Music

Listen to songs by Muna, beabadoobee, Gracie Abrams and more.The pop trio Muna brought a surprise to Coachella last weekend. (It wasn’t Taylor Swift.)Tonje Thilesen for The New York TimesDear listeners,Perhaps you have heard that Taylor Swift is currently on tour.I kid. Of course you have heard about the Eras Tour — the record-setting cultural juggernaut that nearly took down Ticketmaster. The concerts started in March, but Eras Tour fever shows no sign of abating. Fans are getting married in the front rows. Entire cities have been temporarily renamed in Swift’s honor. People are camping out overnight just to buy merch. A lavender haze has officially descended upon the nation.For today’s playlist, though, let’s focus on a less discussed aspect of this tour: the strength, variety and occasional surprises of Swift’s opening acts.Nine artists will be accompanying Swift throughout all the stops of the tour, two playing per night, which gives each performance a bit of novelty and, occasionally, some fun regional specificity. (Haim, those darlings of the San Fernando Valley, are only doing West Coast dates.) The bill is a mix of obvious choices (Haim and Phoebe Bridgers, both Swift collaborators) and unexpected co-signs (the cult-favorite pop group Muna and up-and-coming indie-rocker beabadoobee are welcome surprises). Others, like the Gen-Z singer-songwriters Gracie Abrams and girl in red, represent Swift’s artistic progeny; both have cited Swift’s music as formative influences on their own and share her sharp eye for emotional detail.This playlist culls some of the best songs by my favorite of the artists opening for Swift — and one song that features a cameo from Swift herself. Her tour also includes the teen phenom Gayle (whose viral hit “Abcdefu” you have most likely heard already) and Christian Owens, a former Swift backup dancer who has released a handful of songs under the name Owenn.Even if you’re not much of a Swiftie, this playlist conveniently doubles as both an exploration of the influence that ’90s pop-rock has had on a younger generation of artists, and as a fun, breezy soundtrack for the first warm days of the year. I field-tested it on a long walk in the middle of this gorgeous week in New York for that purpose and found it highly appropriate.Also: Thanks for all your submissions suggesting your favorite workout song! I’ll be publishing some of them in Tuesday’s newsletter. If you still have one you’d like to recommend, you can submit it here.Listen along here on Spotify as you read.1. Haim: “The Steps”Is this song the clearest distillation of Sheryl Crow’s effect on millennial musicians? Is it the best song on Haim’s sprawling and fantastic 2020 album “Women in Music Part III”? How awesome was Haim’s performance of this song at the 2021 Grammys? I am up for debating any and all of these questions. (Listen on YouTube)2. beabadoobee: “Care”There are some excellent songs on “Beatopia,” the most recent release from the Filipino-British singer-songwriter beabadoobee, but this great single from 2020 is the one that first made me a fan. Even though she was born in 2000, “Care” shows how intuitively she understands something about the sort of scuzzy, anthemic indie-pop that underground labels like Slumberland Records were releasing in the ’90s. (A “Best of Slumberland Records” playlist in a future installment of The Amplifier? Now there’s an idea.) (Listen on YouTube)3. Muna featuring Phoebe Bridgers: “Silk Chiffon”Two Eras Tour openers for the price of one! Far and away my favorite song from Muna’s 2022 self-titled album, this one is pure pop bliss and a refreshing reverie of queer joy. (When the group played it last weekend at Coachella, it surprised the crowd by bringing out not just Bridgers, but also the other two members of the supergroup boygenius, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker.) (Listen on YouTube)4. Paramore: “Crave”Here’s an underappreciated highlight from Paramore’s latest album, “This Is Why.” Hayley Williams’s vocals on the chorus give me some serious Alanis Morissette vibes. (Listen on YouTube)5. Gracie Abrams: “Best”I like the dramatic pause Gracie Abrams takes toward the end of this line: “You fell hard, I thought good … riddance.” I also always appreciate a heartbreak song on which the singer takes responsibility for doing the heartbreaking. “Best” is the opening track on Abrams’s 2023 debut studio album, “Good Riddance,” on which she worked with one of Swift’s “Folklore”-era collaborators, the musician and producer Aaron Dessner. (Listen on YouTube)6. girl in red: “I’ll Call You Mine”In the years since she started posting songs online as a teenager, the Norwegian singer-songwriter Marie Ulven Ringheim, now 24, has built a devoted fan base that hangs on her every angsty, sharply observed word. When Swift told her Instagram followers she had the girl in red album “If I Could Make It Go Quiet” “on repeat” in 2021, this was the track she was listening to. (Listen on YouTube)7. Phoebe Bridgers: “Chinese Satellite”Bridgers’s “Punisher,” released in June 2020, will always be one of the albums that defined the surreal loneliness of that first pandemic summer for me. Over the years I’ve cycled through several different favorite tracks — first “Moon Song,” then “Garden Song” — but if you asked me today I’d say it’s “Chinese Satellite.” The moment when Bridgers’s wry numbness suddenly gives way to a rush of earnestness when she sings, “I’d stand on the corner, embarrassed with a picket sign, if it meant I would see you when I die” never fails to give me chills. (Listen on YouTube)8. Haim featuring Taylor Swift: “Gasoline”Is “The Steps” the best song on “Women in Music Part III”? The twist ending to this playlist is that I think it may actually be “Gasoline.” And I get the sense that Swift agrees with me, given the conviction she brings to her guest verse on this remix. Taste! (Listen on YouTube)You needn’t ask what’s wrong with that,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“The Best of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Openers” track listTrack 1: Haim, “The Steps”Track 2: beabadoobee, “Care”Track 3: Muna featuring Phoebe Bridgers, “Silk Chiffon”Track 4: Paramore, “Crave”Track 5: Gracie Abrams, “Best”Track 6: girl in red, “I’ll Call You Mine”Track 7: Phoebe Bridgers, “Chinese Satellite”Track 8: Haim featuring Taylor Swift, “Gasoline (Remix)”Bonus tracksI highly recommend this dispatch from the Eras Tour — or, more accurately, a Tampa parking lot — by my colleague Madison Malone Kircher, on Swift fans’ frenzied quest for a certain blue crew neck sweatshirt. While reading it I was alternately touched and horrified, but always entertained. Make sure you get to the kicker at the very end.Speaking of fascinating-but-depressing reporting, I also appreciate this recent essay in Vulture, in which the writer Nate Jones asks, “Why Are My Secret Spotify Songs Following Me Around?” Jones puts a finger on the precise sort of algorithmic dependency I want to combat with this newsletter in favor of more personal forms of music discovery. Jones writes, “When you love a song, you feel a sense of ownership; it can become a marker of your personal taste in a way that feels private and individual, a feeling ‘Discover Weekly’ is designed to encourage. Encountering a secret Spotify song in the world broke the spell. It made me feel like a widget too.” More

Amid rising political tensions, the orchestra said it would perform in Hong Kong and Taiwan this summer and send a delegation of musicians to mainland China.The New York Philharmonic, saying it hoped to use culture to help ease political tensions, announced plans on Thursday for a summer tour in Asia, including stops in Hong Kong and Taiwan and a visit to mainland China by a small group of musicians.The tour will be the Philharmonic’s first visit to Asia since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, when many countries in the region shut their borders. It comes amid rising tensions between the United States and China and concerns about the possibility of a crisis over Taiwan.Gary Ginstling, the Philharmonic’s incoming president and chief executive, said the orchestra hoped to show that music could help strengthen ties between the United States and Asian countries.“At a time when communication and trust are on the decline, our firm belief is that cultural diplomacy is more important than ever,” he said. “Showing that we can span borders and bring people closer through music is at the heart of our mission.”The Philharmonic held a Shanghai residency in 2019. A delegation of nine players will visit the city this summer to lead chamber music concerts and teach classes.Chris LeeAfter a hiatus during the pandemic, American and European ensembles have in recent months explored returning to Asia, a booming market for classical music before the pandemic.The Philadelphia Orchestra, the first American ensemble to perform in Communist-led China, is planning to send a delegation of 12 musicians to Beijing and Shanghai this fall. (Last year, the orchestra canceled a tour to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its visit to the country in 1973, worried that China’s then-strict coronavirus protocols would create logistical challenges.)The Cleveland Orchestra is planning an Asia tour in 2025 that could include a visit to China, as well as Japan and South Korea. The Boston Symphony Orchestra visited Japan last year, the ensemble’s first overseas tour in four years.The New York Philharmonic’s Asia tour will include performances in late June and early July at the Hong Kong Cultural Center as well as performing arts centers in Taipei and Kaohsiung, a city in southern Taiwan. The orchestra will perform Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony, Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony and Brahms’s Violin Concerto, featuring the violinist Hilary Hahn.Hong Kong is familiar terrain for the Philharmonic’s music director, Jaap van Zweden, who also leads the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.“I look forward to sharing the work of my New York musical family with audiences in both Taiwan and Hong Kong,” van Zweden said in a statement.The pandemic forced the Philharmonic to cancel three previously scheduled trips to China, where it has had a partnership with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra since 2014. Following the visit to Hong Kong in July, a delegation of nine Philharmonic players will go to Shanghai for six days, where they will lead chamber music concerts and teach classes.The Philharmonic is also working to strengthen ties with Taiwanese cultural groups; on Friday, it will present a concert at David Geffen Hall by the Taiwan Philharmonic.Ginstling said the orchestra was considering a full tour in mainland China in the summer of 2024.“It’s too early to commit to that,” he said. “But we’ve certainly made it clear to our friends in Shanghai that when the circumstances warrant and enable it, we will resume our visits with the full orchestra.” More

Cheryl “Salt” James: I remember Issa creating a Kickstarter account in 2011 to raise money so she could finish the first season of her YouTube series “The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl” (2011-13). That always struck me as savvy and bold. I had the privilege of watching her build her audience, then take them with her to HBO for “Insecure.”When you’re an artist, people are always questioning your vision. Ideas can get stretched and pulled in different directions, and they can become diluted. Issa has always, from what I can see, followed her gut.On the CoverCheryl “Salt” James wears a Vince dress; Zana Bayne belt; Christian Louboutin boots; David Webb earrings, necklace and cuff; and Tabayer ring. Rae wears a Proenza Schouler dress; Stuart Weitzman sandals; Lisa Eisner earrings; Bulgari cuffs; and her own ring. Sandra “Pepa” Denton wears a Versace dress; Bottega Veneta shoes; Van Cleef & Arpels necklace and bracelet; and David Webb ring.Photograph by Renee Cox. Styled by Ian BradleySandra “Pepa” Denton: In her memoir [2015’s “The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl”], Issa mentions struggling with not feeling Black enough. I can relate to that. When Salt-N-Pepa was selling millions of records, they called us “crossover,” which meant that we weren’t Black or hip enough. Now everyone wants to be pop. It means you’ve gone global. Like us, Issa stayed strong and was smart about her struggle, turning it into comedy. She kept it real, too.Issa Rae: I grew up on Salt-N-Pepa. I’ve always admired their collaboration as partners and the way they complement each other. It’s so hard for a group to last in this business, but they continue to be unapologetic about who they are and what they’re about. So much of my inspiration as a writer comes from female rappers. I write to rap music. When I was in middle school, I even tried to start rap groups because of Salt-N-Pepa. I had no business doing that, but they made me think I could.Photograph by Renee Cox. Styled by Ian BradleyPhotograph by Renee Cox. Styled by Ian Bradleyculture banner More

Joan Baez: In 2019, Lana, whom I’d heard about from my granddaughter, Jasmine, invited me to sing with her in Berkeley. I said, “Why? Your audience could be my great-grandchildren.” And she said, “They don’t deserve you.”Lana and I are sort of opposites. When I was starting out, I wouldn’t let anyone else onstage. I had two microphones — one for me, one for my guitar — and I stood barefoot, singing sad folk songs. I didn’t even write for the first 10 years, and she’s a songwriter. On the CoverKaty GrannanI stopped singing three years ago; it was time to move on. After 60 years as a musician, I started painting. An artist friend said I need to loosen up and make mistakes so, if a painting isn’t working out, I dunk it twice in the swimming pool to see if it becomes something interesting. A hose will also do.If people want to learn from me, I tell them to look beyond the music to my engagement with human and civil rights. My voice was what it was, but the real gift was using it. A documentary has just been made about me [“Joan Baez I Am a Noise,” 2023]. There’s footage of me marching with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Grenada, Miss., in 1966. At another point in the film, I mention in a letter to my parents that I want to save the world. Lana doesn’t make such grand political statements — at Berkeley, she brought me out to do it for her. And yet, amid the colorful chaos and glitter of her show, she was at one point, I believe, barefoot.The singer delivers a joke in a Southern accent.Katy Grannan & Yumeng GuoLana Del Rey: I was having a show at Berkeley three years ago and wanted Joan to sing “Diamonds & Rust” (1975) with me. She told me she lived an hour south of San Francisco, and that if I could not only find her but also sing the song’s high harmonies on the spot, she’d do it. I was given a vague map to get to a house distinguishable only by its color and the chickens running in the yard. At one point during my audition, she stopped me with a steely look to let me know I didn’t get it right. By the end, she said, “OK, that’s good. I’ll sing with you.”culture banner More

Madhur Jaffrey: I learned about Michelle through my granddaughter. I read her book [“Crying in H Mart,” 2021] and listened to her music, and I thought she seemed like me. Our relationships to our mothers are in many ways similar — when she said in her book that her mother used to watch QVC and buy face creams, I thought of my own mother, who would have my sisters and me rub the cow’s milk from our own cows into our faces because she heard that Cleopatra bathed in the milk of an ass for her milky complexion. Our fathers were similar, too: Michelle’s father never took her music seriously, which reminded me of my father, who told the president of India that acting was just my hobby.culture banner More

The singer-songwriter’s performance there on Sunday was his first large-scale concert in years, but his scheduled second act has been canceled in response to medical advice, a representative said.Frank Ocean will not perform at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival this weekend because of a leg injury, a representative for the singer-songwriter said Wednesday, noting that the injury had prevented his performance there last Sunday from going on as planned.Ocean’s much-anticipated set on Sunday for the festival’s opening weekend was his first large-scale concert in years, but the set drew mixed reviews, with some calling out its tardiness and technical bumps. Later on, reports emerged that the set had been abruptly reconfigured ahead of the nighttime performance.The statement from Ocean’s representative, Anna Meacham, said that he had suffered a leg injury on the festival grounds days before his first scheduled performance, leading to the preshow scramble.“Frank Ocean was unable to perform the intended show but was still intent on performing, and in 72 hours, the show was reworked out of necessity,” the statement said. “On doctor’s advice, Frank Ocean is not able to perform weekend 2 due to two fractures and a sprain in his left leg.”Representatives for Coachella did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the cancellation. The festival’s other headliners are scheduled to repeat from the first weekend — Bad Bunny on Friday and the K-pop group Blackpink on Saturday — with other performers throughout the weekend including Björk, Blink-182, Burna Boy, Gorillaz, Rosalía and many more.Coachella has dealt with major last-minute cancellations before. Last year, Kanye West (now known as Ye) pulled out as one of the event’s three headliners amid personal upheaval and was replaced by the D.J. group Swedish House Mafia with the Weeknd as a special guest, a performance that was already on the bill.Sunday’s performance had been years in the making, after the plan for Ocean to headline Coachella in 2020 was scuttled by the pandemic. This year’s festival was viewed as the singer’s re-emergence, but there were early signs that it was not going according to plan.Most of the festival was livestreamed on YouTube throughout the weekend, and fans were anxiously awaiting the same for Ocean’s set, but late on Sunday, YouTube announced that it would not be part of the livestream. Ocean took the stage about an hour late, then ended abruptly, saying, “I’m being told it’s curfew.”Some fans and critics complained that the singer was hard to see throughout the set — which included hits like “Bad Religion” and “White Ferrari” — and that there were pauses throughout. (Justin Bieber disagreed with the naysayers, writing on Instagram that he was “blown away” by Ocean’s performance and that “his artistry is simply unmatched.”)The original plan for the performance was likely much more intricate than what Coachella attendees witnessed. Two hockey players, Dan and Chris Powers, said in a podcast released Tuesday that they had rehearsed for about a month with other ice skaters before they were suddenly cut from the show the day of.In a statement on Wednesday, Ocean said of his set: “It was chaotic. There is some beauty in chaos. It isn’t what I intended to show but I did enjoy being out there and I’ll see you soon.”Joe Coscarelli More

The K-pop star was found dead on Wednesday at his home in Seoul.Moonbin, a member of the K-pop band ASTRO, died on Wednesday at his home in Seoul. He was 25.The pop star’s death was confirmed by the band and its management agency in a statement in Korean posted to Twitter. They did not specify a cause.“On April 19, ASTRO member Moonbin suddenly left us and has now become a star in the sky,” the agency said. It called on fans to refrain from “speculative and malicious reports” so that his family could process the news. To respect their wishes, the agency added, the funeral would be held as privately as possible, with only family, friends and colleagues.According to the Korean news agency Yonhap, Moonbin was found dead at his home in the upscale neighborhood of Gangnam at about 8:10 p.m. on Wednesday by his manager, who contacted the Seoul Gangnam Police Station. Moonbin, born Jan. 26, 1998, was an actor, dancer and model as well as a singer, who also performed as part of the band Moonbin & Sanha. ASTRO, originally a six-person male K-Pop group, shot to fame in 2016 with their debut EP “Spring Up.” They were named to Billboard’s top 10 list of new K-Pop groups that year.In a statement shared early Wednesday, ASTRO announced the cancellation of the Moonbin & Sanha tour in Jakarta “due to unforeseen circumstances.”News of Moonbin’s death reverberated throughout the K-pop world, as fans praised the star for introducing them to the genre, and mourned the sudden loss.Moonbin is the most recent of a series of Korean celebrities in their 20s dying suddenly. In 2019, the deaths of two other K-pop stars left South Korea soul searching over what had gone wrong in one of its most popular cultural exports. Earlier this month, Jung Chae-yull, a 26-year-old South Korean actress, was also found dead in her home. Some, though not all, of the cases have been acknowledged as suicide.If you are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK) or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources. More

He was grateful for Otis Redding’s enduring legacy, he said, even if it overshadowed his efforts to make music of his own.Otis Redding III, the son and namesake of the celebrated 1960s soul singer, who made a name for himself as a singer and guitarist, died on Tuesday in Macon, Ga. He was 59.The cause was cancer, his sister, Karla Redding-Andrews, said in a statement posted on the Facebook page of the Otis Redding Foundation, the family’s charity.Mr. Redding was just 3 years old when his father died, along with several members of his band, in a plane crash on Dec. 10, 1967, outside Madison, Wis. Otis Redding III and his brother, Dexter, along with a cousin, Mark Lockett, went on to form the funk band the Reddings, which recorded six albums in the 1980s. Otis was a guitarist with the group; Dexter, who survives him, played bass and handled the vocals; and Mr. Lockett played keyboards.The band had some success on the Billboard charts: “Remote Control” reached No. 6 on the Hot Soul Singles chart and No. 89 on the Hot 100 in 1980. The group’s final album, called simply “The Reddings,” which contained the hit single “Call the Law,” reached No. 88 on the Billboard album chart in 1988.The Redding brothers never came close to matching their father’s success, but Otis Redding III nonetheless continued performing. When the soul singer Eddie Floyd hired him as guitarist for a European tour, Mr. Redding became comfortable singing “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay” and other songs made famous by his father, he told WCSH-TV in Portland, Maine, in 2018.“He said, ‘You can play guitar with me, but you’re going to have to sing a few of your dad’s songs,’” Mr. Redding recalled Mr. Floyd saying. “I was like, ‘Huh? I don’t sing,’ you know. And he was like, ‘Well, you’re going to sing “Dock of the Bay” with me tonight.’” He continued to perform his father’s songs live.He said he was grateful for his father’s enduring legacy even if it overshadowed his own music-making efforts.“I go ahead and do what people want, and I live with it,” he said, adding, “I don’t put myself mentally under any pressure to go begging for record deals.”Otis Redding III was born on Dec. 17, 1963, in Macon. His mother was Zelma Atwood.In later years he worked with his family’s foundation to organize summer camps that teach children to play music. He also served as board president of the local chapter of Meals on Wheels.In addition to his sister Ms. Redding-Andrews and his brother, Mr. Redding’s survivors include another sister, Demetria Redding.The New York Times contributed reporting. More