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      Grammy Surprises: boygenius Thrives, Country and Rap Wither

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      A look at the Grammys’ most unexpected and interesting story lines, including Olivia Rodrigo’s intergenerational rock battle with the Rolling Stones.Young women from across genres — along with the Recording Academy’s favorite polymath spoiler Jon Batiste — reigned atop the nominations on Friday for the 66th annual Grammy Awards, to be held Feb. 4 in Los Angeles.But beyond familiar names like Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish, this year’s class of nominees reveals a strong surge for R&B (SZA, Victoria Monét, Coco Jones, Janelle Monáe); a tough showing for country, rap and Latin music, especially in the top categories; and the enduring love for soundtracks historically felt in Grammyland.But who got left out, who represents a welcome surprise and what, as ever, are the Grammys thinking? The New York Times’s pop music team — editor Caryn Ganz, reporter Joe Coscarelli, chief pop music critic Jon Pareles and pop music critic Jon Caramanica — pored over the complete list, including some deeper, oft-ignored categories, to break down the most interesting story lines, snubs and surprises.Boygenius makes the big leagues.The indie-rock supergroup made up of the singers and songwriters Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus was once a side project, an inside joke, a fun way to promote a tour of solo acts. Not anymore. Having released its debut album, “The Record,” earlier this year on the major label Interscope — and having sold 67,000 albums in its first week, landing in the Billboard Top 5 — boygenius may very well be the biggest new rock band working, with all the arena shows, promotional savvy and celebrity worship that entails. Recognized in best rock performance, best rock song, best alternative performance, best alternative album, best engineered album and — most notably — album of the year, boygenius is among the most nominated acts with six overall, the same number as Taylor Swift. Not bad company in 2023. JOE COSCARELLIWhere’s country music?By any measure, it has been a banner 12 months for country music on the pop charts — Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” has spent 16 nonconsecutive weeks atop the Billboard 200, and in August, for the first time in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, the top three positions were occupied by country songs. And yet none of the artists behind those songs — Wallen, Luke Combs and Jason Aldean — were nominated in any of the Grammys’ big three all-genre categories. Neither was Zach Bryan, the genre’s leading dissident, nor Oliver Anthony, who had the year’s most unlikely No. 1 hit.The shutout of the men of country may be indicative of the political shift, explicit and implicit, shaping the genre’s most prominent figures. Wallen, who remains under the long shadow of the 2021 revelation that he was captured on tape using a racial epithet, is still the most popular performer in the genre; he received no nominations this year (though his song “Last Night” is up for best country song, a prize for songwriters). With Aldean, the politics are more literal. His vigilante-justice hit, “Try That in a Small Town,” made overt a partisan perspective that often resides just beneath the surface in Nashville. As for Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond,” a workingman lament that baffled both the left and the right, its direct engagement with class politics perhaps made it too hot to the touch for Grammy voters (if, indeed, Anthony even submitted it for consideration).If there were one song with the best chance of bridging contemporary country to the Grammys, it would be Combs’s cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” which went to No. 2 on the Hot 100 and earlier this week won song of the year at the CMA Awards, making Chapman the first Black winner in that category. But in part because of Grammy rules — it isn’t eligible for song of the year because Chapman was nominated for her original in 1989 — Combs’s version has been relegated to just a single nomination, in best country solo performance, a snub that feels unexpectedly pointed. JON CARAMANICA‘Barbie’ at the Grammys? Yes, she Ken.If it felt this year that pop music was more slippery than ever, subject to the whims of streaming algorithms and TikTok trends, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the Grammys chose to reward songs that came via a particularly old-fashioned delivery mechanism: the film soundtrack.Songs from the Greta Gerwig film “Barbie” — a canny collection of contemporary pop hitmakers finding creative ways to wrestle with the film’s themes — are everywhere in this year’s nominations. Billie Eilish’s familiarly melancholy “What Was I Made For?” is up for record and song of the year, and Dua Lipa’s “Dance the Night” is also nominated for song of the year. “Barbie World” by Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice will compete for best rap song. Tracks from the soundtrack also hog up four of the five available slots in best song written for visual media. CARAMANICAEmerging Latin stars get left behind.After a year in which Latin music continued to explode on streaming services and forge all sorts of cross-cultural hybrids, this year’s Grammy nominations are, well, puzzling. Edgar Barrera, the Mexican American songwriter who has collaborated on hit after hit for singers across the Americas, is rightfully a nominee for songwriter of the year. But there’s no best new artist nomination for Peso Pluma, the cutting-voiced Mexican songwriter whose career skyrocketed in 2022 and 2023 — he’s touring arenas this year — and who bridges regional Mexican corridos and Latin trap. Peso Pluma’s 2023 album, “Génesis,” is just tucked among the nominees for música mexicana. Other emerging Mexican-rooted acts that had a blockbuster year — among them Eslabon Armado, Grupo Frontera, Grupo Firme, Christian Nodal and Natanael Cano — go unmentioned.Then there’s the oddity of the música urbana category. Its three — only three — nominees are deserving: the reggaeton producer Tainy, the electronics-loving pop experimenter Rauw Alejandro and the Colombian songwriter Karol G, whose 2023 album, “Mañana Será Bonito,” was the first Spanish-language album by a woman to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200. But música urbana — encompassing reggaeton, Latin hip-hop, dembow, Latin trap and more — is a crowded, competitive, hugely popular format. The Grammys couldn’t find five nominees? All they had to do was turn on the radio. JON PARELESOlivia Rodrigo takes on … the Rolling Stones.The Grammys’ rock categories are reliable head-scratchers, but best rock song provides an unexpected delight this time: Olivia Rodrigo’s “Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl” goes up against the Rolling Stones’ “Angry,” pitting some of this year’s oldest nominees (average Stones age: 78) against one of the youngest (at 20, Rodrigo is still not old enough to order a celebratory champagne). Rodrigo is the only nominee in the category who isn’t part of a band, but her track has the fewest number of writers: just two, herself and the producer Daniel Nigro. (The other competitors include boygenius, Foo Fighters and Queens of the Stone Age.)“Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl,” with its gleeful pop-punk thrash, is an ode to social awkwardness that draws on ’90s rockers like Veruca Salt; “Angry” is built on a classic Stones riff with plenty of room to breathe — unlike the troubled relationship Mick Jagger describes in its lyrics. Both describe uncomfortable situations; both sound like a load of fun. And it’s nice to see Rodrigo’s latest album, “Guts,” recognized in the rock field, where it belongs. CARYN GANZA powerful Paul Simon LP goes unrewarded.If anyone should have been able to count on respect from the Grammys, it’s Paul Simon. His 2023 album, “Seven Psalms,” plays as a thoughtful, complex, tuneful farewell, anticipating his death. It’s a major statement couched in intimate acoustic arrangements, with the craftsmanship and artistic ambition that awards shows claim to recognize. Simon has won 16 Grammys, dating back to his days with Simon and Garfunkel. But “Seven Psalms” was shut out of high-profile categories like album of the year, and got just one obscure nomination, for best folk album, where Simon competes with the touching comeback (and beloved, familiar songs) of “Joni Mitchell at Newport.” The Grammys used to reward late-career albums by musicians like Steely Dan (“Two Against Nature”), Bob Dylan (“Time Out of Mind”) and Tony Bennett (“MTV Unplugged”). Now, Simon’s knotty confrontation with mortality seems to have gotten stranded between Grammy generations. PARELESRap’s Grammy struggle continues.For the 20th time in a row, a rap release will not win album of the year at the Grammys. That was a safe bet before — only two hip-hop albums have ever won in the biggest category: Lauryn Hill’s “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” in 1999 and Outkast’s “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below” in 2004 — but it’s assured now because none were even nominated. No rap appears among the nominees in record or song of the year, either. (Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” remains the only rap song to ever win in those categories.) But while past Grammys have brought recriminations about how hip-hop is recognized, this shutout up top comes amid a year of intra-genre soul-searching about a lack of chart impact and a dearth of new stars, especially those invested in the album format.The genre-specific nominations include a mix of familiar names (Drake — despite his history of boycotting submissions — with 21 Savage, plus Nicki Minaj and Nas) and a few artists with something to prove (Killer Mike, Doja Cat, Coi Leray). Yet this may be the first year in some time where a lack of major recognition is met with a resigned sigh. Outside of SZA’s rap-flavored singing, Ice Spice’s nomination for best new artist is the lone bright spot in the biggest categories, driving home another common talking point in rap industry circles of late: Women are the present, and likely the future. COSCARELLIGreetings from traditional pop.Oh, the categories! Who knew that Bruce Springsteen, a lifelong rocker, would someday find himself among the “traditional pop vocal” nominees? I think of it as the slot that was created for singers, like Tony Bennett, who kept reaching back to what was known as the Great American Songbook: pop standards written for vintage Broadway and Hollywood musicals, the sophisticated idiom that was overturned by the simplicity of rock ’n’ roll. But Springsteen’s nominated album, “Only the Strong Survive,” isn’t a standards album. It’s a collection of vintage 1960s soul songs, which somehow do not qualify in the Grammy category of “traditional R&B.” Are the Grammys expanding the Great American Songbook, or just consigning Springsteen to the past? PARELES More

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      SZA, ‘Barbie’ Songs and Young Women Lead 2024 Grammy Nominees

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      The indie-rock group boygenius, Olivia Rodrigo, Taylor Swift and Victoria Monét are among the most nominated artists for the 66th annual awards in February.SZA, Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, the indie supergroup boygenius and the eclectic bandleader Jon Batiste are among the top nominees for the 66th annual Grammy Awards, leading a class of contenders dominated by young women.SZA, the R&B singer and songwriter born Solána Rowe, has nine nods — more than any other artist this year — for her album “SOS,” which led the Billboard chart for 10 weeks and spawned an in-demand arena tour. “Kill Bill,” its standout hit, is up for both record and song of the year at the next ceremony, set for Feb. 4 in Los Angeles.Swift and Rodrigo will face off against SZA in all three top categories, with Swift’s “Midnights” — the studio LP she released last year, in between a slew of rerecordings — and Rodrigo’s “Guts” up for best album, and Swift’s “Anti-Hero” and Rodrigo’s “Vampire” each competing for both record and song.The awards were announced in an online stream Friday morning by the Recording Academy, the nonprofit organization behind the Grammys.Miley Cyrus and Batiste are also contenders in each of the most prestigious categories. Cyrus’s mellow, disco-inflected hit “Flowers” is up for record and song of the year, and “Endless Summer Vacation” for album. Batiste, the surprise album of the year victor in 2022 for “We Are” — a rootsy, uplifting collection that had barely made a dent on the charts — earned a string of nominations, including best album for “World Music Radio,” a high-concept amalgam of global pop that was also far from a hit. Its track “Worship” is up for record, and “Butterfly” for song. (Record of the year recognizes a single recording; song of the year is a songwriter’s award.)Boygenius, the project of three of indie-rock’s leading young women — Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, all in their late 20s — will compete for record of the year with “Not Strong Enough,” and best album with “The Record.”Swift, Rodrigo, Cyrus, boygenius, Batiste and the Americana singer-songwriter Brandy Clark have six nods apiece, as does Billie Eilish, another Grammy favorite; Victoria Monét, an R&B singer and songwriter, has seven. Bridgers, of boygenius, also nabbed a seventh, through a collaboration with SZA.The “Barbie” soundtrack, curated by the producer Mark Ronson and filled with female artists — Eilish, Dua Lipa and Nicki Minaj among them — has a total of 11 nominations in seven categories. In best song written for visual media, for example, “Barbie” tracks occupy four of the five slots.The contenders for best new artist include Monét; the banjo-playing pop-folkie Noah Kahan; Jelly Roll, who started as a rapper before finding fame in Nashville; the British dance producer known as Fred again..; the R&B singer and actress Coco Jones; the husband-and-wife soul duo the War and Treaty; and two artists who have gotten a boost from their associations with Swift — the singer Gracie Abrams and the drill-meets-pop Bronx rapper Ice Spice.In past years, the Grammys have been criticized for failing to adequately reward female artists, and this year’s woman-heavy nominations will likely be welcomed in the industry as a sign of progress. Still, the key will be who ultimately wins.As always, the nominations included some surprises in the top tier, particularly when it came to country artists.Luke Combs, who had a cross-generational smash with a reverently faithful version of Tracy Chapman’s 1988 song “Fast Car,” got a nod for country solo performance, but not record of the year, which many in the industry had expected. (“Fast Car” was not, however, eligible for song of the year, since it had already been nominated for that award in the ’80s.)Zach Bryan, an admired songwriter who found chart success this year with a self-titled album, was recognized only in country categories, for that LP and for “I Remember Everything,” a duet with Kacey Musgraves. And Morgan Wallen, a streaming titan whose album “One Thing at a Time” was a blockbuster this year, is absent completely — a sign, perhaps, that the coastal industry mainstream has not forgiven Wallen for his use of a racial slur two years ago, as establishment Nashville seemingly has. (Wallen’s hit “Last Night” is up for best country song, though Wallen was not among its four writers.)Harvey Mason Jr., the chief executive of the Recording Academy, said in an interview that the nominations simply reflect the musical judgment of the academy’s 11,000 or so voting members.“There’s really no other explanation or calculus here,” Mason said. “The voters come in, they listen to the music, and the stuff they like the best, and feel is the most excellent, they vote for.”The nominations arrive two days after Neil Portnow, a former academy chief, was sued in a New York court by an anonymous female musician who accused him of drugging and raping her five years ago. The suit also accused the academy of negligence.Portnow has denied the accusation, and the academy on Wednesday called the woman’s claims “without merit.” Mason declined to comment about the case.The major Grammy nominations this year largely hew to popular hits, and they notably over-index with female artists, though country and hip-hop are scarce in the top categories.In addition to LPs by SZA, Swift, Rodrigo, Cyrus, boygenius and Batiste, the album of the year slate includes Lana Del Rey’s “Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd” and Janelle Monáe’s “The Age of Pleasure.”Record of the year also includes Monét’s “On My Mama” and Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?,” from “Barbie.” Del Rey’s “A&W,” “What Was I Made For?” and another “Barbie” number, Lipa’s “Dance the Night,” round out song of the year.The number of slots on the ballot for the four top Grammy categories has been a moving target for years. This year, the academy set it to eight, after two years at 10. It was the third such change in five years.Among other rule changes this year, the academy moved the producer and songwriter of the year categories to the general field, which allows all voting members to vote on those awards.Nominees for producer of the year, nonclassical, include Jack Antonoff, known for his work with Swift and Del Rey; Daniel Nigro (Rodrigo); Hit-Boy (Nas, Don Toliver); Dernst Emile II, known as D’Mile (Monét); and Metro Boomin (Travis Scott; Drake & 21 Savage). Songwriter of the year, meant to recognize writers who largely work behind the scenes, has nods for Edgar Barrera, Jessie Jo Dillon, Shane McAnally, Theron Thomas and Justin Tranter.For best pop vocal album, Swift’s “Midnights,” Rodrigo’s “Guts” and Cyrus’s “Endless Summer Vacation” are up against Kelly Clarkson’s “Chemistry” and Ed Sheeran’s “-” (called “Subtract”).In the rap album category, Drake & 21 Savage’s collaboration “Her Loss” and Travis Scott’s “Utopia” will contend with Killer Mike’s “Michael,” Nas’s “King’s Disease III” and Metro Boomin’s “Heroes & Villains.”For country album, Bryan’s LP is up along with Kelsea Ballerini’s “Rolling Up the Welcome Mat,” Lainey Wilson’s “Bell Bottom Country,” Tyler Childers’s “Rustin’ in the Rain” and the self-titled album by Brothers Osborne.The contenders for best rock album are Foo Fighters’ “But Here We Are,” Greta Van Fleet’s “Starcatcher,” Metallica’s “72 Seasons,” Paramore’s “This Is Why” and “In Times New Roman …” by Queens of the Stone Age.For best African music performance, a new category, the nominees are Asake & Olamide’s “Amapiano,” Burna Boy’s “City Boys,” Ayra Starr’s “Rush,” Tyla’s “Water,” and Davido’s “Unavailable,” which features Musa Keys.In the audiobook category, Michelle Obama and Senator Bernie Sanders will compete with Meryl Streep, William Shatner and the music producer Rick Rubin.At the ceremony in February, the academy will give out prizes in 94 categories — the most in 13 years. The organization slashed many awards in 2011, but since then the number has gradually crept back upThe 66th Grammys will recognize recordings released from Oct. 1, 2022, to Sept. 15, 2023 — an unusual eligibility window of 11 and a half months. This year, nearly 16,000 entries were submitted for consideration, down slightly from last year. More

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      Bad Bunny’s Surprising Return and 13 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Ice Spice, Sleater-Kinney, Roy Hargrove and more.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.Bad Bunny, ‘Mr. October’Bad Bunny surprise-released a new album, “Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana” (“Nobody Knows what’s Going to Happen Tomorrow”). Many of its 22 songs circle back toward the programmed trap beats that helped start Bad Bunny’s career, but now they’re just part of the sonic domain of a world-conquering star. In “Mr. October” he sings and raps about wealth, clothes, fame, sex and celebrity, comparing himself to Michael Jackson and Reggie Jackson and rightfully claiming, “Yo cambié el juego”: “I changed the game.” But the track is far from triumphal; with tolling piano notes, filmy minor chords and skittering electronic tones, the music laces every boast with anxiety. JON PARELESIce Spice and Rema, ‘Pretty Girl’The utterly unflappable Bronx rapper Ice Spice cannily connects with Afrobeats — and with the gentle-voiced, hook-making Nigerian songwriter Rema, who offers slick, robotic blandishments in what sounds like one repeating cut-and-pasted chorus. Ice Spice responds with encouraging, human-sounding specifics: “Think about my future, got you all in it.” But the track ends with Rema’s looped doubts — “Give me promise you ain’t gonna bail on me” — rather than her wholehearted welcome. Why give him the last word? PARELESDesire Marea, ‘The Only Way’The style-melting South African songwriter Desire Marea turns to funk and Afrobeat in “The Only Way.” His voice lofts a sustained melody and layered backup vocals over an arrangement that feels hand-played and organic: all staccato cross-rhythms — drums, bass, guitar, electric piano, horns — with a nervy, constantly shifting beat and one melodic peak topping another. The only lyrics in English are “It’s the only way” — and with such urgent music, there’s no need for more. PARELESEsperanza Spalding, ‘Não Ao Marco Temporal’If Esperanza Spalding has been in feeds this week for precisely the wrong reasons, consider this your cue to close that tab. Spalding’s mind has been elsewhere: specifically in Brazil, where the battle over the fate of the world’s largest rainforest is reaching a decisive point. On “Não Ao Marco Temporal,” recorded in Rio de Janeiro, Spalding and a small crew of musicians protest the Temporal Framework, a recent attempt to roll back Indigenous Brazilians’ land sovereignty that would have left the Amazon increasingly vulnerable to deforestation. (The Brazilian Supreme Court recently rejected the framework, but industry’s attempts to undermine that decision have continued.) Over strums on the cavaco and violão, the resounding of drums and the squeals of a cuica, Spalding sings of the “grabbing hands” that seek to violate the rainforest. “There are some men who stop at nothing to have their way with the body of a woman or a girl,” she and a small chorus of voices declare. “Right now they’re calling her Brazil.” GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOBrittany Howard, ‘What Now’Brittany Howard, who led the Alabama Shakes, grapples with a disintegrating relationship in “What Now,” singing “If you want someone to hate, then blame it on me.” Over a fierce, choppy funk groove, Howard restrains her far-ranging voice to make her point about “learning lessons I don’t want to.” She is not happy about the breakup; she sings like she has no choice. PARELESMadi Diaz, ‘Same Risk’Madi Diaz sings about a high-stakes infatuation in “Same Risk,” spelling out both her physical passion and her misgivings. “Do you think this could ruin your life?/’Cause I could see it ruining mine,” she asks, then wonders, “Are you gonna throw me under the bus?” What starts with modest acoustic guitar strumming rises with an orchestral crescendo to match the urgency of her questions. PARELESSleater-Kinney, ‘Hell’“Hell” will be the opening track on “Little Rope,” the album Sleater-Kinney will release in January and which was made in the wake of the sudden deaths of Carrie Brownstein’s mother and stepfather. The song breaks wide open with anguish and inconsolable fury, as tolling, elegiac verses erupt into bitter power-chorded choruses. Corin Tucker unleashes her scream on the word “why.” PARELESJamila Woods featuring Saba, ‘Practice’Jamila Woods takes the pressure off a new relationship in “Practice,” the latest single from her excellent album “Water Made Us.” “We don’t gotta hurry up, you ain’t gotta be the one,” she sings in an airy, unburdened voice, carried along by an insistent beat. The Chicago rapper Saba sounds similarly breezy and wise on his verse — “learned from her, moved on, learned more” — and Woods’s lyrics extend the song’s playful basketball metaphor. After all, in the immortal words of Allen Iverson, we’re talking about practice. LINDSAY ZOLADZSen Morimoto, ‘Deeper’“I lost my senses like I’ve lost so many times/Why do the answers seem impossible to find?” sings Sen Morimoto, who plays most of the instruments on his tracks himself, in “Deeper.” A lurching beat, meandering chromatic harmonies and keyboard and guitar incursions that seem to have wafted in from other songs just add to the sense of disorientation. Morimoto’s saxophone solo sounds more sure of itself than he does, but he’s clearly not too perturbed. PARELESRoy Hargrove, ‘Young Daydreams (Beauteous Visions)’The trumpeter Roy Hargrove was just 23, but already near the top of New York’s jazz scene, when his friend and mentor Wynton Marsalis commissioned him to write “Love Suite in Mahogany.” The suite, which he performed with a septet at Marsalis’s Jazz at Lincoln Center, in fall 1993, begins in a downward slide of moonlit harmony, gesturing toward Gil Evans and Billy Strayhorn (this was the Young Lions era; a direct address to the masters was encouraged). It finds its way gradually into a slowly creeping groove before a false ending gives way to a coda of driving post-bop. The track cuts off as he cues the band into the suite’s next movement. You can hear the rest of the suite’s debut performance, which has just been released as an LP on J.A.L.C.’s Blue Engine Records. RUSSONELLOMendoza Hoff Revels, ‘New Ghosts’There’s gristle and bone in every last satisfying bite of “Echolocation,” the debut album from Mendoza Hoff Revels, a four-piece band co-led by the guitarist Ava Mendoza and the bassist Devin Hoff. There is also a delightfully wide range of musical shapes at play. One moment, they’re descending straight from the slow drag of doom metal and stoner-rock; later, Mendoza’s wily, spiral-bound melodies have more to do with the tactics of John Zorn (both she and Hoff have played on Zorn projects). Her acid-soaked electric guitar rarely leaves center stage here. On “New Ghosts,” Mendoza, Hoff and the saxophonist James Brandon Lewis hover around a heavy minor chord, occasionally repainting it in an uncanny major. Then Hoff and the drummer Ches Smith join, and the improvisation ascends into a gray cloud of swirling saxophone and bludgeoning guitar. RUSSONELLOboygenius, ‘Afraid of Heights’Lucy Dacus regrets confessing her fear of heights on this wry highlight from boygenius’s new four-song EP, “The Rest”: “It made you want to test my courage, you made me climb a cliff at night.” Though, like all boygenius songs, it’s a collaboration with her singer-songwriter peers Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker, here Dacus takes the lead, bringing complexity to a simple chord progression through the specificity of her lyricism. “I never rode a motorcycle, I never smoked a cigarette,” she sings, balancing poignancy with dry humor. “I wanna live a vibrant life, but I wanna die a boring death.” ZOLADZAllegra Krieger, ‘Impasse’The folky, deceptively understated songwriter Allegra Krieger released her album “I Keep My Feet on the Fragile Plane” in July; now she extends it with “Fragile Plane — B-Sides.” In “Impasse,” she calmly confronts someone who’s been “building quite a big brand,” touting “family values, patriot song” in a culture where “Everyone here is trying to win/Power or paper or recognition.” Over an unhurried modal guitar line, she warns how it could suddenly come crashing down, and she sings like she won’t mind if it does. PARELESNdox Électrique, ‘Lëk Ndau Mbay’Gianna Greco and François R. Cambuzat, who have worked with post-punk artists including Lydia Lunch, have spent recent years traveling the world, documenting and collaborating with musicians who play traditional trance rituals. For their latest project, Ndox Électrique, they collaborated with Senegalese drummers and singers who perform spirit-possession healing rituals called n’doep, layering drones and assaultive noise-rock guitars atop the fiercely propulsive beat, translating and transmuting the music’s incantatory power. PARELES More

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      Morgan Wallen Spends a Fifth Straight Week at No. 1

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      The country superstar, on his latest chart streak, holds off challenges from the sardonic pop singer Melanie Martinez and a deluxe reissue from Tyler, the Creator.For the fifth time in a row, the country superstar Morgan Wallen tops the Billboard album chart with his latest extra-long LP, “One Thing at a Time,” easily holding off challenges from new releases by the singer Melanie Martinez and the indie-rock supergroup boygenius.In its latest week, the 36-track “One Thing,” Wallen’s third studio album, had the equivalent of 173,000 sales in the United States, including 216 million streams and 8,000 copies sold as a full album, according to the tracking service Luminate.It is Wallen’s latest streak atop the chart. At the beginning of 2021, he released “Dangerous: The Double Album” — which had 30 tracks — and held the No. 1 spot for 10 weeks straight, despite a temporary ban on country radio after he had been caught on video using a racial slur.Martinez, a teenage contestant on “The Voice” a decade ago who has since explored a sardonic form of art-pop as a recording artist, lands at No. 2 with her latest release, “Portals.” It had the equivalent of 142,000 sales, including 61 million streams and 99,000 copies sold as a complete album; in its physical form, “Portals” came in 21 versions, including 14 CDs in a rainbow of collectible variations — autographed, with “puzzle” or lenticular covers, with a tank top — along with six vinyl LPs and a cassette.Tyler, the Creator, jumped 134 spots to No. 3 with the deluxe version of his 2021 album “Call Me if You Get Lost,” which had 78 million streams and 11,000 copies sold as a complete package.Boygenius, featuring three acclaimed singer-songwriters — Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus — opens at No. 4 with its first full album, “The Record,” after an EP released five years ago. “The Record” had the equivalent of 67,000 sales, including 18 million streams and 53,000 copies sold of the full album.SZA’s “SOS” holds at No. 5 in its 17th week out. More

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      The Friendship Harmonies of boygenius

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicIn 2018, the rising indie rock singers Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus teamed up to form boygenius, a collaborative side project that quickly took on outsized importance. For fans, it reinforced the characteristics that made each singer so appealing individually, and also created a new layer of lore.The debut boygenius EP was released in 2018, but it wasn’t until last week that the group released its first full-length project, “The Record.” It continues the group’s familiar combination of emotionally acute songwriting, rich harmonies and inside-joke banter.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about how the music of boygenius overlaps with the solo work of its three members, the ways in which friendship can be rendered in musical terms and how even the most beloved artists can be subject to a backlash cycle.Guests:Jon Pareles, The New York Times’s chief pop music criticCat Zhang, an associate 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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      Nicki Minaj Returns Ready to Rumble, and 8 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Kali Uchis and Summer Walker, Arlo Parks, 6lack and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. 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.Nicki Minaj, ‘Red Ruby Da Sleeze’Calm arrogance is Nicki Minaj’s gift. There’s no need to decipher all her allusions because her delivery and production say it all. The track of “Red Ruby Da Sleeze,” based on Lumidee’s “Never Leave You (Uh Oooh, Uh Oooh),” juggles near-flamenco handclaps, trap drums and choral vocals going “Uh-oh.” Her percussive rhymes are competitive in every realm — linguistic, sexual, financial, culinary (“guacamole with the taco”) — and their utter confidence is still convincing. JON PARELESKali Uchis and Summer Walker, ‘Deserve Me’“Red Moon in Venus,” the third studio album by the cheerfully bilingual Colombian American songwriter Kali Uchis, moves between sensual romance and fierce recriminations. “Deserve Me” is blunt: “I like it better when you’re gone/I feel a little less alone.” Uchis and Summer Walker take turns bad-mouthing the thoughtless lover who’s getting dumped, and harmonize sweetly to remind him, “You don’t deserve me.” The track starts out light and tinkly but keeps adding bassy layers, literally showing the depth of their contempt. PARELESboygenius, ‘Not Strong Enough’The indie-rock trio boygenius — Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker — formed in 2018, under a cheeky moniker that, Dacus said in an interview, was meant to harness some macho overconfidence: “We were just talking about boys and men we know who’ve been told that they are geniuses since they could hear, basically, and what type of creative work comes out of that upbringing.” The group’s stirring, acoustic-guitar-driven new single “Not Strong Enough” once again finds the women in provocative but poetic drag, as they harmonize on a chorus that answers Sheryl Crow: “I don’t know why I am the way I am, not strong enough to be your man.” On a steadily galloping bridge, Dacus leads the trio in a chant that expresses frustration at being “always an angel, never a god.” But by the end of the candid “Not Strong Enough,” boygenius has generated its own kind of strength in vulnerability — and in numbers. LINDSAY ZOLADZArlo Parks, ‘Impurities’The English songwriter Arlo Parks has absorbed Joni Mitchell, hip-hop and much more; it’s no wonder she is willing to enjoy her “Impurities.” Her new track revolves around echoey loops and samples, but she has a paradoxical lesson to impart: “When you embrace all my impurities, then I feel clean again.” PARELESMandy, Indiana, ‘Pinking Shears’On the echoey, percussion-forward “Pinking Shears,” the Manchester art-rockers Mandy, Indiana forcefully and exhaustedly reject an increasingly mechanized world: “J’suis fatiguée” (“I’m tired”) becomes a kind of mantra when chanted by the band’s vocalist Valentine Caulfield. But there’s catharsis and resistance in the industrial abrasion of the sound they create, like a rogue machine created from cobbled-together parts suddenly learning how to talk back. ZOLADZWater From Your Eyes, ‘Barley’The hypnotic “Barley,” from the Brooklyn duo Water From Your Eyes, sounds a bit like a playground chant reimagined by Sonic Youth: “One, two, three, counter, you’re a cool thing, count mountains,” Rachel Brown drones in a charismatic deadpan. The song — and first single from the forthcoming album “Everyone’s Crushed,” which comes out on May 26 — is full of loopy left-turns and unexpected riffs that jut out at odd angles, but Brown and bandmate Nate Amos are, at all times, utterly in command of their strange and alluring sonic universe. ZOLADZ6lack, ‘Since I Have a Lover’6lack positions himself between singer and rapper on “Since I Have a Lover,” which has a looped feeling. He barely projects his voice, but he rides the rhythm of a loping, two-chord guitar track as he promises more than a passing attraction. Will it last? The song suggests a woozy maybe. PARELESPrincess Nokia, ‘Lo Siento’Steady, wistful piano chords carry Princess Nokia through “Lo Siento” (“I’m Sorry”) from her EP due March 14, “I Love You But This Is Goodbye.” It’s not really an apology; as the production blooms into lush, pillowy harmonies, she switches from singing in English to calmly rapping in Spanish, cursing her lover for betrayal and noting, “Thanks for the pain, the pain in my song.” PARELESyMusic, ‘Zebras’A seven-beat rhythm percolates through “Zebras,” a minimalistic but eventful romp by the chamber sextet yMusic. The rhythm hops from key clicks on a bass clarinet to pizzicato strings; it’s juxtaposed with sighing melody lines and hints of a circus band, making the most of its three-and-a-half minutes. PARELES More

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      Indie-Rock Supergroup boygenius Returns, and More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Kim Petras, Yaeji, Arlo Parks and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. 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.boygenius, ‘$20’The indie-rock supergroup boygenius — featuring Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker — never promised to be anything more than a one-off side project when it released an excellent six-song EP in 2018. But this week, the group returned with the promise of a full album and three new songs that prove that EP wasn’t a fluke. The poignant, Bridgers-led “Emily I’m Sorry” is a compassionate folk-rock portrait of a relationship on the brink of collapse, while Dacus steers the ship on the heartening “True Blue,” a vivid snapshot of a love that’s going stronger than ever. (“It feels good to be known so well,” Dacus sings. “I can’t hide from you like I hide from myself.”) The revelation, though, is “$20,” a chugging rocker that finds the band kicking into a whole new gear, and allows Baker to inhabit a swaggering persona. “It’s a bad idea and I’m all about it,” she sings, sketching a scene full of indelible images (“It’s an all night drive from your house to Reno, to the T-Bird graveyard where we play with fire”). Halfway through, “$20” takes a thrilling turn when all three members of the band start singing different refrains in a round: Their voices converge and collide before the song erupts in a conflagration of primal screams — playing with fire, indeed.Fenne Lily, ‘Lights Light Up’On “Lights Light Up,” from the forthcoming album “Big Picture,” the English singer-songwriter Fenne Lily’s smooth, arpeggiated guitar playing has the fluidity of a babbling brook, and her murmured vocals flow with a similar kind of serenity. An undercurrent of melancholy and loss emerges from her lyrics, though, which chronicle a gradual acceptance of loss: “You didn’t listen when I told you I’m no dancer,” she sings, “now I dance alone all the time.”Yaeji, ‘For Granted’The New York-based musician and producer Yaeji has released two acclaimed house-inspired EPs and an impressionistic 2020 mixtape, but on April 7 she’ll finally put out her first full-length album, “With a Hammer.” The debut single, the shape-shifting “For Granted,” is certainly promising — a playful, sing-songy synth-pop track that, halfway through, explodes into skittish euphoria. “When I think about it, I don’t even know,” she croons dreamily, before letting her concerns go: “So I stop the thinking, let it rest and I’ll flow.”Arlo Parks, ‘Weightless’Arlo Parks works through indecision on the driving “Weightless,” the first single from her second album “My Soft Machine.” “I don’t wanna wait for you,” the young British artist sings on the chorus, “but I need you so I won’t go.” With its persistent beat and whooshes of melodrama, “Weightless” is a departure from the more muted sound she explored on her debut, “Collapsed in Sunbeams,” but the vivid lyrics still showcase her signature poeticism: “Cardamom and jade as your eyes screamed,” she sings, “on the night you showed your volcanic side.”Kim Petras, ‘Brrr’Kim Petras plays ice queen on the bold, commanding “Brrr,” a synth-pop track as industrial and echoey as a walk-in freezer. “Why don’t you take it out on me, if you think you’re so cold?” she asks a prospective paramour, delivering the line like a seductive dare.Ice Spice and Lil Tjay, ‘Gangsta Boo’Ice Spice cuts right to the chase on “Gangsta Boo” — “A baddie got’ get what she like/So what’s your sign, ’cause I like you?” — one of three new songs released today on her debut EP “Like..?” Her trusted producer RIOTUSA speeds up and adds some percussive crunch to a sample of P. Diddy’s “I Need a Girl Part 2,” while fellow Bronx rapper Lil Tjay drops in for an exuberant guest verse. “Gangsta Boo” doesn’t have the venomous attitude that made Ice Spice’s breakout single “Munch (Feelin’ U)” pop, but her effortless charisma sells the track just the same. More

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      Lucy Dacus Takes Confessional Songwriting to a New Level

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      For her third solo album, “Home Video,” the singer used her childhood journals as source material.In November of 2018, while on tour with the group boygenius, the singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus began performing a recently written song, “Thumbs,” partly at the urging of Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker, her bandmates in that project. Dacus had already drawn on her own life for the wry and charged songs on her first two solo albums, “No Burden” (2016) and “Historian” (2018), but “Thumbs” — a confessional song about a violent impulse felt toward a close friend’s abusive father — with its blunt reminder that a survivor owes an oppressor exactly nothing, resonated particularly deeply with her fans. “I’ve probably received more messages about that song than anything else I’ve written,” Dacus told me recently. On her solo tour in 2019, she occasionally closed her sets with “Thumbs,” prefacing each performance with a request that no one record it.Lyrically the song often feels like a short story — the father and daughter’s tense meeting at a bar after years of estrangement, as witnessed by a protective friend (“I would kill him / if you let me … I don’t know how you keep smiling,” the narrator sings); the way they “feel him watching / walk a mile in the wrong direction.” But like all the songs on “Home Video,” Dacus’s third album, out on June 25 from Matador, the source material came directly and almost entirely from the journals she’s kept faithfully from the age of 7. The album’s 11 songs, together a forthright exploration of coming of age, deep friendships and young queer love amid a Bible camp backdrop, volley between grief and humor and darkness. They are her most intimate and deliberately personal work to date.For her third solo album, “Home Video,” the 26-year-old Dacus mined her own life, consulting the journals she’s kept since she was 7.Candace Karch“It was intentional that I talk plainly on this album about things that actually happened because I hadn’t done that yet,” the artist says on an early May afternoon while on her front porch in Philadelphia. Dacus, who’s trying to wean herself off a habit of wearing all black, has on a dark blue sweater and bright red pants that match her shade of lipstick. We’re having tea and leftover birthday cake — cardamom, pistachio, olive — that a friend made for Dacus’s 26th birthday a couple days ago. The party occasioned the first reunion of newly vaccinated friends, which Dacus says felt “slightly skittish, but really fun.” On Instagram, she posted a photo of the aftermath, a table covered in so many Pollock-like swirls it was impossible to decipher what had occurred there. “I woke up this morning and deep-cleaned the table,” Dacus says, looking down at it a little ruefully. “We had a crab bake. I really hope it doesn’t smell.”Dacus moved to Philadelphia — a city that had slowly grown on her while she was on tour — from her hometown of Richmond, Va., and after recording “Home Video” in Nashville, at the end of 2019. Heading into 2020, she felt oddly hopeful. When Dacus and her band did a three-night residency at the Philadelphia club Johnny Brenda’s, the audiences erupted in chants afterward for Bernie Sanders. She played her last show in March, in Florida. The release of “Home Video,” which Matador had slated for as early as fall 2020, was pushed back; a slowed-down, remote version of production continued throughout the pandemic.In May of last year, two months into lockdown and recovering from back surgery, Dacus dreamed she was running around a house with her best friends and, as one does during a pandemic, promptly went on Zillow, where a fresh listing for a rambling, early-20th-century rowhouse appeared on her screen. She rounded up six roommates, packed up her sizable library and moved in last summer. As we talk, various housemates drift past us and the dogwood tree in the front yard, wheeling out the recycling, returning from rock climbing. Recently, Dacus signed papers to buy the house, where she’ll continue to live communally. “I think I need one week every four months completely to myself, but other than that I want to be around people,” she says. “I struggle with depersonalization, so it’s nice to have a hustle and bustle around me.”In 2017 and 2018, when she began writing songs for “Home Video,” Dacus occasionally allowed herself to consult particular entries in her old journals, to check a detail for accuracy, and stumbled into a memoirist’s classic quandary. Dacus tends to lean on her emotional memory, layered with hindsight and grown-up knowledge, over what her childhood self was willing to put on the page. “Almost reliably the perspective is true and the entry is not and I’m pissed about that because I would really like to know what I thought in the moment,” she says. “Who’s to know which one I should trust more?” Otherwise, for a long time she says she stuck to another writerly instinct, to not reread the entries: “If I was too close to the event, it wouldn’t hit as an actual story.”Early in lockdown, though, Dacus sat down and began to type up her journals, starting from the beginning grade school years and stopping at age 16, when she hit around 100,000 words. When she looked back at the writing of her teen years, certain omissions stood out. “I really was just hovering around the fact that I was not straight,” she says. “A lot of the songs, like ‘Triple Dog Dare,’ are about that.” “Triple Dog Dare,” which, more precisely, is about queer love forbidden by the church, closes the album with astonishing and dark undertones, intentionally referencing an idea from “A Little Life” (2015) by Hanya Yanagihara (also T’s editor in chief). “There’s a section in the middle of the novel where a parent is talking about losing a child and expresses the surprising relief that nothing worse can happen now,” Dacus says. “That idea really stuck with me.”At 26, Dacus is thoughtful and forthright when describing her sexual identity. “Gay is the overarching word, queer is the better overarching word and more specifically bisexual or pansexual,” she says. “I have no allegiance. I think gender is a joke.”DACUS WAS ADOPTED as an infant and grew up on the rural-suburban edges of Richmond, amid the kind of teenage wasteland territories of her songs — overpasses, cornfields, goat farms. “It was a little isolated but I was also around a bunch of people my age going through the same angsty time, so it was kind of a pressure cooker for weirdness,” she says. From her father, a graphic designer, she acquired a belated love of Bruce Springsteen that translated into her fantastically rocked-out rendition of “Dancing in the Dark” — a song Dacus says has been covered so many times it’s attained the status of a hymn — on her EP “2019” (2019). She credits her mother, a pianist who worked in musical theater, with turning her on to Prince and David Bowie. But as a kid, she admits, she mostly listened to Top 40 songs with her friends, musicians like the Shins that she’d discover from “Gilmore Girls” and church music. She wouldn’t buy her first guitar, a $100 Ibanez she found on Craigslist, until she was 19.Handwritten lyrics to “Partners in Crime,” a song on Dacus’s new album. The words and melody come first, she says. “I’ll go on a walk and sing to myself and go home and pick up the guitar and figure out chords.”Candace KarchIt was around this time that she came out to her then boyfriend and to her family. “I think they were cool with it, but they were not asking questions, not really following up,” she says of her parents. “It was more about me making sure they knew it than a piece of information that brought us together. I’m grateful there wasn’t a fight. It was more like, OK, next topic. Maybe one day. Maybe they’ll read this and ring me up about it.”Dacus was raised in what she characterizes as a fairly progressive church, but she also attended her friends’ churches, places that are referenced in her song “Christine” (“We’re coming home / from a sermon saying / how bent on evil we are”): “There was one church I’d go to a lot where they separated you by gender and they talked to you a lot about sex,” she says. “Like, the purpose of this church was to make sure kids did not have sex.”Talking to her parents about leaving the church was a conversation of coming-out-level difficulty that Dacus reserved for a drive. As she sings in “Brando,” “That’s only something you would say in the car.” “They’re both still Christian and I think they know that I’m not done with whatever journey I’m on and I think that brings them peace of mind,” she says.She sings about the confusion of religious feeling on “VBS,” a song whose title is an acronym for Vacation Bible School. The Dacus of this song, in her early teens, smokes nutmeg in her camp boyfriend’s bunk bed and tries not to laugh at his bad poetry. “He was my first boyfriend and he was a stoner who loved Slayer and we danced in a field with all these people to Christian rock and I thought, this is literally God that’s making me feel so good, when it was probably just endorphins and hormones,” she says.Concerts, Dacus says, fill a void that church once did. “For me, there’s no greater joy than hearing people sing together,” she says. On “Please Stay” and the stunning “Going Going Gone” (which was recorded in a single take), Baker and Bridgers join Dacus, the group reprising its boygenius harmonizing. In the days before my visit, the trio was commended on Twitter by the Chicks for their cover of “Cowboy Take Me Away.” They were also name-checked in an episode of “Mare of Easttown” when Mare’s daughter, Siobhan (Angourie Rice), is asked on a date to a boygenius show by a college radio DJ (Madeline Weinstein).“We were talking about it in our group chat and Julien said something like, ‘Welcome to the gay cultural zeitgeist,’ ” Dacus says. “For our band to basically be an indicator of gayness in a TV show is so funny — and also we only did one tour, so like, did this scene happen in November 2018?” The improbability factor puts boygenius in the pop cultural realm of Sonic Youth appearing on “Gilmore Girls,” the Pixies on “Beverly Hills 90210.” While there are no reunion plans on the horizon, Dacus, Baker and Bridgers message almost daily. “We started doing tarot together,” Dacus says. “Julien didn’t have a deck until recently, Phoebe has a really ornate one and I have the classic Rider deck. I love it. It’s like having a shared lexicon, having a ritual.”Dacus is eager to begin touring again this fall. She keeps a spreadsheet of song requests fans have made in specific cities. She’s excited to play the songs on “Home Video,” even though she hasn’t been able to listen to the entire album herself in a long time. To put out something so honest and vulnerable feels “scary, but good,” she says. It was her first grade teacher who gave her a blank composition book, her first journal — with the reminder that the writing she produced in it would be for Dacus’s eyes only, a pact she’s only now broken in adulthood. “It’s not that I had secrets to protect, but I wanted secrets,” she says. “So I had to find a way to create them.” More