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      Liverpool Will Host 2023 Eurovision Song Contest

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      The popular competition would have been held in Ukraine, which won this year’s event, but safety concerns sent it to Britain instead.Liverpool will host the Eurovision Song Contest in 2023, organizers of the musical competition announced on Friday, choosing the birthplace of the Beatles for one of Europe’s premier cultural events.The M&S Bank Arena, an 11,000-capacity arena, will stage the competition on May 13, 2023, organizers said.The announcement capped an unusual selection process, in which Ukraine, which earned the right to host next year’s event after winning this year’s contest, was ruled out by Eurovision organizers, who said the war-torn country could not provide the necessary “security and operational guarantees.”Instead, Britain, the runner-up in 2022, was named host. Liverpool was selected from a shortlist of seven cities that also included Glasgow, the runner-up, along with Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle and Sheffield.Hosting Eurovision “means everything” for Liverpool, the city’s director of culture, Claire McColgan, told the BBC on Friday.“We’re doing it for Ukraine first of all, for our brilliant city and for the people who come here,” Ms. McColgan said. “It’s going to be incredible.”Ukraine had offered three potential locations that it said were safe from the fighting: Lviv, in western Ukraine; the Zakarpattia region, which borders Hungary and Slovakia; and the capital, Kyiv.But the European Broadcasting Union, which organizes the competition, announced in July that Britain would host instead. At the time, Martin Österdahl, Eurovision’s executive supervisor, pledged that Ukraine would be “celebrated and represented throughout the event,” with representatives from a Ukrainian broadcaster working with the BBC.Tim Davie, the director general of the BBC, also said the network was “committed to making the event a true reflection of Ukrainian culture alongside showcasing the diversity of British music and creativity.”Eurovision began in 1956, gathering musical artists from countries across Europe, as well as some farther afield, including Australia and Israel.Britain has hosted the event eight times, most recently in 1998 in Birmingham.The selection will bring a major international spotlight to Liverpool. Over 160 million people watched in May as Kalush Orchestra, a Ukrainian rap act, was crowned the winner in Turin, Italy.Sixty-two years after the Beatles formed, Liverpool remains closely tied to the enormously influential rock band. The band is central to the city’s tourism, with Beatles-themed museums, tours and a statue along the waterfront.Though Liverpool has produced fewer star international acts recently, the local music scene is small-scale and “healthy,” said Karl Whitney, the author of “Hit Factories: A Journey Through the Industrial Cities of British Pop.” There are “lots of great bands from Liverpool,” he said, “but the Beatles, obviously, sort of overshadow everything.”The city plans collaborations with Ukrainian street artists, designers and musicians to bring the country’s culture to the city, The Liverpool Echo reported this week. Claire McColgan, the director of Culture Liverpool, told the newspaper that “this is their party, it just happens to be in our house,” referring to the Ukrainians.“If we are chosen as host city there’s no question Eurovision will take over Liverpool in a way no single event has ever done before,” she said this week. More

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      in Television

      Britain Wonders, Is It Too Soon to Dramatize the Pandemic?

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      A new Sky Atlantic mini-series, “This England,” depicts the early days of Covid-19 in the country, with Kenneth Branagh playing Boris Johnson.LONDON — In the final moments of the new mini-series “This England,” Boris Johnson, the exhausted and embattled British prime minister, stares bleakly out of a window at 10 Downing Street and falls back, as he often does, on Shakespeare.“This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,” says Johnson, who is played by Kenneth Branagh in the series, a six-part drama about Britain’s ordeal with the coronavirus pandemic.“We usually leave it there, you know,” he says, turning to his anxious wife, Carrie (Ophelia Lovibond), who is cradling their newborn child. “Forget the rest.”But Johnson goes on to recite the end of John of Gaunt’s deathbed soliloquy from “Richard II,” with its damning reproach of the king. “That England, that was wont to conquer others,” he says, “hath made a shameful conquest of itself.”It is a fitting coda to a much-talked-about show in Britain, a series that captures the everyday heroism of Britons during the pandemic, but also the failings of their leaders and how those failings contributed to a dilatory response that arguably deepened the nation’s suffering and led to needless additional deaths.“This England,” which debuted with solid ratings on Wednesday on Sky Atlantic in Britain, chronicles, almost day-by-day, how the first wave of the pandemic swept across the country. To many, the timing is curious, given that the latest wave of the virus hasn’t even ebbed yet.Work on “This England” began in June 2020, not long after the first Covid-19 wave had rampaged across the country.Phil Fisk/Sky AtlanticMichael Winterbottom, the British documentary filmmaker who wrote the script with Kieron Quirke, said that he viewed the show as a “mosaic of many people’s experiences,” from those of Johnson and his advisers to those of doctors and nurses — and, above all, of the dying — in the overwhelmed hospitals and nursing homes.“The goal was to be human and, I think, humane,” Winterbottom said in a joint interview with Branagh. “To honor and acknowledge this incredible, painful loss.” For all the government’s confusion and missteps, he added, “There was a sense that everybody was doing their best.”Yet inevitably, “This England” shows people falling short. Caught in the fog of a mysterious illness, some in government, like Johnson, initially underestimated the risk. Others were compelled to make bad personal choices, like the prime minister’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, who drove 260 miles, in breach of lockdown, to visit his family as the virus struck.Work on “This England” began in June 2020, not long after the first wave had rampaged across the country, and the desperate scenes in ambulances and hospital intensive care units have an anguished immediacy. Much of the commentary about the show in Britain has focused on whether it’s too soon to dramatize all of this.Nearly 300 people died of Covid-19 in England in the seven days ending on Sept. 17; more than 4,000 were admitted to hospitals. The government is still pleading with people to get their booster shots. Johnson was drummed out of office only two months ago after a scandal over parties at Downing Street that violated lockdown rules.The outcry over the parties does not figure in the film, which ends instead with the misbegotten road trip Cummings made to his parents’ house in the north of England after his wife contracted Covid. This abridged timeline led The Financial Times to declare that the show “pulls off the unusual feat of feeling simultaneously premature and dated.”When the series opens, Johnson’s girlfriend, Carrie Symonds (Ophelia Lovibond), is pregnant.Phil Fisk/Sky Atlantic“This England” has also had to contend with a torrent of other news. Sky pushed back the series by a week after the death of Queen Elizabeth II on Sept. 8, which plunged the country into 10 days of mourning. It premiered at a time when the government of Johnson’s replacement, Liz Truss, caused a run on the pound by announcing a plan to cut taxes despite double-digit inflation.Winterbottom acknowledged that the show was a first cut and that some might prefer the cooler perspective that comes with distance, which might be found in future books or films about the pandemic. But his goal was to make a kind of diary of a national trauma, he said. “By being close,” he noted, “you’re able to get a fresher view.”The other big debate is over Branagh’s performance as Johnson. The actor, a 61-year-old Oscar-winner, wore a blonde wig, prosthetics and padding to assume the 58-year-old politician’s shambling appearance.Some critics praised Branagh for nailing Johnson’s propulsive gait and peculiar diction. Another dismissed it as an impersonation that recalled the puppets on “Spitting Image,” a British TV show that satirized public figures of the 1980s and ’90s.Branagh, who has played real-life figures including Franklin D. Roosevelt and the German SS officer Reinhard Heydrich, said that he and the writers had debated how closely he should try to mimic Johnson. They concluded that the former prime minister was too vivid in people’s minds to stray far from the O.G.“With somebody so prominently in the public eye,” Branagh said, “I think it’s harder to serve to an audience something that is very, very different — that is stylized and abstract.”The series shows Johnson initially underestimating the risk posed by the coronavirus.Phil Fisk/Sky AtlanticTo plumb Johnson’s interior life, Branagh said that he had read all the former prime minister’s books, including his biography of Winston Churchill, as well as his newspaper columns for The Daily Telegraph. He came to see Johnson as a kind of “poet-politician,” ambitious and combative, but also emotionally separated from those around him by the crushing weight of his job.That translated to the production. “I didn’t really have small talk with other actors,” Branagh recalled. “It was as if there was already a sense that you must be burdened, and if you are burdened, you must be left alone.”Branagh watched footage of Johnson hustling through the House of Commons to capture his distinctive forward-leaning posture. He said that he had been especially struck by a video in which Johnson, then the mayor of London, runs down a 10-year-old boy while playing rugby during a visit to Japan. “This barreling-forward intensity, almost unstoppable, is just part of the propulsion,” Branagh said.But “This England” also offers a sympathetic portrayal of a harried man with a tangled personal life. Between crisis meetings and late-night awakenings to soothe his crying baby, Johnson is depicted as plaintively leaving voice mail messages for his adult children. It suggests a painful rift after Johnson divorced his second wife, Marina, and moved in with Carrie, who worked as a Tory Party communications aide.“This England” also captures the cramped, claustrophobic work environment in Downing Street, which doubles as the prime minister’s home and the headquarters of the British government. There are tracking shots of aides walking and talking about urgent matters of state, which recall the Aaron Sorkin series “West Wing.” The close quarters nearly became deadly after Johnson himself contracted Covid and wound up in an intensive care unit for three days.Dominic Cummings (Simon Paisley Day) is depicted as arrogant, entitled and contemptuous of his colleagues. Phil Fisk/Sky AtlanticTo the extent that there are heroes and villains, the show clearly puts Cummings in the black hat category. Played by Simon Paisley Day, he is depicted as arrogant, entitled and contemptuous of his colleagues. Winterbottom said that the producers had reached out to all the principals to gather their accounts.When the show takes the camera out of Downing Street, “This England” abruptly shifts from a political procedural to a tragedy. There are many scenes in hospitals and nursing homes, some of which were filmed in a real nursing home with actual residents and nursing staff, who were essentially re-enacting their experiences.“Our starting point was to make everything as accurate as possible, as authentic as possible,” Winterbottom said.It adds up to a heartbreaking depiction of the pressure on health workers, and the fear, pain and often lonely deaths of those hooked up to ventilators. By the final episode, it is easy to understand why a tormented Johnson would stand at a window, peer into a cold dawn and mourn how a disease had conquered his “sceptered isle.” More

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      in Theater

      Eldjarn and Das Are Stars at Home, but Not at Edinburgh Fringe

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      Over 1,000 stand-ups play the Edinburgh Festival Fringe each year, hoping for a big break. Some are already huge names elsewhere.EDINBURGH — When Ari Eldjarn, one of Iceland’s most popular comedians, takes the stage in his native country, it’s usually to sold-out crowds. In the spring, he played 15 dates in a 1,000-capacity auditorium in Reykjavik. The total audience for the run was equivalent to over 10 percent of the city’s population.Yet at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Eldjarn, 40, has found himself in less celebrated surroundings: the fourth room of the Monkey Barrel Comedy Club. On a recent evening, there were about 50 people in that space for Eldjarn’s daily show, “Saga Class,” with three rows of empty seats at the back. The air conditioning whirred loudly, and the thud of dance music occasionally intruded from another show upstairs.“Can you hear me all right?” Eldjarn asked as he came onstage. “I hear myself really well,” he said, pointing to the venue’s main speaker, which was just feet from his head. “But I have no idea if the people at the back hear anything.” Eldjarn then introduced himself as an Icelandic comedian, getting one of his first laughs of the act. “I love being in Edinburgh,” he added, “because there are actually other comedians here.”Vir Das’s Edinburgh show, “Wanted,” is focused on a stir he caused in India with a monologue that examined the country’s paradoxes and divisions.Jaime Molina for The New York TimesThe Edinburgh Fringe has for decades been an event that stand-up comedians flock to, hoping to make it big. Hannah Gadsby, an Australian comedian, won the festival’s main comedy award in 2017 with “Nanette,” a show that went on to become a Netflix phenomenon the next year; previous nominees for that prize include Eddie Izzard, Bo Burnham and James Acaster. At this year’s Fringe, which runs through Aug. 29, more than 1,300 comedians are performing. Most are little known in Britain, and some have to drum up their own audiences by handing out fliers on the street. Yet among them are a handful of comedians, like Eldjarn, who are actually big stars in their homes countries.Also appearing at this year’s Fringe is Stian Blipp, a Norwegian TV star, and Vir Das, an Indian comedian who has 7.7 million Twitter followers and multiple Netflix specials to his name. In Edinburgh, Das is playing to just over 100 people a day, if his show sells out.After his recent show, Eldjarn discovered that audience members had left him just over £20, or about $24, in a tip bucket by the door. He then walked across the street to spend the money on burgers for himself and one of his daughters.“This is definitely like starting over again,” Eldjarn said. In Iceland, he could “just go confidently onstage, make stuff up and people will laugh,” he added. But in Edinburgh, he said, “you really need a lot of good material.”To make his show — which includes jokes about turning 40 and disliking vaping — Eldjarn said he had taken one of his Icelandic sets, deleted anything that would not translate to a British audience, then tried to “salvage as much as possible” as he translated it into English. He was tweaking the routine daily in Edinburgh to try to get bigger laughs, he added.Blipp, the Norwegian comic, said in a telephone interview that he was also nervous about performing in Edinburgh. “I feel like a little boy again,” he said, “like I’m doing a second debut.”Inside the Teviot Row House Student Union, a small Fringe venue for stand-up acts.Jaime Molina for The New York TimesThe Monkey Barrel Comedy Club, where Eldjarn is performing.Jaime Molina for The New York TimesYet not all of the international stars at this year’s fringe were anxious. Das, the Indian comedian, said being in Edinburgh was “very much a holiday, if I’m honest.” He said he was usually on the road so much that it was a luxury to spend a month in Scotland working on his next special and soaking up experiences that might inform future comedy routines.Das, 43, is an old hand at the festival. He first performed in 2011, he said, in a venue “at the back of a pool hall at the back of a video game arcade.” For most of that run, he got only three or four audience members a night, he recalled. Another year, he said he built an audience with the help of a unique take on handing out fliers: He printed the show details on fake bank notes and dropped them around the city.This year, Das was not using any gimmicks to promote his hourlong show, “Wanted,” which was mostly sold out. (It is playing in a 102-capacity basement venue — a far cry from his last tour dates in Mumbai, where he said he played 10 shows at the 1,109-seater Jamshed Bhabha Theater over five days.)“Wanted” is focused on a furor Das caused in India last year, after he posted a monologue online called “Two Indias” in which he examined the country’s paradoxes and divisions. Das said the monologue, which had been performed at a show in Washington, was a way of showing his love for India and calling for social unity, but some accused him of defaming the nation. A spokesman for the governing Bharatiya Janata Party filed an official complaint (Das said in his show that the police had decided not to take it forward, and had dismissed other complaints) and a prominent Bollywood actress accused Das on social media of engaging in “soft terrorism,” a comment widely picked up on Indian news media. In his Edinburgh show, Das said, “I remember thinking, ‘This is so insulting to actual terrorists.’”Das said he used to adjust his material for Edinburgh audiences, but does not do that anymore. Many in the audience were British Indians, who came to his show to hear what India was like today, Das said, whereas Western audiences wanted to learn something new about Indian life. “Strangely, it’s become more important to tell an authentically Indian story for both the Indian and Western audiences,” Das said.In India, Das plays theaters that hold more than 1,000 spectators. In Edinburgh, he’s performing at a 102-capacity venue.Jaime Molina for The New York TimesAt a recent show, Das walked into the sweaty basement to booming music, as if he were entering an arena. He drew immediate laughs by remarking on the racial mix of the crowd. “I see Indian people,” he said. “I see people sleeping with Indian people,” he added. “I see random locals who thought Vir Das was a German comedian and are now thinking, ‘This isn’t what we thought it’d be.’”Then, he told a few preliminary jokes to give latecomers a chance to arrive before he started his routine. “It takes a while to get British crowds warm, and Indian crowds in,” he explained. (In India, a warm-up act does this before he comes on.)When the show ended, Das posed for a group selfie with audience members outside the venue — a requisite of the star comic the world over. After a gig in India, Das said, he would typically jump in a car to his hotel like any other celebrity. But here, he simply walked off, carrying a backpack. Barely anyone gave him a second glance. More

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      in Movies

      Bernard Cribbins, British Actor Known for ‘Doctor Who,’ Is Dead at 93

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      Mr. Cribbins’s long career included roles on stage, film and television.Bernard Cribbins, a British actor who had roles on “Doctor Who” and “Fawlty Towers,” and whose contributions to children’s programs delighted young audiences over a career that spanned seven decades, has died, his agent said on Thursday. He was 93.In a statement, the management and talent agency, Gavin Barker Associates, did not say when or where Mr. Cribbins died.Mr. Cribbins worked well into his 90s, the agency said, in a career that influenced some of the best-known comedy, drama and children’s programs in Britain. He started acting at the age of 14 in the Oldham repertory company. This period of onstage work broadened into other media, including television and film, for which he became widely known, according to IMDB.He was awarded an Order of the British Empire in 2011 for his contributions to the arts. In addition to dozens of roles in film and television, he recorded the 1960s novelty song “Right Said Fred.”For three decades, Mr. Cribbins was regularly featured on “Jackanory,” a BBC children’s program in which an actor read books to young audiences. The program, which ran between 1965 and 1996, was meant to arouse an interest in reading.In one of his more than 100 readings, of “The Wizard of Oz” in 1970, Mr. Cribbins infused the voices of Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion, the Wizard and other characters with a full dramatic repertoire of whispers, tremors and shrieks.When he was awarded a BAFTA Special Award in 2009, he grew serious in an interview when asked about the hugely popular “Jackanory” and how it had influenced young audiences.“All you have to do,” he said, “is look down the lens, find one child, and just talk to that child. And you pull them in.”“It really works, and you think all over the country there will be little kids saying, ‘Just a minute, Mum,’ and they will be looking. And the stories, as I said before, were wonderful,” he said.Mr. Cribbins was born in Oldham, England, just outside Manchester, on Dec. 29, 1928, according to IMDB. After his early stage career, he narrated “The Wombles,” a 1970s animated television program created from a series of books about underground creatures, and joined the cast of the science-fiction TV series “Doctor Who” from 2007 to 2010. He had also appeared in a Doctor Who movie, “Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.,” in 1966.Mr. Cribbins, left, and his co-star David Tennant collected an award for “Doctor Who,” which was named most popular drama at Britain’s National Television Awards in 2010.Photo by Ian West/PA Images via Getty ImagesIn the TV series, which the producer Russell T Davies revived in 2005, Mr. Cribbins played a recurring role as the grandfather of one of the Doctor’s companions, Donna Noble, played by Catherine Tate. In an Instagram post on Thursday, Mr. Davies wrote that Mr. Cribbins “loved being in Doctor Who. He said, ‘Children are calling me grandad in the street!’”Mr. Davies wrote that Mr. Cribbins had once “turned up with a suitcase full of props, just in case, including a rubber chicken.” He added, “He’d phone up and say, ‘I’ve got an idea! What if I attack a Dalek with a paintball gun?!’ Okay, Bernard, in it went!”Mr. Cribbins also starred in the 1970 film “The Railway Children,” based on the children’s book by Edith Nesbit. A review in The New York Times called it “a perfectly lovely little British movie” and said Mr. Cribbins was “excellent” as the stationmaster Albert Perks in a “simple tale about three children who putter around a Yorkshire village, sharing a loving kindness learned at home.”In 1975, Mr. Cribbins appeared in an episode of the comedy series “Fawlty Towers,” starring John Cleese as the hapless manager of a seaside hotel. Mr. Cribbins played a guest mistaken by Mr. Cleese’s character for a hotel inspector, who is trying to order a cheese salad for lunch and instead is served an omelet.A list of survivors was not immediately available. Mr. Cribbins’s wife, the actor Gillian McBarnet, died in October last year.In the interview after receiving the BAFTA award in 2009, Mr. Cribbins and his “Doctor Who” co-star Ms. Tate spoke about how quickly time had gone by during his long career.“I can remember a lot of things with total clarity, total recall,” he said, before adding jokingly, “I’ve got stories I haven’t even thought of yet.” More

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      in Music

      Grime Transformed British Music. A New Exhibition Traces How.

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      “Grime Stories: From the Corner to the Mainstream” at the Museum of London highlights the 20-year-old history and far-reaching impact of the British rap genre.LONDON — On a wall-mounted screen at the Museum of London, a low-resolution video showed young people rapping quickly and hungrily over syncopated beats. Every so often, a decidedly 2000s graphic flashed on the screen, reading “Risky Roadz 2.”The video is an early work from Roony “RiskyRoadz” Keefe, who documented the early days of grime, the muscular British rap genre. Keefe first picked up a camera to chronicle the nascent scene in 2004, and made DVDs of the freestyles he recorded.“I’d hear an M.C. and think, ‘You’re good, put them on,’” Keefe said in a telephone interview. The DVD helped propel the rapper in the scene, like he was an A&R talent scout, he added.Almost two decades later, Keefe, 37, is a co-curator of “Grime Stories: From the Corner to the Mainstream,” a small but heartfelt exhibition currently on view at the Museum of London until December that looks back at the early days of grime, and the context from which it emerged.“It’s a big thing, you know,” Keefe said. “You never think you’re going to end up in a museum.”Initially a tight-knit scene formed by young people in East London, grime now occupies a prized position in mainstream British music and culture. The genre’s selling power is so significant, Ikea featured D Double E, an East London M.C., in its 2019 Christmas advertisement. In politics, the 2017 campaign #Grime4Corbyn harnessed rappers’ clout, encouraging young people to back the then-leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn.At the 2015 Brit Awards — Britain’s version of the Grammys — Kanye West performed with a host of grime artists. Drake has long embraced the genre, featuring the rappers Skepta and Giggs on his “More Life” mixtape in 2017, getting a tattoo of Skepta’s Boy Better Know crew, and helping to revive the cult TV show “Top Boy,” which stars the grime artist Kano and is set in East London.“Grime Stories” was designed as a “venue to speak about the real lived experience of East Londoners,” said Dhelia Snoussi, a curator at the Museum of London. A way to “tell some of the important stories that are lesser heard.”When it emerged in the early 2000s, grime was an urgent affirmation of identity. It developed as an evolution from and reaction to garage, a popular Black British dance genre that had moved in flashy, pop directions. Other British forms of rap had become overly Americanized, some felt, with slang borrowed from across the Atlantic. The creators of grime wanted instead to speak to life in their corner of London.Jammer’s basement was a key space in grime’s evolution, memorialized by the layers of artists’ tags covering the walls.John Chase/Museum of LondonThe exhibition was built around Keefe, who, as well as running a production company and directing, is a London black cabdriver. His knowledge of the city’s streets was a way to tell the story of the community surrounding the genre, but the curators “immediately realized that a lot of the places we wanted to take the cab to were no longer there,” Snoussi said, and gentrification became a focal point for the exhibition.The show includes short documentaries and memorabilia like Keefe’s first camcorder and a bag from Rhythm Division record shop, a hub in grime’s early days. (It is now a coffee shop.)Particularly for purists, grime is a genre with strict technical parameters, including a tempo of 140 beats per minute. But it’s also a way of thinking about community and identity. “It’s not a BPM, it’s not a sound, it’s everything,” says a video in the exhibition.The scene developed around public housing in East London, and its specificity of place is evident in the exhibition’s partial reconstruction of a basement belonging to the family of Jammer, one of the genre’s pioneering figures. Jammer’s basement hosted early collaborations, freestyles and recordings, memorialized by the layers of artists’ tags covering the walls.DJ Target, who now hosts a show on the BBC’s Radio 1Xtra station, was part of those early days. Grime soon became a culture, which influenced “how people dressed, how they would speak, how they looked, the haircut they would get, the slang words they were using,” he said. “And all of it just felt like it was ours.”That desire to see real experiences reflected in music was also a reaction to the young rappers’ environment. Despite growing up in London with parents who also may have grown up in Britain, early grime artists “were still trying to negotiate and find that sense of belonging,” said Joy White, an academic who has studied the genre since 2007.Success was initially localized, but then came 2003, a year that Dan Hancox, a music journalist, described as a “critical, explosive moment” for grime — similar to what 1977 was for punk. In 2003, the 19-year-old rapper Dizzee Rascal released his debut album, “Boy In Da Corner,” which went on to win Britain’s top music accolade, the Mercury Prize.“That was a seminal moment for everybody to look and see that this is actually possible to do on a much bigger scale,” Target said.In the subsequent near-decade, more artists emerged from the grime scene to become influential figures in British music, despite record labels signing many rappers and then letting them languish.In the 2010s, many grime rappers embraced a more mainstream-friendly sound. Wiley had chart success with dance-focused tracks like “Wearing My Rolex” in 2008 and “Heatwave” in 2012. Artists like Tinchy Stryder, Skepta and Tinie Tempah also started climbing the British charts.The exhibition includes a gray Trinity Korg keyboard owned by Jammer and borrowed by Skepta to produce “That’s Not Me,” a 2014 track that announced a return to grime authenticity.That same year, a young M.C. from south London called Stormzy released his debut EP. Today, Stormzy is grime’s most successful breakout. “Without a brand-new star with the extraordinary, unique charisma and talent that Stormzy has,” Hancox said, “you wouldn’t have grime landing itself in the popular consciousness in the way it has.”Stormzy, now 28 and a household name in Britain, represents both grime’s far-reaching influence and how the genre has changed, with tracks on his albums swinging from more traditional grime to more recent genre innovations in Black British music.The influence of grime is built into the D.N.A. of many of those genres, including Afroswing, U.K. drill and road rap. The inspiration has moved in the other direction, too, and grime has evolved to encompass more fluidity and diversity in the beats and styles M.C.s choose to rap over.Jammer embraces these changes. “What people tend to say is, we want it to sound like the old days,” he said. “It’s not the old days.”“I’m here for the new, I’m here for the exciting,” he added. More

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      in Music

      Black Country, New Road, a Breakout Band, Starts Over (Again)

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      The group lost its lead singer just as it was gaining widespread acclaim. Its members have come up with an unusual solution.MANCHESTER, England — Last month, the six members of Black Country, New Road were joking around in a cramped rehearsal room about to try something new: everyone singing lead vocals.First, Tyler Hyde, the group’s bassist, sat forward and sang — her voice jumping between a smooth pop cry and a raucous shout. Next May Kershaw, usually on piano, took over, her voice gentle and brittle like a folk singer’s. Then Lewis Evans, the saxophonist, crooned two songs.“Dope as hell,” Charlie Wayne, the band’s drummer, said as Evans finished. Evans didn’t seem too sure. “I was a bit too slow!” he said, sounding frustrated.Just six months ago, Black Country, New Road, one of Britain’s rising rock acts, was a very different proposition. Back then, lead vocals were the domain of just one frontman: Isaac Wood, an intense and sometimes anxious-sounding singer, whose lovelorn lyrics helped Black Country, New Road win fan and critical devotion. The group’s debut album, “For the First Time,” was nominated last year for a Mercury Prize, Britain’s most important music award. Its second, “Ants From Up There,” was named a New York Times Critic’s Pick.But just before New Year’s Eve, Wood sent his bandmates a Facebook message. He couldn’t be in the public eye anymore, he said. The stress of pouring his heart out onstage was too much. He was leaving.Wayne said that when that message arrived, the band’s first thought was “the safety of our friend.” But once that was assured — Wood is in a much better place now, Evans said, happily working in a cake shop — the remaining members had to decide what to do next.Several of the bandmates gathered to discuss that moment in a sunny yard after the rehearsal last month. Splitting up was never an option, Kershaw said, since “playing together is so important to us.”The bandmates seemed to disagree on how hard restarting had been, though. When Evans said that beginning again after Wood’s departure “didn’t feel like a big deal,” Hyde and Kershaw gave each other confused looks, and laughed nervously. But his departure did make everyone appreciate more fully just how much pressure a band’s lead singer can be under. So they found a solution: share the load.A crowd gathers for Black Country, New Road’s first Manchester gig with its new lineup.Alex Ingram for The New York TimesThe bassist Hyde’s vocals fall between a smooth pop cry and a raucous shout.Alex Ingram for The New York TimesWhen Evans, center, opened a song with a jaunty saxophone melody, he was greeted by whoops from the audience. Alex Ingram for The New York TimesAt Wood’s urging, they kept the band name but decided to stop playing the tracks he had sung (Wood did not respond to requests for comment for this story). This meant that, before the rehearsal, the musicians had spent five intense, fun, but occasionally stressful, months writing nine songs to fulfill European festival dates this summer. Without the income from those appearances, Evans said, they would have had to get jobs, so they would have hardly been able to play together at all.The growing financial and emotional pressures on musicians have long been the focus of media attention in Britain. In 2017, Help Musicians, a nonprofit, set up a 24-hour help line to offer support for those with mental health issues or financial anxieties. Such worries only grew when the pandemic shut live venues, while the cost of living crisis has caused further concerns.Wood’s departure illustrated those pressures, said John Doran, a music journalist who has long championed Black Country, New Road. Being in a successful indie band could once lead to a good lifestyle. Now, Doran said in a telephone interview, acts exhaust themselves “to maybe one day have a mortgage and not need a side job.” It’s “no wonder musicians are under so much stress,” Doran added. “I do not envy them that at all.”This is, in fact, the second time the members of Black Country, New Road — all still in their early 20s — have had to restart.Four years ago, almost all of them were playing in another act, called Nervous Conditions, which was on the verge of breaking through in Britain’s competitive indie music scene. With only a couple of tracks online, taste-making websites declared the group one of the country’s “most exciting propositions,” and representatives from record labels flocked to its shows. But then its frontman, Connor Browne, facing anonymous accusations of sexual assault, issued a statement apologizing for the hurt caused, and the group disbanded.Hyde said that the bandmates had learned lessons from that moment. After the split, “the whole ethos became, ‘We’re doing this for us and because we want to,’” she said. Since then, the band has rewritten songs and changed lyrics whenever they’ve become bored of them, she added.When asked how they managed to keep reinventing themselves, the musicians said that having so many band members with different interests helped. But for the group’s fans, other factors were more important. Geordie Greep of black midi, a London-based band that is touring the United States with Black Country, New Road in September, said in a telephone interview that the group’s members were virtuosic musicians. That gave them the ingenuity to keep changing their style, he said.The members of Black Country, New Road — most of whom have known each other since they were in high school — also clearly had a strong communal bond, Greep added. “These guys genuinely go out of their way to just hang out as friends,” he said, sounding a little bemused. Most bands, including his own, don’t do that, he noted.Splitting up was never an option, said Kershaw, second from left, since “playing together is so important to us.”Alex Ingram for The New York TimesEven for such a close group of musicians, the process of stepping up to lead vocals has not always been easy. Evans said that he “got shakes” the first time he sang a track he’d written to his bandmates. Kershaw said that she had found it “nerve-racking,” and told everyone “not to worry” if they thought her tracks weren’t “the right vibe.” She squirmed on her seat as she recalled the memory.But with shows looming, the band members had to overcome their nerves again to sing in front of paying audiences. A few days later, the band walked onstage at the Pink Room, a music venue in Manchester, northern England, filled with 250 people (the group canceled a sold-out 1,800-capacity show in the city shortly after Wood left).If Evans was still nervous, he did not need to be. As soon as he started playing a jaunty saxophone melody to open the track “Up Song,” he was greeted by whoops from the audience. When the band got to the raucous chorus, the crowd started jumping up and down and chanting along, as if they’d heard the song hundreds of times. “Look at what we did together,” the band sang in unison, “BC, NR/Friends forever.”A few tracks later, even the bar staff fell silent as Kershaw sang “Turbines/Pigs,” an eight-minute song in which she plays a gentle piano melody while singing, “Don’t waste your pearls on me/I’m only a pig.”After 45 minutes, the band walked offstage with a few polite waves goodbye. Some fans shouted for more, until they realized that Black Country, New Road couldn’t come back for an encore even if they wanted to. The new incarnation had played all the songs it had. More

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      Ukraine Is Ruled Out of Staging Eurovision in 2023.

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      Kalush Orchestra, a Ukrainian rap act, gave a huge morale boost last month to its war-torn country by cruising to victory at the Eurovision Song Contest — the world’s most watched and glitziest song contest.That win, with the song “Stefania,” meant that Ukraine also won the right to stage the next contest, scheduled for May 2023. But Eurovision’s organizers announced on Friday that would not be possible.The organizers, the European Broadcasting Union, said in a news release that it had concluded “with deep regret” that Russia’s continuing invasion of Ukraine meant that Ukraine could not provide “the security and operational guarantees” needed to host the event, which sees musicians representing countries from across Europe compete against each other for points.The European Broadcasting Union said it would instead start discussions with the BBC about hosting the event in Britain because Britain’s Sam Ryder came second in last month’s contest.The BBC confirmed in an emailed statement that it would enter those discussions. “Clearly,” it said, “these aren’t a set of circumstances that anyone would want.”Wherever the event is staged, Kalush Orchestra is likely to feature. “It is our full intention that Ukraine’s win will be reflected in next year’s shows,” the European Broadcasting Union said. “This will be a priority for us in our discussions with the eventual hosts,” it added.Kalush Orchestra did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Ukraine has held the twice event before, most recently in 2017. More

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      Harvey Weinstein Facing Indecent Assault Charges in Britain

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      British prosecutors said they authorized criminal charges against Mr. Weinstein for an incident in 1996.The British authorities have authorized criminal charges against Harvey Weinstein on two counts of indecent assault against a woman in 1996 in London, the country’s Crown Prosecution Service announced in a news release Wednesday.Mr. Weinstein, 70, has been convicted of felony sex crimes in New York and is awaiting trial in Los Angeles, where he has been charged with several counts of forcible rape, among other charges.“Charges have been authorized against Harvey Weinstein, 70, following a review of the evidence gathered by the Metropolitan Police in its investigation,” Rosemary Ainslie, the head of the prosecution service’s special crime division, said in a statement.The Metropolitan Police said in a statement that it had gathered evidence in the case, and that Mr. Weinstein was being accused of two counts of indecent assault in London in August, 1996, against a woman who is now in her 50s. Earlier this month a New York appeals court upheld Mr. Weinstein’s 2020 conviction on felony sex crimes, increasing the likelihood that he would serve a significant portion of his 23-year sentence. A lawyer for Mr. Weinstein said at the time that his legal team would ask the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, to review the decision.Mr. Weinstein must be formally charged at a police station in England or Wales, said David Lindsell, a spokesman for the prosecution service. He declined to comment on the possibility of extradition.A lawyer for Mr. Weinstein, Barry Kamins, declined to comment.A spokesman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, Greg Risling, said that Mr. Weinstein would have to stand trial in California before any potential extradition to Britain to face the charges there.Mr. Weinstein was a powerful Hollywood film producer until his downfall in 2017, when The New York Times reported allegations that he had sexually abused women over the course of nearly three decades. In the aftermath, dozens of women came forward to accuse Mr. Weinstein of sexual misconduct or assault; he maintained that he had only engaged in consensual sexual activity.The accusations spurred an international reckoning around sexual assault and harassment, with women in many fields coming forward with public allegations against high-profile men in what became known as the #MeToo movement. In 2018, Mr. Weinstein was arrested in New York City on sex crime charges. He stood trial in 2020, and a jury found him guilty of two felonies — a criminal sexual act in the first degree and third-degree rape — and acquitted him on two charges of predatory sexual assault.In Los Angeles, Mr. Weinstein was indicted on charges that he sexually assaulted several women in separate incidents between 2004 and 2013. He was transferred to California to face the charges and pleaded not guilty. This is the second time in recent weeks that prosecutors in Britain announced that they had authorized criminal charges against a prominent figure from the American entertainment industry accused of sexual misconduct. Last month, the Crown Prosecution Service said it had authorized charges against the actor Kevin Spacey on four counts of sexual assault against three men. Mr. Spacey said that he would voluntarily travel to Britain to face the charges. More