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      Record Shopping in New Jersey: A Playlist From a Fresh Haul

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      Thumbing through the crates at the Princeton Record Exchange, and rediscovering albums by Stevie Wonder, Linda Ronstadt, Broadcast and Merle Haggard.Lindsay ZoladzDear listeners,I love the unpredictability of walking into a record store with a regularly replenished New Arrivals section. You never know what you’ll find: maybe that obscure rarity you’ve spent years hunting down, maybe a familiar classic discounted too low to resist, maybe a chance purchase that sends you down a rabbit hole of related artists. To honor this spirit of musical serendipity, here’s the first of a recurring Amplifier segment, My Record Haul, featuring playlists from my recent finds at brick-and-mortar record shops.I’m going to begin close to home, with a visit to one of my favorite record stores in the world (maybe one of my favorite places in the world, full stop) the Princeton Record Exchange: a vast 4,300-square-foot music lover’s paradise tucked down a side street near Princeton University’s campus. I try to swing by the PREX (as it’s known to regulars) as often as possible; inventory there turns over so quickly (by some estimates, they move 40,000 items a month), the New Arrivals shelves are always fresh.Some of my recent finds talk to each other in unexpected ways. Listen along here on Spotify as you read, and hear 12 new songs out this week in the Playlist.1. Linda Ronstadt: “You’re No Good”“Working at a store like this,” one of the managers told me at the register, “you really get a sense of who was selling massive quantities of records back in the day.” He was talking about Billy Joel (“so much Billy Joel”), but also Linda Ronstadt, whose 1976 collection “Greatest Hits” went seven-times platinum — which means there are now enough used copies floating around to make it a cheap investment. ($2.99, in this case.) I know that Ronstadt is currently enjoying an uptick in popularity with a younger generation thanks to her 1970 ballad “Long, Long Time” being featured on an episode of “The Last of Us,” but — being woefully behind on pretty much all TV shows — what inspired me to dig deeper into her catalog was the fantastic, heartbreaking 2019 documentary “Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice.” (Listen on YouTube)2. Stevie Wonder: “Superstition”My colleague Jon Pareles’s fantastic 50th-anniversary commemoration of Stevie Wonder’s 1972 album “Talking Book” made me realize it’s probably the classic Stevie release I’m least familiar with. How serendipitous, then, to find a mint-condition used copy in one of the first stacks of new releases I flipped through! I am, of course, not suggesting that you will be discovering “Superstition” through this playlist. I am merely suggesting that it has been far too long since you’ve really listened to “Superstition,” even if you listened to it five minutes ago. (Listen on YouTube)3. Broadcast: “Goodbye Girls”Last October, on a vacation in Nashville, I found myself fiddling around with a small vintage keyboard in the hands-on “novelties lounge” at the wonderfully curated Third Man Records store. Its sound was warm, staticky and viscerally reminiscent of a particular album I couldn’t place until the walk back to my hotel, when it hit me — it was the British electronic group Broadcast’s singular “Tender Buttons” from 2005, which for some reason I hadn’t listened to in ages. I’ve been correcting that error in the months since, and though I mostly buy used records, I couldn’t resist dropping $22 on a new pressing of this baby. If only that synthesizer had been priced as reasonably … (Listen on YouTube)4. Merle Haggard: “Where No One Stands Alone”I’ve been going through a Merle Haggard phase for the past few months, since reading the recently released second edition of David Cantwell’s excellent book on the Hag, “The Running Kind.” While I didn’t find the exact Haggard record on my wish list (his eclectic 1979 midlife crisis record “Serving 190 Proof”), I did find an LP that ranks high on Cantwell’s listening guide: “Songs for the Mama That Tried,” a 1981 collection of gospel standards dedicated to the long-suffering mama name-checked in one of Haggard’s most famous songs. I find his bare-bones arrangement of Mosie Lister’s gospel standard “Where No One Stands Alone” quite moving. (Listen on YouTube)5. Stevie Wonder: “Big Brother”This song has such a gorgeous lead vocal melody, the intricate layering of musical elements that makes “Talking Book” such a symphony of self, and lyrics that (“I live in the ghetto, you just come to visit me ’round election time”) are as unfortunately relevant as ever five decades later. (Listen on YouTube)6. Merle Haggard & the Strangers: “The Fightin’ Side of Me (Live at the Philadelphia Civic Center)”The Country section at PREX certainly doesn’t get pride of place — I actually had to sit on the floor to flip through it — but that also means you can find some gems for pretty cheap. In addition to “Songs for the Mama,” I picked up the rollicking 1970 live album “The Fightin’ Side of Me (Live at the Philadelphia Civic Center),” which of course has a fiery rendition of the title track, a Haggard live staple. I like how, in the sequencing of this playlist, Wonder and Haggard seem to be talking back to one another … (Listen on YouTube)7. Broadcast: “America’s Boy”… and how Trish Keenan, on this icy indictment of American military might, seems to be talking right back to Haggard. (Listen on YouTube)8. Linda Ronstadt: “When Will I Be Loved”A recent argument I had with a friend: Is Kelly Clarkson her generation’s Linda Ronstadt? (As in, “an expert interpreter of familiar material, and an effortlessly fluent liaison between the worlds of rock, pop and country,” as I put it in a piece last year about Clarkson the cover artist.) Discuss! (Listen on YouTube)9. Bonnie Owens with Merle Haggard & the Strangers: “Philadelphia Lawyer (Live at the Philadelphia Civic Center)”I’ll leave you with this charming cameo from Haggard’s wife at the time, the country singer Bonnie Owens, topically tackling Woody Guthrie’s “Philadelphia Lawyer.” I love how she admits to flubbing the lyrics — “Oh I forgot to say what the Philadelphia lawyer said to Bill’s Hollywood maid!” — and launches back into the song without missing a beat. (Listen on YouTube)Very superstitious,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Record Shopping at Princeton Record Exchange: Hear My Haul” track listTrack 1: Linda Ronstadt, “You’re No Good”Track 2: Stevie Wonder, “Superstition”Track 3: Broadcast, “Goodbye Girls”Track 4: Merle Haggard, “Where No One Stands Alone”Track 5: Stevie Wonder, “Big Brother”Track 6: Merle Haggard & the Strangers, “The Fightin’ Side of Me (Live at the Philadelphia Civic Center”Track 7: Broadcast, “America’s Boy”Track 8: Linda Ronstadt, “When Will I Be Loved”Track 9: Bonnie Owens with Merle Haggard & the Strangers, “Philadelphia Lawyer (Live at the Philadelphia Civic Center)”Bonus tracks“The store has withstood the coming of CDs. Now it must face the internet.” Here’s a Times report from 2000 about the Princeton Record Exchange at a crossroads. (Spoiler: Almost 23 years later, they’re still in business.)Also, here’s my favorite passage from David Cantwell’s aforementioned Merle Haggard biography, discussing Haggard’s 1994 induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame: “Merle’s acceptance speech was perfectly in character. Rather than thanking a Young Country music industry that applauded him tonight but wouldn’t play his records come morning, he made a point of recognizing first ‘my plumber out in Palo Cedro … for doing a wonderful job on my toilet.’” (It’s true! You can watch the video here.) More

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      Springsteen Comes Alive

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      With the E Street Band electrifying audiences on the road for the first time since 2016, listen to live versions of songs from the current tour.Nils Lofgren and Bruce Springsteen onstage at Madison Square Garden on Saturday.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesDear listeners,In October 2020 — a time when a lot of touring musicians were wondering when, and if, they’d ever play live again — I interviewed Bruce Springsteen over video chat.* He was preparing to release “Letter to You,” his first album with the E Street Band in six years, and he knew that putting out an E Street Band album without an accompanying tour was, to his fans, a total tease.He’d just turned 71; the fleeting nature of time was on his mind and all over his album, from the elegiac ballad “One Minute You’re Here” to “Last Man Standing,” a rocking tribute to the late members of the band he joined as a teenager, the Castiles. After the 2018 death of the guitarist and vocalist George Theiss, Springsteen was the group’s last surviving member.In our conversation, Springsteen was palpably antsy to get back on the road — he knew precious time was wasting. “My band is at its best,” he said, “and we have so much accumulated knowledge and craft about what we do that this was a time in my life where I said, ‘I want to use that as much as I can.’”He told me that the original plan had been to tour with the E Street Band in 2021, but “I would say we’ll be lucky if it’s 2022” — a year that, at that time, felt impossibly far away. (As it turned out, Springsteen would take the stage in 2021, albeit a smaller and less populated one than he’d imagined; his solo “Springsteen on Broadway” show, which had its initial, 236-date run in 2017 and 2018, returned for a limited, 31-date run in New York from June to September.)His prediction wasn’t far from the mark: On Feb. 1, 2023, Springsteen and the E Street Band finally kicked off a 90-date international tour, playing their first show together in seven years. I caught them at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night, and they sounded every bit as tight and spirited as they did the last time I’d seen them there, on the River Tour in 2016.An E Street Band show is an ensemble performance, a veritable rock ’n’ roll circus of eclectic personalities — at its most crowded, there were 18 musicians onstage — each receiving a solo moment in the spotlight. I would personally like to shout out Curtis King for his angelic falsetto vocals on the cover of the Commodores’ “Nightshift,” Max Weinberg for — still! at 71! — being a drummer of exceptional steadiness and flair; and Little Steven, for the continued glory of just being Little Steven, day in and day out.Maybe you’ll get to see Springsteen on this tour. And maybe you won’t — some people still don’t feel comfortable sharing a respiratory experience with 20,000 strangers, and let’s not forget that these shows are happening during a particularly rocky moment for ticket buyers. So if you can’t make it out to one of the concerts — or if you did and want to keep reliving it — I have a playlist for you.It’s culled from my favorite live versions of Springsteen songs that the band played on April 1 at Madison Square Garden. There are only 10, but it’s still well over an hour long, because it’s Bruce. It represents a variety of venues and eras in the band’s five-decade run, including what a lot of Springsteen aficionados believe to be the greatest live recording of “Born to Run,” from an August 1985 show at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. (Every one of them who doesn’t believe that is probably drafting me an email right now.)It includes a wild, 16-minute (!) rendition of “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” and the sparse, poetic solo reading of “Thunder Road” from the 2018 recording of “Springsteen on Broadway,” which blew me away when I was lucky enough to see it in 2021. If you’re avoiding set-list spoilers, I will say: This is only about a third of the material that the band has been playing on this tour, and most of these songs were likely to make the set list anyway — but you do you.Of course, even the all-time greatest playlist of Bruce Springsteen live cuts will not replicate the experience of seeing him — or anybody, really — in concert. I’ll give the last word to the Boss himself, who, at the end of our interview, was bemoaning the loss of live performances (in quotes that didn’t make the final piece). “It’s still important, and it’s an experience that cannot yet be simulated,” he said. Even then-trendy livestreams didn’t cut it: “It’s not the same as being in a little room, or even a stadium, wherever you are, and having that music wash over you while standing next to your neighbors and friends. There’s still just that.”Show a little faith, there’s magic in the night,Lindsay*I am from New Jersey, so telling this to anyone in my family was sort of like saying I was going to Skype with Shakespeare. The assignment came together at the last minute, and as I was prepping I decided I could not tell my mother about it until after it had happened, because she was going to freak out in such a way that would have made me even more nervous than I already was. Her reaction — “no … no …. NOOOOO!” — when I called her after the interview confirmed that this was indeed the right decision. Hi, Mom!The Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Springsteen Comes Alive” track listTrack 1: “No Surrender” (Live at the Wachovia Spectrum; October 2009)Track 2: “Out in the Street” (Live at Madison Square Garden; June/July 2000)Track 3: “Trapped” (Live at the Meadowlands; August 1984)Track 4: “Johnny 99” (Live at Giants Stadium; August 1985)Track 5: “Backstreets” (Live at the Roxy Theater, July 1978)Track 6: “Because the Night” (Live at Nassau Coliseum, December 1980)Track 7: “Jungleland” (Live at Madison Square Garden, June/July 2000)Track 8: “Thunder Road” (“Springsteen on Broadway” version)Track 9: “Born to Run” (Live at Giants Stadium, August 1985)Track 10: “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” (Live at Madison Square Garden; June/July 2000)Bonus tracks“This, too, is the promise that has always been sold in Bruce Springsteen’s music. The ability to make the most out of your life, because it’s the only life you have.” I love this essay that the great critic and poet Hanif Abdurraqib wrote upon seeing the River Tour in 2016, reflecting on music, American myths and the experience of being Black at a Springsteen show.Also, here’s a June 2021 dispatch from the reopening of “Springsteen on Broadway” by me and our chief theater critic Jesse Green, debating whether it was live theater or a rock concert. Writing it the next day, I was still in awe of that rendition of “Thunder Road” — which is why I included this version on today’s playlist — and reassessing a song I thought I knew inside and out. More

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      4 New Artists You Need to Hear

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      Listen to Jana Horn, Water From Your Eyes, Debby Friday and Anna B Savage.Debby Friday is on a heroine’s quest for self-discovery.Katrin BragaDear listeners,Each year when I watch the Grammys, I am reminded of the absurdity of the best new artist category. New to whom, I always wonder. The qualifications are notoriously fuzzy and historically unstable — just ask the country musician Shelby Lynne, who released her debut record in 1989 and was amused to find herself winning best new artist in 2001. (“Thirteen years and six albums to get here,” she remarked wryly from the stage.) In 2007, Justin Vernon’s folk-pop project Bon Iver put out the lauded “For Emma, Forever Ago,” but it took five years and two more acclaimed releases to pull off one of the category’s most dramatic upsets, when he took home the 2012 trophy by beating the fan favorite, Nicki Minaj — who, as it happened, put out her first mixtape all the way back in 2007, too.And yet I did feel sympathy for the Grammy nominating body while putting together today’s playlist, which is full of up-and-coming artists who have recently caught my ear. No, they’re not exactly “new” — all have previously released music, and in some cases a few albums. But they’re new to me, and I hope that means at least a few of them will be new to you, too. They’re an eclectic bunch, making confessional acoustic folk, brash electro-pop and off-kilter art-rock. All have fresh albums that have either just been released or will be very soon. I would happily break Milli Vanilli’s (rescinded) best new artist Grammy from 1990 into four pieces and redistribute it to the following acts.Listen along here on Spotify as you read, or hit the YouTube links as you go.Jana HornJana Horn is a native Texan with a poised, glassy voice that reminds me a bit of the great ’60s folk singer Vashti Bunyan, except Bunyan’s voice evoked pastoral realism instead of Horn’s subtly mischievous mirror-world. The sparse, spine-tingling “After All This Time” — from a new album coming out next week, “The Window Is the Dream” — was what first caught my ear, but it’s since led me back to her great 2020 album, “Optimism,” and the absolutely haunting song “Jordan,” a poetic meditation on a Bible verse that Horn unfurls with the fixed gaze and confident pacing of an expert storyteller.Water From Your EyesSonic Youth never made a guest appearance on “Sesame Street,” but what the Brooklyn duo Water From Your Eyes presupposes with its latest single, “Barley,” is, well … what if the band did? “1, 2, 3, counter,” the vocalist Rachel Brown intones in a bone-dry deadpan. “You’re a cool thing, count mountains.” Nate Amos provides the perfect complement by kicking up dust storms of distorted, deconstructed guitar riffs. “Barley” stacks familiar words and musical elements in unpredictable shapes, creating an internal logic as alluring as it is mysterious. It all bodes very well for the group’s album “Everyone’s Crushed,” which comes out on May 26.Debby FridayThe Nigerian-born, Toronto-based singer and rapper Debby Friday’s ambitious, charismatic album “Good Luck” is one of my favorite debuts of the year so far. The strobe-lit club banger “I Got It,” which features Uñas, has been a mainstay of my running playlist for the past few months — it’s bona fide sprint fuel! But Friday shows off her range on the more introspective “So Hard to Tell,” which she frames as a tender but direct address to her younger self: “Lady Friday,” she sighs in a voice weighted down with the wisdom of hindsight, “all you do is rebel.” No matter her mood, though, Friday has what the kids call main character energy: She’s a shape-shifting, swashbuckling dynamo journeying through different tempos and genres, always on a heroine’s quest for self-discovery.Anna B SavageWhere does love go — like, energetically speaking — after the relationship that contained it ends? That’s the question that the British singer-songwriter Anna B Savage stares down in “The Ghost,” a quivering, emotionally raw incantation that begins her gripping new album, “In/Flux.” “I thought you were gone, but six years on, you’re back again,” Savage sings through gritted teeth before unlatching her jaw to let out a keening plea: “Stop haunting me, please.” There’s a rattling immediacy to Savage’s music; she writes like someone with a direct, unimpeded channel to her innermost feelings. “The Orange,” the album’s cautiously optimistic closer, provides a satisfying counterpoint to “The Ghost” and, I’d venture, a pretty good ending to this little playlist. “My new love is wind in the poplar trees,” Savage sings, finally free of the ghost’s interruptions and able to take stock of the simple pleasures all around her: “Round pebbles, poetry/Orange peel hacked on my knee.”If that’s not enough new music, Jon Pareles and I have 9 more song recommendations for you in this week’s Playlist.Yours in imagining Kim Gordon meeting Cookie Monster,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Best New (to Me) Artists, 2023” track listTrack 1: Jana Horn, “After All This Time”Track 2: Water From Your Eyes, “Barley”Track 3: Debby Friday, “I Got It”Track 4: Anna B Savage, “The Ghost”Track 5: Jana Horn, “Jordan”Track 6: Debby Friday, “So Hard to Tell”Track 7: Anna B Savage, “The Orange”Bonus tracksI cannot mention Vashti Bunyan without stopping everything and listening to “I’d Like to Walk Around in Your Mind,” and if you have two minutes and 15 seconds to spare, I suggest you do the same.Another absurd Grammy fact I learned this week and must share with you: Guess which song earned Bob Dylan his first ever solo Grammy? Actually, don’t guess, you’re never going to get it so I’m just going to tell you: “Gotta Serve Somebody,” which won best rock performance in 1980. Think about that: Bob Dylan didn’t win a single solo Grammy until 1980. (In 1973, when Ringo Starr accepted a podium full of album of the year awards for the many artists featured on “The Concert for Bangladesh,” Dylan got one of those. But still.) As it happens, I do love “Gotta Serve Somebody” — even more after seeing him play it at the Beacon Theater in November 2021 — so here’s to Bob Dylan’s first Grammy. Maybe that is what Soy Bomb was trying to protest. More

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      Lana Del Rey Talks Back to the Songbook

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      Hear a companion to her sprawling new album, “Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd.”Neil KrugDear listeners,I love these lyrics from the title track of Lana Del Rey’s sprawling ninth album, “Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd,” which comes out today:Harry Nilsson has a song, his voice breaks at 2:05Something about the way he says “Don’t forget me”Makes me feel likeI just wish I had a friend like himSomeone to get me byDel Rey’s music is both vividly intimate and highly referential. She writes like a devoted but conversational fan of music history — talking back to the modern songbook and to many of her favorite artists, guided by popular song to her own personal epiphanies.Del Rey’s old-soul reverence collapses the distance between generations, too. People listening to Harry Nilsson’s “Don’t Forget Me” when it first came out — on “Pussy Cats” from 1974, the notorious chronicle of his “Lost Weekend” with John Lennon — were just as likely to be moved by that wrenching part when his voice breaks, but they probably wouldn’t have known its precise time stamp. Del Rey’s homage speaks the language of digital-era listening (“his voice breaks at 2:05”), but her emotional connection to Nilsson is so deeply felt, it seems to transcend time and turn him into a peer.Elsewhere on the album, the much-covered, centuries-old folk standard “Froggy Went a Courtin’” makes Del Rey feel connected to her ancestors when she hears it at a funeral. Leonard Cohen’s famous lyric “there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in” echoes throughout “Ocean Blvd” like a cherished mantra. On “The Grants,” the album’s stirring, gospel-tinged opening number, she interprets the words of a pastor by likening them not to, say, a particular Bible verse, but to “‘Rocky Mountain High,’ the way John Denver sings.”“Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd” is as rich, challenging and singular as anything Del Rey has released yet, and given that its run time is a daunting hour and 17 minutes, it’s going to require a little time to sink in. Today’s playlist puts some of its best songs in conversation with the other artists it references or, in the case of Father John Misty, features. May it serve as an entry point, or maybe just as a means to tunnel deeper into Lana Del Rey’s slow, subterranean sound.Maybe Del Rey would even say that these are some of the songs that explain her. Which reminds me: I’m still reading through your (many) great submissions from earlier this week, and I look forward to sharing some with you in Tuesday’s Amplifier.That’s how the light gets in,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Lana Del Rey Talks Back to the Songbook” track listTrack 1: John Denver, “Rocky Mountain High” (1972)Track 2: Lana Del Rey, “The Grants” (2023)Track 3: Tex Ritter, “Froggy Went a Courtin’” (1945)Track 4: Father John Misty, “Goodbye Mr. Blue” (2022)Track 5: Lana Del Rey featuring Father John Misty, “Let the Light In” (2023)Track 6: Leonard Cohen, “Anthem” (1992)Track 7: Lana Del Rey, “Kintsugi” (2023)Track 8: Harry Nilsson, “Don’t Forget Me” (1974)Track 9: Lana Del Rey, “Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd” (2023)Bonus tracksLana isn’t the only artist to appreciate the broken beauty of Nilsson’s “Don’t Forget Me,” of course. Here are two cover versions I love: Neko Case’s spirited rendition, from her great 2009 album “Middle Cyclone,” and a faithful take from the Walkmen, on which the frontman Hamilton Leithauser sounds so much like Nilsson that it’s a little bit spooky.Also, if you’re looking for some newer music: On Fridays, our chief pop music critic, Jon Pareles, and I select some of the week’s most notable new songs for the Playlist, which you can listen to here. More

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      10 (or, Actually, 11) Songs That Explain Me

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      Introducing a new newsletter dedicated to music discovery, and your host, Lindsay Zoladz.Illustration by The New York Times; Bob Berg/Getty Images (Fiona Apple)Dear listeners,Welcome to the first installment of The Amplifier — a twice-weekly note about songs (new and old) worth hearing. I want The Amplifier to bring that mixtape-from-your-friend feeling back to musical discovery. Too often, in the streaming era, our choices are at the mercy of a shadowy, impersonal algorithm. The Amplifier will be a return to something more intimate and human.Of course, that requires you knowing at least a little bit about me and my particular musical perspective.But the easiest way to fill a music critic with crippling panic is to pose that seemingly simple question: “What’s your favorite song?” Most of us are likely to get defensive and philosophical, asking whether you mean “favorite” or “best,” and how you personally would define those terms — all as a stalling tactic while we spin through the bulging Rolodex of all the songs we’ve ever loved, trying and probably failing to arrive at a sufficiently revealing choice.So rather than make a monolithic list of My Favorite Songs of All Time — one that I’d immediately be adding tracks to in my head as soon as I hit send — I thought I’d opt for the more inviting language of a popular social media prompt: “10 Songs That Explain Me.”Except that I just. Could. Not. Do it. No matter how many times I tried, I always ended up with an extra song. So consider this to be a 10-song playlist with a bonus track — or perhaps an early indication that the knobs on this Amplifier go to 11.Listen along here on Spotify as you read.1. Nina Simone: “Ain’t Got No — I Got Life”Only Nina Simone could transform two relatively kitschy numbers from the musical “Hair” into a song of self that rivals Walt Whitman. Simone is a lodestar to me: The excellence that she demanded from herself, the attention she demanded from her audiences and the classical virtuosity she brought to popular music all make her one of the greats. This rousing song can lift me out of just about any funk, and with such efficiency! Simone only needs less than three minutes to remind you exactly what it means to be alive. (Listen on YouTube)2. Fiona Apple: “Shameika”I grew up in suburban New Jersey and came of age in the late ’90s: a place and a time when conformity was currency. I wasn’t very good at fitting in, and like many an angsty youth, I found a kindred spirit in Fiona Apple. I first heard (and became obsessed with) her poetic and moody debut album, “Tidal,” when I was on the precipice of middle school, which is about the age Apple imagines herself to be in this elegantly unruly song from her 2020 album “Fetch the Bolt Cutters.” I see a lot of myself in it — both in the young, dissatisfied girl Apple remembers herself to be, and in the adult writer who made it out of that environment intact enough to tell the story. In my headphones, at least, Fiona said I had potential. (Listen on YouTube)3. The Dismemberment Plan: “Superpowers”When I was 18, I moved to Washington, D.C., for college and lived there until I was 25. My friend Drew put this song on a mix for me a few years into that stretch, and for a time it became my anthem: The Dismemberment Plan — an arty, verbose four-piece from D.C. that had broken up shortly before I got there — was a perfect bridge between the introspective emo I liked in high school and the more experimental strains of indie-rock I got into in college. Nothing brings me back to the ennui of early adulthood like the band’s 1999 classic “Emergency & I,” but my favorite of its records is the one that has “Superpowers” on it, “Change.” Luckily I got to catch a couple of amazing D-Plan reunion shows before I left town. (Listen on YouTube)4. Grimes: “Genesis”I have this theory that moving to New York knocks at least five years off your behavioral age. I made it here at 25, but for the first few years it felt like a second adolescence: catching shows every night at a bunch of now-defunct Williamsburg venues, making new friends, vying for the car stereo’s aux cord. Very often, the iPod was playing Grimes’s light and blissful album “Visions,” or sometimes just “Genesis” on repeat. It’s a song that can still make me feel, for a fleeting four minutes, like I’m the main character in my own video game and I’ve figured out the cheat code that makes me invincible. (Listen on YouTube)5. Frank Ocean: “Self Control”And here is the B-side of my roaring 20s: Frank Ocean’s tender voice was and remains a balm for whatever failure, loneliness and disappointment life decided to throw my way. (Consider “Self Control” a way to sneak another one of my favorite artists, and homes-away-from-home, onto this list, too, since the eclectic Philadelphia indie-rocker Alex G plays guitar on the track.) (Listen on YouTube)6. The Flying Burrito Brothers: “Wild Horses”Let’s continue wallowing while turning back the clock a bit to hear from another one of my all-time favorite singers, Gram Parsons. (I recently went on a Nashville vacation that was at least partially a spiritual pilgrimage to see his infamously sinful Nudie suit in the Country Music Hall of Fame.) A lot of the older music I love most has a kind of “near miss” quality about it — history’s beautiful losers, the artists who didn’t break through but deserved to, the ones who gesture toward all sorts of alternative presents and what-ifs. Maybe that’s why I prefer Parsons’s vocal take of “Wild Horses” to Mick Jagger’s more familiar one. (The Sundays’ version is great, too.) There’s a wobbly brokenness to it that I find incredibly moving, especially the way he emphasizes “a dull aching pain.” The origins of the song are notoriously disputed, but some insist that its titular line was inspired by something that Marianne Faithfull croaked when she came out of a six-day coma in 1969 — “wild horses couldn’t drag me away” — and that is one of those rock ’n’ roll stories that, even if it’s apocryphal, I have chosen to believe. (Listen on YouTube)7. Big Star: “Daisy Glaze”Speaking of music history’s beautiful losers: Big Star, one of my favorite rock bands ever. Like many a teenage millennial, I first came to the band through one of the numerous covers of the acoustic ballad “Thirteen” (“one of my almost-good songs,” the ever-humble Alex Chilton once said). Once I’d immersed myself in the band’s back catalog, I became belatedly furious that it had never been as famous as Led Zeppelin. I will always be exhilarated by the moment in the middle of “Daisy Glaze” when Jody Stephens’s three kick-drum thumps initiate a sudden tempo change — a perfect encapsulation of the band’s thrilling brilliance. (Listen on YouTube)8. The Mountain Goats: “Up the Wolves”I got into the Mountain Goats toward the end of high school — my friend Matt and I would drive from Jersey diner to diner, listening to their seemingly limitless discography — and John Darnielle is probably my favorite contemporary lyricist. The album “The Sunset Tree,” and this song in particular, have gotten me through many a dark night of the soul. I have now seen the Mountain Goats live more times than I can count — I lost track in the low 20s — and I am not yet numb to the emotional power of these songs. They played “Up the Wolves” a few months ago at Webster Hall, and after all these years, it still made me cry like a big teenage baby. (Listen on YouTube)9. Buffy Sainte-Marie: “The Circle Game”This one’s a total cheat: a sneaky way to mention two artists I adore — Buffy Sainte-Marie and Joni Mitchell, who of course wrote “The Circle Game” — on a single track. Joni is probably my favorite living songwriter, and there are about 100 other songs of hers I could have chosen. But I like the story behind this cover, recorded when Joni was still a fledgling songwriter to whom the then-better-known Buffy was trying to bring some attention. Suffice to say, it worked. (Listen on YouTube)10. The Raincoats: “No Side to Fall In”I’ve identified as a feminist throughout many different cultural and personal phases: in seventh grade when the boys told me girls couldn’t skateboard; in college, when it was a somewhat unfashionable concern that meant I read a lot of literary theory; these days, when a more watered-down version of the word has been co-opted to sell things on Instagram. All throughout, music has given me the strength to keep fighting, dreaming and resisting psychic death. To me, the great post-punk group the Raincoats are emblematic of a kind of utopian feminist freedom: a sonic universe where women can sound like and do anything they want — yes, even skateboarding. (Listen on YouTube)11. Van Morrison: “Ballerina”Oh, Van the (Facebook-hating) Man, my problematic fave. “Astral Weeks” is an album I love deeply, but I’ve always thought “Ballerina” should be the closing track. Since this is my playlist, with my rules, let’s try it out. I love this clip of a very young Leonard Cohen explaining to a confused interviewer on Canadian television what it feels like to be in “a state of grace.” It’s that “kind of balance with which you ride the chaos that you find around you.” I have found no better description of how I feel when I listen to this song. (Listen on YouTube)Thanks for listening,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“10 (or, Actually, 11) Songs That Explain Me” track listTrack 1: Nina Simone, “Ain’t Got No — I Got Life”Track 2: Fiona Apple, “Shameika”Track 3: The Dismemberment Plan, “Superpowers”Track 4: Grimes, “Genesis”Track 5: Frank Ocean, “Self Control”Track 6: The Flying Burrito Brothers, “Wild Horses”Track 7: Big Star, “Daisy Glaze”Track 8: The Mountain Goats, “Up the Wolves”Track 9: Buffy Sainte-Marie, “The Circle Game”Track 10: The Raincoats, “No Side to Fall In”Track 11: Van Morrison, “Ballerina”The song that explains youI’m really excited to go on this musical journey with you. I also want to make this newsletter a place for conversations about the songs and artists that mean something to you, so I’ll occasionally be asking for your thoughts on the topics we cover in this newsletter — and I’d love to hear from all of you.Today, I want to know: What’s a song that explains you? Tell me about it.If you’d like to participate you can fill out this form here. We may use your response in an upcoming edition of The Amplifier.Bonus tracksIf you want to read me going even deeper on my love of Fiona Apple, here’s an essay I wrote a few years back, as part of NPR’s “Turning the Tables” series on female artists. (My dear friend Jenn Pelly also tracked down the real-life Shameika and wrote a wonderful article about her.)And, if you’re a Van Fan, here’s me going incredibly long on “Astral Weeks,” for The Ringer, on the occasion of the album’s 50th anniversary.Finally, if you’re inclined to read my recent profile of the great Buffy Sainte-Marie (I was pinching myself just outside the Zoom frame!), might I suggest following it with this delightful clip of her showing Pete Seeger, on his short-lived TV show “Rainbow Quest,” how to play a mouth bow. More

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      ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Enters the Pantheon of Conservative Fan Fiction

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      The American right has embraced Tom Cruise’s latest blockbuster, hailing the movie as a patriotic gesture produced in defiance of “woke” liberal elites and the Chinese Communist Party.Today’s newsletter is a guest dispatch from the Culture desk of The New York Times. Marc Tracy, who regularly covers the intersection of culture and politics, writes about Tom Cruise’s latest blockbuster — and the conservatives who are singing its praises.“Top Gun: Maverick,” the inescapable Tom Cruise blockbuster sequel, has been hailed as a cinematic throwback.Many critics have interpreted its story of an increasingly obsolete pilot being called back to teach today’s young people a thing or two for one last mission as a not-so-subtle allegory for the film itself. The movie uses relatively few computer-generated effects, stars the now-60-year-old Cruise and still managed to rake in more than $1 billion globally.But amid praise from filmgoers who enjoyed the realistic dogfights, filmed with real planes that the real actors rode in, another community has embraced the movie for representing its values and vindicating its outlook: conservatives.A sampling:Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida: “Any movie that’s not, like, overwhelmingly woke can actually appeal to normal people.” (DeSantis had not seen the movie at the time; he later saw it with his wife for her birthday, he said.)The Fox News host Jesse Watters: “We’ve been longing to see a movie that’s unapologetically American, and we finally got it.”Tomi Lahren, of the conservative sports outlet OutKick and Fox: “The undeniable success of Top Gun is proof Americans are sick of WOKE and just want to watch good movies without a grandstanding social justice message!!”The right vs. HollywoodWhat’s going on here?There is a long tradition in which conservatives seize upon a cultural artifact produced by the entertainment industry, which is generally seen as left-leaning, and claim it for themselves.“This goes back years,” said Doug Heye, a Republican consultant, “and included when we had a Hollywood actor or a reality TV star for president. They feel besieged by the culture. That feeling has only increased, and it’s increased because there’s even more substance behind it today.”In a recent essay that discussed movies including “Top Gun: Maverick,” A.O. Scott, The Times’s co-chief film critic, argued that one notable aspect of the conservative movement is its antagonism toward the entertainment industry.“The modern right,” Scott wrote, “defines itself against the cultural elites who supposedly cluster on the coasts and conspire to impose their values on an unsuspecting public. In this account, Hollywood acts in functional cahoots with academia and the news media.”And conservative activists’ enmity toward Hollywood and other cultural tastemakers has perhaps never been more conspicuous.DeSantis, whose ability to channel the movement might outstrip any other politician’s (including, arguably, Donald Trump’s), made waves this spring by revoking special tax and self-governing privileges that Disney had enjoyed for its enormous theme park in his state. The governor and the company had clashed over a newly passed state law that bars instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in some grades.‘Top Gun’: The Return of MaverickTom Cruise takes to the air once more in “Top Gun: Maverick,” the long-awaited sequel to a much-loved ’80s action blockbuster.A Triumphant Return: At a time when superheroes dominate the box office, the film industry betis betting on the daredevil actor to bring grown-ups back to theaters. It paid off.The Secret Ingredient: Cruise’s potent mix of athleticism and charisma goes a long way to explain why “Top Gun: Maverick” is a hit.Review: The central question posed by the movie has less to do with the need for combat pilots in the age of drones than with the relevance of movie stars, our critic writes.Your Burning Questions: How similar is it to the original? Who’s back? Who’s absent? We have answers.So when “Top Gun: Maverick” entered this culture war with its uncomplicated, feel-good patriotism — it is, among other things, a movie about how awesome U.S. Navy pilots can be, particularly when fighting America’s enemies — conservatives’ sense of alignment arrived naturally.“When something comes out,” Heye said, “and it’s another version of ‘Rocky IV’” — the 1985 movie in which Sylvester Stallone’s working-class boxer enters the ring with a Soviet fighter named Ivan Drago — “that becomes something that, for the activist part of the base that is looking for something that isn’t critical of their values, they’re going to grab onto.”This is not to say that Maverick, Hangman and the other pilots in the new “Top Gun” film face off against today’s equivalent of the Soviet Union, whatever country that might be. As in the first “Top Gun,” which came out in 1986, the enemy is not explicitly identified.Nor are conservative politicians and media personalities claiming that the movie makes a compelling case for policies like tax cuts or gun rights. Their argument has less to do with what the film is than what it is not; less to do with its specific plot or characters than with its vibe.“It’s political in being apolitical,” said Christian Toto, a conservative film critic and the proprietor of the website Hollywood in Toto.He contrasted “Top Gun: Maverick” with some films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the gender-swapped “Ghostbusters” reboot. Their efforts at inclusivity — diverse casting, same-sex relationships — could come across, he said, as ham-handed, particularly to conservative audiences whose antennae are already on alert for filmmakers they see as trying to sneak some spinach in with the cinematic candy.The conservative allergy to such moviemaking decisions flares up, Toto said, “when the audience gets a sense it’s being put in there awkwardly or there’s a message being sent as opposed to organically woven into the story.”That the pilots training for the daring raid in “Top Gun: Maverick” appear to come from a variety of backgrounds seems not like liberal messaging but realistic detail, Toto said.“The cast is moderately diverse; there are women as pilots,” he said. “But they don’t comment on it; they don’t base the script around it. It’s assumed these are just very talented people willing to risk their lives for the mission.”Cruise at the new movie’s global premiere in San Diego. The film has made more money in the United States and Canada than in the rest of the world.Vivien Killilea/Getty Images Paramount PicturesAn All-American hitBox-office information does not contradict conservatives’ case. About 55 percent of the opening weekend sales, an unusually high proportion, came from ticket-buyers over 35, according to Paramount.And — atypically for big box-office hits in this era — “Top Gun: Maverick” has made more money in the United States and Canada than in the rest of the world, according to Box Office Mojo.Which is itself a point of pride for some of the film’s conservative backers: “‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Reaches $1 Billion Worldwide — Without China,” read a Breitbart headline last month. (The film was not released in China; earlier, a Chinese company withdrew its share of financing for the film because of its pro-American message, according to a Wall Street Journal report.)Ben Shapiro, a popular conservative pundit who co-founded the website The Daily Wire, had predicted in his rave review that the movie would do better domestically than abroad. “The film itself is pretty red, white and blue,” he said. “That’s just assumed as the backdrop. Which is the way movies used to be.”Stanley Rosen, a professor of political science at the University of Southern California who studies China’s film industry, said in an interview that “Top Gun: Maverick” represented an emerging idea that “Hollywood doesn’t need China the way it used to.”The film’s success could signal that the days of Hollywood studios altering story lines to make their releases more palatable to Chinese censors and audiences — a trend documented in a recent book, “Red Carpet” by Erich Schwartzel — might slowly be on their way out.And, Rosen added, whatever the film’s actual political message, the argument that it has one at all might have its own uses.“The controversy over wokeness or whether this is Reagan-era nostalgia,” he said, is “very good for the box office.”What to readDepartment of Never Tweet: The Securities and Exchange Commission is broadening its inquiry into Elon Musk’s disclosures about Twitter, Kate Conger reports. The agency questioned whether a tweet Musk sent in May about the acquisition of Twitter should have been disclosed to the agency and investors.Natalia Winkelman reviews “Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down,” a new documentary about the former Democratic congresswoman from Arizona who was shot in the head at a political event in 2011.Follow the latest news from President Biden’s trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia.HOW THEY RUNVice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California are longtime allies and possible future in-state rivals.Lucy Nicholson/ReutersTable for twoGavin Newsom, the governor of California, is sitting down for lunch on Friday in Washington with Vice President Kamala Harris, two of his aides have confirmed.For Newsom, the trip, officially made so he could accept an award and discuss policy issues with lawmakers and Biden administration officials, has doubled as something of a cleanup tour.On Thursday, Newsom said clearly that he supported President Biden to be the Democratic Party’s nominee in 2024, amid a swirl of reporting by my Times colleagues and others suggesting that liberal voters are not especially enthused about another term for the 79-year-old commander in chief.News reports, including in this humble newsletter, have noted that Newsom’s rise as a leader in the Democratic Party could put him in competition with Harris, a longtime ally and possible future in-state opponent, in a hypothetical Biden-free presidential primary.Those stories have gotten the attention of the vice president’s office, while amusing the governor’s staff back home in California. Both camps insist there’s no rivalry between the two leaders.Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Newsom volunteered that Harris had been “wonderful” as vice president and said they were just going to “check in, as we do constantly.” He alluded, however, to unspecified “constraints” Harris had faced in office and said it was “a difficult time for all of us in public life.”Asked what was on the lunch menu, a Newsom aide joked in a text: “Arsenic and arm wrestling. The usual.”Thanks for reading. — BlakeIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More