Music

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares80 Views

      in Music

      Harvard’s Taylor Swift Scholars Have Thoughts on ‘The Tortured Poets Department’

      by

      The students taking Harvard University’s class on the singer are studying up. Their final papers are due at the end of the month.Fans of Taylor Swift often study up for a new album, revisiting the singer’s older works to prepare to analyze lyrics and song titles for secret messages and meanings.“The Tortured Poets Department” is getting much the same treatment, and perhaps no group of listeners was better prepared than the students at Harvard University currently studying Ms. Swift’s works in an English class devoted entirely to the artist. The undergraduate course, “Taylor Swift and Her World,” is taught by Stephanie Burt, who has her students comparing Ms. Swift’s songs to works by poets and writers including Willa Cather, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth.On Thursday night, about 50 students from the class gathered in a lecture hall on campus to listen to Ms. Swift’s new album. Mary Pankowski, a 22-year-old senior studying history of art and architecture, wore a cream sweatshirt she bought at Ms. Swift’s Eras tour last year. The group made beaded friendship bracelets to celebrate the new album, she said.When the clock struck midnight, the classroom erupted into applause, and the analysis began. First, the group listened through the album once without discussing, just taking it all in.Certain lines, however, immediately caused a stir, said Samantha Wilhoit, a junior studying government — like a reference to the singer Charlie Puth and the scathing lyrics to the song “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” Ms. Wilhoit, 21, said.A line from the song “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” in which Ms. Swift sings, “I cry a lot but I am so productive,” also seemed to resonate, Ms. Wilhoit said, laughing.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares55 Views

      in Music

      Mandisa Hundley, ‘American Idol’ Singer, Dies at 47

      by

      She performed and produced music with Christian themes and won a Grammy Award in 2013.Mandisa Hundley, a gospel singer whose strong vocals were applauded on “American Idol” and who later won a Grammy Award for best contemporary Christian music album, was found dead at her home in Nashville on Thursday. She was 47.The Media Collective, which represented Ms. Hundley, confirmed her death and said in a statement that the cause was not known.Ms. Hundley performed and produced music with Christian themes. She was a fan favorite on “American Idol” in 2006, but became the fourth of the 12 finalists to be eliminated.As a soul singer, she spoke openly about her love of God, and her music resonated with fans.Ms. Hundley famously stood up to Simon Cowell, the “American Idol” judge, who has a reputation for being intimidating. In her video interview for the show, she referred to her audition in Chicago, when Mr. Cowell, in an apparent joke about her weight, said after she left the room, “Do we have a bigger stage this year?”Ms. Hundley said in the video that, despite the remark, she would still travel to Hollywood and face Mr. Cowell in the final judging.“When I got to Hollywood, I knew I had to put my game face on,” she said. “I knew that I would finally get to speak my piece.”“You hurt me, and I cried,” she later told Mr. Cowell. “But I want you to know that I have forgiven you.” Mr. Cowell replied that he was “humbled,” and the two hugged.Ms. Hundley told The Oklahoman in 2006 that her faith helped her overcome Mr. Cowell’s hurtful remark.“Food has always been a problem for me,” she said. “When Simon first made the comments, it was a nightmare. But God turned it around. Those words became the impetus I needed to kick-start my plan to live a more healthful lifestyle and get my eating under control.”She went on to record several albums. Her first was “True Beauty,” in 2007. Her 2013 Grammy winning album, “Overcomer,” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Christian Albums Chart. It was her first Grammy Award after three nominations.Mandisa Lynn Hundley was born in Sacramento on Oct. 2, 1976, to John Hundley and Ruby Berryman, who worked for the state. She sang at church and studied vocal performance at American River College, a community college in Sacramento, and then continued her studies at Fisk University in Nashville.After college, she worked as a vocalist for the singers Trisha Yearwood and Shania Twain.She is survived by her parents and a brother, John Hundley.On her 2017 album, “Out of the Dark,” she addressed her struggles with depression, which she also wrote about in a 2022 memoir of the same name.“My dream is that this book will be a tool used in living rooms and coffee shops all over the world to help prompt discussions about our mental health,” she told “Good Morning America.”Emmett Lindner More

    • 125 Shares50 Views

      in Music

      Mariinsky Dancers Barred From Youth Ballet Gala in New York

      by

      Two dancers from the Russian company were set to perform at a benefit for a prestigious competition for young dancers, but they were sidelined after protests by pro-Ukrainian activists.Two dancers from the Mariinsky Theater in Russia were barred from performing at a youth ballet gala in New York this week after their participation drew criticism from pro-Ukrainian officials and activists.The dancers had been set to take part in two performances, at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, that celebrate the 25th anniversary of Youth America Grand Prix, a prestigious ballet competition and scholarship program based in New York.But Youth America Grand Prix’s leaders removed the dancers from the program after critics said the organization was lending support to the Russian government by hosting the artists. The Mariinsky is a state-run theater in St. Petersburg led by the conductor Valery Gergiev, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin.Youth America Grand Prix said in a statement that the decision “gives us great pain.” It said that in the hours before the first performance on Thursday, it had learned — along with Lincoln Center and others in the ballet world — of possible protests. After consulting with New York City Ballet, which operates the Koch Theater, it said that “it was agreed to cancel the performances of the scheduled Mariinsky Ballet dancers.”“Art should unite us, not divide us,” Larissa Saveliev, the founder of Youth America Grand Prix, said in a statement. “In a difficult period, ballet should be healing. This is terribly sad.”Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Russian artists and institutions have come under intense scrutiny on the global stage. The Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and the Mariinsky have faced cancellations abroad and have lost prestigious partnerships. Some stars, including Gergiev, who also leads the Bolshoi, and the soprano Anna Netrebko, have been shunned in the West because of their ties to Mr. Putin.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 75 Shares85 Views

      in Music

      7 Songs That Reference Tortured Poets

      by

      Taylor Swift said she channeled them; Patti Smith, Lana Del Rey, the Smiths and others cited them.Patti Smith.Charlie Steiner — Highway 67/Getty ImagesDear listeners,Perhaps you have heard that Taylor Swift has a new album out today — just a wild guess! — and that it is called “The Tortured Poets Department.” That title alone generated chatter before anyone had heard a note, and it got me thinking about some of my favorite songs that reference poets. And so I filled my inkwell, put a quill pen to my chin and cried, “A playlist is in order!”Though there are no Swift songs on this mix, it does feature the two poets she name-checks on her latest album: Dylan Thomas (in a shaggy ode written by Better Oblivion Community Center) and that most poetic of rock stars, Patti Smith. It is also significantly shorter than “The Tortured Poets Department” and its 15-song companion piece (known together as “The Anthology”), which, as I suggest in my review of Swift’s album, is not necessarily a bad thing. And no, my friends, this playlist does not contain any Charlie Puth.It does, however, highlight songs by the Smiths, Bob Dylan, Lana Del Rey and more. Grab your favorite notebook, find a particularly pastoral patch of grass to lie in, and press play.Keats and Yeats are on your side,LindsayListen along while you read.1. Better Oblivion Community Center: “Dylan Thomas”There are plenty of quotable lines on this jangly, stomping highlight from the sole album released by Conor Oberst and Phoebe Bridgers’s side project, Better Oblivion Community Center, but I am partial to this one: “I’m getting used to these dizzy spells/I’m takin’ a shower at the Bates Motel.”▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTubeWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares85 Views

      in Music

      Taylor Swift’s New Album, ‘The Tortured Poets Department,’ Could Use an Editor: Review

      by

      Over 16 songs (and a second LP), the pop superstar litigates her recent romances. But the themes, and familiar sonic backdrops, generate diminishing returns.If there has been a common thread — an invisible string, if you will — connecting the last few years of Taylor Swift’s output, it has been abundance.Nearly 20 years into her career, Swift, 34, is more popular and prolific than ever, sating her ravenous fan base and expanding her cultural domination with a near-constant stream of music — five new albums plus four rerecorded ones since 2019 alone. Her last LP, “Midnights” from 2022, rolled out in multiple editions, each with its own extra songs and collectible covers. Her record-breaking Eras Tour is a three-and-a-half-hour marathon featuring 40-plus songs, including the revised 10-minute version of her lost-innocence ballad “All Too Well.” In this imperial era of her long reign, Swift has operated under the guiding principle that more is more.What Swift reveals on her sprawling and often self-indulgent 11th LP, “The Tortured Poets Department,” is that this stretch of productivity and commercial success was also a tumultuous time for her, emotionally. “I can read your mind: ‘She’s having the time of her life,’” Swift sings on “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” a percolating track that evokes the glitter and adoration of the Eras Tour but admits, “All the pieces of me shattered as the crowd was chanting ‘more.’” And yet, that’s exactly what she continues to provide, announcing two hours after the release of “Poets” that — surprise! — there was a second “volume” of the album, “The Anthology,” featuring 15 additional, though largely superfluous, tracks.Gone are the character studies and fictionalized narratives of Swift’s 2020 folk-pop albums “Folklore” and “Evermore.” The feverish “Tortured Poets Department” is a full-throated return to her specialty: autobiographical and sometimes spiteful tales of heartbreak, full of detailed, referential lyrics that her fans will delight in decoding.Swift doesn’t name names, but she drops plenty of boldfaced clues about exiting a long-term cross-cultural relationship that has grown cold (the wrenching “So Long, London”), briefly taking up with a tattooed bad boy who raises the hackles of the more judgmental people in her life (the wild-eyed “But Daddy I Love Him”) and starting fresh with someone who makes her sing in — ahem — football metaphors (the weightless “The Alchemy”). The subject of the most headline-grabbing track on “The Anthology,” a fellow member of the Tortured Billionaires Club whom Swift reimagines as a high school bully, is right there in the title’s odd capitalization: “thanK you aIMee.”At times, the album is a return to form. Its first two songs are potent reminders of how viscerally Swift can summon the flushed delirium of a doomed romance. The opener, “Fortnight,” a pulsing, synth-frosted duet with Post Malone, is chilly and controlled until lines like “I love you, it’s ruining my life” inspire the song to thaw and glow. Even better is the chatty, radiant title track, on which Swift’s voice glides across smooth keyboard arpeggios, self-deprecatingly comparing herself and her lover to more daring poets before concluding, “This ain’t the Chelsea Hotel, we’re modern idiots.” Many Swift songs get lost in dense thickets of their own vocabulary, but here the goofy particularity of the lyrics — chocolate bars, first-name nods to friends, a reference to the pop songwriter Charlie Puth?! — is strangely humanizing.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares96 Views

      in Music

      Review: Thomas Adès Meets the Profound Beauty of Schubert

      by

      The Danish String Quartet returned to Carnegie Hall with its Doppelgänger project, pairing Schubert’s String Quintet and a premiere by Adès.Franz Schubert and Thomas Adès are two composers whose works are capable of touching the cosmos — in different centuries, and often in different ways.The beauty of Schubert tends to be quiet and shatteringly calm, his postcards from the beyond written in lyrical melodies sometimes underlined with nothing more than a chord. Adès, particularly in the past decade, seems to have flung open the gates of heaven, unleashing forces that overwhelm and awe in their immensity.Yet each has also done the opposite: Schubert, in his aptly nicknamed “Great” Symphony, with its Beethovenian heft, for example, and Adès in his hypnotic and weightless “Paradiso” section of “Dante.” At Zankel Hall on Thursday, the composers met somewhere in the middle as they were paired for the fourth and final installment in the Danish String Quartet’s Doppelgänger project.One of the great pleasures of recent seasons, Doppelgänger has surveyed Schubert’s late quartets while commissioning new works that respond to them. Thursday brought perhaps the composer’s finest chamber work, the String Quintet in C; Asbjorn Norgaard, the Danes’ violist, joked from the stage, “We are the Danish String Quartet, with a Finnish cellist,” gesturing to their guest, Johannes Rostamo.In previous Doppelgänger programs at Zankel, Lotta Wennakoski’s “Pige” homed in on the maiden of “Death and the Maiden,” and Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s “Rituals” played with the repetitive nature of the “Rosamunde” Quartet. (Because of pandemic delays, the project will actually return next season, with Part I.) Each evening has ended with an arrangement of a Schubert song; on Thursday it was “Die Nebensonnen,” from “Winterreise.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 88 Shares91 Views

      in Music

      Taylor Swift’s ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ Arrives

      by

      The pop superstar’s latest album was preceded by a satellite radio channel, a word game, a return to TikTok and an actual library. For her fans, more is always welcome.Taylor Swift was already the most ubiquitous pop star in the galaxy, her presence dominating the music charts, the concert calendar, the Super Bowl, the Grammys.Then it came time for her to promote a new album.In the days leading up to the release of “The Tortured Poets Department” on Friday, Swift became all but inescapable, online and seemingly everywhere else. Her lyrics were the basis for an Apple Music word game. A Spotify-sponsored, Swift-branded “library installation,” in muted pink and gray, popped up in a shopping complex in Los Angeles. In Chicago, a QR code painted on a brick wall directed fans to another Easter egg on YouTube. Videos on Swift’s social media accounts, showing antique typewriters and globes with pins, were dissected for clues about her music. SiriusXM added a Swift radio station; of course it’s called Channel 13 (Taylor’s Version).About the only thing Swift didn’t do was an interview with a journalist.At this stage in Swift’s career, an album release is more than just a moment to sell music; it’s all but a given that “The Tortured Poets Department” will open with gigantic sales numbers, many of them for “ghost white,” “phantom clear” and other collector-ready vinyl variants. More than that, the album’s arrival is a test of the celebrity-industrial complex overall, with tech platforms and media outlets racing to capture whatever piece of the fan frenzy they can get.Threads, the newish social media platform from Meta, primed Swifties for their idol’s arrival there, and offered fans who shared Swift’s first Threads post a custom badge. Swift stunned the music industry last week by breaking ranks with her record label, Universal, and returning her music to TikTok, which Universal and other industry groups have said pays far too little in royalties. Overnight, TikTok unveiled “The Ultimate Taylor Swift In-App Experience,” offering fans digital goodies like a “Tortured Poets-inspired animation” on their feed.Before the album’s release on Friday, Swift revealed that a music video — for “Fortnight,” the first single, featuring Post Malone — would arrive on Friday at 8 p.m. Eastern time. At 2 a.m., she had another surprise: 15 more songs. “I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you,” she wrote in a social media post, bringing “The Anthology” edition of the album to 31 tracks.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares65 Views

      in Music

      Dickey Betts, Fiery Guitarist With Allman Brothers Band, Dies at 80

      by

      He traded licks with Duane Allman and proved to be a worthy sparring partner. He also wrote, and sang, the band’s biggest hit, “Ramblin’ Man.”Dickey Betts, a honky-tonk hell raiser who, as a guitarist for the Allman Brothers Band, traded fiery licks with Duane Allman in the band’s early-1970s heyday, and who went on to write some of the band’s most indelible songs, including its biggest hit, “Ramblin’ Man,” died on Thursday at his home in Osprey, Fla. He was 80.His death was announced on social media by his family. His manager David Spero said in a statement to Rolling Stone magazine that the cause was cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.Despite not being an actual Allman brother — the band, founded in 1969, was led by Duane Allman, who achieved guitar-god status before he died in a motorcycle accident at 24, and Gregg Allman, the lead vocalist, who got an added flash of the limelight in 1975 when he married Cher — Mr. Betts was a guiding force in the group for decades and central to the sound that, along with the music of Lynyrd Skynyrd, came to define Southern rock.Although pigeonholed by some fans in the band’s early days as its “other” guitarist, Mr. Betts, whose solos seemed at times to scorch the fretboard of his Gibson Les Paul, proved a worthy sparring partner to Duane Allman, serving more as a co-lead guitarist than as a sidekick.Mr. Betts in 1977. His solos at times seemed to scorch the fretboard of his Gibson Les Paul.Richard E. Aaron/Redferns, via Getty ImagesWith his chiseled features, Wild West mustache and gunfighter demeanor, Mr. Betts certainly looked the part of the star. And he played like one. Nowhere was that more apparent than on the band’s landmark 1971 live double album, “At Fillmore East,” which was filled with expansive jams and showcased the intricate interplay between Mr. Betts and Mr. Allman. It sold more than a million copies.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More