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      The Power and Beauty of African Guitar Greats

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      Hear songs by Mdou Moctar, Bombino, Orchestra Baobab and more.Mdou Moctar onstage at Coachella in April.Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for CoachellaDear listeners,For today’s Amplifier, your proprietor Lindsay Zoladz graciously lent me the keys for a little tour of Africa to celebrate some of the continent’s guitar greats. It was prompted by my recent profile of Mdou Moctar, the axeman from Niger who has built up a following with a tight band and stunning solos that can sound somewhere between vintage psychedelia and the so-called desert blues — a modern update of the African rhythmic and harmonic traditions that underlie so much popular music in the West, including the blues (and rock, and jazz, and R&B …).But honestly, any excuse is a good one to delve into this music and explore some of the characters behind it. There’s Ali Farka Touré, the Malian poet of the guitar, who learned from exposure to American bluesmen like John Lee Hooker but bristled at the idea that he was anything but an African purist. There’s Orchestra Baobab, whose songs are evidence of how musical styles pingpong around the world and can continue to evolve after returning home. And Oliver Mtukudzi, a force for justice and human rights who put music in service of his message.When I interviewed Moctar, much of our conversation was about politics. His latest album, “Funeral for Justice,” is a take-no-prisoners assault on the legacy of colonialism in Africa, which includes the struggles of the Tuareg, a historically nomadic ethnic group in the Sahara region that are divided by national borders. Political statements are scarce in American pop music these days, but they are a vital part of many of the tracks here, in ways that can be direct or oblique.This playlist is an assortment of some of my favorites, but is by no means meant as an exhaustive list, musically or geographically. If you’re new to this, I hope it can help you get started on a lifetime of exploration.Thanks for listening,BenListen 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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      A Brief Tour of Pop Music’s Caffeine Addiction

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      Hear songs by Sabrina Carpenter, Squeeze, SZA and more.Sabrina Carpenter’s perky bop “Espresso” is … a bit addictive. (We’re sorry.)Valerie Macon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDear listeners,A few weeks ago in our Friday feature the Playlist, I recommended a bubbly new single by the pop artist Sabrina Carpenter and made a bold prediction: “Get ready to hear this one everywhere.” Even more quickly than I imagined, the prophecy has come true. Last week, “Espresso” debuted at No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it Carpenter’s highest charting hit yet. More important, it has taken over the nation’s psyche. You can hardly go anywhere these days without hearing someone quoting the song’s infectious hook “That’s that me espresso” or wondering aloud, “what is a ‘me espresso?’”That’s a profound philosophical question for another day. Today, we are simply honoring the absurdist joy of “Espresso” with a playlist of songs about caffeinated beverages.Coffee has been a consistently evocative theme throughout pop musical history, so this mix travels from 1940 right up to the present moment. That trusty beverage is often used to describe a sophisticated kind of romance (as it does on Otis Redding’s swooning ballad “Cigarettes and Coffee”) or perhaps the idle hours waiting around for said romance to occur (see Peggy Lee’s sultry take on the 1948 standard “Black Coffee”). Chappell Roan tries to use it as a shield against romance on a track from her 2023 album “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess,” reasoning with a former flame, “I’ll meet you for coffee, ’cause if we have wine/You’ll say that you want me, I know that’s a lie.”In “Espresso,” Carpenter uses the caffeine metaphor to suggest how restless she makes a guy she has wrapped around her finger: “Say you can’t sleep? Baby, I know.” Also, crucially, she understands that “espresso” rhymes with “I guess so.” That’s poetry.It’s time for the percolator,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 Magnetic Fields Wrote ‘69 Love Songs.’ Here’s 11 of the Best.

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      A primer on the indie-rock band’s triple album, now celebrating its 25th anniversary.Marcelo KrasilcicDear listeners,I hope everyone who was in the path of Monday’s eclipse enjoyed the view! I confess I didn’t acquire eclipse glasses in time and couldn’t see anything too spectacular from where I was in Brooklyn, but at least Friday’s Amplifier playlist gave me a soundtrack for imagining some awe-inspiring grandeur.Today’s playlist is something a little different, and more earthbound: a tribute to the Magnetic Fields, the long-running indie band that is currently on a tour commemorating the 25th anniversary of “69 Love Songs,” its landmark 1999 triple album, which I happen to adore very much.“69 Love Songs” is exactly what it says on the tin: nearly three consecutive hours of amorous-themed tunes, all written by the group’s mastermind Stephin Merritt. The album is a staggering showcase of his range as a songwriter, covering just about every genre imaginable and thoroughly chronicling the good (“The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side”), the bad (“No One Will Ever Love You”) and the ugly (“The Cactus Where Your Heart Should Be”) sides of love.The tour is currently in the middle of an eight-night run at Manhattan’s Town Hall, where the band’s original members are playing the album in its entirety for the first time in over two decades. (Because a 69-song set is daunting, they are splitting the album up over two consecutive nights.)For today’s playlist, I attempted something that I found very, very difficult: choosing my 10 favorite tracks off “69 Love Songs.” In classic Amplifier fashion, though, I found the task impossible and allowed myself one extra song. I can already hear some of you shouting at your screens — “What, no ‘I Don’t Want to Get Over You’? And no ‘Reno Dakota’?!” — but these are just my personal picks. One of the most enjoyable parts of dissecting this dense album is comparing notes with other fans; everyone seems to have their own quirky and somewhat inexplicable preferences. (I almost put “Kiss Me Like You Mean It” on this list, for example.)May this playlist serve as a less intimidating introduction to the album, if you’re unfamiliar with it, or a tantalizing refresher if you are. No playlist can duplicate the musical roller-coaster ride that is listening to “69 Love Songs” in full — an experience I would recommend to any music fan. By design, and to paraphrase one of its greatest tracks, some of it is just transcendental, some of it is delightfully dumb.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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      10 Essential Joni Mitchell Songs

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      Celebrate the artist’s return to Spotify with tracks from last summer’s “Joni Jam.”Joni Mitchell performing at the 66th Grammy Awards, where she won best folk album.Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesDear listeners,Last week, most of Joni Mitchell’s music returned to Spotify, the platform she had boycotted for more than two years. In January 2022, Mitchell followed in the footsteps of fellow Canadian and polio survivor Neil Young in pulling her catalog from the streaming giant, accusing Spotify of platforming people who were “spreading lies that are costing people their lives.” On March 12, though, Young announced his return to Spotify: “Apple and Amazon have started serving the same disinformation podcast features I had opposed at Spotify,” he wrote in an announcement on his website. Shortly after, without an official statement explaining her decision, many of Mitchell’s albums returned, too.I saw plenty of people reacting to this news online with all-caps enthusiasm, but I had mixed feelings. On one hand, I’m elated: Joni Mitchell is probably my favorite musician ever, and over the past year I’ve wanted to put her songs on Amplifier playlists more times than I can count. Since we want our playlists to be accessible to the greatest possible number of listeners, I’ve mostly limited my selections to songs available on Spotify. Now, or at least for the time being, I’ll be able to share Mitchell’s music with you.But I also admired Mitchell and Young for going against the grain, standing up for what they believed and drawing attention to the darker side of the streaming economy, which often privileges clicks and controversy over art. As Young said in his somewhat resigned statement, he’s not returning because things have suddenly gotten better — it’s just that they’re bad everywhere else, too.So for that reason, I’m reluctant to greet Mitchell’s return to Spotify with confetti or caps-lock. I will, however, greet it the best way I know how: with a playlist.The task of creating any kind of “Best of Joni” compilation is way too daunting — an attempt could easily top 400 songs — so I decided to make a playlist comprising songs she played at last summer’s “Joni Jam,” the absolutely spellbinding concert I had the great joy of attending at the Gorge Amphitheater in Washington. What impressed me so much about that set list was its balance, toggling between Mitchell’s classics and deep cuts, and also between her early, middle and later eras. You can hear that breadth in this playlist, which stretches from her 1970 breakthrough “Ladies of the Canyon” through her mature 1994 release “Turbulent Indigo” and a recording of her 2022 set at the Newport Folk Festival.If you’re already a Mitchell fan, I hope this playlist reconnects you with at least one track you haven’t heard in ages. And if you’re a newcomer to Mitchell’s oeuvre, well, I’m almost jealous of all the discoveries and revelations in store for you.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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      7 Artists Shaping the Sound of 2024

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      Hear songs from Tanner Adell, Bizarrap and Young Miko, and more.Young Miko.Mauricio Duenas Castaneda/EPA, via ShutterstockDear listeners,It’s Jon — I’m filling in for Lindsay today for a very special installment of The Amplifier. By way of introduction, I’ve been a pop music critic at the Times for … around 15 years? (Let us not speak of that further.) I am also the host of Popcast, our weekly music podcast, and the co-host, with Joe Coscarelli, of Popcast (Deluxe), our YouTube conversation show. Like and subscribe!The primary reason I’ve enjoyed this job for so long is that it’s never boring. Surprise lurks around every corner and in every online wormhole. New artists with novel twists on old ideas — or, from time to time, wholly new ideas — emerge constantly. Pop is centerless and ambitious and forever mutating. If you think things are stagnant, you’re not listening hard enough.And so here’s a list of seven emerging artists who I think have real potential, from a range of genres and styles: People you might want to pay attention to in order to get a taste of what this year, and probably the coming ones too, will sound like.P.S. Or alternately, listen to what I was listening to when I compiled this list: one of the best posse cuts of 1994.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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      9 Sunny Songs for Springing Ahead

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      To celebrate the return of daylight saving time, here’s a playlist full of songs about sunshine and daylight.Harry Styles curses the sun on “Daylight.”The New York TimesDear listeners,Is it just me, or has this winter felt never-ending? Snow, cold rain, cloudy days when the sun sets before work ends — enough already!Thankfully, this weekend brought what I always consider the first harbinger of spring: The beginning of daylight saving time. As someone who reaches for the snooze button more often than I should, springing forward presents its own challenges. But I’ll gladly deal with them for an extra hour of sunlight in the evening.That bonus sunlight has inspired today’s playlist, full of songs about sunshine and daylight. Light takes on a spiritual quality in some of these tunes (including a modern standard by Hank Williams) while others bask in its meteorological reality (the bees and things and flowers name-checked by Roy Ayers Ubiquity). A few of these artists (the Velvet Underground; Harry Styles) claim not to care about the sun, but the incandescence of their music begs to differ.Am I jumping the gun a bit by celebrating sun songs in mid-March rather than during the dog days of summer? No way! Plus, by then we’ll probably be sick of them. Best to celebrate the sun’s welcome return, and especially on such a bright day here in New York. Here’s your soundtrack for strutting down the street in the short-sleeve outfit you’ve been waiting all winter to wear. (And then, you know, rushing back into the house to grab a light jacket, because it’s still only March.)Also, I’ll be out on Friday, but I’m leaving you in the very capable hands of a special guest playlister. Till then!People gotta synchronize to animal time,LindsayWe 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 Ultimate Hurray for the Riff Raff Primer

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      Listen to Alynda Segarra’s catalog as their latest album, “The Past Is Still Alive,” arrives.Luisa Opalesky for The New York TimesDear listeners,Last week, I published a profile of the 36-year-old singer-songwriter Alynda Segarra, who makes spirited and defiant music under the name Hurray for the Riff Raff.* Their ninth LP, “The Past Is Still Alive,” comes out today, and though 2024 is still young, it’s an early contender for my favorite album of the year.Yes, I did say ninth album, which means that Segarra has quite the back catalog. Today’s playlist can serve either as an introduction to Hurray for the Riff Raff or, if you’re already familiar with them, a mix that places their new songs in rich conversation with what’s come before.Segarra grew up in the Bronx and left home just after turning 17, eventually ending up busking in a street band in New Orleans and riding freight trains during the hottest Louisiana months. Playing in communal spaces and collaborating with other musicians, they developed a repertoire of Appalachian folk, Delta blues and classic country, with the requisite Tom Waits song thrown in.By 2014, on the breakout album “Small Town Heroes,” Segarra had found their own unique voice as a songwriter who was able to adapt traditional forms to speak to present concerns. This playlist’s leadoff track, “The Body Electric,” is a perfect example: Sparsely arranged and sung with conviction, it is a kind of revisionist murder ballad that questions that genre’s history of violence against marginalized people. “He shot her down, he put her body in the river,” Segarra sings of the doomed Delia Green, before offering a line that would come to define the political motivation of subsequent HFRR albums: “He covered her up, but I went to get her.”Over the past decade, Segarra has released a consistently strong run of albums that update traditional folk music to consider modern scourges like gentrification (on the epic 2017 album “The Navigator”) and climate change (on the elegiac 2022 release “Life on Earth”).But “The Past Is Still Alive” is something else: a memoir, a travelogue, a loose campfire singalong. These songs have the sort of direct, plain-spoken confidence that comes with age. On “The Navigator,” Segarra created a protagonist named Navina and built a whole alternate universe in order to tell a story that had parallels to their own. Here, Segarra is narrating their own experiences, etching their own story into the American songbook, and asserting that they belong there.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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      7 Stellar Songs for a Saturn Return

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      Inspired by Kacey Musgraves’s latest single, hear tracks by No Doubt, Stevie Wonder, R.E.M. and more.Gwen Stefani.Kevin Lamarque/ReutersDear listeners,“My Saturn has returned,” the 35-year-old singer-songwriter Kacey Musgraves announces at the beginning of her stirring new single “Deeper Well,” the title track from her upcoming fifth album. “When I turned 27, everything started to change.”I know what she means. While I’m not much of an astrology person, I am something of an expert on the Saturn Return, the time when the ringed planet approaches the spot it was located when a person was born. It’s generally thought to be a moment of tumultuous upheaval and, eventually, of great personal transformation. Since Saturn’s orbit around the sun takes about 29-and-a-half years and stays in a particular sign for two-and-a -half years, the first return begins around one’s 27th birthday.It was music that first taught me about this concept: specifically No Doubt’s searching 2000 album “Return of Saturn,” which I listened to obsessively when it first came out. Gwen Stefani had written much of the material while she was going through her own Saturn Return, uncharacteristically depressed and questioning her place in the world. At 13, this sounded quite profound and adult to me.When I began mine years later, I researched the concept extensively and wrote an essay trying to understand why the idea has been so resonant for so many people. Is the Saturn Return just a fancy astrological name for the existential anxiety of turning 30? I’ll leave that for you to answer. But I tend to think that any framework that provokes self-reflection and a consideration of ourselves as part of a larger whole can’t be all bad. Plus, over the years, it’s inspired some pretty great music.Today’s playlist is a short compilation of songs either directly or indirectly inspired by this astrological event. It includes the aforementioned Musgraves and No Doubt, but also R.E.M., Hayley Williams and Stevie Wonder. It does contain a few notable omissions from this very specific musical canon, but I personally — forgive me — am not a fan of Katy Perry’s saturnine ballad “By the Grace of God,” and I also felt that an eight-and-a-half-minute Tool song would disrupt the flow of this particular playlist, even if it does feature Maynard James Keenan growling, “Saturn comes back around again to show you everything.” You are of course welcome to listen to those songs on your own time.I did, however, want to highlight a lesser discussed aspect of the Saturn Return: It does indeed keep coming back around, so you can expect a second one in your late 50s and, if you’re lucky, a third in your mid-80s — which means we’re in for a doozy of a Kacey Musgraves album in approximately 2074.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