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      Remembering Stephen Sondheim, Musical Theater Visionary

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherStephen Sondheim, the person most responsible for the modernization of the American musical, died late last month at 91.A protégé of Oscar Hammerstein II, Sondheim brought complexity and intricacy to the union of lyric and music, helping to elevate the form somewhere past straightforward entertainment and into the American intellectual zeitgeist. He was most acclaimed for his run in the 1970s and 1980s, which included “Company” (1970), “Follies” (1971), “Sweeney Todd” (1979), “Sunday in the Park With George” (1984) and “Into the Woods” (1987). A revival of “Company” with a gender-swapped lead role is currently in previews on Broadway.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Sondheim’s legacy, his engagements with pop music, how his musicals have aged and whether he has any true inheritors in the current generation of lyricist-composers.Guests:Jesse Green, The New York Times’s chief theater criticElisabeth Vincentelli, who writes about theater, music and television for The New York TimesConnect 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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      Adele Returns, From Beyond Space and Time

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherAdele’s fourth album, “30,” just had the year’s biggest debut week, an unsurprising reflection of the power still wielded by the British pop-soul torch singer, who remains the kind of big-tent, multiple-audience pop star that, in the era of algorithmic sorting, is perhaps no longer achievable.Adele has maintained that position by making music that often felt removed from prevailing trends. But “30” marks some changes, albeit mild ones — production on some songs feels in conversation with contemporary R&B, and her personal life (her recent divorce and journey into motherhood) intersects with her songwriting, which has in the past scanned as more abstract and depersonalized.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Adele’s return, her light gestures to innovation, the intrusion of tabloid reality into her timeless sound, and the productive intersection of a texturally rich voice and a texturally rich life. Also, a few words about the life and work of Virgil Abloh.Guests:Jon Pareles, The New York Times’s chief pop music criticJillian Mapes, features editor at PitchforkConnect 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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      The Emotional and Financial Business of Taylor Swift’s ‘All Too Well’

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherThe cornerstone of Taylor Swift’s new rerecording of her 2012 album “Red” is the extended 10-minute “All Too Well.” Its original version is one of Swift’s great heartbreak anthems; the new one doubles down on the grim details of a love gone sour. She performed the extended cut on “Saturday Night Live” the day after its release, in front of the short film she directed to accompany it.The creative success of this song offers an artistic bonus to what has essentially been a business decision: faithfully rerecording her old albums to devalue the master recordings of the original versions and own the new ones herself. Swift understands how to craft compelling public-facing narratives even while grappling with behind-the-scenes dramas.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Swift’s rerecorded albums, the unruly fervor of the new “All Too Well” and whether one can ever fully truly channel the past when saddled with the knowledge of the present.Guests:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterCaryn Ganz, The New York Times’s pop music editorLindsay Zoladz, who writes about pop music for The New York Times and othersConnect 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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      Remembering the Velvet Underground Through the Mirror of Film

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherIn its day, the Velvet Underground verged on the inscrutable, a band that tempered pop curiosity with avant-garde abrasion. Managed for a time by Andy Warhol, it wasn’t particularly successful by commercial measures, but the group — which included Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison and Moe Tucker — provided an early counternarrative to the peace and love centrist counterculture of the 1960s, and proved to be profoundly influential.The band is remembered in “The Velvet Underground,” a new documentary directed by Todd Haynes, who has made unconventional music films for the last two decades. This movie is a deep dive on the New York demimonde that birthed the band, and also a reflection on the cinema and art of the day.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about how the Velvet Underground was experienced in its time, how the band’s musical aesthetic matches with the film’s visual aesthetic and the state of contemporary music documentaries.Guests:Jon Pareles, The New York Times’s chief pop music criticA.O. Scott, The New York Times’s co-chief film criticConnect 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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      How the Mosh Pit and ‘Raging’ Came to Hip-Hop

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherIn the last decade, hip-hop has become increasingly familiar with the mosh pit, stage diving and crowds that take on lives of their own. No one’s career embodies that more than Travis Scott, whose fans are known as Ragers and who has built an empire on encouraging them toward abandon.The cause of death of the eight people who lost their lives at Scott’s Astroworld festival on Friday remains unknown. But video footage of the event shows issues with crowd control. Hip-hop festival performances are oriented toward the rowdy these days, and the tragedy at Astroworld feels like it could be a potential pivot point away from an era in hip-hop that’s become improbably wild.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the history of moshing in hip-hop, how the last decade has seen the energy typically associated with hardcore and punk shows become central to a huge swath of rap music, and the future of the rage.Guest:Roger Gengo, founder of Masked Gorilla and Masked RecordsConnect 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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      Popcast Mailbag! Halsey, Nicki, TikTok and, of Course, Taylor

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherYou ask, we answer. Or prevaricate. It depends!On this week’s Popcast, part of our semiregular mailbag series, the team takes questions on a range of topics:the year in Taylor Swiftthe quality of Halsey’s new musicthe state of the music videothe ways TikTok can be a lifeline for a legacy actthe direction Drake’s career should head inthe increasingly idiosyncratic vocal styles of young female pop starswhether we still buy physical mediaAnd much more.Guests:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterCaryn Ganz, The New York Times’s pop music editorConnect 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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      glaive and Hyperpop’s Breakthrough Moment

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherThe singer glaive, just 16 years old, has become the biggest breakout star from the world of hyperpop. An intuitive songwriter with a springy voice and a direct line to a wellspring of raw emotion, he’s a true talent looming in a scene that isn’t anti-pop so much as meta-pop, chaotic and a little indifferent.Hyperpop is a loose scene at best — it has a home on the Spotify playlist that de facto gave it its name, but many of its performers are ambivalent about the moniker, and the music lumped under the umbrella varies widely. But with the recent success of 100 gecs, the duo that is something like the genre’s spiritual elders, and the long shadow of the PC Music collective, the style is inching closer to widespread embrace.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about glaive’s rapid ascent, how hyperpop is and isn’t a traditional scene, and what the future might hold for a singer and sound that are figuring it out in real time.Guest:Alex Robert Ross, editorial director of The FaderConnect 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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      The Music Lost to Coronavirus, Part 3

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherThis past summer, it briefly seemed as if the worst of the coronavirus might be behind us. But despite some encouraging signs — like the concert business amping up again — the pandemic’s landscape continued to shift; the Delta variant spread widely, and deaths rose again. Many musicians and people integral to the music business have been lost to Covid-19.On this week’s Popcast, the third in a recurring series, a handful of remembrances of musicians who died during the pandemic:Jacob Desvarieux, one of the founders and the core arranger of Kassav’, the band that pioneered zouk music, who died at 65.John Davis, one of the actual singing voices behind the façade-pop supernova act Milli Vanilli, who died at 66.Chucky Thompson, a hip-hop and R&B producer responsible for hits by Mary J. Blige, the Notorious B.I.G. and others, who died at 53.Guests:Doreen St. Felix, television critic at The New YorkerGil Kaufman, senior writer and editor at BillboardJeff Mao, longtime music journalist and D.J.Connect 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