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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

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      in Movies

      In the Weeds of ‘In the Heights’

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      The film adaptation of the Tony-winning musical “In the Heights” was released this month, one of the first blockbuster movies to arrive after more than a year of pandemic shutdowns. The original musical was the breakthrough for Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote its music and lyrics and went on to gain global fame with “Hamilton.”The film opened to successful box office numbers, but also spawned several critical conversations, particularly about the lack of Afro-Latino representation among the film’s lead actors, and the ways in which it failed to capture the full mosaic of the actual neighborhood of Washington Heights.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Miranda’s evolutionary approach to the musical theater lineage, how the film left certain elements of the musical on the cutting room floor and the critical blowback brought on by the film’s casting choices.Guests:Sandra Garcia, a Styles reporter for The New York TimesIsabelia Herrera, an arts critic fellow for The New York Times’s Culture deskLena Wilson, a film critic who has written for The New York Times, Slate and others More

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      Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘Sour’ Breakthrough

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      For the past few years, there’s been something of a pop star vacuum — or at least, a pop-music star vacuum. By and large, performers making centrist, big-tent pop music have been relegated to the sidelines as hip-hop — and other genres borrowing heavily from it — took center stage.But Olivia Rodrigo, a Disney child star wielding a bad breakup and a tart voice, has made pop primal, and primary, again. “Sour,” her first album, just debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart with the biggest sales week of the year.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Rodrigo’s meteoric year so far, the long arc of the mainstreaming of emo and the quickening of the maturing of Disney idols.Guests:Olivia Horn, who writes about music for Pitchfork, The New York Times and othersLindsay Zoladz, who writes about music for The New York Times and others More