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    Miley Cyrus Told Us to Ask Her Anything

    Miley Cyrus’s entire life has been shaped by fame. Born at the height of her father Billy Ray Cyrus’s celebrity, she spent her childhood at his sold-out country concerts. At 13, she became a star herself — and an important part of the Disney machine — as the titular lead in “Hannah Montana,” playing a regular girl by day and a pop star by night and becoming a cultural touchstone for millennial kids.By the time Cyrus left the show, she already had dozens of Billboard Hot 100 hits, but industry and tastemaker respect was harder to come by. As with many former female child stars, her transition to adulthood in the public eye was marked by controversy (twerking with Robin Thicke at the 2013 Video Music Awards) and judgment (the Parents Television Council condemned the performance), which she looks back on today with some bitterness at how she was treated.Now 33, Cyrus is one of pop’s reigning female queens, a status cemented by her first Grammy win for her 2023 megahit “Flowers.” Her ninth studio album, “Something Beautiful,” has just been released, and she says it’s her attempt to reimagine what “beautiful” means — her beloved grandmother’s death, for instance, or the emotion of rage, which she told me is beautiful because “it lets you know you’re alive.” We also spoke at length about her close relationship with her mother, Tish Cyrus-Purcell, her repaired relationship with her father and how she has learned to protect herself in a world that is still fascinated by everything she does. But we started by talking about the first time I interviewed her, when her candor and openness quite honestly freaked me out.The Grammy-winning singer on overcoming child stardom, accepting her parents and being in control.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon | iHeart | NYT Audio AppYou know, I’ve interviewed you before. You look really familiar to me.No, we never saw each other because I was at NPR. The voice!I was a new host back then. I hadn’t done a lot of celebrity interviews, and you came on and said: “Ask me anything. Anything at all.” And I had no idea what to do with that. I just froze and thought, I don’t know what to ask Miley Cyrus if she’s saying, “Ask me anything.” Would you say something like that now? I think I would say something like that now, but maybe paying a little closer attention. But yeah, you can ask me anything. I’ve learned that I’m in control. The worst that happens is I just leave the room — say, “I’ll be right back,” and then don’t come back. More

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    Lorde’s Anthem of Transformation, and 9 More New Songs

    Hear tracks by Miley Cyrus featuring Brittany Howard, Thom Yorke, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Lorde, ‘Man of the Year’“I’ve become someone else, someone more like myself,” Lorde sings, somewhere between pride and astonishment, in “Man of the Year,” the second single from her album due in June, “Virgin.” It’s a crescendo of self-transformation, from quietly plucked cello to full-band stomp, as Lorde seizes the masculinity within herself. In the video clip, she flattens her breasts, taping them down with duct tape; she ponders, “Who’s gonna love me like this?” and then proclaims, “Now I’m broken open / Let’s hear it for the man of the year.”Miley Cyrus featuring Brittany Howard, ‘Walk of Fame’“Walk of Fame,” from “Something Beautiful,” the new Miley Cyrus album, turns the proverbial morning-after walk of shame into something prouder: “I walk the concrete like it’s a stage.” The song is mostly formulaic disco, thumping away. But the voice of Brittany Howard — adding little responses and wordless overlays, then promising “You’ll live forever”— gives it some gravity.Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, ‘Urges’Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, an dedicated electronic-pop experimenter, toys with and displaces dance-floor rhythms in “Urges,” from her coming album, “Gush.” She whisper-sings “I keep getting urges /What if I just let them move through me like this” while brittle programmed syncopations, disembodied voices and distant, tootling arpeggios materialize around her voice; even as the sounds disintegrate, the pulse is danceable.Santana and Grupo Frontera, ‘Me Retiro’Two generations of Mexican American musicians — the Texas band Grupo Frontera and the guitarist Carlos Santana — make a natural combination in “Me Retiro” (“I’m Leaving”), a song about trying to drink away a heartbreak. Santana sits in with the Grupo Frontera band and, rightly, takes over; his guitar slices through the clip-clop beat and accordion chords and compounds the sorrows that Adelaido “Payo” Solís III sings about.Obongjayar featuring Little Simz, ‘Talk Olympics’Obongjayar — Steven Umoh, a Nigerian musician based in London — has a new album, “Paradise Now,” that’s full of inventive, Pan-African electronic grooves like the zippy staccato propulsion of “Talk Olympics.” With an octave-bouncing bass line and the sounds of balafons, drums, synthesizers and sampled voices, Obongjayar and Little Simz take turns complaining about someone who’s far too chatty: “I let you speak, that was my mistake,” Little Simz notes; Obongjayar adds, in his sweetest falsetto, “Shut up! Shut up!”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Miley Cyrus’s Apocalyptic Pop, and 9 More New Songs

    Hear tracks by Bruce Springsteen, Elton John and Brandi Carlile, Wet Leg and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Miley Cyrus, ‘End of the World’Miley Cyrus has announced that her album “Something Beautiful,” due May 30, will be a “pop opera” and a “visual experience,” with a film to follow in June. One of its early singles, “End of the World,” is a luxurious pop extravaganza with songwriting collaborators including Jonathan Rado from Foxygen and Molly Rankin and Alec O’Hanley from the group Alvvays. A pumping beat, stacked-up guitars, orchestral underpinnings and a platoon of backup vocals abet Cyrus as she calls for one last, desperate chance at pleasure. “Let’s pretend it’s not the end of the world,” she urges. She probably didn’t know she’d be singing through an economic crisis. JON PARELESBruce Springsteen, ‘Rain in the River’Bruce Springsteen was hoarse and howling when he recorded “Rain in the River,” now released as a preview of “Tracks II: The Lost Albums,” an 83-song collection from his archives that will be released in June. It’s a booming, arena-scale cry of anguish with Springsteen’s guitars pealing, droning and spinning gnarled leads. His character gets spurned, told that “Your love means no more to me than rain in the river.” What happens next is ambiguous — and possibly fatal. PARELESElton John and Brandi Carlile, ‘Little Richard’s Bible’Layers of fandom inform “Who Believes in Angels?,” the new duet album by Elton John and Brandi Carlile. Carlile grew up as an ardent fan of John’s songwriting and flamboyant gay identity, while the producer Andrew Watt, who collaborated on the songwriting (along with John’s longtime lyricist, Bernie Taupin), spurs longtime musicians to rediscover their youthful spark. The album’s two opening tracks pay tribute to songwriters that John admired: Laura Nyro and, in this song, Little Richard. John, now 78, sings about Little Richard’s swings between carnality and faith, with high harmonies from Carlile, and he pounds out piano chords as a lifetime rock ’n’ roll believer. PARELESWet Leg, ‘Catch These Fists’A deadpan near-spoken vocal, bristling bass and guitar riffs and a beat that stomps its way into the chorus: those were the ingredients of the English indie-rock band Wet Leg’s 2021 smash, “Chaise Longue.” The group deploys similar elements in “Catch These Fists,” but trades the drolleries of “Chaise Longue” to contend with a more fraught situation: an unwanted pickup attempt at a club. “I know all too well just what you’re like,” Rhian Teasdale tells the suitor. “I don’t want your love — I just wanna fight.” PARELESThe Hives, ‘Enough Is Enough’The swaggering Swedish punks the Hives are back — so soon! — with the first single from an album due Aug. 29 called “Play It Again Sam.” The quintet paused after its 2012 LP “Lex Hives” until 2023, when it returned with “The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons.” (“It was like a slow, 10-year-long panic,” the frontman Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist joked then. “It was never an outright panic because we continued to be so immensely popular worldwide.”) “Enough Is Enough” rides four chords and a wave of frustration to a delightfully tuneful bridge. In the video, Almqvist is the king of the ring — until he takes a punch that lands him in the hospital. Like his powder keg of a band, he rallies. CARYN GANZWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Party Like It’s 2009: The Playlist

    Lady Gaga’s “Mayhem” inspired a look back at a time when indie-rock and Auto-Tuned pop mingled, and the lines between the underground and mainstream blurredGrizzly Bear performing at SXSW in 2009.Josh Haner/The New York TimesDear listeners,I spent the weekend reviewing Lady Gaga’s “Mayhem” and thinking a lot about 2009, a recent moment the album explicitly references. When I was trying to put my finger on exactly what 2009 sounded like, there was only one thing to do: make a playlist.I graduated from college in the fabled year of “Bad Romance” and “Paparazzi” — and of the Black Eyed Peas’ “I Got a Feeling” and Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me” — so I attach a lot of emotions and memories to that musical moment. My favorite 2009 albums at the time were a trifecta of stellar and ambitious indie releases that would come to define their era, too: Animal Collective’s “Merriweather Post Pavilion,” Grizzly Bear’s “Veckatimest” and Dirty Projectors’ “Bitte Orca.” The line between underground and mainstream music was becoming provocatively blurred, in a way that seems a little quaint today. The writer Andrew Unterberger recently devoted an entire episode of his Billboard podcast to an event that somehow made headlines in 2009: Beyoncé and Jay-Z attending a Grizzly Bear concert in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. (Naturally, her cool younger sister, Solange, took them.)You’ll hear Grizzly Bear on this brief tour through 2009, along with higher-profile artists like Miley Cyrus, Jason Derulo and Mariah Carey. This is hardly meant to be a definitive look at the year’s releases, but a quick refresher on what it sounded like to, as I put it in my “Mayhem” review, party like it’s 2009.All up in the blogs,LindsayListen along while you read.1. Phoenix: “Lisztomania”Let’s kick things off with this irresistibly upbeat opening track from the French pop band Phoenix’s 2009 LP, “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix.” This song prompted one of the more wholesome memes of 2009, when a YouTube creator used it to soundtrack a montage of Brat Pack movie dance scenes. That video became such a sensation that it inspired countless copycat clips — including one featuring a future member of Congress.▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTubeWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    How Dolly Parton’s ‘Jolene’ Was Inspired by Her Husband Carl Dean

    She wrote the hit 1973 song after a bank teller caught the eye of Dean, who died on Monday. She attributed its success to its simplicity and the universal emotions it evokes.In the early years of her nearly six-decade marriage, Dolly Parton noticed that her husband was spending a lot of time at the bank, where he had developed a crush on a teller. She told him to knock it off.She later channeled her feelings into “Jolene,” a hit 1973 song. Her fans have been singing its haunting chorus ever since.Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, JoleneI’m begging of you please don’t take my manJolene, Jolene, Jolene, JolenePlease don’t take him just because you can.The song is one of several that Parton’s husband, Carl Dean, an asphalt paver who died on Monday at 82, inspired in the decades after they met outside a Nashville laundromat in 1964. It never reached No. 1 on Billboard’s main singles chart, but it topped the Billboard country chart, earned a Grammy nod and became the most-recorded song of any Parton has written.The album cover for “Jolene” by Dolly Parton.Donaldson Collection/Getty ImagesIn interviews over the years, Parton attributed the song’s staying power to a variety of factors, including the simplicity of its chorus and its “kind of mysterious” minor key.She said many women had told her that they found its story — a woman acknowledging Jolene’s beauty while pleading with her to not steal her husband “just because you can” — relatable.When the song appeared, “Nobody had been writing about affairs from that side of it — to go to the person who was trying to steal your man,” she told the entertainment news site Vulture in 2023.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Miley Cyrus Gives Showgirl Pathos, and 8 More New Songs

    Hear tracks by Benjamin Booker, Julien Baker and Torres, and more.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Miley Cyrus: ‘Beautiful That Way’At 32, Miley Cyrus is an old soul in the guise of a provocative modern pop star, which means that she can nail a slow, torchy ballad in her sleep. She brings expected, husky-voiced pathos to “Beautiful That Way,” a Golden-Globe-nominated song from the soundtrack of “The Last Showgirl,” Gia Coppola’s moody character study that stars Pamela Anderson. “Just like a rose, she’ll cut you with thorns,” Cyrus croons on the track, co-written with Andrew Wyatt and the Swedish musician Lykke Li. “She’s beautiful that way.” LINDSAY ZOLADZSnoop Dogg featuring 50 Cent and Eminem, ‘Gunz N Smoke’Self-congratulation reigns on “Missionary,” the new Snoop Dogg album that reunites him with the producer Dr. Dre and other 1990s Dre protégés — including, on “Gunz N Smoke,” 50 Cent and Eminem. Flaunting a “Gun smoke, gun smoke” sample from “Dead Wrong” (by the Notorious B.I.G. featuring Eminem), the track has the three rappers revisiting belligerent poses that have become all too familiar: “I come from freestylin’ over gunshots and sirens / Nothing more gangster than my voice over these violins,” Snoop Dogg claims. But Eminem admits, “Now I’m much older, and I may be calmer.” JON PARELESMario, ‘Questions’We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Beyoncé’s ‘Cowboy Carter’ Is Here, and It’s Much More Than Country

    The superstar’s new LP is a 27-track tour of popular music with a Beatles cover, cameos by Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton, and features from Miley Cyrus and Post Malone.Beyoncé has gone country, sure … but it turns out that’s only the half of it.For months, the superstar, who made her name in R&B and pop, has been telegraphing her version of country music and style. There was the “disco” cowboy hat at her Renaissance World Tour last year, and her “western” look at the Grammys in February, complete with a white Stetson and black studded jacket. Then, on the night of the Super Bowl, she released two new songs, and sent one of them, “Texas Hold ’Em” — with plucked banjos and lines about Texas and hoedowns — to country radio stations, sparking an industrywide debate about the defensive moat that has long surrounded Nashville’s musical institutions.At midnight on Friday, Beyoncé finally released her new album, “Cowboy Carter,” and the country bona fides were certainly there. Dolly Parton provides a cameo introduction to Beyoncé’s version of “Jolene,” Parton’s 1972 classic about a woman confronting a romantic rival. Willie Nelson pops in twice as a grizzled D.J., who says he “turns you on to some real good [expletive],” including snippets of Chuck Berry, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and the blues singer Son House.Yet “Cowboy Carter” is far broader than simply a country album. Beyoncé does a version of the Beatles’ “Blackbird” and, on the track “Ya Ya,” draws from Nancy Sinatra and the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations.” “Desert Eagle” is glistening funk, and the upbeat “Bodyguard” would not be out of place on a modern rock radio station. The album’s range suggests a broad essay on contemporary pop music, and on the nature of genre itself.That theory is made clear on the partly spoken track “Spaghettii,” featuring the pioneering but long absent Black country singer Linda Martell, who in 1970 released an album called “Color Me Country.”“Genres are a funny little concept, aren’t they? Yes, they are,” Martell, 82, says. “In theory, they have a simple definition that’s easy to understand. But in practice, well, some may feel confined.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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

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