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    Beyoncé Makes History at a Star-Powered Grammy Ceremony

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    LOS ANGELES — Beyoncé made Grammy history on Sunday night, setting a record at the awards’ 65th annual ceremony for the most career wins by any artist, after picking up a string of trophies for “Renaissance,” her hit album that mined decades of dance music.But she was once again shut out of the major categories, winning all four of her prizes for the night in down-ballot genre categories. Harry Styles took album of the year for “Harry’s House,” Lizzo won record of the year for her retro dance anthem “About Damn Time,” and song of the year went to Bonnie Raitt for “Just Like That.” It was Beyoncé’s fourth career loss for album of the year.Styles seemed at a loss for words as he accepted his Grammy, opening his remarks with a stunned profanity.Still, Beyoncé’s accomplishment resonated throughout the evening. Accepting her 32nd career award, Beyoncé thanked God and her family, and honored her “Uncle Jonny,” a gay relative whom she has described in the past as her “godmother” and as the person who exposed her to L.G.B.T.Q. culture.“I’d like thank the queer community for your love, and for inventing the genre,” she said to roars of applause from the crowd at the Crypto.com Arena as she won best dance/electronic music album for “Renaissance,” which was widely seen as a love letter to gay culture. (Even so, Beyoncé faced a backlash recently when she performed a private concert in Dubai, in United Arab Emirates, where homosexuality is illegal.)With her latest wins, Beyoncé surpassed Georg Solti, the Hungarian-born classical conductor who died in 1997 and had long held the title of the most career wins by any artist.Even Beyoncé’s competitors cheered her on. Accepting record of the year, Lizzo told a story of being inspired by seeing Beyoncé in concert (while skipping school).“You clearly are the artist of our lives!” she shouted. (In 2017, when Adele beat Beyoncé for album of the year, she said almost the same thing.)Beyoncé also won best dance/electronic recording (“Break My Soul”), traditional R&B performance (“Plastic Off the Sofa”) and best R&B song (“Cuff It”). She had been the most nominated artist of the evening, with nine nods.Gender freedom was a theme running through the night. Not long before Beyoncé’s win, Sam Smith, a nonbinary singer, and Kim Petras, a trans woman, won the award for pop/duo group performance for “Unholy,” and Petras drew cheers when she said she was “the first transgender woman to win this award.”“I hope that there’s a future where gender and identity and all these labels don’t matter that much,” Petras told reporters backstage. “Where people can just be themselves, and not get judged so hard and not be labeled so hard.”Gender freedom was a theme running through this year’s Grammys, as Kim Petras, a trans woman, and Sam Smith, a nonbinary singer, were among the night’s winners. Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for The Recording AcademyAfter two years of shows that were disrupted and delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the annual Grammy ceremony returned in full swing to its home court in Los Angeles (Crypto.com is the renamed Staples Center), bringing the music world together for glitz, competition and, behind the scenes, plenty of business schmoozing.“We made it!” exclaimed its host, Trevor Noah. “We’re back!”The power of stardom was another of the night’s major underlying themes. The show opened with a blast of brass and the hip-swaying rhythms of Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican superstar who represents the music industry’s hopes — he is a young celebrity with global appeal and massive numbers, both on streaming services and on the road.Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican superstar who opened the show on Sunday night, represents the music industry’s hopes: a young celebrity with global appeal and the numbers to match.Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated PressWalking through the aisles of the arena flanked by dancers in festive dress, he played two songs from his blockbuster album “Un Verano Sin Ti,” bringing both social commentary and party vibes, and getting stars like Taylor Swift dancing amid the bistro-style seating in front of the stage.Accepting the award for best música urbana album for “Un Verano,” Bad Bunny gave his speech in Spanish and English.“I just made this album with love and passion,” he said. “When you do things with love and passion, everything is easier.”Old-fashioned song craft remains a key touchstone for Grammy voters. Raitt, 73, was the surprise winner of song of the year — beating Adele, Beyoncé, Swift, Lizzo and Styles, whose songs were huge hits — for “Just Like That,” a tender meditation about an organ donation that had only modest commercial success. She accepted it as a recognition of the job of songwriting itself, and thanked other writers for providing her with material throughout her career.“I would not be up here tonight,” Raitt said, “if it wasn’t for the great soul-digging, hard-working people that put these songs and ideas to music.”Samara Joy, a singer who brought fresh interpretations to jazz classics, and began her career posting them online, won best new artist.In classic Grammy fashion, the ceremony also included some loving nods to the past.Stevie Wonder led a Motown revue that included Smokey Robinson and the country songwriter Chris Stapleton. One of the highlights of the night was a 12-minute celebration of the 50th anniversary of hip-hop — the genre’s origin is tied to a birthday party in the Bronx in 1973 — that featured LL Cool J, Busta Rhymes, Salt-N-Pepa, Method Man, Chuck D and Flavor Flav of Public Enemy, Missy Elliott, Future, Grandmaster Flash and many others.A somber, multipart “In Memoriam” segment included the country singer Kacey Musgraves singing Loretta Lynn’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter” barefoot in a blood-red dress; a tribute to Takeoff of the Atlanta rap trio Migos led by his bandmate Quavo; and Raitt, Sheryl Crow and Mick Fleetwood singing “Songbird,” one of the signature compositions by Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie, with Fleetwood tapping a drum like it was a gently beating heart.Kacey Musgraves singing Loretta Lynn’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter” as part of a somber “In Memoriam” segment.Mario Anzuoni/ReutersStyles performed his bubbly, pensive hit “As It Was” in a silvery sequined suit with tassels that shook as he danced. “Harry’s House” also won Styles the award for pop vocal album.Kendrick Lamar won three rap prizes: best performance and best song, for “The Heart Part 5,” and best album, for “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers.” Accepting the album award, he thanked his family “for giving me the courage and giving me the vulnerability to share my truth and share these stories.”Brandi Carlile, a Grammy darling in recent years, won best rock performance and best rock song for “Broken Horses,” as well as best Americana album for “In These Silent Days.”The 89-year-old Willie Nelson, who was not present, won for best country album for “A Beautiful Time,” and best country solo performance for the song “Live Forever.”Swift ended the night with one victory, best music video for “All Too Well: The Short Film,” but lost her three other nods — including her sixth career loss in song of the year for “All Too Well (10 Minute Version),” an extended remake of a song she first released in 2012.The first lady, Jill Biden, announced the winner of a new award, best song for social change, which went to the 25-year-old Iranian songwriter Shervin Hajipour, whose song “Baraye” became an anthem for the women’s rights protests there last year. The prize was chosen by what the academy described as a “blue-ribbon committee.”For an industry that has lately gotten worried about the difficulty minting stars amid the fire hose of content in the age of streaming and social media, this year’s list of nominations was about as good as it gets. It guaranteed plenty of star power and some drama over winners and losers. On Grammy night, drama is a good thing.As much as the Recording Academy, the nonprofit institution behind the Grammys, promotes its mission of celebrating artistic excellence and being a supportive home for creators year-round, the Grammys is also a television show that needs to attract a large audience.As they have for all major awards shows, ratings for the Grammys have been slipping for years. But the past two years have been brutal. In 2021, when the Grammys put on an outdoor show with no audience, its viewership fell to 8.8 million, the lowest ever; last year, when the show was delayed by the spread of the Omicron variant and held for the first time in Las Vegas, the number was only marginally better, at 8.9 million.This year’s awards recognized music released between Oct. 1, 2021, and Sept. 30, 2022, and were selected by the 11,000-member voting body of the Recording Academy, which includes artists, songwriters, producers and other music professionals.Of the 91 awards this year, all but a dozen were given out in a nontelevised ceremony on Sunday afternoon.Viola Davis’s Grammy win makes her the newest EGOT — the coveted acronym for the winner of an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony.Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images for The Recording AcademyThe actress Viola Davis won best audiobook, narration and storytelling recording for her memoir “Finding Me,” making her the newest EGOT — the coveted acronym for the winner of an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony.Among the new categories this year was songwriter of the year (non-classical), intended to recognize the writers who work behind the scenes. It was won by Tobias Jesso Jr., who has written songs for Adele, Styles and others. Stephanie Economou was the first winner for best score soundtrack for video games and other interactive media for her work on the game Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarok.Below the superstar level, the Grammys have the power to transform artists’ careers. The Tennessee State University Marching Band was the first college marching band ever nominated for best roots gospel album, and it won with “The Urban Hymnal.”Accepting that award, Sir the Baptist, one of the album’s producers, addressed the straitened finances of historically Black colleges and universities. “HBCUs are so grossly underfunded to where I had to put my last dime in order to get us across the line,” he said. “We’re here with our pockets empty but our hands aren’t.” More

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      The Year Pop’s Men Dismantled Their Masculinity

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      In 2022, stars including Harry Styles, Jack Harlow and Bad Bunny offered liberated takes on gender, but also risked pandering. Are men OK?In April, during his headlining set at Coachella, the reigning pop prince Harry Styles invited a surprise guest, Shania Twain, to the stage to sing a provocatively chosen duet: “Man, I Feel Like a Woman.”Clad in a low-cut, silver sequined jumpsuit, Styles strutted, twirled and belted out the cheeky anthem’s lyrics. “This lady taught me how to sing,” he told the raucous crowd of over 100,000 when the song was over. “She also taught me that men are trash.”The performance was fun, headline-generating and relatively radical: It is difficult to imagine Styles’s generational predecessor, Justin Timberlake — or even Timberlake’s successor, Justin Bieber — playing so fast and loose with gender roles. That is partially because the Justins embraced hip-hop and R&B — genres where such experimentation is often less welcome — more directly than Styles ever has. But it’s also because the cultural forces that shape the norms and expectations of what a male pop star can and should be are evolving.While the year in music was dominated by a handful of female powerhouses (critically, by Beyoncé’s widely praised dance-floor odyssey “Renaissance” and commercially, by Taylor Swift’s moody synth-pop juggernaut “Midnights”), the top male pop stars — Styles, Bad Bunny and Jack Harlow — all found success while offering refreshingly subversive challenges to old-school masculinity.Styles and Harlow seem cannily aware of how to position themselves as heartthrobs in a cultural moment when being a man — especially one that scans straight and white — can seem like a minefield of potential missteps, offenses and overextended privilege. Bad Bunny, even more subversively, ripped up the English-language pop star’s rule book and offered a more expansive vision of gender and sexuality.Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican superstar whose summery smash “Un Verano Sin Ti” spent more weeks atop the Billboard chart than any other album this year, has gleefully rejected the confines of machismo. Instead, he has embraced gender-fluid fashion, called out male aggression in his songs and videos and even made out with one of his male backup dancers during a performance at this year’s MTV Video Music Awards — decisions that carry extra weight considering his aesthetic-hopping pop is rooted in reggaeton, a genre that has leaned on heteronormativity.Bad Bunny has gleefully rejected the confines of machismo.Isaac Esquivel/EPA, via ShutterstockStyles, too, has won fans and admirers by treating his gender presentation as something of a playground, whether that means wearing a dress on the cover of “Vogue,” refusing to label his sexuality or flipping the familiar script of the older male auteur/younger female muse in his much publicized relationship with his “Don’t Worry Darling” director Olivia Wilde, who is 10 years his senior. None of it has been bad for business: Styles’s “As It Was” was the year’s longest-reigning Billboard No. 1 and, globally, Spotify’s most-streamed song of 2022.But there’s also an increasingly fine line between allyship and pandering, one that fans aren’t shy about calling out online. Styles and Bad Bunny have been accused of the very contemporary crime of “queerbaiting,” or cultivating a faux mystique around one’s sexuality to appeal to an L.G.B.T.Q. fan base. To overemphasize straightness and alpha-male stereotypes, though, presents its own risks, especially in a post-MeToo moment. What’s a man to do?Harlow, the 24-year-old Kentucky-born rapper, spent 2022 trying to figure it out. A technically dexterous rapper with an easy charisma and a head of Shirley Temple ringlets, Harlow is known for making artistic choices that spotlight his skills and convey his seriousness as an MC. He’s also cultivated a persona as an irrepressible flirt with a particular attraction to Black women. He famously shot his shot with Saweetie on the BET Awards red carpet, repeatedly popped into Doja Cat’s Instagram live broadcasts and even parodied his reputation during a star-turning “Saturday Night Live” hosting gig, when he played himself in a skit that imagined him seducing Whoopi Goldberg on the set of “The View.”Harlow’s music, too, actively cultivates the female listener. As he explained in an interview with The New York Times earlier this year, “I always think about if I was in the car and the girl I had a crush on was in the shotgun and I had to play the song, would I be proud to play the song?”Jack Harlow’s music focuses on a kind of glorification of the female listener.Calla Kessler for The New York TimesThroughout his second album, “Come Home the Kids Miss You,” Harlow paints himself as stylish and sensitive, a man who keeps his nails clean and discusses his romantic encounters in therapy. In the grand tradition of his elder Drake, Harlow often uses the pronoun “you” to directly and intimately address women in his songs. His biggest solo hit to date, “First Class,” which spent three weeks at No. 1 this spring, turned “Glamorous,” Fergie’s blingy 2007 hit about luxury and hard-earned success, into a chivalric invitation for a lady to come enjoy the good life on Harlow’s dime: “I could put you in first class,” he clarified.Stylistically, Harlow’s music is worlds away from Styles’s, but both share a kind of glorification of the female listener, a lyrical attentiveness to her pleasure and a subtle insistence that they are more caring partners than all those other men who, in Styles’s parlance (and on superhumanly empathetic ballads like “Boyfriends” and “Matilda”), are “trash.”In some sense, this is certainly progress. Consider that Timberlake’s early aughts success involved the excessive vilification of his ex Britney Spears, or that a performance that pantomimed a kind of hyper-heterosexual dominance over Janet Jackson had virtually no effect on his career, but nearly ended hers. Harlow’s collaboration with and public support for the gay pop star Lil Nas X and even his fawning over his female peers are worlds away from his predecessor Eminem, who negotiated his complex stance as a white man in a predominantly Black genre by punching down at women and queer people. Misogyny and homophobia aren’t exactly good for business anymore — and thank goodness.It’s hard to imagine these men making the same mistakes as their forebears, and overcorrection is in some sense welcome, given the alternative. (Bad Bunny, again, has taken even bolder risks, like vehemently criticizing the Puerto Rican government in response to island-wide blackouts.)But even responsibly wielded privilege is still, at the end of the day, privilege. And Styles’s and Harlow’s music often betrays that by its relative weightlessness, its sense of existence in a space free of any great existential cares. Styles’s songs in particular seem hollowed out of any introspection; most of the ones on “Harry’s House” pass by like cumulus clouds. The focus of Harlow’s music vacillates between girls and ego, with few gestures toward the riskier political statements he’s made on red carpets (decrying homophobia) and on social media (attending protests demanding justice for Breonna Taylor). That failure to see oneself as part of a larger problem is a symptom of privilege, too. Even if he’s wearing sequins, a man declaring that “men are trash” is just a very subtle way of saying “not all men.” What about the guy saying it?On “Part of the Band,” a moody, verbose single released this year by the British band the 1975, the frontman Matty Healy imagines overhearing a snippet of chitchat between two young women: “I like my men like I like my coffee/Full of soy milk and so sweet it won’t offend anybody.” The implication is that Healy is decidedly not one of those men, and it’s indeed hard to imagine a listener — particularly a non-male one — making it through all 11 tracks of the 1975’s soft-focused “Being Funny in a Foreign Language” without cringing at something Healy says. (Just one example: “I thought we were fighting, but it seems I was ‘gaslighting’ you.” Yeesh.)But in Healy’s musings, there’s something often lacking in Harlow’s or Styles’s music: a genuine sense of self-scrutiny, and an active internal monologue about what it means to be a man at this moment in the 21st century. Healy’s songs are, as the critic Ann Powers put it in an astute essay tracing the cultural lineage of “the dirtbag,” excavations of “the curses and blessings of his gendered existence.” Under his relentless microscope, straight(ish) white masculinity is, blessedly, freed from its status as the default human condition and instead becomes a curiosity to poke and prod at, exposing its internal contradictions and latent anxieties.“Am I ironically woke?” Healy wonders later in “Part of the Band.” “The butt of my joke? Or am I just some post-coke, average, skinny bloke calling his ego imagination?” Cringe if you want. He’s man enough to let the question hang there in the air. 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      The Harry Styles Show (and Some Music) Comes to Madison Square Garden

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      The first two nights of a 15-concert run at Madison Square Garden were heavy on charisma, banter and nods to the past.Over the weekend, Harry Styles began a 15-night stand at Madison Square Garden, an impressive feat befitting one of the most popular musicians in the world. (He’ll begin a similar stretch in October at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif. — his tour supporting his latest album, “Harry’s House,” consists of a series of residencies.) But Styles, who came to fame as part of the British boy band One Direction, is still relatively early in his solo career, and is still establishing his sonic ideas. Two New York Times critics attended the first two nights of his Love on Tour run in New York to see how he wielded his gravitational pull.JON CARAMANICA I always liked One Direction, more or less. Or maybe I liked what the group represented: a rejection of the hyperprocessed boy band, and by extension an acknowledgment that doing the least can still earn you the most. They weren’t trying to delude audiences about their artistry — their casualness was foundational to their appeal. But that approach wears thin in a solo act, and time and again during the Harry Styles show at the Garden on Saturday night, I found myself vexed. Off-the-charts charisma, collective exuberance, decently competent band, and yet at the center of it all, Styles was inscrutable. Musically, at least. I’ve rarely if ever seen someone more confident in their ownership of the stage, but everything underneath felt slight. All razzle, no dazzle. What am I missing? (I’m not missing anything.)The set included songs from Styles’s repertoire that lean toward mid-1970s rock.The New York TimesLINDSAY ZOLADZ Hmm, Jon, maybe a boa? Despite all of the construction around Madison Square Garden, I had no difficulty finding the venue’s entrance: I just followed the trail of rainbow feathers shed from the signature Styles neckwear that at least half of the audience seemed to be sporting. My thoughts today (and over the next several weeks of Styles’s 15-date residency) are with the Garden’s cleanup crew.I’ve long considered One Direction to be the quintessential boy band of the fan-service era — expertly primed to respond to the demands of their devoted, social-media savvy stan army — and after catching Styles’s show on Sunday night, I’m ready to declare him the defining solo artist of that era, too. I am not sure I’ve ever seen a pop star wave so much from the stage in my entire life? Roughly a third of his performance seemed to comprise waving, pointing and blowing kisses to various sections of the audience, whose volume approximated a jet taking off. Most of the time I could not hear Styles’s voice well enough to determine if he was hitting all the notes, though the crowd’s reaction was energetic enough that they did not seem to care. This show felt, as so much of Styles’s music does, first and foremost for the fans, which — I agree — can sometimes make the man at the center of it all feel like a bit of an enigma.The Dreamy World of Harry StylesThe British pop star and former member of the boy-band One Direction has grown into a magnetic and provocative performer.A 15-Night Stand: The first two nights of Harry Styles’ run at Madison Square Garden were heavy on charisma, banter and nods to the past.New Album: The record-breaking album “Harry’s House” is a testament to the singer’s sense of generosity and devotion to the female subject.Styler Fashion: Stylers, as the pop star’s fans are called, love to dress in homage to their idol. Here are some of the best looks seen at a concert.Opening Up: For his solo debut, Styles agreed to a Times interview. He was slippery in conversation, deflecting questions with politeness.CARAMANICA Let’s try to distill the Harry Styles musical proposition. He has nowhere near the determined agita of, say, Shawn Mendes; nowhere near the vocal litheness of Justin Bieber. (Also:#FreeZayn) And it goes without saying that despite the rampant Eltonisms on display throughout Styles’s solo catalog, and the (sub?)conscious echoes of John’s sartorial glamour in Styles’s Gucci gear, he has nowhere near John’s verve or panache. It is all quite a brittle foundation upon which to build this fame skyscraper.But yes, the waving. Also the utterly-at-ease shimmying. And that thing he did mid-show where he took a fan’s cellphone and tried calling her ex on it. (Josh, if you’re reading this, you got washed, buddy — everyone at Madison Square Garden hates you.) See also: him singing “Happy Birthday” to his friend Florence. Florence Welch, of the Machine? No. Florence Pugh, his co-star in the upcoming film “Don’t Worry Darling”? Also no. Florence, daughter of Rob Stringer, chairman of Sony Music Group? Yes.This is the essence of his appeal — his is not a top-down sort of fame. He’s the approachable but protective friend, the one who leads with good judgment and progressive wholesomeness. (At previous shows, he’s helped people come out, or to confess their love.) That’s part of why, even though public discussion of Styles often centers on his dating life or the ways he flirts with gender fluidity, his actual show is conventional and chaste. The most risqué bit was when he explained how the in-the-round performance would work. Sometimes, “we’ll be ass to face,” he said. “I’ll be sure to distribute face and ass equally throughout the show — there’s plenty to go around.” It was cheeky. Even “Watermelon Sugar,” his lightly erotic hit, was dry.The New York TimesZOLADZ Styles did not call any exes at our show, but he did a funny bit where he attempted to count all of the “golf dads” in the audience — 34, apparently. He also broke some solemn “bad news” about something that had happened just before the show: “I’ve blown my tongue on some soup.” So yes, effortlessly charismatic banter, and he works every corner of the stage. The set and wardrobe were a bit more minimal than I anticipated; I expected at least one costume change. But I would describe the look he was going for, in a red-and-white-striped jumpsuit, as “sexy candy cane.” The fashion, the fans, the force of personality — it feels like we’re talking about everything but the music here, which is perhaps telling. How did the songs strike you, Jon, and did you get anything out of them that you don’t get on his records?CARAMANICA Basically, we’re of opposite opinions on Styles’s albums — I’m more partial to the most recent one, “Harry’s House,” and I know you lean more toward the previous one, “Fine Line.” When the songs were … funkier — and I use that designation extremely loosely — his performance felt more full. I’m thinking “Satellite,” and also “Cinema,” both from the new album — the rhythm section is in the lead, but doesn’t overpower him. I also liked what he did with “Adore You,” melting the chorus into more of a restrained tease. But when he went unadorned, like on “Matilda,” the air in the room felt heavier. And “Sign of the Times,” the first Styles solo hit, was ponderous, a karaoke take on mid-1970s power-mope.Styles’s performance was heavy on waving, pointing and blowing kisses to various sections of the audience.The New York TimesZOLADZ I sometimes detect a divide between the music Styles wants to make — the big, bold, if somewhat generic-sounding ’70s-style rock of his first album — and the more pop-oriented fare that better suits his personality. Not surprisingly, the songs that worked best for me live were the ones that manage to satisfy both of those impulses, like the groovy, Tame Impala-esque “Daylight” or the still-ubiquitous hit “As It Was.” I wish he’d ended the set on that note, but regrettably he had one more song to play after that, the stomping, Led-Zeppelin-cosplay rocker “Kiwi,” an unfortunate live staple that I consider one of his weakest songs. But, as ever, he seemed to relish playing the role of bombastic rock star, even if the material itself didn’t always electrify.I found it refreshing, though, that Styles is not shying away from his former group on this tour: The first song on his preperformance playlist is One Direction’s “Best Song Ever” — much to the shrieking delight of the thousands of fans who sang along to every word — and during his set he actually played a louder and more rock-oriented version of One Direction’s 2011 hit “What Makes You Beautiful,” which happens to be from an album that his former bandmate Louis Tomlinson recently called a disparaging word we can’t print here. How did you feel about Styles’s raucous 1D cover, Jon?CARAMANICA That was one of the musical high points, if not the peak. It was as if a rowdy bar band momentarily inhabited Styles’s very deliberately understated crew. On Saturday, too, people absolutely lost it when the opening bars of “Best Song Ever” hit right after the conclusion of Blood Orange’s temperate and tasteful opening set. It was the purest release of pent-up demand that I’ve witnessed in quite some time. And that’s how the rest of the night went, too — demand leading supply. Fervor without feeling (and certainly without friction). An arena-size canvas merely doodled on with pencil.And for the record, a friend lent me her pink-and-white boa for a few songs — it didn’t help. More

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      From Harry Styles to BTS, Pop’s Biggest Stars Are Looking to Residencies

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      Extended runs in one venue, once associated with legacy acts, have become popular with stars including Harry Styles and BTS, lowering bills and building hype as touring costs rise.On Saturday, Harry Styles will take the stage at Madison Square Garden as part of the tour for his chart-topping new album, “Harry’s House.”Then, next Sunday, he will play the Garden again. Next Monday, too. And another 12 times through Sept. 21. At the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif., Styles will perform another 15 times in October and November. The entire North American leg of the singer’s latest tour, which opened in Toronto this week, consists of 42 shows in just five cities.Styles’s tour is the most prominent example of a bubbling trend of concert residencies: extended runs by artists in a limited number of cities and venues. In a rebounding touring market, with concert-starved audiences buying tickets in record numbers — and at higher prices than ever — these bookings are deliberate choices by prominent artists to reduce their time on the road and set up shop in far fewer places than they could on a traditional tour.Besides Styles’s, high-profile residencies have been completed recently by the K-pop phenom BTS and the Mexican rock band Maná, which has booked 12 dates since March at the Forum, the group’s only performances in the United States all year. In Las Vegas, the place that arguably birthed the residency format, Adele will begin a 32-date weekend engagement at Caesars Palace in November, and Katy Perry and Miranda Lambert also have dates lined up for the fall.“We thought doing a whole tour would be really challenging, maybe impossible, given all the variables,” said Fher Olvera, the lead singer of Maná.Frederick M. Brown/Getty ImagesAccording to talent agents and industry observers, the reasons include clever branding, the protection of artists and crews in the pandemic and a cold calculation of financial efficiencies. More concerts in fewer cities means fewer trucks on the road and lower bills all around.Those financial advantages are key at a time when gas prices are high and the concert world must deal with the same supply-chain shortages that have hit other businesses, said Ray Waddell, who covered the touring business for decades for Billboard magazine and now runs the media and conferences division of the Oak View Group, which operates sports and entertainment venues around the world.“The math is challenging right now,” Waddell said. “It costs way more to tour, more to produce the shows for everybody, more for labor. At the same time, inflation is going to impact discretionary income and force fans to make choices. That’s bad calculus.”For artists like Adele, Harry Styles and BTS, whose vast fan bases seem to have unquenchable demand, asking fans to come to them — and perhaps incur travel expenses of their own — may not be a great risk. But this model does not translate well below the superstar level, agents say.Of course, extended bookings are nothing new. Bruce Springsteen played Giants Stadium 10 times in the summer of in 2003. Prince played 21 shows around Los Angeles in 2011, most at the Forum. But the pandemic may have led to a critical mass.For artists and venues, touring has had a much-needed return to full capacity this year. According to Pollstar, a trade publication that follows the concert industry, gross ticket sales for the top 100 tours in North America reached $1.7 billion for the first six months of 2022, up 9 percent from the same period in 2019. Live Nation, the global concert giant that owns Ticketmaster, recently reported that the company had already sold 100 million tickets for the full year, more than in 2019. Still, the tightening of the wider economy has many in the industry worried about the rest of the year.On the road, and in venues packed with unmasked fans, the threat of Covid-19 still lingers, leading to occasional postponements and cancellations. A residency plan can limit the risk of exposure, and also give an artist a temporary break from the rigors of the road. In one recent Instagram post from a tour stop in Germany, Styles showed himself collapsed in an ice bath. (Styles and his representatives declined to comment for this article.)Adele will begin a 32-date weekend engagement at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas in November.Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images for AdeleThe complications of touring in the age of Covid-19 were behind Maná’s decision to limit its U.S. shows to the Forum. Last year, as the group began making its plans for 2022, the rise of the Omicron variant, and the tangle of local health regulations across the country, made a nationwide tour seem daunting.So they decided to stick to one spot in the Los Angeles area, the group’s biggest worldwide market. The band has already played eight sold-out shows at the Forum, drawing 110,000 fans, and has four more announced through October.“We just wanted to get out and play, to be with our fans,” said Fher Olvera, Maná’s lead singer. “We thought doing a whole tour would be really challenging, maybe impossible, given all the variables.”“After everything that’s happened over the last few years,” Olvera added, “the residency is more than a series of concerts for us — it’s a celebration of life.”The origins of the contemporary concert residency go back to Celine Dion’s decision to set up in Las Vegas in 2003, a time when that city was still seen as a pasture for fading acts.“It was a very big risk at the time — everybody thought we were fools,” said John Meglen of Concerts West, Dion’s promoter, which is part of the AEG Live empire. “At the time, Vegas was like the end of your career. It was like, ‘Come die with us.’”But Dion’s two residencies sold about $660 million in tickets to more than 1,100 shows, according to Pollstar. Dion’s engagements, as well as two by Elton John, recalibrated the industry’s approach to Las Vegas, and were followed by residencies there with Garth Brooks, Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez, Lady Gaga, Drake and many others.The crucial artist for expanding the residency outside of Las Vegas, however, was Billy Joel. After being named the Garden’s first “music franchise” in late 2013, Joel began playing there monthly in 2014, and, aside from a hiatus during the pandemic, never stopped; his 86th concert in the series was recently announced for Dec. 19.Through his June show, the Garden residency has sold about $180 million in tickets. If the rest of his concerts there this year sell out — a fair bet, since every other night of the residency has — the cumulative gross will be around $200 million.“It’s basically the Super Bowl of music events,” said Dennis Arfa, Joel’s longtime booking agent. Joel has said he would continue the engagement “as long as the demand continues,” and there is no sign of that letting up.For Arfa, the scale of engagements like Joel’s and Dion’s raises a question of nomenclature. Do 15 shows over a few weeks count as a “residency” compared to 86, or to 1,100? If not, then what is it?“The word residency is kind of undefinable,” Arfa said. “Now everything is a residency. People do four nights and they can call it a residency. It’s a matter of verbiage and perception. I think the accomplishment is more important than the title.”Whatever these are, they are likely to continue. Omar Al-joulani, Live Nation’s president of touring, said he expected around 30 residency-type engagements in 2023. “That’s including a big Vegas year.”But talent agents and music executives say that these kinds of events cannot replace full-scale touring as a way to satisfy demand and cultivate audiences. When Styles announced his tour dates, Nathan Hubbard, a longtime ticketing executive who is the former chief executive of Ticketmaster, on Twitter declared the strategy “the future of live.” But in a recent interview, he took a more nuanced view.“This is not the new touring model,” Hubbard said. “This doesn’t mean nobody’s going to Louisville — indeed, most artists are still going to have to go market to market to hustle it.”And when a major venue announces its next block booking, what do we call it? Is it a residency, or something else? Arfa, Joel’s agent, pointed to Styles’s dates at the Garden.“It’s a run,” he said. “It’s a great run.” More

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      Harry Styles Repeats at No. 1 With ‘Harry’s House’

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      The One Direction singer’s latest solo album is the first since Adele’s “30” to go back-to-back atop the Billboard chart after debuting there.A big week of vinyl sales made “Harry’s House,” the latest solo album by the One Direction singer Harry Styles, the fastest-selling release of the year so far. A lack of new competition kept it at No. 1 for a second week running.Despite a nearly 70 percent dip in overall activity, including sales and streaming, “Harry’s House” moved another 160,500 album equivalent units in its second week of release, according to the tracking service Luminate, good enough to top the Billboard 200 album chart once again.Yet unlike last week, when it totaled 521,500 units — 182,000 in physical vinyl LPs alone — “Harry’s House” was carried this time by streaming, earning another 134 million clicks. The album became the first release to go back-to-back at No. 1 after its debut since Adele’s “30,” which topped the chart for six straight weeks beginning late last year.The rest of the Top 5 is comprised entirely of former No. 1s: “Un Verano Sin Ti” by Bad Bunny holds at No. 2 with 141,500 units (down just 9 percent from the week prior) while Kendrick Lamar’s “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers” remains at No. 3 with 89,500 units. Future’s “I Never Like You” is No. 4 with 68,000 units and Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” climbs back up one spot to No. 5, still a steady success nearly 18 months after its release.In a quiet week for new music, the highest chart debut belonged to Def Leppard, whose 12th studio album and first in seven years, “Diamond Star Halos,” comes in at No. 10 with 32,000 in sales and three million streams. More

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      Can Harry Styles’s Music Catch Up to His Fame?

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherHarry Styles’s third album, “Harry’s House,” just debuted at the top of the Billboard chart with the year’s biggest opening-week sales: 521,500 equivalent album units. His upcoming tour will feature 15 performances at Madison Square Garden in New York, and 15 performances at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif. By most conventional metrics, Styles is one of pop’s biggest stars.And yet his music has not always been as successful as his celebrity might suggest — he has had just six Top 10 hits. He makes 1970s-style pop that is largely out of step with the current landscape, and he often draws more attention for his intense charisma and his gender-fluid sartorial flair than for his songs.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Styles’s sometimes circular musical journey, the ways his time in One Direction helped shaped his public image and how internet fandom has bolstered his career.Guests:Kaitlyn Tiffany, a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of “Everything I Need I Get From You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It”Lindsay Zoladz, who writes about music for The New York Times and othersConnect 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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      Harry Styles Is No. 1 With a Record-Breaking Total for Vinyl Sales

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      “Harry’s House,” the British pop star’s third solo album, moved more copies on vinyl since at least 1991, when SoundScan began keeping reliable sales data.Is 500,000 the new million?As a shorthand for success selling albums in the streaming age, that may now be the case. The latest release to hit that adjusted milestone is Harry Styles’s “Harry’s House,” which had the equivalent of 521,500 sales in the United States over the last week, thanks to strong streaming numbers and the biggest vinyl take in three decades.For years, moving a million copies of an album in one week was a coveted achievement for any blockbuster release. Since the 1990s it has been done at least 20 times, by acts like Adele, Whitney Houston, ’N Sync, Eminem and Taylor Swift.But streaming has rejiggered the music industry’s math, and the prospect of selling a million copies of an album — or even getting a million “equivalent sales units,” a new yardstick that incorporates old-fashioned purchases and streaming clicks — has largely disappeared from the strategy book. No title has had a million sales in a single week since Swift’s “Reputation” nearly five years ago, and in the last 18 months, only four albums — including “Harry’s House” — have crossed 500,000.“Harry’s House” had about as boffo an opening as any album can have now, with 247 million streams and 330,000 copies sold as a complete package, according to the tracking service Luminate. It had the best opening of any album since Adele’s “30,” which landed six months ago with 839,000. (Even Adele, whose previous album, “25,” started with nearly 3.4 million back in 2015, could no longer hit seven figures.)Styles’s streaming number was strong, but less robust than the totals for recent albums by Bad Bunny and Kendrick Lamar. Where “Harry’s House” really shone was vinyl. It moved 182,000 copies on the LP format, more than any other album has sold in a single week since at least 1991, when Luminate’s predecessor, SoundScan, began keeping reliable sales data.As Billboard noted, vinyl sales alone would have been enough to propel “Harry’s House” to No. 1. Each of the three solo albums by Styles, who rose to fame as part of the British boy band One Direction, has opened at the top of the chart. Styles’s song “As It Was” also returned to No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart, notching its fourth time at the top.Also this week, several recent chart-toppers hold strong: Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” is No. 2, Lamar’s “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers,” is No. 3 and Future’s “I Never Liked You” is No. 4.“American Heartbreak,” by the country singer-songwriter Zach Bryan — his first major-label album after two self-released recordings — opens at No. 5. Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” is No. 6, the 72-week-old album’s first time out of the Top 5 since December. More