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      9 Spellbinding Songs About Magic

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      Lady Gaga’s latest has inspired a playlist.Lady Gaga debuted her madcap video for “Abracadabra” in a Mastercard commercial during the Grammy Awards on Sunday night.Dear listeners,If you’ve noticed anyone walking around with their paws up, speaking in tongues and raving about the floor being on fire, allow me to explain: In an ad Sunday night during the Grammy Awards, Lady Gaga debuted a new single. It’s called “Abracadabra,” and it’s a gloriously nostalgic return to form, reminiscent of the infectious gibberish hook of “Bad Romance” and the go-for-broke electro-sleaze she perfected on “The Fame Monster” and “Born This Way.” Rejoice, ye elder millennials: A star has been reborn.As I’ve been strutting around all week with “abracadabra, abra-cadaaaabra” on an endless loop in my head, I’ve been thinking about how many great songs throughout pop music reference magic — as a tried-and-true metaphor for the mysteries of love, or just as a thematic excuse to get a little weird. (For Gaga, it’s a little bit of both, but always with emphasis on the latter.)The ’60s gave us spellbinding classics like the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Do You Believe in Magic?” and the Drifters’ “This Magic Moment.” But “Abracadabra” is just the latest proof that pop still has magic on the mind: In the last year or so, there have been not one but two Top 20 hits called “Houdini.” (Though never forget that Kate Bush beat them both to it.)Since a definitive playlist of every song ever to conjure magic would be incredibly long and contain quite a few overindulgent duds, this collection reflects my own tastes. Which is to say that it omits Eminem’s “Houdini,” as well as the song it samples, that other “Abracadabra,” by the Steve Miller Band. Personal preference! But it does feature enchanting tunes from Electric Light Orchestra, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and, of course, Gaga’s latest incantation.Like a poem said by a lady in red,LindsayListen along while you read.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Review: Heartbeat Opera Compresses Strauss’s ‘Salome’

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      Heartbeat Opera specializes in daring reductions of the classics, and this may be its most implausible undertaking yet.Strauss’s “Salome” begins with a swiftly slithering clarinet flourish, like a snake darting into the undergrowth almost before you see it. The passage is over in a couple of seconds, but it sets the stage for what’s to come: sinuous, nocturnal, elusive.This germ of music ends up infecting one of the sickliest scores in opera: a 1905 one-act setting of Oscar Wilde’s languorously decadent, gleefully fetid fin-de-siècle play about a society slow-dancing toward self-destruction.It’s obvious, then, where Heartbeat Opera got the batty, witty idea of doing the work almost only with clarinets. The vividly unvarnished results, which opened on Thursday at the Space at Irondale in Brooklyn, may be the most implausible yet of this feisty company’s chamber-scale takes on the classics.Heartbeat’s productions don’t reduce canonical compositions so much as reinvent them, with orchestras that could fit around a dining table. Over the past decade, it has given us a six-instrument “Madama Butterfly” and a jazz-infused “Carmen,” both trimmed to an hour and a half. Beethoven’s “Fidelio” was pared to two pianos, two cellos, two horns and percussion.But even compressing the grandeur of “Tosca” to a few cellos, bass, piano, flute, trumpet and horn isn’t as out-there as imagining “Salome” for an octet of clarinetists. (To be precise, those eight musicians play a total of 28 instruments, including a handful of saxophones, and they’re buttressed by two busy percussionists.)The concept is radical because Strauss’s breakthrough opera is defined like few others by the expressionistic power of its huge orchestra. The score’s brilliance, though, lies in a paradox: For much of the piece, the sprawling forces are meant to sound seductively diaphanous, a Mack truck navigating curves with eerily catlike grace.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ye Takes Back Apology and Calls Himself a Nazi in Social Media Rant

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      The rapper praised Hitler and took back an apology he made in 2023 for his past antisemitic remarks.Ye, the rapper and designer formerly known as Kanye West, took back the apology he made in 2023 for his past antisemitic statements, declared that he was a Nazi and professed his love for Adolf Hitler in an hourslong rant on social media.“I’m never apologizing for my Jewish comments,” he said in a post laced with vulgar language on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, as part of a barrage that began late Thursday night and lasted into Friday morning.The taunting statements were in stark contrast to an apology he made in 2023 after he had come under fire for making a series of antisemitic and pro-Nazi remarks, prompting businesses including Adidas to cut ties with him. In his 2023 apology, which was written in Hebrew, Ye asked forgiveness and said it “was not my intention to offend or demean, and I deeply regret any pain I may have caused.”Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a statement on Friday morning that the organization had condemned Ye’s “dangerous behavior” and called the rapper’s recent posts on X “a flagrant and unequivocal display of hate.”“We know this game all too well,” Greenblatt said. “Let’s call Ye’s hate-filled public rant for what it really is: a sad attempt for attention that uses Jews as a scapegoat. But unfortunately, it does get attention because Kanye has a far-reaching platform on which to spread his antisemitism and hate. Words matter. And as we’ve seen too many times before, hateful rhetoric can prompt real-world consequences.”A representative for Ye did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.Ye’s other posts touched on a series of topics, including Elon Musk, President Trump’s inauguration, and the see-through dress his wife, Bianca Censori, wore on the red carpet at the Grammy Awards last Sunday. “I have dominion over my wife,” he said.Over the years, Ye had mentioned several times a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, but in a podcast interview this week, he said that he had been misdiagnosed and that he has autism. More

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      Doechii’s Victory Lap, and 10 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks from Valerie June, Coi Leray, Destroyer and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Doechii, ‘Nosebleeds’Doechii was tearful and emotional — but primed with facts — when she became the third woman to win a Grammy for best rap album. She was also prepared; “Nosebleeds” was released almost immediately. Over stark, pushy, bare-bones electronic sounds, she gloats, “Will she ever lose? Man I guess we’ll never know” and declares her readiness for arena concerts: “I look good from the nosebleeds.” The track is barely over two minutes, but its last stretch segues into an entirely different sound: a double-time beat with Doechii cooing that she needs no advice from anyone who’s “never suffered.” The moment was hers to seize. JON PARELESLady Gaga, ‘Abracadabra’She’s overheard your theory that nostalgia’s for geeks — and she couldn’t care less. Lady Gaga mines the sonic and aesthetic shards of her own past on the insistent “Abracadabra,” the third single from her upcoming album, “Mayhem.” Fashioning an anthemic chorus out of self-referential nonsense syllables (“abracadabra, morta oo Gaga”) is so “Bad Romance,” but the verse’s thumping house piano refines the more recent sound of her mixed-bag 2020 release “Chromatica” into something sharper and more urgent. Gaga’s not forging new ground here so much as she’s remixing her former selves, reminding her many imitators who they learned their strangest moves from and grasping so strongly at dance-or-die self-seriousness that she somehow ends up doubling back into absurdist fun. LINDSAY ZOLADZValerie June, ‘Joy, Joy!’The resolutely upbeat Valerie June insists that everyone can find “that joy joy in your soul,” no matter what. Her twangy, wavery voice, doubletracked in not-quite-unison, rises over a brawny two-chord vamp that gets buttressed by saxophones, cymbals, cranked-up lead guitar and a string section, massing to overpower any doubts. PARELESGiveon, ‘Twenties’“Thought that if I put you first enough / we would last for sure,” Giveon laments, with neat wordplay, in a vintage-style soul ballad complete with strings and electric sitar. The reminiscences quickly lead into recriminations over “six years gone down the drain,” and none of the retro trappings cushion the pain. PARELESMoses Sumney featuring Syd and Meshell Ndegeocello, ‘Hey Girl(s)’Moses Sumney has revamped “Hey Girl,” a slow-jam come-on from his 2024 album “Sophcore,” to make it more gender-fluid by handing over verses to guests. Syd teases, “You say you ain’t done this before,” and Meshell Ndegeocello moves evolutionary goal posts, intoning, “I am not a woman, I am not a man / I am a water- and carbon-based life form you’ll never comprehend.’ The track’s easy-rolling syncopation and suavely supportive horn arrangement welcome them all. PARELESWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Irv Gotti: Key Milestones in the Life of the Rap Mogul

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      The producer, who died on Wednesday, built Murder Inc. into one of the most influential record labels of the early 2000s. His career was marred by a federal investigation and trial.Irv Gotti, who founded the record label Murder Inc. and helped shape the sound of hip-hop and R&B in the late 1990s and early 2000s when he shepherded the careers of Ja Rule and Ashanti, died on Wednesday at 54.Here is a brief look at how the rap entrepreneur and record executive worked his way from humble beginnings in Queens, N.Y., to the top of the charts before his momentum was marred by a federal investigation into the label in which he was charged with money laundering and acquitted.A Childhood in Queens, N.Y.Gotti was born Irving Domingo Lorenzo Jr. in Queens, N.Y., in 1970. He was the youngest of eight children, according to “The Murder Inc Story,” a documentary about his life that aired on BET in 2022. His family, which he described as one that didn’t have much money but had plenty of love, recalled him as a “clown” who loved performing, dancing and entertaining, sometimes even for small change.His foray into music began as a preteen, when he played for hours with a turntable and a mixer that his siblings had purchased for him. By the age of 15, he had begun to make a name for himself as a D.J. at local parties.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Kendrick Lamar’s Performances Led Him to the Super Bowl Halftime Show

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      Kendrick Lamar performs like someone parceling out a secret. On the 2015 single “King Kunta,” he stage-whispers, “I swore I wouldn’t tell,” and then proceeds to flaunt industry gossip without naming names. Though the Grammy-hoarding, Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper has mastered literary opacity in his music — he’s a generous user of perspective shifts and allusion — in videos and in live performances, Lamar’s expressive stagings strike like visual poetry.Lamar has scaled up those performances, becoming more elaborate as his platforms have grown in the 14 years since his recording debut. Dave Free, his primary creative partner and a collaborator on his visual presentations, has in the past attributed the rapper’s mutability to what he called the roller coaster effect: “You give people some type of variation, they can’t get used to you. They can’t put their finger on you. The more you keep people on their toes, the more interested they stay in you, for a longer period of time.” The zigzagging ride Free described is not unlike the sensory swerve of verse, especially Lamar’s quirky couplets. Ahead of his performance at the Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday, and a planned stadium tour this spring, it’s worth tracing how Lamar has visually explored intimate themes as his ambitions and career have expanded.‘Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe’ video (2013)Layering Comedy and Tragedy“Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe,” the last single from Lamar’s debut album, “good kid, m.A.A.d. city”(2012), is his most straightforward exploration of a visual lament. “I know you had to die in a pitiful vain, tell me a watch and a chain / Is way more believable, give me a feasible gain,” he chants in one verse. The song’s video, directed by Lamar and Free, is set at a funeral, with the rapper joining a procession of mourners wearing white in a hike up a picturesque hill. Their destination? A party with a preacher played by the comic Mike Epps.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kanye West Announces He Was Diagnosed With Autism

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      The rapper and designer formerly known as Kanye West revealed the diagnosis during a podcast interview where he also discussed his upcoming album.Less than a week after his controversial appearance on the Grammy Awards red carpet, in which his wife stripped down to an entirely sheer dress, Ye, the rapper and designer formerly known as Kanye West, announced in a podcast interview that he had been diagnosed with autism.Over the past few years, Ye has frequently mentioned a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, which he alluded to on the cover of his album “ye” in 2018, with scrawled green text that read “I hate being Bi-Polar its awesome.”On the track “Yikes,” Ye said being bipolar was not a disability but rather a superpower. That same year, in an interview with The New York Times, he said he had been “learning how to not be on meds.”But on an episode of “The Download,” hosted by Justin Laboy, a former professional basketball player turned internet personality, Ye discussed his mental health and said he had been misdiagnosed. In the interview, which was released on Wednesday, he said that his wife, Bianca Censori, had challenged him to get a second opinion, and that he sought out a doctor who he said had previously worked with the singer Justin Bieber.“Come to find out it’s really a case of autism that I have,” Ye said.“Autism takes you to a ‘Rain Man’ thing where you’re like, I’m gonna wear this Trump hat because I just like Trump in general, and then when people tell you to not do it you just get on that one point,” he added, making reference to the 1988 film starring Dustin Hoffman as a man with autism.Messages to a representative for Ye seeking further clarity on the diagnosis were not immediately returned.In 2020, Kim Kardashian, who was then married to Ye, defended the rapper in an Instagram post after a series of erratic social media posts. In it, she attributed at least some of his actions to his diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Two years later, Ye made a series of antisemitic and offensive comments that led Adidas to end its longtime relationship with him and the Creative Artists Agency to drop him as a client.On social media, the reactions to this week’s podcast interview, in which Ye also discussed his upcoming album, “Bully,” and the ongoing feud between the rappers Kendrick Lamar and Drake, were mixed.In comments on the podcast’s Instagram account, some users praised Ye for his openness and chattered excitedly about the new album, which he said will be released later this year. Others continued to criticize him for the barely there dress he designed for Ms. Censori to wear at the Grammys.On the social media platform X, other users voiced concern for Mr. West’s mental health, with many noting that diagnoses of autism and bipolar disorder do not have to be mutually exclusive. More

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      Susan Alcorn, Voyager on Pedal Steel Guitar, Dies at 71

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      With a daring avant-garde approach, she pushed the frontiers of an instrument best known for speaking with a down-home accent.Susan Alcorn, an experimental composer and musician who pushed the pedal steel guitar, an instrument more often associated with the country music roadhouse, into the avant-garde, died on Friday in Baltimore. She was 71.Her husband, David Lobato, said the cause of death, in a hospital, had not been determined.A rare female virtuoso on an instrument long dominated by men, Ms. Alcorn erased boundaries for pedal steel guitar — a console-style electric guitar played face up, with pedals and knee levers to alter pitch, often used to create a forlorn, wailing twang. That made it a key instrument in country music.As hinted at by the title of her 2006 album, “And I Await the Resurrection of the Pedal Steel Guitar,” Ms. Alcorn steered the instrument into uncharted territory. Over the course of a career in which she mined and refigured countless genres, she released more than 20 albums, either as a solo artist or in collaboration with boundary-pushing musicians like the guitarist and banjo player Eugene Chadbourne, the saxophonist Caroline Kraabel and the guitarist Mary Halvorson.The title of Ms. Alcorn’s 2006 album, “And I Await the Resurrection of the Pedal Steel Guitar,” signaled that she was steering her instrument into uncharted territory.Olde English Spelling BeeMs. Alcorn’s 2003 album, “Curandera,” featured her interpretations of compositions by Curtis Mayfield and Messiaen.Uma SoundsHer album “Curandera,” released in 2003, featured cosmic interpretations of the Curtis Mayfield composition “People Get Ready” and Messiaen’s “O Sacrum Convivium.” Her 2023 album, “Canto,” was inspired by her travels in Chile, where she became entranced with nueva canción, a left-leaning folk music that had been repressed by the dictator Augusto Pinochet in the 1970s.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More