Haim (Music Group)

Subterms

    Latest story

    100 Shares179 Views

    The Best of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Openers

    by

    Listen to songs by Muna, beabadoobee, Gracie Abrams and more.The pop trio Muna brought a surprise to Coachella last weekend. (It wasn’t Taylor Swift.)Tonje Thilesen for The New York TimesDear listeners,Perhaps you have heard that Taylor Swift is currently on tour.I kid. Of course you have heard about the Eras Tour — the record-setting cultural juggernaut that nearly took down Ticketmaster. The concerts started in March, but Eras Tour fever shows no sign of abating. Fans are getting married in the front rows. Entire cities have been temporarily renamed in Swift’s honor. People are camping out overnight just to buy merch. A lavender haze has officially descended upon the nation.For today’s playlist, though, let’s focus on a less discussed aspect of this tour: the strength, variety and occasional surprises of Swift’s opening acts.Nine artists will be accompanying Swift throughout all the stops of the tour, two playing per night, which gives each performance a bit of novelty and, occasionally, some fun regional specificity. (Haim, those darlings of the San Fernando Valley, are only doing West Coast dates.) The bill is a mix of obvious choices (Haim and Phoebe Bridgers, both Swift collaborators) and unexpected co-signs (the cult-favorite pop group Muna and up-and-coming indie-rocker beabadoobee are welcome surprises). Others, like the Gen-Z singer-songwriters Gracie Abrams and girl in red, represent Swift’s artistic progeny; both have cited Swift’s music as formative influences on their own and share her sharp eye for emotional detail.This playlist culls some of the best songs by my favorite of the artists opening for Swift — and one song that features a cameo from Swift herself. Her tour also includes the teen phenom Gayle (whose viral hit “Abcdefu” you have most likely heard already) and Christian Owens, a former Swift backup dancer who has released a handful of songs under the name Owenn.Even if you’re not much of a Swiftie, this playlist conveniently doubles as both an exploration of the influence that ’90s pop-rock has had on a younger generation of artists, and as a fun, breezy soundtrack for the first warm days of the year. I field-tested it on a long walk in the middle of this gorgeous week in New York for that purpose and found it highly appropriate.Also: Thanks for all your submissions suggesting your favorite workout song! I’ll be publishing some of them in Tuesday’s newsletter. If you still have one you’d like to recommend, you can submit it here.Listen along here on Spotify as you read.1. Haim: “The Steps”Is this song the clearest distillation of Sheryl Crow’s effect on millennial musicians? Is it the best song on Haim’s sprawling and fantastic 2020 album “Women in Music Part III”? How awesome was Haim’s performance of this song at the 2021 Grammys? I am up for debating any and all of these questions. (Listen on YouTube)2. beabadoobee: “Care”There are some excellent songs on “Beatopia,” the most recent release from the Filipino-British singer-songwriter beabadoobee, but this great single from 2020 is the one that first made me a fan. Even though she was born in 2000, “Care” shows how intuitively she understands something about the sort of scuzzy, anthemic indie-pop that underground labels like Slumberland Records were releasing in the ’90s. (A “Best of Slumberland Records” playlist in a future installment of The Amplifier? Now there’s an idea.) (Listen on YouTube)3. Muna featuring Phoebe Bridgers: “Silk Chiffon”Two Eras Tour openers for the price of one! Far and away my favorite song from Muna’s 2022 self-titled album, this one is pure pop bliss and a refreshing reverie of queer joy. (When the group played it last weekend at Coachella, it surprised the crowd by bringing out not just Bridgers, but also the other two members of the supergroup boygenius, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker.) (Listen on YouTube)4. Paramore: “Crave”Here’s an underappreciated highlight from Paramore’s latest album, “This Is Why.” Hayley Williams’s vocals on the chorus give me some serious Alanis Morissette vibes. (Listen on YouTube)5. Gracie Abrams: “Best”I like the dramatic pause Gracie Abrams takes toward the end of this line: “You fell hard, I thought good … riddance.” I also always appreciate a heartbreak song on which the singer takes responsibility for doing the heartbreaking. “Best” is the opening track on Abrams’s 2023 debut studio album, “Good Riddance,” on which she worked with one of Swift’s “Folklore”-era collaborators, the musician and producer Aaron Dessner. (Listen on YouTube)6. girl in red: “I’ll Call You Mine”In the years since she started posting songs online as a teenager, the Norwegian singer-songwriter Marie Ulven Ringheim, now 24, has built a devoted fan base that hangs on her every angsty, sharply observed word. When Swift told her Instagram followers she had the girl in red album “If I Could Make It Go Quiet” “on repeat” in 2021, this was the track she was listening to. (Listen on YouTube)7. Phoebe Bridgers: “Chinese Satellite”Bridgers’s “Punisher,” released in June 2020, will always be one of the albums that defined the surreal loneliness of that first pandemic summer for me. Over the years I’ve cycled through several different favorite tracks — first “Moon Song,” then “Garden Song” — but if you asked me today I’d say it’s “Chinese Satellite.” The moment when Bridgers’s wry numbness suddenly gives way to a rush of earnestness when she sings, “I’d stand on the corner, embarrassed with a picket sign, if it meant I would see you when I die” never fails to give me chills. (Listen on YouTube)8. Haim featuring Taylor Swift: “Gasoline”Is “The Steps” the best song on “Women in Music Part III”? The twist ending to this playlist is that I think it may actually be “Gasoline.” And I get the sense that Swift agrees with me, given the conviction she brings to her guest verse on this remix. Taste! (Listen on YouTube)You needn’t ask what’s wrong with that,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“The Best of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Openers” track listTrack 1: Haim, “The Steps”Track 2: beabadoobee, “Care”Track 3: Muna featuring Phoebe Bridgers, “Silk Chiffon”Track 4: Paramore, “Crave”Track 5: Gracie Abrams, “Best”Track 6: girl in red, “I’ll Call You Mine”Track 7: Phoebe Bridgers, “Chinese Satellite”Track 8: Haim featuring Taylor Swift, “Gasoline (Remix)”Bonus tracksI highly recommend this dispatch from the Eras Tour — or, more accurately, a Tampa parking lot — by my colleague Madison Malone Kircher, on Swift fans’ frenzied quest for a certain blue crew neck sweatshirt. While reading it I was alternately touched and horrified, but always entertained. Make sure you get to the kicker at the very end.Speaking of fascinating-but-depressing reporting, I also appreciate this recent essay in Vulture, in which the writer Nate Jones asks, “Why Are My Secret Spotify Songs Following Me Around?” Jones puts a finger on the precise sort of algorithmic dependency I want to combat with this newsletter in favor of more personal forms of music discovery. Jones writes, “When you love a song, you feel a sense of ownership; it can become a marker of your personal taste in a way that feels private and individual, a feeling ‘Discover Weekly’ is designed to encourage. Encountering a secret Spotify song in the world broke the spell. It made me feel like a widget too.” More

    More stories

    • 188 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      The Buzzy Band Wet Leg Trips Out at a Party, and 13 More New Songs

      by

      Hear tracks by Bartees Strange, La Marimba, Sharon Van Etten 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.Wet Leg, ‘Angelica’The latest single from the buzzy post-punk revivalists Wet Leg tells a more linear story than their drolly absurdist breakout “Chaise Longue”: “Angelica” captures that all-too-relatable experience of feeling awkward at a bad party, observing with a pang of envy the people who actually seem to be having fun. “I don’t know what I’m even doing here,” Rhian Teasdale deadpans, “I was told that there would be free beer.” But she and bandmate Hester Chambers finally get to let loose on the chorus, as the song’s surf-rock-meets-French-disco groove explodes, however briefly, into a psychedelic freakout. LINDSAY ZOLADZBartees Strange, ‘Heavy Heart’With its jangly guitar riffs and a cutting post-hardcore edge, Bartees Strange’s “Heavy Heart” at first seems like a simple slice of mid-00s nostalgia. But there is more longing for another time here. Strange, who grew up playing in hardcore bands in Washington, D.C., shatters genre tropes with ease: there is a rap-sung verse, a blossoming horn section, an aura of tender hope. “Heavy Heart,” which Strange wrote during a period of personal crisis in 2020, is about the guilt he experienced around the passing of his grandfather and the sacrifices his father made for his family. But it’s not a submission to that feeling; Strange sings, “Then I remember I rely too much upon/My heavy heart.” This is a relinquishing — a promise to embrace the possibility that lies beyond debilitating regret. ISABELIA HERRERAKevin Morby, ‘This Is a Photograph’“This Is a Photograph,” by the songwriter Kevin Morby (from the Woods and the Babies), starts out sparse and low-fi and keeps gathering instruments and implications. He juxtaposes momentary images with mortality: “This is what I’ll miss about being alive,” he repeats, between descriptions of mundane scenes. His vocals are largely spoken, more chanted than rapped, over a repeating modal guitar line that the arrangement keeps building on: with keyboards, drums, guitars, saxes and voices, a gathering of humanity to hold off the solitude of death. JON PARELESLabrinth and Zendaya, ‘I’m Tired’“Hey Lord, you know I’m tired of tears,” Labrinth sings in “I’m Tired,” a gospel-rooted song from the “Euphoria” soundtrack that retains the barest remnants of gospel’s underlying hope. It contemplates oblivion as much as redemption: “I’m sure this world is done with me,” Labrinth adds. Organ chords and choir harmonies swell, yet even when Zendaya comes in at the end, vowing to get through somehow, she wonders, “It’s all I got, is this enough?” PARELESRobyn, Neneh Cherry and Maipei, ‘Buffalo Stance’Neneh Cherry’s album “Raw Like Sushi,” released in 1989, was both of and ahead of its time: reveling in the ways pop, electronics, hip-hop and rock were merging and defining what an autonomous woman could do with them all. This week she released a remade version of the international hit “Buffalo Stance” featuring the dance-crying Swedish songwriter Robyn and the Swedish American rapper-singer Mapei. Cherry’s original, with vintage vinyl scratching for rhythm, was about fashion, poverty, exploitation and defiance: “No moneyman can win my love,” she taunted. The remake is slower and warier, with snaking minor-key guitar lines and even more skepticism about what men want. PARELESSharon Van Etten, ‘Used to It’Following her recent, upbeat single “Porta,” “Used to It” is a return to the more meditative side of Sharon Van Etten. Vividly imagistic lyrics and the smoky hush of Van Etten’s voice unfurl across the track with an unhurried confidence: “Where are you going, you rainstorm?” Van Etten sings. “Are you used to it, pouring out your life?” ZOLADZHaim, ‘Lost Track’“Lost Track” — a playfully punny title for a previously unreleased one-off single that is also about someone in an emotional free-fall — is as understated as a Haim song gets. Handclaps take the place of the group’s usually forceful percussion, Danielle Haim’s signature guitar is absent from the verses, a plinking toy piano gives the whole thing a dreamlike vibe. But the dynamism the Haim sisters are able to create from such simple means, and the way the song suddenly and satisfyingly builds to a crescendo during the chorus, is a testament to their deft and resourceful song craft. The music video, by the group’s longtime collaborator and Alana Haim’s “Licorice Pizza” director Paul Thomas Anderson, casts Danielle as a fidgety malcontent at a country club, her frustration bubbling over as she shouts the song’s most triumphant line, “You can sit down if you don’t mind me standing up!” ZOLADZOmah Lay and Justin Bieber, ‘Attention’Justin Bieber isn’t done with Nigerian Afrobeats; his restrained croon dovetails nicely with the equanimity of Afrobeats singers. Meanwhile, Western producers are learning Afrobeats techniques. Last year Bieber joined a remix of “Essence,” a worldwide hit by Wizkid. Now he’s collaborating with another Nigerian star, Omah Lay, on “Attention,” which melds Afrobeats and house music in a production by Avedon (Vincent van den Ende), from the Netherlands, and Harv (Bernard Harvey), from Kansas City. Separately and then together, Bieber and Lay state a longing that might be either for romance or clicks: “Show me a little attention.” PARELESNew Kids on the Block featuring Salt-N-Pepa, Rick Astley and En Vogue, ‘Bring Back the Time’At a moment when current hitmakers like the Weeknd and Dua Lipa revive glossy, pumped-up 1980s sounds — ballooning drums, arpeggiating synthesizers — the not-so-New Kids on the Block cannily position themselves as a nostalgia act for both music and video. Abetted by early-MTV contemporaries, they fondly parody 1980s videos from Devo, Talking Heads, A Flock of Seagulls, Robert Palmer, Twisted Sister, Michael Jackson and more. “We’re still the same kids we were back in ’89,” they proclaim, all evidence to the contrary. PARELESLa Marimba, ‘Suéltame’The Dominican singer-songwriter La Marimba may have a smoky voice, but don’t confuse it for hushed modesty. Her single “Suéltame,” or “Let Me Go,” is nothing less than a battle cry: this is punk perico ripiao, an electric take on the oldest style of merengue, with a liberatory spirit. (On Instagram, La Marimba said the song is a response to the everyday struggles of women and girls in the Caribbean.) Over razor-sharp synths and the raucous metal scrapes of the güira, La Marimba demands freedom through gritted teeth: “Let me go already/I am how I want to be.” HERRERAMelissa Aldana, ‘Emelia’The Chilean-born tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana was in the middle of a dream about motherhood one night when the melody to “Emelia” came to her. Pillowy and suspended, caught between longing and rest, this tune is the moment on “12 Stars” — Aldana’s latest release for Blue Note Records — when she and her hyper-literate quintet of rising jazz all-stars slow down and fully embrace the blur. The pianist Sullivan Fortner is the biggest smudge artist here, adding clouds of harmony on Rhodes, cluttering the airspace around Lage Lund’s guitar, and complementing the distant, even-toned longing of Aldana’s saxophone. At the end of the song, taking the melody home, she tongues the instrument’s reed, letting her notes crack; then the music cuts off and the voices of young children come in, bringing the track to a close. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOThe Weather Station, ‘To Talk About It’“I’m tired of working all night long, trying to fit this world into a song,” Tamara Lindeman sighs, although the striking achievement of her latest album as the Weather Station is how often she is able to do just that. “How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars,” out Friday, is at once spacious and granular: Lindeman’s precise lyricism zooms in on particular human experiences and scenes, but her airy, piano-driven compositions allow for all sorts of environmental ambience and collective anxieties to seep in. “To Talk About,” the album’s latest single, features vocals from the Toronto-based musician Ryan Driver, and seeks refuge from an emotionally fatiguing world in quiet, shared intimacy: “I am tired,” Lindeman repeats, this time adding, “I only want to lie beside my lover tonight.” ZOLADZCarmen Villain, ‘Subtle Bodies’The composer Carmen Villain blends nature recordings, instruments, samples and programming to create tracks that feel both enveloping and open. “Subtle Bodies,” from her new album “Only Love from Now On,” stacks up layers of quiet polyrhythm, swathes them in pink noise that could be wind or waves, nudges them forward with a muffled two-note bass loop and wafts in sustained tones and distant wordless voices; it’s ambient but clearly in motion. PARELESLila Tirando a Violeta & Nicola Cruz, ‘Cuerpo que Flota’“Cuerpo que Flota,” the first single from Uruguayan producer Lila Tirando a Violeta’s forthcoming album “Desire Path,” refuses to hew to tradition. Alongside the Ecuadorean producer Nicola Cruz, Lila stitches together murmurs; a muted, stuttering half-dembow riddim; and layers of static disturbance. The album samples pre-Hispanic flutes and ocarinas right alongside Lila’s electronic experimentation (you can even buy a 3-D printed ocarina along with the release), allowing her to forge her own dystopic, serrated universe where past meets present. HERRERA More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Alana Haim on ‘Licorice Pizza,’ Her Surprising Movie Debut

      by

      One summer night in 2019, Alana Haim was jet-lagged, tossing and turning in a London hotel bed, when her phone pinged with an email from the acclaimed filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson.This was not particularly out of the ordinary: Anderson had become a close friend of the family in the years since he’d started directing music videos for Haim, the Grammy-nominated rock band Alana is in with her two older sisters, Este and Danielle. (Their mother, Donna, was also Anderson’s beloved elementary-school art teacher — a fortuitous coincidence he realized only after having already met her daughters.) When the band is on the road, Anderson will occasionally send the Haim siblings affable emails: a silly YouTube video, an article that might inspire them. But this message was different, and a little mysterious: Just an untitled Word document.“All of a sudden, a script opens up,” Haim said over a video call from her home in Los Angeles,“And the first name on the script is Alana.” Save for a few appearances playing herself in music videos, Haim had never acted before, and this was the first movie script she’d ever read. “It was like ‘EXTERIOR,’” she recalled, giddily. “I was like, here we go. We’re reading a script. This is the movies.”As she read the screenplay for what would become “Licorice Pizza,” Anderson’s warm and nostalgic ninth feature, Haim thought he had sent it to let her know he had named a character after her. “I was honestly just flattered that he was using my name,” she said. “Because when you think about Paul Thomas Anderson movies, the names are so incredibly iconic,” she said, citing the porn star Dirk Diggler of “Boogie Nights” (1997) and Reynolds Woodcock, the tempestuous fashion designer that Daniel Day-Lewis portrayed in “Phantom Thread” (2017). “I mean, I like my name, but do I think my name is iconic? Not when you put it next to, like, Reynolds Woodcock. But I was flattered. I was like, ‘Paul’s going to use my name in a movie.’”Bradley Cooper, left, and Cooper Hoffman with Alana Haim behind the wheel of a truck in “Licorice Pizza.” Once she mastered driving it, she said, “I felt like a badass.” MGM, via Associated PressWhen presented with Alana’s version of events over the phone later that same day, Anderson sighed and then laughed for a long time. “Wouldn’t it have been completely rude and insane of me to send her a script with a character named Alana, only to say, ‘Thanks for reading it, I appreciate your notes, I’m going to go hire an actress to play a woman named Alana? Oh and by the way, she has two sisters named Este and Danielle and there are multiple situations that have come from your life.’ What kind of friend would I be? That’s terrible.”But that would have been about as plausible as what was actually happening: A famous auteur was asking Haim, who had never been in a movie before, to carry his next feature. Later that night when they spoke on the phone and Anderson clarified his request, Haim — in a torrent of “word-vomit” — said yes immediately. A few hours later, the first doubts set in: “What if I’m just terrible? I was like, ‘I don’t even know where to look. What if I look at the camera?’”Miraculously, she pulled it off in spades. “Licorice Pizza” establishes Haim as a revelatory and magnetic screen presence, a unique amalgamation of daffy, Carole Lombard screwball, early Sissy Spacek fresh-faced guilelessness, and an offbeat cartoon character’s nervy, can-do energy. Even when she’s sharing the frame with Sean Penn, Tom Waits or Bradley Cooper, it is her face — freckled, elastic, unpredictable — that commands the viewer’s attention. Critics have raved about the performance; David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter called it “one of the most exciting screen debuts in recent memory.”Haim didn’t know Paul Thomas Anderson wanted to cast her in his film until he sent her a script unbidden.Josefina Santos for The New York TimesAnderson said he knew Haim would be good but “I didn’t know she was going to be that good. I’ve worked with the same guys for like 20 years, and I just kept looking around at them for verification. Like, you have to tap me on my shoulder to make sure I’m seeing what I’m seeing. Don’t let me be delusional. And everybody collectively on set was seeing what I was seeing — her skill and the way you can photograph her.”It helped that her co-star, the effortlessly charismatic Cooper Hoffman (son of Philip Seymour Hoffman, who was a frequent Anderson collaborator) had also never been in a movie before. Anderson cast him late in the process, after auditioning a number of young actors who felt too mannered and formally trained to match Haim’s naturalistic style. Hoffman and Haim had met briefly through Anderson five years prior, never thinking their paths would cross again, but as soon as they read together, Haim recalled, “It was like, oh, we’re a team. We can take on the world together.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Despite the characters’ relatively chaste relationship, the age gap between them has caused some controversy. In real life, Haim, who turns 30 this month, is 12 years older than Hoffman (they bonded so much during the shoot that she still calls him “one of my best friends”), though in the movie her age is a little ambiguous. At one point the character says she’s 25, but there’s a pause between the two numerals that suggests she might be rounding up. “There was never really a conversation between me and Paul about how old Alana was,” she said. “Somewhere in her early 20s. I say some ages in the movie, but you don’t really believe Alana. She kind of doesn’t even know how old she really is? She’s very secretive. But really, it’s about her and Gary’s friendship more than anything.”When we spoke on a late November afternoon, Haim was battling a sinus infection she blamed on the Santa Ana winds. As a Southern California breeze tickled the curtains of her open living-room window, she occasionally paused our conversation to blow her nose with humorous theatricality. (“Oh, that was a lot!”) She wore a white T-shirt, jeans and, around her neck, her most prized possession, a “Sisters of the Moon” pendant given to her by one of her idols, Stevie Nicks. In conversation Haim is garrulous and ebullient, occasionally clipping the ends off her sentences in an excited hurry to get to the next thought.As they were shooting, Anderson found that the actor Haim most reminded him of was Joaquin Phoenix, whom Anderson directed in “The Master” (2012) and “Inherent Vice” (2014).“She can throw herself into something, a lot like Joaquin,” Anderson said. “You cannot tell if they’re completely out of control, or if they’re so in their body that they’re able to make it look like they’re out of control. They’re very similar. It’s weird. They’re both feral, you know? You’re not really sure what’s coming next.”Performing onstage as part of the band Haim. Emma McIntyre/Getty ImagesHer years onstage playing guitar, keyboards and percussion certainly taught her how to ground herself amid the chaos of a film set. “Being in Haim, I’m doing so many different things and there are so many different distractions that you have to tune everything out and just be very present in your body,” she said. “And I think that really helps with shooting a movie.”Seeing herself in close-up on a huge screen for the first time was, she admitted, a bit uncomfortable: “Look, for my future boyfriends that I’ll maybe have, would I love to see less acne and maybe more glamorous vibes?” Haim asked rhetorically. “Of course. But it wouldn’t be truthful to the movie. Because growing up in the Valley where it’s 100 degrees outside, you would look worse if you wore makeup, because it would melt off and you’d look insane.”But those supposed imperfections — and her contagious brand of self-acceptance — are at the core of Haim’s refreshing onscreen charm. “I feel like there’s this whole thing where everybody has to be perfect in all these movies,” she said, candidly admitting that the only reason her skin looked “impeccable and lovely” on our call that day was because she was using a Zoom filter. “But, I have acne, and there’s nothing I can do about it — and that’s OK!”Raised in the San Fernando Valley, the Haim siblings all took up instruments at a young age and formed a family band. What they lacked in social capital, they made up for with sisterly camaraderie and humor. “We all wanted to be Barbra Streisand in ‘Funny Girl,’” Haim said. “That was our Bible growing up. Like, ‘Oh, we might not be the most gorgeous person in the seventh grade, and no one wants to make out with us, but we could be the funniest!’”Anderson said that as a performer, Haim reminded him of Joaquin Phoenix: “They’re very similar. It’s weird. They’re both feral.”Josefina Santos for The New York TimesThe sisters had their first gig as a trio when Alana was just 10, at Los Angeles’s storied Jewish institution Canter’s Deli. Their breakthrough came in 2013 when they released their debut album, “Days Are Gone,” a collection of sleek, percussive pop-rock songs. They’ve since collaborated several times with their former tour-mate Taylor Swift, and their best and most recent album, “Women in Music, Pt. III” (2020), was nominated for the album of the year Grammy.Even though the siblings all harmonize and trade instruments, Alana is still known in the band, as in the family, as “Baby Haim.” Danielle is the de facto lead singer and guitarist, while the bassist Este is known for the gloriously over-the-top “bass faces” she makes onstage. Alana sometimes falls through the cracks. “I’m the baby, so that’s how I grew up with my siblings: ‘I’m just happy that you guys want me to hang out,’” she said modestly. “That was my whole upbringing.”All the members of the Haim family appear sporadically in “Licorice Pizza” — their father, Mordechai, is a bona fide scene-stealer. But Alana is the movie’s beating heart, and her star turn feels like her long-delayed “Funny Girl” moment. That was apparent from her very first day of shooting: she was not only driving a vintage moving truck that required her to learn to operate a stick shift, but also improvising hilariously alongside a deliriously entertaining Bradley Cooper, who plays a manic version of Streisand’s onetime boyfriend, the producer Jon Peters. “At the end of the day, once I got the hang of it, I felt like a badass,” she said. “I was like, not only can I drive stick — but a ’70s U-Haul with a movie star and my best friend in the truck.”She’d love to keep acting — and working with Anderson — if the right projects arise, but she’s also happy to have a day job to fall back on. “After this chapter is over with ‘Licorice Pizza,’ I go back on tour with my band, and I’m back to my other job that I love so much,” she said. “Nothing has changed. I’m still the baby.” More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      The Best and Worst of the 2021 Grammy Awards

      by

      Megan Thee Stallion owned the stage, struggling indie venues got a much needed spotlight and the event proved a pandemic awards show doesn’t have to look like a video conference.The 63rd annual Grammy Awards promised to be different: There was a new executive producer at the helm for the first time in decades; a new host; and a new challenge — assembling a pandemic awards show that didn’t feel like a video conference. With a small audience of nominees outside in Los Angeles, the show highlighted the contributions of women and the impact of Black Lives Matter protests, offered screen time to workers at independent venues crushed by the pandemic and extended tributes to musicians we lost during this challenging year.Here are the show’s highlights and lowlights as we saw them.Best M.V.P.: Megan Thee StallionThough she didn’t win the night’s final and biggest category, record of the year, Grammy night belonged to Megan Thee Stallion. She took home the three other awards she was nominated for: best new artist and, for the remix of “Savage” featuring Beyoncé, best rap song and best rap performance. Each speech was a wholesome gift: words of exuberance from an artist experiencing the first flush of truly widespread acclaim. But her self-assured performance was the loudest statement of all. It opened with a bit of “Body,” and pivoted into her part from the “Savage” remix. But the main focus was a performance of “WAP” with Cardi B that was wildly and charmingly salacious, frisky and genuine in a way that the Grammys has rarely if ever made room for. That it took place on CBS, historically the most conservative of all the broadcast networks, was chef’s kiss. JON CARAMANICABest Accessory: Harry Styles’s Boa“Watermelon Sugar” never sounded better than when Harry Styles and his boa performed it on the Grammys stage.Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Recording AcademyThe first-time nominee Harry Styles kicked off the show with a groovy, casually charismatic rendition of “Watermelon Sugar,” complete with an excellent backing band (Dev Hynes on bass!) and an instantly iconic feather boa. Styles often gets the knee-jerk Mick Jagger comparisons, but Styles possesses a much more laid-back — if no less magnetic — stage presence. “Watermelon Sugar” never sounded better than it did during this performance, which made its subsequent surprise win for best pop solo performance all the more understandable. Something tells me boa season is approaching. LINDSAY ZOLADZWorst Twist Ending: Billie Eilish’s Record of the Year Win“This is really embarrassing for me,” said Billie Eilish, accepting record of the year with her producer brother Finneas O’Connell.Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Recording AcademyAt the very end of a Grammys ceremony that did its best to pretend like the Recording Academy has always supported and centered Black artists, women and especially Black women, Billie Eilish was put in an impossible position that we’ve seen too many times before. Awarded record of the year for “Everything I Wanted,” a mid tempo in-betweener of a track, only a year after sweeping the top four categories with her debut album, Eilish could only gush over Megan Thee Stallion.“This is really embarrassing for me,” Eilish, a white teenager who — like many in her generation and beyond — worships Black culture, said. “You are a queen, I want to cry thinking about how much I love you.” She went on. It was uncomfortably reminiscent of Adele praising Beyoncé when “25” beat “Lemonade” for album of the year in 2017, and also of that infamous Macklemore text to Kendrick Lamar. Some online bristled at the performative white guilt on display, while others applauded Eilish’s apparently sincere fandom. But only a stubbornly old-fashioned voting body that still just honors rap when it’s convenient could be blamed. JOE COSCARELLIBest Reality Check: Presenters From Shuttered VenuesThe Apollo in Harlem, which has been closed for a year during the pandemic.George Etheredge for The New York TimesNeither musicians nor fans can forget that the pandemic has shut down live music. Sprinkled among the awards presenters — instead of the usual actors promoting CBS shows and stray sports figures — were people who work at long-running clubs and theaters: the Station Inn in Nashville, the Troubadour and the Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles, the Apollo Theater in Harlem. They spoke pretaped from their empty music halls and announced the winners live. Billy Mitchell, who started working at the Apollo in 1965, recalled that James Brown had demanded to see his report card, insisted he improve his grades, and later gave him money that Mitchell put toward business school and a lifelong career at the Apollo, where he eventually became the official historian. Music changes lives offstage, too. JON PARELESBest Disco Fantasy: Dua LipaDua Lipa’s “Future Nostalgia” has lived its entire life in quarantine, but it begs to be let loose into the night and onto dance floors around the world. At the Grammys, the British pop singer and songwriter gave us a glimpse of the other side — glitter, flashing lights, throbbing bass lines, people dusting off ’70s dance moves, slight awkwardness. Her two-song set started with “Levitating,” a funky roller-rink jam with a charming DaBaby feature, and ended with “Don’t Start Now,” the powerhouse kiss-off that was nominated for both record and song of the year. The track didn’t take home either prize, but Lipa left with a trophy for pop vocal album and the honor of coaxing the most at-home viewers into a few minutes of spirited couch dancing. CARYN GANZBest Confrontational Politics: Lil Baby and DaBabyLil Baby released “The Bigger Picture,” a stream-of-consciousness, autobiographical protest song, less than three weeks after George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis last summer, on the very day that Rayshard Brooks was fatally shot by police in the rapper’s native Atlanta.With appearances by the actor and activist Kendrick Sampson, who reenacted Brooks’s killing; the organizer Tamika Mallory, who addressed President Joe Biden in a speech; and Killer Mike, who added some Run the Jewels to the mix, Lil Baby’s performance managed to invoke the despair and anger of that moment without it feeling co-opted by the institutions that were playing host.Earlier in the show, DaBaby did the same, adding a new verse to “Rockstar,” his sneakily wrenching ode to firearms, and making eye contact with America as he rapped in front a choir of older white people in judge’s robes: “Right now I’m performing at the Grammys/I’ll probably get profiled before leavin’.” COSCARELLIWorst Queen Worship: The Grammys to BeyoncéBeyoncé won four awards at this year’s Grammys ceremony, bringing her lifetime total to 28.Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Recording AcademyDid you know that Beyoncé has now won more Grammys than any other female artist in history (28)? Of course you did; the Grammys could not stop reminding you. To be clear, this is a monumental achievement, and one that goddess among mortals Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter absolutely deserves. But there was a Grammys-doth-protest-too-much quality to the way Trevor Noah and the show’s presenters kept reminding us of this fact over and over, almost as though the Recording Academy was trying to make amends to Beyoncé for its past transgressions on live television. (Those transgressions include, but are not limited to, icing the woman who has basically redesigned the modern pop album over the past decade out of wins in the big four categories since 2010.)It was awkward. Even Beyoncé’s recognition for “Black Parade” — a good song, sure, but hardly among her best or most impactful work — felt strangely conciliatory, a mea culpa for not giving “Lemonade” its proper due several years ago. The always gracious Beyoncé certainly made the most of it, though, and her acceptance speeches were among the night’s highlights — especially her beaming big-sister energy as her “Savage” collaborator Megan Thee Stallion accepted their shared, very deserved award for best rap song. ZOLADZBest Use of Quarantine Time: Taylor Swift’s Album of the Year ‘Folklore’Taylor Swift is now the only female artist in Grammy history to win album of the year three times.Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated PressGoing into Grammy night, album of the year was Taylor Swift’s award to lose. Perhaps no other LP has come to symbolize our pandemic year more thoroughly than “Folklore,” which Swift created entirely during quarantine and embellished with a warm and woolly homebound aesthetic. Her Grammy performance — a medley of the “Folklore” songs “Cardigan” and “August,” along with “Willow” from her second 2020 album, “Evermore” — relied perhaps too literally on that aesthetic.The flickering visual whimsy all around her and her producers Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner (who both joined her onstage, in a set made up to look like a one-room cottage) detracted a bit from the direct power of her songcraft, which was more easily appreciated in the other awards-show performance she has given in support of “Folklore,” a beautifully bare-bones interpretation of “Betty” at last year’s Country Music Awards. But Swift, a one-time Grammy darling who before tonight had not had a win since 2016, has been out of the show’s spotlight for long enough that her win felt triumphant. In keeping with a night defined by female artists’ achievements it added an impressive feather to her cap, making her the only female artist in Grammy history to win album of the year three times. ZOLADZBest Blasts (and Ballads) from the Past: Silk Sonic and In MemoriamBruno Mars is nothing if not a diligent archivist, digging into the details of vintage styles, and Anderson .Paak joins him on the retro quest in their new project Silk Sonic. They went all in on “Leave the Door Open,” a period-piece homage to smooth 1970s vocal-group R&B. In three-piece mocha suits and shirts with collars that spread almost shoulder-wide, they traded off gritty leads and suave backup harmonies, choreography included. From another time capsule, Mars and Paak returned for the In Memoriam segment, paying raucous tribute to Little Richard with Mars whooping it up into an old-fashioned microphone and Paak slamming a kit of tiger-striped drums. The memorial segment continued with tasteful modesty: Lionel Richie delivering Kenny Rogers’s “Lady” with elegiac melancholy, Brandi Carlile singing John Prine’s last song, “I Remember Everything,” with affectionate respect.The closing tribute probably made more sense in the United Kingdom. With Coldplay’s Chris Martin on piano, Brittany Howard worked up to belting “You’ll Never Walk Alone” (from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “Carousel”) over a country shuffle. It was a convoluted memorial to Gerry Marsden, of Gerry and the Pacemakers, who remade the song in 1963 and saw it adopted as the Liverpool Football Club’s anthem. Even odder, the song reappeared moments later, with Howard singing over a better backup track, in a commercial. PARELESBest Juggling Act: Trevor NoahChris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated PressHosting an awards show during pandemic season is a job without precedent, or sturdy rules. At this year’s Grammys — a mélange of live performances, pretaped segments and award presentations handed out on a downtown Los Angeles rooftop — the remit of the job was deeply confused. And still Trevor Noah proved mostly adept: vibrant energy, a little bit of awe, some topical-humor fluency and a bit of cheek, but not too much. Occasionally he literally inserted himself into the end of a performance, or purposely overlapped with something happening elsewhere onstage, which in moments felt awkward, but actually helped to add glue to a patchwork affair. There were some lumpy spots, and his cringey joke about sharing a bed with Cardi B felt like an attitudinal relic of the 1980s, but on the whole, Noah made something that could have felt like several competing shows feel like one. CARAMANICABest Self-Criticism: Harvey Mason Jr.“We hear the cries for diversity, pleas for representation and demands for transparency,” said Harvey Mason Jr., interim president and chairman of the Recording Academy.Rich Fury/Getty Images for the Recording AcademyThe obligatory Grammy speech by the head of the Recording Academy tends to mingle platitudes about the power of music with mild lobbying. Harvey Mason Jr., who took over as interim president and chairman after the academy fired Deborah Dugan just before last year’s Grammy Awards, offered something different: the closest the Grammys have gotten to a mea culpa. “We hear the cries for diversity, pleas for representation and demands for transparency,” he said, over a soundtrack of earnest piano. “Tonight I’m here to ask that entire music community to join in, work with us not against us, as we build a new Recording Academy that we can all be proud of.” He added, “This is not the vision of tomorrow but the job for today.” Promising sentiments — will they be enough? PARELESBest Overdue Nomination: Mickey GuytonTrevor Noah awkwardly introduced Mickey Guyton as “the first Black female solo artist ever nominated in a country category” — far more a reflection on country music and the Grammys than on her own clear merits. (She lost best country solo performance to Vince Gill in the pre-telecast ceremony.) But Guyton, who will be co-hosting the Academy of Country Music Awards in April, gracefully seized this prime-time moment, singing “Black Like Me,” a blunt indictment — “If you think we live in the land of the free/You should try to be Black like me” — that strives to end on a hopeful note. It’s a hymnlike song that welcomed a backup choir and a big buildup on the way to a climactic, “Someday we’ll all be free.” And it made Guyton a very hard act for Miranda Lambert and Maren Morris to follow. PARELESBest Mixed Emotions: HaimDanielle Haim started “The Steps,” nominated for best rock performance, seated behind the drums, with a pugnacious look on her face and a beat to match. She was singing about being underestimated and misunderstood, and the Grammys simply stuck the three-sister band — Danielle, Este and Alana — in the middle of the floor. But Haim switched instruments as well as moods mid-song; Danielle moved from drums to guitar and back while her voice briefly changed from annoyed to wounded; it can hurt to be misunderstood. By the end she was back on the counterattack, but the song was no longer simple. PARELES More