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      Tyler Childers Puts His Own Spin on Heartfelt Rural Anthems

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      The country musician has sung about racial violence and made a video depicting a queer love story. His new album, “Rustin’ in the Rain,” was inspired by his roots — and Elvis Presley.There are parts of Kentucky where the ground is pruned and prettied, and there are parts where the grass just grows. During the early days of his career, Tyler Childers had one foot in both — as a kid from rural Lawrence County doing landscape work for a Lexington mill while he played country music for whoever would listen. One night, his worlds converged. Asked to perform at the office Christmas party, he dressed up in a tie and good shoes. He thought he looked sharp until an older man stopped to crack a joke.“He told me, ‘You look like a mule looking over a picket fence,’” Childers, 32, said last month, having returned from playing a festival, powered on nicotine and caffeine. It was midday in a borrowed Nashville living room; Childers, despite his growing success, has resisted a move to Music City in favor of staying anchored in Kentucky. “I thought, ‘I’m a mule.’ I’m a poor working man’s animal, and I’m looking over the fence in somebody else’s yard. Do I even belong here?”Childers proudly poses with a mule on the cover of his new album, “Rustin’ in the Rain,” out Friday. It’s a flip on that fateful moment, turning the animal (and the people who rely on it) into something powerful and graceful. Childers’s music, from his 2017 debut “Purgatory” and beyond, has always done this work: rewriting and recontextualizing rural and Appalachian America and the folks within it, and spreading their stories wide.In the past few years, he’s sung about racial inequality (“Long Violent History”), made a music video telling a queer love story (“In Your Love”) and explored the possibilities of an inclusive faith on “Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven?” His songs with roots in bluegrass, Southern rock and Appalachian tradition have pushed the boundaries of country music and even his own fan base, while cementing him as one of the most successful touring and streaming artists in his field — without the aid of radio. Last month, he played two sold-out shows at Radio City Music Hall in New York. In December, he has a pair booked at Lexington’s Rupp Arena.Childers grew up in East Kentucky in the shadow of the Baptist Church. His father had a job in the coal industry, and his mother worked at the health department. While the family had a double-wide trailer with running water and electricity, the neighbors didn’t, so he and his sibling were acutely aware that they were “one bad decision” away from disaster. At 15, Childers moved to a new school, where he coped with being the new kid by spending his lunch playing guitar. Eventually, his classmates took notice. They invited him to sing at parties, and introduced him to some new music.“Drive-By Truckers became the soundtrack to my teenage angst,” he said, wearing dark jeans and a button-up despite the 100-degree weather. He started writing his own music, and quickly built a following across Kentucky and West Virginia — country fans were eager to hear fiddle and steel guitar, and his voice carried that lonesome sound of someone who’d studied both Ricky Skaggs and Kurt Cobain. When he sings live, his eyes burn with the ferocity of a preacher, and fans hang on to every word.When “Purgatory,” co-produced by another Nashville boundary-pusher, Sturgill Simpson, was released, things happened fast. Childers went from opening shows with his band, the Food Stamps, to headlining the same venues in a little over a year. In 2020, he made his first overtly political statement with “Long Violent History,” an album fueled by his rage over the police killing of Breonna Taylor, a fellow Kentuckian. He wanted to be explicit, releasing the title track with a video statement in which he spoke directly to his white rural fans, telling them, “We can stop being so taken aback by Black Lives Matter.”“I felt compelled,” he said, leaning forward in his chair and stiffening up as he talked. “I started looking at the people listening to me, and I was listening to them. I wasn’t stretching out in some weird, forced way — I wrote that song in 10 minutes.” Now he sees it as a responsibility not just to speak for his people, but to grow with them. “There are a lot of artists out there trying to do the work,” Childers said. “Every little effort to give someone a glimpse into that light helps put water on this fire before it boils over into white-hot rage.”The video for “In Your Love,” the new album’s first single, features a love story between two male coal miners in 1950s Appalachia. The inspiration was personal. When Childers asked a gay cousin to be the best man at his wedding to the singer-songwriter Senora May, he started to hear rumblings about “what kind of man Senora might be marrying.” Childers welled up recounting the story, never once trying to wipe a tear or hide his watery eyes — he’s sober now, free of alcohol since 2020, and emotions come fast and easy.To create the treatment for “In Your Love,” he turned over control to the Kentucky poet laureate, his friend Silas House. “That’s unheard of,” House said in a phone interview. “The very first thing Tyler said to me was, ‘I want to make a video for people who have never seen themselves in a country love story.” He added, “It was only ever about telling another rural story.”After his 2017 debut arrived, Childers went from opening shows with his band the Food Stamps to headlining the same venues in a little over a year. Stacy Kranitz for The New York TimesChilders has long told rural stories: about people trying to get by with poisoned water or blackened lungs, about drug addiction and the impact of corporate greed on the people who tend the land — but also about the sheer beauty of these places, too, and the love within them. His allyship, especially for marginalized people out in the country, is a natural progression. He stays deeply connected to place where he was raised: hunting, gardening, tanning the hide after he cans the meat. “I’m a dial-up man,” he said, “in a 5G world.”“Rustin’ in the Rain” is not just about love, or Appalachian life. It’s also about Elvis Presley — songs Childers could have pitched to Elvis, to be exact, a conceit he came up with while cleaning his house, a little accidentally high on some metal polish fumes. The family had just gotten a dog, a Malinois he’d taken to calling his “velvet Elvis.” “I don’t know if it was me saying that,” he said, “or the algorithm thought I was the guy to send it to, but all of the sudden there was all of this Elvis stuff around me. So I played it like a Nashville songwriter, trying to come up with songs to pitch.”“Phone Calls and Emails” is a modern-day lonely lament, while he considers “Luke 2:8-19” his “Christmas song,” with Margo Price as the angel bearing news of a messiah. “In my Christmas play, the angel is this strong woman,” Childers said. “I was like, that’s Margo.” Said Price in an email, “As a woman in country music, just having any opinion at all is considered controversial. I’m beyond grateful he has always stood by me.”One track, “Percheron Mules,” is for Childers’s beloved animals, and “Space and Time,” the album’s closer, is a cover by S.G. Goodman, a fellow Kentucky musician. “Tyler is writing out of a region, and he is putting back good into that region,” Goodman said in a phone interview. “For him, it extends outside of art, as a vehicle for positive change in our communities.”“Rustin’ in the Rain” is a succinct seven songs, which is very intentional. Childers’s albums “are getting shorter as they go,” he said. “A countdown.” What happens when he gets to one? “I go home,” he said — to his mules, his wife and their baby boy, and to his farm. To his own rural story.Just don’t tell him that his videos and country songs about racial inequality and queer love are “courageous.”“People are like, ‘Oh, you are so brave,’” Childers said before gathering his chore coat and heading to a bookstore on his way out of town. “I think it’s sad that’s a brave thing. To me, it’s just about love. And that’s all it ought to be.” More

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      Zach Bryan’s First No. 1 Is His Self-Titled Album

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      The singer-songwriter, whose music crosses genre borders, also has the first rock release to top the Billboard 200 in over a year.Zach Bryan, the Oklahoma-raised singer-songwriter whose work fits somewhere on a continuum of country, rock and Americana folk, has logged his first No. 1 album and single with big streaming numbers.His album, “Zach Bryan,” opens at the top of the Billboard 200 chart with the equivalent of 200,000 sales in the United States. That includes 233 million streams and 17,000 copies sold as a digital download, according to the tracking service Luminate.Critics and playlist curators may quibble over exactly which genre tags to attach to Bryan’s work. But for chart purposes, Billboard has applied a straightforward test, ruling that “Zach Bryan” counts as both country and rock since Bryan’s work has appeared on both its country and rock charts. As such, “Zach Bryan” is the first rock album to top the chart in over a year, since the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Unlimited Love” early last year, and it has the biggest streaming week ever for a rock album. (Among country releases, Billboard reported, Bryan’s album has the fifth-largest debut streaming week.)In addition, Bryan notches his first No. 1 single on Billboard’s all-genre Hot 100 chart. “I Remember Everything,” Bryan’s duet with Kacey Musgraves, takes over from Oliver Anthony Music’s “Rich Men North of Richmond,” which falls to No. 6 after two weeks at the top.Also on the latest album chart, Travis Scott’s “Utopia” falls to second place after four weeks at No. 1, Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” is No. 3 and Taylor Swift’s “Midnights” is No. 4. SZA’s “SOS” returns to the Top 10 for the first time in a month, jumping six spots to No. 5, after the release of a new music video for her song “Snooze.” More

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      35 Pop and Jazz Albums, Shows and Festivals Coming This Fall

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      Buzzy debuts (Chappell Roan, Evian Christ) and anticipated follow-ups (Jorja Smith, yeule) are due this season.After a summer dominated by blockbuster tours by Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, this fall the music business gets back to the business of releasing albums. Longstanding acts are returning with new LPs (Dolly Parton, Wilco, Usher), and long-awaited follow-ups are arriving, too (the Streets, Sampha, Nicki Minaj). Dates and lineups are subject to change.SeptemberSAM RIVERS CENTENNIAL Amid the hardscrabble realities of 1970s New York, Studio Rivbea was a crucial crack in the pavement where creative life flourished. A downtown loft run by the esteemed saxophonist Sam Rivers and his wife, Beatrice, Rivbea — and its resident big band — gave musicians young and old a space to rehearse and perform on their own terms. Craig Harris, Joseph Daly and Steve Coleman all spent formative time there in the ’70s, and they’ve come together to organize a big-band performance in recognition of Rivers, who would have turned 100 this month. (Sep. 22; Mt. Morris Ascension Presbyterian Church) — Giovanni RussonelloSOUL REBELS One of New Orleans’s best-known exports, the Soul Rebels carry forward the classic brass-band tradition by infusing it with plenty of modern-day flavor across the spectrum of Black American music. Their upcoming four-night stand at the Blue Note includes guest appearances from the golden-age rap eminences Rakim and Big Daddy Kane (Sept. 21); Ja Rule (Sept. 22); G-Eazy (Sept. 23); and a potpourri of contemporary-jazz heavyweights, including James Carter and Elena Pinderhughes (Sept. 24). — RussonelloKYLIE MINOGUE For decades, Kylie Minogue has been making dance floor manna that pingpongs between curiosity and undeniability, This year, she released one of her best — “Padam Padam,” a gay nightclub anthem that spawned slang and memes and, over time, a pop crossover. Minogue’s new album, on its heels, is “Tension.” A Las Vegas residency will follow, starting in November. (Sept. 22; BMG) — Jon CaramanicaKylie Minogue got a boost from another club anthem this year, “Padam Padam.”Don Arnold/Getty ImagesCHAPPELL ROAN Over the past year, the pop singer Chappell Roan has been releasing a string of theatrically intimate singles that touch on relationship awkwardness with uncommon candor. The music on her debut album, “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess” — which touches on wobbly ’80s new wave and ’90s singer-songwriter pop-rock and ’00s dance-pop — suggests a singer less beholden to style than to ensuring she says the exact thing she needs to say. (Sept. 22; Amusement/Island) — CaramanicaYEULE The songwriter, singer and producer yeule embraces extremes on “Softscars,” the follow-up to “Glitch Princess,” from 2022. Nothing is predictable on an album that holds guitar ballads, a piano waltz, bristling rock guitar riffs, gleaming electronics, hyperpop tweaks and bluntly distorted beats. The songs consider pain, love, technology and carnality, the experience of a 21st-century life that’s simultaneously physical and virtual. (Sept. 22; Ninja Tune) — Jon ParelesJOHN ZORN’S NEW MASADA QUARTET Opportunities are few to hear the saxophonist, composer and downtown jazz doyen John Zorn simply throwing down, in the company of improvisers that elevate him. That’s what happens when he gets together with the New Masada Quartet, which plays music from Zorn’s 613-piece “Masada” songbook (composed based on aspects of Jewish folklore and theology) and features the guitarist Julian Lage, the bassist Jorge Roeder and the drummer Kenny Wollesen. (Sept. 26 through Oct. 1; The Village Vanguard) — RussonelloCHERRY GLAZERR On the bluntly titled new album “I Don’t Want You Anymore,” Clementine Creevy, who leads the indie-rock band Cherry Glazerr, wrestles with a clearly toxic relationship. As the songs go style-hopping — explosive grunge, chugging synth-pop, hints of funk and jazz — the obsession persists. (Sept. 29; Secretly Canadian) — ParelesDARIUS JONES The avant-gardist Darius Jones has such a distinctive sound on the alto saxophone — widely dilated, yet so rough it could peel paint — he could make a living off his tone alone. But he also has a fiercely innovative streak as a composer. Now he returns with a wide-ranging new album showing off both sides of his talent, “Fluxkit Vancouver (Its Suite but Sacred),” with a string section in prickly repartee with Jones and the commanding drummer Gerald Cleaver. (Sept. 29; Northern Spy/We Jazz) — RussonelloONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER Daniel Lopatin has built a two-lane career: as a producer creating cavernous backdrops for hitmakers like the Weeknd, and recording on his own as Oneohtrix Point Never, exploring changeable, ambiguous soundscapes. His new Oneohtrix Point Never album, “Again,” is largely instrumental, incorporating orchestral arrangements, glitchy electronics, stray vocal samples, artificial intelligence and countless other elements that are subject to change at whim in dynamic, inscrutable tracks. Lopatin has described the music as “crescendo-core.” (Sept. 29; Warp) — ParelesJORJA SMITH “Falling or Flying” is only the second studio album by the English songwriter Jorja Smith, but she has been prolific as a collaborator with Kali Uchis, Burna Boy, Drake, FKA twigs and others. She’s fond of minor chords and lean, moody grooves that hint at soul, jazz and Nigerian Afrobeats; they suit her aching but supple voice, as it projects both sympathy and resilience. (Sept. 29; Famm) — ParelesJorja Smith has become a frequent collaborator in the gap between albums. Her second LP arrives in late September.Alex Pantling/Getty ImagesWILCO To make its 13th studio album, “Cousin,” Wilco brought in an outside producer for the first time since 2007: the Welsh songwriter Cate Le Bon, who opens folk-rock into electronica. She encouraged Wilco to extend the sonic experimentation it opened up on its 2002 album “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.” As Jeff Tweedy sings about desolation, loss and obstinate hope, the music carries roots-rock into disorienting and illuminating territories but still sounds handmade. (Sept. 29; dBpm) — ParelesOctoberUSHER Some of the most viral performance clips of this past summer have belonged not to Taylor Swift or Beyoncé, but to Usher, whose Las Vegas residency has been a celebrity magnet and also a showcase for grown-folks-business R&B. His new music continues to delve into the sticky-situation soul that helped make him a superstar two decades ago. (October; mega/gamma.) — CaramanicaBUTCHER BROWN A spirit of generous communion runs through “Solar Music,” the latest album from the Richmond-based hip-hop-jazz fusion quintet Butcher Brown. The album features guest appearances by the saxophonist Braxton Cook, the M.C.’s Pink Siifu and Nappy Nina and the trumpeter Keyon Harrold, among others. Butcher Brown will toast “Solar Music” at a concert Oct. 18 at Le Poisson Rouge. (Oct. 6; Concord Jazz) — RussonelloSLAUSON MALONE 1 Slauson Malone 1 is the updated name for the recording project of Jasper Marsalis, a musician and artist who plays with myriad genres and styles, denaturing them well beyond their familiar contours. His new album, “Excelsior,” is deeply ambitious, engaging and full of winning eccentricities. (Oct. 6; Warp) — CaramanicaSUFJAN STEVENS Love — physical, divine, longed-for, embattled, cherished — is the subject on Sufjan Stevens’ new album, “Javelin.” Its songs usually start out folky, but they rarely stay that way; they expand and billow. Working alone at his home studio, Stevens orchestrated them all by himself, playing nearly every instrument. (Oct. 6; Asthmatic Kitty) — Pareles“BOSSA NOVA: THE GREATEST NIGHT” The United States was formally introduced to Brazil’s bossa nova, or “new style”— suave, understated, sophisticated — with a concert at Carnegie Hall on Nov. 21, 1962 that included Antonio Carlos Jobim, João Gilberto, Sergio Mendes, Luis Bonfá and others. It’s nearly a year late for a 60th anniversary, but a concert will bring together Brazilian stars including Seu Jorge and Carlinhos Brown along with Daniel Jobim — Antonio’s grandson — to revisit the now-classic bossa nova repertory. (Oct. 8; Carnegie Hall.) — ParelesROY HARGROVE By the time he died in 2018, at 49, Roy Hargrove had become the most impactful trumpeter of his generation. Back in 1993, he was still the new kid on the block when Jazz at Lincoln Center commissioned him to write and perform “Love Suite in Mahogany,” with a septet. That performance is being released on record for the first time and a series of shows at Dizzy’s Club will mark its release: The drummer Willie Jones III and the bassist Gerald Cannon will colead a sextet featuring alumni of Hargrove’s bands Oct. 11-13, and the Roy Hargrove Big Band will appear Oct. 14-16. (Oct. 13; Blue Engine) — RussonelloL’RAIN The songwriter Taja Cheek, who records as L’Rain, dissolves genre boundaries and explores mixed emotions on her third album, “I Killed Your Dog.” The songs are lush and immersive, layered with instrumental patterns and vocal harmonies; they’re also cryptic and open-ended, to be deciphered through repeated listening. (Oct. 13; Mexican Summer) — ParelesOFFSET Offset is the second Migos member to release a solo album in the wake of the killing of Takeoff, the group’s third member and creative heart. The first single from “Set It Off” is “Jealousy,” a collaboration with his wife, Cardi B, that suggests that the couple is willing to play their relationship and fame for laughs, and art. (Oct. 13; Motown) — CaramanicaOffset will release his first album since the death of Migos’s Takeoff in October.Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated PressTROYE SIVAN It’s been five years since Troye Sivan has released an album. His re-emergence in recent months, however, suggests the time away has been emboldening. As an actor, he was one of the standouts on “The Idol,” the besieged HBO drama about the music business, and “Rush,” the lead single from “Something to Give Each Other,” his third album, is a remarkably confident assertion of carnal interest. (Oct. 13; Capitol) — CaramanicaJIHYE LEE ORCHESTRA The composer and bandleader Jihye Lee is becoming well-known for her fluid integration of Western classical and big-band jazz techniques, and for arrangements in which heavily loaded horn parts move with apparent ease. At a Brooklyn show, her 18-piece orchestra will debut “Infinite Connections,” a suite-length meditation on the bond Lee shares with her mother and grandmother. (Oct. 15; National Sawdust) — RussonelloJ.D. ALLEN A tenor saxophonist known for the hefty swing and raw intellect of his improvising, and the back-to-basics approach of his jazz trios, J.D. Allen has never before made an album featuring electronics. That will change this fall, when he releases “This,” with Alex Bonney’s dark and enveloping atmospherics wreathed around Allen’s high-velocity horn playing and the thundering drums of Gwilym Jones. (Oct. 20; Savant) — RussonelloEVIAN CHRIST A long-awaited debut album is finally arriving from the electronic music producer Evian Christ, who has been releasing shiver-inducing music for over a decade. The songs on “Revanchist” are chaotic and blissful, tactile and expansive — all in all, a physical experience as much as an aural one. (Oct. 20; Warp) — CaramanicaSAMPHA In the seven years between his own albums, the English songwriter Sampha has lent his richly melancholy voice to tracks by Kendrick Lamar, Drake, Frank Ocean and Alicia Keys. “Lahai” — named after his grandfather, who was from Sierra Leone — is an exploratory, ambitious album that contemplates time, love and transcendence with otherworldly electronics and thoughtful melodies. (Oct. 20; Young) — ParelesAfter a seven-year gap, Sampha will release “Lahai” in October.Alberto Pezzali/Invision, via Associated PressTHE STREETS British rap’s great literalist, the Streets (Mike Skinner) returns with “The Darker the Shadow the Brighter the Light,” a new album that nods to various stripes of U.K. club culture while adhering firm to Skinner’s keen-eyed storytelling. In conjunction with the album, the Streets will also release a clubland-themed murder mystery film of the same name. (Oct. 20; 679 Recordings/Warner Music UK Ltd) — CaramanicaTHE MOUNTAIN GOATS “All Hail West Texas,” a sparsely arranged but lyrically vivid 2002 album released when the Mountain Goats was still a moniker for the solo music of John Darnielle, remains one of the most beloved entries in the group’s vast discography. Now the band — featuring the bassist Peter Hughes, the drummer Jon Wurster and the multi-instrumentalist Matt Douglas — will release a sequel, “Jenny From Thebes,” updating the fates of its characters and fleshing out its sound. (Oct. 27; Merge) — Lindsay ZoladzMIKE REED “The Separatist Party,” the forthcoming album from the drummer, composer and Chicago jazz instigator Mike Reed, is Part 1 of a forthcoming three-album cycle meditating on solitude, loneliness and the elusiveness of community (surprisingly, he was already working on this project before pandemic lockdowns). The irony, though, is how much fun he seems to be having in the company of the multi-instrumentalist Ben LaMar Gay, the poet Marvin Tate and the three members of Bitchin Bajas, his compatriots on this LP, who surge through grimy post-rock or drift into ethereal, odd-metered, electrified airspaces with whiffs of Ethio-jazz. (Oct. 27; Astral Spirits/We Jazz) — RussonelloDOJA CAT: THE SCARLET TOUR Though she’s wowed audiences with ambitious awards show performances, the rambunctious rapper and pop star Doja Cat has not yet embarked upon an arena tour. (Tonsil surgery forced her to pull out of a slot opening for the Weeknd last year.) The Scarlet Tour — which begins at San Francisco’s Chase Center on Oct. 31 and makes stops at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on Nov. 29 and Newark’s Prudential Center on Nov. 30 — will give her a chance to command her largest stages yet and showcase music from her latest album, “Scarlet,” due Sept. 22. The rising rapper Doechii and of-the-moment it-girl Ice Spice will open. (Oct. 31 through Dec. 13) — ZoladzNovemberCAT POWER Last November, Cat Power (the stage name of the smoky-voiced crooner Chan Marshall) played a song-for-song reimagining of her hero Bob Dylan’s May 1966 Manchester concert — the one at which an audience member, disgruntled by Dylan’s departure from acoustic folk, infamously yelled out “Judas!” Now it is arriving as an album titled “Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert.” Marshall, a gifted interpreter of other musicians’ material, structured the set to be half acoustic and half electric, just like Dylan’s; a muted “She Belongs to Me” contrasts with a rollicking, full-band “Ballad of a Thin Man.” (November; Domino) — ZoladzChan Marshall (a.k.a. Cat Power) will release her live concert covering Bob Dylan.Alberto Pezzali/Invision, via Alberto Pezzali, via Invision, via Associated PressCODY JOHNSON “The Painter,” the new song from Cody Johnson, one of mainstream country’s sturdiest performers, extends his streak of music that’s deeply earnest, unflashily produced, and a blend of emotionally stoic and trembling. It’s the lead single from “Leather,” his third studio album on a major label after a long and robust independent career. (Nov. 3; COJO Music/Warner Music Nashville) — CaramanicaMYRA MELFORD’S FIRE & WATER QUINTET The pianist and composer Myra Melford’s five-piece band of all-star creative improvisers is aptly named: There is something volatile and elemental about the music she makes with Ingrid Laubrock, the saxophonist; Mary Halvorson, the guitarist; Tomeka Reid, the cellist; and Lesley Mok, the percussionist. On “Hear the Light Singing,” the group’s second LP, Halvorson’s effects-laden guitar comes in splashes and jolts, and Reid’s cello moves in hurrying steps or generous waves. (Nov. 3; RogueArt) — RussonelloLIZ PHAIR: ‘EXILE IN GUYVILLE’ 30th ANNIVERSARY TOUR Liz Phair’s 1993 debut “Exile in Guyville” captured young adulthood in a wry, vivid voice and brought a refreshing female perspective to indie rock’s boys club. Thirty years later, it continues to inspire younger musicians, including Kate Bollinger and Sabrina Teitelbaum (who records searingly honest music under the name Blondshell), both openers for Phair when she plays “Guyville” in its glorious entirety on an anniversary tour. The show comes to Brooklyn’s Kings Theater on Nov. 24. (Nov. 3 through Dec. 9) — ZoladzCAMP FLOG GNAW CARNIVAL The annual festival helmed by Tyler, the Creator continues to be one of the most innovatively programmed, in any genre. He is a headliner this year, along with SZA and the Hillbillies (Kendrick Lamar and Baby Keem). The deep lineup includes the corridos tumbados stars Fuerza Regida, various generations of dream-pop from Willow, Toro y Moi and d4vd, accessibly tough rapping from Clipse and Ice Spice and much more. (Nov. 11-12; Dodger Stadium Grounds in Los Angeles) — CaramanicaNICKI MINAJ Reportedly, when Lil Uzi Vert was planning the release of his most recent album, “Pink Tape,” Nicki Minaj reached out to him to ask, in essence, how he could release a pink-themed album and not include her. (He obliged.) Now, Minaj returns with “Pink Friday 2,” her own album, on the heels of a pair of collaborations with Ice Spice, “Princess Diana” and “Barbie World,” that have given her new spark. (Nov. 17; Republic) — CaramanicaDOLLY PARTON Last year, when she was nominated for induction in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Dolly Parton initially declined because she did not consider herself a rock artist. (She was eventually inducted anyway.) “This has, however, inspired me to put out a hopefully great rock ’n’ roll album at some point in the future,” she said in a statement. That future has now arrived: Dolly Parton’s “Rockstar” is a sprawling, star-studded 30-track album that features originals (the stomping “World on Fire”), covers of rock classics (“Stairway to Heaven,” “Let It Be”), and an impressive list of guests that include Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Debbie Harry and more. (Nov. 17; Butterfly Records/Big Machine Records) — Zoladz More

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      The Ultimate Tammy Wynette Primer

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      Hear her biggest hits, deeper cuts and tributes from disciples.Tammy Wynette onstage in Central Park in 1977.Associated PressDear listeners,For years, I’ve been waiting for the right moment to write about one of my favorite country singers, the great, oft-misunderstood Tammy Wynette.Throughout this year, Wynette has been materializing in pop culture in all sorts of unexpected ways. First, Jessica Chastain played her — garnering an Emmy nomination — in the Showtime limited series “George & Tammy.” In May, the critic Steacy Easton published a rousing little book called “Why Tammy Wynette Matters,” arguing that Wynette deserves — but has not received — as much modern recognition as her peers Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn. And earlier this month, Lana Del Rey made headlines when she performed a slyly reverent cover of “Stand by Your Man” at an Arkansas concert.At last! I thought, cracking my knuckles. It’s time.Del Rey’s cover was truly the connection I’d been waiting for. I’ve been thinking for a while about the shared sensibility between Wynette and the millennial-era obsession with “sad girl music,” a sometimes glorified, sometimes bemoaned label affixed to art that finds a deep pathos in the performance of femininity. As I wrote in a piece published earlier on Friday, perhaps this is a newly illuminating context in which to consider Wynette — and an opportunity to take her more seriously.The first time I can remember hearing Wynette’s name was in the media brouhaha that resulted from Hillary Clinton denigrating her in a 1992 interview, responding to rumors of the soon-to-be-president’s infidelity: “I’m not sitting here, some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette,” she said. Wynette was rightly offended, and Clinton apologized, but the damage had been done. As a young girl not really understanding all of this but internalizing it anyway, I developed a dim idea that Wynette was controversial.When I got older and started listening to her music, though, I found that she was something so much richer and more complex. I came to hear in her voice an unapologetic sense of anguish, disappointment and sometimes even defiance in the face of heartbreak. I heard a performer with a keen sense of tonal calibration and intuitive emotional intelligence — a great storyteller, and a much needed chronicler of often dismissed tales of feminized pain.Today’s playlist is a celebration of Wynette in all her multifaceted glory. It works well as a companion piece to my article, but it can also be a stand-alone introduction (or reintroduction) to her music. It features a lot of her own biggest hits, but also some tributes from disciples like Reba McEntire, Kellie Pickler and even Del Rey herself. I decided not to include any of Wynette’s many duets with her ex-husband George Jones, not because I don’t love most of them (I do), but because Wynette is so often reduced to her relationship with Jones and I wanted to give her music a chance to stand on its own. It does, however, feature a collaboration with her artistic equals and fellow Honky Tonk Angels, Parton and Lynn. May this playlist inspire singalongs, cry-alongs and good girls to go bad.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Tammy Wynette: “Womanhood”This later hit from the 1978 album “Womanhood” is one of Wynette’s strangest singles and — perhaps not coincidentally — one of my favorites. Here, Wynette embodies a character who has been led into temptation: “I am a Christian, Lord, but I’m a woman too,” she sings amid blustery guitars that wouldn’t sound out of place on a late ’70s Fleetwood Mac record. “If you are listening, Lord, please show me what to do.” “Womanhood” was penned by the prolific Nashville songwriter Bobby Braddock, and in his memoir he described the song as being “about a girl having a tearful talk with God about losing her virginity.” That Wynette was a woman of 36 embarking upon her fifth marriage when she recorded the song — which would become her final Top 5 hit on the country charts — adds another layer of complexity, pathos and even kitsch. (Listen on YouTube)2. Tammy Wynette: “Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad”Long before Rihanna went bad, there was Tammy. As with many of Wynette’s signature tunes, there is a sense of resignation and even self-abnegation at work here: “I’ll change if it takes that to make you happy,” she tells a whiskey-swilling, bar-dwelling husband as she offers to adopt a lifestyle more like his on this swinging, upbeat number from her 1967 debut. But I also hear a playful defiance in Wynette’s vocal here: She’s throwing a man’s questionable behavior back in his face and subtly pointing out a double standard in the expectations of how men and women are supposed to act. Plus, for once, it sounds like she’s having a blast. (Listen on YouTube)3. Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette and Loretta Lynn: “Silver Threads and Golden Needles”In 1993, the pioneering country queens Parton and Lynn teamed up with Wynette for a spirited collaborative album called “Honky Tonk Angels,” named after Kitty Wells’s classic 1952 anthem. Since most of Wynette’s best-known collaborations find her working through heartache with Jones, it’s refreshing to hear her singing with this accomplished (and convincingly hell-raising) group of women. For the love of big hair and shoulder pads, stop what you’re doing and watch this video of them performing it live together. (Listen on YouTube)4. Kellie Pickler: “Where’s Tammy Wynette”“How ’bout a honky-tonk angel to tell me how this whole thing works,” Pickler sings on this saucy but sincerely sweet track from her 2011 album, “100 Proof,” bridging the gap between Wynette and another generation of female country stars. “Where’s Tammy Wynette when you need her?” (Listen on YouTube)5. Tammy Wynette: “D-I-V-O-R-C-E”Not only is this song — which hit No. 1 on the country charts in 1968 and earned Wynette her second Grammy nomination — a quintessential showcase of her ability to draw rich melancholy out of a lyric, it’s also a perfect example of Billy Sherrill’s signature, Wall-of-Sound-on-Music-Row style of production. C-L-A-S-S-I-C. (Listen on YouTube)6. Tammy Wynette: “Apartment #9”Wynette’s first proper Nashville recording, and her first of many collaborations with Sherrill, wasn’t a runaway hit when it was first released in 1966, but it’s since become one of her most beloved performances. “Just follow the stairway to this lonely world of mine,” she sings, as the atmosphere is heightened by a weeping pedal steel guitar. Easton, in “Why Tammy Wynette Matters,” calls this one “still the saddest country song ever sung.” (Listen on YouTube)7. Reba McEntire: “Tammy Wynette Kind of Pain”“This is more than a little smile I’m having to fake,” Reba McEntire sings on this 2019 ballad, released a few years after her divorce from her husband of more than two decades. McEntire brings a grown woman’s grit and a lived-through-it wisdom to this song, which both talks back to Wynette’s music in its own words (“Standing by your man is a broken plan/When he breaks your heart and all your trust with his two cheating hands”) and calls upon her as a kind of patron saint of heartbreak. (Listen on YouTube)8. Tammy Wynette: “’Til I Can Make It on My Own”Wynette co-wrote this 1976 hit, one of her greatest torch songs, with Sherrill and her soon-to-be fifth husband, the country songwriter George Richey. Of all her hits, Wynette liked to say that this one — covered later by Kenny Rogers and Dottie West, and, much later, by Martina McBride — meant the most to her. (Listen on YouTube)9. Tammy Wynette: “I Don’t Wanna Play House”This heart-wrenching 1967 breakout hit — Wynette’s first country No. 1 as a solo artist, and the performance that earned her first Grammy — is about a mother watching her young daughter playing with a neighborhood boy and overhearing her say something devastating: “I’ve watched Mommy and Daddy, and if that’s the way it’s done/I don’t wanna play house, it makes my Mommy cry. ” The song hits on plenty of the themes that would soon become Wynette’s bread and butter (broken families; lonely women; divorce’s impact on children) and a sudden, thrilling shift into her higher vocal register in the middle of a verse when she sings, “And then the teardrops made my eyes go dim.” (Listen on YouTube)10. Lana Del Rey featuring Nikki Lane: “Breaking Up Slowly”Del Rey first hinted at her affinity for Wynette on this duet with the alt-country crooner Nikki Lane, from Del Rey’s 2021 album “Chemtrails Over the Country Club.” “I don’t wanna live with a life of regret,” Lane sings in the second verse. “I don’t wanna end up like Tammy Wynette.” Del Rey, though, takes a more sympathetic view in her verses, on which she seems to be singing from Wynette’s own perspective: “George got arrested out on the lawn/We might be breaking up after this song.” (Listen on YouTube)11. Tammy Wynette: “Stand by Your Man”Often imitated but never duplicated, Wynette’s biggest pop hit and most infamous calling card has a stealthy power. Sherrill’s production here is top-notch, and Wynette’s undulating vocal — which seems to swing between private pain and public restraint — is a force of tragic but strangely regal beauty. As Easton writes, “‘Stand by Your Man’ is enough of a porous text that it leaks and stains everything it touches, but its messiness is one of the reasons it’s so important.” (Listen on YouTube)I’ll even learn to like the taste of whiskey,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Where’s Tammy Wynette When You Need Her?” track listTrack 1: Tammy Wynette, “Womanhood”Track 2: Tammy Wynette, “Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad”Track 3: Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette and Loretta Lynn, “Silver Threads and Golden Needles”Track 4: Kellie Pickler, “Where’s Tammy Wynette”Track 5: Tammy Wynette, “D-I-V-O-R-C-E”Track 6: Tammy Wynette, “Apartment #9”Track 7: Reba McEntire, “Tammy Wynette Kind of Pain”Track 8: Tammy Wynette, “’Til I Can Make It on My Own”Track 9: Tammy Wynette, “I Don’t Wanna Play House”Track 10: Lana Del Rey featuring Nikki Lane, “Breaking Up Slowly”Track 11: Tammy Wynette, “Stand by Your Man”Bonus tracksOK, one more: Tammy’s bonkers 1991 collaboration with the KLF, “Justified & Ancient.” I will always stand by the jams.And if it’s new songs you’re looking for, we’ve got a whopping 13 to recommend on this week’s Playlist, including tracks from Nicki Minaj, Oneohtrix Point Never and a brash Doja Cat single that I am very much digging. Listen here. More

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      Are We Finally Ready to Take Tammy Wynette Seriously?

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      The unsung godmother of so-called “sad girl” music — and one of pop’s most wrenching chroniclers of feminized pain — has long been misunderstood.Earlier this month, at a concert in Arkansas, Lana Del Rey covered a song she’d never played live before: Tammy Wynette’s “Stand by Your Man.”The performance made headlines, even if most of the accompanying articles held “Stand by Your Man” — an exhaustively debated cultural Rorschach test about badly behaved men and the women who put up with them — and Wynette herself at arm’s length.People magazine called the original song “polarizing.” The website Stereogum referred to Wynette’s track as “controversial.” Rolling Stone noted that Del Rey “didn’t introduce the song or offer commentary on her intentions,” as if simply paying tribute to Wynette couldn’t have been enough of an intention. That article referred to Wynette’s 1968 hit as “a tune many considered an affront to the feminist movement of the late ’60s,” then linked to the publication’s recently revised list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, on which “Stand by Your Man” ranked No. 473.It was just another Rorschach test: Even 25 years after her death, nobody knows quite what to make of Tammy Wynette.Born Virginia Wynette Pugh in 1942, Wynette had a resonantly sad voice and a life story to match. Married at 17; divorced with three children by 23; in and out of disappointing and sometimes abusive relationships (most famously with her frequent duet partner, George Jones); a sufferer of chronic health problems and bizarre, unexplained acts of violence; gone too soon when she died in her sleep in 1998, at age 55.She was also, perhaps because of these experiences, one of the most wrenching chroniclers of feminized pain that popular music has ever known.Wynette and George Jones onstage in 1980 in Chicago. The couple’s tumultuous relationship was chronicled in the recent series “George & Tammy.”Kirk West/Getty ImagesIn recent years, Dolly Parton has been canonized into an untouchable pop-cultural saint, and Loretta Lynn, rightly remembered as a feisty country pioneer when she died last year at 90, enjoyed a late-career renaissance collaborating with younger rock and alt-country artists. But Wynette’s legacy has become more complicated, perhaps because her tumultuous life and storied career have too often been conflated with the flattest and most literal reading of her signature song.Notoriously, when rumors of Bill Clinton’s infidelity surfaced during his 1992 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton told a reporter, “I’m not sitting here, some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette.” But was that ever what Wynette was actually advocating? (For one thing, Wynette was also known for singing one of the most famous songs about divorce.) A recent prestige-TV series and an incisive new book of music criticism offer their own answers, and varied ways to think about Wynette in a modern context.Late last year, Showtime aired the long-gestating “George & Tammy,” in which Jessica Chastain gives a steely, fearless performance as Wynette. (Her work earned an Emmy nomination, and she’s currently the betting favorite to win.) With Michael Shannon playing a convincingly unhinged, charismatic and ultimately contrite Jones, the series encompasses the six years of the couple’s troubled marriage and decades of their closely entwined careers.Jessica Chastain as Wynette and Michael Shannon as Jones in “George & Tammy.”Dana Hawley/Showtime, via Associated PressAs strong as the lead performances are, the series suffers from small anachronisms and fictitious dramatizations — no, Wynette was not in the studio when Jones finally nailed the vocal take of his heartbreaking late-career weepie “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” at least not physically — and it too often scripts Wynette reciting retrofitted platitudes that overexplain the era’s obvious sexism. (“If a girl singer got drunk like you boys do, they would toss her out of Nashville so fast,” she says to Jones, who is eating a raw potato in an attempt to alleviate a hangover.) But “George & Tammy” is most obviously marred by its answer to the classic music biopic conundrum: to lip-sync (and risk looking unserious) or to sing (and inevitably fall short of the source material)?Chastain tackles the songs herself, and though her pipes are decent, her performances never quite transcend honky-tonk bar karaoke. Watching the series, you miss the specific and elusive magic of Wynette’s own voice, making clear how easy it is to take for granted. As with the many lackluster and overly literal covers of “Stand by Your Man” that have been recorded over the years, the power of Wynette’s vocals and the emotional intelligence of her interpretations are somehow easier to appreciate in absentia.And what a voice it was: emotionally weighty but swooping and nimble, downright kaleidoscopic in its melancholy. “The thing about Wynette’s voice,” writes the critic Steacy Easton in a slim but thoughtful new book, “Why Tammy Wynette Matters,” “is that, often, how it catches and breaks, even how it twangs, are marks of domestic melodrama in her performance.”In prose that occasionally veers toward the academic but mostly stays succinctly readable, Easton effectively makes the case that Wynette is underappreciated and worthy of a serious critical reappraisal. The musician has long had a few strikes working against her. As Clinton’s curt 1992 dismissal attests, the women Wynette sang about and embodied in her songs often seemed at odds with second-wave feminism. She often sang about the sorts of people and situations that aren’t usually championed in a culture that devalues women’s work and doesn’t treat their perspectives seriously. Easton notes, astutely, that Wynette’s songs often depicted “failures of the domestic,” and that “Wynette’s best work is about when the most private failures become public scandals.”That intuitive toggling between the private and the public gets at why Wynette’s is one of the saddest voices ever put to tape. Its sadness comes not from rawness or feral inhibition, but from the constant, self-conscious mediation between how the singer is feeling and how she must present herself to the world.It’s that brimming-but-never-spilling-over quality that so many women, mothers and queer people have learned to use as a survival strategy. (Easton, who is trans and nonbinary, provides a refreshing perspective on Wynette and gender: “The idea of putting on your womanhood has a tender resonance,” they write.) It’s knowing exactly how to fold a napkin to dab your mascara so no one knows you’ve been crying. Or, as Reba McEntire sings in an affecting 2019 ballad called “Tammy Wynette Kind of Pain,” it’s when “you don’t want him to see you crying, so you’re crying in the rain.” It’s also, in some cases, about the sacrifice of swallowing that pain to protect a child’s feelings — about spelling out “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” rather than explaining what it means.Despite her cultural association with standing by her man, Wynette actually divorced four times. In Ken Burns’s 2019 documentary “Country Music,” the singer-songwriter Jeannie Seely notes the irony that while Lynn’s songs often embodied the persona of the feisty woman ready to kick her man to the curb, she was the one who stood by her man for his entire life. Seely mused, of Wynette and Lynn, “I always kind of thought they wrote each other’s songs.”Wynette on her tour bus in 1971. Al Clayton/Getty ImagesOnstage in Arkansas, a state abutting Wynette’s own Mississippi birthplace, Del Rey put her into yet another modern context — perhaps one that made the most sense yet. I’ve often considered Wynette to be an unrecognized godmother of so-called “sad girl” music, that somewhat nebulous aesthetic that initially flourished on the microblogging website Tumblr, and of which Del Rey has become an unofficial icon. While there’s something explicitly womanly about Wynette’s sadness — “this ain’t no little girl heartache,” McEntire sings in her definition of “Tammy Wynette pain” — Del Rey’s cover brings Wynette’s music to a generation and a type of listener less inclined to dismiss the expression of feminine pain as weakness. As the critic and artist Audrey Wollen once said of her playfully defined “Sad Girl Theory,” “there is an entire lineage of women who consciously disrupted the status quo through enacting their own sorrow.” Which sounds like yet another way of talking about that Tammy Wynette kind of pain.That type of subversion pervades Wynette’s exquisite and deeply felt performance of “Stand by Your Man,” too — a performance that no one has come close to topping. The Chicks play it too perky; Lyle Lovett’s version is winkingly smarmy; Carla Bruni’s cover … well … exists. Del Rey, though, seems to understand something about the song’s tension and dynamism, its paradoxical earnest irony. But even an eerie A.I. recording speculating what it might sound like if “Del Rey” recorded a “studio version” of “Stand by Your Man” can’t quite fathom the song’s murky depths as well as Wynette could. Again, the voice you miss is distinctly hers.Maybe I am able to come to it with less baggage than I may have had I lived through the particular culture war it spawned in 1968, but I do not listen to this song — or, for that matter, Wynette’s devastating 1967 breakout hit “I Don’t Want to Play House” — and hear a ringing endorsement of heterosexual monogamy, female submission and male supremacy. I hear a quavering teardrop of a voice acknowledge and sing like she means it, “Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman.” And then I hear her issuing one of the most zinging backhanded compliments in the history of patriarchy: “If you love him, oh be proud of him/’cause after all, he’s just a man.” More

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      A Summer of Live Music, From Stadiums to Clubs

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      Hear songs from Beyoncé, Alvvays, Mdou Moctar and more.Beyoncé, a master of ballads and addition.The New York TimesDear listeners,I sincerely hope I am not the first person to break this news to you, but it’s true: Summer is almost over.Let us not mourn what is lost, though. Let us celebrate the summer that was. And what it was, for me at least, was a time to go to a lot of concerts. Most of them outdoors!While the post-lockdown summer concert has made its gradual, necessary return over the past two years, this season it felt back in full bloom. The news was, of course, dominated by a few extremely high-profile ones (Taylor Swift’s cultural juggernaut Eras Tour; Beyoncé’s first solo outing in seven years, the Renaissance World Tour) but there were plenty of simpler (and cheaper) pleasures to be had, too. I caught some incredible free shows over the past few months in New York City parks, from the likes of Mdou Moctar and John Cale. And in a smaller club environment, I was introduced to the up-and-coming singer-songwriter Blondshell.Today’s playlist is a kind of sonic scrapbook of my summer of shows. I’d encourage you to make your own, too; even as this season fades out (sob), it’s a great way to hold onto its most tuneful memories.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Alvvays: “Easy on Your Own?”Let’s start with the most recent one: Last Wednesday, I caught an excellent double bill in Prospect Park, as a part of BRIC Arts Media’s annual Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival. The Canadian dream-pop band Alvvays played first; its last album, “Blue Rev,” was one of my favorites of 2022, and I especially love this fuzzed out, gently melancholic second track. (Listen on YouTube)2. Alex G: “Gretel”And here’s the other half of that double bill, the Philadelphia indie musician Alex G, who also released one of my favorite albums of last year, the strange and poignant “God Save the Animals.” Alex’s live shows are always a bit louder and more raucous than his records would lead you to believe; I have actually seen mosh pits break out when he plays this seemingly subdued standout from his great 2019 album, “House of Sugar.” (Listen on YouTube)3. Taylor Swift: “The Archer”I have been known to refer to this one as “The Sagittarius National Anthem.” The more I think about Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour — and there are plenty of opportunities to do so; it’s still all anybody wants to talk about — the more I think my favorite stretch of the concert was the first one, when she finally got to play some songs from her 2019 album “Lover.” Here she is at her most minimalist, and her most antiheroic, as she punctures her own good-girl image on “The Archer”: “I see right through me, I see right through me.” (Listen on YouTube)4. Tanya Tucker: “Delta Dawn”When I traveled to the Gorge in Washington earlier this summer to catch Brandi Carlile’s Echoes Through the Canyon festival — and, you know, a certain very, very special headliner — I was lucky enough to catch an early evening set by the country icon Tanya Tucker. My second favorite part of the show was when she played “Delta Dawn,” which she recorded at age 13, and every single person there sang along at the top of their lungs. My first favorite part was when Tucker uncorked a bottle of her signature tequila and passed it around the front row. (Listen on YouTube)5. Amanda Shires & Bobbie Nelson: “Always on My Mind”The headliners that final night of Echoes Through the Canyon were the Highwomen, a country supergroup that features Carlile, Maren Morris, Natalie Hemby and the fiery fiddle player and singer-songwriter Amanda Shires. Each Highwoman played a solo cover during the set, and Shires wowed me with a poignant rendition of “Always on My Mind,” which she dedicated to Bobbie Nelson. Luckily, you didn’t just have to be there: The studio recording of the song, on which Nelson played piano shortly before she died last year, is gorgeous, and quite close to the version Shires played live. (Listen on YouTube)6. John Cale: “Heartbreak Hotel”Another brilliant show in Prospect Park: Earlier this month, 81-year-old John Cale treated Brooklyn to a spellbinding concert on one of the most temperate evenings of the whole summer. His set pulled from decades of his own material, but one of the most memorable moments was when he played an eerily deconstructed reimagining of “Heartbreak Hotel,” similar to this version that appeared on his 1992 live album “Fragments of a Rainy Season.” (Listen on YouTube)7. Blondshell: “Dangerous”I already knew, from listening to her 2023 self-titled debut as Blondshell, that Sabrina Teitelbaum was a sharp songwriter with a distinct take on the dark side of young adulthood and an easy way with minor-key melodies. What I didn’t realize until I saw her live this summer, though, is that she can really sing. She belted out “Blondshell” highlights like “Salad” and “Sepsis” (two great titles for songs), but the finely calibrated pathos she brought to the haunting “Dangerous” lingered with me long after the show. (Listen on YouTube)8. Mdou Moctar: “Tarhatazed”Mdou Moctar, the Tuareg guitar wizard whose last few albums have gained him much-deserved recognition in the West, leads what I believe to be one of the best rock bands in the world right now. I’ve seen them live a few times, and they’ve never sounded tighter than they did at the free — what a bargain! — show they played in July at Central Park’s SummerStage Festival. The new material was amazing and has me very excited for whatever the group decides to release next, but in the meantime, here’s an epic jam from the band’s 2019 album “Ilana the Creator.” (Listen on YouTube)9. Beyoncé: “1+1”As I pointed out in my review of the North American opening of her dazzling Renaissance World Tour, Beyoncé began a show that honors the vast history of dance music with, unexpectedly, a mini-set of slow, piano-driven torch songs. I confess I was getting a little impatient with the Queen — didn’t we come to dance?! — until she played a transcendent “1+1,” one of her greatest ballads. Then I had no choice but to bow down. (Listen on YouTube)I’ve got a hundred thrown-out speeches I almost said to you,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“A Summer of Live Music” track listTrack 1: Alvvays, “Easy on Your Own?”Track 2: Alex G, “Gretel”Track 3: Taylor Swift, “The Archer”Track 4: Tanya Tucker, “Delta Dawn”Track 5: Amanda Shires & Bobbie Nelson, “Always on My Mind”Track 6: John Cale, “Heartbreak Hotel”Track 7: Blondshell, “Dangerous”Track 8: Mdou Moctar, “Tarhatazed”Track 9: Beyoncé, “1+1”Bonus tracksI purposely left off the summer concerts to which I’d already devoted entire playlists, but in case you missed those, the Cure and the Pretenders were both amazing.Also, my beleaguered New York Mets are still giving me little to cheer about, but I continue to be amused by the special walk-up songs they choose for “Women’s Day” (which was March 8 everywhere else in the world but, for some reason, was Aug. 26 at Citi Field). Each player changed his walk-up song to one by a female artist, and for the second year in a row, Daniel Vogelbach’s pick was the one to beat. This year he chose Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles,” and last year, he went with Kelis’s “Milkshake.” Daniel Vogelbach, I salute you. More

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      Oliver Anthony Music’s ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ Stays No. 1

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      The song by Oliver Anthony Music played a role at the Republican primary debate, though the musician clarified he doesn’t identify with “people on conservative news.”“Rich Men North of Richmond,” the out-of-nowhere viral protest song by Oliver Anthony Music, is the country’s No. 1 single for a second time, after playing a key role in last week’s Republican primary debate.“Rich Men,” a spare acoustic track uploaded to YouTube just weeks ago by the largely unknown Anthony, quickly caught fire as an angry cry against corporate and political elites, though it also took shots at welfare recipients. Embraced by conservative commentators, the song shot to the top of Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, with big download and streaming numbers.Last week, the first question at the Republican debate was about the significance of “Rich Men,” and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida spun it as a sign of policy failures by the Biden administration.In a video response posted to YouTube, Anthony — real name Christopher Anthony Lunsford — said he was bothered by how his song has become a political talking point. “It’s aggravating seeing people on conservative news try to identify with me like I’m one of them,” he said. “I see the right trying to characterize me as one of their own. And I see the left trying to discredit me.” The song, he added on Facebook, “is about corporate owned D.C. politicians on both sides.”“Rich Men” repeats at No. 1 on the all-genre Hot 100 with 23 million streams and 117,000 downloads, according to the tracking service Luminate. It is also No. 1 on Billboard’s country chart.On the Billboard 200 album chart, Travis Scott’s “Utopia” marks a month at No. 1 with the equivalent of 161,000 sales, including 92 million streams and 92,000 copies sold as a complete package, according to Luminate, driven by discounted vinyl sales on the rapper’s website. According to Billboard, “Utopia” is the first rap album to spend its first four weeks at the top since 2018, when Drake’s “Scorpion” had five. (In 2021, Drake’s “Certified Lover Boy” spent its first three weeks at No. 1, then returned to the top for another two weeks later on.)Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” holds at No. 2, while the singer-songwriter Hozier opens at No. 3 with his new “Unreal Unearth.” The “Barbie” soundtrack remains in fourth place, and Taylor Swift’s “Midnights” is No. 5. More

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      Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez and 9 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Selena Gomez, Al Green, L’Rain and others.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.Miley Cyrus, ‘Used to Be Young’“You say I used to be wild, I say I used to be young,” Miley Cyrus sings on the muted, introspective new ballad “Used to Be Young.” The timing of the single’s release is canny: Cyrus gave her infamous, twerk-seen-’round-the-world MTV Video Music Awards performance 10 years ago on Friday. Cyrus, now 30, isn’t chiding her younger self or expressing regrets here, though — “I know I used to be crazy, messed up, but God was it fun,” she sings with an audible grin — so much as she is asserting her right to grow and change. Though “Used to Be Young” starts out quiet, it gradually builds in intensity, culminating in a finale that allows Cyrus to showcase the full power of her grainy drawl. LINDSAY ZOLADZAl Green, ‘Perfect Day’The magnificently idiosyncratic soul singer Al Green has re-emerged singing “Perfect Day,” a song from 1972 by — of all people — Lou Reed. Reed’s original had a disquieting undertone, warning “You’re going to reap just what you sow.” But Green’s remake — backed by musicians from his 1970s Hi Rhythm Section — trades any misgivings for romance, and the same line becomes a promise of mutual bliss. JON PARELESZach Bryan featuring Kacey Musgraves, ‘I Remember Everything’This wrenching highlight from Zach Bryan’s new self-titled album is a he-said/she-said account of a failed, whiskey-soaked romance, set to a forlorn chord progression. “A cold shoulder at closing time, you were begging me to stay ’til the sun rose,” Bryan sings in his aching croak, before Kacey Musgraves enters with a pointed question: “You’re drinking everything to ease your mind, but when the hell are you gonna ease mine?” ZOLADZL’Rain, ‘Pet Rock’“Why would you go without me?” L’Rain — the songwriter and musician Taja Cheek — wonders in “Pet Rock,” a turbulent song about unwanted solitude. Cascading guitars and shifty-meter drumbeats give the music an unpredictable, almost tidal motion that ebbs and flows with all the lyrics’ unanswered questions. PARELESSelena Gomez, ‘Single Soon’“I know he’ll be a mess when I break the news/but I’ll be single soon,” Selena Gomez exults in the ultra-smiley “Single Soon.” It’s a triumphal march about all the prerogatives of moving on — “I’m gonna do what I wanna do” — with giggles in the backup track as she decides it’s “Time to try another one.” Like Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space,” it celebrates the choices ahead. PARELESPrince, ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’The teaser for the next much-expanded Prince reissue — “Diamonds and Pearls,” due Oct. 27 — is a falsetto funk tune about a woman with a mysterious but alluring occupation. “Some call it a curse, some call it sweet salvation/No one can deny the stimulation,” Prince sings over a skulking synth-bass line. The lyrics stay ambiguous, but the groove tells its own sensual story. PARELESMargo Price, ‘Strays’Margo Price released her album “Strays” in January, but its title track arrives this week in the rollout of “Strays II,” a sequel she’s releasing a few songs at a time. In “Strays,” she sings about being young, broke and ferally in love back in January 2003, with a galloping beat and pounding piano chords that suggests the E Street Band visiting Nashville. The memories sound victorious. PARELESMon Laferte, ‘Tenochtitlán’The Chilean songwriter Mon Laferte sings about a woman shamed for her pregnancy in “Tenochtitlán,” comparing her to the Virgin Mary. In a track that melds the retro and futuristic, she overlays a trip-hop bass undertow with lushly dramatic strings, a flamenco-tinged guitar solo and a passage of pitch-shifted vocals, while she urges, “Beautiful one, cry no more.” PARELESLuciana Souza & Trio Corrente, ‘Bem Que Te Avisei’The new album from Luciana Souza and Trio Corrente, “Cometa” is a celebration of Brazil’s classic songbook, with covers of songs by Dorival Caymmi and Antonio Carlos Jobim alongside lively originals written in the spirit of tradition. Souza contributes a composition, “Bem Que Te Avisei” (“Well, I Warned You”), an up-tempo samba in which she admonishes a suitor not to chase someone unless he’s interested in committing. The piece comes fully alive midway through, when she sings a verse accompanied by just Paulo Paulelli’s bass and Edu Ribeiro’s light percussion, and achieves elevation at the end, as Souza’s wordless vocals double with the piano of Fabio Torres, briefly bringing to mind Flora Purim’s synergy with Chick Corea in Return to Forever. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOTitanic, ‘Anónima’The Guatemalan songwriter Mabe Fratti and the Venezuelan composer Hector Tosta, who bills himself as I la Católica, have collaborated as Titanic, with an album due in October. In “Anónima” (“Anonymous”), Fratti’s cello grunts rhythmic double-stops as she sings about persistent, troubling thoughts, surrounded by clusters of piano notes and increasingly brutal percussion. Her voice maintains its equanimity, but her distorted cello finally lashes out. PARELESAbiodun Oyewole, ‘Somebody Else’s Idea’In 1968, the poet-activists Larry Neal and Amiri Baraka released “Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing,” a collection that would help to define the Black Arts Movement. The poet with the most works featured in its pages was Sun Ra: Although mostly known as the bandleader of the Arkestra, Ra was a philosopher and poet as much as he was a musician. That same year, a group of young poets came together in Harlem, dubbing themselves the Last Poets and helping to lay the groundwork for what would soon become hip-hop; Abiodun Oyewole was one of them. Those histories collide on “My Words Are Music: A Celebration of Sun Ra’s Poetry,” a new album on which various artists read Ra’s poems between spacey synthesizer interludes from Marshall Allen, the Arkestra’s current leader. On “Somebody Else’s Idea,” Oyewole delivers verses that Ra first recorded in the early 1970s, when the Last Poets were in their prime: “Somebody else’s idea of things to come/need not be the only way to vision the future,” he declares. RUSSONELLO More