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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

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      Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 2023: Kate Bush, Missy Elliott, Willie Nelson

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      Rounding out the far-from-traditional class of 2023: George Michael, Sheryl Crow, Rage Against the Machine and the Spinners.The reclusive (but freshly relevant) experimental pop singer Kate Bush, the one-of-one rapper Missy Elliott and the 90-year-old country stalwart Willie Nelson are among this year’s genre-spanning inductees to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The organization behind the museum and annual ceremony announced the lineup on Wednesday, underlining how the new class reflected “the diverse artists and sounds that define rock & roll.”Rounding out the seven acts voted in by more than 1,000 artists, historians and music industry professionals are the pop singer George Michael, who died in 2016; the 1970s soul group the Spinners, who had been nominated three times prior; the platinum-selling 1990s pop-rock singer Sheryl Crow; and the politically rambunctious rap-rock band Rage Against the Machine, who crossed the threshold after its fifth time on the ballot.The Rock Hall ceremony will be held on Friday, Nov. 3, at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.Furthering a pattern that has taken shape in recent years — following steady criticism against the Rock Hall for its lack of inclusion, especially among race and gender lines — none of the musicians inducted this time fit neatly into the most narrow strictures of what constitutes rock. But as the genre and the institution continue to evolve, those behind the scenes have proved increasingly welcome to honoring rappers, pop singers and country artists like Dolly Parton, who attempted to remove herself from consideration last year but was voted in anyway.In a statement accompanying the induction announcement on Wednesday, John Sykes, the chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, said, “We are honored that this November’s induction ceremony in New York will coincide with two milestones in music culture; the 90th birthday of Willie Nelson and the 50th anniversary of the birth of hip-hop.”Nelson — who celebrated his birthday over the weekend with a concert featuring Neil Young, Miranda Lambert and Snoop Dogg — had been eligible for the Rock Hall since 1987, 25 years after the release of his first commercial recording and six years before he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Like Michael, best known for hits like “Faith” and “Freedom! ’90,” this was Nelson’s first time on the ballot.Bush, who has not released an album in more than a decade, had been nominated three times prior. But she may have received a boost thanks to renewed interest in her music since last year, when a placement in the Netflix show “Stranger Things” sent her 1985 single “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” back onto pop radio and to a new peak of No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100.Elliott will become the first woman in rap to be included in the Rock Hall, following previous recognition for artists like Run-DMC, Beastie Boys, N.W.A, Public Enemy and Jay-Z. “I want to say this is HUGE not for just me but all my Sisters in HIPHOP,” she wrote in a string of tweets on Wednesday. “this door is now OPEN to showcase the hard work & what many of us contribute to MUSIC. I have cried all morning because I am GRATEFUL.”Voters passed over more traditional rock bands on the latest ballot like Soundgarden, the White Stripes, Iron Maiden and Joy Division, as well as the singer-songwriters Warren Zevon and Cyndi Lauper. The rap group A Tribe Called Quest also failed to make the cut.Yet outside of those inducted as performers, the ceremony this fall will also celebrate the hip-hop pioneer DJ Kool Herc and the guitarist Link Wray (awarded for “musical influence”); the singer Chaka Khan, the composer and producer Al Kooper and the songwriter Bernie Taupin (for “musical excellence”); and the “Soul Train” creator, producer and host Don Cornelius (posthumously receiving the Ahmet Ertegun award for executives). More

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      Bebe Buell, Rock ’n’ Roll Muse, Sings Her Own Song

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      Decades after those wild nights at Max’s Kansas City and her many rock-star romances, she is making the case for herself.Bebe Buell was back in town.On a recent evening, about 75 people gathered at the National Arts Club, a private club in a landmark building on East 20th Street in Manhattan, to see her read from her new memoir, “Rebel Soul: Musings, Music, & Magic,” and sing some of her songs.The neighborhood was familiar to Ms. Buell. Soon after she arrived in New York from Camp Lejeune, N.C., in 1972, she became a regular at Max’s Kansas City, the famed night spot just a few blocks away. At the time she was an 18-year-old model signed to the Eileen Ford Agency who lived at the St. Mary’s Residence on the Upper East Side. The place had a curfew enforced by nuns, but one night Ms. Buell slipped out and made her way to Max’s, where she would end up partying with Andy Warhol, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, and David Johansen and Johnny Thunders of the New York Dolls.She went from It Girl of Manhattan to Miss November in Playboy magazine. She had relationships with Todd Rundgren, Elvis Costello, Steven Tyler, Jimmy Page, Mick Jagger and Rod Stewart in the years when they did some of their best work, but she writes in her book that she was more than a muse and was unfairly labeled a groupie by the press.The people who went to see her at the National Arts Club seemed to feel the same way. One of them, Dick Wingate, a former music executive, said that, back in 1980, he had tried to get his colleagues at Epic Records to release Ms. Buell’s four-song EP, “Covers Girl,” but ran into resistance. “I really think she was a trailblazer in many ways,” Mr. Wingate said. “She just said, ‘I’m going to do what I’m going to do and I don’t care what people think,’ and it wasn’t easy at that point in time.”From left to right, Stevie Nicks, Rod Stewart and Bebe Buell at Regine’s in New York City, circa. 1977.GThese days, Ms. Buell, 69, lives near Nashville with her husband, James Wallerstein (stage name: Jimmy Walls), 56, a soft-spoken guitarist and director of concierge services at a luxury residential building. The couple said they had made the long drive to Manhattan in a rented S.U.V. with their two dogs, Chicken Burger, 15, and Lola, 11, in the back seat. Late Wednesday afternoon, in the high-ceiling suite where they were staying on the seventh floor of the National Arts Club, Ms. Buell was getting ready for the party.At 6 p.m. the early arrivals trickled into the brightly lit East Gallery on the ground floor. David Croland, a photographer and fashion illustrator, said he had met Ms. Buell in 1972, when he was hired to body-paint her for a Ziegfeld Follies-inspired benefit. “She was never a groupie,” he said. “She had her own groupies. She would just appear and people would line up.”He saw someone across the room: “Danny! Danny!” It was Danny Fields, a pivotal rock music figure who had managed or worked closely with Jim Morrison, the Stooges, the Velvet Underground and the Ramones. “She was a champion of discovering and allying herself with beautiful and talented and wonderful people,” Mr. Fields said of Ms. Buell. “She was smart, sexy and beautiful, with elegant taste. I never wondered why everyone was in love with her.”The guest of honor stepped into the room dressed in black: a Calvin Klein jacket, fringed opera gloves that she had made herself, and a vintage Norma Kamali skirt.“I’m nervous,” Ms. Buell said.Ms. Buell performs her songs accompanied by Gyasi Heus, left, and her husband, James Wallerstein.Leor Miller for The New York TimesShe planted herself at Mr. Wingate’s side. Long after the fact, she still appreciated his efforts on behalf of “Covers Girl,” which came out in 1981 on Rhino Records, then an independent label known for novelty releases.“When everybody in the business was wondering if that rock-star girlfriend, that Playboy girl, can be a rock person, or whatever, Dick Wingate had vision,” Ms. Buell said. “He was smart.”“Oh, Bebe,” he said, “you’re so sweet to say that.”“How am I going to make you proud tonight?” she said. “I’ve worked hard for this moment. I know that we can’t do records together anymore.”“You know, you’re a real inspiration to a lot of people.”“Don’t make me cry before I go on,” she said.The guests took their seats as Ms. Buell climbed onto a small stage.“I feel like I’m getting married here,” she said. “I’ve already cried twice. So I probably look like a wreck.”Someone in the crowd said, “Noooo!”“I’ve always been a ‘rebel, rebel,’ right?” Ms. Buell said, alluding to the David Bowie song. “My face is a mess.”Liv Tyler at the 1996 premiere of “Stealing Beauty,” flanked by her parents, Steven Tyler and Ms. Buell.GShe was joined onstage by a longtime friend, the publicist Liz Derringer, the ex-wife of the rock guitarist Rick Derringer. Decades ago she introduced Ms. Buell to a high school friend, Mr. Tyler, the lead singer of Aerosmith, who became the father of Ms. Buell’s daughter, the actress Liv Tyler.Ms. Derringer led Ms. Buell through some highlights of “Rebel Soul,” which covers her nights with various rockers as it charts her progress toward finding her own voice. The book also goes into what Ms. Buell describes as her “many experiences with extraterrestrial entities.” For the National Arts Club crowd, she mixed in claims of her U.F.O. encounters with stories about Mr. Rundgren and other exes.“I’ve been painted as this wild filly that was running around with the rock stars,” Ms. Buell said. “People don’t realize that wasn’t the reality of what was going on. I was a young girl that would talk her head off. I wanted Todd to be a boyfriend that didn’t go out with other women but that was impossible in those times.”“We were so young,” Ms. Derringer said, “and it was the early ’70s.”“I was 18, he was 23, and we were all gorgeous,” Ms. Buell said. “The hormones were raging. There was so much beauty in New York. When Johnny Thunders walked across the room when he was 19, it caused you to take a breath. The Italian stallion, just something about him. And he had on pink satin pants and my girlfriend’s boots!”“I also had a lot of platonic relationships,” she continued. “Friendships with Bowie and others that were deep.”Ms. Buell read a chapter on her friendship with Prince, whom she said she had met backstage in the mid-70s when Mr. Rundgren’s band Utopia was playing in Minneapolis. Prince was shy, not yet famous, and he told Ms. Buell that she would one day see his name in lights. Before they parted, according to her book, he whispered that he thought the pictures of her in Playboy were very pretty.Ms. Buell teared up as she finished the chapter: “I still cry about him and Bowie,” she said.Ms. Buell signs copies of her book after her performance.Leor Miller for The New York TimesMr. Wallerstein, carrying a Gibson acoustic guitar, stepped close to her, as did another guitarist, Gyasi Heus, who, with his flowing locks and red pants, looked as if he would have been at home in the Max’s Kansas City of yore. They played as Ms. Buell sang songs she had written with her husband and others in Nashville — “By a Woman,” “Cross My Legs” and “Can You Forgive,” among others.Toward the end of her set, she turned to her accompanists, saying, “All right, guys, I’m doing this a cappella.” After asking them not to leave the stage, she told the crowd: “I just think they should stay there, because they look so gorgeous. Gorgeous rock boys. There’s nothing like gorgeous rock boys!”The final song was “Superstar,” a 1971 hit for the Carpenters about a lonesome groupie pining away for a rock star. Ms. Buell encouraged everyone to join her for the chorus:Don’t you remember you told me you loved me, babyYou said you’d be coming back this way again, babyBaby, baby, baby, baby, oh, baby, I love you, I really do.Big applause.Ms. Buell’s last song was “Superstar,” a hit for the Carpenters in 1971.Leor Miller for The New York TimesBeverly Keel, a friend of Ms. Buell’s who is a dean at Middle Tennessee State University, said: “To me, her whole life has been defined by her relationships with other people. She’s Liv’s mom, Todd Rundgren’s girlfriend, Steven Tyler, mother of his child. And now she’s finally being recognized for who she’s been all along.”After signing copies of her book, Ms. Buell seemed ready to call it a night. “I’m done,” she said. “I got a 15-year-old dog upstairs. I’ve got to check on Chicken Burger and I’ve got to change clothes.”The entertainment journalist Roger Friedman, a longtime champion of Ms. Buell, had a suggestion: “You know what you need? You need an electric violin.”“Yeah, I could get that,” she said.“You need an electric violin,” he repeated. “That would be perfect.”“Well, you can’t overuse those suckers,” Ms. Buell said. “You only bring them in when you need to cry.” More

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      Gordon Lightfoot’s 10 Essential Songs

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      The Canadian singer-songwriter, who died on Monday at 84, brought his rueful baritone to memorable, melancholy material.Bob Dylan once named Gordon Lightfoot one of his favorite songwriters, and called the musician “somebody of rare talent” while inducting him into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1986. On Dylan’s 1970 album “Self Portrait,” he even recorded Lightfoot’s “Early Morning Rain,” and the respect was mutual — Lightfoot listened carefully to Dylan’s songs, which instilled in him “a more direct approach, getting away from the love songs,” he once said.In an expansive career that drew from Greenwich Village folk and Laurel Canyon pop, Gordon Meredith Lightfoot Jr., who died on Monday at 84, was embraced by a diverse group of musicians: Elvis Presley and Duran Duran, Lou Rawls and the Replacements. He sang in a rueful baritone full of tenacity and an almost professorial air, and specialized in songs that dwelled on solitude, or recounted unhappy relationships, in grounded language that drew on folk and blues modes.“Lightfoot’s is the voice of the romantic,” Geoffrey Stokes of The Village Voice wrote in 1974. “For him (as for Don Quixote, one of his chosen heroes) perfection is always in view and always slipping from his grasp.”Nowhere was Lightfoot more beloved than in his native Canada, where he helped transform its music industry into a worldwide force. “He sent a message to the world that we’re not just a bunch of lumberjacks and hockey players up here,” Geddy Lee of Rush said in “If You Could Read My Mind,” a 2019 documentary. “We’re capable of sensitivity and poetry.” In the process, Lightfoot became one of the most successful recording artists of the 1970s.Here are 10 of Lightfoot’s most beloved and impactful songs.“For Lovin’ Me” (1966)The folk tradition in which Lightfoot initially worked is full of boastful songs about rambling men who are lighting out for the territory, but this one is uniquely cruel. It’s pushed along by his stout acoustic guitar strumming and David Rea’s sleek fingerpicking accents, which reinforce the lyric’s hauteur. “Everything you have is gone,” Lightfoot tells the woman he’s leaving. “That’s what you get for lovin’ me.” Her broken heart will eventually mend, he adds, at which point “I just might pass this way again.” He later felt some embarrassment about the song, and said, “I didn’t know what chauvinism was.”“Early Morning Rain” (1966)Lightfoot grew up in bucolic Central Ontario, which could hardly be farther from Memphis, but he sounds nearly Southern on this simple, brisk folk song, which Presley recorded a few years later. Its theme is homesickness (Lightfoot was living in Los Angeles when he wrote it); the narrator, who’s “as cold and drunk as I can be,” in addition to broke, watches a 707 fly overhead and envies its freedom as he pines for his hometown.“Did She Mention My Name” (1968)In this canny depiction of wounded pride, Lightfoot gets together with an old friend to shoot the breeze, but amid the chitchat about sports and mutual acquaintances, he casually slips in a question that reveals his agenda: “By the way, did she mention my name?” This song and “For Lovin’ Me” are fraternal twins, joined by their fascination with male pride.“Black Day in July” (1968)Lightfoot mostly worked the personal-relationship side of folk music and left the political side to others. The controversial “Black Day in July” has a restless, unsettled drum track, and describes the July 1967 uprisings in Detroit in which Black residents protested police abuse, prompting the governor to send in the National Guard and the president to send in the army. The song is full of irony, scorn and bafflement (“The soul of Motor City is feared across the land”) and most U.S. radio stations refused to play it.“If You Could Read My Mind” (1970)Lightfoot’s commercial breakthrough (it reached No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100) is also his masterpiece, with assistance from Nick DeCaro’s cascading string arrangement. The lyrics, inspired by his impending divorce, range from poetic to stark, until he reaches the stoic summary: “Stories always end.” The melody inspired Duran Duran’s “Save a Prayer,” and the song has been covered by a who’s who of singers, including Barbra Streisand, Johnny Cash and Neil Young — and, almost, by Frank Sinatra, who tried to record it but gave up, declaring it “too long.”“Sundown” (1974)Lightfoot was an alcoholic who knew a lot about tempestuous relationships. He wrote “Sundown” while in a jealous fit of fantasy about Cathy Smith, a girlfriend whose cheekbone he once broke during a fight. The lyrics are dark, and the snaking guitar solo is one of the great Red Shea’s finest moments. The song’s been covered by, among others, the goth legends Scott Walker and Depeche Mode.“Rainy Day People” (1975)The mid-70s was Lightfoot’s commercial peak, but this successor to the Top 10 pop hits “Sundown” and “Carefree Highway” didn’t get the reception it deserved. The chords and lyrics call to mind Jimmy Webb, as Lightfoot, with his usual precise elocution, celebrates the way loyal friendships give succor to “high-stepping strutters who land in the gutters.”“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” (1976)His best-known song is one of the most unlikely pop hits: a six-and-a-half-minute folk ballad about a freighter that sank in Lake Superior a year earlier, killing 29 crew members. It’s also surely the only Top 40 song to ever mention Gitche Gumee, the Chippewa name for Lake Superior. The impish rock band NRBQ sometimes played a slow, out-of-tune cover of the song, and if the audience didn’t like it, it would play it a second time as well.“The Circle Is Small” (1978)In some of Lightfoot’s lyrics, it’s difficult to tell whether the conflicts he describes are factual or merely byproducts of a suspicious imagination. In this softly scornful song about cheating, which he recorded in 1968 and rerecorded 10 years later, in a superior version, he believes his lover is using a friend’s apartment to carry on an affair, and he implies that he’ll eventually catch her: “The city where we live might be quite large/But the circle is small.”“Harmony” (2004)In the 1980s, as music moved away from acoustic sounds, Lightfoot chased pop success by using synthesizers, drum machines and the producer David Foster, but he didn’t sound like himself. By the time of “Harmony,” he’d returned to working with the guitarists Shea and Terry Clements. Tobacco use had eaten away at the top of his range, but the title song of his penultimate studio album has a fragile, hard-won tenderness that seems to look back at his career (and his life) with peaceful regret. More

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      Europe’s Opera Stages Next Season: What to See

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      Among our critic’s recommendations are multiple “Ring” cycles, a premiere by Ellen Reid and the soprano Lise Davidsen in Strauss’s “Salome.”Keeping up with opera in Europe is a nearly impossible task. There never seems to be enough time, or money, to see all that the continent has to offer across its many storied houses. Many of the most important among them have announced their 2023-24 seasons. Here are some highlights, in chronological order.‘Das Rheingold’The Royal Opera House in London embarks on the multiseason effort of staging Wagner’s four-opera “Der Ring des Nibelungen” with its first installment (Sept. 11-29) right as its music director, Antonio Pappano, enters his final season there. He will be back to conduct the other three, though, lending a sense of cohesion to this new staging by the reliably entertaining Barrie Kosky, starring Christopher Maltman as Wotan. Not long after, another major “Ring” begins at the Monnaie in Brussels, where the symbol-happy abstractionist Romeo Castellucci’s productions of “Das Rheingold” (Oct. 24-Nov. 9) and “Die Walküre” (Jan. 21-Feb. 11) will follow in quick succession.Antonio Pappano will conduct “Das Rheingold” at the Royal Opera House in London. This season will be Pappano’s last as the house’s music director.Victor Llorente for The New York Times‘Das Floss der Medusa’As the Komische Oper in Berlin closes for renovations, the company enters a nomadic period familiar to its neighbor, the Berlin State Opera, which for years operated out of the Schiller Theater, where many of the Komische’s productions will be presented next season. But it will also branch out, including with its new staging, by the sleekly smart Tobias Kratzer of Hans Werner Henze’s “Das Floss der Medusa” (“The Raft of the Medusa”), inside a hangar at the disused Tempelhof Airport (Sept. 16-Oct. 2).‘Aida’The provocateur Calixto Bieito’s production of Verdi’s “Aida” at Theater Basel over a decade ago has been described as a difficult, even disturbing depiction of immigration in Europe. His new staging, at the Berlin State Opera (Oct. 3-29), is being billed more modestly, as homing in on the work’s intimacy, and as mining the tension between the opera and the politics of its time. Nicola Luisotti conducts a cast that includes the tenor Yusif Eyvazov as Radamès and the bass René Pape as Ramfis.‘Masque of Might’Masques, which were something like variety shows in the 17th century, get contemporary treatment in this Opera North pastiche from the inveterate director David Pountney touring northern England (Oct. 6-Nov. 16). The hope is to give Henry Purcell — one of his country’s essential composers and, in Pountney’s view, its greatest creator of stage music until Benjamin Britten — his due as a writer for the theater. So, rather than revive Purcell’s only opera, “Dido and Aeneas,” Pountney has assembled bits and pieces from elsewhere in his output for a new show on topical contemporary themes.‘Antony & Cleopatra’After its premiere in San Francisco this season, John Adams’s latest opera, an intricate yet flowing adaptation of Shakespeare, travels to the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, Spain (Oct. 28-Nov. 8). One of the stars it was written for, the soprano Julia Bullock, missed the earlier run because she was pregnant, but she will be back, with the rest of the principal cast, for this revival, directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer. Adams, who famously revises his scores, will be at the conductor’s podium.John Adams’s “Antony & Cleopatra” will come to the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, Spain, in the fall after an earlier staging in California.Cory Weaver‘Götterdämmerung’Yes, more of the “Ring.” The Zurich Opera House’s cycle, conducted by its general music director, Gianandrea Noseda, and directed by Andreas Homoki, its artistic leader, reaches its conclusion with the premiere of “Götterdämmerung,” starring the elegant, mighty soprano Camilla Nylund as Brünnhilde and the ethereal-voiced tenor Klaus Florian Vogt as Siegfried (Nov. 5-Dec. 3). Then, the whole “Ring” will be presented in cycles in spring 2024, with performers including Tomasz Konieczny as Wotan and Christopher Purves as Alberich (May 3-9 and 18-26).‘Le Grand Macabre’György Ligeti’s only opera — an apocalyptic dark comedy of dizzying eclecticism — was widely seen in the years immediately after its 1978 premiere. These days, a performance of it feels like more of a special occasion; but next season, there are two to choose from. At the Vienna State Opera, Jan Lauwers, who directed a strident revival of Luigi Nono’s “Intolleranza 1960” at the Salzburg Festival, helms a new production conducted by Pablo Heras-Casado (Nov. 11-23). Then, at the Bavarian State Opera, the work will be presented in a new staging by the cerebral Krzysztof Warlikowski, conducted by one of that house’s former general music directors, Kent Nagano (June 28-July 7).Gustavo Dudamel, the Paris Opera’s music director, will conduct a new production of Thomas Adès’s “The Exterminating Angel.”Joel Saget/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images‘The Exterminating Angel’Thomas Adès’s third opera — one of the finest so far this century — seemed to have a future threatened by its own ambition. With an enormous (which is to say expensive) cast of principal characters and an orchestra of Wagnerian scale, it was not exactly inviting revivals. Yet there it is on the schedule for the Paris Opera’s coming season — with a less starry cast than its early runs at the Salzburg Festival and the Metropolitan Opera, perhaps, but with a new production from Calixto Bieito, and the baton of Gustavo Dudamel, the company’s music director and a sure hand in Adès’s music (Feb. 29-March 23).Ellen Reid presents her opera “The Shell Trial” at the Dutch National Opera in March 2024.Erin Baiano‘The Shell Trial’The Dutch National Opera, which in the past couple of seasons has been a font of successful world premieres like Michel van der Aa’s “Upload” and Alexander Raskatov’s “Animal Farm,” has now commissioned the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Ellen Reid, whose “The Shell Trial” will be introduced at the house’s Opera Forward Festival (March 16-21). Inspired by a Dutch court’s 2021 ruling that the Shell company was legally responsible for contributing to climate change, it will feature Julia Bullock, a star of “Upload,” in the dual role of the Law and the Artist.‘Salome’Everything on this list has been a new production or a premiere. But opera is an art form that thrives on revivals of repertory classics, and on hearing the stars of today revisit the works, and productions, of the past. One of those singers is the soprano Lise Davidsen, who tends to astonish in her role debuts, like her Marschallin in “Der Rosenkavalier” at the Metropolitan Opera recently. Coming soon is more Strauss, when she takes on the title character in his “Salome” at the Paris Opera, in Lydia Steier’s staging, conducted by Mark Wigglesworth (May 9-28). More