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      Ed Sheeran, Streaming Star, Is No. 1 With Help From Album Sales

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      Sheeran’s “=” (pronounced “equals”) opens at the top of the Billboard 200 with modest streaming numbers for a star of his magnitude.Ed Sheeran may be one of the world’s most popular artists on music streaming services, but his latest turn at No. 1 owes a lot to old-fashioned album sales.Sheeran’s new album, “=” (pronounced “equals”), opens at the top of the Billboard chart with the equivalent of 118,000 sales in the United States, including nearly 62 million streams and 68,000 copies sold as a complete package, according to MRC Data, Billboard’s tracking arm.Those numbers are modest for a star of Sheeran’s magnitude. He draws 76.8 million listeners a month on Spotify, more than any other artist except Justin Bieber, and Sheeran’s 2017 song “Shape of You” is that service’s biggest hit ever, with 2.96 billion streams worldwide. (Its music video also has 5.5 billion views on YouTube.)Yet the 62 million clicks for “=” is the least number of streams for any new title at No. 1 this year, and streaming overall accounts for only about 39 percent of its total consumption in the United States. Of the 68,000 copies that were sold as complete packages, 33,000 were digital downloads, 26,000 were CDs and 9,000 were vinyl LPs, according to MRC.Also this week, Drake’s “Certified Lover Boy” falls one spot to No. 2, Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” is No. 3, and Doja Cat’s “Planet Her” is No. 4. Megan Thee Stallion’s “Something for Thee Hotties,” a compilation of stray tracks, opens at No. 5 with the equivalent of 39,000 sales.On the singles chart, Adele’s “Easy on Me” holds at No. 1 for a third week, while anticipation in the music industry builds for her new album, “30,” due Nov. 19. More

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      How an Artist Listens to the Voices in His Head

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      The singer and songwriter Josh Ritter’s musical work is often praised for its imaginative and deeply considered lyrics. His first novel, “Bright’s Passage” (2011), started as a song before Ritter transformed it.For his second novel, “The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All,” he was inspired by the history of Idaho, where he grew up. It’s narrated by Weldon Applegate, a 99-year-old man remembering back to his teenage years, when the long line of lumberjacks in his family seemed like it might be petering out.The novel is a tall tale laced with humor and salty language, delivered by Weldon in a classically folksy manner. (His father was “so poor he could barely afford to whistle a tune.”) Below, Ritter talks about the irascible Weldon, the history of timber towns, the characters in his head and more.When did you first get the idea to write this book?About seven years ago, living in Woodstock, N.Y. I’ve always been really interested in myth, and particularly American myth, because you can get such big ideas into small spaces.I was sitting on the floor with my daughter, Beatrix, who was very young at the time, and I just noticed the floorboards in this house, which were immense. Each one looked like a supper table. I was thinking of the people who took down those trees and moved them, and how they had turned them into these incredible floorboards. I’ve never really read a story about lumberjacks, and I grew up around lots of timber towns. So my mind went from those floorboards to those towns in northern Idaho where I was a boy, and from there the idea was just so plain: I had to write a lumberjack tall tale..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;}I started working on it, but I was touring a lot, on the road with my family, raising a little kid. I picked up the novel and put it down a bunch of times in that period.Josh Ritter, whose new novel is “The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All.”Laura WilsonWhat’s the most surprising thing you learned while writing it?When I was growing up, the woods had emptied out some. There wasn’t the kind of influx of people from all over the world. What I learned in my research was that back just a hundred years ago, it was hopping. Around that area, there were the silver mines, there was timber, fishing, all the agriculture. Huge labor disputes. To walk down the streets of one of these towns now and imagine back, it was a profound experience to learn about that period.And for me personally, as a writer I’ve worried that there’s a store of characters or a store of songs in my head, and when I get through those I won’t have anymore. I’ve fought with that in my music so much. When I started to work with Weldon Applegate and let his voice out, I realized that there was a well there — a spring rather than a cistern. There’s something that’s continually creative, that made me feel like: OK, I have all the characters up there, they will always come. I just have to listen for them.In what way is the book you wrote different from the book you set out to write?I wrote many drafts of this book, maybe 15 or so, and with each draft there was time in between. It developed as I put it down and stepped away from it. I think of it like painters stepping away from the canvas to get a view. With a novel, you have to put it down and forget that you wrote some of it.What I noticed is that Weldon is a much more sympathetic character than he started out as. When I started writing him, he was not only cantankerous, he was a real hard-ass. Over time, he had changed. He’d gotten a little bit more humane; there was a sweetness there that was really surprising, and I was charmed by it.There’s a book — I think it’s Flann O’Brien’s “At Swim-Two-Birds,” I read it so long ago — where the author’s characters come alive and do stuff while he’s asleep. There’s that element to writing, which is so beautiful. Sometimes with songs or stories, I really do think that you end up following them, they’re like a strong dog on a leash. You follow along and pretend that’s what you meant the whole time.What creative person (not a writer) has influenced you and your work?I have two that are very important to me. The creative heroes I’m always on the lookout for are people who make big changes in their art and continually change. And they manage to have families and lives that aren’t consumed by their art. Their art doesn’t eat them up. They manage to feed the fire without getting burned. One of those people is Tom Waits. He’s done an amazing job of always finding new ways to express himself and communicate with the world.The closer, even more personal one, is my own mom. She was a neuroscientist, and a major force for me in envisioning what it was to have a life where you loved what you did and worked on it as a joyful activity. And my mom loved Tom Waits.Persuade someone to read the novel in 50 words or fewer.Moonshine, avalanches, witches, devils, murder, piano players, mobile homes, old injuries and lightning strikes. More

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      Astroworld Victims: Who They Were

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      The music festival at Astroworld in Houston left eight people dead. Here is what is known about them so far.Excitement and adrenaline soon turned to panic and horror as a crowd of 50,000 descended into chaos at the Astroworld music festival in Houston on Friday night. Unconscious bodies were lifted and surfed through the crowd, while other attendees begged for the concert to stop as they watched others around them collapse.Hundreds of people, including a 10-year-old child, suffered injuries. Some were rushed from the NRG Park in Houston, where the festival took place, to hospitals. By Saturday afternoon, Houston’s mayor confirmed that 13 victims remain hospitalized, including five minors. And eight people, ranging in age from 14 to 27, with one age unknown, were dead. Here is what we know about some of the lives that were lost. Franco Patino, 21, was majoring in mechanical engineering technology at the University of Dayton in Ohio.Patino FamilyFranco PatinoFranco Patino, 21, a senior at the University of Dayton in Ohio, was among those who died at the music festival, the university and one of Mr. Patino’s brothers confirmed.Mr. Patino, who was from Naperville, Ill., was majoring in mechanical engineering technology with a minor in human movement biomechanics, the university said in a campuswide email on Saturday. Mr. Patino was a member of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers and Alpha Psi Lambda, a Hispanic interest fraternity, the university said.A brother, Julio Patino Jr., said his younger brother was planning to pursue a career in biomedical engineering and had a particular interest in prosthetics. Julio Patino Jr. said his brother was active in volunteer work and regularly sought to help others.“He was just that type of person,” he said. “He was always there for the people he cared about. He had a big heart.”He described his brother as an avid video game player (“Call of Duty” was a favorite) who competed in football, rugby and wrestling in high school. He said his brother had been to other concerts without incident but that this was his first time attending the Astroworld festival.“This should have never happened,” Julio Patino Jr. said of the deaths at the music festival. “There should be more rules in place to prevent this in the future. They should have stopped the concert right away as soon as all this started happening.”John HilgertGreen ribbons appeared at Memorial High School, just outside of Houston. It was the favorite color of John Hilgert, 14, a freshman, who was the youngest person to die at Astroworld, according to the authorities. He told friends that he wanted to get to the performance by the rapper Travis Scott early to get a good view, The Houston Chronicle reported. Now, family members, friends and former coaches were left to make sense of his death. On social media, those who knew Mr. Hilgert told similar stories of a young, kind boy who was known for being a good student and an athlete who played baseball and football. “The kid impacted everyone that met him,” Justin Higgs, a former baseball coach of Mr. Hilgert, wrote on Facebook. “Privileged to have had the opportunity to coach him during those seasons of his life.” Mr. Hilgert’s principal, Lisa Weir, sent an email to the entire school the morning after the concert, identifying Mr. Hilgert as one of the victims. The school will have counselors available to talk to students. “He was one of the nicest kids I knew and always made people laugh,” a friend tweeted. Brianna Rodriguez Brianna Rodriguez, 16, was a student at Heights High School in Houston and was a drill dancer as part of the band program, which paid tribute to her on Saturday on Twitter. “Brianna was someone who performed with the band and was someone who could always make anyone smile,” the band said. “Although she’s gone and she cannot perform with us anymore, we know she’d want to still enjoy our time in heights.”In an automated phone call on Saturday to parents, the school’s principal, Wendy L. Hampton, said that a student had died on Friday night while off campus and that grief counselors would be available. The call did not identify the student. On a GoFundMe page raising money for funeral expenses, Ms. Rodriguez’s family said that she was passionate about dancing.On Sunday, Erica Davis, a trustee for the Harris County Department of Education, shared photos of Ms. Rodriguez on Twitter.“There is no level above Tragedy … my heart mourns for families and all who experienced this,” Ms. Davis said. Rudy PeñaRudy Peña died at the Astroworld music festival.GoFundMeRudy Peña, 23, was identified by a cousin, Kimberly Escamilla, as being one of the victims. “Rip to my cousin,” she wrote in a Facebook post, “you will be missed.” She described him as “always smiling and so nice.” His sister, Jennifer Peña, told The Laredo Morning Times that he was “the sweetest person, friendly, outgoing.” She said that Mr. Peña had been taken to Ben Taub Hospital in Houston, where staff members told Mr. Peña’s mother that he had died. Danish BaigThe brother of Danish Baig described him in a Facebook post as a “beautiful soul” who put “everyone before himself.”“I am scarred for life,” said the brother, Basil Mirza Baig. “You were my role model, and I have so much pain in my heart. I can’t believe I lost you.”Basil Baig, who attended the festival, said his brother died as he tried to save a sister-in-law from “horrendous things that were being done.” People were “trampled, walked and stomped on,” he wrote.“In this time of mourning and grief and such pain, I would like everyone to pray for my family and my brother,” he wrote. Jacob E. Jurinek, who died at the Astroworld music festival, was a student at Southern Illinois University.Jurinek familyJacob E. JurinekHis younger cousins called him “Big Jake.” The nickname suited Jacob E. Jurinek, 20, well, his family said in a statement, because the young man with many friends and a “larger-than-life personality” was known for his “contagious enthusiasm, his boundless energy and his unwavering positive attitude.”Mr. Jurinek was a junior at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where he was studying art and media and was on the dean’s list this semester. The chancellor of the school, Austin A. Lane, described him in a statement as “a creative, intelligent young man with a promising career in journalism and advertising.”Mr. Jurinek graduated in 2019 from Neuqua Valley High School in Naperville, about 30 miles west of Chicago.At the university, he worked as a graphic arts and media intern for the athletic department, his family said. He was a music fan, an artist and a “beloved cousin, nephew and grandson,” the family said.His father, Ron Jurinek, said Mr. Jurinek would be most remembered as his “best friend.”The father and son were brought closer by a previous loss, the death of Jacob’s mother, Alison, in 2011. Since then, they have been inseparable, and attended White Sox and Blackhawks games together and spent weekends at a family cottage in Southwestern Michigan, the family said.“We are all devastated and are left with a huge hole in our lives,” Ron Jurinek said. Axel Acosta, 21, was a student at Western Washington University.Acosta familyAxel AcostaAxel Acosta, 21, was identified on Sunday by his brother, Joel Acosta, as the man in a photograph circulated by the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences in Texas, which was seeking the public’s help to identify the man.Mr. Acosta was a junior at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash., where he was majoring in computer science, his younger brother said on Sunday.Mr. Acosta was a fan of Mr. Scott, but had never been to one of his concerts before, said Joel Acosta, 19, who recalled driving his brother to the airport in Bellingham last Wednesday. From there, Axel Acosta rented a car and drove about 90 miles south to Seattle before flying to Houston for the music festival, his brother said.“He finally had the money to go,” Joel Acosta said. “He was excited to go.”Axel Acosta was from Tieton, Wash., a community of fewer than 2,000 people in the Yakima Valley. When Joel Acosta did not hear from his brother on Friday night, he said he figured that his brother was just having a fun time at the festival. “He said that reception was spotty and the internet was really bad,” Mr. Acosta said. During the concert, Axel Acosta got separated from a person he had been rooming with at a local hotel, his brother said.“The roommate had called me that he had not seen Axel come to sleep that night,” Joel Acosta said. That’s when Mr. Acosta said that he began to worry that his brother might have been among the people who died. His fears were confirmed, he said, when the authorities released a photo of his brother on Saturday. Joel Acosta said he stopped looking at TikTok and other social media posts from the concert.“Now, I can’t look at the videos anymore,” he said. Reporting was contributed by More

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      PinkPantheress Has 1 Million Fans on TikTok

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      Her songs “Just for Me” and “Break It Off” were breakout summer hits.Name: PinkPantheressAge: 20Hometown: Bath, EnglandCurrently Lives: In London, with a group of childhood friends.Claim to Fame: PinkPantheress is a singer, songwriter and producer whose melancholic yet upbeat track “Just for Me” has been featured in more than 2.1 million TikTok videos, becoming a kind of soundtrack for Gen Z angst and longing. Sample lyric: “My diary’s full of your name on every page.” Her music stitches elements from drum and bass, as well as garage. “A lot of my beats are literally from the early 2000s and late ’90s,” she said. “I think a lot of people probably have heard them before without realizing.”Big Break: PinkPantheress has been creating music since she was 14, when she joined a rock band. On Christmas Day last year, she posted a snippet of her song “Just a Waste,” which samples Michael Jackson’s “Off the Wall,” to TikTok. The following day, she said, she was flooded with requests for the full-length version and the song has been featured in more than 216,000 TikTok videos. “My first TikTok was just to gauge if I should put out a song,” she said. “This is a great way to assess if music is good enough to put out or not.’”Charlotte Hadden for The New York TimesLatest Project: On Oct. 15, PinkPantheress released “To Hell With It,” her debut mixtape of 10 songs, which Jon Caramanica, pop music critic for The New York Times, calls “warmly ecstatic and cheekily gloomy.” “I think a lot of my music doesn’t come from a place of pain or whatever,” she said. “It doesn’t come from a place of me. A lot of it just comes because I really like storytelling.”Next Thing: With most pandemic restrictions lifted in London, she plans to perform at a few shows this month, including the Cause. She also hopes to explore a wider array of music. “Music-wise, I do want to flesh it out a bit,” she said. “I definitely want to do more genres, or try at least.”Mum’s the Word: Despite, or maybe because of, her large social media following (one million on TikTok), PinkPantheress has tried to keep her legal name secret, though some music fan sites say that they have identified her. “I always was private, not because I’m standoffish or I don’t want to have that intimacy with people — it’s just more because it’s hassle free,” she said. “I really enjoy leaving things up to people’s imagination.” More

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      Marília Mendonça, Brazilian Pop Singer, Dies in Plane Crash at 26

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      Ms. Mendonça, who was a social media sensation with millions of followers, was iconic in a type of Brazilian country music called sertanejo.Marília Mendonça, one of the most popular Brazilian pop singers who was known as “The Queen of Suffering” for her angst-filled ballads, was killed on Friday in a small plane crash in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais in Brazil. She was 26.The singer’s press office confirmed Ms. Mendonça’s death and said her producer, Henrique Ribeiro; her uncle who was also her assistant, Abicieli Silveira Dias Filho; and the pilot and co-pilot of the plane were also killed.The plane had been headed from the city of Goiania to Caratinga, where Ms. Mendonça was to have performed in a concert on Friday night. There was no immediate word on the circumstances leading up to the crash. The authorities said they were investigating.Ms. Mendonça was iconic in a type of Brazilian country music called sertanejo, a popular genre in Brazil. Her legions of fans found power in her song lyrics, which implored women to reject bad and abusive relationships, and told the stories of flawed characters.Ms. Mendonça was a social media sensation, with 7.8 million followers on Twitter, 22 million on YouTube and more than 38 million on Instagram.The plane had been headed to Caratinga, where Ms. Mendonça was to have performed on Friday night. Minas Gerais Civil Police, via Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBrazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, said on Twitter, “The whole country receives in shock the news of the death of the young country singer Marília Mendonça, one of the greatest artists of her generation, whom, with her unique voice, charisma and music won the affection and admiration of all of us.”Anitta, a funk singer popular in Brazil, said on Twitter: “I just found out. I can’t believe it.”Some in Brazil’s cosmopolitan circles had scorned Ms. Mendonça’s country ballads as “‘brega,’ or corny music,” NPR reported in 2019.“Sentimental or not, her songs offer a woman’s perspective that hasn’t been heard much in sertanejo’s machismo culture, and it’s made Mendonça the leading voice of a new subgenre called ‘feminejo’ — music by and for women,” NPR said.Ana Ionova contributed reporting. More

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      Ronnie Wilson, Founder of the Gap Band, Dies at 73

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      After beginning his career as a teenager, he joined with his two younger brothers to record R&B hits like “You Dropped a Bomb on Me” and “Outstanding.”Ronnie Wilson, the founder of the Gap Band, which rode a funky party sound to success on the R&B charts in the late 1970s and throughout the ’80s, died on Tuesday. He was 73.The death was announced on Facebook by Mr. Wilson’s wife, Linda Boulware-Wilson. She did not say where he died or what the cause was.The Gap Band topped the R&B charts four times and placed 15 songs in the R&B Top 10 from 1979 to 1990; two of its singles, “Early in the Morning” and “You Dropped a Bomb on Me,” reached the pop Top 40 in 1982. Ronnie Wilson primarily played keyboards but also contributed horn and percussion parts in a rotating vocal and instrumental arrangement with his two younger brothers, Robert, who mainly played bass, and Charlie, the lead singer.Hits like “Burn Rubber on Me (Why You Wanna Hurt Me)” (1980) defined the Gap Band’s sound, which The New York Times critic Stephen Holden described in 1981 as “swinging minimalist funk — sweaty, slangy and streetwise.” Some of their other best-known tracks, like “Outstanding” (1982), struck an erotic tone in a softer manner — less stomping of the feet, more rolling of the hips.The Gap Band appeared on “Soul Train,” the premier television showcase for Black music at the time, and appeared in concert alongside bands like Kool & the Gang.In the years after their popularity peaked, the Gap Band’s tunes were sampled hundreds of times. Ashanti’s 2002 hit “Happy” got its leisurely, bouncy sound from “Outstanding,” and N.W.A.’s canonical “Straight Outta Compton” sped up and darkened “Burn Rubber on Me.”The Gap Band on “Soul Train” in 1979.Afro American Newspapers/Gado, via Getty ImagesIn an interview with the weekly San Francisco newspaper The Sun-Reporter in 1999, Mr. Wilson said that he and his younger brothers were addressed with the honorific “Uncle” before their names by current music stars like Snoop Dogg “because we helped to lay the foundation for hip-hop.”Ronnie Wilson was born on April 7, 1948, in Tulsa, Okla. His father, Oscar, was a minister, and Ronnie and his brothers grew up playing music in church.Ronnie formed his first band as a teenager, and over time he got his brothers involved. The word “Gap” in the Gap Band’s name came from Greenwood Avenue, Archer Street and Pine Street in Tulsa’s Greenwood district — the neighborhood, once known as Black Wall Street, that was the site of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre.The group got an early boost in the music business, and met stars like Bob Dylan, thanks to the rock singer and pianist Leon Russell, long based in Tulsa, who had the Gap Band back him on his album “Stop All That Jazz” (1974). The Wilson brothers signed their first major-label deal, with Mercury, a few years later.Ronnie Wilson later worked as a minister and continued to perform occasionally. His brother Charlie pursued a successful solo singing career. The other brother in the band, Robert, died in 2010.A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.Sheelagh McNeill More

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      Post Malone and the Weeknd’s Emo Synth-Pop, and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Jenny Lewis, TNGHT, Dawn Richard 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.Post Malone and the Weeknd, ‘One Right Now’Oh, the fragile male ego. “Don’t call me baby when you did me so wrong” is one of the milder jibes hurled at a straying girlfriend by Post Malone as he trades verses with the Weeknd. She may want to get together, but the guys have already moved on, with “one coming over and one right now.” A very 1980s track — springy synthesizer bass line and hook, programmed beat — carries pure, focused resentment about how much damage she’s done to “my feelings.” JON PARELESCharli XCX featuring Christine and the Queens and Caroline Polachek, ‘New Shapes’“What you want/I ain’t got it,” Charli XCX snarls over a blast of ’80s pop gloss. The British pop provocateur unleashes her ultrapop persona, brooding over cinematic new wave synths. “New Shapes” leverages the kind of vulnerability and insecurity that defines some of Charli’s best work, thanks to pointed verses from her guests (and previous collaborators), the sad girl supergroup of Christine and the Queens and Caroline Polachek. The whole thing doesn’t quite measure up to the irresistible drama of the beloved 2019 anthem “Gone,” but hey, the girls will take it. ISABELIA HERRERATerrace Martin featuring Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg, Ty Dolla Sign and James Fauntleroy, ‘Drones’The polymathic musician and producer Terrace Martin is widely known for helping Kendrick Lamar sculpt his jazz-tinted masterpiece, “To Pimp a Butterfly,” but he’d been an asset in Los Angeles studios since the mid-2000s, when he first fell in with Snoop Dogg. The title track from Martin’s new solo album, “Drones,” is something like a reading of his résumé, with features from four resounding names in L.A. hip-hop. The dapper, G-funk beat is a braid of plunky guitar, pulsing electric piano and 808 percussion; the lyrics — sung partly by Lamar, in a sly shrug — describe a booty-call relationship that’s exactly as shallow as it looks to the outside world, and maybe not much more satisfying. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLODawn Richard, ‘Loose Your Mind’Following her eclectic album “The Second Line,” released earlier this year, Dawn Richard’s new track for the Adult Swim Singles series is all bass-heavy, aqueous funk. Her voice shape-shifts throughout “Loose Your Mind,” so at times it almost feels like she’s duetting with different sides of her prismatic personality. “Ain’t really nothing wrong when the feeling is golden,” she spits at the beginning, before a melodic chorus of Dawns responds in agreement: “Solid gold.” LINDSAY ZOLADZTNGHT, ‘Tums’Few songs defined the hypermaximalist sound of the 2010s as succinctly as the electronic duo TNGHT’s “Higher Ground,” that brassy, ever-escalating EDM anthem that was sampled by Kanye West on “Yeezus” and — I will die on this hill — has to be the inspiration behind the “Arby’s: We Have the Meats” jingle, right? After a long hiatus, the producers Hudson Mohawke and Lunice reunited as TNGHT in 2019, and have now released a new track called “Tums,” which Lunice says was created according to the duo’s guiding principles: “Keep it really fun. Dumb. Hard-hitting. Don’t overwork it.” Sampled giggles and slide whistles keep things fizzy on the surface, while the track’s booming low end guides it through a series of roller-coaster drops. “Tums” might not be as innovative as the pair’s earlier work, but maybe that’s because everything else has been sounding like them for years now. ZOLADZSimi, ‘Woman’With “Woman,” the Nigerian singer and songwriter Simi offers a tribute, corrective and update to Fela Anikalupo Kuti, who invented Afrobeat in the 1970s in songs including “Lady,” which scoffed at European feminism. “Woman” mixes current electronic Afrobeats with the funk of Kuti’s 1970s Afrobeat, while quoting Kuti songs between her own assertions about women’s strengths: “She won’t pay attention to the intimidation.” The rhetoric is tricky; the beat is unstoppable. PARELESGregory Porter featuring Cherise, ‘Love Runs Deeper’The standard elements of Gregory Porter’s style run through “Love Runs Deeper”: lyrics that linger on the difficulties — and the bounties — of care and connection; twinkling orchestral strings; a gradual build that allows his burly, baritone voice to unfurl itself with just enough tension and release. But this is more of a direct-delivery power ballad than most of Porter’s tunes: The melody wouldn’t feel out of place on an Adele or Halsey record, and it’s liable to get lodged in your head quickly and stay there. With supporting vocals from the young British singer Cherise, “Love Runs Deeper” serves as the soundtrack to Disney’s annual holiday-season advertisement, which this year is a short film (full of self-referential touches, like a Buzz Lightyear cameo) titled “The Stepdad.” The song is also included on a new Porter compilation, “Still Rising,” which features a mix of his greatest hits, B-sides and new songs. RUSSONELLOJenny Lewis, ‘Puppy and a Truck’“My 40s are kicking my ass, and handing them to me in a margarita glass” — how’s that for an opening line? Something about the gentle country strum and laid-back croon of Jenny Lewis’s new stand-alone single recalls her old band Rilo Kiley’s great 2004 album “More Adventurous,” though her perspective has been updated with the unglamorous realities and hard-won wisdom of middle age. After chronicling the wreckage of a few recent relationships, the eternally witty Lewis arrives at a mantra of tough-talking self-reliance: “If you feel like giving up, shut up — get a puppy and a truck.” ZOLADZChastity Belt, ‘Fear’Lydia Lund spends much of the Washington indie-rock band Chastity Belt’s new song “Fear” hollering until she’s hoarse, “It’s just the fear, it’s just the fear.” Apparently she recorded the vocals while she was staying at her parents’ house, and her commitment to the song was so intense that her mother knocked on the door to make sure she was OK because she “thought I was doing some kind of primal scream therapy,” Lund said. “And I guess in a way I am.” Lund’s impassioned delivery and the song’s soaring guitars turn “Fear” into a cathartic response to overwhelming anxiety, and provide a powerful soundtrack for slaying that dreaded mind killer. ZOLADZRadiohead, ‘Follow Me Around’“Kid A Mnesia,” the new, expansive compilation of Radiohead songs from their paradigm-shifting sessions in 1999-2000, has unearthed studio versions of songs that the band performed but never committed to albums, notably “Follow Me Around,” a guitar-strumming crescendo of paranoia. The video, apparently made with a small but persistent camera drone, nicely multiplies the dread. PARELESLorde, ‘Hold No Grudge’Lorde whisper-sings through the first half of “Hold No Grudge,” a bonus track added to her album “Solar Power.” It’s a memory of an early love that ended without a resolution; later messages went unanswered. Midway through, she’s still bouncing syllables off guitar strums, but the sound of the song comes into focus and Lorde realizes, “We both might have done some growing up.” She’s ready to let the passage of time offer solace. PARELESOmar Apollo featuring Kali Uchis, ‘Bad Life’Omar Apollo is known for combining cool funk grooves, slick charisma and sensual falsettos. But on “Bad Life,” his new single featuring Kali Uchis, the young singer-songwriter peels back the layers and puts his armor aside for a bare-bones exercise in vulnerability. “Bad Life” revels in contempt, burning slow and low alongside a soft-focus electric guitar. Apollo opens the track with a heart-piercer: “You give me nothing/But I still change it to something.” Ouch. The singer’s voice curls into anguished melismas, and when the orchestral strings soar in halfway through, the resentment cuts crystal clear. HERRERAAlt-J, ‘Get Better’Alt-J created a serene and almost unbearably mournful song with “Get Better,” a fingerpicked chronicle about the profundity and mundanity of a loved one’s slow death like Paul Simon’s “Darling Lorraine” and Mount Eerie’s “Real Death.” It’s profoundly self-conscious, citing the similarly acoustic arrangement of Elliott Smith; it offers personal moments, stray events, reminiscences, belongings, thoughts of “front line workers,” admissions that “I still pretend you’re only out of sight in another room/smiling at your phone.” The loss is only personal, but shattering. PARELES More

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      Review: Michael Tilson Thomas, a Podium Hero, Returns

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      The eminent conductor appeared with the New York Philharmonic, his first public performance since brain surgery this summer.In early August, the conductor Michael Tilson Thomas announced that, following surgery to remove a brain tumor, he was withdrawing from his upcoming performances to receive treatment. “I look forward,” he said, “to seeing everyone again in November.”Even coming from such an indefatigable musician, still dynamic at 76, that promise seemed optimistic.But on Thursday at Alice Tully Hall, looking a little weather-beaten but still vigorous and bright-eyed, Thomas took the podium to lead the New York Philharmonic in inspiring performances of demanding works by Ruth Crawford Seeger, Berg and Beethoven.This was his first public performance since his announcement, as well as his first time with the Philharmonic in 10 years, and he was clearly determined not to miss it. He is scheduled to lead two upcoming programs with the San Francisco Symphony, where he ended a quarter-century tenure as music director last year. But returning to the Philharmonic at this difficult time was very meaningful, he said in a short video released this week.What moved me most about the video was that Thomas said nothing directly about his illness. Instead, ever the educator — the best explainer of music to general audiences since his mentor, Leonard Bernstein — he shared keen insights into the works he was offering. He kept it all about the music.On Thursday at Tully, the hearty ovation that greeted his appearance might have gone on longer had Thomas not quickly taken the podium to get to work — standing to conduct and looking alert and immersed, his cues a deft combination of precision and flexibility.He began with Crawford Seeger’s visionary Andante for Strings, written in the 1930s but anticipating experimental styles of 30 or 40 years later. The quasi-atonal music unfurls in small recurring motifs that overlap and build into outbursts of intensity. It was gripping.Thomas, with the superb Gil Shaham as soloist, then turned to Berg’s Violin Concerto, one of the greatest works of the 20th century. Berg dedicated the piece to “the memory of an angel” — the 18-year-old daughter of Walter Gropius and Alma Mahler Werfel, who had died of polio. In the video Thomas says that the piece contemplates death, but “goes beyond that to a really big and beautiful vision of what the totality of life is, in our whole planet, and in the whole universe.”Berg drew upon 12-tone techniques here, though the first movement deftly folds in musical evocations of a young woman’s youth in Vienna, with bits of waltzes and folk songs. From the start, Shaham (with glowing sound and, when called for, spiky intensity) and Thomas (drawing rich, lucid sonorities from the orchestra) brought out the lyrical elements that run through the score.In the second movement, which begins with wrenching expressions of grief and anger, Shaham dispatched the tangles of skittish lines and blocks of heaving chords with eerily controlled vehemence. The strains of “Es ist genug,” one of Bach’s most harmonically daring chorales, gradually enter as a gesture of consolation. Yet this performance remained alert to the unresolved, searching strands that linger until the end.During the bows that followed, Thomas interrupted the applause. “I forced Gil to learn this piece,” he told the audience, smiling. “Good idea, wasn’t it?”After intermission — the Philharmonic’s first this season, after a run of shorter performances — Thomas led a compelling account of Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony. In the first movement, rather than just going for stirring energy and grandeur, he seemed intent on bringing out the intricacies and inner textures of the music.Perhaps overly so — though the performance gained in sweep and determination as it went on. The slow movement, a noble funeral march, was magnificent, almost Mahlerian. And the Scherzo showed that Thomas was in no slow-tempo mode: The music whisked by with fleetness and crackling rhythms. The Finale was joyous — majestic and exciting, even teasing out the touches of silliness.At one point, between movements, Thomas unabashedly pulled up his visibly sagging pants, which elicited some good-natured laughter from the audience. He turned around and said, “Post-pandemic waistline,” prompting more laughter.But in general he looked fit and lively. Beethoven famously scratched out the original dedication of his “Eroica” — to Napoleon — and instead titled it in honor of a nameless hero. On Thursday, that hero was Michael Tilson Thomas.New York PhilharmonicThis program is repeated through Sunday at Alice Tully Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More