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      Mary J. Blige’s Daily Affirmation, and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Grimes, Hurray for the Riff Raff, Kim Petras and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Mary J. Blige, ‘Good Morning Gorgeous’Once again, Mary J. Blige battles and overcomes self-doubt. “I’m so tired of feeling empty,” she sings in a gritty croon over a slow-rolling, vintage-style soul track, abetted by a moody string arrangement. But she’s got the solution: looking in the mirror every morning with the self-affirmation, “Good morning, gorgeous.” She adds, “I ain’t talking about getting no hair and makeup/I’m talking about soon as I wake up.” The video makes clear she’s waking up in a mansion, toned and bejeweled, a long way from “all the times that I hated myself.” JON PARELESHurray for the Riff Raff, ‘Jupiter’s Dance’“Jupiter’s Dance” is an exercise in tenderness. It is a welcome departure for Alynda Segarra, who typically makes warm folk-punk as Hurray for the Riff Raff, here trading grit for cosmic reverie. In a breathy whisper, Segarra coos: “Seven revolutions around the sun/Blessings on our way, it has only begun.” The video juxtaposes celestial NASA images with found footage of people dancing to the Afro-Puerto Rican genres bomba and plena. It is a galactic prayer, a belief in the promise of the future, rooted in the vitality of the past. ISABELIA HERRERAKali Uchis and Ozuna, ‘Another Day in America’Pointedly released on Thanksgiving Day, “Another Day in America” borrows the tune of “America” from “West Side Story,” anticipating the release next week of the Steven Spielberg remake. Over syncopated guitar and a boom-bap beat, Kali Uchis sings and raps in English, keeping her tone cheerful but not mincing words: “Say ‘land of the free’/But the land was always stolen.” Ozuna, from Puerto Rico, sing-raps in Spanish, declaring, “Quisiera tumbar las fronteras de México a Nigeria”: “I would like to bring down the borders from Mexico to Nigeria.” It’s a conversation starter. PARELESAurora, ‘Heathens’The Norwegian songwriter Aurora has announced her next album, due Jan. 21, is titled “The Gods We Can Touch,” and on “Heathens” she sings about Eve, Eden and falling from grace to a life on Mother Earth. It’s a shimmering, wide-screen production, with pealing harp, Aurora’s choir-like harmonies and a seismic beat that comes and goes. It’s also a warning that paradise was lost. “Everything we touch is evil,” Aurora sings. “That is why we live like heathens.” PARELESGrimes, ‘Player of Games’Recently “semi-separated” from the Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, with whom she has a child, Grimes (Claire Boucher) coos club-ready recriminations in “Player of Games,” which she sometimes sings like “play your love games.” Over a brisk house track written and produced with Illangelo, she asks questions like “Baby, will you still love me?” and “How can I compare to the adventure out there?” as the arpeggios repeat and the four-on-the-floor thumps. “If I loved him any less, I’d make him stay,” she asserts, teasing the gossip-industrial complex. PARELESKim Petras, ‘Coconuts’A deliriously comic, sexually playful disco anthem from Kim Petras, advocating for, one could say, one kind of fruit over all the rest: “Strawberry, mango, lime/don’t compare to these.” JON CARAMANICAKerozen, ‘Motivation’Kerozen, from Ivory Coast, praises patient, diligent hard work in “Motivation,” but the song provides instant gratification anyway. A galloping six-beat groove carries exultant close-harmony vocals, punched up by pattering snare drums and bursts of synthesizers and simulated horns — pure positive energy. PARELESJoe Meah, ‘Ahwene Pa Nkasa’The latest find from the indefatigable crate-diggers at Analog Africa is “Essiebon Special 1973-1984: Ghana Power House,” from the archives of the Essiebons and Dix labels. It’s Ghanaian highlife souped up with funk, Afrobeat, synthesizers and psychedelia, like “Ahwene Pa Nkasa,” a groove that materializes out of a funk backbeat, turns into a chattery, competitive stereo dialogue between two synthesizer keyboards and eventually gets around to its call-and-response vocals, fading out before the chorus gets done. PARELESCordae featuring Lil Wayne, ‘Sinister’A casually excellent rhyme workout from Cordae, who reveres the complexity of the 1990s — “Eight months with no phone, dog/we aiming for brilliance” — and Lil Wayne, who at his late 2000s mixtape peak, which he recalls here, turned complexity into extraterrestriality. CARAMANICAEladio Carrión and Luar la L, ‘Socio’A strategically placed beat change is more than a secret weapon: It can turn a standard rap track into delicious deviance. Elado Carrión’s “Socio” opens with a soulful piano intro and snare-driven beat reminiscent of something Drake’s go-to producer Noah “40” Shebib might pull out of his hard drive. But before long, the barbs arrive. A muted echo of Russell Crowe’s infamous “Gladiator” line “Are you not entertained?!” crashes into the production, and a muscular, speaker-knocking beat unravels. The guest rapper Luar la L shoots off punch lines like rounds of silver bullets, his full-throated baritone landing each with serrated precision. HERRERAChayce Beckham and Lindsay Ell, ‘Can’t Do Without Me’A good old-fashioned power country duet, with references to the grim day job, a speeding car and the high-horsepower intensity of a rough-hewed love. CARAMANICAChristian McBride and Inside Straight, ‘Gang Gang’The Village Vanguard is where the bassist Christian McBride first performed, over a decade ago, with Inside Straight, which has become maybe the most distinguished acoustic quintet in jazz. McBride’s latest release with Inside Straight, “Live at the Village Vanguard,” was recorded there years later, in 2014, during another weeklong run. “Gang Gang,” written by the vibraphonist Warren Wolf, is the album’s longest track and its most intense. The group centers itself around the drummer Carl Allen’s heavy, spiraling swing feel, and Wolf takes a solo full of pelted, bluesy notes, painting a cloud of energy in pointillist strokes. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOSara Serpa and Emmanuel Iduma, ‘First Song’The Portuguese vocalist Sara Serpa traces an etched, wordless line while Sofîa Rei and Aubrey Johnson circle her with sung melodies of their own, and ambient street sounds gargle below. Soon Serpa begins singing words from the Nigerian writer Emmanuel Iduma’s book, “A Stranger’s Pose,” about his travels across the African continent: “I can recite distances by heart feet memory/I can tell wanderlust rounded as the eyes,” she sings. Then Iduma’s voice enters, accompanied by the pianist Matt Mitchell, reading a passage on the power of language to create a space “between reality and dream.” “First Song” opens Serpa and Iduma’s impressive new collaborative album, “Intimate Strangers,” a collage of her swimming melodies and his words — many of which describe the experiences of laborers seeking their fate on the road, sometimes heading north to Europe, but in many cases stuck waiting for something to change around them. RUSSONELLO More

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      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love the Organ

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      Listen to the biggest, loudest, most extravagant (yet incredibly subtle) instrument of them all.In the past we’ve chosen the five minutes or so we would play to make our friends fall in love with classical music, piano, opera, cello, Mozart, 21st-century composers, violin, Baroque music, sopranos, Beethoven, flute, string quartets, tenors, Brahms, choral music, percussion, symphonies, Stravinsky, trumpet, Maria Callas and Bach.Now we want to convince those curious friends to love the grandeur and colors of the organ — a full orchestra in a single instrument. We hope you find lots here to discover and enjoy; leave your favorites in the comments.◆ ◆ ◆James McVinnie, organistIf I had a time machine, I would go back to 1740 to hear Johann Sebastian Bach play the organ in Leipzig, Germany. Bach is the ultimate composer for this extraordinary, timeless instrument. Much of his organ music is intense, revealing its multilayered, life-affirming majesty slowly, through repeated listening. The opening to his 29th cantata, however, leaps and bounds with immediate joy. There is something visceral about hearing this music played live, on a great organ, in a vast cathedral space: The building shakes, the air shimmers and the music is as much felt as heard.Bach’s “Wir danken dir, Gott”Robert Quinney (Hyperion)◆ ◆ ◆Joy-Leilani Garbutt, organist and Boulanger Initiative co-founderThis piece stops me in my tracks every time I hear it, conjuring the phrases “tour de force” and “pièce de résistance.” In an incredible display of badassery, Demessieux unleashes the full spectrum of the organ’s capabilities, with all its sounds, timbres, colors and contrasts. Too often people associate this instrument with dirges or spooky music; this piece is energetic and exuberant.The middle section is like a slow jazz waltz sound bath, filled with luscious chords and featuring an inverted texture that places the solo in the pedals and the bass line on the keyboards. As a performer, it’s always a great adventure to tackle music written by a virtuoso composer to showcase her own instrument. Demessieux knows exactly what the organ can do, and she uses all of it.Jeanne Demessieux’s “Te Deum”Hampus Lindwall (Ligia)◆ ◆ ◆Zachary Woolfe, Times classical music editorIt hardly gets grander than Saint-Saëns’s Third Symphony, which he titled “with organ.” And yet, with the right musicians, this gigantic Romantic wedding cake of a piece is shining elegance, not overkill. After its first C-major blast in the finale, the organ is woven into the orchestra so lovingly that it never seems to be used for mere effect; the instrument is treated like a jewel, to be placed in one of the repertory’s most sumptuous, stirring settings. A delightful bonus in this finely detailed recording: a father-and-son pair of eminences as organist and conductor.Saint-Saëns’s Third SymphonyDaniel Roth; Les Siècles; François-Xavier Roth, conductor (Harmonia Mundi)◆ ◆ ◆Sarah Kirkland Snider, composerOne remarkable thing about the organ is its ability to generate acoustic sounds that seem electronic. The Scottish composer Claire M. Singer explores this to rapturous effect in “The Molendinar,” a slowly morphing, 25-minute journey that intricately builds beautiful, bending overtones over a simple ground bass through her manipulation of the organ’s mechanical stop action. The Molendinar is a hidden watercourse above which the city of Glasgow was founded in the sixth century, but the music’s grand, glacial build, and ghostly evanescence, remind me of the Breton legend of Ys, its mythological cathedral rising and then sinking back into the ocean.Claire M. Singer’s “The Molendinar”Claire M. Singer◆ ◆ ◆Cameron Carpenter, organistIf I’m introducing someone, I can only submit my most recent recording, since it is played on an instrument I designed whose very point is to demonstrate the possibilities of the modern organ. The transition of the instrument to the digital realm gives us a glimpse of the part of it that transcends moving parts. In pairing Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations with Howard Hanson‘s 1930 Symphony No. 2, “Romantic,” I wanted to contrast two masterpieces from outside the organ repertoire. I didn’t intrude on any organ works in which others are better versed, and the instrument’s clarity and color helps us to understand these well-loved pieces anew.Howard Hanson’s “Romantic” SymphonyCameron Carpenter (Decca Gold)◆ ◆ ◆David Allen, Times writerAlthough César Franck wrote relatively few works for the organ, he was still arguably the greatest composer for the instrument since Bach, and it was in Bach’s shadow that he composed three chorales in 1890, the year he died. What Franck called a chorale, though, bears little resemblance to Bach’s settings of hymn tunes; the three are vast, 15-minute ruminations on belief, none more spiritual than the second, a passacaglia that hypnotically winds its way to what the ear thinks is going to be an imposing declaration of faith, before it falls away to a quieter, more personal hope.Franck’s Chorale No. 2 in B minorJeanne Demessieux (Eloquence)◆ ◆ ◆Paul Jacobs, organistBeethoven considered organists “the greatest of all virtuosi.” But if making music with all four limbs isn’t hard enough, Lou Harrison also expects the soloist in his Concerto for Organ and Percussion to play clamorous clusters of keys with felt padded slabs — to match a full battery of percussion that includes Chinese crash cymbals, oxygen tank bells and gongs galore. While I’ve always prized the organ’s uncanny ability to arouse our numinous instincts, sometimes we just want to let our hair down. The irrepressible joy of the final movement will wake the dead and make them dance.Lou Harrison’s Concerto for Organ with Percussion OrchestraPaul Jacobs; San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor (SFS Media)◆ ◆ ◆Anthony Tommasini, Times chief classical music criticThe young Aaron Copland wrote his Symphony for Organ and Orchestra at the behest of his teacher, Nadia Boulanger, who played the solo part at the premiere, in 1925. Copland’s friend and colleague Virgil Thomson later described the symphony as “the voice of America in our generation.” He was right. While looking back at the European symphonic heritage, Copland’s ambitious piece is fresh, direct, unsentimental and sassy in a way that seems somehow American, especially the feisty, unabashedly dissonant finale. And I love the ruminative opening Andante, which glows and sighs in this live recording.Copland’s Organ SymphonyPaul Jacobs; San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor (SFS Media)◆ ◆ ◆Javier C. Hernández, Times classical music and dance reporterHandel is best known for his operas and oratorios. But his organ concertos contain some of his most lively and playful music. A gifted virtuoso on the instrument, he performed several of these pieces as entertainment for audiences between acts of his oratorios. The Organ Concerto in F, which premiered in 1739, goes by the nickname “The Cuckoo and the Nightingale” for its chirpy motifs. Marie-Claire Alain plays with precision and zeal, gliding through the many improvisatory sections.Handel’s Organ Concerto No. 13Marie-Claire Alain; Orchestra de Chambre Jean-François Paillard (Erato)◆ ◆ ◆Nico Muhly, composerThe organ in church can be like a piece of beautiful architecture, or a wonderful sermon: It is sometimes taken for granted. And there is a subtle art to playing with a choir; the organist must wrestle with the acoustics of the space to make sure everything aligns, as the player is oftentimes quite far from the singers, and the pipes can be practically miles away.One beautiful challenge is the “Jubilate” from Herbert Howells’s morning service for the choir of King’s College, Cambridge, and the extraordinary and specific acoustics of the chapel there. Even when the organ is under the choir, Howells is masterly at doubling the voices and weaving in and out of them, foretelling little themes or echoing them after. The acoustics of the space turn the simple counterpoint into something intentionally blurry but somehow precise, like a house at night lit from within but seen from outside, with shapes flickering in and out of view.The beginning of the piece starts with the organ in its simplest incarnation, just holding an E-flat minor chord. In the last phrase, on the text “world without end, amen,” the choir sings in unison, and the organ, here the primary voice, unspools a long melody, crabwise but ultimately pointing downward toward a resolution in E-flat major.Herbert Howells’s “Jubilate”Peter Barley; King’s College Choir; Stephen Cleobury, conductor (Argo)◆ ◆ ◆Joshua Barone, Times editorYou can’t help but appreciate the too-muchness of the organ. Its extremity goes both ways: It can whisper, or shake the ground you stand on with the awe-inspiring sound of a full-voiced choir. Both ends of the spectrum coexist in Samuel Barber’s 1960 “Toccata Festiva.” About two-thirds into the piece, after an opening of Romantic excess and concerto-like flair, comes a cadenza that rises from foreboding depths to episodes that are by turns agile, luminous and borderline outrageous — but arriving at a mysterious peace. When the orchestra returns in a crowded dash to the ending, all of its might is necessary to meet the grandeur of what may be our most extravagant instrument.Barber’s “Toccata Festiva”Paul Jacobs; Lucerne Symphony Orchestra; James Gaffigan, conductor (Harmonia Mundi)◆ ◆ ◆Anna Lapwood, organistIt’s hard not to be impressed by the sheer power a pipe organ can produce, but it is also an instrument with an amazing capacity for beauty and sensitivity, characteristics that are often overlooked when talking about it. We hear this more subtle side in Robilliard’s transcription of Fauré’s “Sicilienne,” performed here by Thomas Ospital in the Church of St. Eustache in Paris. It’s in this kind of music that the building becomes integral to the success of a performance; as we hear the individual flute stops dancing around the space, the acoustic bloom becomes an architectural sustaining pedal.Fauré’s “Sicilienne”Thomas Ospital◆ ◆ ◆Seth Colter Walls, Times writerWhen the Los Angeles Philharmonic wanted to commission organ music from Terry Riley, they let him hang out all night playing on Hurricane Mama, the potent pipe instrument inside Walt Disney Concert Hall. Some of the material Riley improvised there made its way into his 2013 concerto “At the Royal Majestic.” One of his grandest late-career works, it’s punchy, mystical and gorgeous. (It’s also a reminder that his artistic development did not stop with the early Minimalist touchstone “In C.”)The close of the first movement — called “Negro Hall,” after a drawing by the fin-de-siècle Swiss artist Adolf Wölfli — occasionally seesaws between sugar-sweet orchestral motifs and gloomier exhalations from the organ. Riley presents such contrasts not with postmodern irony, but with tangible, genuine delight. Even after a climactic turn toward frenzied rhythmic patterns, his joyous sensibility is always perceptible, and the final chords are exhilarating.Terry Riley’s “At the Royal Majestic”Todd Wilson; Nashville Symphony; Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor (Naxos)◆ ◆ ◆Olivier Latry, an organist at Notre-DameApril 15, 2019: The whole world was horrified to discover the images of Notre-Dame on fire. A few weeks earlier, I was in the cathedral recording this “Little” Fugue in G minor for an album called “Bach to the Future.”“Little” — but it is nevertheless great Bach! In a few minutes, the cantor of Leipzig tells us such a story. I love the fragility that shines throughout this work, a fragility that brings us back to our human condition in front of current events: the fire of Notre-Dame, the health situation, climate change. May this music make us aware of our determining role in humanity.Bach’s Fugue in G minor, BWV 578Olivier Latry (La Prima Volta)◆ ◆ ◆ More

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      Marilyn Manson Loses a Grammy Nomination, and a Songwriter Gains One

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      The Recording Academy has made various changes to its list for the 64th awards, adding Linda Chorney, whose name appeared on an earlier version of the ballot, back to the competition.Since the 64th annual Grammy nominations were announced last week, the Recording Academy, the organization behind the awards, has made various changes to its list, correcting misspellings and adding names that had been omitted from credits. Among the most notable revisions: Marilyn Manson lost one nomination, and a little-known songwriter, Linda Chorney, was added to the competitors for best American roots song.Manson, the shock rocker who is being investigated by the authorities in Los Angeles on accusations of sexual assault (numerous women have come forward), had been nominated twice for his work with Kanye West, including in the album of the year category as a featured artist and a songwriter on West’s album “Donda,” and for best rap song, as one of the writers of West’s “Jail.”Manson, whose real name — and official songwriting credit — is Brian Hugh Warner, has been removed from the rap song category; although Manson is credited as a writer on “Jail, Pt 2,” another track from “Donda,” he is not listed among the writers on the most current version of the album..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}The addition of Chorney is more complex, and offers a partial if confusing glimpse into the Grammys’ behind-the-scenes process of tabulating votes.Chorney had been on an initial version of the ballot under best American roots song, for her “Bored.” That version of the list, which circulated outside the Recording Academy in the days before the nominations were announced on Nov. 23, also had just eight slots for the top four categories; the day before that announcement, the Grammys’ board approved increasing that number to 10, adding artists including West and Taylor Swift. When the final nominations list came out, Chorney had been replaced by another artist, though some news outlets online still included her name.This week, the Grammys added Chorney back in. She had been removed, the academy said, because the accounting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, the awards’ longtime partner in collecting and tabulating votes, had performed an “audit” on the votes she received, and the academy decided to remove her name from the ballot.“That audit has now concluded, and Ms. Chorney’s recording has been added back in,” the academy said in a statement. “We apologize for any inconvenience this delay may have caused, but ensuring the integrity of our voting process is paramount.” It offered no explanation for how the early nominations list, which contained Chorney’s name, was released.Why was the audit conducted? In an interview on Wednesday, Chorney said that Harvey Mason Jr., the academy’s chief executive, told her in a phone call this week that she had been “flagged” because of her previous public comments about the Grammys. In 2011, her “Emotional Jukebox” was a surprise nominee for best Americana album. She was criticized at the time for “gaming the system” — she acknowledged using the Grammys’ website to promote herself, a common and permitted tactic at the time — and said she even got death threats. She helped make a movie about the experience titled “When I Sing.”Days after this year’s nominations were announced, the Grammys came under scrutiny for giving nominations to figures like Manson and Louis C.K., the comedian who in 2017 admitted to sexual misconduct. In a recent interview with The Wrap, Mason said that Grammy eligibility is based only on the recordings submitted for the awards, not any artist’s past behavior. “We won’t look back at people’s history,” he said.Chorney praised Mason for looking into the problem and addressing it quickly. When he called her, she said, “I was ecstatic. I felt validated.”The Grammys ceremony will be held on Jan. 31 in Los Angeles, hosted by Trevor Noah. More

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      Best Albums of 2021

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      Less isolation didn’t mean a return to normalcy. Albums with big feelings and room for catharsis made the most powerful connections.Olivia Rodrigo, Moneybagg Yo and Allison Russell stood out in 2021.From left: Grant Spanier; Noam Galai/Getty Images; Bethany Mollenkof for the New York TimesJon Pareles | Jon Caramanica | Lindsay ZoladzJon ParelesSongs of Trauma, Fear and TriumphThe past year was awash in recorded music — not only the stuck-at-home recordings that musicians occupied themselves with when touring evaporated during the pandemic, but also many albums that had been made before the lockdowns but had been shelved in hopes of some return to normalcy. The albums that resonated most with me during 2021 were songs of reflection and revelation, often dealing with traumas and crises, transfigured through music.1. Bomba Estéreo, ‘Deja’The Colombian duo Bomba Estéreo released “Deja” as a series of EPs tied to the ancient elements: water, air, fire, earth. Each new one broadened an album that entwines folklore and electronics, personal yearning and planetary concerns. With Liliana Saumet’s tartly endearing singing and rapping and Simón Mejía’s meticulously kinetic productions, the songs dance through their fears. (Read our interview with Bomba Estéreo.)Simón Mejía and Liliana Saumet of Bomba Estéreo released “Deja” as a series of EPs.Valerie Amor C2. Allison Russell, ‘Outside Child’Allison Russell, the longtime frontwoman of Birds of Chicago, transforms a horrific childhood — she was abused by her stepfather — into songs of joyful survival. “I’m still rising, stronger for my pain and suffering,” she sings. Drawing on soul, country, folk and deep blues, she connects her own story to myth and metaphor, remembering the trauma yet decisively rising above it. (Read our interview with Allison Russell.)3. Mon Laferte, ‘Seis’Sometimes visitors can see what residents take for granted. Mon Laferte is from Chile, but she has been living for more than a decade in Mexico and has immersed herself in its music. On “Seis,” she wrote songs that draw deeply on regional Mexican traditions — mariachi, banda, ranchera, corrido, norteño — to sing, in a voice that can be teasing or furiously incendiary, about deep passions and equally deep betrayals. (Read our interview with Mon Laferte.)Mon Laferte drew on Mexican traditions for one of two albums she released this year, “Seis.”Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times4. The Weather Station, ‘Ignorance’Tamara Lindeman, who writes songs and records as the Weather Station, surrounded herself with a jazzy, intuitive backup group for “Ignorance,” clearly aware of Joni Mitchell’s folk-jazz precedent. The rhythms are brisk and precise; winds, keyboards and guitars ricochet respectfully off her breathy vocal lines. She sings about impending disasters, romantic and environmental, and the widespread disregard for what’s clearly about to happen. (Read our interview with the Weather Station.)5. Mdou Moctar, ‘Afrique Victime’Mdou Moctar is a Tuareg guitarist born in Niger. Like Tinariwen, his band plugs North African rhythms and modal vamps into rock amplifiers and drums. But “Afrique Victime” further expands the sonic possibilities for Tuareg rock, from ambient meditation to psychedelic onslaught. Six-beat rhythms and skeins of guitar lines carry Moctar’s voice in songs that can be modest and introspective or unstoppably frenetic.6. Julien Baker, ‘Little Oblivions’“Beat myself until I’m bloody/And I’ll give you a ringside seat,” Julien Baker sings in one of the brave, ruthlessly self-indicting songs that fill “Little Oblivions,” an album about the toll of one person’s addictions on everyone around her. She played all the instruments herself, scaling her sound up to arena size and chiming like U2, even as she refuses herself any excuses or forgiveness. (Read our review of “Little Oblivions.”)7. Black Midi, ‘Cavalcade’The virtuosic British band Black Midi bristles in every direction: with jagged, skewed funk riffs; with pointed dissonances; with passages of Minimalistic, ominous suspense; with lyrics full of bitter disillusion. And then, just to keep things unsettled, come passages filled with tenderness and wonderment, only to plunge back into the fray. (Read our interview with Black Midi.)8. Olivia Rodrigo, ‘Sour’Olivia Rodrigo, now 18, fixates on a breakup with an adolescent’s obsessiveness on “Sour,” building on the audience she found as a cast member in Disney’s “High School Musical.” With Taylor Swift as a role model for craftsmanship, her songs are as neatly detailed as they are wounded, and the production whipsaws through styles — calm piano ballad, ethereal choir harmonies, fierce distorted guitars — to match every mood swing. (Read our review of “Sour” and watch her “Diary of a Song.”)Olivia Rodrigo’s songs are neatly detailed.Erica Hernandez9. Esperanza Spalding, ‘Songwrights Apothecary Lab’“Songwrights Apothecary Lab” was the bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding’s pandemic project; she consulted neuroscientists, music therapists and ethnomusicologists to devise music for healing, and an online user’s guide prescribes the purpose of each song. But the songs are equally effective off-label; they encompass meditations, serpentine jazz compositions, calm or turbulent improvisations, open-ended questions and sly bits of advice, the work of a graceful, perpetually questing mind. (Read our interview with Esperanza Spalding.)10. Tyler, the Creator, ‘Call Me if You Get Lost’A life of luxury can’t mollify Tyler, the Creator. He’s no longer the trolling provocateur he was a decade ago when he emerged with Odd Future, but he’s still intransigent and high-concept. After singing through most of his 2019 album, “Igor,” he’s back to rapping, now simulating a mixtape with DJ Drama as hypeman. In his deep voice, he raps about all he owns and all he can’t control — mostly romance — over his own dense, detailed productions, at once lush and abrasive. The album peaks with an eight-minute love-triangle saga, “Wichita”: a raw confession, cannily orchestrated. (Read our review of “Call Me if You Get Lost.”)Tyler, the Creator swings back to mostly rapping on his 2021 album.Luis “Panch” PerezAnd here are another 15 deserving albums, alphabetically:Adele, “30”Arooj Aftab, “Vulture Prince”Khaira Arby, “New York Live”Billie Eilish, “Happier Than Ever”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra, “Promises”Flock of Dimes, “Head of Roses”Rhiannon Giddens with Franceso Turrisi, “They’re Calling Me Home”Idles, “Crawler”Ka, “A Martyr’s Reward”Valerie June, “The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers”L’Rain, “Fatigue”Arlo Parks, “Collapsed in Sunbeams”Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, “Raise the Roof”Omar Sosa, “An East African Journey”Jazmine Sullivan, “Heaux Tales”Jon CaramanicaProcessing Pain, Blurring BoundariesIn the second year of global quasi-paralysis, what made the most sense were, once again, albums that felt like wombs and albums that felt like eruptions. When there was nowhere to go, literally or metaphorically, there were still places to retreat — to the gut, to history, to memory, to forgetting.1. Mustafa, ‘When Smoke Rises’Did you mourn this year? Were you broken in some way that was beyond words? Mustafa’s debut album was there with you, a startling, primal chronicle of relentless loss and the relentless grace required to navigate it. In moments when the ground buckled, this album was a cradle. (Read our interview with Mustafa.)Mustafa’s debut album is a profound meditation on loss.Bethany Mollenkof for The New York Times2. EST Gee, ‘Bigger Than Life or Death’The latest in a string of excellent releases from the Louisville, Ky., rapper EST Gee, whose verses are refreshingly burly and brusque, and who tells stories sprinkled with surprisingly vivid left-field details. A bold back-to-basics statement, utterly free of filigree.3. Olivia Rodrigo, ‘Sour’The most important new pop star of the year delivered a debut album of poppy punk and punky pop that’s sometimes musically blistering and always emotionally blistered. A reminder that a failed relationship might leave you icy or bruised or drained, but in truth, it frees you to be emboldened. (Read our review of “Sour” and watch her “Diary of a Song.”)4. Moneybagg Yo, ‘A Gangsta’s Pain’Moneybagg Yo is a casually sassy rapper — a don of tsk-tsking, fluent in arched eyebrows, dispositionally blunt. This is his fourth major-label album, and it’s punchy and robustly musical. À la peak 2 Chainz, Moneybagg Yo boasts so long and so intently that he sounds fatigued, and in turn, uproarious.5. PinkPantheress, ‘To Hell With It’This is music about listening to music, about the secret places we burrow into in order to make sure our favorite songs can wash over us unimpeded. The singing is sweet and melancholic, and the production flirts with memory and time — stories of right now and back then, all told as one. (Read our review of “To Hell With It.”)6. Summer Walker, ‘Still Over It’The most emotionally direct vocalist working in R&B today, Summer Walker is a bracing listen. And this album, her third full-length release, is rawly vindictive and unconcerned with polish, the equivalent of a public-facing Instagram account that feels like a finsta. (Read our notebook on Summer Walker.)Summer Walker’s third album is appealingly unpolished and intimate.Theo Wargo/Getty Images7. Lana Del Rey, ‘Chemtrails Over the Country Club’Lana Del Rey albums have become pop music’s most compelling ongoing saga about American loneliness and sadness. This, the better of her two albums this year, is alluringly arid and dreamlike. (Read our review of “Chemtrails Over the Country Club.”)8. Tyler, the Creator, ‘Call Me if You Get Lost’In which the rapper who introduced himself a decade ago as the genre’s great anarchist reveals something that was long clear to close observers: He reveres tradition. Brick-hard rhyme structures. Ostentatious taunts. Mixtape grit. All of it. (Read our review of “Call Me if You Get Lost.”)9. Playboi Carti, ‘Whole Lotta Red’Just an unyieldingly odd record. Notionally a cousin of mid-2010s SoundCloud rap, it also has echoes of 1980s industrial rock and also the glitchcore of the 2000s. It’s buoyant and psychedelic and totally destabilizing.10. Kanye West, ‘Donda (Deluxe)’“Donda” lives at the intersection of Kanye’s “Yeezus” era and his Jesus era. On the one hand, there’s scabrous, churning production that sets a chaotic mood. On the other, there are moments of intense searching, gasps for air amid the unrest. (Read our notebook on “Donda.”)11. Rauw Alejandro, ‘Vice Versa’Rauw Alejandro, the most imaginative meta-reggaeton Latin pop star, dabbles in drum ’n’ bass and baile funk on his second major-label album. But the star is his hypertreated voice, which is synthetically sweet and appealingly lush, almost to the point of delightful suffocation. (Read our review of “Vice Versa.”)Rauw Alejandro’s latest album puts a spotlight on his vocals.Thais Llorca/EPA, via Shutterstock12. Doja Cat, ‘Planet Her’Outlandish, eccentric, lustrous, mercenarily maximalist pop from the sing-rapper with the richest and keenest pop ear not named Drake.13. Chloe Moriondo, ‘Blood Bunny’Openhearted and effortlessly catchy indie punk-pop about lovelorn confusion and beginning to figure out you’re too cool for that. (Read our notebook on Chloe Moriondo.)14. Kidd G, ‘Down Home Boy’Why yes, those are Juice WRLD cadences in the singing on the year’s best country debut album. (Read our interview with Kidd G.)15. The Armed, ‘Ultrapop’Shrieking sheets of nervy noise — a battering ram.16. Carly Pearce, ’29: Written in Stone’A brief marriage, a messy divorce, a helluva album.17. Yeat, ‘4L’If “Whole Lotta Red” is too coherent for you, try Yeat.18. Conway the Machine, ‘La Maquina’A cold, cold, cold growl of a classic-minded hip-hop album.19. Farruko, ‘La 167’“Pepas” is here, along with a confidently expansive range of reggaeton styles.Farruko’s “La 167” is a showcase for reggaeton styles.Rich Polk/Getty Images20. Mickey Guyton, ‘Remember Her Name’A pop-country winner that feels both universal and singular. (Read our interview with Mickey Guyton.)… and 20 more albums for a more well-rounded year.42 Dugg, “Free Dem Boyz”Gracie Abrams, “This Is What It Feels Like”Aespa, “Savage”Jay Bahd, “Return of Okomfo Anokye”Benny the Butcher and Harry Fraud, “The Plugs I Met 2”Ivan Cornejo, “Alma Vacía”Jhay Cortez, “Timelezz”Dave, “We’re All Alone in This Together”Drake, “Certified Lover Boy”Halsey, “If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power”Cody Johnson, “Human the Double Album”NCT 127, “Sticker”RXK Nephew, “Crack Dreams”serpentwithfeet, “Deacon”Spirit of the Beehive, “Entertainment, Death”Don Toliver, “Life of a Don”Rod Wave, “SoulFly”Tion Wayne, “Green With Envy”Wiki, “Half God”Young Thug, “Punk”Lindsay ZoladzOpening Up Hearts and MindsIn an emotionally hung over year when so many people were trying to process loss — of loved ones, of charred or flooded homes, of the world as we once knew it — some of the best music offered an opportunity to slow down and reconnect with feelings we may have rushed right by before truly acknowledging. Sometimes we just needed a voice to capture and echo the absurdity all around us, but other times records gave us a way of experiencing nothing less than mass catharsis.1. Adele, ‘30’It takes a certain kind of record to make me want to quote Rumi, but Adele really killed this, so let me say: “You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.”Adele has been our mass-cultural bard of heartbreak for the past decade, but in her music — save for the handful of instant-classic ballads scattered across her discography — I did not really get the sense that she was truly open in all the terror and glory that implies. Then she turned 30. “I’m so afraid but I’m open wide,” she sings on the divine “To Be Loved,” her imperial voice trembling but assured. Most breakup albums are full of anger, scorn, and blame, but this one is remarkably self-directed, a grown woman making a deeply considered choice to leap into the void and break her own heart wide apart. “I took some bad turns that I am owning,” she sings, audibly italicizing that last phrase, as if the preceding 10 tracks in all their startling honesty hadn’t already made that clear.On “19,” “21,” and “25,” Adele acted wise beyond her years: “We both know we ain’t kids no more,” she chided an ex on an album about being in her mid-20s, which also included a world-wearied number called “When We Were Young.” “30” refreshingly winds back the clock and finds her admitting that all along she was “just a child, didn’t get the chance to feel the world around” her. But now she sings like a mature woman who knows there’s still plenty of time to get wine-drunk on the everyday wonders of her own freedom, to break her heart open again and again in her newly omnivorous and sonically eclectic songs. This, at last, is Adele living up to her promise, pop majesty at the highest count. (Read our review of “30.”)Adele breaks her own heart open on “30.”Cliff Lipson/CBS2. Tyler, The Creator, ‘Call Me if You Get Lost’He’s still on the boat! Tyler has never sounded this breezy yet in control, but for all the luxurious braggadocio, there’s a darker undercurrent at work, too. “I remembered I was rich so I bought me some new emotions,” he raps at the beginning of the album; by the stunning penultimate track, the heart-tugging epic “Wilshire,” he’ll have to admit that’s impossible. Full of playful reflections on his past (“I was canceled before canceled was with Twitter fingers”) and auspicious blessings for his future, “Call Me” finds Tyler dropping a stone into that murky blue and discovering unexplored new depths. (Read our review of “Call Me if You Get Lost.”)3. Snail Mail, ‘Valentine’Lindsey Jordan begs, bargains and finally accepts the pain of heartache in this searing song cycle that further establishes her as one of indie rock’s brightest young stars. There’s a raw immediacy to these 10 songs that make them almost feel hot to the touch — the thrashing title track, the keening acoustic ballad “Light Blue,” even the slinky, synth-driven vamp “Ben Franklin.” Her nimble guitar work highlights a sharp ear for off-kilter melody, but at the core of “Valentine” is Jordan’s passionately hoarse voice, lungs filled to the brim with sound and fury. (Read our review of “Valentine.”)4. Jazmine Sullivan, ‘Heaux Tales’The chatty, candid interstitials woven through this wonderful album play out like an adult reunion of those young girls in the classroom from “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” — now grown women swapping secrets, recollections and hard-earned wisdom. “Heaux Tales” is a prismatic, multiperspective snapshot of female desire in the 21st century, enlivened by the testimonies of friends like Ari Lennox and H.E.R. but made cohesive by the soulfully versatile voice of Jazmine Sullivan. She breathes life into a spectrum of emotions, from the sassy assertion of “Pick Up Your Feelings” to the naked yearning of “The Other Side,” proving that it would be too limiting to choose between being a hard rock or a gem. Aren’t we all a little bit of both? (Read our review of “Heaux Tales.”)Jazmine Sullivan explores the multiple dimensions of female desire in the 21st century on “Heaux Tales.”NAACP, via Reuters5. Illuminati Hotties, ‘Let Me Do One More’The indie producer turned surprisingly ebullient frontperson Sarah Tudzin is a personable and occasionally hilarious guide through the surreal ruins of late capitalism. “You think I wanna be a part of every self-appointed start-up?” she seethes in a punky, cartoonish voice, but a few songs later she’s exhausted enough to sound resigned to inevitable compromise: “The corner store is selling spit, bottled up for profit,” she sighs, “can’t believe I’m buying it.” Still, Tudzin’s songs glow with the possibility of human intimacy amid all the rubble, and they show off her mastery of so many different genres that by the end of the record, it seems like there’s no ceiling to her talent as both a producer and a finger-on-the-pulse songwriter. (Read our interview with Illuminati Hotties.)6. Olivia Rodrigo, ‘Sour’Hell hath no fury like a young woman out to prove she’s no one-hit wonder. From the opening guitar-crunch of the Zoomer primal scream that is “Brutal,” Olivia Rodrigo proves there’s so much more to her than could be expressed even in a song as exquisitely expressive as her seismic smash “Drivers License.” Rodrigo fashions teen-girl sarcasm into a lethal weapon on the dream-pop “Deja Vu,” rails against the Instagram industrial complex on the barbed social critique “Jealousy, Jealousy” and transforms a sample of one of her idol Taylor Swift’s sweetest love songs into a tear-streaked heartbreaker on “1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back.” If it feels comparatively weak on the back end, that’s only because the first half of this album is probably the most impressive six-song run anybody put together this year. (Read our review of “Sour” and watch her “Diary of a Song.”)7. The Weather Station, ‘Ignorance’How do you make music about climate change without it sounding too didactic and abstract? Tamara Lindeman, the Canadian musician who records as the Weather Station, came up with a winning solution on her stirring album “Ignorance,” which finds her singing elegiac love songs to a dying planet. The graceful melancholy of “Tried to Tell You” surveys the natural beauty we’ve been too numb to mourn, while the sparse, jazzy “Robber” is a kind of musical tone-poem about large-scale corporate destruction. With her nimble voice — sometimes high and fluttery, other times earthy and low — and evocative lyricism, the songs of “Ignorance” animate, as one of her bandmates puts it, “the emotional side of climate change,” employing music’s depth of feeling to ignite political consciousness. (Read our interview with the Weather Station.)Tamara Lindeman of the Weather Station finds artful ways to sing about the climate crisis.Angela Lewis for The New York Times8. Low, ‘Hey What’If only every band could sound this adventurous 30 years into existence. As their eerily heartfelt harmonies cut through with rhythmic blurts of electronic noise, Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk sound, quite literally, like ghosts in the machine, imbuing vast, steely soundscapes with a disarming beauty. Following the sonic reinvention of the stunning 2018 album “Double Negative,” the Duluth band have continued to frame human yearning amid a churning and apocalyptic backdrop, with career-best songs like “Disappearing” and “Days Like These” capturing both the difficulty and the necessity of finding light in a dark age.9. Lucy Dacus, ‘Home Video’Lucy Dacus’s wrenching third studio album is as much an achievement of memoir as it is of songwriting, a vividly conjured coming-of-age story so personal that she used her own teenage diaries for research. “In the summer of ’07, I was sure I’d go to heaven,” she sings on “VBS” (as in, Vacation Bible School), before a gradual and all-consuming doubt begins to creep in. By the final song, when a friend tells her she’s afraid that their desires have rendered them “cursed,” Dacus responds, “So what?” As thoughtfully crafted as a collection of short stories, “Home Video” achingly chronicles the tale of a young person who loses her religion but in the process gains autonomy, a sense of identity and the glorious strength to tell her own truths in song. (Read T magazine’s interview with Lucy Dacus.)10. Dry Cleaning, ‘New Long Leg’“Are there some kind of reverse platform shoes that make you go into the ground more?” the ever-droll Florence Shaw asks, one of many absurdist yet somehow relatable philosophical questions she poses on the English post-punk band Dry Cleaning’s singular debut album. The instrumentation around Shaw swells like a sudden squall, but her deadpan, spoken-word musings — a mixture of found text, overheard chitchat and offbeat poetry — are the eye of the storm, remaining steady and strangely unperturbed in all kinds of weather.11. Billie Eilish, ‘Happier Than Ever’No record grew on me more this year than Billie Eilish’s patient and personal sophomore effort, which shuns repeat-the-formula predictability and unfolds at its own unhurried pace. It’s somehow even quieter than her sumptuously ASMR-triggering debut, until those sudden moments when it isn’t — as on the corrosive conclusion to the Nine-Inch-Nails-like “NDA,” or the fireworks display of pent-up frustration that rips open the title track. Exquisitely sequenced, this is a rare pop album that doesn’t show all its cards right away, but instead saves its strongest material for the end, building toward a satisfying finale and a hint at the potential versatility of her future. (Read our review of “Happier Than Ever.”)Billie Eilish’s second album, “Happier Than Ever,” reveals itself at its own pace.Rich Fury/Getty Images12. Mdou Moctar, ‘Afrique Victime’The fluid and incandescent playing of the Tuareg guitar hero Mdou Moctar transcends borders, seamlessly fusing Western psychedelia with North African desert blues. “Afrique Victime,” his strongest and most focused record to date, showcases not only his quicksilver fingerwork but his innate gift for melody and songcraft, proving in every one of these nine blazing tracks that shredding is a universal language.13. Bitchin Bajas, ‘Switched on Ra’This shouldn’t work, or at least not nearly as well as it does: A drone synth outfit tackling the otherworldly compositions and complex harmonies of cosmic jazz pioneer Sun Ra? But Chicago’s Bitchin Bajas approach the task with equal parts reverence and playfulness, assembling an Arkestra of 19 different analog synths and in the process creating a prolonged musical meditation on time, space and the meaning of retrofuturism. The vibes are exquisite, and the whole thing sounds like the Muzak that would play in an intergalactic portal’s waiting room.14. Remi Wolf, ‘Juno’Here’s to anyone who takes a technically skilled voice and chooses to do something delectably weird with it. The Palo Alto native Remi Wolf’s pipes are strong enough to have propelled her to Hollywood on the 2014 season of “American Idol,” but she’s since carved out a much less conventional path, making bold, psychedelic pop that bursts at the seams with ideas, melodies and truly wild wordplay (“I love my family intrinsically, like Anthony Kiedis,” she sings, which — sure!). On “Juno,” one of the most promising debut albums of the year, Wolf throws everything she’s got at the wall — and a surprisingly high percentage of it actually sticks. (Read our interview with Remi Wolf.)Remi Wolf makes bold, psychedelic pop that bursts at the seams with ideas.Amy Sussman/Getty ImagesSome runners-up worth mentioning:L’Rain, “Fatigue”Rostam, “Changephobia”Flock of Dimes, “Head of Roses”Lana Del Rey, “Chemtrails Over the Country Club”/“Blue Banisters”Halsey, “If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power”Palberta, “Palberta 5000”/Lily Konigsberg, “Lily We Need to Talk Now” More

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      Best Jazz Albums of 2021

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      In a year of continued uncertainty, musicians held their colleagues, and listeners, close.Esperanza Spalding, Pharoah Sanders and Jason Moran made some of the year’s strongest jazz releases.Clockwise from left: Will Matsuda for The New York Times; Sam Polcer for The New York Times; Heather Sten for The New York TimesEven the big-statement albums made by jazz musicians this year had a feeling of intense closeness: of large-scale problems being worked out within an enclosure, with limited tools and just a few compatriots. No surprise there, I guess. Twelve months ago, the year began with promise, but we’ve hardly returned to old comforts. Rather than breaking out, we spent 2021 getting used to a feeling of unquiet, making the most of being mostly alone. The best improvised music of the year understood that, and met us there.1. Pharoah Sanders, Floating Points and the London Symphony Orchestra, ‘Promises’Why fight it: This year’s big talker in the experimental-music world ended up being just as powerful as we’d hoped. Not really jazz, not exactly classical, definitely not electronic music per se, “Promises” is the first-ever collaboration between Pharoah Sanders, the octogenarian spiritual-jazz eminence, and Floating Points, nee Sam Shepherd, a 30-something British composer and polymath. They each use music to get at questions of healing — Shepherd typically as a solo musician, Sanders as a communitarian — and although “Promises” was recorded before the coronavirus pandemic began, it arrived a year into lockdown, just when we needed it most.2. Jason Moran, ‘The Sound Will Tell You’A pianist, visual artist, curator, writer and guiding force in jazz, Jason Moran has been quietly releasing albums on his Bandcamp over the past few years, after ending a lengthy relationship with Blue Note Records. He doesn’t have a publicist, and barely self-promotes beyond his personal social media feeds, but these releases are worth seeking out. Moran recorded “The Sound Will Tell You” alone in January, just as he was mounting an exhibition of deep-blue works on paper at Luhring Augustine in Tribeca. This is an intimate and tender, harmonically lush piano record, heavily inspired by the writings of Toni Morrison, blurred occasionally by electronic effects but always clear in its melodic intent. (Listen to “The Sound Will Tell You” on Bandcamp.)3. James Brandon Lewis Red Lily Quintet, ‘Jesup Wagon’The tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis tends to blow hard into his horn, but he likes to save up extra breath in the bottom of his lungs, so that his notes don’t necessarily fade, but sometimes grow louder and stronger over time. It’s a way of broadcasting patience and urgency all at once, and reminding you that he’s in control. After years of mounting buzz, Lewis cashed in his chips with “Jesup Wagon.” The album’s seven original compositions — composed for an unorthodox quintet, with the life of George Washington Carver in mind — are built around yawning, polyphonic melodies (Lewis’s saxophone intertwined with Kirk Knuffke’s cornet) and layers of rhythm stacked underneath (William Parker’s bass and guimbri, Christopher Hoffman’s cello and Chad Taylor’s drums and mbira).4. Patricia Brennan, ‘Maquishti’Twinkling and mesmeric, the debut album from this Mexican-born, New York-based vibraphonist and marimba player mixes composed material with tracks that were improvised in the studio whole cloth. Some are retouched with echoey, scrambling effects, but none is particularly lush or layered. Moving way outside the standard language of jazz vibraphone, Patricia Brennan has created something like a landscape of vapor, full of wandering melodies lost in the fog.Patricia Brennan’s “Maquishti” blends composed tracks with improvisation.Noel Brennan5. Adam O’Farrill, ‘Visions of Your Other’Weaving, pulsing, fine-grain complexity, intense focus: They’re all at play in the trumpeter Adam O’Farrill’s tangled compositions. On “Visions of Your Other,” his third album with his quartet, Stranger Days (featuring Xavier Del Castillo on tenor saxophone, Walter Stinson on bass and Zack O’Farrill on drums), the group slips into the music like a perfectly tailored suit.Adam O’Farrill’s “Visions of Your Other,” his third album with his quartet, Stranger Days, is a study of intense focus.Camilo Fuentealba for The New York Times6. Sam Gendel and Sam Wilkes, ‘Music for Saxofone & Bass Guitar More Songs’Sam Gendel, a saxophonist, and Sam Wilkes, a bassist, are millennial pals who seem equally interested in using music for the purposes of comfort and disruption. In 2018, they put out “Music for Saxofone and Bass Guitar,” a stealthy little album that might have spluttered out of a vat where time, space, genre and the titular instruments themselves had all melted down into a roux. Recorded live to tape and released on Bandcamp, it became an underground obsession. Their follow-up LP, “More Songs,” contains nine additional tracks in the same vein, and it’s at least as hypnotic as the first.Sam Gendel and Sam Wilkes followed up their 2018 release this year.Marcella Cytrynowicz7. William Parker, ‘Migration of Silence Into and Out of the Tone World’The bassist, composer and organizer William Parker’s five-decade career sends a galvanizing message: Yes, you can do it all. You can play in and outside of any improvising style you choose; you can lead and you can follow; you can play the bass like a heavy rhythm instrument while coaxing grace and lyric from it. “Migration of Silence Into and Out of the Tone World” is not one new LP, but in fact 10, each featuring Parker’s original music recorded with a different collaborator or band. So it works as a measure of his enormous range, and an index of his network on the downtown avant-garde — a scene that would hardly be the same without him.8. Sara Serpa and Emmanuel Iduma, ‘Intimate Strangers’Sara Serpa, a Portuguese singer whose voice is both small and bold, has spent the past few years immersing herself in the shocking history of Portugal’s colonial misadventures on the African continent, and responding through music. On “Intimate Strangers,” she collaborates with Emmanuel Iduma, a Nigerian memoirist and critic, who has written in evocative detail about the experiences of migrant laborers on the continent today. Through him, Serpa found a way to explore the present-day legacy of colonialism, while usefully decentering her own perspective. But the music remains distinctly Serpa’s: cool-toned, vocal-driven, abstract and yet immediately beautiful.9. Wadada Leo Smith/Douglas R. Ewart/Mike Reed, ‘Sun Beams of Shimmering Light’Nearing 80, Wadada Leo Smith retains one of the fullest and most arresting trumpet sounds around. But playing alongside him means getting in touch with silence, too, as if there might be energy coming from his horn that hasn’t yet become sound but still needs room to breathe. The saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist Douglas R. Ewart — who, like Smith, moved to Chicago in the 1960s and became an early member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians — brings a similarly restful approach to improvisation. Working with the younger Chicagoan drummer Mike Reed, Smith and Ewart created an album of expanse and vision that lives up to its name. (Listen to “Sun Beams of Shimmering Light” on Bandcamp.)10. Esperanza Spalding, ‘Songwrights Apothecary Lab’“Songwrights Apothecary Lab” takes the form of an album here, but it began as more than that (and it’s likely to continue as more, too). Esperanza Spalding, the bassist, vocalist and self-described “songwright,” held residencies in New York and her native Oregon during the pandemic, bringing together a mix of healers and artists in search of new and therapeutic methods of making music. Each of the LP’s 12 tracks is a “formwela,” blending lyrical and wordless vocals, instrumental textures and hooks that condense out of thin air.Esperanza Spalding held residencies during the pandemic.Will Matsuda for The New York Times More

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      Alvin Lucier, Probing Composer of Soundscapes, Is Dead at 90

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      His experimental music was rooted in the physics of sound and might yield unpredictable results — in one instance a Beatles song emanating from a teapot.Alvin Lucier, an influential experimental composer whose works focused less on traditional musical elements like melody and harmony than on the scientific underpinnings of sound and of listeners’ perceptions, died on Wednesday at his home in Middletown, Conn., where he had taught for decades at Wesleyan University. He was 90.His daughter, Amanda Lucier, said the cause was complications after a fall.Unlike composers who have the goal of painting an aural picture, evoking particular emotions, creating a dramatic narrative or exploring carefully plotted rhythmic interactions, Mr. Lucier seemed to approach his works as experiments that might yield unpredictable soundscapes.A finished work could sound like howling feedback, electronic crackling or — in the case of his best-known piece, “I Am Sitting in a Room” (1969) — a spoken text that with repetition becomes increasingly distorted and overlaid with reverberation until it is transformed into a symphony of dancing overtones.And though his music was rooted in the physics of sound, variables like the size and shape of the performance space or the alpha wave patterns a performer generates made his pieces sound different from one performance to the next.Mr. Lucier began many of his projects by wondering what kinds of sounds would emerge from a specific process, like tapping a pair of pencils or detecting brain waves. He would then reduce the variables into a single focus.Mr. Lucier in 1967. He would sometimes employ high-tech gadgetry in composing.via Lucier family“My main activity composing is to eliminate many different possibilities in a piece,” he told the producers of “No Ideas but in Things,” a 2013 film portrait of him by Viola Rusche and Hauke Harder. “When I start, I have so many different ideas about how to put the piece together, and I have to work and think hard until I get to the point where only the essential components are there.”In “I Am Sitting in a Room,” Mr. Lucier began by quietly reading a short statement describing what he is doing. “I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now,” the text begins. “I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed.”The room’s acoustics, as well as audio distortions that occur when a tape is rerecorded over and over, yields a gradually changing sound in which, after 10 minutes, the spoken text is buried in reverberation and overtones, and unintelligible. During the final section, high-pitched overtones coalesce into eerie, slow-moving melodies.Other works are tempered by a wry sense of humor. In “Nothing Is Real” (1990), Mr. Lucier has a pianist play the melody of the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever,” scattering the song’s phrases throughout the piano’s range. The performance is recorded and immediately played back through a small speaker inside a teapot, which works as a sound-altering resonant chamber. Mr. Lucier then has the pianist open and close the teapot’s lid to further manipulate the tone of the recording.Alvin Augustus Lucier Jr., was born in Nashua, N.H., on May 14, 1931. His father was a lawyer who was elected mayor of Nashua when Alvin was 3. Alvin Sr. was also an amateur violinist who met his future wife, Kathryn E. Lemery, when he filled in with a dance band in which she was the pianist.The Luciers encouraged their son’s interest in music, but although he picked up the rudiments of piano playing from his mother, he refused to take lessons, preferring to play the drums. His principal interest at the time was jazz, but he became interested in contemporary classical music when he found a recording of Arnold Schoenberg’s “Serenade.”“I bought it and it was shocking,” Mr. Lucier said in a 2005 interview with NewMusicBox. “It didn’t make any sense, but there was something about it that kept my interest. At that point I decided I was interested in challenging things.”Mr. Lucier in 1997. His best-known work was “I Am Sitting in a Room,” a spoken text that, with repetition, becomes increasingly distorted and overlaid with reverberation until it is transformed into a symphony of dancing overtones.Joyce Dopkeen/The New York TimesHe studied composition and music theory at Yale University, where his teachers included Howard Boatwright and Quincy Porter. He received his bachelor’s degree there in 1954 and his master’s in 1960 at Brandeis University, where he studied with Arthur Berger and Harold Shapero. During those years he composed in a neo-Classical style, a preference reinforced by his studies at the Tanglewood Music Festival in Massachusetts with Aaron Copland and Lukas Foss during the summers of 1958 and ’59.Mr. Lucier’s change of heart occurred during a two-year stay in Rome as a Fulbright scholar, from 1960 to 1962. Attending a 1960 concert by the composers John Cage and David Tudor and the choreographer Merce Cunningham at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Mr. Lucier was at first outraged by the chance processes that Cage and Tudor were exploring. But as he thought about the concert in the days that followed, he began to understand Cage’s and Tudor’s rejection of conventional musical formats as both important and necessary.“Something about it was so wonderful and exhilarating, I decided that I wanted to involve myself in that,” he told The New York Times in 1997. “I was literally exhausted by the neo-Classic style, and I had a couple of teachers that were at an impasse. They were getting bitter, and they were sort of losing their enthusiasm. And I was just at that age where I was ready for something new. But I didn’t know what to do.”He found an answer in 1965, when he met Edmond Dewan, a physicist who had invented a brain wave amplifier. Mr. Lucier was by then on the Brandeis faculty and had won considerable attention in new-music circles by presiding over programs, both at Brandeis and in New York, that included premieres by Cage, Earl Brown, Christian Wolff and Terry Riley. Dr. Dewan offered the use of his invention to Mr. Lucier, who explored its possibilities in what became the breakthrough work in his new style, “Music for Solo Performer” (1965).For that piece, the performer sits before an audience with sensors strapped around his forehead, closed eyes and a clear mind. The waves are amplified and sent to loudspeakers, the vibrating cones of which cause percussion instruments to sound.The brain wave amplifier gave way to other high-tech gadgetry. Mr. Lucier created “Vespers” (1968) using echolocation devices — pulse oscillators used by the blind and others to determine distances. He had the gear operated by blindfolded performers moving through a space, the devices clicking at different speeds and intensities as they approach walls and other objects.Mr. Lucier earlier this year. He taught composition at Wesleyan University from 1968 to 2011.Jillian Freyer for The New York TimesIn 1966, Mr. Lucier formed the Sonic Arts Union with a group of like-minded avant-gardists, among them the composers Robert Ashley, David Behrman and Gordon Mumma. The group toured in the United States and Europe, with each composer performing his own music, until 1976. They were joined at times by visual artists, including Mr. Lucier’s first wife, Mary Lucier. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1972.Mr. Lucier later married Wendy Stokes, a former dancer and a psychiatric advanced-practice registered nurse. She survives him along with their daughter, Amanda.. In addition to their Middletown home, Mr. Lucier and his wife owned a studio apartment in Manhattan.He joined the Wesleyan faculty in 1968 and taught composition there until his retirement in 2011. Starting in the mid-1980s, he devoted himself increasingly to instrumental and ensemble works. The Bang on a Can All-Stars, Alter Ego, Ensemble Pamplemousse and ICE are among the groups that commissioned works from him.“I don’t really enjoy listening to my own music,” Mr. Lucier told NewMusicBox. “But maybe it’s good because it keeps me thinking and it keeps me from getting complacent.”Maia Coleman contributed reporting. More

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      Looking Again at Amy Winehouse, 10 Years After Her Death

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      In “Amy: Beyond the Stage,” the Design Museum in London explores — and tries to somewhat reframe — the “Back to Black” singer’s life and legacy.LONDON — On the wall of a museum here hangs a handwritten page from Amy Winehouse’s teenage notebook, listing her “fame ambitions.” There are 14 goals, including “to be photographed by David LaChapelle” (the photographer who would later direct the music video for her song “Tears Dry on Their Own”) and “to do a movie where I look ugly.”A decade after her death at 27, the exhibition “Amy: Beyond the Stage” at the Design Museum displays both intimate items — like the goal list — and objects that point to the singer’s influences in an attempt to add new dimensions to how we understand Winehouse’s short career and legacy, both of which are often overshadowed by her struggles with addiction.Winehouse’s memory has been shaped, in part, by documentaries like “Amy” from 2015, which won an Oscar, and by artists who cite her as an influence — “I owe 90 percent of my career to her,” Adele said onstage in 2016.Speaking in an interview at the museum, Janis Winehouse, the singer’s mother, said that her daughter was “difficult” growing up. “We had a relationship: I would say, ‘Amy don’t,’ and she would take it as, ‘Amy carry on,’ and that’s how it worked,” she said.Winehouse’s stepfather, Richard Collins, added that the musician “was very strong, very charismatic, she was manipulative, she was loving, she was naughty, headstrong and she could sing — and it was obvious.”The idea for an exhibition that could touch on many of these facets was brought to the Design Museum by Naomi Parry, Winehouse’s friend and stylist, in the summer of 2020. After 10 years, Parry hoped that people would be receptive to thinking about Winehouse’s story in a different way.A wall of photographs in the exhibition depict the evolution of Winehouse’s style around the release of her first album, “Frank,” in 2003.Ed ReeveIn the years immediately after her death, “people weren’t ready to talk about anything but the tragedy, which I understood,” Parry, who is an adviser to the exhibition, said in a recent interview. But more recently, she has “needed the narrative to shift slightly to a more positive focus on her life because it was a real struggle constantly seeing books and stories and negative things about my friend.”There was also another motivation. Last month, there was an auction of a number of the singer’s belongings from her estate, which is administered by her father, Mitch Winehouse. . “It was kind of our last opportunity whilst we had things in our control to do this,” Parry said.The exhibition charts Winehouse’s evolution and influences, from her early years growing up in the Southgate suburb of north London to the Black artists who inspired her, as well as the clothes and hair that made up her distinctive aesthetic..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Here’s a look at some of the items on display, and what they reveal about the singer.Winehouse wore this yellow dress, second from left, to the BRIT Awards in 2007. She paired it with a black bra.Ed ReeveDress by PreenWinehouse wore a yellow dress from the designer Preen in 2007 at the BRIT Awards, an annual ceremony celebrating British popular music. That year, “Back to Black” was nominated for album of the year, and Winehouse took home the award for best British female artist.For Parry, the BRIT Awards marked a moment in which the singer’s signature vintage style — the beehive, short dresses and thick eyeliner — took shape.Winehouse customized the outfit by wearing a black bra underneath. “When we did the fitting, she tried it on without a bra, and I was like, ‘It looks incredible,’” Parry said. Before the event, however, Winehouse tried the dress on again over her bra and decided she preferred it that way.Parry said that Winehouse often personalized outfits: Before one performance, Parry had to cut off the bottom of a Dolce & Gabbana dress because Winehouse wanted it shorter. “It was always a conversation,” Parry said of the alterations. “But she would always win.”In one installation at the Design Museum, visitors may feel like they’re stepping into the London recording studio where parts of “Back to Black” were recorded. Ed Reeve‘In the Studio’ InstallationThis installation, created by Chiara Stephenson, a stage and costume designer, is inspired by Metropolis Studios, the London recording studio where parts of Winehouse’s 2006 album “Back to Black” were recorded and mixed. The constructed “booth” plays footage of Winehouse, her contemporaries and influences.“It kind of felt like it was overnight,” Parry said of Winehouse’s fame after the album’s release. “Suddenly she had paparazzi camped directly outside her house. For anybody, whether they had mental health issues or not, that is a lot.”A jacket from a 2008 collection that Karl Lagerfeld designed for Chanel.On the runway, models sported Winehouse-style beehives. Ed ReeveJacket From Chanel’s Métiers d’Art Pre-Fall CollectionThis piece is from Chanel’s 2008 Métiers d’Art collection, designed by Karl Lagerfeld. On the runway, many of the models sported beehives and heavy eyeliner, inspired by Winehouse.While Winehouse was confident in her abilities as a singer, Parry said, “I think it completely blew her mind when people, like Lagerfeld, knew who she was and were inspired by her.”Winehouse’s influence on high-fashion houses continued after her death — in 2012 Jean Paul Gaultier unveiled a line paying even more direct homage to the singer — as did her effect on street style more broadly.“In the wake of Amy’s death, there were women all over the streets of London, Paris, New York wearing beehives in all different forms,” said Priya Khanchandani, the show’s curator. “I think some people were doing it without necessarily realizing that it came from Amy.”After Winehouse’s death, fans wrote messages to her on the street signs outside her north London home.Ed ReeveCamden Square and Murray Street SignsFans and well-wishers wrote on these street signs outside Winehouse’s home in the aftermath of her death in July 2011. “The fans were in the square singing Amy’s songs and crying,” said Collins, Winehouse’s stepfather.The council had planned to take the signs down and replace them, Collins said, but Winehouse’s manager persuaded officials to hand them over to the family.Parry, who lived with Winehouse from January to May 2011, said of the public outpouring: “Looking back on it, it was such an amazing thing how many people felt like they experienced her to the point where they feel physical grief.”Fred Perry and Winehouse collaborated on a collection in 2010.Ed ReeveFred Perry CollectionThese selected items come from the 2010 collaboration between the clothing brand Fred Perry and Winehouse.Parry had conversations with Winehouse about starting a label together and thought that a collaboration with Fred Perry — a brand that Winehouse loved and that had strong connections to musical subcultures — would be a way for her to enter the fashion world.Remembering Winehouse’s excitement at the prospect of working with the brand, Parry described it as “like a child that was about to go into their favorite sweet shop.”Working on the collection was an escape for Winehouse, Parry said: “It was still doing something creative, but it wasn’t the pressure of music. It was something new and something she could get her teeth into.”During her lifetime, the media often fetishized Winehouse’s troubles or didn’t “treat them with the gravity that they should have,” said Priya Khanchandani, the show’s curator.Ed Reeve‘In the Limelight’ InstallationThese are a selection of articles written about Winehouse, many of which address her substance use.“The exhibition sets out to be celebratory of Amy and her legacy, but it would be impossible to do an exhibition about Amy and not talk about the struggles that she faced,” said Khanchandani, the show’s curator. At the time, the media often fetishized Winehouse’s troubles or didn’t “treat them with the gravity that they should have,” she said.Stories included here describe Winehouse as “a tortured soul” and “the nation’s high priestess of hedonism.”Khanchandani took care to properly frame this part of the exhibition, calling on experts who deal with addiction and body image to workshop the exhibit’s language. “I wanted to shift the discourse to approach these issues through a critical lens,” she said. More

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      Stephen Sondheim Discusses a Gender-Swapped ‘Company’

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      Days before he died, Stephen Sondheim and the director Marianne Elliott chatted about a Broadway revival of his 1970 musical. With a gender swap, it has a “different flavor,” he said.ROXBURY, Conn. — Had I known what was about to happen, I would have asked so many different questions. But I didn’t, and, presumably, neither did he.It was Nov. 21, a lovely fall Sunday, and I had driven to rural Connecticut to talk with one of the greatest figures in musical theater history, Stephen Sondheim, about a Broadway revival of his seminal concept musical, “Company.”We chatted about the show with its director, Marianne Elliott, who joined us for the interview. We talked too, about an unfinished musical he was hoping to complete (“Square One,” adapted from two Luis Buñuel films), his work habits (“I’m a procrastinator”) and his health (“Outside of my sprained ankle, OK”). And he showed us a few rooms in the house, which he had used for years as a weekend getaway, and where he had spent most of his time during the pandemic.Five days after our conversation, Sondheim died. He was 91.What stands out, as I think back on that afternoon? Every time I looked up, I saw a big, bold “Company” artwork, a multicolored print, by Deborah Kass, with the words “Being Alive” — the title of one of the show’s biggest songs.There was the black standard poodle that joined us in the kitchen as I was tested by a Covid concierge, and then stopped by to visit as we began the interview; Sondheim explained that he had had two, Willie and Addie, named after the brothers in his last finished musical, “Road Show,” but that Addie had recently died.The house was a treasure trove, jam-packed with artifacts: set pieces from “Sunday in the Park With George,” a suspended clock face rescued from a London synagogue, orreries and Japanese trick boxes, a portrait by Annie Leibovitz and posters from international productions of his shows. Then I spotted the Stephen Sondheim action figure. “That was sent to me,” he said, laughing. “I thought it was hilarious. At first I was horrified. Then I was flattered.”Larry Kert as Bobby and Susan Browning as April in the original Broadway production of “Company.” Friedman-Abeles/The New York Public Library for the Performing ArtsGender flip: Katrina Lenk as Bobbie and Claybourne Elder as Andy in the revival of the show, now on Broadway.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Company,” with music and lyrics by Sondheim and a book by George Furth, first ran on Broadway in 1970 (and won the Tony for best musical the following year). The nonlinear show is about a single person, just turning 35, feeling pressure to settle down from paired-off friends.The current revival, which changes the gender of the protagonist (the male Bobby is now the female Bobbie), is now in previews and is scheduled to open on Dec. 9, following a lengthy pandemic delay. Over the course of 90 minutes, we mostly talked about the new revival, but he also offered flashes of insight about theater and theater-making.These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Let’s talk about why you decided to revisit “Company.”STEPHEN SONDHEIM I revisited it because Marianne wanted to. I was a big fan of Marianne’s. I was skeptical. Then she did a workshop, and videoed it, and there was a young cameraman there who had never heard of the show. When Marianne told him about what the show was originally, he said, “You mean it worked with a guy?” And then I knew that we had a show.MARIANNE ELLIOTT I’d always loved “Company.” I’d never seen it actually, but I listened to it quite a lot. But if it was set now, it feels like it would have more potency if it was with a female Bobbie, because a male Bobby who is 35 now, who has clearly got a lovely life — lots of friends, lots of girlfriends, obviously doing quite well, an apartment in the city — nobody’s going to be pushing him into getting married. They’d probably just slap him on the back and say, “Have a great time.” But for a woman at 35, obviously, it’s quite a threshold. There’s going to be a lot of pressure on her from her friends to make a wish that she will actually “sort her life out” and settle down and get married and have a family, maybe.You had turned down a proposal for an all-male “Company” with a gay Bobby, directed by John Tiffany.SONDHEIM Yes. There were certain scenes that worked really well, and certain scenes that just seemed forced. Actually the scenes that worked best were what we call the girlfriend scenes. But the marriage scenes didn’t really work well.So why did you say yes to this one?SONDHEIM My feeling about the theater is the thing that makes it different from movies and television is that you can do it in different ways from generation to generation. Just as you can have many different actors play Hamlet, you can have many different ways of looking at a show without distorting it. And also, shows change their life according to what is going on in the world around them. “Assassins” now has an entirely different and ominous quality to it because of what’s going on with guns and violence. “Company” has a different flavor than it had before feminism really got a foothold.ELLIOTT I wish more people thought that way. Because theater is ephemeral. It is about the now. Even if you set it in another period, it should have something to say to the now.SONDHEIM What keeps theater alive is the chance always to do it differently, with not only fresh casts, but fresh viewpoints.Were there ways besides gender that you wanted to reset the piece?SONDHEIM It’s not just a matter of changing pronouns, but attitudes. Marianne went and looked through all of George Furth’s early drafts to find out if something was useful, and she did — there are short passages in the piece that are out of George’s notes, not out of the script he wrote.ELLIOTT We read everything he’d ever written, trying to get into his head. We were very keen that it had to be faithful to the original.SONDHEIM Getting into George’s head is quite a task for anybody. He had a really original head.What was the trickiest lyric to adapt?SONDHEIM There are words and little phrases here and there, but there are no big changes. I suppose the biggest change is in “Someone Is Waiting” where it’s a list of men instead of a list of girls.What about the music? One of the sounds that’s closely associated with the score is that of a busy signal.SONDHEIM It’s just a musical theme now — it doesn’t signify a busy signal. If you didn’t know, you’d just think it was a vamp. There was no point in throwing it out, because it’s integrated into the score, and it’s a wonderful sound to open the show with.ELLIOTT We use the clock quite a lot — the ticking clock through all of the transitions. In our head, we were thinking more of a clock than a busy signal.How did you think about the sexual situations — a man with three girlfriends versus a woman with three boyfriends?ELLIOTT I do think it might be tricky today for a man to be sleeping with a woman and not really wanting to hear what she has to say. But if you change it the other way around it’s less offensive.Lenk in a scene from the show. “The image of all of them crowding that small room,” Sondheim said, “gives a whole other meaning to the title, ‘Company,’ cause they’re smothering her.” Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesYou also wrestled with how to handle an exchange between Bobbie and her friend Joanne. In the original, Joanne propositions Bobby; in this version, Joanne makes a different suggestion.SONDHEIM That was all Marianne’s idea. That was another thing I was skeptical of, but she really wanted to try it.ELLIOTT I suppose I was interested in who Joanne was, and her self-destructive behavior. She’s much more fragile than she shows herself to be. What’s the worst thing she could possibly do? How did the two of you collaborate?SONDHEIM We just went over it scene by scene. And I would change, and Marianne would, taking some of George’s lines. And she’d say, “We’ll, that’s OK, but I wish it were more this,” and I’d say, “That’s OK, but I don’t quite understand what she’s feeling.” That kind of thing.[One of the last decisions Elliott and Sondheim made was to change the gender of one of Bobbie’s friends, replacing an Amy with a Jamie, so there is now a same-sex couple in which one person is having wedding day jitters.]ELLIOTT When I was auditioning in London, I couldn’t find the person [to play Amy]. I also felt like this woman wasn’t now, wasn’t a very modern woman. So then I did a crazy thing — I asked a friend of mine, Jonathan Bailey, who was in the workshop playing P.J., “Would you mind just coming in and trying something for me? It’s a bit crazy.”SONDHEIM I didn’t know that.ELLIOTT We worked for maybe an hour and a half, and it wasn’t perfect, but I felt (gasp), this is exciting, there’s a potential here. So I then immediately got on the email to Steve, and I said, “Steve, you have to be sitting down. You have to be having a glass of wine in your hand. And take a deep breath, but I’m going to say something to you: I think possibly we should change Amy into a man.” And Steve’s reply sums him up, really, as a collaborator. He basically said, “Marianne, you need to be sitting down, you need to have a glass of wine in your hand, you need to take a deep breath: I think it’s a great idea.”Is there something about same-sex relationships that made that work?SONDHEIM: Well, it’s contemporary. This makes it so much “of today.” The whole cast takes it for granted. It’s just, “Oh, those two guys are married.” It’s what people would do today.ELLIOTT I don’t know whether this is modern or not, but there’s something about a woman saying to a gay guy, “Oh, God, we’re both getting older, let’s just you and I get married,” in a sort of flip way, that feels quite real, but then it becomes more serious.SONDHEIM The great key line — I’m going to paraphrase it — is “Just because we can get married, doesn’t mean we should,” and that sums up everything about the gay aspect of marriage. That’s such a prescient line.During the life of this show, you got married.SONDHEIM Yes, but not because of the show. Actually a good friend of mine was contemplating getting married back in 1970. He saw “Company,” and he said, all right, I’ll try it. He got divorced three months later. So I don’t send prospective grooms and brides to see “Company.”Does the change in gender change the way you see the show?SONDHEIM Not the way I see the show. The way I see what it’s about, sure.How does it change the way you see what it’s about?SONDHEIM It just tells me something about the way people live today, as opposed to the way that people lived in 1970.So many people have ideas about how to change or update classic shows. How do you decide what the limits are for you?SONDHEIM You’re asking a general question. I couldn’t possibly answer that. But most of the shows that I’ve written, if not all but “Company,” don’t require or ask for a change. Maybe to improve something, but not to change it because the world around it has changed. An awful lot of shows that I’ve written are period pieces anyway. You don’t have to change “Sweeney Todd” to fit the contemporary world, or even “Night Music.”Marianne, I wanted to ask you about directing a musical, because most of your career has been plays. This is your first big musical? ELLIOTT It’s my second — I did “The Light Princess,” that Tori Amos wrote.How is it different from a play? What are you learning?ELLIOTT It’s more collaborative. You can share running the room, which means that it’s not always about you running the minutiae of the moment. Sometimes it’s nice to be able to sit back and see it as a whole. It just enables you to think much more creatively, much more objectively, much more about the overall.SONDHEIM But isn’t the essential difference between directing a play and directing a musical that musicals are out front, they’re presentational, whereas a play is not presentational, it’s about the characters interacting.ELLIOTT Yes, that’s true. I suppose the thing about this particular musical though, as you’ve always said Steve, it was written for actors, so that helps me. I like music, but I’m not highly educated in terms of music. But I can say things like, “Why does she have a long note there, and why does she go up on the line there, and not keep to the melody? Why is it held?” And with Steve’s stuff, there’s always a psychological reason.SONDHEIM I always approach writing a song from the actor’s point of view. I try to get into the character the way an actor gets into the character, and then write from that point of view. So that means I pay attention to each consonant and each vowel, the way you would if you were writing a play.ELLIOTT It really does tell you something psychologically.SONDHEIM Music, of course, does that wonderful thing of suggesting an emotion. You don’t have to spell it out. It makes such an impact on an audience.“It’s fantastic to come back and do a show, in the year after the pandemic, to do a show that is absolutely the antithesis of being locked down,” Elliott said.Daniel Dorsa for The New York TimesThis production of “Company” began its life with a run in London. Was there anything you saw there that you decided to change for New York?ELLIOTT I wanted to make it really clear that it was all about the moment when, at her birthday party that she’s going to have, she’s going to have to blow the candles out on the cake. I also wanted to make it clear that in my head — I mean, this is not in my head, this is actually as it’s written — it’s all in her head as she’s waiting for this blinking surprise party to turn up. As she’s drinking, on the bourbon, she’s probably hiding under the stairs thinking, “What’s going to happen?” And she drifts from thought to thought to thought. So it’s not necessarily a narrative, but there’s logic from one thought to another thought to another thought, which then takes her to the place of “Being Alive.”SONDHEIM That’s why it’s not a revue. It has the form of a revue, but it’s not. It’s a play.ELLIOTT Yeah. And I wanted to make that clear. So the “Alice in Wonderland” features more heavily here than it did in London.SONDHEIM And also you wanted to restage “Another Hundred People.” That’s a complete restaging of what was in London.Why?ELLIOTT Well, I didn’t think it worked particularly well in London.SONDHEIM No, it didn’t. And of course, it wasn’t written to be a group number — it was written as a solo. And so Marianne had to invent something — I don’t know exactly why you wanted a group number, but it’s nice to have one there.ELLIOTT I wanted it to look like she was being taken through the streets and the alleys and the corners and the highs and the lows of New York, and also, through, possibly even, an app. So it has connotations of her walking, but also connotations of her going through a dating app.SONDHEIM This is New York’s solo.ELLIOTT That’s a great way of putting it: New York’s solo. Every single scene, New York is mentioned. They all have something to say about New York. And it’s fantastic to come back and do a show, in the year after the pandemic, to do a show that is absolutely the antithesis of being locked down, because everybody is crammed in her apartment — all her friends — and also to do a show that is about how fantastic New York is.SONDHEIM The image of all of them crowding that small room, at the beginning, gives the show an entirely different flavor than it’s ever had before. It gives a whole other meaning to the title, “Company,” cause they’re smothering her. That’s something it’s never had before. It’s all friendly, and full of love and warmth, and they’re smothering her.You had a few previews before the pandemic and shut down for a year and a half. How did that affect you and the show?SONDHEIM It made us so happy! What a great question! Never been happier to have a show close after a week!ELLIOTT (laughing) With a great advance!I have to say, it was pretty awful. I hated the pandemic. Absolutely hated it. I felt like I was kicking like a horse against the stable door: “Let me out!” But it was worrying as well, because we wanted to come back. We were a very strong company. We all really believed what we were doing. And suddenly we were totally scattered across the globe.SONDHEIM And like other shows, we were just getting the steam up, when the door slammed.ELLIOTT There’s quite a lot of post-traumatic stress going on, I think, and that will continue to go on in humans just generally, so coming back into rehearsal after having been isolated was quite a thing. It felt like everybody knew each other. There was a trust there, an understanding. And when you’re playing a married couple, you can’t buy that, you can’t direct it, you can’t act it. It’s either there or it isn’t there. SONDHEIM The appropriate word is, it was a company. More