Lizzo (1988- )

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      Lizzo Plays New Notes on James Madison’s Crystal Flute from 1813

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      A classically trained flutist, the singer, rapper and songwriter spent more than three hours admiring the flute collection at the Library of Congress. Madison’s instrument was made for the second inauguration by a Parisian craftsman.Lizzo looked uncharacteristically nervous as she crossed the stage in a glittering mesh leotard with tights and sequined combat boots.A classically trained flutist who began playing when she was in fifth grade and considered studying at the Paris Conservatory, she has woven flute into many of her songs, has played virtually with the New York Philharmonic, and her flute, named Sasha Flute, even has its own Instagram page.But waiting for her on Tuesday night was an exquisite (and highly breakable) musical instrument that had arrived at her concert in Washington under heavy security: a crystal flute that a French craftsman and clockmaker had made for President James Madison in 1813.“I’m scared,” Lizzo said, as she took the sparkling instrument from Carol Lynn Ward-Bamford, a curator at the Library of Congress, who had carefully removed the flute from its customized protective case. “It’s crystal. It’s like playing out of a wine glass.”As the crowd roared, Lizzo played a note, stuck out her tongue in amazement, and then played another note, trilling it as she twerked in front of thousands of cheering fans. She then carried the flute over her head, giving the crowd at Capital One Arena one last look, before handing it back to Ms. Ward-Bamford.“I just twerked and played James Madison’s crystal flute from the 1800s,” Lizzo proclaimed. “We just made history tonight.”It was a symbolic moment as Lizzo, a hugely popular Black singer, rapper and songwriter, played a priceless instrument that had once belonged to a founder whose Virginia plantation was built by enslaved Black workers. And the flute had been lent to her by Carla D. Hayden, the first African American and first woman to lead the Library of Congress.The moment came together after Dr. Hayden asked Lizzo on Friday to visit the library’s flute collection, the largest in the world, with about 1,700 of the instruments.Dr. Hayden wrote on Twitter: “@lizzo we would love for you to come see it and even play a couple when you are in DC next week. Like your song they are ‘Good as hell.’”Lizzo responded without much hesitation.“IM COMING CARLA! AND IM PLAYIN THAT CRYSTAL FLUTE!!!!!” she wrote.Lizzo arrived on Monday, with her mother and members of her band. Dr. Hayden and staff members ushered her into the “flute vault,” and gave her a tour of the collection, which includes fifes, piccolos and a flute shaped like a walking stick, which Lizzo said she might want as a Christmas present.Lizzo spent more than three hours at the library, trying out several instruments, staff members said.She played a piccolo from John Philip Sousa’s band that was used to play the solo at the premiere of his song, “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” And she played a plexiglass flute, made in 1937, filling the ornate Main Reading Room and marble Great Hall with music, to the delight of library workers and a handful of researchers who happened to be there.“Just the enthusiasm that Lizzo brought to seeing the flute collection and how curious she was about it,” Ms. Ward-Bamford said in an interview on Wednesday. “It’s been wonderful.”Most of the collection — including Madison’s crystal flute — was donated in 1941 by Dayton C. Miller, a physicist, astronomer and ardent collector of flutes.The flute’s silver joint is engraved with Madison’s name, title and the year 1813.Library of CongressMadison’s flute had been made for his second inauguration by Claude Laurent, a Parisian craftsman who believed that glass flutes would hold their pitch and tone better than flutes made of wood or ivory, which were common at the time.The flute’s silver joint is engraved with Madison’s name, title and the year 1813. “It’s not clear if Madison did much with the flute other than admire it, but it became a family heirloom and an artifact of the era,” the library said.The library believes that the first lady, Dolley Madison, might have rescued the flute from the White House in 1814, when the British entered Washington during the War of 1812, although it has not found documentation to confirm the theory.Only 185 of Mr. Laurent’s glass flutes remain, the library said, and his crystal flutes are especially rare. The Library of Congress has 17 Laurent flutes, it said.When Lizzo asked if she could play Madison’s crystal flute at her concert on Tuesday, the library’s collection, preservation and security teams swung into action, ensuring the instrument could be safely delivered to her onstage.“It was a lot thrilling and a little bit scary,” Ms. Ward-Bamford said.Or as Lizzo told her cheering fans after she played the instrument: “Thank you to the Library of Congress for preserving our history and making history freaking cool. History is freaking cool, you guys.” More

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      Lizzo’s Complicated, Joyful Pop

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherLizzo’s second major-label studio album, “Special,” another collection of up-tempo disco-pop empowerment anthems, just arrived at No. 2 on the Billboard album chart. Its single “About Damn Time” also climbed to No. 1 on the Hot 100, securing her place as one of pop’s established stars.But “Special” is also a reminder that she is one of pop’s most idiosyncratic performers, too. Lizzo’s throwback-minded anthems are full of internet-primed catchphrases, and she remains a peppy outlier in a pop music landscape dominated by performers who largely traffic in melancholy, not joy.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Lizzo’s career, her relationship with empowerment culture and optimism in pop music. Also, a segment celebrating the life of the classical music scholar Richard Taruskin, who recently passed away.Guests:Justin Charity, senior staff writer at The Ringer and co-host of the Sound Only podcastLindsay Zoladz, who writes about music for The New York Times and othersWilliam Robin, an associate professor of musicology at University of Maryland, College ParkConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      Lizzo Earns Her Second No. 1 Song: ‘About Damn Time’

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      The singer and rapper’s disco-tinged hit follows her 2019 smash “Truth Hurts” to the top of the Hot 100. Her album debuts at No. 2.If you have tuned in your local Top 40 radio station recently, or fired up TikTok, there’s a good chance you have come across Lizzo’s discofied hit “About Damn Time” (or at least, on your phone, found it in meme form).This week, after a three-month climb, “About Damn Time” becomes Lizzo’s second song to hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, after “Truth Hurts” — another inescapable hit-slash-meme — in 2019. “About Damn Time” displaces Harry Styles’s “As It Was,” which falls to No. 2 after a 10-week run at the top. Also on the singles chart, Kate Bush’s 37-year-old “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God),” still riding a new wave of popularity from its appearance in the Netflix show “Stranger Things,” has reached a high of No. 3.The popularity of “About Damn Time,” however, wasn’t enough to send Lizzo’s new LP, “Special,” to the top of the album chart. That position is still held by Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti,” which notches its fourth time in a row at No. 1, and sixth time overall since its release in May.In its 11th week out, “Un Verano” had the equivalent of 103,000 sales in the United States, with virtually all of its commercial activity attributable to 143 million clicks on streaming services, according to the tracking service Luminate. Week after week, “Un Verano” has proved a streaming blockbuster, even as none of its individual tracks has climbed higher than No. 4 on the Hot 100 chart (which is based on a combination of streaming, track sales and radio airplay).“Special,” Lizzo’s fourth album — and second for a major label — opens at No. 2 with the equivalent of 69,000 sales, including 37 million streams and 39,000 copies sold as a complete package. On TikTok, Lizzo posted videos of herself shopping for “Special” vinyl in Target and reacting as fans buy and drop the needle their copies. (Grape-colored, “standard black” or both?)No. 2 is Lizzo’s highest chart position on the album chart yet, surpassing that of her last album, “Cuz I Love You,” which went to No. 4. As Billboard notes, “Special” is the highest-charting album released by a woman this year.Also on the album chart this week, Harry Styles’s “Harry’s House” is No. 3, Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” is No. 4 and Drake’s “Honestly, Nevermind” is No. 5. More

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      Lizzo’s Empowerment Pop Gets Stuck in the Same Groove

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      “Special,” her second major-label album, gestures toward complexities that would broaden her image as the queen of the mirror pep talk, but retreats to her comfort zone.Since her charismatic breakout hit “Truth Hurts” dominated the Hot 100 in 2019, the music of the Houston-raised singer, rapper, songwriter and flutist Lizzo has been a pop cultural omnipresence — a glossy sonic lacquer ready to provide any humdrum moment with a hater-repellent sheen.That signature spirit of uplift is all over “Special,” Lizzo’s fourth album, and the follow-up to her 2019 major-label debut, “Cuz I Love You.” “In case nobody told you today, you’re special,” Lizzo sings on the title track, briefly abdicating her role as the rap game Mae West to become a millennial Mister Rogers. Later, on the bouncy, brassy “Birthday Girl,” she asks, “Is it your birthday, girl? ’Cause you looking like a present.” Another propulsive, synth-driven track succinctly captures Lizzo’s bawdily empowering ethos in its title: “I Love You Bitch.”As a self-described “big grrrl” preaching unapologetic sex positivity and self-love, Lizzo, 34, is a refreshingly radical personality, on red carpets and on social media, where she is candid and outspoken. But the cultural ubiquity of her recent music emphasizes its general agreeability and attests to its political limitations: Now many Lizzo songs have come to signify the treat-yourself mood major corporations wish to capture when they want you to buy something. In the past few years, Lizzo’s music has appeared in advertisements for several competing technology companies, alcoholic beverages and soft drinks, a food-delivery app and the rebranded Weight Watchers (for which she was criticized by some fans and semi-apologized, stating, fairly, “I deserve the space to learn from my actions”). The “Cuz I Love You” diversity anthem “Better in Color” accompanied a 2021 commercial introducing the many hues of iMacs.In 2022, there’s no such thing as selling out — everyone is entitled to make money in a challenging music industry — but artists run the risk of diluting their message. Perhaps it is unsurprising, then, that on “Special” Lizzo often sounds caught between the personal and the personal brand. Occasionally, on songs that chronicle her less-than-ecstatic feelings, she gestures toward complexities that challenge the one-dimensional image of her as the high priestess of the mirror pep talk — only to retreat back to the anodyne comfort zone of songs like “Special” (which debuted as part of a Logitech ad campaign early this year) and “Birthday Girl,” which features a spoken-word segment of people gleefully shouting out their astrological signs.Like her irresistibly fun 2019 single “Juice,” many of Lizzo’s best songs cruise in the same lane that Bruno Mars skillfully dominates: uncannily reproduced ’70s-funk and ’80s-pop simulacra, updated for the present moment with slangy, winking vocals. Her current hit, the disco-lite summer jam “About Damn Time” (produced by her “Truth Hurts” collaborator Ricky Reed and Blake Slatkin) is a bit Lizzo-by-Numbers: a showy flute solo, relentlessly vampy delivery, lyrics that could double as Instagram captions. But the bass line’s gummy groove holds all the disparate parts together, allowing Lizzo to glide elegantly from arch, semi-rapped verses to a belted-out bridge that shows off the full range of her vocals. When it works, it works.And when it doesn’t, well … you get a song like overzealous-ally anthem “Everybody’s Gay,” which aims for Paradise Garage euphoria but lands closer to Target’s collection of Pride month apparel. The energy of the opening track, “The Sign,” somehow manages to be both relentless and listless, Lizzo’s usual cheeky wit blunted by generic lines like, “I live inside his head and pay no rent, yeah/It’s lit, yeah.” The best thing about the abrasive, Beastie Boys-sampling “Grrrls” is that it is the shortest song on the album.“Grrrls” is one of several tracks on “Special” centered around an interpolation of another older and more famous song, which, repeated often on a relatively short pop album, starts to feel less like homage and more like an overreliance on other people’s hooks. The soulful, midtempo “Break Up Twice,” produced by Mark Ronson, draws out a melodic line from Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Wop (That Thing)” to address a disappointing partner, but after the dueling “Ex-Factor” samples in Drake’s “Nice for What” and Cardi B’s “Be Careful” in summer 2018, interpolating the untouchable Hill has come to feel like an overused trope. “Coldplay” features a sped-up and ill-fitting sample of “Yellow,” which Lizzo later shouts out as her go-to soundtrack for nursing a broken heart: “It made me sad, I cried,” she sings over a skittish, jazzy beat, “Singin’ Coldplay in the night.”“Coldplay,” the album’s final track, concludes the loose thematic arc of “Special,” which finds Lizzo wondering if all this work on her self-confidence has made it more difficult to let her guard down and allow herself to be swept away by romantic love. “I’ve learned to love me as myself,” she sings on the searching ballad “If You Love Me,” “But when I’m with somebody else/I question everything I know.” On the energetic “2 B Loved (Am I Ready),” which has a bright, synth-driven chorus reminiscent of Laura Branigan’s “Gloria,” the antic butterflies of a new romance make Lizzo question her hard-won identity as an independent single woman. “I’m good with my friends, I don’t want a man, girl,” she sings, before the ringing of her phone upends that stability: “And now he callin’ me, why do I feel like this? What’s happenin’ to me?”What happens when the woman who proclaimed she would “put the sing in single” finds herself in a monogamous relationship? Or when the queen of empowerment pop wakes up feeling something less than good as hell? In its more tantalizing moments, “Special” articulates these questions but falls short of committing to an answer. On her major-label albums, Lizzo has yet to risk traveling to a depth from which she cannot immediately pull herself up, with triumphant fanfare, on the very next song.Lizzo“Special”(Nice Life Recording Company/Atlantic) More

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      Lizzo Conquers Self-Doubt With an ’80s Jam, and 7 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Brent Faiyaz, Pink, Marcus Mumford and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Lizzo, ‘2 Be Loved (Am I Ready)’“2 Be Loved (Am I Ready)” — from Lizzo’s new album, “Special” — is a self-questioning self-help pop track with 1980s drum machines and synthesizers pumping syncopated octaves and handclaps over an aerobics-friendly beat, heading toward the upward key change of a classic pop single. As Lizzo sings about temptation and insecurity contending with the promise of pleasure, it’s clear what’s going to win.Pink, ‘Irrelevant’Self-doubt turns to defiance and then to righteous anger in “Irrelevant,” a thumping, guitar-strumming, generalized pop-rock protest that makes up in spirit and momentum what it lacks in focus. As the arrangement builds behind her, Pink sings about fear, calls out religious hypocrisy, makes common cause with “the kids” and finally, backed by a mass of vocals, belts, “Girls just wanna have rights/So why do we have to fight?”Demi Lovato, ‘Substance’After all Demi Lovato’s travails, the singer wails a 21st-century plaint about superficiality and loneliness: “Am I the only one looking for substance?” The backup is pure professional punk-pop, pushing those loud guitars and muscular drums as Lovato works up to a near-shriek and flings “whoa-oh” as a hook. But the frustration comes through as loudly as the guitars.Brent Faiyaz, ‘Loose Change’Brent Faiyaz, an R&B singer, songwriter and producer, has landed collaborations with Drake, Alicia Keys and Tyler, the Creator. His surprise-released second album, “Wasteland,” which is full of songs and skits about romantic suspense — both good and bad — is poised for a big debut on the Billboard 200 album chart. “Loose Change” backs him with an implied beat — no drums, lots of space — sketched by syncopated chords from a string ensemble, skulking synthesizer tones and his own imploring voice. In a tremulous tenor croon that echoes Usher, he sings about how infatuation can turn to irritation, indicting his own worst impulses and wondering, “What’s left of us, what’s left of our lives?”The A’s, ‘When I Die’“When I Die” is morbid but practical, and ultimately affectionate. The A’s are Amelia Meath, from the electronic band Sylvan Esso, and Alexandra Sauser-Monnig from Daughter of Swords. Their new album, “Fruit,” is mostly other people’s songs, but “When I Die” is their own. Singing close harmony in what could almost be a nursery-rhyme melody, they add percussion and synthesizer bass lines over what sounds like marching feet. And they calmly provide instructions for a memorial — loud music, flowers, dancing, toasts and a funeral pyre “to light your way back home” — to remind survivors that “I’m sorry I left you behind/and I’m kissing you through this song.”Marcus Mumford, ‘Cannibal’Marcus Mumford, from Mumford and Sons, confronts deep and confusing trauma in “Cannibal,” from a solo album due in September. He doesn’t specify what happened, but he insists, “That wasn’t a choice in the mind of a child.” Most of the track is just his voice and a few guitar notes picked on low strings. But as he faces up to how hard it is to speak about the events, and pleads “help me know how to begin again,” a arena-filling band suddenly materializes behind him; it’s the breakthrough he longs for.Sabrina Carpenter, ‘Because I Liked a Boy’Things go wrong fast in Sabrina Carpenter’s “Because I Liked a Boy” from her new album, “Emails I Can’t Send.” It starts out sounding cozy and old-fashioned, with just an echoey electric guitar playing 1950s chords as she sings about what could be a rom-com flirtation: “We bonded over black-eyed peas and complicated exes,” she coos. “It was all so innocent.” But the chorus changes everything; an ominous synthesizer bass tone arrives and she’s being accused of being “a homewrecker” and “a slut” and getting truckloads of death threats, and the bass and drum machine heave beneath her like the ground is shaking. She keeps her composure, but just barely.Pantha du Prince, ‘Golden Galactic’Pantha du Prince — the electronic musician Hendrik Weber — works where ambient and dance music overlap. He’s fond of nature imagery and pretty, consonant sounds, but his music is changeable and contemplative rather than saccharine. “Golden Galactic,” from his upcoming album “Golden Gaia,” uses plinking, harplike motifs, repeating them a few times and moving on, constantly changing up the implied rhythms instead of settling into a loop. That restless motion is enfolded in swelling string-section chords, going nowhere in particular yet not staying still. More

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      Lizzo Changes “Grrrls” Lyric After Outcry

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      The song “Grrrls” was released Friday and updated Monday to remove a derogatory term for people with disabilities, which she said she did not use with an intent to offend.Lizzo, a Grammy-winning singer and rapper seen by many fans as a champion of inclusivity, changed a lyric on a new song within days of its release after it was criticized for containing a word considered derogatory toward people with disabilities.In the original version of the song “Grrrls” released on Friday, Lizzo used the word “spaz” to indicate that she was going to lose control. The word is based on spastic diplegia, a form of cerebral palsy, a condition that causes motor impairments in the legs or arms.Fans and disability advocates called on Lizzo to change what they called an ableist slur, a word seen as particularly harmful in some countries where it has a history of being used as a schoolhouse taunt.By Monday, the major music streaming services had substituted the original version of the song with one that replaces the line with “Hold me back.” In a statement posted to Instagram on Monday, Lizzo said she understood the effects of harmful language, whether intentional or unintentional, because “As a fat black woman in America, I’ve had many hurtful words used against me.”“Let me make one thing clear: I never want to promote derogatory language,” she said, later adding: “This is the result of me listening and taking action.”For Lizzo, who enjoys a warm public persona and produces upbeat, feel-good music that promotes self-acceptance, the lyric struck fans as particularly off-brand. The criticism began almost immediately after the song, the latest single from her upcoming album, “Special,” was released on Friday.Inside Lizzo’s WorldThe Grammy-winning singer is known for her fierce lyrics, fashion and personality.‘Big Grrrls’: The singer wanted a new kind of backup dancer. In her pursuit of proper representation, she created a TV show.‘Feel-Good Music’: Lizzo says her music is as much about building yourself up as it is about accepting where you are.Why ‘Truth Hurts’ Matters: In 2020, The New York Times Magazine put her No. 1 hit on its list of songs that define the moment.Diary of a Song: Watch how Lizzo made “Juice,” a party song that packs all of her joy and charm into three danceable minutes.But the swift removal satisfied many of the fans and activists who had criticized her, believing it to be an example of someone listening, learning and acting on new information.Hannah Diviney, a disability advocate in Australia and self-proclaimed Lizzo fan, said in an interview that hearing the word in the original version “made me feel really uncomfortable.” For her, spasticity refers to an “unending, constant, painful tightness in my legs and other parts of my body,” making her life “very difficult and is not something I can control.”But she was “blown away” by Lizzo’s rapid reversal, she said. Instead of being defensive, the rapper took action once she heard the criticism, making her “a real genuine ally because she’s willing to learn.”“I’m really glad that Lizzo changing it has led to lots of people learning that it’s a slur,” Ms. Diviney said. “And while I obviously would have preferred she didn’t use it in the first place, I’m glad it became something of a teachable moment. That’s probably the best outcome.”After one of her tweets was reshared more than a thousand times, Ms. Diviney learned that it may not be as clear to some Americans as to people in other countries why the word is considered ableist, she said.Warren Kirwan, a spokesman for Scope, a group in Britain that campaigns for equality for people with disabilities, said the term has been “quite a common term of abuse for disabled people for the better part of 30 years in the U.K.” In 1994, the organization changed its name from The Spastic Society to Scope to avoid association with the slur.The differing cultural contexts may help explain why Lizzo, an American, used the term, even if it doesn’t excuse it, he said. But Lizzo handled the situation well once she learned more about the word, he said.“It was in her power to own that mistake and change it, and well done for doing that,” Mr. Kirwan said.Other musicians have made the same mistake. Kanye West was criticized for using the word in a 2015 song “FourFiveSeconds,” a collaboration with Paul McCartney and Rihanna. And in 2014, Weird Al Yankovic said he was “deeply sorry” for including a related word in his song “Word Crimes,” saying he didn’t know it was considered offensive. More

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      SZA’s ‘Ctrl’ Bonus, and 8 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Saucy Santana, Demi Lovato, Joyce Manor and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.SZA, ‘Jodie’One way to satiate fans who have been clamoring for your long-delayed next album: just keep adding new material to the one they already love! Five years ago this week, SZA released her widely adored debut “Ctrl,” and though she’s put out a handful of singles and made some celebrated feature appearances since then (including her Grammy-winning Doja Cat collaboration “Kiss Me More”), she’s yet to follow it up with a full-length. As a stopgap, though, SZA offered fans seven previously unreleased tracks this week on a deluxe edition of “Ctrl.” The best of them is “Jodie” — already a fan favorite, since a demo version leaked last year. “Stuck with just weed and no friends,” she laments on the buoyant track, which balances a confessional tone with self-deprecating humor. Her vocals are melodically nimble but endearingly off-the-cuff, as though you’re overhearing an animated conversation she’s having with herself. LINDSAY ZOLADZSaucy Santana featuring Latto, ‘Booty’Whether the exuberant horns deployed on Saucy Santana’s “Booty” are sampled from Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love” or “Are You My Woman? (Tell Me So)” by the Chi-Lites (which provided the original sample for “Crazy in Love”) is immaterial — it’s pure cheat code either way. “Booty” functions as a kind of conceptual bootleg remix of the Beyoncé classic, a way of trumpeting an alliance that could be actual, virtual or theoretical. Most listeners won’t parse it out. Consider it a savvy stroke by Saucy Santana, whose “Material Girl” was the best kind of TikTok breakout — a catchphrase that was in fact connected to an outsized personality. “Booty” is his first major label single, and it has a couple of other borrowings, too: a flow from J-Kwon’s “Tipsy,” a nod to Bubba Sparxxx’s “Ms. New Booty.” But mainly this onetime makeup artist is having fun in the shrinking space between fan and star. JON CARAMANICALizzo, ‘Grrrls’Another entry in the gratuitous remake sweepstakes of 2022: Lizzo reimagines the Beastie Boys’ hypercrass “Girls” as a celebration of female friendship: “That’s my girl, we codependent/If she with it, them I’m with it.” CARAMANICABeach Bunny, ‘Entropy’“Somebody’s gonna figure us out,” Lili Trifilio sings with bracing confidence, “and I hope they do ’cause I’m falling for you.” The hopelessly catchy opening track from the Chicago pop-rock band Beach Bunny’s forthcoming second album, “Emotional Creature,” is all about throwing caution to the wind and going public with a clandestine romance. There’s a fitting clarity to the song’s production and arrangement: glimmering guitars, steady percussion and Trifilio’s voice at the forefront as she sings such openhearted lyrics as “I wanna kiss you when everyone’s watching.” ZOLADZDemi Lovato, ‘Skin of My Teeth’Demi Lovato — the child star turned grown-up hitmaker who survived a 2018 drug overdose and has come out as nonbinary — leverages notoriety and a setback into fierce punk-pop with “Skin of My Teeth.” It’s an armor-plated confession that begins “Demi leaves rehab again” and rides seismic drums, cranked-up guitars and an “ooh-woo-hoo” pop hook to claim solidarity with everyone struggling with addiction. “I can’t believe I’m not dead,” they belt, adding, “I’m just trying to keep my head above water.” JON PARELESJoyce Manor, ‘You’re Not Famous Anymore’“40 Oz. to Fresno,” the new album from the Torrance, Calif., rock band Joyce Manor, is a relentlessly tuneful 17-minute collection of all-killer, no-filler power-pop. An obvious highlight is the punchy “You’re Not Famous Anymore,” which sounds like something that would have gotten a lot of play on mid-90s alternative-rock radio — the sort of song that would have seemed like a mere novelty hit until it ended up stuck in your head for weeks. “You were a child star on methamphetamines,” the frontman Barry Johnson sings, “Now who knows what you are, ’cause you’re not anything.” Accompanied by head-bopping percussion and a surfy guitar, Johnson’s archly acidic delivery cuts through the rest of the song’s mock-breezy atmosphere. ZOLADZJoji, ‘Glimpse of Us’A splendid and striking piano ballad from the singer Joji, who finds middle ground between 1970s soft rock and James Blake. His singing is lightly unsteady, meshing an unnerving sadness with a know-better resilience. CARAMANICAJulius Rodriguez, ‘In Heaven’The 23-year-old pianist and multi-instrumentalist Julius Rodriguez has been wowing audiences at New York clubs for more than half his young life. In a story that’s already become part of jazz’s 21st-century lore, from the time Rodriguez was 11 his father would drive him in from White Plains to partake of jam sessions at Smalls. Cats were floored from Day 1. The other big portion of his musical education took place in church, where he started out even younger as a drummer, and those two big influences resound throughout “Let Sound Tell All,” Rodriguez’s highly anticipated debut album. On “In Heaven,” an invocation written by Darlene Andrews and first recorded by Gregory Porter, Rodriguez joins up with another rising star, the singer Samara Joy. He accompanies her molasses-rich vocals with fanned-out harmonies, channeling Kenny Barron and Hank Jones, sweeping from heavy clusters of notes to threads of crystal clarity. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOSonic Liberation Front and the Sonic Liberation Singers featuring Oliver Lake, ‘Ain’t Nothin’ Real But Love’“Love is an emotion in action,” the eminent saxophonist, poet and visual artist Oliver Lake, 79, recites over the Sonic Liberation Singers’ suspended, open-vowel harmonies. “Ain’t nothin’ real but love/It moves independently of our fears and desires.” Lake recently performed a series of farewell shows with Trio 3, the avant-garde supergroup that he has played in for more than three decades — but it should come as little surprise that as he closes one chapter, the ever-prolific Lake has opened another: “Justice,” on which this track appears, is the first LP to feature Lake’s vocal compositions. At times wild and purgative, the album is also full of moments like this one: poised, stubbornly hopeful, grounded in Lake’s memories of a more revolutionary age and seeking to stir that energy up again. RUSSONELLO More

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      ‘SNL’ Offers Easter Wishes From Elon Musk, Donald Trump and More

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      The host and musical guest was Lizzo, probably the first “Saturday Night Live” guest to get audiences cheering for a flute solo.The Easter holiday is a period for rebirth and renewal — and also an opportunity for “Saturday Night Live” to pack as many celebrity impersonations as possible into a single sketch.This weekend’s “S.N.L.,” which featured Lizzo as its host and musical guest, opened with its cast members performing a grab-bag of impressions, starting with Bowen Yang as the Easter bunny.He explained that although he may not be the most popular holiday mascot, “I am the freakiest: a man-sized bunny with no back story.”Yang added that, unlike Santa Claus, “I don’t use enslaved elves to make my Easter baskets. I get them on Etsy. Because I support women.”Yang was followed by Kate McKinnon, in her recurring role as Dr. Anthony S. Fauci. “Trust me, I’m not here to give you any more Covid guidance,” McKinnon said. “I’m not stupid enough to think you’re actually going to follow it. All I’ll say is that Covid cases are a lot like Jesus: They’ve risen again.”Cecily Strong played Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who said she had been aggressively wishing a happy Easter to her Jewish and Muslim colleagues. Chris Redd played Mayor Eric Adams of New York, who shared some good news with the audience:“We got him: We got the shooter,” Redd said, a reference to the man accused of opening fire in a subway car in Brooklyn on Tuesday. “Sure, it took 30 hours, and the suspect turned himself in, but we got him. Case closed. Subway’s fixed. Ride without fear.”Mikey Day appeared as the billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk and announced that he planned to buy Easter. “I am offering 43 billion Peeps,” he said. After some stilted laughter, Day added: “That was a joke. Ha ha ha. Do you get it? That’s why, afterwards, I say, ‘That was a joke.’”Chloe Fineman portrayed Britney Spears, who was celebrating her recent release from a yearslong conservatorship. “Don’t worry; I’m finally free, and I’m having a baby,” she said. “I just pray my baby is born happy, healthy and with the power of attorney.Next, Kyle Mooney appeared in long hair and a beard, identifying himself as Jesus Christ. “Just kidding — I’m Jared Leto,” he said. He added that his Easter message this year was to encourage positivity. “So if you go to see my new movie, ‘Morbius,’ please don’t review it,” he said.Just as Yang appeared to be wrapping up the sketch, he was interrupted by James Austin Johnson, playing former President Donald J. Trump. Johnson, as Trump, complained that his omission was “another example of how whites are being treated horribly in this country.”He went on to give a rambling, discursive monologue about Cap’n Crunch, Seabiscuit and Little Caesar (whom Johnson claimed he taught to say, “Pizza, pizza”). He then marked the holiday by observing: “I’ve told America Covid would be over by Easter. I just didn’t say which one.”Nostalgia plays of the weekThis was the week that “S.N.L.” realized it had the ideal distribution of cast members to play the members of the Black Eyed Peas for a sketch in which two producers in 2008 (played by Lizzo and Aidy Bryant) help the bandmates (Kenan Thompson, Strong, Redd and Yang) spin their none-too-complex insights and emotions into hit singles like “Boom Boom Pow” and “I Gotta Feeling.”And if that sketch wasn’t enough to satisfy your desire to be transported back to a more innocent time of, like, 13 or 14 years ago, there was also this segment in which several performers played Mr. Six, the inexplicably spry former mascot of Six Flags theme parks.Lizzo performances of the weekLizzo’s musical talents were put to productive use in a few sketches this week, most notably this filmed segment in which she and the Please Don’t Destroy team frantically attempt to brainstorm a new hit single for her in 10 minutes, resulting in the hilariously disastrous song (and music video) “Horny Zookeeper.” (A close runner-up would be this sketch that casts Lizzo as a twerking flutist whose unconventional methods inspire an entire orchestra.)Lizzo was pretty successful, too, when it was time to be a legitimate, non-comedic musician: Her performance of her new song “About Damn Time” is probably the first time we’ve seen the “S.N.L.” audience go nuts for a flute solo.Weekend Update jokes of the weekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che riffed on President Biden’s political woes and Elon Musk’s offer to buy Twitter.Jost began:A new poll shows that President Biden’s approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 33 percent. For a perspective, that’s less the half the approval rating of “Sonic the Hedgehog 2.” “Sonic 2” features the characters Tails and Knuckles, which are also the names of two gang members Joe Biden claims he fought in the 1960s. A video has also gone viral of President Biden finishing a speech in North Carolina, then apparently turning to shake hands with an invisible person. Hey, her name is Kamala.Che continued:President Biden, seen here trying to remember where he left his mask, announced new federal regulations for ghost guns. I mean, look, I don’t like the idea of people having ghost guns, either. But if there’s something strange in your neighborhood, who ya gonna call? [His screen showed the cast of “Ghostbusters.”] Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter for over $40 billion so he can loosen its free speech rules. That’s how badly white guys want to use the N-word.Jost added to this thread:Honestly, I don’t understand why Elon even wants to own Twitter. It used to be something that seemed important and even fun, and now you look at it and it’s confusing and depressing. It’s the Giuliani of apps. And come on, Elon built electric cars, he’s going to Mars. Why is he even involving himself with Twitter? It would be like if the prince of England gave it all up just to marry an actor from “Suits.” Plus, I’ve got to say, Twitter’s not even profitable anymore. It just feels like a bad business decision. And I say that as someone who bought a Staten Island Ferry with Pete. More