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      The Legend of Gram Parsons, in 12 Songs

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      A half-century after his death, listen to some of the singer-songwriter’s most soulful signature tunes, and some tributes and covers by artists he inspired.Harvey L. Silver/Corbis via Getty ImagesDear listeners,For quite some time, I’ve been looking for an excuse to write about an artist whose music means a lot to me: the singer-songwriter Gram Parsons.When I realized that the 50th anniversary of his death was this year — Sept. 19, to be exact — I thought it would be as good a time as any. Only I didn’t want to focus on the tragic and morbid details of Parsons’s death, as so many people have done for the past half-century. (Parsons died of a drug overdose at age 26 in a Joshua Tree motel.) I wanted to use the anniversary of his death, maybe a little paradoxically, as an occasion to argue that it should not be the defining element of his legacy. The music should be.My piece about Parsons was published on Thursday, but I wanted to use today’s Amplifier to delve even deeper into his music. That’s right: This newsletter is a Gramplifier. (I had to. I’m sorry.)A native of Winter Haven, Fla. — and born into a family that made its fortune in the citrus industry — Parsons sought to bridge the divide between the counterculture and the country-music establishment. A Southern boy with a rock ’n’ roll heart, he dreamed of a loftily named, utopian sound he liked to call “cosmic American music,” injecting traditional styles with a bit of the unknown. At his best — in his time with groups like the International Submarine Band, the Byrds, and the Flying Burrito Brothers, as well as in his later solo work — Parsons made that vision a reality. Though he didn’t find much commercial success while he was alive, his influence continues to ripple.Today’s playlist contains some of Parsons’s most soulful signature tunes, as well as some tributes and covers by artists he inspired, like Elvis Costello and, of course, his protégée and duet partner, Emmylou Harris, who has been one of the most persistent torchbearers of Parsons’s legacy.Parsons remains a kind of outlaw figure in the cultural imagination, suggesting an alternative to more complacent country rock, and if you’re unacquainted, discovering his catalog feels like dusting off some dazzling hidden gems. So cue up this playlist and get ready for the return of the grievous angel.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. The International Submarine Band: “Luxury Liner”An early Parsons composition included on the International Submarine Band’s 1968 album “Safe at Home,” “Luxury Liner” is at once a rollicking road song and a tuneful confession of lonesomeness in the tradition of Parsons’s idol Hank Williams. Emmylou Harris would later help popularize the song — as she did with much of Parsons’s material — when she covered it as the title track of her 1976 album. (Listen on YouTube)2. The Byrds: “Hickory Wind”Parsons wrote two songs that appeared on “Sweetheart of the Rodeo,” his only album with the Byrds, and one of them, “Hickory Wind,” is among his most enduringly beloved tracks. As the music critic Ben Fong-Torres put it in his 1991 biography of Parsons, named after this very tune, “What made the song so universal was its recognition of one of life’s big questions — Is that all there is? — combined with pleasant evocations of youth and the safety a kid felt being at home among the pines, the oak, and the brush.” (Listen on YouTube)3. The Flying Burrito Brothers: “Hot Burrito #2”The Flying Burrito Brothers — the third band Parsons joined in as many years — melded country music and psychedelic rock seamlessly on their 1969 debut album, “The Gilded Palace of Sin.” “Sneaky” Pete Kleinow was perhaps the band member whose style best demonstrated this fusion: He played pedal steel through a fuzz-box, as though it were an electric guitar. (Listen on YouTube)4. Elvis Costello & the Attractions: “I’m Your Toy”Parsons was a huge inspiration for Elvis Costello’s 1981 country covers album, “Almost Blue,” and on it Costello offered his own renditions of two Parsons songs, including this arresting take on the Flying Burrito Brothers’ goofily titled classic “Hot Burrito #1.” Costello, though, decided to change the song’s name to reference a memorable lyric in the refrain: “I’m your toy, I’m your old boy/But I don’t want no one but you to love me.” (Listen on YouTube)5. The Flying Burrito Brothers: “Sin City”We’re talking Los Angeles here, not Vegas. Perhaps the greatest example of the briefly simpatico songwriting partnership of Parsons and the former Byrd Chris Hillman, this twangy ballad captures the mood of late-60s Southern California burnout in the fiery spirit of the Louvin Brothers. (Listen on YouTube)6. The Flying Burrito Brothers: “Wild Horses”For better and for worse, Parsons spent a lot of time in the late ’60s and early ’70s hanging out with the Rolling Stones, particularly Keith Richards (who admitted to Fong-Torres, “yes, maybe hanging around the Rolling Stones didn’t help him in his attitude towards drugs”). Parsons taught Richards a lot about American country music, though, and many people claim his influence can be heard on “Exile on Main St.” songs like “Sweet Virginia” and “Torn and Frayed.” That exchange could also be reciprocal, though, like when Richards let the Flying Burrito Brothers record his band’s new song “Wild Horses” before the Stones did. (Listen on YouTube)7. Gram Parsons: “Still Feeling Blue”For “GP,” his 1973 debut solo album, Parsons recruited much of his hero Elvis Presley’s red-hot old backing band: the guitarist James Burton, pianist Glen D. Hardin and drummer Ronnie Tutt. They lend an air of experience and polish to Parsons’s own compositions, like the lively country throwback “Still Feeling Blue.” (Listen on YouTube)8. Gram Parsons, “The New Soft Shoe”Ostensibly — if somewhat inscrutably — about the auto pioneer E.L. Cord, “The New Soft Shoe,” another highlight from “GP,” boasts one of the loveliest and most wistful melodies Parsons ever wrote. (Listen on YouTube)9. Gram Parsons, “The Return of the Grievous Angel”At a tour stop in Boston, a young poet named Tom Brown handed Parsons a sheet of vivid lyrics he’d written with Parsons in mind. They became the basis of the laid-back, lived-in “The Return of the Grievous Angel” — destined to become one of Parsons’s signature songs. (Listen on YouTube)10. Emmylou Harris, “Boulder to Birmingham”Emmylou Harris was an unknown folk singer on the Washington, D.C., club circuit when Parsons recruited her to sing backup on his solo records and tour with his band. After his death, she became a solo star in her own right, but she continued to pay tribute to Parsons throughout her career. This wrenching ballad from her major-label debut album, “Pieces of the Sky,” is about her processing the overwhelming grief of Parsons’s loss: “I would walk all the way from Boulder to Birmingham,” she sings in her clarion voice, “if I thought I could see your face.” (Listen on YouTube)11. Gram Parsons: “$1000 Wedding”Here is Parsons at the peak of his powers as a conduit for emotion. Memories of a thwarted wedding and a subsequent bender swirl in an impressionistic recollection, not always told in a linear fashion but emotionally piercing nonetheless. “Supposed to be a funeral,” Parsons sings in a heartbreakingly weary voice. “It’s been a bad, bad day.” (Listen on YouTube)12. Gram Parsons: “In My Hour of Darkness”Each verse in this elegiac song is dedicated to someone in Parsons’s life who had recently passed away: first the actor Brandon deWilde (the young man who “went driving through the night”), then the guitarist Clarence White (“another young man safely strummed his silver-stringed guitar”), and finally the Los Angeles music scene fixture Sid Kaiser (“kind and wise with age”). There’s something haunting about Parsons writing this song so shortly before his own death, and it closes out “Grievous Angel” with both a spiritual warmth and the chill of premonition. (Listen on YouTube)Out with the truckers and the kickers and the cowboy angels,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“The Legend of Gram Parsons” track listTrack 1: The International Submarine Band, “Luxury Liner”Track 2: The Byrds, “Hickory Wind”Track 3: The Flying Burrito Brothers, “Hot Burrito #2”Track 4: Elvis Costello & the Attractions, “I’m Your Toy”Track 5: The Flying Burrito Brothers, “Sin City”Track 6: The Flying Burrito Brothers, “Wild Horses”Track 7: Gram Parsons, “Still Feeling Blue”Track 8: Gram Parsons, “The New Soft Shoe”Track 9: Gram Parsons, “The Return of the Grievous Angel”Track 10. Emmylou Harris, “Boulder to Birmingham”Track 11: Gram Parsons, “$1000 Wedding”Track 12: Gram Parsons, “In My Hour of Darkness”Bonus TracksIn 1999, Emmylou Harris helped put together the richly reverent “Return of the Grievous Angel: A Tribute to Gram Parsons,” which showcased the breadth of the musicians who were influenced by Parsons — including Wilco, Beck and Sheryl Crow — and demonstrated how Parsons’s songs have echoed across generations. The great folk singer-songwriter Gillian Welch’s stirring take on “Hickory Wind” is one of the album’s finest moments, as is Lucinda Williams’s swaggering “Return of the Grievous Angel,” with backing vocals from the one and only David Crosby. More

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      The Chaos and Clarity of the Replacements’ ‘Tim’

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      Listening to a remaster of the band’s 1985 album with fresh ears.Deborah FeingoldDear listeners,I have adored “Tim,” the 1985 album by the Minnesota rockers the Replacements, for decades — nearly every growl, guitar lick and snare hit have been imprinted upon my memory since I discovered it as a teenager — and yet I just learned some of its lyrics last week.That was what happened when I first heard a wildly illuminating new mix of the album being released today under the name “Tim: The Let It Bleed Edition.” If you already know “Tim” as well as I did, this mix is a revelation: Phantom riffs emerge from the ether, once-muted drums sound stadium-sized, Paul Westerberg’s singing is often (if not always) understandable. It’s a fascinating opportunity to hear the importance of mixing and to compare different production styles.And if you’ve never heard “Tim” before? I’m almost jealous, because now you get to bypass all the baggage and what-if’s and experience one of the greatest American rock records of the 1980s on its own terms.When we fall in love with an album, we often become affectionate toward — maybe even defensive of — its imperfections. But “Tim” is a special case: The original album sounded thin, compressed and distant, as though the band were playing on the other end of a kid’s string-and-tin-can telephone. It was hardly the best way to present these songs. Produced by Tommy Erdelyi, a founding member and later studio wizard of the Ramones, “Tim” didn’t pack the sonic punch of the Replacements’ previous album, the cheekily titled 1984 masterpiece “Let It Be,” though Westerberg’s songwriting had grown stronger.Formed in Minneapolis in 1979, the Replacements combined the anarchic fury of punk and hard rock with the sorts of timeless pop melodies written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney — or by the unsung musical hero to whom they’d later dedicate one of their best songs, Alex Chilton of Big Star. By 1985, the Replacements were critical darlings with a cult following and three increasingly ambitious albums under their belt, but mainstream success still eluded them. There was a feeling that “Tim,” their major-label debut for Seymour Stein’s Sire Records, might change that.It didn’t. The Replacements had a perpetual self-destructive streak that was equal parts frustrating and endearing, and they found the promotional process too corny to take seriously. The album’s title, for one thing, is a head-scratcher.* The music video for the “Tim” single “Bastards of Young” was just a long, slow zoom shot of a speaker. Their notorious “Saturday Night Live” performance in early 1986 got them banned from the show.“Tim” was hardly the commercial breakthrough that the label had hoped for — it peaked at No. 183 on the Billboard album chart. The lead guitarist Bob Stinson already had one foot out of the band during the recording sessions, and it would be his last Replacements album. The LP has served as an enduring snapshot of the original lineup’s final days, and over time it has found its own intergenerational legion of devotees.Now, 38 years after its initial release, the record has gotten the warm, muscular mix it always deserved at the hands of Erdelyi’s frequent collaborator Ed Stasium, a veteran producer and engineer. If the original mix of “Tim” sounded like eavesdropping on the band performing on the other side of a wall, Stasium’s new mix makes it feel like you’re in the middle of the room, dodging Westerberg’s spittle and catching whiffs of the Replacements’ ever-present aura of cigarettes and booze.If you couldn’t already tell, I’m quite excited about this new mix. With this playlist, I’ve cobbled together a kind of alternate version of “Tim” that leans heavily on the Stasium mix but also includes a couple of bonus tracks, demos and a few instances where I think the original Erdelyi mix works best.I’d encourage you to listen to Stasium’s version of “Tim” in its entirety; even if I don’t agree with every single choice he made, the overall spirit of the project makes me grateful that it now exists.But if you want to dig a little deeper into the album’s lore, or just learn a bit about production choices and mixing, turn your dial to the left and crank up this playlist.Listen along on Spotify while you read.1. “Hold My Life (Ed Stasium Mix)”Here is the ultimate Westerbergian mantra of arrested development: “Hold my life until I’m ready to use it.” (It was also my unofficial theme song during a monthslong stretch of post-collegiate unemployment.) Since this is a song about indecision and stasis, Westerberg’s delivery is appropriately mumbled, but Stasium’s new mix makes the guitars ring out loud and clear. (Listen on YouTube)2. “I’ll Buy (Ed Stasium Mix)”The original mix of “Tim” leaned heavily on reverb, and this new version of the rockabilly show tune “I’ll Buy” shows what a disservice that did to Chris Mars’s sharp, energetic drumming. The percussion really pops here, as does Westerberg’s enunciation: I truly did not realize he was saying “it’s fine, fine, fine, fine, fine” in the first part of the chorus, despite having heard this song approximately one million times. (Listen on YouTube)3. “Kiss Me on the Bus (2023 Remaster of the Original Mix)”Possibly a contrarian opinion, but I like the compressed, faraway sound of the original best. That gauzy remove makes the song feel that much more like a romantic reverie. (Listen on YouTube)4. “Dose of Thunder (Ed Stasium Mix)”Bob Stinson was growing estranged from the band by the time “Tim” was recorded, and he plays on just five of the album’s 11 tracks. His presence on this version of the hard-hitting, storm-chasing “Dose of Thunder” finally looms as large as it should have all along. Plus, who knew that Westerberg was making a “Wizard of Oz” reference on the bridge? Not I. (Listen on YouTube)5. “Waitress in the Sky (Alternate Version)”The album’s catchiest, most tongue-in-cheek tune — an affectionately irreverent ode to Westerberg’s flight attendant sister — is a bit of a lark, so I like this alternate version, first heard on the 2008 expanded edition of “Tim,” because it doesn’t take itself seriously. That Westerberg flubs one of the lyrics is totally in line with the song’s spirit. (Listen on YouTube)6. “Swingin Party (Ed Stasium Mix)”On the new mix, the atmosphere of this introspective, mid-tempo number — covered many years later by the alt-pop star Lorde — provides plenty of space for Westerberg’s aching vocal and some floating guitar flourishes not heard on the original. (Listen on YouTube)7. “Bastards of Young (2023 Remaster of the Original Mix)”Stasium’s mix makes this anthem of young-adult disillusionment sound like the huge hit it always deserved to be. But I believe “Bastards of Young” to already be a perfect, A+, 10-out-of-10 rock ’n’ roll song, with no possible room for improvement, even when it sounds like it’s coming out of the blown-out speaker from the audaciously low-concept music video. (Listen on YouTube)8. “Lay It Down Clown (Ed Stasium Mix)”As with “Dose of Thunder,” some of the most revelatory moments of Stasium’s work come on the album’s heaviest songs. “Lay It Down Clown” has never sounded so wonderfully shambolic. (Listen on YouTube)9. “Left of the Dial (Alternate Version)”Shortly before the proper “Tim” sessions began, the band got a chance to work through new material and record some demos produced by its hero, Alex Chilton. None of the Chilton sessions made the final album, but this expanded edition premieres some of those recordings. I like the loose, unpolished sound he captured on this early cut of the band’s classic ode to the indie underground. (Listen on YouTube)10. “Little Mascara (Ed Stasium Mix)”Stasium really punches up Bob Stinson’s presence on this song, a Westerbergian character study of marital dissatisfaction that draws equally from Tennessee Williams and the Who. (Listen on YouTube)11. “Here Comes a Regular (2023 Remaster of the Original Mix)”The gut-wrenching closing track on “Tim” marks a crucial step in the band’s inevitable shift from playing party songs to playing my-drinking-is-taking-a-toll songs. Again, there’s something about the hazy glow of the original that works, as if it’s taking place in those haunting moments just before sunrise. (Listen on YouTube)12. “Nowhere Is My Home (Alternate Version)”This recording of the fan-favorite rarity provides a clear example of how the raw, atmospheric sound Chilton captured in his sessions differed from the tinnier and echoing feel of the finished album. (Listen on YouTube)13. “Can’t Hardly Wait (Electric Demo)”Destined to become one of the band’s best-known songs when a more polished arrangement with string and horn parts appeared on the 1987 album “Pleased to Meet Me,” Westerberg was actually tweaking “Can’t Hardly Wait” during the “Tim” era. I prefer these early versions to the finished track, which allow us to imagine what would have happened if yet another one of the Replacements’ greatest songs had appeared on “Tim.” (Listen on YouTube)Take it it’s yours take it it’s yours take it it’s yours,Lindsay* Who is the mysterious Tim? Just a name embroidered on a thrift-store jacket that Bob liked to wear. As his brother and the band’s bassist, Tommy, put it in the new edition’s liner notes, with classic Replacements logic, “Like most of the titles of the records, it started off as an inside joke. Calling a record ‘Tim’ — after a bunch of drinks it was funny. The next day it wasn’t so funny. But if you had more drinks, it became funny again.”The Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“The Chaos and Clarity of the Replacements’ ‘Tim’” track listTrack 1: “Hold My Life (Ed Stasium Mix)”Track 2: “I’ll Buy (Ed Stasium Mix)”Track 3: “Kiss Me on the Bus (2023 Remaster)”Track 4: “Dose of Thunder (Ed Stasium Mix)”Track 5: “Waitress in the Sky (Alternate Version)”Track 6: “Swingin Party (Ed Stasium Mix)”Track 7: “Bastards of Young (2023 Remaster)”Track 8: “Lay It Down Clown (Ed Stasium Mix)”Track 9: “Left of the Dial (Alternate Version)”Track 10: “Little Mascara (Ed Stasium Mix)”Track 11: “Here Comes a Regular (2023 Remaster)”Track 12: “Nowhere Is My Home (Alternate Version)”Track 13: “Can’t Hardly Wait (Electric Demo)”Bonus TracksI highly recommend seeking out that fabled “Saturday Night Live” performance of “Bastards of Young.” Lorne Michaels was irked that Westerberg muttered a barely audible f-bomb, sure, but the performance is infinitely cooler and livelier than most of the overly rehearsed fare that gets played on that stage.Also, from a 1986 live concert featured on the new edition of “Tim”: A delightfully chaotic cover of the Beatles’ “Nowhere Man.”And, finally, if you’re looking for some music released more recently than the mid-1980s, might I recommend our weekly Playlist? This week, we’ve got fresh tracks from Zach Bryan and Bon Iver, Laurel Halo and Shakira. More

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      An Essential Mitski Primer

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      The singer-songwriter’s seventh album, “The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We,” is out Friday.Ebru YildizDear listeners,The singer-songwriter Mitski first caught my ear in 2014, when she released the sharply penned and tunefully guitar-driven album “Bury Me at Makeout Creek.” (It’s a “Simpsons” reference.)I clocked her then as a smart chronicler of millennial malaise and a punk-adjacent indie-rocker working in the D.I.Y. tradition, figuring she’d subsequently release a few more albums that fit that description. I could not have predicted where she’d go in the next decade: an Oscar nomination for a song she wrote with Son Lux and David Byrne, an accidental and somewhat reluctant foray into TikTok stardom, and a creatively adventurous, consistently challenging discography that includes her seventh studio album, “The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We,” which is out today.“A Mitski song lasts about as long as it takes to poach an egg,” E. Alex Jung wrote in a profile of Mitski last year. “They are small and will knock you out, like pearls slipped inside the left ventricle of your heart.” I like thinking of Mitski songs in these terms, polished and self-contained, but sneakily potent. She perfected that method of songwriting on her 2018 album “Be the Cowboy,” which contained a song that, appropriately enough, likened the creative process to having “a pearl in my head” that the singer would “roll around every night just to watch it glow.”“The Land Is Inhospitable” is a veritable string of such pearls. Its songs sound labored over, yes, but they also have a looseness and an airiness, which are not qualities I usually associate with Mitski. With tracks like the lilting ballad “Heaven” or the country-tinged “The Frost,” listening to this album feels like stumbling upon the welcome glow of a crowded saloon in the middle of a desolate night, beckoned by the inviting sounds of someone casually playing music inside.It also feels like a notable departure, maybe even a course correction, from the more pop-oriented direction Mitski seemed to be on with her previous album, the new wave-y “Laurel Hell.” I spent some time with Mitski right before the release of that album, when I was profiling her for The New York Times Magazine, and found her to be a thoughtful and refreshing voice of skepticism in this musical era of algorithmic optimization. Mitski had stumbled into virality — through no effort of her own, her songs “Washing Machine Heart” and “Nobody” became TikTok hits in 2021 — and found the experience strange and disorienting. Rather than try to replicate that success, she’s followed a muse that has led to more mature sounds. “The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We” is not one of her most immediate albums, but over repeated listens, I think it reveals itself to be one of her best.I also think it’s best appreciated in the context of Mitski’s larger discography, which I’m going to spotlight on today’s playlist. If you’re unfamiliar with her music, it serves as a comprehensive introduction to her sound. And if you’re already a Mitski fan, I hope it will provide connections between her new and old songs and give you an entry point into her latest album.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. “Bug Like an Angel” (2023)The leadoff track and first single from “The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We” showcases two of Mitski’s signature songwriting skills: her knack for succinct, imagistic lyrics (“There’s a bug like an angel stuck to the bottom of my glass”) and her affinity for unexpected contrasts between quiet and loud. Here, that dynamism comes from the tension between Mitski’s flat, lonely vocal during the verses and the resounding, earnest backing choir that bursts forth from the void without warning, tearing the roof right off what seemed to be a muted, acoustic lament. (Listen on YouTube)2. “Your Best American Girl” (2016)And here, that dynamism comes from a quick stomp on the distortion pedal. “You’re an all-American boy,” Mitski hollers on this sky-scraping chorus, “I guess I couldn’t help trying to be your best American girl.” A standout from what is still my favorite Mitski album, the impeccably named “Puberty 2,” “Your Best American Girl” is also on my long list of best songs of the millennium so far. (Listen on YouTube)3. “Townie” (2014)Sometimes — especially on her earlier, more rock-oriented albums — Mitski will kick a song into a high gear immediately and continue escalating the intensity until the track sounds like it’s ready to burst into flames. That approach works well on the blazing “Townie,” a cathartic exorcism of 20-something anxiety from her 2014 album, “Bury Me at Makeout Creek.” “I want a love that falls as fast as a body from a balcony,” she sings, translating the song’s frantic momentum into another memorable image. (Listen on YouTube)4. “Heaven” (2023)Mitski’s music occasionally contains a faint country influence, albeit filtered through her own distinct sensibility. I hear some of that on this lovely ballad from the new album, but I also hear Mitski experimenting with sounds she hasn’t before explored on her records, like chamber-pop grandiosity and soaring orchestral accompaniments. (Listen on YouTube)5. “Lonesome Love” (2018)The country influence is more pronounced here, on this galloping ditty from the aptly named 2018 album “Be the Cowboy.” So is Mitski’s wry sense of humor: “In the morning, in a taxi I am so very paying for.” (Listen on YouTube)6. “Stay Soft” (2022)Here is my favorite song from Mitski’s previous album, “Laurel Hell,” which has the slightly misleading reputation as her happiest, poppiest release. (The opening track, “Valentine, Texas,” is one of many brooding songs that complicate that understanding.) On this song Mitski demonstrates how much depth she can mine from a seemingly simple lyric and a satisfying chord progression. “Open up your heart, like the gates of hell,” she sings, a perfect encapsulation of her macabre take on romance. (Listen on YouTube)7. “Nobody” (2018)This glistening, disco-kissed confession of loneliness is perhaps Mitski’s best-known song, thanks to its unexpected popularity on TikTok. “I don’t get it, but it’s nice!” Mitski told me last year, when asked about her fame on the app, which she is not on, herself. “All of the businesspeople are like, ‘This is so great!’ And I’m like, ‘Please stop texting me these TikToks.’” (Listen on YouTube)8. “Francis Forever” (2014)An early example, from “Bury Me at Makeout Creek,” of Mitski’s command of pop melody, “Francis Forever” charts the emotional and physical restlessness that comes from missing someone: “I don’t know what to do without you,” Mitski croons, “I don’t know where to put my hands.” (Listen on YouTube)9. “My Body’s Made of Crushed Little Stars” (2016)I love the rough-hewed texture and unrelenting fury of this highlight from “Puberty 2,” which plays out like a stream-of-consciousness airing of quarter-life grievances: “I wanna see the whole world!/I don’t know how I’m gonna pay rent!” Each line is delivered with the urgency of an inebriated epiphany shouted at a close friend during the waning hours of a house party. (Listen on YouTube)10. “Class of 2013” (2013)Mitski released her first two albums, “Lush” (2012) and “Retired From Sad, New Career in Business” (2013), in relative obscurity when she was a student at SUNY Purchase’s Conservatory of Music. Although these albums have belatedly become popular with some of her fans, for their uninhibited expressions of young-adult angst, they mostly still feel like rough drafts of what was to come. An exception is this brief, raw, piano-driven song, which culminates in Mitski letting out a blistering howl and foreshadows the clear, concise songwriting style of her best later work. (Listen on YouTube)11. “My Love Mine All Mine” (2023)“Nothing in the world belongs to me but my love,” Mitski sings on her latest single, a warm, lushly atmospheric ballad that exemplifies the easy confidence and sonic spaciousness of her seventh album. (Listen on YouTube)I work better under a deadline,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“An Essential Mitski Primer” track listTrack 1: “Bug Like an Angel”Track 2: “Your Best American Girl”Track 3: “Townie”Track 4: “Heaven”Track 5: “Lonesome Love”Track 6: “Stay Soft”Track 7: “Nobody”Track 8: “Francis Forever”Track 9: “My Body’s Made of Crushed Little Stars”Track 10: “Class of 2013”Track 11: “My Love Mine All Mine”Bonus TracksJon Pareles profiled the Rolling Stones (!) ahead of the band’s forthcoming album, “Hackney Diamonds,” and, among other impressive things, made Keith Richards cry: “Thanks for bringing me to tears.” I know you want to find out why.Speaking of the Stones, this David Marchese interview with the Rolling Stone co-founder Jann Wenner is … really something.And if it’s new music you’re looking for, as ever, we’ve got a Playlist for that. This week’s selections feature Maren Morris, Chris Stapleton and Cat Power. Listen here. More

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      A Deep Dive Into Olivia Rodrigo’s Triumphant ‘Guts’

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      Hear songs from her new LP in conversation with ones from the past.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesDear listeners,In May 2021, Olivia Rodrigo, then 18 years old, released her debut album, “Sour.” Earlier that year, the singer-songwriter had become an overnight sensation with her heart-tugging, piano-driven ballad “Drivers License,” but “Sour” proved that there was so much more to her than that: She could also pull off dreamy alt-rock (“Deja Vu”), spiky pop-punk (“Good 4 U”) and sharp social commentary (“Jealousy, Jealousy”). In a review I wrote at the time, I noted that “Rodrigo’s songs have lived-in details to spare, as though she had all this time been assembling a detailed dossier on the emotional minutiae of the teenage experience.”“Sour” felt as if it were signaling the sudden arrival of a major talent — and those are often the trickiest albums to follow up. As the Amplifier’s very own editor, Caryn Ganz, wrote in a recent profile of Rodrigo, “crafting the follow-up to a smash debut is music’s most daunting crucible, and Rodrigo felt the pressure to make a diamond.”Rodrigo’s sophomore album, “Guts,” is finally out today, and I am here to report some good news: It’s a diamond.Listening to “Guts” for the first time reminded me of when I initially heard Lorde’s great 2017 sophomore album, “Melodrama.” The albums don’t sound much alike — Rodrigo gravitates more toward rock aesthetics — but both feel like thrilling fulfillments of potential, two distinct artists staying true to what made them special while expanding the scope of their perspectives and ambitions. Both musicians are former teen phenoms who returned to the spotlight at age 20. And both, I can now say, made awesome second albums.Something particular I appreciate about Rodrigo’s music is the way it pulls from a lot of genres that have historically been male-dominated — pop-punk, emo, angsty alt-rock — and enlivens them with the vivid perspective of an idiosyncratic young woman. I cannot overstate how much I needed a voice like hers when I was a teenager, listening to rock music that blamed The Girl for everything, and that sometimes even indulged in violent revenge fantasies about her, always figuring her as the object and never the subject. I felt like I was supposed to be a specific sort of girl, the kind Rodrigo sketches and then obliterates on the opening track of “Guts,” when she sings in an exaggerated lilt, “I’m all right with the movies that make jokes ’bout senseless cruelty, that’s for sure.” Then she kicks the distortion pedal and says, so cathartically, the hell with that. She’s going to be herself — witty, a little awkward, convincingly weird — and write herself into the story.On both of her albums, Rodrigo mashes up genres and influences in a way that feels genuinely fresh. Which is why it was so disappointing when two of her stated idols, Taylor Swift and Paramore, suddenly received writing credits on two of the biggest hits from “Sour” after they were released. I prefer to think of it the way Elvis Costello did, when he responded to a tweet suggesting that the chord progression of Rodrigo’s song “Brutal” sounds similar to Costello’s 1978 hit with the Attractions, “Pump It Up.” “This is fine by me,” Costello wrote. “It’s how rock and roll works. You take the broken pieces of another thrill and make it a brand new toy. That’s what I did.” (He hashtagged the post with the titles of the Bob Dylan and Chuck Berry songs that had, in turn, inspired “Pump It Up.”)In that spirit, today’s playlist is a celebration of the many musical influences I hear on “Guts,” putting them in conversation with some of the album’s tracks to create new connections and pathways of inspiration. I limited myself to including only songs released before Rodrigo was alive, which was not difficult, as she was born in [deep sigh] 2003. Good 4 her.This is the rare playlist that features both Billy Joel and Bikini Kill; a track from Carole King’s 1971 album “Tapestry” and one off Saves the Day’s 2001 album “Stay What You Are.” Like the best of us, Olivia Rodrigo contains multitudes. And, of course, guts.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Olivia Rodrigo: “All-American Bitch”In the tradition of “Brutal,” which kicked off Rodrigo’s “Sour,” the propulsive “Guts” opener plays around with dynamics and stylistic contrasts to convey the impossible tension of being a young American girl. (She stumbled across the title phrase while reading Joan Didion’s essay collection “The White Album” — a young American girl rite of passage.) As the song progresses, it becomes clear that the eponymous perfect specimen of femininity is actually stifling fiction: “I don’t get angry when I’m pissed, I’m the eternal optimist,” an angsty Rodrigo shouts atop boisterously crunchy guitars, suggesting otherwise. (Listen on YouTube)2. Veruca Salt: “Volcano Girls”When I saw Rodrigo live last April at Radio City Music Hall, she played a cover that somehow felt both out-of-left-field and obvious: Veruca Salt’s 1994 alt-rock hit “Seether.” I hear a lot of Veruca Salt on “Guts,” particularly in Rodrigo’s penchant for caking buoyant pop melodies in grungy guitar distortion. “Seether” may have been the clearer choice, but I slightly prefer this even higher-octane single from the band’s 1996 album “Eight Arms to Hold You.” (Listen on YouTube)3. Olivia Rodrigo: “Bad Idea Right?”This spunky, self-deprecating second single from “Guts” has been stuck in my head approximately 80 percent of the time since it was released last month. And you know what? I’m OK with that. (Listen on YouTube)4. Toni Basil: “Mickey”Fun fact: When the choreographer, actress and occasional pop star Toni Basil released the video for her 1981 hit “Mickey,” she was in her late 30s. In a recent interview, Rodrigo, who is much closer in age to an actual high school cheerleader, named “Mickey” as a song she wishes she’d written herself. She definitely makes those cheerleader-chant vocals her own on “Bad Idea Right?” (Listen on YouTube)5. Olivia Rodrigo: “Vampire”There’s a precise moment in this song — the leadoff single from “Guts,” and her third No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 — that sets Rodrigo apart from her bedroom-pop peers: that wrenching, elegantly escalating melodic climb in the chorus when she sings about “the way you sold me for parts as you sunk your teeth into me.” Restraint is key, but Rodrigo also knows exactly when, and how, to let it rip. (Listen on YouTube)6. Billy Joel: “You May Be Right”On the “Sour” single “Deja Vu,” Rodrigo shouted out the piano man himself, while mocking an ex’s predictable taste: “I bet that she knows Billy Joel ’cause you played her ‘Uptown Girl.’” Last summer, she joined Joel onstage at Madison Square Garden to play “Deja Vu” (“I couldn’t have written this next song without you,” she told him) and, of course, “Uptown Girl.” But there’s a subtler link to Joel in the verbose, musical-theater-like cadences of Rodrigo’s writing, too, that I hear on some of her piano-driven songs. (Listen on YouTube)7. Olivia Rodrigo: “Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl”This deliriously catchy ode to social anxiety might be my favorite song on the record? But “Guts” has enough highlights that I’m sure that will change a few times, too. (Listen on YouTube)8. That Dog.: “Never Say Never”Another sweetly sour, underappreciated ’90s jam that I believe Rodrigo should cover on her next tour. (Listen on YouTube)9. Olivia Rodrigo: “Logical”Though “Guts” is full of upbeat pop-rock songs, this highlight proves Rodrigo can still pull off a heart-stopping piano ballad with the best of them. “If rain don’t pour and the sun don’t shine,” she sings with a lump in her throat, “then changing you is possible/No, love is never logical.” (Listen on YouTube)10. Carole King: “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?”Speaking of ballads written by and about teenagers, Carole King — a Rodrigo fan who said in a recent Vogue interview that Rodrigo “begins by speaking for herself, but she speaks, in the end, for so many young women” — composed the music to this wistful 1960 Shirelles hit when she was a little younger than Rodrigo is now. She recorded it herself a decade later, for her classic album “Tapestry,” and brought a new maturity to words written by her ex-husband Gerry Goffin, proving, as Rodrigo often does, that songs about young love can have hidden wisdom and unexpected depths. (Listen on YouTube)11. Olivia Rodrigo: “Get Him Back!”Rodrigo finds out why lust rhymes with disgust on this playful, infectious and dryly hilarious singalong. “Do I love him, do I hate him? I guess it’s up and down,” Rodrigo deadpans, before choosing a double entendre that allows her to have it both ways: “If I had to choose, I would say right now, I want to get him back!” (Listen on YouTube)12. Saves the Day: “At Your Funeral”The icky, squirmy do-I-love-them-or-wish-they-were-dead quality of “Get Him Back!” is reminiscent of the early aughts emo exemplified by bands like Saves the Day, Taking Back Sunday and As Tall As Lions, the group that the songwriter and producer Daniel Nigro fronted before coming Rodrigo’s chief collaborator. Not all of these songs have aged particularly well, but I believe that “At Your Funeral” still very much goes. (Listen on YouTube)13. Olivia Rodrigo: “Love Is Embarrassing”Or is this my favorite song on “Guts”? It’s got some new wave, a little bit of riot grrrl and a whole lot of Rodrigo’s effervescent personality. (Listen on YouTube)14. Bikini Kill: “Reject All American”I hear some major Kathleen Hanna ’tude at the end of “Love Is Embarrassing.” (Hanna, in turn, confessed in Ganz’s profile to “sobbing in my car” the first time she heard Rodrigo’s “Drivers License.” Game recognize game.) (Listen on YouTube)15. Olivia Rodrigo, “Teenage Dream”Let’s let Rodrigo have the last word with this poignant closing track. “They all say that it gets better,” she sings atop a gradually building piano arrangement, laying her insecurities bare. “It get better, but what if I don’t?” I appreciate the way she lets the question hang in the air, even as the preceding album has proved that she does. (Listen on YouTube)Searching “how to start a conversation” on a website,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“A Deep Dive Into Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘Guts’” track listTrack 1: Olivia Rodrigo, “All-American Bitch”Track 2: Veruca Salt, “Volcano Girls”Track 3: Olivia Rodrigo, “Bad Idea Right?”Track 4: Toni Basil, “Mickey”Track 5: Olivia Rodrigo, “Vampire”Track 6: Billy Joel, “You May Be Right”Track 7: Olivia Rodrigo, “Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl”Track 8: That Dog., “Never Say Never”Track 9: Olivia Rodrigo, “Logical”Track 10: Carole King, “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?”Track 11: Olivia Rodrigo, “Get Him Back!”Track 12: Saves the Day, “At Your Funeral”Track 13: Olivia Rodrigo, “Love Is Embarrassing”Track 14: Bikini Kill, “Reject All American”Track 15: Olivia Rodrigo, “Teenage Dream”Bonus tracksYou don’t just have to take my word for it: Jon Caramanica named “Guts” a Critic’s Pick. Read his take on the album here.Plus, in this week’s new music Playlist, the Rolling Stones are back! Listen to their new single “Angry,” along with fresh tracks from Ashley McBryde, Allison Russell and more, here. More

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      The Ultimate Tammy Wynette Primer

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      Hear her biggest hits, deeper cuts and tributes from disciples.Tammy Wynette onstage in Central Park in 1977.Associated PressDear listeners,For years, I’ve been waiting for the right moment to write about one of my favorite country singers, the great, oft-misunderstood Tammy Wynette.Throughout this year, Wynette has been materializing in pop culture in all sorts of unexpected ways. First, Jessica Chastain played her — garnering an Emmy nomination — in the Showtime limited series “George & Tammy.” In May, the critic Steacy Easton published a rousing little book called “Why Tammy Wynette Matters,” arguing that Wynette deserves — but has not received — as much modern recognition as her peers Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn. And earlier this month, Lana Del Rey made headlines when she performed a slyly reverent cover of “Stand by Your Man” at an Arkansas concert.At last! I thought, cracking my knuckles. It’s time.Del Rey’s cover was truly the connection I’d been waiting for. I’ve been thinking for a while about the shared sensibility between Wynette and the millennial-era obsession with “sad girl music,” a sometimes glorified, sometimes bemoaned label affixed to art that finds a deep pathos in the performance of femininity. As I wrote in a piece published earlier on Friday, perhaps this is a newly illuminating context in which to consider Wynette — and an opportunity to take her more seriously.The first time I can remember hearing Wynette’s name was in the media brouhaha that resulted from Hillary Clinton denigrating her in a 1992 interview, responding to rumors of the soon-to-be-president’s infidelity: “I’m not sitting here, some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette,” she said. Wynette was rightly offended, and Clinton apologized, but the damage had been done. As a young girl not really understanding all of this but internalizing it anyway, I developed a dim idea that Wynette was controversial.When I got older and started listening to her music, though, I found that she was something so much richer and more complex. I came to hear in her voice an unapologetic sense of anguish, disappointment and sometimes even defiance in the face of heartbreak. I heard a performer with a keen sense of tonal calibration and intuitive emotional intelligence — a great storyteller, and a much needed chronicler of often dismissed tales of feminized pain.Today’s playlist is a celebration of Wynette in all her multifaceted glory. It works well as a companion piece to my article, but it can also be a stand-alone introduction (or reintroduction) to her music. It features a lot of her own biggest hits, but also some tributes from disciples like Reba McEntire, Kellie Pickler and even Del Rey herself. I decided not to include any of Wynette’s many duets with her ex-husband George Jones, not because I don’t love most of them (I do), but because Wynette is so often reduced to her relationship with Jones and I wanted to give her music a chance to stand on its own. It does, however, feature a collaboration with her artistic equals and fellow Honky Tonk Angels, Parton and Lynn. May this playlist inspire singalongs, cry-alongs and good girls to go bad.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Tammy Wynette: “Womanhood”This later hit from the 1978 album “Womanhood” is one of Wynette’s strangest singles and — perhaps not coincidentally — one of my favorites. Here, Wynette embodies a character who has been led into temptation: “I am a Christian, Lord, but I’m a woman too,” she sings amid blustery guitars that wouldn’t sound out of place on a late ’70s Fleetwood Mac record. “If you are listening, Lord, please show me what to do.” “Womanhood” was penned by the prolific Nashville songwriter Bobby Braddock, and in his memoir he described the song as being “about a girl having a tearful talk with God about losing her virginity.” That Wynette was a woman of 36 embarking upon her fifth marriage when she recorded the song — which would become her final Top 5 hit on the country charts — adds another layer of complexity, pathos and even kitsch. (Listen on YouTube)2. Tammy Wynette: “Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad”Long before Rihanna went bad, there was Tammy. As with many of Wynette’s signature tunes, there is a sense of resignation and even self-abnegation at work here: “I’ll change if it takes that to make you happy,” she tells a whiskey-swilling, bar-dwelling husband as she offers to adopt a lifestyle more like his on this swinging, upbeat number from her 1967 debut. But I also hear a playful defiance in Wynette’s vocal here: She’s throwing a man’s questionable behavior back in his face and subtly pointing out a double standard in the expectations of how men and women are supposed to act. Plus, for once, it sounds like she’s having a blast. (Listen on YouTube)3. Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette and Loretta Lynn: “Silver Threads and Golden Needles”In 1993, the pioneering country queens Parton and Lynn teamed up with Wynette for a spirited collaborative album called “Honky Tonk Angels,” named after Kitty Wells’s classic 1952 anthem. Since most of Wynette’s best-known collaborations find her working through heartache with Jones, it’s refreshing to hear her singing with this accomplished (and convincingly hell-raising) group of women. For the love of big hair and shoulder pads, stop what you’re doing and watch this video of them performing it live together. (Listen on YouTube)4. Kellie Pickler: “Where’s Tammy Wynette”“How ’bout a honky-tonk angel to tell me how this whole thing works,” Pickler sings on this saucy but sincerely sweet track from her 2011 album, “100 Proof,” bridging the gap between Wynette and another generation of female country stars. “Where’s Tammy Wynette when you need her?” (Listen on YouTube)5. Tammy Wynette: “D-I-V-O-R-C-E”Not only is this song — which hit No. 1 on the country charts in 1968 and earned Wynette her second Grammy nomination — a quintessential showcase of her ability to draw rich melancholy out of a lyric, it’s also a perfect example of Billy Sherrill’s signature, Wall-of-Sound-on-Music-Row style of production. C-L-A-S-S-I-C. (Listen on YouTube)6. Tammy Wynette: “Apartment #9”Wynette’s first proper Nashville recording, and her first of many collaborations with Sherrill, wasn’t a runaway hit when it was first released in 1966, but it’s since become one of her most beloved performances. “Just follow the stairway to this lonely world of mine,” she sings, as the atmosphere is heightened by a weeping pedal steel guitar. Easton, in “Why Tammy Wynette Matters,” calls this one “still the saddest country song ever sung.” (Listen on YouTube)7. Reba McEntire: “Tammy Wynette Kind of Pain”“This is more than a little smile I’m having to fake,” Reba McEntire sings on this 2019 ballad, released a few years after her divorce from her husband of more than two decades. McEntire brings a grown woman’s grit and a lived-through-it wisdom to this song, which both talks back to Wynette’s music in its own words (“Standing by your man is a broken plan/When he breaks your heart and all your trust with his two cheating hands”) and calls upon her as a kind of patron saint of heartbreak. (Listen on YouTube)8. Tammy Wynette: “’Til I Can Make It on My Own”Wynette co-wrote this 1976 hit, one of her greatest torch songs, with Sherrill and her soon-to-be fifth husband, the country songwriter George Richey. Of all her hits, Wynette liked to say that this one — covered later by Kenny Rogers and Dottie West, and, much later, by Martina McBride — meant the most to her. (Listen on YouTube)9. Tammy Wynette: “I Don’t Wanna Play House”This heart-wrenching 1967 breakout hit — Wynette’s first country No. 1 as a solo artist, and the performance that earned her first Grammy — is about a mother watching her young daughter playing with a neighborhood boy and overhearing her say something devastating: “I’ve watched Mommy and Daddy, and if that’s the way it’s done/I don’t wanna play house, it makes my Mommy cry. ” The song hits on plenty of the themes that would soon become Wynette’s bread and butter (broken families; lonely women; divorce’s impact on children) and a sudden, thrilling shift into her higher vocal register in the middle of a verse when she sings, “And then the teardrops made my eyes go dim.” (Listen on YouTube)10. Lana Del Rey featuring Nikki Lane: “Breaking Up Slowly”Del Rey first hinted at her affinity for Wynette on this duet with the alt-country crooner Nikki Lane, from Del Rey’s 2021 album “Chemtrails Over the Country Club.” “I don’t wanna live with a life of regret,” Lane sings in the second verse. “I don’t wanna end up like Tammy Wynette.” Del Rey, though, takes a more sympathetic view in her verses, on which she seems to be singing from Wynette’s own perspective: “George got arrested out on the lawn/We might be breaking up after this song.” (Listen on YouTube)11. Tammy Wynette: “Stand by Your Man”Often imitated but never duplicated, Wynette’s biggest pop hit and most infamous calling card has a stealthy power. Sherrill’s production here is top-notch, and Wynette’s undulating vocal — which seems to swing between private pain and public restraint — is a force of tragic but strangely regal beauty. As Easton writes, “‘Stand by Your Man’ is enough of a porous text that it leaks and stains everything it touches, but its messiness is one of the reasons it’s so important.” (Listen on YouTube)I’ll even learn to like the taste of whiskey,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Where’s Tammy Wynette When You Need Her?” track listTrack 1: Tammy Wynette, “Womanhood”Track 2: Tammy Wynette, “Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad”Track 3: Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette and Loretta Lynn, “Silver Threads and Golden Needles”Track 4: Kellie Pickler, “Where’s Tammy Wynette”Track 5: Tammy Wynette, “D-I-V-O-R-C-E”Track 6: Tammy Wynette, “Apartment #9”Track 7: Reba McEntire, “Tammy Wynette Kind of Pain”Track 8: Tammy Wynette, “’Til I Can Make It on My Own”Track 9: Tammy Wynette, “I Don’t Wanna Play House”Track 10: Lana Del Rey featuring Nikki Lane, “Breaking Up Slowly”Track 11: Tammy Wynette, “Stand by Your Man”Bonus tracksOK, one more: Tammy’s bonkers 1991 collaboration with the KLF, “Justified & Ancient.” I will always stand by the jams.And if it’s new songs you’re looking for, we’ve got a whopping 13 to recommend on this week’s Playlist, including tracks from Nicki Minaj, Oneohtrix Point Never and a brash Doja Cat single that I am very much digging. Listen here. More

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      A Summer of Live Music, From Stadiums to Clubs

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      Hear songs from Beyoncé, Alvvays, Mdou Moctar and more.Beyoncé, a master of ballads and addition.The New York TimesDear listeners,I sincerely hope I am not the first person to break this news to you, but it’s true: Summer is almost over.Let us not mourn what is lost, though. Let us celebrate the summer that was. And what it was, for me at least, was a time to go to a lot of concerts. Most of them outdoors!While the post-lockdown summer concert has made its gradual, necessary return over the past two years, this season it felt back in full bloom. The news was, of course, dominated by a few extremely high-profile ones (Taylor Swift’s cultural juggernaut Eras Tour; Beyoncé’s first solo outing in seven years, the Renaissance World Tour) but there were plenty of simpler (and cheaper) pleasures to be had, too. I caught some incredible free shows over the past few months in New York City parks, from the likes of Mdou Moctar and John Cale. And in a smaller club environment, I was introduced to the up-and-coming singer-songwriter Blondshell.Today’s playlist is a kind of sonic scrapbook of my summer of shows. I’d encourage you to make your own, too; even as this season fades out (sob), it’s a great way to hold onto its most tuneful memories.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Alvvays: “Easy on Your Own?”Let’s start with the most recent one: Last Wednesday, I caught an excellent double bill in Prospect Park, as a part of BRIC Arts Media’s annual Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival. The Canadian dream-pop band Alvvays played first; its last album, “Blue Rev,” was one of my favorites of 2022, and I especially love this fuzzed out, gently melancholic second track. (Listen on YouTube)2. Alex G: “Gretel”And here’s the other half of that double bill, the Philadelphia indie musician Alex G, who also released one of my favorite albums of last year, the strange and poignant “God Save the Animals.” Alex’s live shows are always a bit louder and more raucous than his records would lead you to believe; I have actually seen mosh pits break out when he plays this seemingly subdued standout from his great 2019 album, “House of Sugar.” (Listen on YouTube)3. Taylor Swift: “The Archer”I have been known to refer to this one as “The Sagittarius National Anthem.” The more I think about Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour — and there are plenty of opportunities to do so; it’s still all anybody wants to talk about — the more I think my favorite stretch of the concert was the first one, when she finally got to play some songs from her 2019 album “Lover.” Here she is at her most minimalist, and her most antiheroic, as she punctures her own good-girl image on “The Archer”: “I see right through me, I see right through me.” (Listen on YouTube)4. Tanya Tucker: “Delta Dawn”When I traveled to the Gorge in Washington earlier this summer to catch Brandi Carlile’s Echoes Through the Canyon festival — and, you know, a certain very, very special headliner — I was lucky enough to catch an early evening set by the country icon Tanya Tucker. My second favorite part of the show was when she played “Delta Dawn,” which she recorded at age 13, and every single person there sang along at the top of their lungs. My first favorite part was when Tucker uncorked a bottle of her signature tequila and passed it around the front row. (Listen on YouTube)5. Amanda Shires & Bobbie Nelson: “Always on My Mind”The headliners that final night of Echoes Through the Canyon were the Highwomen, a country supergroup that features Carlile, Maren Morris, Natalie Hemby and the fiery fiddle player and singer-songwriter Amanda Shires. Each Highwoman played a solo cover during the set, and Shires wowed me with a poignant rendition of “Always on My Mind,” which she dedicated to Bobbie Nelson. Luckily, you didn’t just have to be there: The studio recording of the song, on which Nelson played piano shortly before she died last year, is gorgeous, and quite close to the version Shires played live. (Listen on YouTube)6. John Cale: “Heartbreak Hotel”Another brilliant show in Prospect Park: Earlier this month, 81-year-old John Cale treated Brooklyn to a spellbinding concert on one of the most temperate evenings of the whole summer. His set pulled from decades of his own material, but one of the most memorable moments was when he played an eerily deconstructed reimagining of “Heartbreak Hotel,” similar to this version that appeared on his 1992 live album “Fragments of a Rainy Season.” (Listen on YouTube)7. Blondshell: “Dangerous”I already knew, from listening to her 2023 self-titled debut as Blondshell, that Sabrina Teitelbaum was a sharp songwriter with a distinct take on the dark side of young adulthood and an easy way with minor-key melodies. What I didn’t realize until I saw her live this summer, though, is that she can really sing. She belted out “Blondshell” highlights like “Salad” and “Sepsis” (two great titles for songs), but the finely calibrated pathos she brought to the haunting “Dangerous” lingered with me long after the show. (Listen on YouTube)8. Mdou Moctar: “Tarhatazed”Mdou Moctar, the Tuareg guitar wizard whose last few albums have gained him much-deserved recognition in the West, leads what I believe to be one of the best rock bands in the world right now. I’ve seen them live a few times, and they’ve never sounded tighter than they did at the free — what a bargain! — show they played in July at Central Park’s SummerStage Festival. The new material was amazing and has me very excited for whatever the group decides to release next, but in the meantime, here’s an epic jam from the band’s 2019 album “Ilana the Creator.” (Listen on YouTube)9. Beyoncé: “1+1”As I pointed out in my review of the North American opening of her dazzling Renaissance World Tour, Beyoncé began a show that honors the vast history of dance music with, unexpectedly, a mini-set of slow, piano-driven torch songs. I confess I was getting a little impatient with the Queen — didn’t we come to dance?! — until she played a transcendent “1+1,” one of her greatest ballads. Then I had no choice but to bow down. (Listen on YouTube)I’ve got a hundred thrown-out speeches I almost said to you,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“A Summer of Live Music” track listTrack 1: Alvvays, “Easy on Your Own?”Track 2: Alex G, “Gretel”Track 3: Taylor Swift, “The Archer”Track 4: Tanya Tucker, “Delta Dawn”Track 5: Amanda Shires & Bobbie Nelson, “Always on My Mind”Track 6: John Cale, “Heartbreak Hotel”Track 7: Blondshell, “Dangerous”Track 8: Mdou Moctar, “Tarhatazed”Track 9: Beyoncé, “1+1”Bonus tracksI purposely left off the summer concerts to which I’d already devoted entire playlists, but in case you missed those, the Cure and the Pretenders were both amazing.Also, my beleaguered New York Mets are still giving me little to cheer about, but I continue to be amused by the special walk-up songs they choose for “Women’s Day” (which was March 8 everywhere else in the world but, for some reason, was Aug. 26 at Citi Field). Each player changed his walk-up song to one by a female artist, and for the second year in a row, Daniel Vogelbach’s pick was the one to beat. This year he chose Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles,” and last year, he went with Kelis’s “Milkshake.” Daniel Vogelbach, I salute you. More

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      Get Close: 10 Gems From the Pretenders

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      With a new album due in September, Chrissie Hynde’s band played a tiny club show in New York that inspired a spin through its catalog.From left: Martin Chambers and Chrissie Hynde onstage in 1980.Graham Wiltshire/Redferns, via Getty ImagesDear listeners,On Wednesday night, I was one of approximately 600 sardines crammed into Manhattan’s Bowery Ballroom for a very special concert. We were packed so tightly, I couldn’t move an inch; even clapping felt like a precarious use of my elbows. Did I mention it is August, in New York, and the humidity has been hovering around 75 percent for days? If this show were mediocre, or even just good, I might have lasted half the set at best. But there was no way I was leaving. Because we were there, in an impossibly small club, seeing the rock legends the Pretenders.The night before, Chrissie Hynde and company had played for a crowd roughly 100 times larger, opening for Guns N’ Roses at MetLife Stadium. But on this tour — the band’s first since it had to cancel its 2020 shows because of, well, 2020 — the Pretenders are doing something unexpected and fun: In between those huge stadium gigs, they’re playing smaller capacity venues like the Atlantis in Washington, D.C. and the iconic Stone Pony in Asbury Park, N.J.At MetLife, they played the hits: “Brass in Pocket,” “Back on the Chain Gang,” “I’ll Stand by You.” The set list at the Bowery leaned more heavily on deep cuts and fan favorites. I knew and loved some of these already, but I confess my knowledge of the Pretenders’ catalog skews more toward the mainstream, so the Bowery show also opened my ears to a few great tunes with which I was unfamiliar — and which, of course, I want to share with you in today’s playlist, which is culled entirely from Wednesday night’s set.At 71, Hynde still carries herself like one of the coolest and most badass people on the planet. She commanded the stage with her skunked-out black eye makeup, spitfire attitude and impressively strong pipes; as ever, she sings in a singular, sneering enunciation that’s neither American nor British, but more as if the birth country listed on her passport was just “rock ’n’ roll.” (She still loves repping her home state, Ohio, though, as this playlist will show.)Though Hynde is the only original member touring with this iteration of the Pretenders (Martin Chambers, the group’s original, on-again-off-again drummer, sent his regards, Hynde told the crowd), the band absolutely smokes. The standout is the lead guitarist James Walbourne, who has the skills and the hairdo of a rockabilly virtuoso. He’s toured with the band since 2008 and has co-written two Pretenders albums with Hynde: the 2020 LP “Hate for Sale” and the band’s forthcoming 12th album “Relentless,” which will be out Sept. 15.“To live forever, that’s the plan, the longest living mortal man,” Hynde sings on “Let the Sun Come In,” an anthemic single from “Relentless.” It’s tongue-in-cheek, but also haunting given the band’s history with untimely death: Two original members, the guitarist James Honeyman-Scott and the bassist Pete Farndon, died of drug-related causes shortly after the band’s second album was released.Hynde has seen firsthand how fleeting rock stardom — even life itself — can be, and she’s let her survivor’s grit guide her now for more than four decades. The Bowery show was a reminder that she’s a living legend, not to be taken for granted — a woman in a man’s world who refused to sand down her rough edges or follow someone else’s playbook to artistic fulfillment. “We don’t have to fade to black,” she sang on Wednesday night, still tough as nails. “Let the sun come in.”Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. “Turf Accountant Daddy”This pummeling, bluesy rock number about a no-good bookie comes from the 2020 album “Hate for Sale.” In classic Pretenders fashion, it features a finger-wagging vocal, blustery distortion and a reference to a city in Ohio: “She’ll never know in Cincinnati/He’s never gonna show, the turf accountant daddy.” (Listen on YouTube)2. “Downtown (Akron)”Speaking of Ohio: Here’s a propulsive ode to Hynde’s hometown, from the 1990 album “Packed!” C’mon! (Listen on YouTube)3. “Time the Avenger”Hynde can really cut a self-important man down to size with her observant lyricism and eye-rolling delivery. She chides an unfaithful businessman in this jittery tune from the Pretenders’ classic 1984 album “Learning to Crawl,” but she conveys some empathy for his futile attempts to outrun the nagging metronome of mortality: “Time to kill another bottle of wine, to help paralyze that little tick, tick, tick, tick.” (Listen on YouTube)4. “Boots of Chinese Plastic (Live)”This galloping rocker kicks off the Pretenders’ 2008 album “Break Up the Concrete,” though this version, from the 2010 release “Live in London,” best captures the kinetic energy of the band’s Bowery show. (Listen on YouTube)5. “Thumbelina”I love this lyric, which comes toward the end of this road-weary, rockabilly-influenced tune from 1984: “It must seem strange, love was here then gone/And the Oklahoma sunrise becomes the Amarillo dawn.” (Listen on YouTube)6. “Tequila”A short version of this cry-in-your-shot-glass ballad appeared on the 1994 album “Last of the Independents,” but at the Bowery, Hynde and her band played the full song, which has been released on various bonus collections and deluxe editions over the years. “I drink tequila,” she sings in the song’s opening moments, “’cause I can’t have your lips tonight.” (Listen on YouTube)7. “Gotta Wait”A dark, antsy energy propels this blown-out track off “Alone,” the 2016 album that Hynde recorded with a cast of session musicians and the producer Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys (another Akron band). Time, once again, is the avenger here: “You gotta wait, wait, hold the date and hesitate — wait.” (Listen on YouTube)8. “You Can’t Hurt a Fool”Performing this soulful ballad from “Hate for Sale,” Hynde delivered perhaps her most impassioned vocal of the night, briefly casting aside the armor of her guitar and getting vulnerable. “You can’t hurt a fool,” she crooned sorrowfully. “Don’t even try.” (Listen on YouTube)9. “Let the Sun Come In”This guitar-driven tune — one of several “Relentless” tracks the band played at the Bowery — plays out like an elegy to lost band members and a galvanic call to keep writing, touring and rocking out: “With a soul that can’t be perished,” Hynde sings, “with a song that’s always cherished.” (Listen on YouTube)10. “Precious”Poetically barbed and spikily self-assured, “Precious” kicks off the Pretenders’ indelible self-titled 1979 debut and introduces Hynde as a transfixing, take-no-prisoners talent. Honeyman-Scott’s guitar crouches in wait and pounces into action at the perfect moment, while the tight rhythm section keeps the tempo at an aggressive strut. “Not me, baby, I’m too precious,” Hynde sneers at the song’s thrilling climax, before hocking one of rock history’s most well-earned expletives like an expertly aimed spitball. (Listen on YouTube)You shouldn’t let your manners slip,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Get Close: 10 Gems From the Pretenders” track listTrack 1: “Turf Accountant Daddy”Track 2: “Downtown (Akron)”Track 3: “Time the Avenger”Track 4: “Boots of Chinese Plastic (Live)”Track 5: “Thumbelina”Track 6: “Tequila”Track 7: “Gotta Wait”Track 8: “You Can’t Hurt a Fool”Track 9: “Let the Sun Come In”Track 10: “Precious”Bonus tracksIn today’s new music Playlist, there’s a just-released song from the Pretenders’ tour mates Guns N’ Roses, plus a previously unreleased Joni Mitchell demo, Dolly Parton’s Beatles reunion and much more. Listen here. More

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      9 Songs From Pop’s ‘Middle Class’ That Deserve to Be Hits

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      Hear songs by Carly Rae Jepsen, Charli XCX, Troye Sivan and more.Carly Rae Jepsen, likely cutting to a feeling.Jason Cairnduff/ReutersDear listeners,On Monday, The Times published a piece by the critic Shaad D’Souza that asked a question I’ve been pondering a lot over the past decade: “What happens when a pop star isn’t that popular?”D’Souza created a taxonomy of a relatively varied assortment of musicians — among them Carly Rae Jepsen, Charli XCX, Kim Petras, Troye Sivan and Rita Ora — who embrace pop musical sounds and command devoted, internet-savvy fan bases but still operate below the visibility of “major” pop stars like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. “For these artists,” D’Souza writes, “pop stardom isn’t a commercial category, but a sound, an aesthetic and an attitude.”“Pop,” though, is of course short for “popular,” and some purists might dismiss D’Souza’s question as a futile thought experiment: If a tree in a forest releases a single that fails to crack the Hot 100, does it even make a sound? And with detractors quick to label any perceived misstep as evidence that a pop star has entered her flop era, success and failure can now feel like an irreversible binary.But there are plenty of gray areas, too, and I appreciate the optimism of D’Souza’s conclusion: Hey, it’s a living. “It may be miles away from the spectacle and flash usually associated with pop music,” he writes of this broad career trajectory, “but it does provide a path toward something that, for decades, has proved elusive for a lot of aspirant pop stars: career sustainability.”The article made me think of something I mentioned in last Friday’s newsletter: Jepsen’s recent sets at Rockwood Music Hall (save it, please!), a tiny venue into which she crammed 150 fans at a time after her outdoor concert at the larger Pier 17 was cut short because of weather. Jepsen seemed to be having a ball leading direct-to-fan singalongs with her frenzied devotees, who may not fill Swift-sized arenas, but who nevertheless adore her. With Eras Tour tickets either impossible to come by or prohibitively expensive anyway, maybe pledging allegiance to a pop star with a more modestly sized fan base is, these days, the more sustainable way to stan.Though D’Souza makes the argument that the majority of these performers operate in a relatively safe pop playground, adjusted commercial ambitions also free up many of these artists to stop chasing fickle chart trends and make bolder, stranger and more sonically adventurous pop music. I want to celebrate that freedom on today’s playlist, which culls some of my favorite songs from a few of the artists D’Souza affectionately called “pop’s middle class.”My personal favorites of these are-they-actually-pop stars are generally the more outré ones: the eternal club kid Charli XCX, the vocally dexterous former Chairlift frontwoman Caroline Polachek and the genre-omnivorous British-Japanese musician Rina Sawayama. But, as you’ll hear, I appreciate a solid Jepsen banger as much as the next Jepfriend.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Carly Rae Jepsen: “Surrender My Heart”One of my favorite songs from Jepsen’s 2022 album, “The Loneliest Time,” “Surrender My Heart” — a surging synth-pop tune about how difficult it can be to open up to the possibility of new love — has one of Jepsen’s signature anthemic choruses and even some of her wry humor: “I paid to toughen up in therapy/She said to me, ‘soften up.’” (Listen on YouTube)2. Troye Sivan, “Rush”The lusty, effervescent “Rush” is the first single from the Australian musician Sivan’s upcoming album “Something to Give Each Other.” Sivan was one of the few cast members not to embarrass himself on HBO’s recent narratively challenged series “The Idol”; it remains to be seen if that increased visibility will push him closer to pop’s A-list. (Listen on YouTube)3. Caroline Polachek: “Welcome to My Island”Maybe one of my favorite pop choruses in years? Every time I hear it, I want to shout it off the top of the mountain like the guy from that Ricola commercial: “DESIIIIIIIIIIRE! I want to turn into you!” That lyric from “Welcome to My Island” also gives Polachek’s latest album — easily one of my most-played of 2023 — its charmingly ridiculous title. (Listen on YouTube)4. Charli XCX: “Constant Repeat”“I’m cute and I’m rude with kind of rare attitude,” Charli XCX sings, summing up her own unruly musical personality on this highlight from her sleek 2022 album “Crash,” which lets a flighty would-be lover know exactly what they missed out on. (Listen on YouTube)5. Ava Max: “Million Dollar Baby”At her best, Ava Max sounds like Lady Gaga would if she were still making “Fame Monster” B-sides in 2023. I mean this as a compliment; in my opinion, most pop songs should sound like they could have been included on “The Fame Monster.” Ava Max’s biggest hit, “Sweet but Psycho” from 2019, certainly fits this description, but I’m also a fan of this driving 2022 single, which cleverly employs an interpolation of LeAnn Rimes’s 2000 “Coyote Ugly” smash “Can’t Fight the Moonlight.” (Listen on YouTube)6. Troye Sivan, “Rager Teenager!”This wistful track, from the 2020 EP “In a Dream,” shows off the softer, sparser side of Sivan’s dreamy pop. It also would have worked as an entry on last month’s exclamatory playlist! (Listen on YouTube)7. Rina Sawayama: “Bad Friend”Man, I love this one. File it under “incredibly common life experiences that no one really writes pop songs about”; Sawayama’s wrenching “Bad Friend” chronicles, to the tune of a beautifully melancholy melody, the gradual erosion of a once-close friendship. “So don’t ask me where I’ve been, been avoiding everything,” Sawayama sings, before finding solace in a chorus of people confessing that they can relate: “Put your hands up if you’re not good at this stuff.” (Listen on YouTube)8. Carly Rae Jepsen: “Cut to the Feeling”Jepsen — bless her — has an unfortunate tendency to bury some of her best work, and it’s possible that has hampered her ability to achieve another pop radio smash. Consider that the single she released after “Call Me Maybe” was a painfully twee duet with the guy from Owl City (if you don’t remember Owl City, I’m jealous of your brain), or that she kicked off her “Emotion” era by releasing as a leadoff single that excellent album’s very worst song, “I Really Like You.” (At least she got Tom Hanks in the video.) “Cut to the Feeling,” from 2015, is an absolutely perfect, ecstatic, 10-out-of-10 pop song, and if you have never heard of it before that’s because it was released on the soundtrack of a Canadian-French animated film called “Ballerina.” At least you get to hear it now! (Listen on YouTube)9. Charli XCX: “Track 10”Many of Charli’s Angels — this one included — consider the gleefully forward-thinking 2017 mixtape “Pop 2” to be Charli’s magnum opus (so far) and this epic finale to be one of her most successful experiments. D’Souza highlights Charli as a musician who has straddled the worlds of mainstream pop and its more risk-taking underground, and a clear distillation of that contrast can be heard in the two different versions she’d recorded of one particular song. “Blame It on Your Love,” from her 2019 album “Charli,” is a glossy, radio-friendly tropical house jam, complete with a by-the-numbers guest verse from Lizzo. “Track 10,” though, is something else: A wildly weird deconstruction of a pop song, culminating in an escalating bridge that sounds like it’s being sung by a malfunctioning laser printer. Some songs are so special that something would be lost by even giving them a title. So this one, fittingly, is just “Track 10.” (Listen on YouTube)Desiiiiiiiiiiire,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“The Best of Pop’s ‘Middle Class’” track listTrack 1: Carly Rae Jepsen, “Surrender My Heart”Track 2: Troye Sivan, “Rush”Track 3: Caroline Polachek, “Welcome to My Island”Track 4: Charli XCX, “Constant Repeat”Track 5: Ava Max, “Million Dollar Baby”Track 6: Troye Sivan, “Rager Teenager!”Track 7: Rina Sawayama, “Bad Friend”Track 8: Carly Rae Jepsen, “Cut to the Feeling”Track 9: Charli XCX, “Track 10” More