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    On ‘The Great Impersonator,’ Halsey Channels Pop’s Past

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    The singer and songwriter’s fifth album processes intense pain through a high-concept homage to role models including Stevie Nicks, Bruce Springsteen and Britney Spears.Pop stars start out as pop fans. Like countless other listeners, they find songs that move them, sounds they enjoy and public personas they identify with. Then, if they are talented and determined and lucky enough, they forge their own artistic identities and inspire new fans.“The Great Impersonator,” the high-concept new album from Halsey (who uses she/they pronouns), openly pays homage to her role models. On her Instagram, she specifies an influence for each song, among them Kate Bush, David Bowie, Dolly Parton, Björk and Aaliyah. She poses in photos like each one, with wigs and costumes, somewhere between Cindy Sherman and a songwriter’s mood board. And in one song, “Lucky,” she adapts both the title and the chorus of Britney Spears’s “Lucky” to apply to her own time as a pop celebrity. “I told everybody I was fine for a whole damn year,” she sings. “And that’s the biggest lie of my career.”“The Great Impersonator” lets Halsey, who is 30, try on vintage styles, largely acoustic and hand-played. It’s a sharp turn away from the fearsome, exploratory studio arsenal of “If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power,” her 2021 album that was produced by Nine Inch Nails. The explicit concept makes a pre-emptive strike against accusations of derivativeness. Yet even as the album underlines what Halsey has learned from others, it shows what sets her apart: her insistence on channeling intense pain through her songs. In “Only Living Girl in LA,” which opens the new album, Halsey sings, “I wake up every day in some new kind of suffering / I’ve never known a day of peace.”From the beginning — her first EP, “Room 93,” was released in 2014 — Halsey has sung about fierce inner conflicts. On her 2015 album, “Badlands,” she sang, in “Gasoline,” “Do you tear yourself apart to entertain like me?” Her songs juggle traumas, insecurities, obsessions, self-destructive impulses, the imperatives of stardom and the inevitability of death.Songs on “The Great Impersonator” reflect Halsey’s more recent life changes: the birth in 2021 of her son, Ender Ridley Aydin — whose voice appears in a few songs — and her serious health problems. In June, Halsey revealed that she has been under treatment for chronic autoimmune conditions: lupus erythematosus and T-cell lymphoproliferative disorder. And in September, she stated, “I made this record in the space between life and death.”Halsey’s “The Great Impersonator” is full of medical encounters, recognizing the fragility and centrality of the body. “The End” — a Joni Mitchell tribute set to fingerpicked acoustic guitar and high vocal harmonies — sets doctor visits against the solace of love. “I Never Loved You,” with stately piano chords à la Kate Bush, envisions futile surgery after a lovers’ quarrel and a car crash. In “Letter to God (1983),” which hints at the ticking beat and sustained keyboard lines of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire,” Halsey recalls an addicted boyfriend who had “track marks on his arms,” then notes, “Now I’m the one with needles in my arms and in my legs / I’m making jokes about the blood tests and I’m planning my estate.”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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      Charli XCX’s Starry ‘Brat’ Remixes, and 9 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Victoria Monét, Samara Joy, the Linda Lindas 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.Charli XCX featuring Ariana Grande, ‘Sympathy Is a Knife’Now that her “Brat” album has given Charli XCX her long-deserved mass pop audience, she has recharged it with a follow-up album of remixes: “Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat.” On the first version of “Sympathy Is a Knife,” she sang about personal insecurities and a rivalry she couldn’t help feeling, “’Cause I couldn’t even be her if I tried.” The remix has the same two-note synthesizer riff but a new lyric about the vicious precarity of 21st-century stardom: “It’s a knife when you’re finally on top/’cause magically the next step is they wanna see you fall to the bottom.” Ariana Grande, who has been through her own fame roller coaster, makes a natural ally.Obongjayar, ‘Tomorrow Man’Obongjayar, a songwriter from Nigeria who’s now based in London, connects the call-and-response and social exhortations of Fela Kuti’s 1970s Afrobeat to the samples, loops and layering of contemporary computerized African pop in “Tomorrow Man.” Over a deep, thumping beat, he denounces laziness: “If you no work you suffer,” he rasps. Meanwhile, percussion clatters around him and other sounds go whizzing by — flutes, piano, distorted guitar — like career obstacles to be batted away.Victoria Monét, ‘The Greatest’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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      A Nuanced, Unreleased Live Bob Dylan Cut, and 8 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Linkin Park, Halsey, Queen Naija 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.Bob Dylan and the Band, ‘Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues’On Sept. 20, Bob Dylan will release “The 1974 Live Recordings,” the entire gigantic archive — 431 tracks — of his 1974 arena tour with the Band. Most of “Before the Flood,” the 1975 live album culled from that tour, had Dylan shouting brusquely through his 1960s classics. But he never performed a song the same way twice, and there’s far more melody and nuance in this version of “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” from Madison Square Garden. With the Band in full rowdy roadhouse mode — J.R. Robertson’s twangy guitar jabs, Richard Manuel’s honky-tonk piano, Garth Hudson’s wheezy organ — Dylan delivers the lyrics in a long-breathed croon that merges defiance and tribulation. By the time he belts, “Goin’ back to New York City — I do believe I’ve had enough,” he’s earned the inevitable roar from the hometown crowd. JON PARELESCorinne Bailey Rae, ‘SilverCane’With the single “SilverCane,” Corinne Bailey Rae exults in the adventurous streak that she revealed on her 2023 album, “Black Rainbows.” It opens with a blast of noise and — over a parade-worthy drum thump — struts through an ever-morphing funk arrangement. The lyrics mention American towns (though Bailey is English) on the way to envisioning a future where “All the people shout hurray/There will be no more hate.” PARELESLinkin Park, ‘The Emptiness Machine’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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      Plant and Krauss Cover a Led Zeppelin Classic, and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Soccer Mommy, Tems, Floating Points 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.Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, ‘When the Levee Breaks’No one is more entitled to cover Led Zeppelin than its singer, Robert Plant. His close-harmony duo with the singer and fiddler Alison Krauss excels at making songs sound far older than they are, and even in 1971, “When the Levee Breaks” harked back to a vintage blues by Memphis Minnie. This live recording is stark, resonant and rumbling, with a fiddle solo by Stuart Duncan that looks toward both Ireland and Morocco and a cranked-up guitar stomp that builds toward — alas! — a frustrating fade-out. JON PARELESCarly Pearce, ‘Truck on Fire’The spoiler is in the title of “Truck on Fire,” a swinging country revenge song from Carly Pearce’s new album, “Hummingbird.” Her voice seethes as she recalls “the way that you laughed it off when I was catching on/Said it was in my head,” and there’s a dark glee (and a product placement) while she watches the “flames rolling off of your Goodyear tires.” PARELESSabrina Carpenter, ‘Please Please Please’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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      Popcast Mailbag! Halsey, Nicki, TikTok and, of Course, Taylor

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherYou ask, we answer. Or prevaricate. It depends!On this week’s Popcast, part of our semiregular mailbag series, the team takes questions on a range of topics:the year in Taylor Swiftthe quality of Halsey’s new musicthe state of the music videothe ways TikTok can be a lifeline for a legacy actthe direction Drake’s career should head inthe increasingly idiosyncratic vocal styles of young female pop starswhether we still buy physical mediaAnd much more.Guests:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterCaryn Ganz, The New York Times’s pop music editorConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      Kim Kardashian West Takes Aim at Herself in ‘S.N.L.’ Monologue

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      Kardashian West hosted an episode featuring the musical guest Halsey and a parade of celebrity cameos that included John Cena, Chris Rock and Amy Schumer.When it was first announced that Kim Kardashian West would be hosting “Saturday Night Live” this weekend, the feedback was mixed — based on the reaction from some corners, you’d think they had invited Elon Musk or something.But Kardashian West, the reality TV star, entrepreneur, influencer and advocate, gamely poked fun at her own image in a self-mocking “S.N.L.” monologue that also took satirical potshots at her other famous family members and her divorce from the rapper Kanye West.And, as Kardashian West admitted in the routine, she was as surprised as anyone to find herself hosting the show.As she recounted in the monologue: “When they asked, I was like, you want me to host? Why? I haven’t had a movie premiere in a really long time. I mean, I actually I only had that one movie come out and no one told me it was even premiering. It must have slipped my mom’s mind.”Kardashian West said that “S.N.L.” offered her the opportunity to demonstrate that she was “so much more than just a pretty face.”“And good hair,” she added. “And great makeup. And amazing boobs. And a perfect butt. Basically, I’m just so much more than that reference photo my sisters showed their plastic surgeons.”She credited her father, Robert Kardashian, for stoking her interest in social justice while also reminding audiences that he was a member of the defense team at O.J. Simpson’s 1995 murder trial.“My father was and still is such an influence and inspiration to me, and I credit him with really opening up my eyes to racial injustice,” Kardashian West said. “It’s because of him that I met my first Black person. You want to take a stab in the dark at who it was?”Of course, she shouted out Kanye: “I married the best rapper of all time,” Kardashian West said. “Not only that, he’s the richest Black man in America — a talented, legit genius who gave me four incredible kids. So, when I divorced him, you have to know it came down to just one thing: his personality.”And in true “S.N.L.” style, Kardashian West wrapped up the monologue by biting the hand that fed her. “I’m so used to having 360 million followers watching my every move,” she said. “How many people watch ‘S.N.L.,’ like 10 million? So tonight is just a chill, intimate night for me.”Embarrassment of celebrity riches of the weekIf you’re a vaccinated celebrity who lives within driving distance of Rockefeller Center, ask your agent why you weren’t asked to make a cameo on “S.N.L.” this weekend: This one sketch, a send-up of reality dating shows, featured an entire season’s worth of celebrity bookings, with Tyler Cameron, John Cena, Chace Crawford, Blake Griffin, Chris Rock and Jesse Williams appearing as potential suitors for a bachelorette played by Kardashian West.Amy Schumer also appeared as one of the producers of the fictional show, who has decided she wants to vie for Kardashian West’s affections. Maybe don’t get too invested in the hapless contestant played by Kyle Mooney, who is blissfully certain he has just as much of a shot as his famous rivals.Freaky Friday of the weekThere was no way a Kardashian-themed episode of “S.N.L.” was going to leave out the other members of that camera-friendly family. At least some of them are put to good use in “The Switch,” an homage to body-swapping comedies that finds Kardashian West and Aidy Bryant trading identities for what’s supposed to be 24 hours — until Bryant decides she isn’t swapping back. (If that didn’t satisfy your appetite for Kardashian-centric humor, there’s also this parody of “The People’s Court,” featuring a mix of actual Kardashians and “S.N.L.” cast members playing Kardashians and other assorted would-be celebs.)Weekend Update jokes of the weekAt the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che riffed on Facebook’s troubled week, in which a whistle-blower, Frances Haugen, testified about the company’s internal research, and the site and its products suffered lengthy outages.Jost began:This week we found out that sometimes a guy in a hoodie actually can be dangerous. Internal documents show that Facebook knew its platform was used to spread hate and misinformation, but they hid the evidence. Now the weird thing is, I went to school with Mark Zuckerberg and I was there when he created Facebook. And I feel terrible. Sometimes, I wish I had a time machine so I could go back to college and find Mark and say, “Hey, man … can I be part of your company?”He added:Facebook’s also denying a report that says using Instagram can cause users to develop a negative body image. Which explains their rival’s new slogan, TikTok: bring your fat ass over here.Che picked up on the social media thread:This week Instagram was down for an entire day. Forcing many Instagram addicts to fill their time with Twitter, TikTok or hosting “S.N.L.” [Behind him, a screen showed an image of Kardashian West delivering her monologue from earlier in the show.]Then he went on to note some other media news, with a personal touch:Fox News turned 25 this week and they celebrated their birthday the same way that I do: by paying white women to say some nasty stuff.Going your own way of the weekIf a whole generation of “S.N.L.” viewers doesn’t actually know what Lindsey Buckingham sounds like, it might be because they recognize him only as a perpetually silent guest (played by Bill Hader) on the overstuffed talk show “What Up With That?”The onetime Fleetwood Mac singer and guitarist has since been cut loose from his old band and released a new solo album, and “S.N.L.” finally let audiences hear Buckingham’s voice on the show — as sung by himself, accompanying Halsey on a performance of her song “Darling.” (Don’t worry, he still didn’t speak at goodnights.) 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      Halsey Connects Past and Future in 'If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power'

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      On “If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power,” the 26-year-old musician enlists a longtime role model and takes one step back from confessionals.Halsey’s fourth album, “If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power,” announces its character from its first sounds: slowly tolling piano arpeggios with a few notes flatted into dissonance. It’s an unmistakable echo of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” from 1994, the year Halsey was born. The new song, “The Tradition,” opens a cross-generational, album-length collaboration with a longtime influence: Trent Reznor, who started Nine Inch Nails as a solo studio project in 1987, and Atticus Ross, his partner in Oscar-winning film scores and an official member of Nine Inch Nails since 2016.Both Halsey — born Ashley Frangipane, who uses she/they pronouns — and Nine Inch Nails have made it their mission to pack the bleaker impulses of human nature into pop-song structures: noisy, desolate, sometimes assaultive tracks that still resolve into neat verses, choruses and hooks. As far back as Halsey’s first single, “Ghost” in 2014, their ominous, echoey electronic production drew comparisons to Nine Inch Nails; in a way, the new album is a visit to the source.For Reznor and Ross, who supply nearly all the instrumental tracks and produced the album, it’s a chance to work with a new voice, a different melodic sense and a fresh perspective: a young bisexual musician who speaks frankly about mental health. For Halsey, the album is both a homage to 1990s roots and a strategic pivot: away from (seemingly) direct autobiography and toward archetypes.“Manic,” the album Halsey released in January 2020, was a post-breakup album with ample blame for both Halsey and the ex. Its cover was a close-up of Halsey’s face, and it opened with “Ashley” which observed, “I told you I’d spill my guts/I left you to clean it up.” The new album, instead, establishes some formal distance. Its cover has Halsey holding a baby and seated on a throne with one breast bared, like a surreal royal or religious portrait; they unveiled the image while pregnant with their first child, Ender Ridley Aydin, who was born in July. The first track, “The Tradition,” is a cryptic, third-person tale of lonely young women sold into unhappy lives.Even when Halsey returns to first-person through most of the album, their lyrics are less confessional, more general, as if they have stepped back from immediate conflicts. In “Bells in Santa Fe,” as tension builds with repeated tones and looming distortion, Halsey ponders their tendencies to approach and avoid, with a reminder that “All of this is temporary.” In “Girl Is a Gun,” the vocal is giggly and teasing, lilting amid rapid-fire percussion, as Halsey flirts — “Let me show you how to touch my trigger” — but also warns, “You’ll be better with a nice girl, darling.”The album was a long-distance project, with Reznor and Ross recording in Los Angeles and Halsey singing nearly all of the songs at a studio in Turks and Caicos. (They also got remote contributions from Dave Grohl, slamming the drums in “Honey,” and Lindsey Buckingham, picking a folky guitar in “Darling.”) Yet the combination melded because Halsey and Nine Inch Nails have so much in common: skill at generating drama through sheer sound, along with a willingness to admit the worst. Halsey can be self-lacerating. In “Whispers,” which begins with Reznor’s bare-bones piano and turns into a mechanized dirge, they admit, “I sabotage the things I love the most.” In “I Am Not a Woman, I’m a God,” Halsey immediately mocks such self-aggrandizement: “I am not a legend, I’m a fraud.”And in “You Asked for This” — with Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio piling on multiple overdriven guitars — Halsey questions whether being “a big girl” means trading ambition and adventurousness for boring stability: “Lemonade in crystal glasses/Picket fences, filing taxes.” It starts out hurtling ahead like a Smashing Pumpkins rocker, then drops to half-speed for a finale like a grunge remake of the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life.” But Halsey still craves turbulence. “I want a beautiful boy’s despondent laughter/I want to ruin all my plans,” they sing.Halsey has been releasing music since their teens, and at 26, they’re gaining a longer view. The album ends with “Ya’burnee,” an Arabic phrase for “you bury me” that implies not wanting to outlive a beloved partner: a lifelong commitment. True to both Halsey and Nine Inch Nails, the song has a morbid streak. But it’s also subdued, willing itself toward calm, as if growing up might not be all bad.Halsey“If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power”(Capitol) More