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    Britpop’s Back. But What Happened to Cool Britannia?

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    Some of the biggest ’90s bands are playing major gigs across Britain again, and headlining festivals abroad. Yet Britpop’s swaggering sense of national self-belief feels like a distant memory.In 1994, Luis Chuva was 14 and on summer vacation at his grandparents’ home in Costa Nova, Portugal, when, one Saturday, he glimpsed something on TV that changed his life: a music video for “Girls and Boys,” by the British band Blur.Onscreen, Blur’s singer, Damon Albarn, dressed in a track jacket and wearing a hint of eyeliner, glanced seductively at the camera, and then launched into an upbeat song about British tourists on promiscuous, beer-fueled Mediterranean holidays.The swaggering track couldn’t have been further from Chuva’s simple teenage life: It featured Albarn singing in a regional British accent about “Girls who want boys / Who like boys to be girls.” But Chuva recalled in a recent interview that he “was hypnotized.”Damon Albarn in the 1994 music video for Blur’s “Girls and Boys.”Soon, the teenager was scouring Portuguese music magazines to find out everything he could about Blur and the other so-called Britpop bands, which included Pulp, Suede (known as the London Suede in the United States) and Oasis. He taped their songs off the radio. He got hold of bootleg tapes of their concerts, which he dreamed of attending.And Chuva made a decision: At the first opportunity, he would move to London. Viewed from sleepy ’90s Portugal, Britain looked optimistic, exciting, colorful. “It just felt like the place to be,” he said.Now 44, Chuva has lived in London for almost two decades, and, this summer, he’s busy — because Britpop is back. Some 30 years after the genre emerged, paving the way for the wider phenomenon known as Cool Britannia, some of its biggest acts are playing major gigs across Britain again, and headlining festivals from Mexico to Japan.This month, Blur released “The Ballad of Darren,” the group’s first album in eight years, and played two sold-out shows at Wembley Stadium, a London soccer venue that can seat 90,000 people. Chuva went to both concerts.Pulp, another Britpop mainstay, has also re-formed for a major tour. (Chuva saw them, too.) There was even chatter about a potential Oasis reunion — although Noel and Liam Gallagher, the brothers at the heart of that boisterous rock group, quickly knocked the idea back, pointing out on separate radio shows that they don’t talk to each other.Wembley Stadium, where Blur performed their London shows, holds 90,000 people.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesThe comebacks have received euphoric reviews, but they are occurring at a starkly different moment for British pop music, compared with the ’90s. Although Britpop never reached the same heights of popularity in the United States that it did in Australia, Canada, Japan and continental Europe, it coincided with a high point for British soft power. In 1996 Newsweek declared London the world’s coolest city. In 1997, Vanity Fair devoted 25 pages to the bands, artists, chefs and designers making Britain “the place we must all look to.” The same year, The New Yorker called Britain’s music scene “a scary paradise.”Today, however, neither British nor global news media are portraying Britain as the musical place to be — despite it giving the world current stars like Ed Sheeran, Adele and Harry Styles. Instead, news articles about the country’s music scene are more likely to touch on venues shuttering — at a rate of one a week this year, according to the nonprofit Music Venue Trust — or the country’s bands, DJs and rappers struggling to tour abroad after Brexit brought in a tangle of red tape. Local news outlets have also lamented the British government’s cuts to arts funding, and warned about the decline of music teaching in schools.Sitting in his West London recording studio recently, Albarn said some things hadn’t changed since Britpop’s heyday. He was still “completely obsessed with this country,” he said, and writing songs with lyrics that were “chipped out of that blue stone of Stonehenge.”But there were also big differences, he added. He was now 55, and wore knee supports onstage. And the challenges facing the country’s pipeline of musical stars were clear: “The soul of the nation is in danger, if you want to get dramatic about it,” he said, adding that music was “pivotal to our international place.”Chuva, the Portuguese music fan, said he felt a change, too — not just in Britain’s music, but in the national mood. “The weather here’s always been gray,” he said. “Now everything is.”Damon Albarn said he was still “completely obsessed” with Britain, and still wrote songs that were “chipped out of that blue stone of Stonehenge.” Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesBut there were challenges to the country’s pipeline of musical stars, Albarn said.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York Times“The soul of the nation is in danger, if you want to get dramatic about it,” Albarn said, adding that music was “pivotal to our international place.”Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesThe emergence in the early 1990s of Britpop — a catchall term for almost any guitar music that came out of Britain at the time — was, in many ways, a reaction to America. At the end of 1992, Blur traveled to the United States for a 44-date tour, only to find a country gripped by grunge music and indifferent to the band’s danceable indie charms.Not long after British journalists labeled the style “Britpop,” and highlighted its rejection of American tastes, it became a pop juggernaut in Britain, with bands vying to top the country’s pop charts.Blur’s music seemed to typify the genre, with cheeky singles about life in modern England. But it quickly expanded to include a variety of acts, including Elastica — a sneeringly cool punk-influenced band — and the anthemic Oasis. Each had different ideas about Britishness, but they all seemed united in a swaggering sense of self-belief.The crowd at a Blur gig, in London, in July. The audience included new and old fans.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesSeveral of the bands were depicted with the Union Jack flag on magazine covers, and happy to deploy it in their visuals. Among them was Sonya Madan, the lead singer of Echobelly, who was born in India and moved to Britain as a child. She once appeared in a music video wearing a Union Jack T-shirt with the phrase “My Country Too” scrawled on it. “It was such a positive explosion,” she said in a recent interview, “with people exploring their self-identity and having this positivity about being British.”And it didn’t take long for Britain’s politicians to see an opportunity. In 1995, Tony Blair, then the leader of the opposition Labour Party, invited Albarn for a meeting in the Houses of Parliament. Over gin and tonics, Blair and a spin doctor peppered the singer with queries. They included, Albarn said: “What do you think young people are looking for in their governance?”“I didn’t understand,” Albarn recalled. “I’d just thought he wanted to meet me.”Two years later, when Blair became prime minister, Albarn turned down an invitation to a drinks reception for British cultural figures at 10 Downing Street, having decided that the new government was just using musicians for a photo opportunity.Some fans wore throwback British fashions including bucket hats. A handful even draped themselves in the Union Jack.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesLuis Chuva, a Portuguese Blur fan who relocated to London in the ’90s and still lives there. He attended both Blur gigs.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesBlur’s latest album, “The Ballad of Darren,” is named for their former bodyguard. At a Wembley show this month, fans wore masks bearing Darren “Smoggy” Evans’s face.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesIf Britpop made Britain feel good about itself, it also made people abroad feel positive about Britain.Derek Miller, a 46-year-old American actor, said in an interview that he became “immediately smitten” with Blur when he heard them as a teenager in Chicago. The music didn’t have the machismo of American rock, he said. “There was something about it that was just fun.”While studying at Indiana University Bloomington, he met other Britpop obsessives. (The college radio station had a Britpop show, and the presenter was prone to speaking in a fake British accent, Miller said.) After graduation he moved to Britain. He now lives in Yorkshire, in northern England, and has a son named Jarvis, after the Pulp lead singer.In recent interviews, a dozen other non-British Britpop fans offered similar tales. Jess Mo said that, at age 18, she moved to London from a village of “literally five houses” on an island off the coast of Sweden, because of her love of Blur. Anne-Sophie Marsh, a Frenchwoman, said she wrote to Pulp’s fan club for advice on what British college to study at, and then moved to the city of Brighton.Blur played hits including “Song 2” — known in U.S. sports stadiums for its “Woo-hoo!” refrain.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesMost expert interviewees for this article — musicians, academics and journalists — said they felt that Britain’s music scene was today less likely to draw fans to the country. Their reasons didn’t involve the quality of British music. Albarn said some of Britain’s younger, ever-online music stars were writing songs filled with such “universal references” that fans may not even realize they were British. That applied to his own group Gorillaz, too, he said. “I don’t think there’s any sense of it being English,” he said. “They think it’s American in America,” he added. “I think in England they think it’s American, too.”The only interviewee who didn’t seem downbeat about the prospects of Britain’s musical influence was an American, but one who knows a lot about soft power. Joseph Nye is a political scientist and a former Pentagon official, who in the late 1980s pioneered the idea that countries don’t need to use force to get what they want, but can achieve influence by building popular affinity. By phone, Nye said that, at first glance, it did seem Britain’s musical star was waning. “I hear a lot about K-pop,” he said of Korean artists like BTS. “I don’t hear much about Britpop.”But, he added, people would still be listening to touchstone British bands like the Rolling Stones and the Beatles for decades to come. It almost doesn’t matter what Britpop’s legacy was; the country remains a cultural powerhouse by virtue of its earlier history. “I’m not saying Britain can rest on its laurels forever,” Nye said. “But laurels don’t wither.”A Times reporter at the show spoke to fans from Estonia, South Korea, Italy, the United States and France.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesAt one of Blur’s recent homecoming shows at Wembley Stadium, fans had begun lining up outside long before the scheduled showtime. Nye seemed to have a point. Many wore Blur T-shirts. Others were dressed in throwback British fashions, including bucket hats and Fred Perry polo shirts. Few of those die-hard supporters were British. Instead, they said, they were from Estonia, South Korea, Italy, the United States and France, and many had flown over especially for the concert. Chuva, the Portuguese fan, was among them in the line.A few hours later, Chuva was at the front as Blur played hits like “Song 2” — known in U.S. sports stadiums for its “Woo-hoo!” refrain — and his teenage favorite, “Girls and Boys.” As the band finished with “The Universal” — a euphoric song from 1995 — Albarn put his hands on his knees, emotionally and physically spent.It was a “truly special” evening, Chuva said. He just hoped the band’s aging members hadn’t exhausted themselves. He had tickets for the next day’s gig, too.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York Times More

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      Taylor Swift Revises a Lyric on ‘Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)’

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      Hear tracks by Prince, Rauw Alejandro, First Aid Kit and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. 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, and The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Taylor Swift, ‘Better Than Revenge (Taylor’s Version)’“Speak Now,” from 2010, was Taylor Swift’s third album, and it is now the third to be rereleased as a rerecorded “Taylor’s Version.” But all along, the album was a declaration of independence: It was the first she wrote entirely on her own, as a rebuttal to critics — perhaps like the one she cuts down on the sugary, spicy “Mean” — who suggested that Swift’s co-writers had a bigger hand in her previous successes than she’d let on. “Speak Now” remains one of Swift’s best and most sharply penned albums: The line “You made a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter,” from the chorus of the great opening track “Mine,” is often held up as an example of Swift’s lyricism at its most expertly concise.But “Speak Now” is an album of excesses, too; some of them are glorious — like the epic kiss-off “Dear John” or the romantic grandiosity of “Enchanted” — and some of them are the authentic artifacts of a 19-year-old’s somewhat myopic sensibility. “Mean,” which punches down, is guilty of that, and so is the acidic rocker “Better Than Revenge,” which has the most significantly revised lyrics in a “Taylor’s Version.” “He was a moth to the flame, she was holding the matches,” Swift sings on this 2023 update, a clumsier and less direct lyric than the original: “She’s better known for the things that she does on the mattress.” The change is unfortunate, and perhaps the beginning of a slippery slope of self-editing. The previous lyric was sanctimonious and nasty, yes, but it was also a historical document of Swift’s point of view at 19, and that of many young women who, being raised in a misogynistic society, are taught to blame the other girl before they learn how to curse “the patriarchy.” LINDSAY ZOLADZFirst Aid Kit, ‘Everybody’s Got to Learn’First Aid Kit is a duo of Swedish sisters, Johanna and Klara Söderberg, whose vocal harmonies are so perfect they can seem unreal. They have thoroughly studied 1970s Laurel Canyon folk-pop, with its gleaming, precisely blended electric and acoustic guitars. “Everybody’s Got to Learn,” from the expanded version of the 2022 album “Palomino,” sounds like parental advice from Fleetwood Mac. Over earnest folk-rock guitars and what grows into a hefty girl-group beat, the song reflects on the missteps that lead to maturity — “The blues and the bliss/you’ll hit and you’ll miss” — and promises, “You’re gonna see this through.” JON PARELESPrince, ‘All a Share Together Now’The latest find from Prince’s vault is “All a Share Together Now,” a song he recorded in 2006 but never released in any form. Prince sings about generational responsibilities — “the debt of the ones before us must be paid” — in a taut, bare-bones funk workout built around a jumpy bass riff. Live drums kick the beat around and a note-bending guitar teases out terse licks that are simultaneously lead and rhythm. It’s a homily disguised as a jam. PARELESRauw Alejandro, ‘Cuando Baje el Sol’Rauw Alejandro’s new album, “Playa Saturno,” eases back on the electronic experiments of his 2022 album, “Saturno,” in favor of earthy, party-ready reggaeton. But in “Cuando Baje el Sol” (“When the Sun Goes Down”), Alejandro and his fellow producers complicate the reggaeton thump with plenty of spatial and sonic mischief. Sampled and warped vocals, echoey synthesizers, turntable scratching and eruptive percussion all ricochet around his promises of hot times after sunset. PARELESKaisa’s Machine, ‘Gravity’Is “Taking Shape” — the latest album by the bassist Kaisa Mäensivu and her quintet, Kaisa’s Machine — a journal, or a workbook? Original tunes like “Shadow Mind” (a listless ballad) and “Eat Dessert First” (the LP’s eager, clattery final track) bespeak a confessional urge, but they can’t help spotlighting Mäensivu’s conservatory chops and wily compositional tactics. When wizardry takes the wheel — especially in jazz, and especially today — the voice underneath it can end up muffled in the trunk. Mäensivu deserves credit for seeking a healthy balance. “Gravity” is the album’s only track without a piano, slimming down this band of young aces to just bass, drums, guitar and vibraphone. Moving at a fast, nine-beat clip, Mäensivu’s bass line squares up firmly in a minor key, easing you into a space of feeling before the tune’s harmonic center starts shifting around. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOAnohni and the Johnsons, ‘Why Am I Alive Now?’The title is a plain-spoken survivor’s lament, ostensibly about living through a time of environmental collapse: “I don’t want to be witness,” Anohni wails, “seeing all of this duress, aching of our world.” But within the context of Anohni and the Johnsons’ piercing new album “My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross” — which features a photo of the band’s namesake, the gay activist Marsha P. Johnson, on its cover — that question is also haunted by the ghosts of the queer community. By the end of this loose, mournful soul song, Anohni finds a hopeful answer to that titular inquiry: She’s here to tell these stories, to draw attention to these causes, to sing this song. ZOLADZLittle Dragon featuring Damon Albarn, ‘Glow’Surrounded by swirling, twinkling, glimmering arpeggios, Little Dragon’s Yuki Nagano sings about sheer rapture: “Glowing in the dark to find streams of stars to taste.” Midway through, and inexplicably, Damon Albarn arrives from a different, bummed-out dimension, with apologies for being “Under the spell of the eyes that paralyze.” Having provided a little ballast, he vanishes in a download spiral and Nagano returns, still glowing and utterly unperturbed. PARELESFito Páez featuring Mon Laferte, ‘Sasha, Sissi y el Círculo de Baba’Fito Páez, Argentina’s most celebrated — and perpetually eccentric — rocker, decided to remake all the songs on his definitive 1992 album, “El Amor Después el Amor” (“Love After Love”), three decades later for the album “EADDA9223,” joined by duet partners including Elvis Costello, Nathy Peluso and Marisa Monte. “Sasha, Sissi y el Círculo de Baba” — a tale of passion and crime — used busy disco-funk guitar back in 1992. But the new version — trading vocals with the dynamic, torchy Chilean belter Mon Laferte — uncovers the retro bolero underlying the song. With reverb-laden guitar and a trumpet obbligato, Páez and Laferte revel in the drama together. PARELESTkay Maidza & Flume, ‘Silent Assassin’The Australian electronic music producer Flume usually juxtaposes bouncy, consonant chords with a little noise. But the track he brought to the Australian rapper Tkay Maidza is pure irritation: buzzes, distortion, wavery tones, a drone that bristles with dissonance. Maidza tops it with a speedy, shifty, percussive boast, racing through lines like “I’m a jigsaw, not a quick fix” and “I’m tactical, no attachments/I’m doing it for the passion.” From any angle, it’s combative. PARELESPJ Harvey, ‘Lwonesome Tonight’Polly Jean Harvey meticulously constructed a narrative, a sound and a language — based on the local dialect in Dorset, where she grew up — for “I Inside the Old World Dying,” her first album since 2016. The music is folky but fringed with electronics; her vocals are high and eerie, nearly disembodied. In “Lwonesome Tonight,” she sings about encountering a mystically charismatic figure: “Are you Elvis? Are you God?/Jesus sent you, win my trust,” she sings, and at the end she’s left wondering: “My love, will you come back again?” PARELESBrian Blade & the Fellowship Band, ‘God Be With You’Over the past quarter-century, Brian Blade’s Fellowship has come to feel more like a brotherhood than an ensemble, accruing a repertoire of original music that will stand the test of time along with an unmistakable sound: a mix of country, jazz and gospel that exudes a feeling of choral warmth, despite not using any vocals. But beyond that, they’ve stood up against (and basically outlived) a few insidious trends in jazz: When so many fine improvisers seemed be reconciling themselves to a future where the audience might become an afterthought, Blade and Fellowship had no time for that. The group’s fifth album, “Kings Highway,” begins with “Until We Meet Again,” a slowly seductive Blade original that makes reference to a William G. Tomer hymn; it ends with “God Be With You,” a short and elegant rendition of the Tomer piece itself. We can only hope that those valedictory titles aren’t telling us something about Fellowship’s future. RUSSONELLO More

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      The Brilliance of Blur: Liste to t

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      The band is back, woo-hoo! Revisit 12 of its greatest songs.Graham Coxon and Damon Albarn, Blur’s two opposing forces, showcasing their late-90s haircuts.Chris Pizzello/Associated PressDear listeners,Last week, out of nowhere, the beloved Britpop band Blur announced a new album due July 21 — its first in eight years. Say it with me now: Woo-hoo!“The Ballad of Darren” — recorded in secret and wrapped earlier this year — will be the band’s ninth album, arriving nearly 35 years after Blur was formed. The group’s discography can seem imposing if you’re not familiar with all of its twists and turns, and don’t have anyone to guide you through it. Luckily, you do not have this problem, because Blur is one of my favorite bands.Blur’s career is all about the friction of opposing forces — and those are, for the most part, the band’s charismatic frontman Damon Albarn and its more introverted but equally brilliant guitarist Graham Coxon. The bassist Alex James and the drummer Dave Rowntree are stabilizers, grounding the band’s adventurous sound.In the liner notes to “21,” a 2012 boxed set compiling material from the group’s first seven albums, Rowntree gave what is still perhaps the most succinct summary of the band’s driving tension: “Graham used to say that he wanted to make an album that nobody would want to listen to. But you can’t do that in a band with Damon.” (If you want to read an extended cut of me geeking out on Blur, I wrote a zoomed-out summary of the band’s first two decades in a review of “21.”)A few notes on this playlist, compiled to celebrate Blur’s return. It’s not quite chronological, but it’s meant to show the breadth of the band’s sprawling career. Only two Blur albums are not represented here, and for different reasons: “Modern Life Is Rubbish,” the sophomore effort from 1993, because I find most songs from its follow-up, “Parklife,” to be better examples of what Blur was trying to do in that era; and “Think Tank” from 2003, for the semi-controversial reason that I don’t consider it a Blur album at all, given that almost all of it was recorded without Coxon and I believe the definition of Blur to be a specific alchemical happening between four particular people. (Albarn has even admitted as much in recent years, joking that, if anything, “Think Tank” was a “LUR” album.)Consider this playlist slightly beyond entry level: Blur 201, if you will. I avoided the most obvious songs, presuming that you’re already familiar with “Song 2” at the very least, and maybe also the band’s era-defining mid-90s hits “Girls and Boys” and “Parklife,” or its 1999 stadium-size weepie “Tender.” If you’re not, check those out when you get a moment. But for now, let’s follow the herd down to Greece and dive in.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. “Lot 105” (1994)To set the mood: a zany interstitial from the band’s 1994 masterpiece, “Parklife.” (Listen on YouTube)2. “There’s No Other Way” (1991)Blur began life as a prettily vacant Britpop group that was often lumped in with late-80s U.K. subgenres like Madchester and baggy; the best-case scenario, at that time, was it would become the next Stone Roses. I am happy the quartet grew out of this sound quickly, but there are several perfect pop songs on its 1991 debut album, “Leisure,” including the exquisitely bratty single “There’s No Other Way.” The video for this song is important for several reasons: 1) Damon Albarn’s haircut 2) The Lynchian aesthetic that foreshadows the way Blur would soon come to write songs about the dark underbelly of polite society and 3) Seriously, behold Damon’s 1991 bowl cut. (Listen on YouTube)3. “Country House” (1995)Perhaps best known for beating Oasis’ “Roll With It” in the epochal battle of Britpop on the U.K. charts, “Country House,” from the band’s fourth album, “The Great Escape,” is a wickedly catchy sendup of rich people who abandon the urban rat race for lush, secluded digs in the country — and specifically, of Blur’s former manager and label head David Balfe. It also boasts the only music video ever directed by the artist Damien Hirst, who went to Goldsmiths College with three-quarters of Blur. (Listen on YouTube)4. “M.O.R.” (1997)Blur’s 1997 album — yes, the one with “Song 2” — was the band’s most dramatic stylistic pivot: Here was what until then seemed like a quintessentially British band earnestly and somehow convincingly embracing American indie rock. The propulsive “M.O.R.,” though, is a bridge between Blur’s past and future. The chorus interpolates David Bowie’s arch, vampy “Boys Keep Swinging,” even as Coxon’s distorted, disaffected guitar squalls like J Mascis. (Listen on YouTube)5. “Coffee & TV” (1999)One of just a few Blur songs on which Coxon sings lead vocals, the fan-favorite single “Coffee & TV” is at once prickly and sweet, a steadily chugging tune suffused with an introvert’s romanticism. “Sociability is hard enough for me,” he and Albarn sing in wobbly falsetto. “Take me away from this big, bad world and agree to marry me.” I am not exaggerating when I say I still think about that little milk carton guy all the time. (Listen on YouTube)6. “Tracy Jacks” (1994)A sharp, poignant character study of a middle-aged civil servant on the verge of a nervous breakdown, “Tracy Jacks” is a perfect encapsulation of the band’s widening sociological scope circa “Parklife.” (Listen on YouTube)7. “Charmless Man” (1995)And, from around the same time, here’s a much more acidic snapshot of British life: “Educated the expensive way/He knows his claret from his Beaujolais/I think he’d like to have been Ronnie Kray/But then nature didn’t make him that way.” (Listen on YouTube)8. “Go Out” (2015)I love all the weird art-rock textures and sounds that protrude from this jaunty pop ditty from the band’s 2015 comeback album, “The Magic Whip” — a perfect match for Albarn’s caustic, deadpan vocal. (Listen on YouTube)9. “Beetlebum” (1997)In news that does not surprise me at all, Liam Gallagher has admitted that this is his favorite Blur song. War is over (if you want it). (Listen on YouTube)10. “No Distance Left to Run” (1999)Inarguably the saddest Blur song; no, I won’t be taking any questions at this time. If this gutting ballad — written around the time of Albarn’s breakup with the Elastica frontwoman Justine Frischmann — doesn’t destroy your heart, I don’t even know what to tell you. This is the sound of love dying, with a whimper: “I won’t kill myself trying to stay in your life/I’ve got no distance left to run.” (Listen on YouTube)11. “This Is a Low” (1994)Blur constantly wrestles with ambivalence about Anglophilia, but it can’t hide a certain affection toward its native country on this majestic “Parklife” highlight, which was partly inspired by the band’s habit of listening to BBC shipping forecasts while homesick on tour. (Listen on YouTube)12. “The Universal (Live at Hyde Park)” (2012)On Aug. 12, 2012, Blur played a triumphant reunion concert in London’s Hyde Park, following the Summer Olympics closing ceremony. The excellent and inevitably titled live album “Parklive” captures the ecstatic energy of that night — and especially the soaring singalong “The Universal,” which closed the show in grand style. (Listen on YouTube)Well, here’s your lucky day,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“The Brilliance of Blur” track listTrack 1: “Lot 105”Track 2: “There’s No Other Way”Track 3: “Country House”Track 4: “M.O.R.”Track 5: “Coffee & TV”Track 6: “Tracy Jacks”Track 7: “Charmless Man”Track 8: “Go Out”Track 9: “Beetlebum”Track 10: “No Distance Left to Run”Track 11: “This Is a Low”Track 12: “The Universal (Live at Hyde Park)”Bonus tracksMore exciting news: The New York Times has a new audio app! From time to time, I’ll be recording audio versions of The Amplifier on there, and you can also find Jon Caramanica’s Popcast and Jon Pareles recommending new music, plus a whole lot more Times music content. The app also features read-aloud stories and narrated articles from the worlds of politics, tech, health, food, sports, the entire archive of This American Life and much more. To start exploring, download the New York Times Audio app here. More