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      Lorde Steals Her Sunshine Back

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      Lorde’s new album “Solar Power” marks a pivot for the New Zealand singer-songwriter, away from the insular and intimate relationship tension captured on her last album, “Melodrama” from 2017, into a brighter palette and songs about embracing wellness and posi vibes.This is something that can happen when you grow up in public — a rejection of the fixed gaze that stardom imposes on you. For Lorde, it’s meant a long retreat from the spotlight, and an insistence on making music that hews to no fixed idea about what a “Lorde sound” should be.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about this sunny phase of Lorde’s career, the ways pop stardom can dull a creative person’s edges and what it means to choose to move away from the expectations of superstardom.Guests:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterLindsay Zoladz, who writes about music for The New York Times and others More

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      How Kanye West Is Using Fashion in the 'Donda' Era

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      Kanye West may or may not be imminently releasing “Donda,” his 10th solo album, but over the course of the past few weeks, this era in his career has already established its own signature aesthetic: all black, military, asceticism on an epic scale.It’s a now familiar part of West’s album rollout strategy: clothes to match, or make, the mood. Given that nowadays he spends as much time focused on his fashion enterprises as his music (likely more), it’s unsurprising that shifts in those two creative areas move in parallel.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about West’s use of fashion as a signifier for musical evolution, the ways he has been alternately embraced and rejected by the fashion industry, and how musicians like Frank Ocean and Tyler, the Creator are walking in the path he carved.Guests:Rachel Tashjian, fashion critic at GQSteff Yotka, senior fashion news editor at Vogue More

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      The Lox, Triumphant at Verzuz

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      In early August, Verzuz — the pandemic-era staple that began on Instagram Live and within a year morphed into a multi-platform content powerhouse with artists “battling” hit for hit — held its first live, ticketed, in-person event. The night featured two of New York’s most historically vital hip-hop crews, the Lox and Dipset, facing off at the Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden.From a distance, it seemed like a light mismatch — Dipset, Cam’ron and his extended crew, are flashy and theatrical, and the Lox are workmanlike and relentless. But the battle took place in a boxing ring, and that set the tone: The Lox emerged triumphant.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about New York rap in the 1990s and early 2000s, the long-forgotten tension of pop crossover, and a night that brought the spirit of battle back to Verzuz, which had begun to turn into a lovefest.Guests:Jayson Rodriguez, a longtime hip-hop journalist and writer of the Backseat Freestyle newsletterJayson Buford, who writes about music for Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and others More

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      Billie Eilish’s New Pop Perspective

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      When Billie Eilish swept the biggest Grammy categories in early 2020, she was a phenomenon, yet somehow not quite a pop star. Her music tended toward the gloomy and insular, and her ravenous fan base was built online among young people, not on the radio.One pandemic later, and Eilish’s world — and worldview — has grown. Her new No. 1 album, “Happier Than Ever,” addresses her fame, and its wages, head on, with her most emotionally specific lyrics. It is an album made by someone freshly cast out of the womb.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Eilish’s musical and personal evolutions, how she has navigated growing up in public and the harsh sensation of the internet beginning to turn on one of its own.Guests:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterLindsay Zoladz, who writes about music for The New York Times and others More

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      Lil Nas X in the Pop Stratosphere

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      “Old Town Road,” remember? Were we ever so young?In just the handful of years since, Lil Nas X has become a bona fide pop star, even if his music is sometimes a step behind his persona.His recent single, “Montero (Call Me by Your Name),” went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. But he made as much noise by releasing the song in several different versions (à la “Old Town Road”) to squeeze maximum value from it, and by making easy sport of swatting down internet combatants dissatisfied with how he expresses himself, his sexuality and his art.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Lil Nas X’s unconventional path to pop success, his unconventional methods of maintaining it and his possible futures beyond it.Guest:Jazmine Hughes, The New York Times magazine staff writer and Metro reporter More

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      When Pop Music Trolls Grow Up

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      Over the past month, the Top 5 of the Billboard 200 featured debuts by Tyler, the Creator and Doja Cat, two artists who, early in their careers, sometimes functioned as trolls. They are children of the internet with a taste for friction — Tyler as the leader of the raucous, parent-unsettling Odd Future crew, and Doja as an absurdist with a reckless streak.Now they’re at the center of pop, and their new albums represent different ways of maturing in the spotlight. Doja is a musical centrist, but imbues her songs with sexual friskiness and light camp. Tyler, eager to show off his gift for straight-ahead hip-hop (a world he’s still somewhat excluded from), has moved on from trolling outsiders to trolling insiders.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about how these two musicians have navigated paths from the margins to the center, and about whether, in order to be an effective 2020s pop star, you need to have a little bit of troll in you after all.Guest:Justin Charity, staff writer at The Ringer and co-host of the “Sound Only” podcast More

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      The (Not So?) Tentative Return of Live Music

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      Fewer industries felt a more specific and intense economic burden during the pandemic than live music. Venues went quiet. Musicians were stuck at home, with an occasional livestream to leaven the boredom (and financial strain). Though the federal government recently passed relief measures intended to stem the financial pain felt by performance venues, the rollout of the programs has been chaotic, leaving the industry not much better off than it was 16 months ago.Still, tours are being announced for the fall, and concerts are starting up again, even as new variants of the coronavirus threaten the fragile balance between freedom and safety afforded by vaccines.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the challenges faced by the live music business over the last year, and how the industry is adjusting to the new normal.Guest:Ben Sisario, The New York Times’s music business reporter More

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      Britney Spears Takes On Her Conservatorship

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      Britney Spears has been living under a conservatorship of her person and her estate since 2008, and in recent years, that arrangement has come under increased scrutiny. Last week, the singer spoke out publicly in a court hearing about her frustrations with the arrangement in a passionate speech that explained how she felt living under other people’s control.“I’ve been in shock. I am traumatized,” she said. “You know, fake it till you make it. But now I’m telling you the truth, OK? I’m not happy. I can’t sleep. I’m so angry it’s insane. And I’m depressed. I cry every day.”The revelations constituted Spears’s most detailed public statements about the terms under which she lives and works, and in the days since, her father, James P. Spears, — who has largely been in control of the arrangement from the start — filed legal documents calling for an investigation into her claims.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the status of Spears’s conservatorship, the ways it has intersected with her creative work, and the possibilities for her personal and professional future.Guests:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterLiz Day, senior story editor of “Framing Britney Spears”Samantha Stark, director of “Framing Britney Spears” More