coronation of Queen Victoria is the first time the entire musical service is transcribed, in part because of George Smart, who was in charge of the coronation’s music. The service features the Handel coronation anthems “Zadok the Priest” and “The Queen Shall Rejoice,” as well as the Hallelujah chorus from “Messiah,” which took place after Victoria received communion. The reliance on Handel and the lack of new musical material — except for one new anthem, “This is the day,” by William Knyvett — resulted in widespread criticism of the service, with The Spectator writing that “the musical part of the service was a libel on the present state of art in this country.”Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, 1902It is with Edward VII’s coronation that music becomes a significant part of the service, by royal decree. Frederick Bridge, in charge of the music for the coronation, wrote that “the King was most explicit in declaring his Command that there should be no curtailment of the musical part of the service,” when cuts were being made to shorten the service because of Edward’s health.For the first time, music was incorporated in the published order of service, including compositions performed both before and after the coronation. This featured marches by Wagner, Gounod, Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky and Elgar, whose “Imperial March” had been written for Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897. Within the coronation service, Bridge outlined a program that would connect centuries of English church music together from Tallis to Parry, aiming to highlight Britain’s imperial might by showcasing the long centuries of its artistic power.Bridge commissioned new coronation anthems for the service, notably “I was glad” by C.H.H. Parry and a new setting of the “Confortare” by Walter Parratt, Master of the King’s Musick. Both have since become staples in the coronation service. Parry’s setting of “I was glad” is resoundingly jubilant, opening with brass over a full orchestra in a fanfare, before giving way to the chorus’s unaccompanied entrance. Parry incorporates the vivats into the anthem; here they are sung by the choir, punctuated by brass echoes and snare drums, while excising the “Gloria Patri.” Parratt’s “Confortare” (“Be strong and play the man”) revived a text not used since the 17th century. Parratt’s arrangement takes the antiphon from recited chant to full chorus with fanfare-like brass accompaniment.Elizabeth II and Charles IIIThe accession of Elizabeth II prompted the idea of a new Elizabethan age, one that would rival the artistic, cultural and military achievements of the 16th century, connecting postwar Britons with the glory of their ancestors. The coronation showcased that idea by featuring music by the premiere contemporary British composers: Ralph Vaughan Williams, Arnold Bax, Herbert Howells, Arthur Bliss, George Butterworth, Gordon Jacob, Charles Villiers Stanford, Gustav Holst, John Ireland and William Walton.And at the most recent coronation, comparisons between Elizabeth II and Charles III are unsurprisingly being made. Composers writing music for this coronation include both expected and unexpected names, including Judith Weir, Master of the King’s Music; Tarik O’Regan; Paul Mealor; and Shirley Thompson; there will be a new coronation anthem from Andrew Lloyd Webber.Charles III’s coronation is set to usher in the new Carolean era, in the hopes that it will reflect its namesake Charles II and his contributions to art and music. Only the coronation and time will show if this new era lives up to that promise. More

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      Mo Willems Finds Yet Another Way to Entertain Kids: Opera

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      The beloved author of children’s books is experimenting with new forms, alongside starry collaborators, at the Kennedy Center.WASHINGTON — Do you know the words to the Queen of the Night’s stratospheric showcase from “The Magic Flute”? Maybe the Duke’s famous tune from “Rigoletto”? Carmen’s Habanera?No, not those words. The other ones: the words, at least, as they are now known to my 6-year-old daughter and the hundreds of children who took grown-ups like me to the Kennedy Center here recently for the premiere of “The Ice Cream Truck Is Broken! & Other Emotional Arias,” an experiment, including a short new work by the composer Carlos Simon, in what it might mean to draw a very young and impossibly demanding audience into a life in opera.See, you might think that Carmen is relating her views on love, but no. Listen closely, and you’ll find that the singer should have shared her cotton candy with her friends, and absolutely will … tomorrow. “La donna è mobile”? That’s about how milk squirts out your nose if you happen to laugh at exactly the wrong time. The Queen’s aria? That’s still about anger, but it now invokes something far worse than the vengeance of hell.“This bicycle,” it begins, in a fit of preschool pique, “is such a poo-poo vehicle.”The director Felicia Curry, left, with Willems during a rehearsal for “Don’t Let the Pigeon Sing Up Late!,” a short new opera created with the composer Carlos Simon.Lexey Swall for The New York TimesWillems and Simon reunited after their first opera effort, “SLOPERA!,” also at the Kennedy Center.Lexey Swall for The New York TimesOpera’s great composers have a new librettist, and he is almost certainly the only person who could induce an institution like the Kennedy Center to do something like this, let alone get Renée Fleming to join him in hosting it; inspire a quintet of young singers to ham their way through it; and persuade Simon, one of the busiest composers around, to crown the show with a 20-minute piece that gives an attention-seeking, picture-book Pigeon the prima donna spotlight it has surely always craved.The writer for it all? Mo Willems, who, it turns out, really loves opera!“The commonalities between what my industry, or my main industry, does and what opera does are incredible,” said Willems, a six-time Emmy Award-winning former Sesame Street writer, who has earned three Caldecott Honors for picture books and reigns as a near-deity in children’s literature.“It’s big emotions,” he added during an interview at the Kennedy Center before the premiere. “It’s direct communication. It’s interior dialogue. It’s self-discovery. And both forms really have been pushed off to the side of the mainstream, and I think that they have more power that way.”WILLEMS HAS ALWAYS BEEN a broader artist than just a writer of picture books, though that task alone is such that he calls it “as easy as describing the history of Byzantium in three words.” Some of his most celebrated characters — who include a venturesome plushie called Knuffle Bunny, the on-and-off best friends Elephant and Piggie, and that insatiable, inimitable Pigeon — had already starred in musicals that he had written before he formalized his long association with the Kennedy Center in 2019, when he became its education artist in residence. That three-year position coincided with the pandemic, to which he responded with invaluable “Lunch Doodles” videos, but it still let him explore a range of genres, including symphonic music, which he said “has always been important to me.”“Beethoven’s Fifth is the easiest example,” he explained, “but it’s basically the arc of an episode of television, or a movie: ‘Ba-ba-ba-baaam,’ oh, it’s exciting — and then you take the theme, you take the theme, and then you build with it. So when I was writing a show called ‘Codename: Kids Next Door,’ which is a silly sort of action comedy, I would literally write to the symphony.”Siphokazi Molteno, left, during a rehearsal for “Don’t Let the Pigeon Sing Up Late!”Lexey Swall for The New York TimesA rehearsal for “Don’t Let the Pigeon Sing Up Late!,” which is based on Willems’s book “Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late!”Lexey Swall for The New York TimesFor the National Symphony Orchestra, Willems painted giant abstractions to accompany a cycle of Beethoven’s nine symphonies, and he worked with the musician Ben Folds to adapt one of his books, “Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs,” for the concert hall. Hearing plans for “Goldilocks” led Tim O’Leary, the general director of the Washington National Opera and a Willems-reading father of three, to inquire about a commission.At their first meeting, Willems was “feigning ignorance” about opera, O’Leary recalled, but the author quickly sent him a copy of an Elephant and Piggie book — “I Really Like Slop!” — with the inscription “Tim, this book really sings.” By their second encounter, Willems had the libretto in his head, a sketch of the characters in concert dress and a title: “SLOPERA!”“Obviously, once it was called the ‘SLOPERA!’ we had to do it,” O’Leary said.Willems says that opera is similar to picture books in that in both cases, the text cannot stand on its own.Lexey Swall for The New York Times“SLOPERA!” could only be performed live outdoors on account of the pandemic, but an indoor recording, with piano accompaniment, was shown virtually to more than 300,000 schoolchildren.” Piggie gets Gerald the Elephant to try slop, a stinky green delicacy among porcine foodies. He does, after his initial refusals upset his companion, and he endures the consequences in something like a bel canto mad (or death) scene. He recovers, though, and tells Piggie that while he might not like her food, he still likes her. Scored cutely by Simon, it is funny, catchy and in the end moving, a paean to friendship and trying new things.“Everything that I do as a picture book writer is reductive,” Willems said, reflecting on what writing his first libretto taught him, aside from the importance of placing consonants carefully. “If you look at a picture book manuscript, and you can understand it, it has too many words. If you look at just the illustrations, and you can understand it, the drawings are too detailed. They both have to be incomprehensible. It’s very similar with writing an opera, that the words that you’re using have to be dependent on the music, but the music has to be dependent on the words, and either of them shouldn’t really be able to stand alone.”WILLEMS CAUGHT THE opera bug and started planning a follow-up, “Don’t Let the Pigeon Sing Up Late!,” which O’Leary said was initially conceived as a monodrama for the inquisitive, intransigent Pigeon — akin to an avian “Erwartung.” Deborah Rutter, the Kennedy Center’s president, also suggested that Willems collaborate with Fleming, the center’s artistic adviser at large.Fleming sent Willems reams of classic arias to listen to, select from and rewrite to fit how kids might experience emotions like joy, disgust or shame. “They are sung beautifully,” Fleming said of the results. “They are sung in all seriousness. It’s just the text. A, it’s in English, and B, it’s really devised for 6-year-olds.”Curry, center, preparing the premiere of “Don’t Let the Pigeon Sing Up Late!”Lexey Swall for The New York TimesSimon, right, the composer of “Don’t Let the Pigeon Sing Up Late!”Lexey Swall for The New York TimesSmushed together under the title “The Ice Cream Truck Is Broken!” so that nine rewritten arias surrounded the Pigeon opera, the hourlong show ended up being a bit of a mishmash, as if the remarkable sum of resources being drawn from all over the Kennedy Center — not least, its comedy budget — were being thrown around to see what stuck.The arias didn’t quite land, to judge by the polite but not thrilled reactions of the children sitting near me. Dressed to the nines, Willems and Fleming introduced them, laboring over a running joke about an “opera song” really being called an “aria.” Felicia Curry, a leading Washington actress, directed with a light touch, sharing with her collaborators a faith in the music itself to connect. Though the early-career singers — Suzannah Waddington, Siphokazi Molteno, Oznur Tuluoglu, Jonathan Pierce Rhodes, Shea Owens — were amplified and could not possibly have sung more clearly or enthusiastically, it was still hard for my young assistant either to follow the lyrics with her ears, or to sound out the supertitles in time. I found some of the texts ingenious, but it all felt a bit too earnest, too consciously instructional to inspire.She was there, in any case, to see a bird sing; and sing the Pigeon did. After eight of the arias and a fair bit of fidgeting came the Willems-Simon piece, which is based on “Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late!,” a past-bedtime classic in which the Pigeon works through a repertoire of tactics to ward off sleepy time. Tuluoglu, a young soprano whose most recent prior role was Barbarina at the Annapolis Opera, took on the title character. “When you train, you have to be able to sing Mozart, you gotta be able to be a pigeon,” she said before the show.Willems adds two cousins to the Pigeon’s flock, and in turn the pajama-clad birds try out a trio of techniques — “Negotiation,” “Guilt” and “Tantrum,” as their arias are called — on an audience that is encouraged to yell back in denial. Simon’s score is a delight, propulsive and charming with a swishing jazz number and a lullaby ripped from Brahms. The kids enjoyed it, and so did the adults.Now, Willems hopes to write the libretto of a full-scale opera.Lexey Swall for The New York TimesTHE HOLY GRAIL of so-called family or education programming must surely be something along those lines, but in the experience of this frustrated musical parent, the recipe is often wrong. Willems and his collaborators understand the same thing as their goal, although as the author said, “no one is a true expert in children’s, Al Yankovic-ing, spoofing opera pieces.” Experimentation is required.“You have to approach it with all the same seriousness” as a main-stage opera, O’Leary said, “and get all the greatest people involved, because actually kids are the toughest audience, the most discerning, and if you can make it work, then you know you’ve got something.”Willems has long written books that transcend generational divides: my children love them because they are silly, and I love them because they make me a sillier father than I would ever be without one in my hand. As a librettist — a description that must now be added to all his other job titles, as he enjoys the collaborative nature of opera so much that he hopes to write a full-scale piece — he inevitably thinks along the same lines. His arias, he said, were for me and my children alike.“She already thinks it’s cool because it’s great music,” Willems said, nodding to my daughter. “You have a history to it, and by stripping that history away hopefully you’ll listen to it differently. You’re coming into it with preconceived notions, and these guys aren’t, and then there’s somebody in the middle who just, like, saw a lot of Chuck Jones films, and has a vague sense of it.”“I struggle,” he added, “with the idea that a grown-up would bring one of the younger people in their lives, with the expectation that that person is going to learn something, but that the person bringing them isn’t. I want everybody to be open to a new experience.” More

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      Jai Paul Emerges From the Shadows, Somewhat

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicWhen a collection of Jai Paul demos leaked online in 2013, it had the makings of a celebration, not a catastrophe. Paul had previously released two rapturously received singles, and anticipation for his music was high. The songs on that collection were shared widely, and beloved. But rather than capitalize on the good will generated by the unintended release, Paul retreated, making almost no public noise or appearances for the following decade.This year, he returned — first, with a pair of performances at Coachella, and then a pair of smaller headlining concerts in New York. He was shy and a little awkward onstage, but the music he played was sure-footed. Whether it was the conclusion of his prior arc, or a prelude to a new era, wasn’t clear.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Paul’s anti-career trajectory, the persistence of fan enthusiasm for him even in his absence, and how mystery on the internet has changed over the past couple of decades.Guests:Lindsay Zoladz, a pop music critic for The New York Times and author of The Amplifier newsletterJia Tolentino, a staff writer at The New YorkerConnect 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