Music

MTV News bridged a gap between news and pop culture without talking down to its young audience. As it prepares to shut down, Kurt Loder, Tabitha Soren, Sway Calloway and others reflect on its legacy.A little over a year into his first term, President Bill Clinton made good on a promise to return to MTV if young voters sent him to the White House. The town hall-style program in 1994 was meant to focus on violence in America, but it was a question of personal preference that made headlines and helped put MTV News on the media map.Boxers or briefs?“Usually briefs,” Mr. Clinton responded to a room full of giggles.Now, a generation after MTV News bridged the gap between news and pop culture, Paramount, the network’s parent company, announced this week that it was shuttering the news service.The end of MTV’s news operation is part of a 25 percent reduction in Paramount’s staff, Chris McCarthy, president and chief executive of Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios and Paramount Media Networks, said in an email to staff that was shared with The New York Times.MTV News and its cadre of anchors and video journalists were the ones to tell young people about the suicide of Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, and the killings of the Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur. They brought viewers on the presidential campaign trail and face to face with world leaders like Yasir Arafat, and took them into college dorms in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. They also embraced the messy chaos of 1990s and early 2000s celebrity, as when Courtney Love interrupted an interview with Madonna. They always put music first.Through it all, MTV News never strayed from its core mission of centering the conversation around young people.“There were no comparisons, it was one of one,” said SuChin Pak, a former MTV News correspondent. “We were the kids elbowing in. There just wasn’t anything out there for young people.”SuChin Pak, left, an MTV News correspondent, with Fergie, of the rap group the Black Eyed Peas, and Snoop Dogg. Ms. Pak said of MTV News, “We were the kids elbowing in.”Jason Merritt/FilmMagic, via Getty ImagesMTV News broke up the television news environment “in terms of young versus old, hip versus square” rather than the conservative-versus-liberal approach of many cable news networks today, said Robert Thompson, a professor of television and pop culture at Syracuse University. Its influence can be seen in the work of Vice News, the brash digital-media disrupter that is preparing to file for bankruptcy, and in the hand-held camcorder style of reporting that some CNN journalists have embraced.MTV was able to corner a young audience who could name the entire catalog of the band Flock of Seagulls but also had a curiosity about current events, he said.The Music Television network debuted in 1981 like a “fuse that lit the cable revolution,” Mr. Thompson said. Six years later, MTV News came on air under the deep, sure-footed voice of Kurt Loder, a former Rolling Stone editor, who co-hosted a weekly news program called “The Week in Rock.” But it was his interrupting-regular-programming announcement of Cobain’s death in 1994 that cemented Mr. Loder as “the poet laureate of Gen X,” Mr. Thompson said.“It was live TV at its best, I suppose, for an awful event,” Mr. Loder, who now reviews films for Reason magazine, said in an interview.MTV News tried to set itself apart from other cable news operations in a number of ways, Mr. Loder said.For starters, its anchors and correspondents did not wear suits. They also weren’t “self-righteous” and tried “not to talk down to the audience,” he said. That became especially important as rap and hip-hop seeped into every fiber of American culture.“We didn’t jump on rap at all as being a threat to the republic; we covered that stuff pretty evenhandedly,” Mr. Loder said. MTV then started adding more hip-hop to its music programing “and suddenly there’s a whole new audience.”Sway Calloway was brought into the MTV News fold to “elevate the conversation” around hip-hop and pop culture, and to do so with credibility.“MTV News took news very seriously,” he said. “We all wanted to make sure that we kept integrity in what we did.”Mr. Calloway, who now hosts a morning radio program on SiriusXM, said he knew respect for hip-hop culture had reached a new level when he was sitting in the Blue Room of the White House with President Barack Obama.“When Biggie said, ‘Did you ever think hip-hop would take it this far?’ I never thought that the culture would be aligned with the most powerful man in the free world, that we would be able to have a discussion through hip-hop culture that resonates on a global basis,” Mr. Calloway said. “That’s because of MTV News.”From its inception, MTV News saw itself as a critical connector for young voters. Tabitha Soren, an MTV News correspondent in the 1990s, saw that first hand on the campaign trail with MTV’s “Choose or Lose” get-out-the-vote campaign, and in the White House.“People were very earnest and sincere in wanting young people to be educated voters, not just willy-nilly, get anybody to the ballot box,” she said. “I felt like we were trying to make sure they were informed.”For Ms. Soren, who was 23 when she first appeared on air for MTV News in 1991, being able to connect with a younger audience was made easier because she was their age, she said. That meant asking Arafat about the role of young people in the intifada and going to Bosnia to follow American troops, many of whom were the same age as MTV’s viewers.“I was empathetic because I was their age,” said Ms. Soren, who is now a visual artist in the Bay Area. “My natural curiosity most of the time lined up with what the audience wanted to hear about.”During a town hall-style forum on MTV in 1994, President Bill Clinton was famously asked about his preference in underwear.Diana Walker/Getty ImagesThat rang especially true for Ms. Pak, who was born in South Korea and filmed a docu-series for MTV News about growing up in America with immigrant parents.“It was a culture shift for me personally, but with an audience that suddenly was like, wait, are we going to talk about this version of what it means to be American that is never shown and never talked about, and do it in the most real way possible?” said Ms. Pak, who was with MTV for a decade and now co-hosts a podcast. “Where else would you have seen that but MTV?”Just as Mr. Loder and Ms. Soren became cultural touchstones for Generation X, Ms. Pak, Mr. Calloway and others filled that role for millennials. Racing home after school to catch Total Request Live, they watched video journalists report the day’s headlines at 10 minutes to the hour during the network’s afternoon blocks and between Britney Spears and Green Day videos.“A lot of people were getting their news from us, and we understood that and knew it,” Ms. Pak said. “For all of us it was, OK, what is the audience, what’s our way in here that feels true? You do that by sitting down with them versus standing over them.” More

At 81, the singer-songwriter admits his time could be short, especially after losing David Crosby. But in the meantime, he’s got plenty to say and sing.ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Graham Nash was slow to smile on a recent Wednesday afternoon, sitting in early spring sunshine on the porch of a cafe near Washington, D.C.The night before, the 81-year-old singer-songwriter had bounded onto the stage of the folk bastion the Birchmere, and wooed the sold-out crowd with his tunes that long ago became generational standards, like “Teach Your Children” and “Military Madness.” He shared the songs and candid stories of longtime pals like Paul McCartney and Joni Mitchell, landing expertly practiced punch lines.But he’d awakened in the daze of emotional hangover. Exactly three months had passed since the January death of David Crosby, his best friend and closest collaborator since they first harmonized together in August 1968, at the Laurel Canyon cottage that Nash would soon share with Mitchell. “It is like an earthquake,” he said, his English accent softened by nearly 50 years in California and Hawaii. “The shock was terrifying. Then I see his face, and it makes me really sad.”The day’s aftershock stemmed from a video tribute Nash recorded for Neil Young and Stephen Stills to use at an autism benefit. It was another unwelcome opportunity to contemplate all that Nash and Crosby left unsaid during the prior decade, as the pair traded barbs in the press, left an album with Rick Rubin unfinished and rarely spoke. In early January, Crosby emailed Nash to say he wanted to talk, then left a voice mail message telling him he wanted to apologize for, as Nash remembered, “all the stupid things I said about you and, particularly, Neil.” After Nash set a time, Crosby stood him up. Three days later, he was dead.Nash, left, and David Crosby in 1976. The two bandmates and close friends had fallen out of touch before Crosby’s death in January.Jorgen Angel/Redferns, via Getty Images“David was a very interesting couple of people: He was generous, funny and the most unbelievably great musician. On the other hand, he could make an entire room feel bad with two words,” Nash said, making his way through the first of three lunchtime lattes. “I wanted to remember the good music we made and the great times we had, let that satisfy you. But he’s gone.”Nash is now a member of the rarest class of living rock legend — old enough to have witnessed the genre’s genesis and eager to talk about his wild days, but also inspired enough by his current work to rave about new songs. This year alone, he has reunited with a childhood chum, the Hollies co-founder Allan Clarke, for the sentimental and charming album “I’ll Never Forget,” singing backup on most songs. And on May 19, Nash will release “Now,” 13 tracks about American unrest and the renewal inspired by his third marriage and a move to New York.Still, several of his favorite former musical partners, like Crosby, the drummer Jim Gordon and the multi-instrumentalist David Lindley, have all died since January. He knows his life’s work is increasingly a race against mortality.“I tried to be the best husband, the best friend, the best musician, but I’ll never make it,” he said. “I’m still healthy, but so was David. I could drop dead in the middle of this conversation.”“I wanted to remember the good music we made and the great times we had, let that satisfy you,” Nash said of Crosby. “But he’s gone.”Daniel Arnold for The New York TimesNash’s life story reads like a rock ’n’ roll fantasy. He was raised working-class in Salford, near Manchester, and first heard hints of the stateside musical revolution by pressing his ear to his bedpost on Sunday nights. As his parents listened to Radio Luxembourg downstairs, the sound traveled through the wooden beams of their close quarters, sparking his imagination.“My mother and father didn’t tell me to get a real job because music’s not going to last,” he said by phone during an earlier conversation from his East Village recording and photography studio. “My mother always said to me, ‘Follow your heart, and you will always make the right choices. Life is just choices.’”Already playing the proto-rock of skiffle, Nash skipped school to score tickets to see Bill Haley & His Comets with Clarke, days after his 15th birthday. The duo soon beat the Beatles (before they were the Beatles) in a talent show. Three years later, they stalked the Everly Brothers to their hotel, where they received the encouragement they needed to start the Hollies. (“Keep doing it,” Phil Everly said in the rain. “Things’ll happen.”)The Hollies’ suave R&B covers and bittersweet originals made them pop sensations, part of the Beatles’ global sea change. During their first U.S. appearance, they shared a bill with Little Richard and the young guitarist he scolded for upstaging him, Jimi Hendrix.But soon after his father’s 1966 death, Nash tired of the group’s strict parameters. When he first sang with Stills and Crosby in California, he knew his future lay in its libertine lifestyle. He fell in love with Mitchell. His mother didn’t realize he had left the Hollies, his first marriage and England altogether until a copy of Crosby, Stills & Nash’s debut LP arrived, a chart-topping postcard home. The split blindsided Clarke, especially because Nash refused to tell him directly.“I really believed, in my mid-70s, ‘I’m coming to the end of my life. It’s all finished,’” Nash said. “I wanted to wear my heart on my sleeve, as I try and always do.”Daniel Arnold for The New York Times“He was my brother, really, and he had gone and fallen in love with someone else,” Clarke said, shrugging in a video interview. “I had a family, and I was devastated. What was going to happen to me now?”That ceaseless need for reinvention — bordering perhaps on an obsession with relevance — has threaded together Nash’s career and life. He indulged drum machines and synths for his lampooned 1986 album “Innocent Eyes” (perhaps not coincidentally, his final solo album for 16 years). He used augmented reality for a prescient but lambasted high-tech concert series a decade later. A zealous photographer and art collector, Nash was an early adopter of fine-art digital prints, an enduring side enterprise.He was a self-professed cad during his first marriage, ultimately leading him to Mitchell. He has always believed he should have proposed to her in the early ’70s, but she worried he wanted her to play housekeeper to his rock star. (“Am I going to tell Joni Mitchell not to write?” he scoffed, loudly, in the cafe. “Get real here.”) In the half-century since they split, he’s never forgotten to send her birthday flowers.But for the final eight years of his 38-year marriage to the actress Susan Sennett, he was not in love, something he said they both acknowledged. In 2014, he met the artist Amy Grantham, four decades his junior, backstage at a Crosby, Stills & Nash show during one of their final tours. In that first moment, he realized happiness was again possible. He told Sennett about the attraction, and they split two years later. Sennett died soon after Nash and Grantham’s 2019 Woodstock wedding.From left: John Sebastian, Nash, Joni Mitchell, Crosby and Stephen Stills onstage at the Big Sur Folk Festival in September 1969.Robert Altman/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty ImagesIn the acrimonious annals of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Nash generally seemed the best-adjusted, least controversial member. He quit hard drugs relatively early and devoted decades to charity. For some, his divorce and remarriage represented a heel turn. But, he reiterated, it was worth it.“I’ve never been upset with any major decision I have made,” he said, noting that he did regret missing his parents’ deaths. “I have enjoyed my life and made some incredibly correct decisions for me. I hope to be going on for a few more years yet.”After a lifetime of restlessness, “Now” feels remarkably content, as if Nash has slipped into a favorite old overcoat to find a cache of new tunes stuffed inside a pocket. There are political jeremiads that decry “MAGA tourists,” plus a next-generation hymn that echoes “Teach Your Children.” He wrote “Buddy’s Back,” a glowing celebration of the Hollies forebear, for Clarke; they cut different takes for their respective albums, joyously closing a broken boyhood circle.Love songs for Grantham shape nearly half the album, gentle and guileless tunes that glow. “It Feels Like Home” is “Our House” recast for the East Coast, Nash walking through the door to find “the answer to a prayer.” He apologizes for lashing out during “Love of Mine,” a true-to-life mea culpa after Grantham told him to stop clogging Manhattan sidewalks. “Now” unspools in hard-won tranquillity.“I really believed, in my mid-70s, ‘I’m coming to the end of my life. It’s all finished,’” he said. “In many ways, Amy saved my life. I wanted to wear my heart on my sleeve, as I try and always do.”As Nash relaxed on that sunny porch, he pulled up the sleeves of his black T-shirt to reveal three tattoos. There was the Hindu god Ganesha below his left shoulder, his ex-wife below his right. He lingered longer on his left forearm, where the black ink of the vegvisir, often called the “Viking compass,” was fading.“It’s so I don’t get lost,” he said, lifting his gaze and grinning. “But it might be upside down, so who knows?”Daniel Arnold for The New York Times More

The 19-year-old musician made his New York Philharmonic debut with a powerful yet poetic performance of Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto.“He plays like a dream,” we say about musicians we like, meaning simply that they’re very good.But when I say that Yunchan Lim, the 19-year-old pianist who made a galvanizing debut with the New York Philharmonic at David Geffen Hall on Wednesday, played like a dream, I mean something more literal.I mean that there was, in his performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3, the juxtaposition of precise clarity and expansive reverie; the vivid scenes and bursts of wit; the sense of contrasting yet organically developing moods; the endless and persuasive bendings of time — the qualities that tend to characterize nighttime wanderings of the mind.This dreamy concert was among Lim’s first major professional performances outside his native South Korea, though he is already world-famous for this concerto. His blazing account of it secured his victory last June as the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition’s youngest-ever winner, and the video of that appearance has been viewed millions of times on YouTube.That is, of course, hardly a guarantee of quality; there are many overhyped artists who go viral. But Lim’s preternaturally poised and poetic, tautly exciting Rachmaninoff deserved the clicks.He was not scheduled to join the Philharmonic this season; this weekend was supposed to bring Shostakovich’s mighty “Leningrad” Symphony. But when the conductor Tugan Sokhiev canceled in December — pretty much the last minute in the glacially planned world of classical music — a new program was brought in with Lim and, on the podium, James Gaffigan.Next season, Lim will do solo Chopin on Carnegie Hall’s main stage, but catching him now was a coup for the Philharmonic. On Wednesday, he played the Rachmaninoff concerto, one of the most difficult and popular in the repertoire, with clean, confident technique; silkily smooth tone; and rare relish in passages of sprightly humor. (Who knew this piece was so funny?)Lim’s playing had a quietly, calmly penetrating lucidity that made his sound especially simpatico with the winds, as in his subtle interplay in the first movement with the oboe and, in the finale, with the flute.But he was unafraid of power. In his hands, the great, pounding first-movement cadenza was granitic, though never sludgy. And at the highest reaches of the piano, he had pinging intensity. By the end of the piece, his upper body was jackknifing toward the keys at flourishes, with his left foot stomping.Especially given the acoustics of the renovated Geffen Hall — which don’t immediately place soloists in sonic boldface, rather integrating them into the ensemble — this was very much a duet with a Philharmonic that played under Gaffigan with transparency, warmth and restraint.Some of the best moments were the quietest ones: In the third movement, the passage in which the piano plays as the strings lightly tap with their bows gave the effect of a snow globe, air full of swirling ice crystals. All in all, this was the kind of performance that made me want to hear how it develops over the course of a weekend, as these players and Lim get even more comfortable with each other.Oh, and the concert had a first half, too: an instrumental arrangement of Valentin Silvestrov’s tender choral “Prayer for Ukraine” and a rare, excellent rendition of Prokofiev’s Third Symphony, from the late 1920s.For New York opera lovers, there was some poignancy to hearing this symphony, since Prokofiev drew its musical material from his memorably extreme “The Fiery Angel,” the Metropolitan Opera premiere of which was canceled (and not rescheduled) during the pandemic. Gaffigan — throughout the concert, drawing out playing that was controlled and urgent but also delicate and natural — emphasized the eerily seductive beauties of this grand, colorful, astringent score, with all its subdued sourness and shivery anxiety.The Prokofiev alone would have made Wednesday’s program a highlight of the Philharmonic’s season, but it’s understandable if many in the audience will think immediately of Lim when they recall this concert. If certain of his phrases in the Rachmaninoff could have relaxed just a shade more, his encores — yes, plural — were pure eloquent serenity.The second, a Lyadov prelude, was lovely. But the first, Liszt’s arrangement for piano of “Pace non trovo,” one of his songs to Petrarch texts, was more than that: wistful yet fresh, altogether elegant.He played it like a dream.New York PhilharmonicThis program continues through Friday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

The pop superstar opened her first solo tour in seven years in Stockholm and performed tracks from her acclaimed 2022 album, but left most of the choreography to her dancers.They came from Iceland, Portugal, Switzerland, Detroit. Dressed in “alien superstar” chic — rhinestone boots and disco-ready, glittery cowboy hats — a huge crowd gathered on Wednesday at the Friends Arena, their cheers reaching an almost deafening pitch as a woman gradually emerged from below, lights bouncing off the sequins on her outfit.Beyoncé was back onstage.The singer, style icon and heroine of the global BeyHive fan community is on the road solo for the first time in seven years with her Renaissance World Tour, which opened on Wednesday in Sweden with elaborate visuals but with unusual physical restraint from Beyoncé herself.Onstage at the 50,000-capacity arena in Stockholm, she appeared flanked by dancers and backed by a live band, performing for three hours before a giant screen that displayed a constantly morphing tableau that was part retrofuturism and part disco fantasia. At one point, the 41-year-old artist traded dance moves with a pair of giant robot arms; at another, an image of a silvery alien dancer in heels hovered over a disco ball.But for one of pop’s ultimate dancing queens, Beyoncé’s performance was far less physical than on past tours. She often seemed to keep her feet stationary while shaking her upper body, and appeared to favor one leg. She spent much of one song sitting atop a prop.Fans came from around the globe, drawn in part by the more affordable ticket prices in Sweden.Felix Odell for The New York TimesThe star’s eagle-eyed fan community speculated online that the singer was injured. A spokeswoman for Beyoncé did not respond to questions about her performance.Kristin Hulden, a Swedish fashion student who was wearing an embroidered jacket she had made that depicted Beyoncé riding a horse (the image on the cover of her latest album, “Renaissance”), said she had noticed the star’s more limited movement, but it hadn’t bothered her. “The show was so great,” she said. “The dancers, the visual — it never stopped.” Like many fans at the opening-night gig, she will attend several shows on the tour, returning to Friends Arena on Thursday and then heading to Hamburg, Germany, in June. “I’m very excited,” she added.Competition for tickets to pop’s biggest, priciest concerts has been stiff, and many in the crowd had traveled far — even thousands of miles — to guarantee that they would see Beyoncé this time. (Thanks in part to favorable exchange rates, tickets in Sweden ended up being far cheaper than in the United States or Britain, costing between 650 and 1,495 Swedish kronor, or about $63 to $146.)Rhoyle Ivy King, 26, an actor wearing a fluorescent turquoise jumpsuit and shades, said before the show that he had come from Los Angeles for the concert, spending about $2,500. “Anything for mother,” he said. “Seriously.”Beyoncé has not toured on her own since her Formation outing in 2016, following the release of her pop-culture-dominating “Lemonade.” In 2018, she performed at the Coachella festival and hit the road with her husband, Jay-Z, for their joint On the Run II Tour.Because Beyoncé offered few visual cues for her “Renaissance” era beyond her album artwork, fans came decked out in looks inspired by the disco cowboy aesthetic she nodded to there. The new tour is for “Renaissance,” a homage to decades of Black queer dance music. The LP, her seventh solo release, opened at No. 1 last summer, and its single “Break My Soul” became her first solo No. 1 hit since “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” in 2008.It was, notably, the first Beyoncé album in nearly a decade to arrive without a full suite of accompanying videos. Starting with her surprise self-titled LP in 2013, the singer has become synonymous with elaborately choreographed and highly produced visual pieces.On Wednesday, she revealed several futuristic fashion choices: an iridescent-effect minidress; a shimmery gold bodysuit festooned with black opera gloves covering strategic locations; a black-and-silver suit that resembled royal armor. At one point, Beyoncé was dressed in sci-fi bee chic: a yellow-and-black leotard with cutouts and sharp angles, and knee-high black boots. The cyborg theme was fully reflected at the merch stands, with T-shirts, hoodies and totes carrying images of Beyoncé in silvery, “Metropolis”-like robot costumes.The set list featured songs from her debut solo album from 2003 (“Crazy in Love”), her 2008 double album “I Am … Sasha Fierce” (“Diva”), her 2011 LP “4” (including “Love on Top,” which Beyoncé let the crowd finish for her) and her self-titled 2013 release (“Drunk in Love”), alongside a host of tracks from “Renaissance,” including “Move,” “America Has a Problem” and “Cozy.” For the closer, “Summer Renaissance,” the singer sat atop a silver horse that was hoisted from the rafters and then ascended above the crowd by herself, sporting a grand, sparkling cape.Beyoncé has not toured on her own since her Formation outing in 2016, following the release of her album “Lemonade.”Felix Odell for The New York TimesIn February, Beyoncé announced the Renaissance tour by simply posting an image to social media. Three months earlier, the demand for tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour had led to a Ticketmaster meltdown, leaving many fans frustrated and calling for Washington to examine the outsize market power of Ticketmaster and its corporate parent, Live Nation.To handle the ticketing for Beyoncé’s tour — which is being promoted by Beyoncé’s company, Parkwood Entertainment, and produced by Live Nation — Ticketmaster had an elaborate plan that included rolling out sales in batches, rather than all at once, and the process went far more smoothly.Still, Beyoncé drew controversy this year when she performed a private show at a luxury hotel in Dubai, in United Arab Emirates, where homosexuality is illegal. “Renaissance” draws heavily on dance music of the 1990s and L.G.B.T.Q. culture; at the Friends Arena, signs denoted some “gender neutral restrooms” in the official tour font.Oless Mauigoa, 35, had traveled from Salt Lake City and said that “Renaissance” had made him desperate to see the show. “I feel like it’s dedicated to a lot of gay styles,” he said. “I’m connected to it more than anything she’s done.”Beyoncé played into those connections throughout the show, nodding to the ballroom and vogueing culture that inspired “Renaissance” at the end of the night by giving the stage over to her dancers, who tried to outperform each other to rousing cheers.Beyoncé’s tour continues in Stockholm on Thursday and then arrives in London for five shows at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, starting May 29. Its North American leg will open in Toronto on July 9, will head to MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., on July 29 and 30 and will close in New Orleans at the Caesars Superdome on Sept. 27. More

NASHVILLE — The spoils of fame are coming fast for the emerging country star Bailey Zimmerman. The Texas singer-songwriter Cody Johnson gave him a standing offer to come ride horses at his ranch. The Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger flew him on a private plane to his home in Canada to spend some time writing songs. The guitar whiz Gary Clark Jr. and the singing ex-rapper Jelly Roll partied with him backstage at the CMT Awards.Recently, Kid Rock had him over for dinner at his ranch outside Nashville.“He freestyled for us at dinner and we went in and he showed us his pool and his bowling alley and all his guns,” Zimmerman said last month, still a little awe-struck, enthusiastically sipping a Bacardi and Coke at the bar at Topgolf. “He let me do a TikTok in one of the bars!”Zimmerman, 23, is boisterous and amiable, openhearted and still a little stupefied by it all. Only two and a half years have passed since he first posted a clip of himself singing one verse of an original song — his first ever — to TikTok, went to bed, and woke up to a million views. Now, he’s got the No. 1 song at country radio, “Rock and a Hard Place”; is the first opening act on the current Morgan Wallen stadium tour; and is on the cusp of releasing his debut album on Friday, the comfortably bruising and appealingly bruised “Religiously. The Album.”But this is how Nashville works now, at least sometimes. Social media is increasingly dictating how country music is evolving, and sometimes that’s in unexpected, lightly chaotic directions.“I never wanted to be, like, ‘country,’” Zimmerman said earlier that day, at the East Nashville home belonging to his producer Austin Shawn, where he records all of his music, cutting vocals in a closet. “Whatever I want to make that day, that’s what I want to be. Some days you’ll see me in penny loafers and then sometimes you’ll see me in Air Force 1s.”He was indeed wearing Air Force 1s, gray ones. (He started sporting them — he tries not to wear the same pair twice — when his manager suggested he needed to step up from the Vans he used to favor.) He’d paired them with a lightly distressed denim jacket and jeans. His longish, tousled hair was swept back under a black cap with a BZ logo (which he’d later sign and give to the Topgolf staff for a charity auction) and a BZ diamond pendant on a chain around his neck.“You know, I can go to a farm and put boots on and take care of 500 head of cattle and do all that,” he said. “But I just don’t, like, act ‘country’ I guess. You know what I’m saying?”Zimmerman is a modern country star in a hybrid mold. He has a rigorously raspy voice, and sings with power he’s mainlined from his primary influences, many of which are rock acts: Nickelback, Three Days Grace, Foo Fighters and, most crucially, the Southern-rock bruisers Hinder — bands that specialize in puffed-chest emoting. Zimmerman’s favorite band is the melodic hard rock outfit Tesla. (He recently enthusiastically posted a video online of the frontman Jeff Keith singing the hook of “Rock and a Hard Place.”)“The TikTok and the Instagram, me doing that every day, that is the brand, of course,” Zimmerman said. Eric Ryan Anderson for The New York TimesAt Topgolf, the music was blasting loudly and the songs Zimmerman had the most electrified reaction to were the pop-punk anthem “My Own Worst Enemy” by the sleaze-rock band Lit, and the unruly glam plosion “Time to Pretend” by MGMT.But he is also clearly an inheritor of Nashville’s recent crop of shaggy-at-the-edges superstars — singers like the powerhouse Luke Combs, or the genre’s reigning titan, Wallen, who have collectively iterated beyond the boyfriend and gentleman country of the mid-2010s, and whose songwriting and commitment to genre mark them as somewhat more traditional than the bro-country breakouts of the early 2010s.Shawn said that “the door has been opened” by artists like Combs and Wallen, “even people like Zach Bryan and Tyler Childers.” Shawn, who produced or co-produced every song on the album, added, “Is he a country singer? Or a rock singer? Or a folk/Americana singer with a little bit of a gritty edge?”Those lines are blurry in Nashville’s contemporary mainstream. Given that pre-existing context, Zimmerman has floated to the top of Nashville’s rising class with remarkable ease and speed. The ascent has been even more remarkable given his starting point. Zimmerman is from Louisville, Ill., a town in the Southern part of the state with a population of just over 1,000 and proximate to not much. (“A two-hour drive to get to a mall to go school shopping.”) His father owned a trucking business and repossessed vehicles; his mother owned the family car dealership with Zimmerman’s grandfather and uncle.When Zimmerman struck out on his own, he took on some of the hardest physical labor available: working on natural gas pipelines in West Virginia. “The gnarliest most chaotic work,” he said. “Screaming, yelling, breaking stuff. Hard hats, walkie talkies, whatever they had in their hands, they’d chuck it at you. Like, you’d walk home with black eyes, bruises from people chucking drinks on you and just belittling you.” On one particularly unpleasant assignment, he was fired in a series of events that included a coffee thrown in his face, a broken shovel wielded as a weapon and a brawl in the living room of his abode that smashed the coffee table.Even still, he maintains a soft spot for the work. “I was so into pipeline, man. Like, I loved working hard. I’ve always loved working hard. Like, I loved getting my hands dirty and coming home and having oil on my face,” he said. “I just felt like, man, there’s no possible way I’m going to ever make it out of this. I’m going to be 65, 70 years old, hips broken, back broken, still have nothing to show for it.”He moved home and began custom building lifted trucks — pickup trucks with super tall wheels — and posted videos about them on TikTok, eventually amassing a respectable 60,000 followers. In his earliest TikToks, his hair is prim and short, and he has braces on his teeth.One day in late 2020 Gavin Lucas, a high school acquaintance who wrote songs, heard Zimmerman singing on Snapchat and was impressed. For a couple of weeks, they fiddled around and eventually, on Christmas night, wrote a verse for a new song. The resulting TikTok changed both of their lives — Zimmerman resigned from his union the following day. Within a couple of weeks, they had finished the song — the rowdy country-rock number “Never Comin’ Home” — Googled information on how to record songs, and driven to Nashville to cut it in a real studio, splitting the $3,000 cost. (Zimmerman borrowed his half from his mother.)Attention came at a disorienting speed. When Zimmerman first met Chief Zaruk, an industry insider who would become one of his managers, “I thought he was the mayor of Nashville, ’cause that’s how everybody introduced him on the Zoom call,” Zimmerman said. “I’m just like, man, why is the mayor of Nashville trying to sign me? This makes no sense.”But the kismet continued. “Morgan was one of the first artists I ever met. He was walking up to Big Loud just randomly,” Zimmerman said, referring to offices for the label and management company. “And he was like, ‘Hey man, I’m a big fan of your song ‘Fall in Love.’ And I’m like, holy crap!” He continued, “Morgan has just been such a big part of my life since 2015, since 16, ‘Up Down,’ ‘Chain Smokin’’ and ‘Spin You Around.’ All that stuff has just been my life.”Zimmerman currently has the No. 1 song at country radio, “Rock and a Hard Place.”Eric Ryan Anderson for The New York TimesLast October, he released his debut EP, “Leave the Light On,” which remains in the Top 50 of the all-genre Billboard album chart. This is owing to his success at radio, but also to Zimmerman’s relentless presence on TikTok and Instagram. He is his own best promoter, and his success underscores how even Nashville, the most hidebound of music industry towns, is increasingly powerless against the tide of social media.Lucas said that Zimmerman’s attitude has been crucial to the speed of his success. “I love how excited he gets and how much he jumps the gun,” he said of Zimmerman’s no-brakes ascent. “I don’t think we’d be where we are today if Bailey wasn’t that enthusiastic. I know we wouldn’t.”“The TikTok and the Instagram, me doing that every day, that is the brand, of course,” Zimmerman said. “That is the company. And now it’s like, whoa, whoa, whoa, label, hold on. I now have an avenue of my own to make me successful by myself.” That said, TikTok provides, and TikTok takes away, as seen in Zimmerman’s first true public fumble — a viral video of him singing woefully off-pitch at a recent concert. But rather than duck it, Zimmerman posted through the embarrassment, apologizing for his misstep and taking his lumps with a sense of humor and as much enthusiasm as when he posts about a new song.“I heard a saying the other day, and I’m living by that now,” he said. “Dogs don’t bark at parked cars.”And so he’ll keep speeding. Sometimes literally, in the white 2023 Corvette with a red interior that he bought in cash after “Fall in Love” went to No. 1 at country radio, his first splurge. (He also has an even taller truck than his old one that’s in the shop being built to spec.)“I try to keep my sins to a limit, of course, always,” he said. “But of course, dude, I cuss every day. I drink, I smoke, I harm my temple.” And so he’s also taken to the trappings of being a star who needs to perform at a high level — vitamin IV drips, injections of the anti-inflammatory treatment N.A.D.+ and cryotherapy. He’s put both of his parents on his payroll, and is trying to encourage his uncle Brent, whose guitar Zimmerman used to practice on as a child, to become a full-time songwriter.Unexpected things keep happening to him — most recently, it’s the chaotic cross-genre collaboration on the soundtrack of the upcoming “Fast X” film “Won’t Back Down,” with the Irish crooner Dermot Kennedy and the prolific rapper YoungBoy Never Broke Again, making for a trio of blood-letter vocalists — but Zimmerman still prefers to operate as if there are no guarantees.He recalled playing one of his first songs for his father. “You need to chase this,” he said his father told him.“He’s like, ‘I wasted my whole life not chasing nothing, man. You need to chase something.’” More

With a song inspired by the bravery of Ukrainian soldiers, the pop group Tvorchi sees the beloved, often campy global song competition as a serious opportunity to represent their country.Whenever their rehearsals for the Eurovision Song Contest were interrupted by air raid sirens, the Ukrainian pop duo Tvorchi would race to the safety of underground bunkers, sometimes wearing their matching stage outfits.While recording a video in Kyiv of their contest entry, “Heart of Steel,” they lost electricity, sending them on a hunt for generators.But they are quick to stress that those inconveniences have been minor compared with what others are going through.“Everyone can meet hard and difficult times,” said Andrii Hutsuliak, 27, who formed the group with the singer Jimoh Augustus Kehinde, 26, describing what has become the theme of their song. “We just wanted to say, be a stronger and better version of yourself.”They are about to get a chance to project that message at the world’s largest, glitziest and, often, campiest song contest: Eurovision, in which entrants from countries across Europe and beyond are facing off Saturday on a broadcast that is expected to draw some 160 million global viewers, making it the world’s most-watched cultural event.This year’s contest should have been held in Ukraine because the country’s entrant last year, Kalush Orchestra, won with an upbeat track that mixed rap and traditional folk music. But with Russia’s bombardment of Ukraine continuing, the host city was switched to Liverpool, in England.Tvorchi, which means “creative,” won the right to represent Ukraine after performing “Heart of Steel” at a Eurovision selection contest staged in a metro station deep below Kyiv, out of reach of Russian bombs. They were flanked by backup dancers wearing gas masks, and images of nuclear warning signs flashed on screens behind them.“It still feels kind of unreal,” Hutsuliak said as he prepared to leave for Liverpool.Known now as a sprawling television extravaganza with wild costumes, eclectic mixes of acts and over-the-top performances, Eurovision began in 1956 as a way of uniting Europe after World War II. As it has grown — and expanded beyond Europe, with entries from Israel and Australia — it has often reflected wider political and social issues.Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has taken the contest’s entanglement with politics to new heights. The European Broadcasting Union, which organizes the contest, banned Russia from competing immediately after its invasion of Ukraine. The Ukrainian victory at last year’s Eurovision, awarded by a mix of jury and public votes, was widely seen as a show of solidarity with the besieged nation.In Ukraine, which has won top honors three times since making its Eurovision debut in 2003, the contest has long been hugely popular and valued as a way for the nation to align itself culturally with Europe. Now it is also seen as a way to keep Europe’s attention focused on the war.As Hutsuliak and Kehinde sat down for an interview at a hip restaurant in central Kyiv called Honey, they apologized for having had to delay the meeting by a day, explaining that they had some urgent business: securing the paperwork that men of fighting age need to exit the country so they could travel to Liverpool.Their song “Heart of Steel” was inspired, Hutsuliak said, by the soldiers who worked to defend the now-ruined city of Mariupol in southern Ukraine, holding out months longer than anyone imagined possible. The soldiers made their final stand at the sprawling Azovstal steel plant.Hutsuliak said he clearly remembered the online clips that soldiers filmed of their defense.“When I saw these videos, I saw people with strength, staying solid even in the most terrible conditions,” he added. Soon afterward, the pair wrote the track with lyrics seemingly aimed at invading Russians.“Get out of my way,” Kehinde sings. “’Cause I got a heart of steel.”When Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February last year, martial law meant that Hutsuliak couldn’t leave, while Kehinde, a Nigerian citizen originally from Lagos, could. His mother, panicked, called him on the morning Russia started bombing Ukrainian cities and urged him to get out.“That day I think I had 25 to 30 relatives call me,” Kehinde recalled. “They wanted me to leave.”Tvorchi performed in a train station in Kyiv last month. Their Eurovision track, “Heart of Steel,” is inspired by Ukrainian soldiers. Zoya Shu/Associated PressKehinde, whose stage name is Jeffery Kenny, visited his mother in Nigeria for a week — “because she wouldn’t stop panicking,” he said — but then quickly returned, as he’d built a life in Ternopil, a city in western Ukraine. At first he thought the war would last only a few months, but then the reality of the conflict set in.The band would never have formed if Kehinde had not made the unusual decision to move, in December 2013, to Ukraine for college to study for a pharmacy degree. As one of the few Black people in Ternopil, Kehinde stood out, he recalled, but that proved instrumental to the band’s formation. One day, Hutsuliak introduced himself and asked if he could practice his English, promising that Kehinde could try out his Ukrainian in return.The pair soon became friends, and a year later, at Hutsuliak’s birthday party, they decided to try making music together, with Kehinde singing mostly in English but also in Ukrainian. At first it was just a hobby, but they’ve gone on to release four albums and pick up awards.Tvorchi in Amsterdam. The duo had to secure special paperwork to leave Ukraine at a time when men of fighting age are forbidden to leave.Melissa Schriek for The New York TimesMany of their early tracks were love songs, but the invasion led them to write a series of more intense tracks including “Heart of Steel” and “Freedom,” which has defiant lyrics including “These walls / You can’t break them down.” Those songs were not written with Eurovision in mind, but in December the pair competed in a live contest in Kyiv to become Ukraine’s entry.Tvorchi has also supported Ukraine by playing concerts on the back of trucks for troops and partnering with United24, a Ukrainian charity, to raise money to buy incubators for premature newborns in the country’s strained hospitals.The concert that got them to Eurovision, performed in a metro station where Russian bombs couldn’t interrupt the acts, was surreal, Kehinde recalled. Trains sped past throughout rehearsals and the final event.“I thought more than once, ‘What in the world is going on right now?’” Kehinde said. But when he watched the broadcast later, he was amazed to discover it looked like a professional studio, with lighting and graphics.The pair didn’t expect to win, but they became Ukraine’s choice. Ever since, they have been trying to live up to that decision, which they called an honor.This year, they reworked their track a little to make it even more representative of the country. While Eurovision songs are frequently sung in English, the version of “Heart of Steel” that will be performed on Saturday now contains a section in Ukrainian.“Despite the pain, I continue my fight,” Kehinde sings during it. “The world is on fire, but you should act.” More

Traveling the nation to discover little-known performers for the Arhoolie label, which he founded in 1960, he earned a nickname: El Fanático.Chris Strachwitz, who traveled in search of the roots of American music with the eagerness of a pilgrim, discovered traditional musicians with the skill of a detective, promoted their careers with the zeal of an ideologue and guarded their work with the care of a historian, died on Friday at an assisted living facility in San Rafael, Calif. He was 91.The cause was congestive heart failure, his brother, Hubert, said.Mr. Strachwitz (pronounced STRACK-wits) specialized in music passed down over generations — cotton-field music, orange-orchard music, mountain music, bayou music, barroom music, porch music. The songs came not only from before the era of the music industry but even from before the existence of mass culture itself.Like other leading musical folklorists of the modern recording era — among them Moses Asch, Alan Lomax and Harry Smith — Mr. Strachwitz rescued parts of that history before they vanished.But the extent of his devotion and the idiosyncrasy of his passions defy comparison.Mr. Strachwitz was the founder of Arhoolie Records (the name comes from a term for field hollers). In addition to recruiting his own artists, he did his own field recordings, music editing, production, liner notes, advertising and sales. In the company’s early years, he affixed the labels to the records and mailed them himself.He was a lifelong bachelor who said that having a family would have thwarted his career. On his journeys around the country to record new music, he had for company a manually operated orange juicer and 20-pound bags of oranges. The targets of his search included a highway grass cutter, a gravedigger and a janitor, all of whose musical talents were at the time basically unknown.He emigrated from Germany after growing up as a teenage count under Nazi rule and went on to explore the fullest reaches of American pluralism. He took an interest not just in the standard roots repertory of folk and blues, but also in norteño, Cajun, zydeco, klezmer, Hawaiian steel guitar, Ukrainian fiddle, Czech polka and Irish dance music, among countless other genres.To account for what united his passions, Mr. Strachwitz said he liked music that was “pure,” “hard-core” and “old-timey,” particularly if one of the musicians had a “spark.” His language grew more colorful when he defined his type of music negatively.“It ain’t wimpy, that’s for sure,” he said in a 2014 documentary about him. The movie took its title from Mr. Strachwitz’s ultimate insult, which he used to refer to anything that he considered commercial, artificial and soulless: “This Ain’t No Mouse Music!”The first Arhoolie album, released in 1960, was “Texas Sharecropper and Songster,” by the blues singer Mance Lipscomb. It vaulted Mr. Lipscomb into prominence during the 1960s folk revival.The first Arhoolie record, released in 1960, was “Texas Sharecropper and Songster,” by the blues singer Mance Lipscomb. Mr. Lipscomb’s music had never been recorded, and the new release vaulted him into prominence during the 1960s folk revival. Mr. Strachwitz went on to help revive the careers of other blues singers, including Lightnin’ Hopkins, Mississippi Fred McDowell and Big Mama Thornton.As both a record executive and a record collector, he made a particularly profound historical contribution to norteño, music from the Texas-Mexico border. The Smithsonian Institution last year called his archive of Mexican and Mexican American music “the largest collection of commercially produced vernacular recordings of its kind in existence,” noting that it contained many records that are “irreplaceable.”It was the result of about 60 years of collecting — yet Mr. Strachwitz never learned to speak Spanish. Norteño musicians nicknamed him El Fanático.Mr. Strachwitz might have been considered a preservationist, but he also shaped the worlds that he documented. That was particularly true of his recordings of Cajun musicians In 2000, the rock historian Ed Ward wrote in The New York Times that Mr. Strachwitz “helped prod the culture into what is now a full-blown renaissance.”Perhaps his most notable discovery in Louisiana was Clifton Chenier, who became known as the leading exponent of the mix of rhythm and blues, soul and Cajun music known as zydeco. During a visit to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival as an older man, Mr. Chenier discussed his frustrations with the record industry.“They wanted you to do what they wanted you to do, and I didn’t like that,” Mr. Chenier said. “Then I met Chris.”Mr. Strachwitz with Clifton Chenier, who was known as the king of zydeco. Other record companies “wanted you to do what they wanted you to do, and I didn’t like that,” Mr. Chenier said. “Then I met Chris.”via Arhoolie FoundationMainstream musicians also saw something exceptional in Mr. Strachwitz. In a 2010 profile of Mr. Strachwitz in The Times, the guitarist Ry Cooder said that Arhoolie’s second release, “Tough Times,” an LP by the blues musician Big Joe Williams, “started me on a path of living, the path I am still on.”Christian Alexander Maria Strachwitz was born on July 1, 1931, in Berlin. He grew up on a country estate called Gross Reichenau, located in what was then the Lower Silesia region of Germany (it is now a village called Bogaczow in southwest Poland). His father, Alexander Graf Strachwitz, and his mother, Friederike (von Bredow) Strachwitz, ran a vegetable and grain farm of about a couple hundred acres. The men of the family had the royal title of count.The family lived in a manor originally built during the time of Frederick the Great, the king of Prussia. The Nazis appointed Chris’s father a local game warden, and during World War II he joined the military and attained the rank of captain, though Hubert Strachwitz said his service was limited to escorting troop transports bound for Italy. On the family’s bucolic ancestral property, the war seemed far away to young Chris.That changed in February 1945. The family fled as the Russians invaded the estate. Chris and two of his sisters had left shortly beforehand on a train; his father escaped in a horse and buggy; Hubert, Chris’s other two sisters and his mother left on a tractor-trailer. Thanks to a wealthy relative in the United States, the family was able to reunite in Reno, Nev., by 1947.Chris served in the U.S. Army from 1954 to 1956. Soon after being honorably discharged, he graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a bachelor’s degree in political science. He taught high school German in the suburbs of San Jose for several years.In his free time, Mr. Strachwitz collected records, and he developed a particular interest in Lightnin’ Hopkins, whom he struggled to learn more about. There was no public information about whether Mr. Hopkins was even still alive.Mr. Strachwitz going through the Arhoolie archives in El Cerrito, Calif., in 2010.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesIn 1959, a fellow music enthusiast told Mr. Strachwitz that he had found the bluesman in Houston. When the school year ended, Mr. Strachwitz went on a road trip.He later recalled that he found Mr. Hopkins playing in “a little beer joint” — improvising songs in a conversational style, telling a woman in the crowd to quiet down, wondering in song about the man from California who had traveled all the way to Texas “to hear poor Lightnin’ sing.”Mr. Strachwitz believed that nobody had ever recorded a scene like that live. Following a tip from one of Mr. Hopkins’s songs, he returned to Texas the next year and found Mr. Lipscomb. This time, he brought a recorder.Meeting musicians where they lived and recording them where they liked to play, rather than in a studio, became Mr. Strachwitz’s signature style.He found unexpected commercial success when Country Joe and the Fish performed their “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag” at Woodstock in 1969. Joe McDonald, the band’s lead singer and principal songwriter, had used Mr. Strachwitz’s equipment to record the song back in 1965 and given him publishing rights in exchange. With his share of the royalties, Mr. Strachwitz put a down payment on a building in El Cerrito, Calif., near Berkeley, that became the home of Arhoolie and a record outlet he called the Down Home Music Store.Aside from recording music, he drew attention to the artists he loved by collaborating with the filmmaker Les Blank on several music documentaries.As the record industry declined, Mr. Strachwitz focused on a nonprofit arm of Arhoolie that digitizes and exhibits his singular record collection. In 2016, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, the nonprofit label of the Smithsonian Institution, acquired the Arhoolie catalog.In addition to his brother, Mr. Strachwitz is survived by three sisters, Rosy Schlueter, Barbara Steward and Frances Strachwitz.There was one word Mr. Strachwitz often used to describe success in his field. When he found an aged master of traditional music playing a song at a resonant time and place, he called it, as if he were hunting butterflies, a “catch.” More

As a member the 1960s band Os Mutantes and later as a solo artist, she drew a following that included Kurt Cobain, Beck and the Prince of Wales.Rita Lee, a convention-flouting titan of Brazilian music who emerged with the seminal experimental band Os Mutantes and went on to become a solo star known widely as her country’s Queen of Rock, died on Monday at her home in São Paulo. She was 75.Her death was announced in a statement posted on her Instagram account. She had been receiving treatments for lung cancer, which she learned she had in 2021.With Os Mutantes, Ms. Lee was a product of the tropicália movement (also known as tropicalismo), an anti-authoritarian Brazilian cultural flowering that started in the late 1960s. She ultimately became a commercial powerhouse, selling a reported 55 million records over a career that stretched over half a century.As a solo artist, she churned out a string of hits in the 1970s, among then “Ovelha Negra” (“Black Sheep”) and “Mania de Você” (“Mania For You”), that became enduring classics. She was accompanied by the band Tutti Frutti in her early years, and later, by her husband, Roberto de Carvalho.In 2001, Ms. Lee took home a Latin Grammy Award for best Portuguese-language rock or alternative album for “3001.”Her reach was global. Kurt Cobain, David Byrne and Beck are among the many musical innovators who hailed the subversive oeuvre of Os Mutantes. In 1988, King Charles III, then the Prince of Wales, requested one of her records for a dance at a banquet at the British Embassy in Paris. He was said to know the words “by heart,” according to The Daily Mirror.But she was no pop confection. After a troubled and rebellious youth, she was arrested in 1976 for marijuana possession and held up as a cautionary tale by Brazil’s military dictatorship. She also made multiple trips to treatment facilities for drug and alcohol use.In 2001, Ms. Lee’s “3001” won a Latin Grammy Award for best Portuguese-language rock or alternative album.Amanda Perobelli/ReutersIrreverent and candid, Ms. Lee carried herself with rock-star swagger. (After her cancer diagnosis, the mordant Ms. Lee nicknamed her tumor Jair, a jab at Brazil’s incendiary president at the time, Jair Bolsonaro.)As one of the few female rockers to play guitar onstage in the 1960s, and as a solo artist who explored sexuality from a woman’s point of view, Ms. Lee was hailed as a feminist hero. When informed of Ms. Lee’s death during a Senate commission hearing, Brazil’s cultural minister, the singer Margareth Menezes, was visibly overcome with emotion, describing Ms. Lee as a “revolutionary woman.”Ms. Lee herself was a little more blunt about her triumphs.“When we talk about feminism and all these things, I don’t really have the theory of it, I’m more of the action,” Ms. Lee said in a 2017 television interview. “They used to say that women couldn’t wear long pants. Huh? Yes, we can, I wore mine. They used to say that women couldn’t play rock. I would get my ovaries, my uterus, I’d play my rock ’n’ roll.”Rita Lee Jones was born on Dec. 31, 1947, in São Paulo, the youngest of three daughters of Charles Jones, an American-born dentist descended from Confederates who fled to Brazil after the Civil War (Rita’s middle name was inspired by Gen. Robert E. Lee), and Romilda Padula, a pianist.When she was a child, Ms. Lee recounted in “Rita Lee: Uma Autobiografia” (2016), a sewing machine repairman sexually abused her in her home, a traumatic experience that fueled her rebellious spirt. .Musically inclined, she played in several groups as a teenager and, despite her early stage fright, formed Os Mutantes (the Mutants) with the brothers Arnaldo and Sérgio Dias Baptista in 1966. In an early interview, she claimed that the band, whose name was inspired by a science fiction book called “O Planeta dos Mutantes” (“The Planet of the Mutants”), had “come from another planet to take over the world.”The band was to São Paulo “what the Grateful Dead were to San Francisco, the Velvet Underground to New York or Nirvana to Seattle,” Larry Rohter of The New York Times wrote during a comeback tour in 2007.Ms. Lee performing in São Paulo in 2012. Her songs often served as a pointed rebuke to Brazil’s authoritarian climate.Marcos Mazini/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn terms of psychedelic trappings and extravagant plumage, the band was far more Dead than Velvets, although it took the free-for-all spirit of the ’60s to absurdist levels, mixing American and British psychedelia with Brazilian genres like bossa nova, and adding electronic experimentalism and a prankster sensibility that served as a pointed rebuke to Brazil’s authoritarian climate.Os Mutantes made their mark backing Gilberto Gil at the Festival of Brazilian Popular Music in 1967. The next year the band appeared on the groundbreaking compilation album “Tropicália: Ou Panis et Circenses,” featuring songs by Mr. Gil, Caetano Veloso and other leading lights of the movement.The band’s debut album, released that same year, was sprinkled with environmental sounds, jagged guitar riffs. and other sonic detritus. It was, Rolling Stone wrote when including it in a 2013 roundup of the greatest stoner albums of all time, one of the late 1960s’ “most mischievous head trips, which is saying something.”Ms. Lee left the band to pursue a solo career after it released its fifth album, “E Seus Cometas No Pais Do Baurets” (“Mutants and their Comets in the Country of Weed”), in 1972. She retreated from the limelight after her final studio effort, “Reza” (“Prayer”), in 2012, although she did release a new song, “Change,” with her husband and the producer Gui Boratto in 2021.She is survived by her husband; her sons, Beto, João and Antônio; and two grandchildren. Her first marriage, to Arnaldo Baptista of Os Mutantes, ended in divorce in 1972.A vegan and animal rights activist, the onetime countercultural firebrand spent much of her final years “confined to my den, in a little house in the middle of the woods surrounded by animals and plants,” only going out shopping or to the dentist, she wrote in a 2020 essay for the Brazilian magazine Veja.“Today,” she added, “I do everything over the internet and pray I don’t break a tooth.” More