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      Bicycle Diaries: Cruising With the ‘American Utopia’ Family

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      Our intrepid reporter and photographer biked through Queens with David Byrne and some of his castmates ahead of their return to Broadway. Then the skies opened up.On a dock in Queens, David Byrne’s musical bike gang was gearing up to go.“Are we ready?” Byrne called.It was a Saturday in late August, and the gang — three percussionists, a guitarist, a bassist and me, along with a daredevil photographer and lighting assistant — were sitting astride bicycles as Byrne, our fearless two-wheeled leader, outlined the plan.He wore a brimmed, pith-style helmet and a tour guide’s relaxed confidence: He’d done this route before, from Astoria to Flushing. The destination was the Queens Night Market, a paradise of global food stalls at the site of the 1964 World’s Fair. He’d already been talking up a ceviche stand and the all-women samba drumline he’d seen the last time he’d pedaled through.The market, in its diversity, “is really extraordinary,” he said — the kind of endeavor that seems like an antidote to our current social divisiveness. “In that context, you really go, ‘OK, this is not impossible, we can do this.’” It’s a message of community-as-uplift that Byrne, the former Talking Heads frontman, has been big on recently, with his hit theatrical concert “American Utopia,” a mostly joyous pilgrimage through his music. Even the act of extreme weather that ultimately derailed our ride didn’t curb his ability to find revelation locally.From left, the percussionists Tim Keiper, Jacquelene Acevedo and Daniel Freedman. “We would go on these adventures,” Acevedo said of the rides with Byrne. “It’s great. You come back six hours later, exhausted, like, ‘Where did I go?’”Byrne is, of course, a devoted cyclist: He’s written a book about it, and even designed bike racks; last week, he took an e-bike to the Met Gala (so he wouldn’t get sweaty!) and checked his helmet at the door. In the Before Times, I could sometimes clock the velocity and verve of my nightlife by how frequently I intersected with him speeding to some event along the Williamsburg waterfront bike path. He was easy to spot, often dressed in somehow still-pristine white — as he was on this evening, stepping off the East River ferry in white pants, a blue guayabera shirt and brown fisherman sandals. His whole crew, castmates from “American Utopia,” had been onboard, too.On the dock, he gave a few general instructions — hang a left at the big brick building, “go down for, like, a couple miles; should I say when our next turn is? Sixty-first, we make a right” — and then we peeled off. In interchanging pairs or spread out, our expedition took up half a city block. “Riding in New York is — hoo-hoo!” trilled Angie Swan, the guitarist, who had moved here from Milwaukee to work with Byrne and was now dodging through a crowded bike lane.From left, the guitarist Angie Swan, Byrne, Freedman, Keiper and the bassist Bobby Wooten III. The band members got matching folding bikes during their tour.It was the weekend before rehearsals began for the Broadway return of “American Utopia.” But the cast had already been convening throughout the pandemic for these miles-long, leisurely (or not) bike rides around town, led by Byrne, who is 69 and has the stamina of an athlete and the curiosity of a cultural omnivore. Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island: He traversed the city a couple of times a week at least, trailing bandmates alongside him.“That kind of pioneering spirit that he has in music is the same as he has in his bike rides,” Jacquelene Acevedo, a percussionist and Toronto transplant who lives in Manhattan, said as we pedaled along, passing beneath the rumbling train and only-in-Queens intersections like the corner of 31st Avenue and 31st Street. She said she got to know the city on these socially distanced rides. “We would go on these adventures,” she said. “It’s great. You come back six hours later, exhausted, like, ‘Where did I go?’”From left, Freedman, Byrne and Swan. They landed in Flushing Meadows Corona Park with the rest of the group as the sun was setting.That Saturday, we pulsed through Jackson Heights toward Corona — two neighborhoods, Byrne observed later, that had been hit hard, early on, by the coronavirus — and saw the city’s rhythms change. We spun through families barbecuing on pedestrian blocks and dinged our bells along to the streetside cumbia and reggaeton. It was, in a word, glorious.We might’ve blown a few stoplights, too, and caused some double-takes as Cole Wilson, the photographer, and his assistant, Bryan Banducci, cycled ahead of the group but peered backward to get their shot. Byrne was always in the lead; as soon as traffic disappeared, he removed his helmet, revealing his signature silver coif.By the time we landed in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, the sun was setting. Byrne led us to his ceviche spot. Moments later, the skies opened up: Tropical Storm Henri, arriving far earlier than the forecast predicted. We were quickly drenched. So, so drenched.A night that was meant to be a dreamy celebration of this multicultural city and its serendipitous connections, experienced from atop a bike seat, wound up in a (very) soggy group subway ride home. But even that became a moment for Byrnian wonder, thanks to a subway preacher and her acolytes, and an unexpected bit of ecstatic dance — the civic and the divine aboard the 7 train. Byrne clocked it all, surrounded by his bikemates.This group of musicians had toured with “American Utopia” when it was a more traditional rock concert a few years ago, and their matching bikes — a folding model made by Tern — came along then, too. The bikes had their own compartment on the tour bus: “Even when we went overseas, the bikes would come,” said Tim Keiper, a drummer. They would sometimes ride 25 miles before soundcheck, added Daniel Freedman, another drummer. (There are more than four dozen percussion instruments in the show.) “David would find the cool thing,” Freedman said, “and be like, there’s a restaurant or a museum or something bizarre, funny — ‘Cumming, Iowa! We’ve got to go!’”For Byrne, the rides kept him “sane on the road,” he told me later, “and inspired and stimulated.”It also gave his cast and crew a connection that was rare among performers. The original run of “American Utopia” ended in February 2020, just before the coronavirus shut down the city’s live performance spaces. During lockdown, Annie-B Parson, the show’s choreographer, saw the “American Utopia” crew a lot more than anybody else, she said. The cast’s emotional closeness onstage? “It’s not acted.”“Bike riding is a nice metaphor,” she added, “because there’s a kinship. There’s a group moving together, but everybody’s in their own space. But there is a unison. It’s a dance, for sure.”Tropical Storm Henri arrived earlier than forecasted. But the group did manage to finally try the ceviche and some of the other fare at the market.Days after drying out from the Queens ride, the group gathered for rehearsals. “American Utopia” is now playing at the St. James Theater, a bigger Broadway venue than its previous home, the Hudson. Parson, a downtown choreographer known for her attention to form and multimedia detail, was thrilled to learn that the stage is a rectangle, as she’d originally envisioned for the piece. “To me, a square shape is a warm shape that faces in, because there’s symmetry on the sides,” she explained. “A rectangular shape implies infinity, because it reaches out on the sides. They’re both beautiful. This show, and David, to me, I associate with a rectangle.”So Parson polished the choreography, much of which is done by the musicians while they’re playing. (Chris Giarmo and Tendayi Kuumba, standouts onstage and in Spike Lee’s filmed version of the show, are the main dancers.) In one rehearsal, Parson directed Byrne to amplify a moment by turning to face his castmates, giving an extra beat of connection there — the pandemic had underscored a theme of the show, “that we’re not atomized entities,” Byrne said. “Being together with other people is such a big part of what we are as individuals.”As a collaborator, Byrne leads with praise. Watching his percussion circle, he danced along with his very core. “I love the first half where you change up the groove, but it still keeps all the momentum,” he told them.In Byrne’s recent eclectic career, “American Utopia,” which will receive a special Tony Award at this Sunday’s ceremony, has taken up a bigger chunk than other projects. It may be because it makes him happier. “It’s a very moving show to do,” he said, “and a lot of fun” — not least because audiences shimmy with abandon a few songs in.And it pulls from the panoply of Byrne’s interests. There’s neuroscience, civic history, and Brazilian, African and Latin instrumentation. The visual and movement references span the world: the Bauhaus artist Oskar Schlemmer; ’70s Japanese movies; a Thai king’s coronation; and, after our Queens odyssey, a scene from the 7 train, when a woman pulled out a mic and an amp, plugged in and began proselytizing.Byrne, unrecognized beneath his mask, stood near her, holding his bike. Across the way, her companion suddenly began doing impassioned hand motions that were reminiscent of some “American Utopia” moves, waving and snapping her wrists around her face. “Annie-B should see this!” Byrne said, almost to himself. Someone taped a snippet, and he sent it off to her to check out.“There are no words to describe how adventurous David is,” Parson said. “He always finds the most profound way to interact with a place with his bicycle, and he always invites others, graciously, to join in.” More

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      Kacey Musgraves, Country Music Chameleon

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherKacey Musgraves’s new album, “Star-Crossed,” documents the collapse of the marriage she celebrated on her last album, the Grammy-winning “Golden Hour.” It’s an LP that calls back to her earliest, more modest-scaled work — the embodiment of post-exuberance.Throughout her career, Musgraves has been embraced as a country music radical, but that’s not exactly true. She’s someone well versed in tradition who also understands that over the decades, plenty of alleged outsiders made crucial contributions to the genre. As a result, she’s far less preoccupied with the terminology than anyone trying to apply it to her.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Musgraves’s career, her easy way with songwriting, and what might come next after you’ve documented your life’s highs and lows in song.Guests:Amanda Hess, a critic at large at The New York TimesLaura Snapes, deputy music editor at The GuardianConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica More

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      Review: For Armory Recitals, a Modest but Memorable Return

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      Paul Appleby and Conor Hanick presented a song program focused on cycles by Beethoven and Berg.The past few weeks have brought heartening signs that classical music is coming back to New York after the devastating pandemic closures of the past year and a half. The Metropolitan Opera reopened the doors for an inspiring performance of Verdi’s Requiem on Sept. 11. The New York Philharmonic inaugurated its new season last week.On Monday evening a much more modest, but no less meaningful, return took place when the tenor Paul Appleby and the pianist Conor Hanick presented a song recital in the elegantly intimate Board of Officers Room at the Park Avenue Armory.Just over 90 people, a near-capacity crowd for the salon-like space, attended this intelligent and beautifully performed program of German lieder — lasting two hours, with an intermission, just as concerts generally used to before everything stopped. The program repeats on Wednesday, and two more artist pairs fill out the fall in the space: Will Liverman and Myra Huang next month, and Jamie Barton and Warren Jones in November.Hiroyuki Ito for The New York TimesAppleby is best known for opera, including the title role in Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress” and David in Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg,” which he sings next month at the Met. Yet he has long been devoted to the song literature, including many new and recent works.This Armory program arose from his desire to pair two song cycles, Beethoven’s “An die ferne Geliebte” and Berg’s “Altenberg Lieder” — both of which, as he wrote in program notes, “address ways of coping with unfulfilled wishes, with dreams that did not come true.” To place these cycles in context, he performed selected songs by Schumann and Schubert that also grapple with loss and pain and offer coping mechanisms — including, as Appleby put it, “numb nihilism.”Both cycles were historically momentous. Beethoven’s set of six songs, from 1816, offered a template for the 19th-century German song cycle. The poems, by Alois Jeitteles, present a protagonist thinking of his lost home, his distant beloved, his unfulfilled love. The songs flow from one to the next, giving the cycle the sense of a unified, if episodic, narrative. Appleby sang the tender pieces with warmth and heartache, and brought almost eerie vitality to moments of heady nostalgia. Hanick, a brilliant pianist more often heard in thorny contemporary scores, played with crispness, nuance and grace.Berg’s 1912 work, which sets five short texts by the German writer Peter Altenberg, was originally written for mezzo-soprano and lush orchestra. The public reaction when two of the songs were introduced at a concert in Vienna was so hostile that their aggrieved composer never had them performed again. But the work pointed the way to a new 20th-century musical language. Appleby and Hanick performed a version with a piano reduction that allowed the tenor — with a relatively lighter, lyric voice — to bring out subtleties in the vocal lines. And Hanick’s playing was a revelation of clarity and bite.There were lovely accounts of all the Schubert and Schumann works. I was especially gratified to hear these artists call attention to little-heard songs from Schumann’s later years, like the dreamy “An den Mond,” which opened the wonderful program, and the autumnal, harmonically tart “Abendlied,” which ended it.Paul Appleby and Conor HanickRepeats Wednesday at the Park Avenue Armory, Manhattan; armoryonpark.com. More

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      When a Minivan Becomes a Music Machine

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      On a muggy August evening on Randalls Island, I stood in a field of Honda Odysseys and CR-Vs, tricked out with towering rows of tweeters and subwoofers. Speakers were affixed to the roofs or lined the trunks of the vehicles like light artillery, painted in canary yellows, blood reds and indigo blues. This is Dominican […] More

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      At 75, the Ojai Music Festival Stays Focused on the Future

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      This storied California haven of contemporary classical music returned, organized by the composer John Adams.OJAI, Calif. — Returning is a process. Rarely is it linear.The Ojai Music Festival, for instance, returned, Sept. 16-19, to celebrate its 75th year after a long pandemic absence. But there were setbacks among the comebacks. Compromises were made to accommodate its move from spring to the final days of summer. An artist was held up in Spain by travel restrictions. Diligently enforced safety measures slightly harshed the vibe of this storied event, a rigorous yet relaxing haven for contemporary music tucked in an idyllic valley of straight-faced mysticism and sweet Pixie tangerines.This edition of the festival is the first under the leadership of Ara Guzelimian, back at the helm after a run in the 1990s. Each year, the person in his position organizes the programming with a new music director; for Guzelimian’s debut, he chose the composer John Adams, the paterfamilias of American classical music, who happens to have been born the year of the first festival. Uninterested in a retrospective for the milestone anniversary, they billed their concerts as a forward-looking survey of young artists — fitting for a festival that has long focused on the future.But in music, past, present and future are always informing one another. Bach and Beethoven haunted new and recent works; the pianist Vikingur Olafsson treated Mozart, as he likes to say, as if the ink had just dried on the score. There is no looking forward without looking back.The Chumash elder Julie Tumamait-Stenslie led a storytelling hour on a misty field at Soule Park on Friday.Timothy TeagueGuzelimian and Adams looked back about far as possible in weaving the valley’s Indigenous history into the festival. The cover of its program book was the Cindy Pitou Burton photograph “Ghost Poppy” — the flower’s name given by the Chumash people, the first known inhabitants of this area, who after the arrival of Europeans were nearly annihilated by disease and violence, and who no longer have any land in Ojai.It’s a history that was shared, among more lighthearted tales, by the Chumash elder Julie Tumamait-Stenslie, who opened Friday’s programming with storytelling on a misty field at Soule Park; that evening, she began a concert with a blessing.Despite the best of intentions, these were among the more cringe-worthy moments of the festival. The predominantly white, moneyed audience responded to details of colonial brutality with an obliviously affirmative hum, not unlike the way it later cheered on Rhiannon Giddens’s “Build a House,” a searing and sweeping indictment of American history — as if these listeners weren’t implicated in its message.Members of the Attacca Quartet with Giddens and her partner, Francesco Turrisi.Timothy TeagueThe festival was at its best when the music spoke for itself. (Most of the concerts are streaming online.) It should be said, though, that the programming still had its limits; just as this review can’t possibly address the entire event, Ojai’s three days (and a brief prelude the evening before) represented only a sliver of the field, and excluded some of the thornier, more experimental work being done.Adams was nevertheless interested, it seemed, in artists who operate as if liberated from orthodoxy and genre — far from what he has called “the bad old days” of modernism’s grip.Beyond the composers, that translated to the performers, a roster that included the festival orchestra (no mere pickup group with the brilliant violinist Alexi Kenney as its concertmaster); members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group; and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. And soloists like the violinist — for one piece, also a violist — Miranda Cuckson, who summoned the force of a full ensemble in Anthony Cheung’s “Character Studies” and Dai Fujikura’s “Prism Spectra,” and nimbly followed Bach’s Second Partita with Kaija Saariaho’s “Frises” in place of the partita’s famous Chaconne finale.The violinist Miranda Cuckson in Samuel Adams’s Chamber Concerto, conducted by his father, John Adams.Timothy TeagueOlafsson, whose recordings have demonstrated his brilliance as a programmer — with a sharp ear for connections within a single composer’s body of work, or across centuries and genres — persuasively moderated a conversation among Rameau, Debussy and Philip Glass, as well as another of Mozart and his contemporaries, with masterly voicing and enlightening clarity.Giddens was also at ease in a range of styles, her polymathic musicality and chameleonic voice deployed as affectingly in an Adams aria as in American folk. Performing with her own band (whose members include Francesco Turrisi, her partner) she was deadpan and charismatic; alongside the Attacca Quartet, she simply sat at a microphone with a laser-focus stare, commanding the stage with only her sound.Attacca’s appearance was all too brief, but could justify their own turn at directing the festival one day. Whether in works by Adams, Jessie Montgomery or Caroline Shaw, in Paul Wiancko’s vividly episodic “Benkei’s Standing Death” or Gabriella Smith’s jam-like “Carrot Revolution,” these open-eared and open-minded players don’t seem to bring a piece to the stage until it is etched into their bones, so fully is each score embodied.There was overlap of composer and performer in Timo Andres, whose works were well represented but who also served as the soloist — twinkling, patient and tender — in Ingram Marshall’s humbly gorgeous piano concerto “Flow.”Andres later gave a chilly Sunday morning recital that opened with selections from “I Still Play,” a set of miniatures written for Robert Hurwitz, the longtime and influential leader of Nonesuch Records. It continued with one of Samuel Adams’s Impromptus, a work of inspired keyboard writing designed to complement Schubert, with flashes of that composer along with warmth and subtle harmonic shading to match. And it ended with the first live performance of Smith’s “Imaginary Pancake,” which had a respectable debut online early in the pandemic but truly roared in person.In very Ojai fashion, there were so many living composers programmed that Esa-Pekka Salonen didn’t even qualify as a headliner. If anything, he was a known quantity that unintentionally faded amid the novelty of other voices. Carlos Simon’s propulsive and galvanizing “Fate Now Conquers” nodded to Beethoven, but on his own brazen terms. And there continues to be nothing but promise in the emerging Inti Figgis-Vizueta, whose “To give you form and breath,” for three percussionists, slyly warped time in a juxtaposition of resonant and dull sounds of found objects like wood and planters.Much real estate was given to Gabriela Ortiz, who in addition to being performed — providing a blissfully rousing climax for the festival with an expanded version of her “La calaca” on Sunday evening — stepped in as a curator when a recital by Anna Margules was canceled because she couldn’t travel to the United States. That concert, a survey of Mexican composers, offered one of the festival’s great delights: the percussionist Lynn Vartan in Javier Álvarez’s “Temazcal,” a work for maracas and electronics that demands dance-like delivery in a revelation of acoustic possibilities from an instrument most people treat as a mere toy.From left, Emily Levin, Abby Savell and Julie Smith Phillips in Gabriela Ortiz’s “Río de la Mariposas.”Timothy TeagueOrtiz’s chamber works revealed a gift for surprising acoustic pairings, such as two harps and a steel plan in “Río de las Mariposas,” which opened a late morning concert on Sunday. It’s a sound that had a sibling in a premiere that ended that program: Dylan Mattingly’s “Sunt Lacrimae Rerum,” its title taken from the “Aeneid.”The work is also for two harps (Emily Levin and Julie Smith Phillips) — but also two pianos that, microtonally detuned, could at times be confused with a sound of steel pan. There is a slight dissonance, but not an unpleasant one; the effect is more like the distortion of memory. And there was nothing unpleasant about this cry for joy. Ecstasy emanated from the open pianos, played by Joanne Pearce Martin and Vicki Ray, as they were lightly hammered at their uppermost registers, joined by music-box twinkling in the harps.The mood turned more meditative in the comparatively subdued middle section, but the transporting thrill of the opening returned at the end: first in fragments, then full force. “Sunt Lacrimae Rerum” was the newest work at the festival, a piece that looked back on a year that was traumatic for all of us. But Mattingly met the moment with music that teemed with defiant, unflappable hope for the future. More

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      Ron Miles Headlines the Village Vanguard, at Last, as the Club Reopens

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      The cornetist led a quintet featuring Jason Moran, Bill Frisell, Thomas Morgan and Brian Blade as the 86-year-old establishment came back to life after its pandemic shutdown.Ron Miles has a dusty and unvarnished sound on cornet that hints at his Rocky Mountain roots, and unlike your typical high-brass improviser, he hardly ever resorts to flash or big pronouncements. Onstage he’s unhurried, low-key and playing for the audience, yes, but not directly to it.All of which helped make his quintet’s early set at the Village Vanguard on Saturday night feel comfortable, even familiar, despite it being Miles’s first week leading a band at the storied club — and his shows being the Vanguard’s first after 18 months of lockdown.There was an air of celebration as the 86-year-old establishment came back to life, but the way to engage with it was seemingly to pick up right where things left off, letting the music do its work.Patrons returning to the club found it largely unchanged after the long pause.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesThe tiny white bistro tables and wooden chairs were just as before, knocked closely together between the venue’s obtusely angled walls, all lined with leather benches. The simple laminated drink menus were unchanged, except for a sticker on each one with a handwritten “Modelo” replacing the Stella Artois.But a big part of the night’s easy, familial feeling came from the fact that the members of Miles’s all-star quintet were all Vanguard regulars. Everyone but the band’s leader had previously headlined at the club in his own right: the pianist Jason Moran, the guitarist Bill Frisell, the bassist Thomas Morgan and the drummer Brian Blade.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesMiles, 58, has spent most of his life in Denver and has only recently begun to garner the heavy national attention he was due, and it’s come thanks to this band. He had booked this engagement with the club’s management far in advance, after the quintet had released its debut album but before last year’s equally spellbinding release, “Rainbow Sign.” When the Vanguard decided to align its reopening with Broadway’s, in mid-September, Miles’s became the first date on the schedule that stood.The cornetist first convened the quintet in 2016 as an extension of a trio that he had long maintained with Blade and Frisell. Everyone in the group spent at least his adolescent years west of the Mississippi River — Louisiana, Texas, Colorado, California — and Miles’s slyly swinging compositions are built perfectly to find the natural simpatico between these musicians. Steeped in American roots music, 1950s cool jazz and the musical openness of Don Cherry, it never feels settled but almost always seems centered on a search for shared comfort.Appearing onstage with the band just after 8 p.m., Miles allowed a pregnant silence to build before beaming out one evenly held note; Moran responded with a low and cloudy chord, striking it just half a moment behind Miles. Frisell’s guitar, run through reversed effects and sudden loops, added an electric charge to their earth tones.It was Morgan who started, finally, to set a firm pulse, though he built it in response to Blade’s scattered strokes on the snare and bass drums, which implied a flow. The tune became slowly recognizable as “Like Those Who Dream,” the opener from “Rainbow Sign.” The musicians bent in and out of blues form as they moved into a steady three-beat pattern, and solos folded neatly into composed sections.The drummer Brian Blade and the guitarist Bill Frisell on the Vanguard stage.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesThe set started with long, expansive renditions of original compositions, and ended with a diptych of short, pithy pieces: a quick-hit take on Lee Konitz’s cool-jazz classic “Subconscious-Lee” and a short version of “The Rumor,” a pool of harmony and tone that serves as the centerpiece of the new album.Miles knows about fitting his voice into another musician’s band; most of his higher-profile work had been as a side musician, and he makes himself indispensable by paying attention to a group’s entire sound, in the way that a bassist or a pianist might.He encouraged the same approach from his bandmates here by not only writing to their natural strengths but by presenting each member with a score that shows the entire band’s parts, rather than just their own.Miles’s skills as an accompanist were in evidence too on Saturday. On “Queen of the South,” another original from the new album with a memorable, folklike melody, after the solo section ended and the band reclined back into the melody, Miles capered happily around it, adding bright coloration and cross-swipes of rhythm.He followed with “Let’s,” an up-tempo tune by Thad Jones, the trumpeter and Vanguard icon, hoisting up the energy and the tempo but not the volume. Moran stayed out as Frisell improvised, starting with spare gestures and getting more creative, treating his solo like an engine being rebuilt one part at a time. Miles took his own solo quickly off the harmonic map, tugging against whatever structure had set in with the swing feel.After “Let’s,” Miles took the microphone off its stand for the first and only time that set, and spoke as if this was just a normal night of music in a highly special place. “We are blessed to be here and blessed to be in this hallowed space,” he said. “We’re going to play some more music for you.”There was an air of celebration as the club came back to life.An Rong Xu for The New York Times More

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      Drake’s ‘Certified Lover Boy’ Holds at No. 1 for a Second Week

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      The rapper’s latest album repeats at the top of the Billboard 200, and Kacey Musgraves’s “Star-Crossed” opens at No. 3.In its second week out, Drake’s hit new album, “Certified Lover Boy,” lost 61 percent of its sales, but it still holds at No. 1 on Billboard’s chart, while the latest LP from the Grammy-winning country star Kacey Musgraves opens at No. 3.“Certified Lover Boy” had the equivalent of 236,000 sales in the United States, down from 613,000 in its debut week, according to MRC Data, Billboard’s tracking arm. Almost all of its total was attributed to streaming activity, with songs from the album garnering 305 million clicks — still a huge weekly number, beaten this year only by the opening weeks of J. Cole’s “The Off-Season” (325 million), Kanye West’s “Donda” (357 million) and, of course, “Certified Lover Boy” (744 million).Musgraves’s fifth studio album, “Star-Crossed,” starts at No. 3 with 77,000 sales, including 38 million streams and 47,000 copies sold as a complete package. Musgraves’s last LP, “Golden Hour,” won album of the year and best country album at the 2019 Grammys.West’s “Donda” holds at No. 2 in its third week out, with the equivalent of 79,000 sales. Olivia Rodrigo’s “Sour” is No. 4, and “The Melodic Blue” by the rapper Baby Keem, a protégé of Kendrick Lamar, opens at No. 5.Also this week, Metallica’s self-titled album from 1991 — known to fans as the “Black Album,” and featuring breakthrough hits like “Enter Sandman” and “The Unforgiven” — jumped 149 spots to No. 9 thanks to a 30th-anniversary reissue. More

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      JoJo Siwa Wants to Be ‘a Role Model for People Who Love Love’

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      At 18, the “Dance Moms” and internet star is returning to reality TV as half of the first same-sex partnership on “Dancing With the Stars.”A few years ago, JoJo Siwa emerged as a tween wonder on the reality show “Dance Moms,” known for her brassy one-liners, rapid-fire pirouettes and rainbow-hued ensembles topped with huge hair bows.Today, Siwa, 18, is about to return to dance reality TV — as a budding queer idol. After coming out earlier this year, she will be part of the first same-sex partnership on “Dancing With the Stars.”Her wardrobe hasn’t changed much.“When I came out, people were like, ‘How did you not see this coming? She’s always literally been a walking Pride flag!’” Siwa said. “It’s the best compliment.”In many ways, Siwa remains the same playfully outrageous person fans first encountered on “Dance Moms.” But during the intervening years, she has built an empire on her glitter-and-rainbows star power.Siwa on tour in Queensland, Australia, in 2018.Dan Peled/Rex, via ShutterstockSiwa now has 36.4 million followers on TikTok, 10.9 million on Instagram and 12.3 million on YouTube, where her song “Boomerang” is approaching 1 billion views. She has headlined an arena tour and appeared in TV series and movies, most recently “The J-Team,” a film she also executive produced. She was named one of GLAAD’s 20 Under 20 for 2021, and one of Time’s Most Influential People of 2020. She has sold more than 80 million of her signature hair bows.From the beginning, legions of preteen girls bought into Siwa’s positive, anti-bullying messaging. Since coming out, she has begun to speak more directly to people her age, who tended to dismiss her as kid stuff. She heads to the 30th season of “Dancing With the Stars,” which premieres on Monday, with all those fans — a.k.a. Siwanatorz — in tow.“She’s like a living, breathing Mirrorball Trophy,” said Andrew Llinares, an executive producer of “Dancing With the Stars,” referring to its top prize. “She’s colorful in the way she looks, but she’s also colorful in her personality and her aura. She’s just an amazing sort of — being.”Siwa grew up immersed in dance. Her mother, Jess, owned a dance studio in the Siwas’ hometown, Omaha. Jess had JoJo in competitions when she was just 2, the toddler’s costumes concealing her diaper. “She could turn like nobody’s business, and her presence was unreal,” Jess said. “She would just captivate people.”JoJo Siwa with her mother, Jess, at her 13th birthday party at Madame Tussauds in Los Angeles in 2016.Paul Redmond/WireImage, via Getty ImagesMaking JoJo a star in the mold of Hannah Montana, the Disney Channel character played by Miley Cyrus, soon became the goal. “I didn’t know that Miley Cyrus and Hannah Montana were two totally different people,” JoJo said. “Hannah Montana was the only human that existed for me, and she was glittery and sparkly and a rock star, and I just wanted to be that human.”In 2013, the 9-year-old JoJo earned a spot on the “Dance Moms” spinoff “Abby’s Ultimate Dance Competition.” Soon, JoJo and Jess joined the main “Dance Moms” cast. Though not the strongest dancer on the show — she routinely landed at the bottom of its trademark pyramid ranking — JoJo’s outspokenness and unapologetic confidence made her a reality TV natural.“Dance Moms” offered JoJo a degree of fame, but limited control over her image. In 2015, she started a YouTube channel, which she described as a way to showcase her truest self. “As a 12-year-old, I was editing 10 videos a week, which is wild,” JoJo said. “But it was just my favorite, because I was in charge and I had freedom.”Millions of followers beyond the “Dance Moms” universe began tuning in to see her share the contents of her taco-print dance bag and make pink slime without using her arms. It was a celebrity rooted in her own eccentricities and enthusiasms, without the shaping of a teen-idol-generating corporation. “In traditional media, there’s kind of a manufacturing of stardom,” said Earnest Pettie, who is the culture and trends insight lead at YouTube. “But by coming to social media, JoJo was able to claim her voice for herself, to tell her own story.”An early version of Siwa style.via JoJo SiwaAs her audience ballooned, JoJo became an anti-bullying crusader, encouraging her young fans to be themselves, haters be darned. That positivity, in its shiny, bow-topped packaging, proved highly marketable. And JoJo proved a savvy businesswoman, taking a hands-on approach to her lines of bows and dolls and clothing. (Jess proudly described 13-year-old JoJo holding court in a room full of Walmart executives.)But despite earning the adoration of 6- to 10-year-olds, she faced increasingly venomous harassment online from fellow teens. “I’ve never really had kid friends my own age,” she said. “But teenagers hated me. I mean, literally hated me.” From her detractors’ perspective, she looked like a phony, forced to perpetually inhabit a lucrative persona created when she was 9.She wouldn’t have been the only “Dance Moms” cast member to feel trapped in amber. Zackery Lennon Torres, who identified as a boy when she was on “Abby’s Ultimate Dance Competition” and “Dance Moms” as a young teen, came out this spring as a transgender woman. Now 22, she said she “hit pause” on her feelings about gender and sexual identity during her years with the franchise, which had specific ideas about what gender roles Torres would play.“I didn’t have time to think about where I was in my growth as a person,” Torres said. “After I left the show and went back to high school, I had to figure out that, like, Oh, I wanted a boyfriend. What does it mean to come out? Who am I?”Siwa, who overlapped a bit with Torres on “Dance Moms,” is quick to express sympathy for her. But Siwa maintains that her “Dance Moms” experience didn’t stifle or alter her, and neither did her ensuing fame.“Nothing I’ve ever done has been something I didn’t want to do,” Siwa said. “If I wanted to create an alternate identity, I could do that — it’d be easy. I didn’t. This is me.”Tracy Nguyen for The New York Times“Nothing I’ve ever done has been something I didn’t want to do,” she said. “If I wanted to create an alternate identity, I could do that — it’d be easy. I didn’t. This is me.”Since quarantine, however, there has been a new sense of vulnerability and transparency to Siwa’s online presence. On TikTok her posts became winkingly self-aware. “I started showing people, like, hey, I know you make fun of me, but guess what? I’m game!” she said. “They got to meet a human that maybe they actually like.” After turning 18 in May, she began experimenting with slightly toned-down looks, giving the hair bows a rest.Siwa came out and introduced her girlfriend, Kylie Prew, in a series of posts in January and February — an undeniably honest moment met, overwhelmingly, with cheers. (She is still figuring out how best to describe her sexuality; for the moment, she said, she’s going with “queer, because it covers it, and it’s cute.”) She has disavowed her homophobic trolls.“I want to be a role model for people who love love,” she said. “I don’t want to be a role model for people who think being gay is wrong. I don’t need those people in my corner.”Siwa with her girlfriend, Kylie Prew. “When I came out, people were like, ‘How did you not see this coming? She’s always literally been a walking Pride flag!’” Leon Bennett/Getty ImagesThough Siwa’s ambitions extend to music, acting and production, her “Dancing With the Stars” turn comes at an especially dance-focused moment in her career. Her new film “The J-Team” centers on a dance team, and she is the choreographer in the coming streaming series “Siwa Dance Pop Revolution,” a collaboration with her mother. “Dance has always been home for me,” she said.“Dancing With the Stars” will help twine Siwa the dancer and Siwa the queer role model together in the public imagination. (There has been some grumbling online about her dance background giving her an unfair advantage on the show, but “Dancing” frequently includes trained dancers in its star lineup.) When the “Dancing” team first approached her earlier this year, they asked whether she’d like to perform with a male or a female pro. “I immediately chose female,” she said. “How awesome is it that I get to be the first, that I get to make history and inspire people this way? That is huge.”It is huge. And, in some encouraging ways, it isn’t. “Dancing” follows in the footsteps of its BBC cousin, “Strictly Come Dancing,” which featured its first same-sex partnership last year, and the Danish “Dancing With the Stars,” which has already awarded its Mirrorball Trophy to a male-male duo. Since 2019, the National Dance Council of America, the official governing council of traditional ballroom dance in the United States, has defined a couple in ballroom as “a leader and follower without regard to the sex or gender of the dancer.”Siwa, once seen as stuck in time, is now helping network TV catch up with the times. And her Siwanatorz? They’re already caught up.“I think the best part,” Torres said, “will be for these young kids to see her dancing with a girl on TV, and not even bat an eye.” More