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      Priscilla Block Wants Country Music to Sparkle

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      The singer-songwriter’s “Welcome to the Block Party” is a refreshing and ambitious pop-country debut filled with good-humored feminist anthems and pointed songs about an ex.NASHVILLE — In the summer of 2020, four months into the pandemic, Priscilla Block was broke and forced to move out of the apartment she was renting in a medium-fancy complex near Music Row. She’d been cleaning Airbnbs for money, and the work had dried up. Her mother and sister came into town to help move her into a far grimmer shared house nearby.“I was crying. I just felt like I failed so bad,” Block, 26, said one afternoon last month, parked outside the house in her white Jeep, one stop on a tour of dispiriting places she’d called home over the years.The small, ramshackle house had no air conditioning, and during that hot season, she came down with Covid-19 following a night out at a local bar. Quarantined and sick, Block nevertheless kept writing songs, including one about another misfortune from that same night: bumping into an ex.She’d been posting songs to TikTok for a few months at that point, including brassy, clever, uproarious feminist country anthems like “Thick Thighs” and “PMS.” But this song, “Just About Over You,” was different, a smoldering ballad that balanced resentment with determination. She uploaded a video singing it, and her fans reacted feverishly, raising money for her to record it professionally. Three weeks later, when she self-released it to streaming services, she went live on TikTok to thank them.“I thought that my life was changed then, you know?” she said. “I thought that was it.”The next day, “Just About Over You” unexpectedly topped the iTunes sales chart. For Block, who moved to Nashville in 2014 right after high school, and who sang at bars for tips in between other make-ends-meet jobs, the jolt was sudden. Before long, she had a record deal, a publishing contract and on Friday, she’ll release her full-length debut album, “Welcome to the Block Party.”It’s a refreshing and accomplished pop-country debut album, and an ambitious one, too. In a moment in which female performers are still scant on country radio, it is full of songs that announce their intentions loudly. The sheer scale of some of the album’s choruses — on “My Bar,” “Heels in Hand,” “Wish You Were the Whiskey” and others — recalls the power country of the 1990s and early 2000s, when the genre was taking its cues from arena rock, and when its pop ambitions were unfettered. Nothing about this album is shy.Earlier in the day, Block was sitting at a table at the Listening Room, a cafe and performance space where she used to work. Her hair was pulled up in a turquoise scrunchie that matched both her fingernails and her chewing gum. She wore a marble-dyed mesh shirt, tight jeans, clodhopper heels and a bounty of rings and necklaces. “Classy and trashy,” she joked, adding, “I like to wear clothes that fit my like hourglass shape, owning the whole body thing.”If Nashville has been inhospitable to female performers, it has been exponentially more so to anyone who deviates from its strictly proscribed beauty standards. As a young performer, Block found her role models far from country music; “I would watch Beyoncé get up on TV and like, she was a thicker girl, and that was cool.”“I can be the funny girl or I could be the girl crying her eyes out,” Block said. “The girl crying her eyes out or the girl trying to hype up the girl that’s crying her eyes out.”Maggie Shannon for The New York TimesBlock encountered resistance from her earliest days in Nashville: “I remember sitting down with somebody and it was that conversation, ‘I’m saying this in a nice way, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but you need to lose weight if this is the career path that you really want to go down.’”The uproarious “Thick Thighs,” which had been a breakout success on TikTok, was written in a fit of pique. “I’ve been hearing ’bout ‘dad bods’ a little too long/So what about my muffin top is wrong?” she sings tartly, adding an implied eye-roll at the chorus: “I can’t be the only one who likes/Extra fries over exercise.” When she performed it for the first time at the bar where she sang covers of Carrie Underwood and the Chicks for tips, the crowd was singing along by the second chorus.But when it came time to put out her first EP (released last April) after signing her deal, she opted for a set of lovelorn heartbreak ballads. “I did have that fear of being the ‘funny song’ girl,” Block said. “I can be the funny girl or I could be the girl crying her eyes out. The girl crying her eyes out or the girl trying to hype up the girl that’s crying her eyes out.”But an urging from the president of her label — “She told me, ‘That is new. That is you. And that is ballsy for somebody to say that. I really want to make sure that doesn’t get lost.’” — made her realize how crucial both parts of her creative personality would be for her album.The album’s final song, “Peaked in High School,” plays to to her humorous side, with Block jubilantly dismissing the mean girls who made teenage life hard: “I got a deal, you got divorced/You see my face on billboards/I changed the number you’re still calling.” But the smokiness of her heartbreak songs is potent. They’re often pointedly about an ex who appears to still be lingering — on the insistently resilient “My Bar,” he tries to showing up at her local watering hole (“You think you’re such a star but here’s the funny part/ No one even knows who you are”), while on the slick kiss-off “I Bet You Wanna Know,” he’s painted as a stubborn shadow that Block can’t quite shake.Block’s blend of sass and angst is powerful, and a far cry from the music she was making when she first came to Nashville — “Taylor Swift meets Miranda Lambert” — and was building Pinterest boards charting what her style and aesthetic should be. “I basically was trying to cover up everything cool about me, you know?”Now, she leans into sparkle. In her Jeep, she sips water from a tumbler sent by a fan, covered in glitter and inscribed with the names of several of her songs. She’s having her album release concert at the Las Vegas branch of the bar she favors in Nashville. And she’s seeking out kindred spirits: “My goal is to do a ‘CMT Crossroads’ with Lizzo, and have her playing a frickin’ flute to ‘Thick Thighs’!” More

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      Hargus Robbins, Pianist on Country Music Hits, Dies at 84

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      A revered member of Nashville’s A-Team of studio musicians, he was a major contributor to Bob Dylan’s “Blonde on Blonde” album.NASHVILLE — Hargus “Pig” Robbins, one of country music’s most prolific session piano players and a key contributor to Bob Dylan’s landmark 1966 album, “Blonde on Blonde,” died on Sunday. He was 84.His death was announced on the website of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. It did not say where he died or specify the cause.A longtime member of Nashville’s so-called A-Team of first-call studio musicians, Mr. Robbins appeared on thousands of popular recordings made here between the late 1950s and mid-2010s.Many became No. 1 country singles, including Hank Snow’s “I’ve Been Everywhere” (1962), Loretta Lynn’s “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind)” (1966) and Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” (1974). Several also crossed over to become major pop hits, Patsy Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces” (1961) and Kenny Rogers’s “The Gambler” (1978) among them.An instinctive melodicist who valued understatement over flash, Mr. Robbins helped establish the piano as an integral part of the smooth, uncluttered Nashville Sound of the 1960s. He also was a big reason that folk and rock acts like Joan Baez and Mr. Dylan began traveling to Nashville to adopt the impromptu approach to recording popularized here.The former Kingston Trio member John Stewart referred to him as “first-take Hargus Robbins” when, on the closing track of Mr. Stewart’s acclaimed 1969 album, “California Bloodlines,” he listed the Nashville session musicians who appeared on it. Mr. Stewart was acknowledging Mr. Robbins’s knack for playing musical passages flawlessly the first time through.Mr. Robbins’s influence was maybe most pronounced as the Nashville Sound evolved into the more soul-steeped “countrypolitan” style heard on records like George Jones’s 1980 blockbuster single, “He Stopped Loving Her Today.”Mr. Robbins’s rippling, jazz-inflected intros to Charlie Rich’s “Behind Closed Doors” (1973) and Crystal Gayle’s “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” (1977) became enduring expressions of the Southern musical vernacular of their era. Both records were No. 1 country and crossover pop singles.“Of all the musicians on my sessions, he stood the tallest,” the producer and A-Team guitarist Jerry Kennedy said of Mr. Robbins in an exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame.“He has been a backbone for Nashville,” added Mr. Kennedy, who worked with Mr. Robbins on hits by Roger Miller and Jerry Lee Lewis, and on “Blonde on Blonde.”Mr. Robbins acquired his distinctive nickname, Pig, while attending the Tennessee School for the Blind in Nashville as a boy.“I had a supervisor who called me that because I used to sneak in through a fire escape and play when I wasn’t supposed to and I’d get dirty as a pig,” Mr. Robbins said in an interview cited in the Encyclopedia of Country Music.He lost vision in one of his eyes when he was 3, after accidentally poking himself in the eye with a knife. The injured eye was ultimately removed and Mr. Robbins eventually lost sight in his other eye as well.While at the School for the Blind he studied classical music, but he would also play jazz, honky-tonk and barrelhouse blues.Mr. Robbins’s wide-ranging tastes served him well, equipping him for work on soul recordings like Clyde McPhatter’s 1962 pop hit, “Lover Please” (where he was inscrutably credited as Mel “Pigue” Robbins), andArthur Alexander’s “Anna (Go to Him),” a Top 10 R&B single from 1962 covered by the Beatles.Afforded the chance to stretch out stylistically on “Blonde on Blonde,” Mr. Robbins played with raucous abandon on “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35,” the woozy, carnivalesque No. 2 pop hit hooked by the tagline “Everybody must get stoned.” He employed a tender lyricism, by contrast, on elegiac ballads like “Just Like a Woman” and “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.”Hargus Melvin Robbins was born on Jan. 18, 1938, in Spring City, Tenn. His first big break came in 1959 when the music publisher Buddy Killen secured him an invitation to play on Mr. Jones’s “White Lightning.” Spurred by Mr. Robbins’s rollicking boogie-woogie piano, the record became a No. 1 country single.Another opportunity came two years later, when the producer Owen Bradley, needing someone to fill in for the A-Team pianist Floyd Cramer, hired Mr. Robbins to play on the session for Ms. Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces.” Mr. Cramer soon embarked on a solo career, creating an opening for Mr. Robbins on the A-Team.Mr. Robbins flirted with a solo career in the ’50s, recording rockabilly originals under the name Mel Robbins. “Save It,” an obscure single from 1959, was covered by the garage-punks the Cramps on their 1983 album, “Off the Bone.”One of Mr. Robbins’s instrumental albums, “Country Instrumentalist of the Year,” won a Grammy Award for best country instrumental performance in 1978.Working as a session musician was nevertheless his stock in trade, as a scene from Robert Altman’s 1971 movie “Nashville” memorably attests. Upbraiding his recording engineer when a hippie piano player nicknamed Frog shows up to work on their session instead of Mr. Robbins, the narcissistic country singer played by Henry Gibson shouts, “When I ask for Pig, I want Pig!”Mr. Robbins performing at the Country Music Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2012.Wade Payne/Invision, via Associated PressMr. Robbins was named country instrumentalist of the year by the Country Music Association in 1976 and 2000. Even after he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2012, he continued — then in his 70s — to do studio work with latter-day hitmakers like Miranda Lambert and Sturgill Simpson.Information on survivors was not immediately available.Losing his eyesight may or may not have helped Mr. Robbins cultivate a keener musical sensibility. His playing, in any case, revealed a commitment to listening and imagination that had him responding to his collaborators with a singular depth of feeling.“Pig Robbins is the best session man I’ve ever known,” said Charlie McCoy, a fellow A-Teamer, at a reception held in Mr. Robbins’s honor at the Country Music Hall of Fame. “Anytime Pig’s on a session everyone else plays better.”“If you’re going to be a good player,” Mr. Robbins said at the event, “you have to come up with something that will complement the song and the singer.” More

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      Ralph Emery, the Dick Clark of Country Music, Dies at 88

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      For six decades he promoted country performers on radio and television, earning a place in the Country Music Hall of Fame.NASHVILLE — Ralph Emery, the M.C. widely regarded as the most popular radio and television broadcast personality in the history of country music, died on Saturday at a hospital here. He was 88.His death, after a brief illness, was confirmed by his wife of 54 years, Joy Kott Emery.Heralded by turns as the dean of country music broadcasters and the Dick Clark of country music, Mr. Emery spent more than six decades on the air promoting country music and seeking to broaden its appeal among audiences with no natural affinity with rural Southern culture.He first made his mark in 1957 after signing on to work the graveyard shift at Nashville’s WSM, home of the Grand Ole Opry. A 50,000-watt radio station known as the “Air Castle of the South,” WSM could be heard throughout the Southern and Eastern United States — and, on clear nights, well beyond them.Only 24 at the time, Mr. Emery immediately distinguished himself at WSM as a low-key host with an intimate, easygoing on-air presence. His informal, open-door policy on the show encouraged his guests, both established and aspiring, to drop by the studio unannounced to chat, drink coffee and spin their latest records.“Ralph was more a grand conversationalist than a calculated interviewer, and it was his conversations that revealed the humor and humanity of Tom T. Hall, Barbara Mandrell, Tex Ritter, Marty Robbins and many more,” said Kyle Young, chief executive of the Country Music Hall of Fame, in a statement. “Above all, he believed in music and in the people who make it.”From 1957 to 1972, some of country’s biggest stars, including Loretta Lynn, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard, made impromptu appearances on Mr. Emery’s show, its most devoted followers perhaps being the cross-country truckers it kept awake as they made their all-night runs.Mr. Emery, right, with Reba McEntire in 2007 during a break in his interview show on the RFD-TV cable channel. Over the years, he interviewed country music’s biggest stars.Mark Humphrey/Associated PressMr. Emery’s early success on WSM also led to a concurrent slot as an announcer on the Grand Ole Opry, as well as a role as host of “Opry Almanac,” an Opry-themed television broadcast on WSMV later billed as “The Ralph Emery Show.”One uncharacteristically fraught exception to Mr. Emery’s otherwise affable tenure at WSM came in 1968 when the pioneering country-rock band the Byrds were guests on his show.The group’s new album, “Sweetheart of the Rodeo,” unabashedly expressed their devotion to traditional country music, even to the point of recruiting some of Nashville’s first-call session musicians to play on the record. The Byrds’s performance on the Opry before going on Mr. Emery’s show, though, was greeted with a cool reception from the audience after they decided to perform one of their originals instead of the Merle Haggard song they assured the show’s management they would play.None too impressed with their hippie take on country music, Mr. Emery likewise gave the Byrds the cold shoulder. Gram Parsons and Roger McGuinn of the Byrds responded in kind by writing “Drug Store Truck Drivin’ Man,” a merciless sendup in which they characterized the song’s protagonist (a thinly veiled version of Mr. Emery) as a hidebound Southerner.This inauspicious clash with the counterculture notwithstanding, Mr. Emery continued to flourish within country music with “The Ralph Emery Show.” An early morning television broadcast that ran on WSMV from 1972 to 1991, the program featured a live band and earned a reputation for developing unsung talent like Lorrie Morgan and the Judds.A man of unflagging energy, Mr. Emery also hosted the nationally syndicated weekly TV series “Pop Goes the Country” from 1974 to 1980, before reaching what might have been his peak in popularity as the host of “Nashville Now.” A prime-time broadcast that aired weeknights on the Nashville Network from 1983 to 1993, “Nashville Now” for years featured a Muppet-like co-host named Shotgun Red, played by the comedian and voice-over artist Steve Hall.Mr. Emery, right, presented Loretta Lynn and Marty Robbins with plaques proclaiming them WSM’s top female and male vocalists in 1969.Dale Ernsberger/The Tennessean, Nashville Tennessean, via ImagnWalter Ralph Emery was born on March 10, 1933, in McEwen, Tenn., 50 miles or so west of Nashville, the only child of Walter and Maxine (Fuqua) Emery.His father, who suffered from alcoholism, was an accountant. His mother, who struggled with poor mental health, worked as a stenographer and at other jobs to pay the bills. Young Ralph’s happiest childhood moments were spent on his grandparents’ farm.Radio likewise proved an escape from childhood trauma — Mr. Emery’s “surrogate family,” as he put it in the first of two memoirs, “Memories” (written with Tom Carter), if not a career path.After his parents divorced, Mr. Emery worked as an usher in a Nashville movie theater. He also stocked groceries in a local Kroger store, paying his way through the Tennessee School of Broadcasting.“I practiced and practiced, in school and at home, talking and listening real hard to myself to rid my speech of its horrendous regionalism,” Mr. Emery said in an interview for his bio for the Country Music Hall of Fame.Perhaps inevitably, Mr. Emery tried his hand at recording with “Hello Fool,” an answer record to Faron Young’s “Hello Walls” that reached the country Top 10 in 1961. He also made an album, “Songs for Children” (1989), with Shotgun Red, his co-host from “Nashville Now.”Mr. Emery, right, was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2007 with, from left, Mel Tillis and Vince Gill.John Russell/Country Music Hall of Fame, via Associated PressMr. Emery also appeared in several B-movies, including “Nashville Rebel” and the “Girl from Tobacco Row,” both from 1966.Mr. Emery continued to host country-themed programming into the 2000s, perhaps most notably, “Ralph Emery Live,” a TV production, later renamed “Ralph Emery’s Memories,” that aired on cable from 2007 to 2015.Mr. Emery was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2007 and into the National Radio Hall of Fame three years later.Besides his wife, he is survived by three sons, Steve, Michael and Kit, five grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. Mr. Emery was married several times, including a brief union with the singer Skeeter Davis from 1960 to 1964.“I’ve always tried to bring respect to country music,” he said in his bio for the Country Music Hall of Fame. “I’ll be very content if people can look on me and say, ‘He brought dignity to his craft,’ or, ‘He brought class to the business.’” More

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      Dallas Frazier, Who Wrote Hits for Country Stars, Dies at 82

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      His songs included the novelty number “Alley Oop,” the Oak Ridge Boys’ hit “Elvira” and “Beneath Still Waters” for Emmylou Harris.Dallas Frazier, a songwriter of great emotional range who wrote No. 1 country hits for Charley Pride, Tanya Tucker and the Oak Ridge Boys, died on Friday at a rehabilitation facility in Gallatin, Tenn., near Nashville. He was 82.His death was confirmed by his daughter Melody Morris, who said he had suffered two strokes since August.Although his most enduring success came in country music, Mr. Frazier also wrote pop and R&B hits for artists like the country-soul singer Charlie Rich and the Louisiana bluesman Slim Harpo. Both released versions of Mr. Frazier’s “Mohair Sam,” a swamp-pop homage to a larger-than-life hipster that, in Mr. Rich’s 1965 Top 40 pop version, became one of Elvis Presley’s favorite songs.Mr. Frazier’s big break, though, came five years earlier with “Alley Oop,” a novelty song that reached No. 1 on the pop chart (No. 3 on the R&B chart) for the Hollywood Argyles in 1960. Inspired by the V.T. Hamlin comic strip of the same name, the song has been recorded several times since, including versions by the Beach Boys and the satirical British art-rockers the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.David Bowie also interpolated the line “Look at those cave men go” from “Alley Oop” in his 1973 single “Life on Mars?”“I had country roots, but I had this other thing going on with me,” Mr. Frazier said, alluding to his omnivorous musical appetite in a 2008 interview with the online magazine Perfect Sound Forever. “I wasn’t stuck in this one field of music. I had other things going on inside my soul.”Mr. Frazier’s bread and butter, nevertheless, was country music, where his songs plumbed an array of subjects and emotions, like humor, heartache and his hardscrabble childhood during the Great Depression.Mr. Frazier wrote “There Goes My Everything” for the Grand Ole Opry star Jack Greene, “Beneath Still Waters” for Emmylou Harris and “Elvira,” with its atavistic “oom poppa, oom poppa” chorus, for the Oak Ridge Boys. All three were career-defining records, and each topped the country chart. (“There Goes My Everything” also reached the pop Top 20 for the British crooner Engelbert Humperdinck in 1967.)Mr. Frazier, left, with Marty Stuart and Connie Smith, performing at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville in 2019. Terry Wyatt/Getty Images for Country Music Hall of Fame and MuseumConnie Smith, a 2012 inductee into the Country Music Hall of Fame, has recorded more than five dozen songs written by Mr. Frazier.Dallas June Frazier was born on Oct. 27, 1939, in Spiro, Okla. His parents, William Floyd Frazier and Eva Marie Laughlin Frazier, were itinerant laborers who moved the family to Bakersfield, Calif., to work in the cotton fields there. Young Dallas was just 2½ at the time.The Model A was loaded down and California boundA change of luck was just four days awayBut the only change that I remember seeing for my daddyWas when his dark hair turned to silver graySo goes the second half of the last stanza of “California Cottonfields,” an autobiographical original, written by Mr. Frazier and Earl Montgomery, that became a signature song for Merle Haggard, whose childhood privation rivaled Mr. Frazier’s.“We were part of ‘The Grapes of Wrath,’” Mr. Frazier said in 2008, referring to John Steinbeck’s epic novel of the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. “We were the Okies who went out to California with mattresses tied to the tops of their Model A Fords. My folks were poor.”The Fraziers lived in tents and boxcars in the California labor camps, suffering not only the indignity of poverty but also the prejudice of native westerners. Dallas began picking cotton at the age of 6.His father exposed him to country music, playing the latest hits by Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell on the jukebox of their local diner. Dallas Frazier commemorated the experience in “Hank and Lefty Raised My Country Soul,” a song that became a Top 40 country hit for his fellow Oklahoman Stoney Edwards in 1973.Mr. Frazier began writing songs and singing as an adolescent, earning an invitation at 12 to tour with the country star Ferlin Husky after winning a West Coast talent contest. At 14, he signed a contract as a recording artist with Mr. Husky’s label, Capitol Records. During the mid-to-late ’50s, he also appeared regularly on Cliffie Stone’s “Hometown Jamboree,” a popular country music television show broadcast from Los Angeles.In 1963, after his singing career began to founder, Mr. Frazier moved to Nashville with his wife, Sharon, to work for country song publishers. He continued to make the occasional record, steeped in New Orleans-style R&B, before eventually giving himself over to songwriting full time.In 1976, shortly after his induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, Mr. Frazier suddenly retired from music to become the pastor of a church outside Nashville. He returned to writing and performing three decades later, emerging as an elder statesman of the music he helped shape.Besides Ms. Morris, Mr. Frazier is survived by his wife of 63 years, Sharon Carpani Frazier; their two other daughters, Robin Proetta and Alison Thompson; four grandchildren; one great-grandson; and a sister, Judy Shults.Despite his success as a songwriter in country music, Mr. Frazier said that at times he felt hampered by Nashville’s unwritten rules, especially when it came to embracing more wide-ranging musical influences like rock and R&B.“Nobody ever said, ‘Dallas, you can’t do this,’” he told Perfect Sound Forever, “but it was common knowledge that you did certain things. I should have had more product in the rock ’n’ roll field, definitely. Had I been living in L.A. or New York, I would have, but less country, you see.” More

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      FKA twigs Seeks Angelic Intervention, and 10 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Maren Morris, Stromae, Robert Glasper and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.FKA twigs, ‘Meta Angel’FKA twigs’s new mixtape, “Caprisongs,” is woven through with snippets of conversations with friends, which she has said represents a kind of sonic antidote to the loneliness and self-doubt she was experiencing during the 2020 lockdown. The wrenching, shape-shifting “Meta Angel” is perhaps the purest distillation of this approach: After an introductory pep talk from a friend, twigs confesses her private vulnerabilities (“I’ve got voices in my head, telling me I won’t make it far”), before summoning all her defiance on an artfully Auto-Tuned, Charli XCX-esque chorus. “Throw it in the fire,” she belts, in a conflagration of emotion that sounds like the first step to healing. LINDSAY ZOLADZStromae, ‘L’enfer’“L’enfer” — the “Hell” that Stromae confesses to in this single — is thoughts of suicide. Stromae, whose father is from Rwanda, is a Belgian songwriter, musician, dancer and YouTube creator who has been making a return after releasing his last studio album in 2013. This song suggests the reason for his absence: dark, self-destructive impulses that he has averted. It begins with Bulgarian-style vocal harmonies and moves to four mournful piano chords as Stromae considers how “It’s crazy how many people have thought the same.” A choir, stuttering electronics and a looming beat answer him, but there’s nothing sanctimonious about the song; Stromae sounds like he’s still grappling with his troubles. JON PARELESAldous Harding, ‘Lawn’“Doors are the way you leave/Open it up to me,” sings the ever-enigmatic Aldous Harding in “Lawn,” from an album due in March. The track is a wispy-voiced homage to Stereolab, serenely cycling through two-chord piano patterns over breezy syncopated drums, as Harding airily ponders “losing you” and the obligations of songwriting: “Time flies when you’re writing B-sides,” she observes. The video, co-directed by Harding, features human-lizard hybrids and actual reptiles, but she never sounds entirely coldblooded. PARELESMaren Morris, ‘Circles Around This Town’The first single from Maren Morris’s forthcoming album, “Humble Quest,” vividly conjures her earliest days in Nashville, hustling around town in a “Montero with the A/C busted” shopping “a couple bad demos on a burned CD.” Those details may feel lived-in and time-stamped, but Morris knows she’s operating within a long lineage — she was certainly not the first aspiring songwriter to drive circles around Music City in hopes of catching her big break, nor will she be the last. The song’s direct appeal to this country tradition makes it feel like a throwback to the days before Morris’s pop crossover, but she and the producer Greg Kurstin prove twang is no obstacle to a soaring, universally inviting chorus. “Thought that when I hit it, it’d all look different, but I still got the pedal down,” Morris sings from the other side of success, still hungry but now with a mature confidence in her talent. ZOLADZPavement, ‘Be the Hook’An infamous lore hangs over “Terror Twilight,” Pavement’s fifth and final album, from 1999. The alt-rock super-producer Nigel Godrich was hired in an attempt to make the band’s slacker-rock sound slightly more palatable to the mainstream, but his methods ended up hastening the already-fraying group’s demise — or so the story goes. On April 8, though, Matador Records will finally release a comprehensive deluxe edition of “Terror Twilight,” and perhaps enough time has passed since the LP’s polarizing release that it can finally be appreciated on its own terms. The first taste of the unreleased material, the loose and bluesy jam “Be the Hook,” already complicates the received wisdom that “Terror Twilight” was all streamlined melodies and smoothed-over edges, as Stephen Malkmus meta-vamps charismatically atop a crunchy riff: “Everybody get your hands together and cheer for this rock ’n’ roll band!” ZOLADZKing Princess featuring Fousheé, ‘Little Bother’King Princess, a songwriter from Brooklyn, uses a programmed punk-pop beat, U2-style guitar chords, cascading vocal harmonies and the endorsement of a co-writer, Fousheé, to confront an ex who ended up being indifferent, treating her like a “little bother.” Pointedly, she asks, “Do you feel like you should-could have tried a little harder?” PARELESRobert Glasper featuring Killer Mike, Big K.R.I.T. and BJ the Chicago Kid, ‘Black Superhero’Robert Glasper, a jazz pianist who maintains a close connection with hip-hop, works through three thick chords and enlists choir-like backup vocals behind Killer Mike (from Run the Jewels), Big K.R.I.T. and BJ the Chicago Kid to call for a “Black Superhero.” The song invokes 1960s activism and current unrest to call for ways to save “every block, every hood, every city, every ghetto.” PARELESDJ Python, ‘Angel’The Brooklyn-based producer Brian Piñeyro (a.k.a. DJ Python) has a reputation for tenderness. Consider the title of his website, a painfully veracious observation on contemporary texting behavior: “sayingsomethingsincerelyandendingitwith.lol.” That kind of soft-focus sentimentality also appears on “Angel,” the latest track from his upcoming full-length “Club Sentimientos, Vol. 2.” Over the course of the 10-minute production, Piñeyro collages oneiric, crystalline synths and drums into a suspended state of astral bliss. The song arrives alongside a custom perfume, whose description — a “gender-spectral” scent that draws on rave culture — only plunges the release further into the universe of daydreams. ISABELIA HERRERAJacques Greene, ‘Taurus’Jacques Greene has always been interested in weaving the textures of all kinds of club music, but on “Taurus,” he takes a more meditative path, perhaps inspired by the film scores he recently composed. Hard-edge drum breaks propel the production, recalling the rush of a distant dance floor, but a softness remains at the center. The vaporous whispers and echoes of the vocalist Leanne Macomber float on and over each other, curling into a small misty cloud, like visible breath on a frigid day. The effect is cold and cavernous, but it offers an unexpected sense of comfort. HERRERAGonora Sounds, ‘Kusaziva Kufa’Gonora Sounds, from Zimbabwe, is led by a blind guitarist, Daniel Gonora, who had been a member of a top Zimbabwean group, Jairos Jiri Band. For years, he made a living performing on the streets of Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital. A documentary, “You Can’t Hide from the Truth,” revived his reputation, and on Feb. 4 he releases an album, “Hard Times Never Kill,” backed by some of Zimbabwe’s top musicians. His style is called sungura, which meshes Zimbabwe’s own traditions — guitar picking that echoes the plinking patterns of thumb pianos — with styles from across Africa. “Kusaziva Kufa” (“Ignorance”) taunts anyone who doubted that his music would survive; between drums, vocals and guitars, it’s a syncopated marvel that shifts to an even higher gear halfway through. PARELESRokia Koné & Jacknife Lee, ‘Kurunba’The Malian singer and songwriter Rokia Koné smiles her way through the video for “Kurunba,” and the beat she and the Irish producer Jackknife Lee — whose collaborative album is due Feb. 18 — worked up meshes a four-on-the floor thump, electronic swoops, quick-strummed guitars and West African percussion, an unstoppable groove. Yet her lyrics, delivered with a tough rasp, are about the ways a patriarchal culture discards women after they have raised their children, protesting with unquestionable vitality. PARELES More

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      Why Kane Brown Loves Cookie Monster, Elvis Presley and ‘Ted Lasso’

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      The country star’s list of must-haves mixes heartstring-yanking shows, sports video games and powerhouse musicians known for shaking up the culture.The country singer Kane Brown will not lie: He has not developed any new skills during the pandemic. He’s spent a lot of time with his wife and daughter. He’s spent a lot of time in the gym. He oversaw construction on his house, and almost looked into whether he could try building his own home in the future. (That did not pan out.)But for the most part, he’s been waiting to get back on the road. Calling from Indianapolis, on the first day of the second leg of his Blessed & Free tour, he said it was “crazy” to be performing again, and observed that the feeling stretches to the audience. “The fans don’t know what to think; they don’t know what to do,” he said. “I don’t really have answers for them, or explanations. But we get to play the show.”Tour life in the time of Covid-19 is different than it used to be. One constant is video games: Brown plays just about all the available sports games, with some “Call of Duty” thrown in for good measure. He doesn’t take much care to hide his identity, which makes for some fun interactions. “I got a big microphone above my head, so a lot of people think I’m a rapper,” he said. “One time, we had these kids convinced I was Lil Baby. But if you click on my profile, it says my name, so then I’ll get a lot of messages like, ‘Man, I’m a big fan.’”Brown is on tour for the next two months, so those fans will have plenty of time to catch him in the digital sphere. Before the Indianapolis show, we spoke about 10 of his beloved cultural necessities. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. The Madden N.F.L. series One of my favorite memories was Madden 2004, when Michael Vick was on the cover. I got my first PlayStation 2, and I remember sitting down in the basement, just beating my stepdad. The game is really mechanical, but I kind of learned how to play football like I play Madden — just run and get a touchdown. You know, don’t play by the rules; don’t get hit; just run. That’s what I did in real life football, and I guess that’s why I’m sitting on my tour bus today.2. Elvis Presley Elvis was just his own thing, man. My nana was a huge Elvis fan; I remember she used to have this crazy bedazzled Elvis purse she would take everywhere, that was just his face blown up on a purse. As I got older, I started listening to his music, and if you really listen, he’s not scared to do anything. I find myself trying to sound like him all the time, on “Blue Christmas” or “Hound Dog.” However long this world goes on, he’ll still be talked about.3. “Ted Lasso” Jason Sudeikis is one of my favorite actors; I just love his dry sense of humor. I see a lot of myself in Ted. I wish I could be more like him, but I love how he’s so optimistic. No matter how much bad news is given to him, he always tries to turn it positive. The team is looking at him as a weird dude that doesn’t know anything about soccer, and he just goes in there and shows everybody his heart. It’s just amazing to me.4. Steph Curry I remember Curry coming to UTC, a college in my hometown of Chattanooga, and he hit a half-court buzzer beater. I remember everybody saying he was small and overrated, and he was just killing us. To see him go to the league, just destroying the competition, is insane. I did a podcast with him, and I think my favorite part was he brought his daughters in. I asked what they would listen to every day going to school, and they said my song “What Ifs.” It just hit a spot in my heart.5. H.E.R. I didn’t really know much about her until I met my wife, who was a huge fan. Our first dance at our wedding was “Best Part,” her song with Daniel Caesar. She’s just an amazingly talented vocal artist, and she can play that incredible guitar. She’s one of my favorite collaborators that I’ve got to work with; I feel like she’s another artist that’s going to be around for a while.6. “Click” I’m a huge Adam Sandler fan, and I actually showed this movie to my security guard last night. The angel of death gives him a universal remote that controls everything, but also controls his life. Every time he uses it, it just keeps fast forwarding. He ends up going past 20 years of his life — he loses his wife, his kids are grown, he ends up getting cancer. He fast forwarded past all the boring parts of his life, and now his life is gone. It literally brings me to tears every time I watch it. If you’re sitting on the couch like, “Oh, I’m bored,” that’s precious time you could be spending with your family. After I watched it last night, I called my wife; my security guard even called his wife. We just said, “We love you.”7. “Sesame Street”When I was a kid, Elmo and Cookie Monster were the main two characters for me. I didn’t expect to ever meet or film with them, but I got to do it last year. It was cool to see how they did it; they really make you feel like the characters are alive. I got to watch it with my little girl Kingsley, and you know, she just looks up to me and she loves Elmo. So for her to see her daddy with Elmo, it was one for the books.8. “Yellowstone”I fell in love with the TV show “Yellowstone” so much that my wife told me I need to go outside and do something. So I bought full cowboy gear and went to Lowe’s to buy some wood to build a treehouse. [Laughs] The story’s amazing; the music’s amazing. My nana always took me to rodeos, growing up. I used to mutton bust, and I used to chase the cows and try to get the ribbons off their tails. She also took me to a lot of pow wows, so to see the Native American culture that’s also in there — it’s just another part of my life that I really like watching.9. His first home in Mount Juliet, Tenn. I never really grew up in a steady home; I was always moving around, moving in with friends or different apartments with my mom. I was always grateful to have a roof over my head, but we never knew if we were going to stay there long, or what was going to happen. Before this house was built, we kept going there, and being like, “This is our new home.” Thinking about what we were going to put in there, I really felt like an adult. It was a huge, life-changing moment for me. Fast forward, we have a new home that we’re expanding on because I just had another kid. It’s amazing to give them things I never had growing up.10. Madison Square Garden The first time I went there, I watched the Knicks play Boston. The next night I was playing the Hulu Theater, so I didn’t actually get to play Madison Square Garden, but my dream was always to go to the big arena across the street. We actually get to do it this year; I think we’re even shooting a documentary. When you think about all the names that have gone through there, it’s just like: “I’m a nobody artist from Fort Oglethorpe, Ga., and I’m actually going to be headlining the arena that they’re all talking about.” It’s mind blowing. I can’t even think about the jitters; I just know it’s going to be a good show. More

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      J.D. Crowe, Banjo Virtuoso and Bluegrass Innovator, Dies at 84

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      Drawing on rock and R&B, Mr. Crowe recast the sound of bluegrass while helping launch the careers of some of the genre’s biggest stars.J.D. Crowe, a master banjo player and bandleader who expanded the sound of bluegrass while attracting some of the genre’s most prodigiously gifted musicians into his groups, died on Friday at his home in Nicholasville, Ky. He was 84.The death was confirmed by his friend Frank Godbey, who said Mr. Crowe had recently been hospitalized for pneumonia. Mr. Godbey’s wife, Marty Godbey, who died in 2010, was the author of “Crowe on the Banjo: The Music Life of J.D. Crowe” (2011).As the leader of the Kentucky Mountain Boys in the 1960s and J.D. Crowe & the New South in the ’70s, Mr. Crowe was among the first musicians to adapt rock and R&B to a bluegrass setting. Built around his impeccable tone and timing as a banjoist, the resulting hybrid was a harbinger of both the freewheeling “newgrass” movement of the ’70s and the bluegrass-aligned alternative country music that came after it.Mr. Crowe’s bands were renowned for their precision and soulfulness. The classic edition of the New South featured a who’s who of future bluegrass masters: Tony Rice, who died in December 2020, on lead vocals and guitar; Ricky Skaggs on mandolin and tenor vocals (Mr. Crowe sang baritone); and Jerry Douglas on dobro. Rounded out by Bobby Slone on bass guitar and fiddle, this lineup alone could be credited with ushering in a new era of progressive bluegrass with their 1975 album, called just “J.D. Crowe & the New South” but more popularly known by its catalog number, Rounder 0044.Mr. Crowe’s Kentucky Mountain Boys had covered material by the hippie country-rock band the Flying Burrito Brothers, but J.D. Crowe & the New South’s landmark album gave expression to a broader musical palette. It drew on everything from old-time country music to straight-ahead bluegrass and songs written by Fats Domino and Gordon Lightfoot.The 1975 album by Mr. Crowe’s band the New South changed not only how people thought about bluegrass but also their approach to playing it. Rounder 0044 changed not only how people thought about bluegrass but also their approach to playing it. Musically intrepid inheritors like Alison Krauss & Union Station and Nickel Creek would scarcely be imaginable without it.Ms. Krauss grew up listening to the album and kept a framed copy of its cover on the wall in her home, Bill Nowlin, whose Rounder label released the project, wrote in 2016 in the online publication Bluegrass Situation.Mr. Skaggs talked about the record’s impact in a 1999 interview with No Depression magazine. Referring to Bill Monroe and other bluegrass pioneers, he said that the album “had a lot of influence on kids that grew up during that time because, for a whole new generation, that was their Flatt & Scruggs and Monroe and the Stanley Brothers.”“Rounder 0044 was the transition,” Mr. Crowe said in a 2012 interview for the liner notes to a reissue of the New South’s 1977 album, “You Can Share My Blanket.” “All we did was we took tunes nobody was doing, and it was like they were new tunes as far as the bluegrass genre was concerned.”James Dee Crowe was born on Aug. 27, 1937, in Lexington, Ky., one of three children of Orval Dee and Bessie Lee (Nichols) Crowe. His parents were farmers.He had taken up the guitar as a boy before falling under the spell of Earl Scruggs’s dazzling three-finger banjo playing when, at about 12 or 13, he went to see Flatt and Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys perform in Lexington.“There was no other sound like that, so I dropped the guitar and got into the banjo,” he told No Depression.As a teenager Mr. Crowe played in bands led by bluegrass royalty like Mac Wiseman and Jimmy Martin, but he did not begin working in music full time until 1956, after rejoining Mr. Martin’s Sunny Mountain Boys. Mr. Crowe appeared regularly on the “Louisiana Hayride” broadcast with Mr. Martin, the self-proclaimed “King of Bluegrass Music.” He also made numerous recordings with him, including one of his signature songs, “You Don’t Know My Mind,” in 1960.Weary of touring, Mr. Crowe left Mr. Martin’s employ in 1961. He later formed the Kentucky Mountain Boys with the singer Red Allen and the mandolinist Doyle Lawson. That group, which also featured Mr. Slone, eventually settled into a regular gig at the Red Slipper Lounge at the Holiday Inn North in Lexington, where Mr. Crowe proceeded in earnest to incorporate country-rock into a bluegrass context.The formation of the New South, though, marked the real watershed of his career, attracting musicians with expansive sensibilities who regularly passed through the band’s ranks before moving on to other projects. Among the more notable of these was the singer Keith Whitley, a late-’70s arrival who, like Mr. Skaggs, would achieve considerable success in mainstream country music.Mr. Crowe started slowing down professionally in the ’80s, limiting himself to reunion concerts and selected recording projects like the six-album series he did with the Bluegrass Album Band, a bluegrass supergroup he founded with Mr. Rice.Mr. Crowe won a Grammy in 1983 for best country instrumental performance for his recording “Fireball.” He was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Association Hall of Fame in 2003. Kentucky Educational Television aired the documentary “A Kentucky Treasure: The James Dee Crowe Story” in 2008.Mr. Crowe is survived by his wife of 48 years, Sheryl Moore Crowe; a son, David; a daughter, Stacey Crowe; and a granddaughter.Mr. Crowe’s musical catholicity gave the lie to the belief that bluegrass is only about cleaving to tradition.“So many groups try to keep the same sound, and that’s all well and good, if you can,” he said in 2012. “But for myself, I mean, how are you going to replace a Tony Rice and a Ricky Skaggs and a Jerry Douglas?“You’re not going to do that. If you’re trying to do that, you’re forcing somebody to do what they can’t do, really. Although they may try, it don’t come off. So I figured, well, the best thing is, hire people that has good voices, can sing good, pick good, and let them do their deal.” More

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      Stonewall Jackson, Grand Ole Opry Star for Over 60 Years, Dies at 89

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      His biggest record, “Waterloo,” topped the country music chart for five weeks in 1959 and became a crossover hit.NASHVILLE — Stonewall Jackson, the honky-tonk singer who overcame an abusive, hardscrabble childhood and went on to enjoy a long, successful career in country music, including more than 60 years as a member of the cast of the Grand Ole Opry, died on Saturday in Nashville. He was 89.His death, after struggling with vascular dementia, was announced by the Opry. In the book “From the Bottom Up: The Stonewall Jackson Story as Told in His Own Words” (1991), Mr. Jackson said his stepfather, a short-tempered sharecropper named James Leviner, had often abused him, once hoisting him high above his head and dashing him against a rock.Another time, Mr. Jackson wrote, his stepfather beat him and left him lying senseless in a field after the boy accidentally spilled a bucket of water that he had been carrying.“The physical scars and pain of being abused don’t last long,” Mr. Jackson said, “but the mental part of it goes on and on and on.”Mr. Jackson’s 1962 recording “A Wound Time Can’t Erase,” a Top 10 country hit written by Bill D. Johnson, called to mind this early trauma.“Is it power you’ve won for the things that you’ve done? What you’ve gained I guess I’ll never see,” Mr. Jackson wonders aloud, his heartache set to the record’s chugging rhythms and uncluttered production.“A Wound Time Can’t Erase” was the 11th in a string of 23 consecutive singles that reached the country Top 40 for Mr. Jackson from 1958 to 1965. He later had a run of eight consecutive Top 40 country hits from 1966 to 1968, and ultimately placed 44 singles on the country charts before the hits stopped coming in 1973.“Waterloo,” a catchy ditty written by John D. Loudermilk and Marijohn Wilkin, was his biggest record, occupying the top spot on the country chart for five weeks in 1959 and crossing over to the pop Top 10. “B.J. the D.J.,” his other No. 1 country single, began its run up the charts toward the end of 1963.Most of Mr. Jackson’s recordings were made in the traditional style known as hard country: a lean, shuffling sound accented by keening fiddle and steel guitar. Eleven of his singles, including “Life to Go,” a prisoner’s lament written by George Jones, and “I Washed My Hands in Muddy Water,” a Top 20 pop hit for Johnny Rivers in 1966, reached the country Top 10.Mr. Jackson in 1999 performing at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. He was in the cast of the Grand Ole Opry for more than 60 years.Mark Humphrey/Associated PressStonewall Jackson was born on Nov. 6, 1932, in Tabor City, N.C. His biological father, a railroad engineer named Waymond David Jackson, wanted him to be named after Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson, the Confederate general from whom he claimed to have been descended, but he died of complications of a hernia before Stonewall, the third of his three boys, was born.Mr. Jackson’s mother, who was born Lulu Loraine Turner, remarried after his father died.Fearing for their safety, Mr. Jackson’s mother eventually left her sons’ abusive stepfather and moved the family to Georgia, where they lived in a shack on the farm of the boys’ paternal grandmother and her husband. Stonewall was working in the fields and cutting timber there before he reached the age of 10.Hoping to escape the drudgery of sharecropping, Mr. Jackson, who received only a limited education, lied about his age and joined the Army when he was 16. He was discharged as soon as the deception was discovered.The next year, he enlisted in the Navy, where he served on the submarine rescue vessel Kittiwake and began honing his skills as a guitar player and songwriter. Four years later, he returned to Georgia to farm a small plot before moving to Nashville to try his luck as a songwriter.His many hit records notwithstanding, Mr. Jackson’s biggest claim to fame was his six-decade run on the Grand Ole Opry. He remains the only singer to have been invited to join the Opry cast before releasing a record, much less having a hit.Mr. Jackson, who lived in Brentwood, Tenn., recalled that in 1956, during his first visit to Nashville, he presented himself unannounced at the offices of Acuff-Rose Music in hopes of securing a songwriting deal. Wesley Rose, the son of Fred Rose, the Acuff-Rose executive who gave Hank Williams his start, invited Mr. Jackson to make a demo recording and was impressed with the results.“He called WSM, the radio station that owns and operates the Grand Ole Opry, and told them about me,” Mr. Jackson was quoted as saying in the liner notes to the 1972 compilation “The World of Stonewall Jackson.” “He asked if they would set up an audition for me the next day and asked if I’d like to try out for the Opry.”In 2007, Mr. Jackson’s relationship with the show soured when he sued Gaylord Entertainment, the Opry’s parent company, for age discrimination after his appearances on the program were curtailed to make room for younger artists. The lawsuit was settled, for an undisclosed amount, in October 2008, and Mr. Jackson resumed performing on the show.His wife, Juanita Wair Jackson, died in 2019. Survivors include a son, Stonewall Jr., and two grandchildren. More