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    Carin León Is Bringing Música Mexicana and Country Ever Closer

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    “There are no limits for music,” the Mexican singer-songwriter said.“There’s just good music and bad music.”In January 2023, the música Mexicana star Carin León was preparing for a concert at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena when he decided he needed to do something special for an encore.León grew up in Hermosillo, the capital city of Sonora, Mexico, about 250 miles from Tucson, Ariz. Music was always playing around his home, often from border radio stations that piped in a wide variety of American hits, and his father was known to listen to David Allen Coe’s “Tennessee Whiskey” on cassette over and over.“Me and my brother would sing the song as kids, but we would make up different lyrics because we didn’t know English back then,” León said. The country giant Chris Stapleton turned his R&B-slow-dance cover of “Tennessee Whiskey” into a career breakthrough, and León, a Stapleton superfan, worked up his own powerfully soulful version for the largely Latino audience in Nashville.“The next day, the performance went viral,” León said. “People were saying, he can sing country music, he can sing in English. So that gave me a little spark.”León, 34, was already a Latin Grammy-winning artist with billions of streams on Spotify before he covered “Tennessee Whiskey” — and before he released bilingual collaborations with the country star Kane Brown and the soul singer Leon Bridges; wrote with the Nashville veterans Jon Pardi, Cody Johnson and Natalie Hemby; earned a standing ovation at the Grand Ole Opry with a set entirely in Spanish; became the first Latin artist to perform at both the Coachella and Stagecoach festivals; and opened for the Rolling Stones in early May.“My comfort zone is being outside of my comfort zone,” León said from his shopping-bag-strewn suite at a swank Beverly Hills hotel in California, his girlfriend and team at his side. “There are no limits for music. There’s just good music and bad music.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Chappell Roan’s Eye-Roll Kiss-Off, and 11 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Prince, Young Miko, the Black Keys and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Chappell Roan, ‘Good Luck, Babe!’The rising pop star Chappell Roan sends an ex-lover off with an eye roll on the wrenching “Good Luck, Babe!,” a synth-driven tune that allows the dynamic vocalist to do her best Kate Bush. The subject of the song is noncommittal and perhaps in denial of her sexuality: Roan imagines her former flame kissing “a hundred boys in bars” and eventually becoming a man’s dissatisfied wife in the aftermath of their affair. But ultimately, Roan chooses herself, singing with all her heart, “I just wanna love someone who calls me baby.” LINDSAY ZOLADZPrince, ‘United States of Division’“Everybody stop fighting/everybody make love,” Prince urged in “United States of Division,” a song previously released only as a British single B-side in 2004, alongside Prince’s album “Musicology.” It’s six minutes of deep-bottomed polytonal funk — topped with synthesizer jabs and horn lines, goaded by a hard-rock guitar riff — that veers between disenchanted verses and a conditionally optimistic chorus. Prince was hoping for the best but seeing stubborn obstacles, pondering tribalism, inequality and faith all at once and wondering, “Why must I sing ‘God Bless America’ and not the rest of the world?” JON PARELESCharli XCX, ‘B2b’We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      St. Vincent Channels Nine Inch Nails, and 11 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Cardi B, Mdou Moctar, T Bone Burnett and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.St. Vincent, ‘Broken Man’“I can hold my arms wide open/but I need you to drive the nail,” St. Vincent — the songwriter and guitarist Annie Clark — sings in “Broken Man.” It’s a volcanic buildup of a song, from the sparsest ticking electronics to a hard-rock stomp to a full-scale pileup of guitars, drums and horns. Clark sings about power, defiance, abject need and imminent breakdown, riding an onslaught of a song that lives up to the title of her album due in April: “All Born Screaming.” JON PARELESMdou Moctar, ‘Funeral for Justice’Over a hurtling beat and a chain of frantic, trilling, overdriven guitar riffs, the Tuareg guitarist Mdou Moctar insists that African leaders should work together and push back against foreign interests, to “Retake control of your resource-rich countries.” The band couldn’t sound more urgent. PARELESPharrell Williams and Miley Cyrus, ‘Doctor (Work It Out)’We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More