Cook, A G (1990- )

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    What’s the Best Way to Honor Sophie in Song?

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    Recent tracks from Charli XCX, A.G. Cook, Caroline Polachek and St. Vincent capture the producer’s philosophy and humanity, but not necessarily her signature sound.When the producer Sophie died at 34 in 2021 after an accidental fall, it felt like a singular loss, as well as the end of a nascent era in electronic music. The innovative Scottish artist, who worked with Charli XCX, Vince Staples and Madonna, was a linchpin of the U.K.’s experimental scene in the 2010s and advocated for a radical reframing of the way creators and listeners think about music. “The language of electronic music shouldn’t still be referencing obsolete instruments like kick drum or clap. No one’s kicking or clapping,” she said in 2014. “It makes more sense in my mind to discard those ideas of polyphony and traditional roles of instrumentation.”Sophie provided a new vernacular, as well as great inspiration, for a generation of acolytes, but her own body of work was relatively small and she rarely spoke to the press, making it hard to imagine where one of pop futurism’s leading lights may have gone next. While many artists, such as the avant-garde pop duo 100 gecs and the German experimental musician Lyra Pramuk, have drawn clear inspiration from Sophie, few have captured the perilous, cutting-edge newness of her work, which reinterpreted pop music codes in disorienting, physical, textural ways.On “Lemonade,” an early calling card, she seemed to craft melody out of the sounds of popping bubbles and hissing gas canisters; “Faceshopping” turns ideas of constructed digital identity into what sounds like a construction site, whirring with the sounds of tearing metal and heavy machinery. Sophie felt that music should be a tactile, unpredictable experience — she memorably said a song should feel like a roller-coaster ride, ending with the listener buying a key ring — but a lot of attempts to reference the “Sophie sound,” like Kim Petras’s 2023 track “Brrr,” reduce the producer’s philosophy to an aesthetic of bulbous bass and scraping synths while still fitting conventional pop forms.“So I,” a song from Charli XCX’s new album, “Brat,” pays tribute to her longtime collaborator Sophie, who died in 2021.Bianca De Marchi/EPA, via ShutterstockFour recent songs by Charli XCX, A.G. Cook, Caroline Polachek and St. Vincent seem to suggest that the best way to pay tribute to a modern titan is not to emulate her at all, but to reinterpret strands of her DNA in hope of alluding to a bigger picture. These tracks reckon with Sophie’s legacy in emotional, rather than technical, ways, acknowledging the humanity within a figure who is often remembered in flattening, counterintuitively rigid portraits.The most trenchant of these songs is “So I,” the wounded core of Charli’s volatile, clubby new record, “Brat.” Over shuddering laser-beam synths — a nod to her past work with Sophie on records like “Vroom Vroom” and “Number 1 Angel” — Charli sings about regretting putting distance between herself and Sophie, whose talent awed her, while she was alive. The song is nakedly vulnerable, almost power ballad-esque in the way it builds, resembling one of Sophie’s best-known tracks: “It’s OK to Cry,” the song with which she came out as transgender and revealed her face to the public for the first time. Charli makes the link explicit on the track’s chorus: “I know you always said ‘It’s OK to cry’/So I know I can cry.”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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      SZA’s ‘Saturn,’ and 8 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Rhiannon Giddens, Norah Jones, Les Amazones d’Afrique 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 sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.SZA, ‘Saturn’The song SZA introduced in a commercial during the Grammy Awards, “Saturn,” has now been separated from its credit-card plug and released to streaming services in multiple versions; one, the sped-up version, brings out its clear pop structure. But the real-time version is better. The song is about a longing for the better place that her karma has earned: “Stuck in this paradigm/Don’t believe in paradise,” she sings. Arpeggios glimmer around her; a boom-bap beat brings an undertow. Her vocal lines argue with the beat as she joins generations of Afrofuturists like Sun Ra, looking beyond Earth and insisting, “There’s got to be more.” JON PARELESLes Amazones d’Afrique, ‘Musow Danse’“Musow Danse” (“Women’s Dance”) is the title track of the jubilant new album by Les Amazones D’Afrique: a Pan-African, proudly multilingual alliance of singers and songwriters carrying feminist messages to dance floors. “Musow Danse” is propelled by gritty distorted electronics and traditional drumming; it features Mamani Keïta from Mali, Fafa Ruffino from Benin, Dobet Gnahoré from the Ivory Coast and Kandy Guira from Mali, singing (respectively) in Bambara, Fon, Bété and Mooré, and sharing the chorus, “Rise up African woman!” PARELESA.G. Cook, ‘Britpop’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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      Oasis and Stone Roses Musicians Team Up, and 7 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by A.G. Cook, Mary Timony, Bela Fleck 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 sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Liam Gallagher and John Squire, ‘Just Another Rainbow’If you’ve ever wondered what Liam Gallagher fronting the Stone Roses would have sounded like — and don’t just say “Oasis” — have I got a song for you. The snarl-lipped Gallagher joins forces with the singular Stone Roses guitarist John Squire on “Just Another Rainbow,” the first single from a forthcoming collaborative project, and naturally the two Manchester musicians make immediate sonic sense together. “Red and orange, yellow and green, blue, indigo, violet,” Gallagher sings in his unmistakable lilt — seriously, this song has Liam Gallagher singing the colors of the rainbow. But Squire ultimately ascends into the spotlight in the track’s second half, projecting his towering, prismatic riffs across the sky. LINDSAY ZOLADZSmallgod featuring Black Sherif, ‘Fallen Angel’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?  More

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      Listening to Beyoncé’s ‘Renaissance’ References

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      A tour through key samples, references and influences on the pop star’s 2022 album as her world tour arrives in North America.A scene from the screens at Beyoncé’s North American Renaissance World Tour opener in Toronto.The New York TimesDear listeners,Last weekend, I traveled to Toronto to catch the first North American date of Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour. I returned home feeling like the human incarnation of the starry-eyed emoji (so many sparkles!) and with a new appreciation for “Renaissance,” the loose and sprawling album that Beyoncé released this time last year.“Renaissance,” Beyoncé’s seventh studio album, is a sonic odyssey through the history of dance music, with a specific focus on the genre’s Black and queer pioneers. It achieves the perfect balance of many opposing forces: “Renaissance” is studied and referential but still maintains a fun lightness. It celebrates community and a kind of artistic plurality while still centering Beyoncé’s singular star power. It contains a few of Beyoncé’s strongest stand-alone singles and yet plays like a continuous D.J. set: Sometimes I will get an urge to hear one particular song and, before I know it, I will have listened to the rest of the album in its entirety — again!Witnessing the way Beyoncé staged some of these songs live has helped me hear new elements in an album I have already played approximately four billion times. Some of that has to do with the way she contextualized the “Renaissance” songs within the evolution of her own catalog (the vampy, hard-hitting “Diva,” from 2008, sounds like a transmission from Beyoncé’s future), but she also made sure to situate “Renaissance” within a larger continuum of pop music, electronic sounds, and Black and queer culture.That’s a project I’d like to continue with today’s playlist, which is a kind of musical tour of the samples, references and influences heard on “Renaissance.” It is highly indebted to a great piece that the music journalist and electronic dance music scholar Michaelangelo Matos wrote for The Times right after the album was released, which served as a listening guide to its many sonic footnotes.Come along for the ride as Beyoncé pays homage to the Chicago house of Adonis, the postmillennial bounce of Big Freedia, the pulsating bass of Reese and much more. May this playlist help you hear “Renaissance” anew, learn a little about electronic music history or maybe just make like Beyoncé and Grace Jones and move.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Adonis: “No Way Back”One of the formative early classics of Chicago house — a localized subgenre of dance music that spread through the Windy City’s underground club scene in the mid-80s — Adonis’s 1986 track “No Way Back” has a menacing intensity and a grimy low-end that would prove enormously influential … (Listen on YouTube)2. Beyoncé: “Cozy”… and “Cozy,” the second song off “Renaissance,” certainly bears that influence. Production and a writing credit from the Chicago-born D.J. and musician Honey Dijon also add some house-music credibility to this hypnotic track. (Listen on YouTube)3. Chic: “Good Times”Sumptuous, timeless, transcendent — Chic’s glittering “Good Times,” from 1979, remains one of the best-known and most frequently referenced tunes in the history of dance music. Bernard Edwards’s bass line is a thing of beauty, rightly given its own extended solo. (Listen on YouTube)4. Beyoncé: “Cuff It”If you’re going to pay homage to Chic, as Beyoncé does on this groovy disco throwback, you might as well get Nile Rodgers on the track. “When I got called to play on this song, it was the most organic thing that ever happened to me,” Rodgers said, accepting a Grammy when “Cuff It” won best R&B song. (Beyoncé was fashionably late.) “I heard the song and I just said, ‘I wanna play on that. Right now.’ And it was one take, I promise.” (Listen on YouTube)5. Robin S.: “Show Me Love”Driven by the unmistakable sound of the Korg M1 Organ 2, this 1992 hit — technically a remix, by the Swedish producer StoneBridge, of a little-heard 1990 track by Robin Stone — brought house music to the mainstream in the early ’90s, and its much-sampled keyboard riff is still ubiquitous today. (Listen on YouTube)6. Big Freedia: “Explode”Beyoncé first sampled Big Freedia, a.k.a. the Queen of Bounce, on her 2016 hit “Formation.” She once again drew upon the New Orleans musician’s highly flammable energy on “Break My Soul,” which samples her 2014 single “Explode.” (Listen on YouTube)7. Beyoncé: “Break My Soul”A house homage updated with some fresh zaps of New Orleans bounce, the “Renaissance” leadoff single “Break My Soul” was a worthy introduction to the album’s kinetic, highly referential sound. (Though, as the reporter Rich Juzwiak found when speaking to StoneBridge and Robin S., exactly how directly “Break My Soul” references “Show Me Love” is up for debate.) (Listen on YouTube)8. Reese/Kevin Saunderson: “Just Want Another Chance”The term “Reese bass” refers to the dark, warbling low-end that rumbles through the foundation of “Just Want Another Chance,” a pivotal Detroit techno track released by Kevin Saunderson — under the moniker Reese — in 1988. The Reese has become so popular that there are innumerable patches and presets that now replicate Saunderson’s groundbreaking bass sound. (Listen on YouTube)9. Beyoncé: “America Has a Problem”The most bonkers staging on the Renaissance World Tour comes when Beyoncé plays this one live — donning a custom Mugler bee costume and performing from behind a desk like she’s a newscaster attempting to brainwash the world. The Reese-indebted tones give this song, and its live performance, an ominous edge. (Listen on YouTube)10. A.G. Cook: “Beautiful”In the mid-to-late 2010s, the experimental production collective PC Music pushed pop to its most frenetic, gloriously synthetic extremes, reveling in surface sheen and outré ideas. The English producer A.G. Cook was at the forefront of this wave (sometimes called hyperpop), and his zanily infectious “Beautiful,” from the 2015 compilation “PC Music Volume 1,” is emblematic of his distinct sound. (Listen on YouTube)11. Beyoncé: “All Up in Your Mind”Beyoncé goes hyperpop — sort of — on this distorted earworm co-produced by Cook himself. The instrumentation sounds like a malfunctioning computer program, but there’s a growly physicality to Beyoncé’s vocal that gives the song an intriguing textural friction and keeps things in the realm of flesh and blood. (Listen on YouTube)12. Donna Summer: “I Feel Love”Arguably the most innovative and influential dance record of all time, “I Feel Love” is Giorgio Moroder’s wholehearted embrace of electronic music’s nascent, seemingly boundless possibilities. Donna Summer plays the ghost in the machine, unfurling an ecstatic vocal and achieving a kind of cyborgian bliss. (Listen on YouTube)13. Beyoncé: “Summer Renaissance”It’s risky business, referencing the iconic “I Feel Love” as blatantly as Beyoncé does here. But over the course of four-and-a-half minutes of airy falsetto and giddy sass, she effectively makes the argument that quoting Summer is the only way to end an album like “Renaissance.” It’s the ultimate, inevitable conclusion — a fireworks-display finale to this dazzling tour through dance music past, present and future. (Listen on YouTube)Release your wiggle,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Beyoncé’s ‘Renaissance’ References” track listTrack 1: Adonis, “No Way Back”Track 2: Beyoncé, “Cozy”Track 3: Chic, “Good Times”Track 4: Beyoncé, “Cuff It”Track 5: Robin S., “Show Me Love”Track 6: Big Freedia: “Explode”Track 7: Beyoncé, “Break My Soul”Track 8: Reese/Kevin Saunderson, “Just Want Another Chance”Track 9: Beyoncé, “America Has a Problem”Track 10: A.G. Cook, “Beautiful”Track 11: Beyoncé, “All Up in Your Mind”Track 12: Donna Summer, “I Feel Love”Track 13: Beyoncé: “Summer Renaissance”Bonus tracksSpeaking of dance floor anthems that pull knowingly from house music history: I am very much digging Troye Sivan’s new single “Rush.” I don’t know if the Song of the Summer is a thing anymore, or if it ever really was, but I nonetheless appreciate him making a run for it.“Rush” is just one of the 11 new songs we recommend in this week’s Playlist. Check out the full selection, featuring tracks by Billie Eilish, Jamila Woods and Jlin, here. More

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      11 Songs That Will Make You Want to Move

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      The key to a great exercise playlist, our critic writes, is a mix of novelty and familiarity.Kirn Vintage Stock/Corbis, via Getty ImagesDear listeners,I have heard some truly horrific music at the gym.I am loathe to even tell you about it, but if I must: I have been subjected to an EDM remix of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Under the Bridge” and a clubby re-imagination of Aerosmith’s “Dream On.” I have heard Iggy Azalea songs that are not “Fancy.” I have experienced things I have had to purge from my memory in order to carry on.The pandemic forced me, like so many of us, to find ways to work out at home. This was sometimes difficult, and once involved lugging a 20-pound kettlebell nearly a mile home from Target — do not recommend — but it also meant I had much more freedom to determine what I listened to while swinging my new gear around. I started seeking out YouTube workouts without background music, or ones I could do with the sound off. And, naturally, I started making playlists. A bunch of them, actually.For me, a successful exercise playlist combines novelty and familiarity. It mostly functions to distract my brain from the fact that I am exerting myself and sweating profusely and would much rather not be doing those things, so ideally I want to switch things up to help the time pass. But I also appreciate when a song I know and love comes on when I need some extra motivation. Whether dancing or working out, sometimes moving your body to a song you already know can make you appreciate it in new ways.I’ve been fine-tuning this playlist for a while, rotating songs out when I get tired of them, or tinkering with the sequencing. I like the way it combines some more recent artists with their influences and forebears (a dynamic explicitly captured by Daft Punk’s great, shouted-out homage to its heroes, “Teachers,” from what itself is now a dance music landmark, “Homework,” from 1997). This is not the playlist I go to for my most high-intensity workouts or runs, though I’ll definitely share one of those in a future Amplifier. This is instead something slightly more sustained and intermittently low-key — a playlist I’d listen to when doing a strength-training routine, a jog or a very brisk walk.Rest assured, you are not required to move a muscle while listening to it. Maybe you just need an energetic, gradually crescendoing pick-me-up in the middle of a long workday. But be forewarned: There’s always a chance these songs will inspire a spontaneous dance party.Listen along here on Spotify as you read.1. Caroline Polachek: “So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings (A.G. Cook Remix)”A.G. Cook, one of the wily masterminds behind the PC Music collective, reworked this dreamy version of a fun, flirty Caroline Polachek single from her 2019 album, “Pang.” (Listen on YouTube)2. Jessie Ware: “Free Yourself”The British pop musician Jessie Ware — my personal favorite instigator of a recent disco revival — found a new groove with her great 2020 album, “What’s Your Pleasure?” She released this thumping, house-inflected jam last year as what seemed like a one-off single, but it will also appear on her next album, “That! Feels Good!,” which comes out later this month. (Listen on YouTube)3. Anita Ward: “Ring My Bell”Speaking of disco, why not go straight to the source with this blissful, weightless 1979 hit? I’m a fan of the eight-minute extended mix myself, but in the interest of keeping things moving, I opted for the three-and-a-half-minute single edit here. (Listen on YouTube)4. Giorgio Moroder: “From Here to Eternity”The ascending synthesizer arpeggios make this title track from Giorgio Moroder’s landmark 1977 album feel truly heavenly. (The opening vocoder line is a little callback to that A.G. Cook remix earlier in the playlist, too.) (Listen on YouTube)5. Yaeji: “Raingurl”The New York-born songwriter and D.J. Yaeji strays from her dance-music roots a bit on “With a Hammer,” the eclectic debut album she put out earlier this month. But for the purposes of this playlist, I prefer this playful and pulsating cult favorite from 2017. (Listen on YouTube)6. Daft Punk: “Teachers”The iconic French duo nods to the artists who inspire them on this fluid and funky cut from the group’s 1997 breakout album, “Homework.” (Listen on YouTube)7. Robyn & La Bagatelle Magique featuring Maluca: “Love Is Free”The euphoric 2015 EP “Love Is Free” marked the final collaboration between Swedish pop star Robyn and her longtime friend, the late producer and D.J. Christian Falk. This kinetic, house-inspired title track is the project’s undeniable highlight. (Listen on YouTube)8. Alicia Keys: “In Common (Xpect Remix)”A minor Alicia Keys hit that should have been a massive one, “In Common” inspired its own remix EP featuring re-workings by four different producers. I like this one by Xpect, which dials up the original’s Afrobeats sound. (Listen on YouTube)9. Todd Edwards: “Shall Go”The garage pioneer Todd Edwards got a shout-out from Daft Punk on the aforementioned “Teachers” — and then he started working with the group on later albums “Discovery” and “Random Access Memories.” I love this transcendent title track from his 2012 EP “Shall Go.” (Listen on YouTube)10. Daphni: “Yes, I Know”Also from 2012, here’s a soulful and transfixing track from the dance project of Dan Snaith (who also records as Caribou), centered around a memorable sample from Buddy Miles’s 1971 song “The Segment.” (Listen on YouTube)11. Britney Spears: “Stronger”Oops! I just couldn’t resist. (Listen on YouTube)Pump it up,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“11 Songs That Will Make You Want to Move” track listTrack 1: Caroline Polachek, “So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings (A.G. Cook Remix)”Track 2: Jessie Ware, “Free Yourself”Track 3: Anita Ward, “Ring My Bell”Track 4: Giorgio Moroder, “From Here to Eternity”Track 5: Yaeji, “Raingurl”Track 6: Daft Punk, “Teachers”Track 7: Robyn & La Bagatelle Magique featuring Maluca, “Love Is Free”Track 8: Alicia Keys, “In Common (Xpect Remix)”Track 9: Todd Edwards, “Shall Go”Track 10: Daphni, “Yes, I Know”Track 11: Britney Spears, “Stronger”Your workout mixI’m always looking for new additions to my workout playlist, and would love to know the songs that help you forget the pain of a squat or push you through an extra mile.So tell me: What’s a song that never fails to pump you up? And what is it about the song that motivates you?Let me know by filling out this form here. We may use your response in an upcoming newsletter. More