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    Italian Pop Discoveries From My Vacation

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    Hear songs from Angelina Mango, Patty Pravo and an unexpected hit by Conan Gray.Angelina Mango.Jessica Gow/EPA, via ShutterstockDear listeners,I’m back! Thank you to my editor, Caryn Ganz, for filling in for me for the past two weeks while I was on vacation visiting a friend in Italy. I was mostly in and around Florence, but I also made some excursions to Siena, Bologna and Rome. As relaxing as that sounds, know that my ears weren’t completely on vacation. As always, I was constantly discovering new music, and I’m going to share some of those finds with you in today’s playlist.I confess that, going into this trip, I didn’t know much about Italian pop music — minus Giorgio Moroder or the odd Italo disco track I’d downloaded over the years — and even after digging in a bit more deeply, I’m still far from an expert. But those circumstances sometimes make for the most honest and exciting discoveries. I don’t know which of the artists whose music I connected with are particularly “cool,” and I can’t quite trace all the cultural references that put them into a larger context. All I know is that something about each of these songs resonated with me when I heard them — and sometimes it really is that simple.What follows is a collection of nine songs that I encountered while browsing record stores, watching one of several music video channels that still exist on Italian TV, or sitting in a cafe and hearing something that piqued my curiosity enough to open up Shazam. It includes new artists like Italy’s most recent Eurovision representative Angelina Mango, national legends like Patty Pravo, and a three-song detour into the country’s ’80s new-wave underground. It also includes one recent American pop song that — I was surprised to learn — is unexpectedly big in Italy. Divertiti!Ciao,LindsayListen along while you read.1. Patty Pravo: “La Bambola”Patty Pravo was an unfamiliar name I kept seeing in used record store bins, and I’m glad I looked her up after I got home. Now 76, the Venice-born Pravo is a smoky-voiced chanteuse who has had a long and eclectic career. Her breakout hit “La Bambola” (“The Doll”) topped the Italian pop charts for nine weeks in 1968 and is still one of her signature songs.▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTubeWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Me’ Is a Lovely and Distinctive Tween Drama

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      Anchored by beautiful performances, this Apple TV+ superhero show surpasses its own genre clichés.How often the world nearly ends at a middle-school dance. “Me,” a superpower tween drama arriving Friday on Apple TV+, has your standard cataclysm in its be-streamered gym and hits plenty of familiar beats along the way. But the show is anchored by beautiful performances, and its non-magical story lines punch well above their weight class. Why, it’s almost as if the real super powers lay within all along.Lucian-River Chauhan stars as Ben, our saucer-eyed hero who is trying, for his mother’s sake, to make a go of things with his doting new stepfather (Kyle Howard) and funky, precocious stepsister, Max (Abigail Pniowsky). Lucky for him, Max tries to have his back at school, where he is subjected to (unimaginative) cafeteria bullying.Our Ben is not just a put-upon little dweeb, though. He is also a shape-shifter. One morning, he wakes up not looking like himself but instead exactly like a classmate. Eventually, he learns to control this power, and he attempts to wield it justly: to stand up for people even lower in the social strata than he, to help Max ask a crush to the doomed dance, to mimic voices as a fun party trick. But there’s a reason well-meaning adults always offer the same advice. Just be yourself! Pretending to be other people is a dangerous game.As a gentle blended-family drama for young viewers, “Me” is lovely and distinctive. The relationship between Max and Ben is one rarely explored on television: stepsiblings who are allies. Chauhan and Pniowsky are terrific, and especially terrific together. Ben lets Max in on his big secret right away, and not only does she instantly believe him, she’s in his corner, helping him with his techniques and also with his ethics.This warm wholesomeness is not without its deeper tensions: Max is loyal to her own mother, too, and she resents how often her wants are dismissed in order to placate her divorced parents. Ben’s powers are thoughtfully framed as part of the natural teenage search for one’s identity, and his mother (Dilshad Vadsaria) worries, with good reason, that he’s withdrawing, pulling away.Were we to stay within the domestic realms, even with Ben’s gifts, this would be among the most emotionally literate middle-grade shows. But of course Ben’s abilities connect him to a broader world of a superpowered cabal and an evil guy seeking world domination and blah blah blah. The triteness is tiring, the mechanics and motivations of the supernatural stories do not make enough sense, and the use of split timelines only muddies the narrative.There are 10 episodes of “Me,” and they start strong, strong enough to fend off the forces of evil that threaten both the characters and the show. More

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      ‘Sunny’ Is a Dreamy Robot Dramedy

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      This stylish sci-fi series, on Apple TV+, stars Rashida Jones as a grieving woman with an unexpected new companion.Rashida Jones stars as a grieving, alienated ex-pat in “Sunny,” a quirky new 10-episode dramedy that begins Wednesday on Apple TV+. Suzie is an American woman living in Japan, who is married to a Japanese man but has to rely on an in-ear translator when she is out and about on her own. After her husband and young son disappear in a commercial plane crash, she feels totally untethered, often clashing with her chilly mother-in-law, Noriko (Judy Ongg), and spilling her guts to a friendly bartender, Mixxy (Annie the Clumsy).Her husband’s colleague drops off a homebot for her — a chirpy humanoid named Sunny (voiced by Joanna Sotomura) with a noggin like the Las Vegas Sphere. Suzie’s husband, Masa (Hidetoshi Nishijima), designed and programmed the robot especially for her, the colleague says. How odd! Masa always told Suzie that his job at the big technology company was in the refrigerators division …. (She does indeed have a snazzy refrigerator: buttery yellow with a ridged porthole window on the freezer.)It is also odd because Suzie claims to hate robots. “A robot killed my mother,” she says dryly; it was a self-driving car, explains Noriko. But Suzie isn’t really in a position to turn down help and companionship, and Sunny is awfully persistent. “Robots are expressions of their creators,” the colleague tells her, and any lingering tidbits of her husband are of course quite precious. Especially because, now that you mention it, maybe Masa was lying about a lot of things, including his connections to organized crime. And — eek! They’re after us!Much of the story and plotting in “Sunny” is chasing its own tail, but gosh it’s a fun loop. At a time when many shows have ceded ground to second-screen viewing, “Sunny” has a distinctive visual style. Drab, gray swaths are punctuated by pops of yellow, and scenes of seedy nightlife and packed shopping kiosks burst with neon squiggles and candy-bright outfits. It’s all exceptionally evocative, and the show’s mood and vibe linger like a lover’s perfume.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      An All ‘Independence’ Playlist for the Fourth of July

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      Listen to songs by Martina McBride, Destiny’s Child, Kelly Clarkson and more.Martina McBridePaul Natkin/WireImage, via Getty ImagesDear listeners,Hello again from your guest playlister — Lindsay’s editor, Caryn — in this lead-up to the Fourth of July. Last year, Lindsay brought you a 16-song soundtrack for your holiday barbecues. I am not going to top that, so instead (inspired by my fave, Kelly Clarkson), I did a brief dive into songs that use independence as a thematic trope.While pop has turned to the independent woman many times, Independence Day has been a time for reflection on a variety of emotional topics: a painful breakup (Palehound), an escape from an abusive relationship (Martina McBride), a glimmer of hopefulness cracking through the melancholy (Elliott Smith). Bruce Springsteen’s song is a tad too dark even for this list, sorry, Jersey friends!All of these songs are sharply written, passionately sung and provide some form of release. And taken together, they make a pretty cohesive playlist. (If you did not yet know, I’m fanatical about sequencing.)Throw your hands up at me,CarynListen along while you read.1. Kelly Clarkson: “Miss Independent”Kelly Clarkson’s debut album, “Thankful” from 2003, featured this killer lead single: a genuine jam (with some genuinely dated production) about a strong woman who finds there’s also strength in letting love into her life. If it sounds a bit like a finger-wagging Christina Aguilera song, there’s good reason for that: She’s a writer on the track (along with Clarkson, Rhett Lawrence and Matt Morris), which was at one point destined for her own “Stripped.”▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTubeWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Girl Groupers Gone (Successfully!) Solo

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      With two new albums from members of Fifth Harmony out now, a look back at other pop singers who took off on their own.Diana RossJoe Castro/European Pressphoto AgencyDear listeners,This is not exactly a boom time for American girl groups*. The last high-profile one to have any chart success was Fifth Harmony, who formed on the 2012 season of “The X Factor” and went on an indefinite hiatus in 2018. I bring this up because, strikingly, two former members of Fifth Harmony have released solo albums in the past two weeks: The R&B chanteuse Normani put out her long-gestating “Dopamine” on June 14, and today the Cuban-born pop star Camila Cabello is unleashing her bold, outré fourth solo album, “C, XOXO.”In honor of this rare phenomenon in the pop cosmos, I thought it would be fun to put together a playlist of songs by former members of all-female vocal groups — past and present — who flew the coop and went solo. Yes, this mix features Beyoncé. And Kelly Rowland too! It also includes tracks from the Supreme Ms. Diana Ross, the multitalented Dawn Richard and the eternally cool Ronnie Spector, among others.Also, a programming note: I will be on vacation for the next two weeks, but as always I’ll be leaving you in good hands. Expect a fresh Amplifier written by a very special guest to arrive in your inbox each Tuesday while I’m gone, and get ready for an especially eclectic record haul playlist when I return from my travels. Til then!Respectfully I say to thee,Lindsay*The girl group is, of course, still alive and well in the K-pop world. If I had to guess, I’d predict that the next major, global, post-girl-group superstar will come from South Korea.Listen along while you read.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Bear’ Season 3 Is a Clanging, Wailing Beast

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      The hit FX series about an upstart Chicago restaurant loves the pressures of tight quarters and close shouting. The new season serves up plenty more.Jeremy Allen White stars in “The Bear.”FXSeason 3 of “The Bear,” available now on Hulu, is a volcano of self-loathing. Appropriately for a show set in Chicago, “The Bear” tends to move in a loop, revisiting the past and bringing old wounds into the present day aboard a clanging, wailing beast. This go-round makes all the local stops: enchanting food porn, bitter screaming matches, elegant monologues, small moments where the audience can learn culinary techniques, a character’s back story that boils down to “they were poor and needed a job.” Doors open on the right at repressed rage.When we last saw our Bear pals, the friends-and-family preview night for their revamped restaurant had collapsed because Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) locked himself in the walk-in fridge — but really because of the fragility and volatility of the clique at large, and the fact that the characters mostly hate their friends and families. Everyone yelled even more than usual, with Carmy and Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) whipping themselves into hysteria through the fridge door, and Carmy and Claire (Molly Gordon) breaking up. Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) was left with all of the responsibility but none of the authority. The action of this season begins moments later, a blue cloud of dejection hanging over everyone.I used to think of “The Bear” as claustrophobic, but now I think it’s claustrophilic: This show loves tight spaces, the pressures of close quarters. Its hugs are all rib-cracking, suffocating, too much. Even dermatologists don’t require such detailed examinations of every mole and pore on people’s cheeks.The show often name-drops actual restaurants, and many real chefs appear as themselves. (This season, they appear a bit too much: Save it for the endless mutual appreciation societies on “Top Chef.”) The omnipresent jargon, the if-you-know-you-know details and the fly-on-the-wall style give everything a rush of legitimacy — it may not be not true, but it’s real. Or wait: maybe not real, but true.That veracity is tempered by the show’s appetite for contrivance. Barnburner monologues give way to dialogue so repetitive it might as well be a Meisner exercise. Comic relief becomes sitcom buffoonery from a dumber planet. The show’s high-profile cameos can yank you out of the action and make you think “ooo, Jamie Lee Curtis” and not just “ooo, dysfunctional Christmas.”Characters on “The Bear” struggle to express themselves and struggle to be understood, so they repeat everything, over and over, louder and louder. What grates is when the show itself does this, too, always adding another line for good measure — just to make extra sure you definitely, 100 percent got what it was going for. In one scene at the end of this season, Carmy and Luca (Will Poulter), Carmy’s old chef pal, reminisce about how many peas they shucked for a certain dish while working together. Sydney says it sounds like “a trauma dish.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Smiling Friends’ Is a Deranged Blast

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      This warped Adult Swim animated series, streaming on Max, is so fast and feral it feels like its own highlight reel.Charlie, Pip and Allan try to make people smile at Smiling Friends Inc.Adult SwimThe setup for the Adult Swim series “Smiling Friends,” available on Max, sounds like the premise of a cheery, do-unto-others children’s show: Charlie and Pim (voiced by Zach Hadel and Michael Cusack, the show’s creators) and their kooky pals work at Smiling Friends Inc., where their job is to make clients smile.But there is nary a shred of cutesy wholesomeness here — instead, there is cursing, bloodshed, absurdity, silliness. The show is so fast and feral it feels like its own highlight reel.Each 12-minute installment takes us on another deranged misadventure, to odd enclaves and foreign planets, to find lost loves, influence political elections, revamp video-game franchises. “Smiling Friends” has an omnivorous sensibility, and its punchlines can be surreal and warped or grounded and tenderly specific, all part of its grand ethnography of weird little freaks. It also varies its animation style, with Charlie and Pim looking mostly unchanged but guest characters depicted in a range of formats: live action, grotesque illustration, rotoscoped realism.If some of this character design conjures fond associations with “Tom Goes to the Mayor” or “Beavis and Butt-Head,” well, that’s how you know you are in the right place. “Smiling” is more acrid than “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” and plays by different rules than “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” but it has a similar naughtiness.The show first aired as a backdoor pilot in 2020, was ordered to series in 2021, debuted in 2022 and is about to finish its second season on Sunday at midnight on Adult Swim. (It was recently renewed for a third season.) Part of the appeal here is the show’s wide curiosity and unpredictable rhythm; its grab-bagginess recreates the lure of a blind-box toy. There’s also a snacky quality to “Smiling,” thanks to the peppy vulgarity that is basically Adult Swim’s Doritos powder.Its episodic nature and short running times help, too — though as with any modern show that wants to be loved, Easter eggs and deep-cut callbacks abound. More

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      The Fiery Sounds of the Monterey International Pop Festival

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      Revisiting the event’s memorable set list, 57 years later.Ravi Shankar onstage at the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967.Ted Streshinsky/Corbis, via Getty ImagesDear listeners,Fifty-seven years ago today, the Monterey International Pop Festival — the three-day event that arguably invented the modern music festival — concluded in a blaze of glory. That Sunday boasted quite a bill: Ravi Shankar mesmerized the crowd with a set of ragas that lasted more than three hours. The Who obliterated the calm with a proto-punk set which ended when Pete Townshend smashed his guitar. Jimi Hendrix attempted a one-up by lighting his on fire. The headliners the Mamas & the Papas had the unenviable task of following all that.I’ve had Monterey Pop on the brain recently, since last month I published an in-depth piece about the life and legacy of “Mama” Cass Elliot. (I began the essay with a self-deprecating joke that Elliot made onstage at the festival, which took place just six weeks after she’d given birth to her daughter.) The story of Monterey Pop is entwined in the story of the Mamas & the Papas: The group’s leader, John Phillips, was one of the organizers of the festival, and he even wrote the event’s de facto theme song, “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair),” which was recorded by the folk singer Scott McKenzie. The Mamas & the Papas were perhaps the most famous band on the bill at the time, but that would soon change. The festival — like D.A. Pennebaker’s era-defining, fly-on-the-wall documentary “Monterey Pop” — was a snapshot of the precise moment when the prevailing sounds of folk-rock began to give way to a louder, gnarlier kind of rock ’n’ roll practiced by Hendrix, the Who and another of the weekend’s breakout stars, the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company, Janis Joplin.One of the things that makes Pennebaker’s documentary so valuable is the fact that it captured, in vivid liveliness, so many musical luminaries who would soon be gone: Joplin, Hendrix, Elliot and Otis Redding, who died in a plane crash before the film was released. Pennebaker and his crew shot these artists in intimate, immediate close-up, pioneering the visual language of concert documentaries to come.Today’s playlist revisits some of Monterey Pop’s legendry set list, specifically focusing on the songs performed in Pennebaker’s film. It’s a mix of live cuts and studio versions, of flower-child folk and rabble-rousing rock. It is unlikely to inspire you to go full pyromaniac like Hendrix, but just in case, you might want to have a fire extinguisher handy.Lookin’ for fun and feelin’ groovy,LindsayListen along while you read.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Curse’ Is a Pulpy and Self-Aware Heist Series

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      In the best ways, this endearing and very bingeable British show feels as if “Breaking Bad” were happening to “Bob’s Burgers.”From left, Hugo Chegwin, Allan Mustafa, Emer Kenny and Tom Davis in a scene from “The Curse.”BritBox“Some of this might have happened,” “The Curse” declares at the top of each episode. The show is loosely inspired by the 1983 Brink’s-Mat robbery in London, when robbers stole a mountain of gold bullion from a vault and largely evaded capture. As with many plundered caches, though, those bricks came at a cost, and where money led, misery followed.But veracity claims feel beside the point for “The Curse” — a British show that debuted in 2022, not to be confused with the unrelated 2023 Showtime series starring Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone — which shines bright enough on its specifics, its self-aware pulp and especially its antsy momentum.Our doomed squad centers on the calculating cafe owner Natasha (Emer Kenny), her bumbling husband, Albert (Allan Mustafa), and her even more bumbling brother, Sidney (Steve Stamp, who also created the show). Mick (Tom Davis) is the muscle, but definitely not the brains, and Phil (Hugo Chegwin) is convinced he is the group’s leader — which the others dispute.In the best ways, the show feels as if “Breaking Bad” were happening to “Bob’s Burgers.” Anxious wannabe-tough guys argue over inane minutiae while fumbling their way through the criminal underworld. After Phil gives a grandiose pronouncement, Mick asks if he is quoting the Bible. “It’s our new Bible,” Phil says. “‘Scarface.’”The Brink’s-Mat robbery was recently the basis for the also terrific 2023 mini-series “The Gold,” which is witty but takes a more grounded approach. “The Curse” is more cartoonish, blending sitcom one-liners with flashes of abrupt violence — neurotic, endearing infighting in the foreground, international crime rings in the background. The plotting is brisk approaching breakneck, which highlights just how much its ding-a-ling characters are struggling to keep up, getting both luckier and unluckier at every turn.Episodes of “The Curse” are a half-hour, and most end on cliffhangers, so the show is practically begging to be binged. Season 1, available on Amazon Prime Video and BritBox, starts with the heist and ends with a great escape; Season 2, available on BritBox only, is set in Spain, where characters are avoiding extradition, building a water park and trying to break into the cocaine industry. More