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      15 Great Songs From 1989 (the Year, Not the Album)

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      A playlist celebrating a staggeringly great year in music: Pixies, Janet Jackson, De La Soul, Madonna, Indigo Girls and more.Pixies want you to know that 1989 was really a stunning year in popular music. Gie Knaeps/Getty ImagesDear listeners,Today’s playlist is a homage to the music of 1989. Yes, the year. Why, you ask? Does it have anything to do with … you know … a certain musician rereleasing one of her most popular albums, with a title referencing the year she was born? I have no idea what you’re talking about. I simply wanted to celebrate a staggeringly great year in music.Consider just some of the albums released during this annus mirabilis: “Like a Prayer.” “3 Feet High and Rising.” “Paul’s Boutique.” “Doolittle.” “Rhythm Nation 1814.” “Pretty Hate Machine.” “Disintegration.” “Full Moon Fever.” “The Stone Roses.” “Bleach.” I could go on, but I have a playlist to get to.For brevity’s sake, I limited myself to 15 songs. I left off some artists who have made appearances on previous playlists; I adore “Disintegration,” for example, but I also did an entire Cure playlist a few months ago. Some 1989 hits, too, are so ubiquitous — “Love Shack,” “Free Fallin’,” “Like a Prayer” — that I don’t need to put them on the playlist: You will probably hear them in the next few days as a result of simply going about your life. And some omissions are just personal. As a small child, I was so terrified of Jack Nicholson’s “Joker” in the Tim Burton-directed “Batman” that Prince’s No. 1 hit “Batdance” still kind of creeps me out.That still left plenty of great songs to choose from, though. On this playlist, 1989 reveals itself to be a year when inventive, imaginative sampling had reached the mainstream in the music of Beastie Boys, De La Soul and Public Enemy; a generation of female pop stars like Madonna and Janet Jackson were coming into their power; and the alt-rock wave was beginning to form underground thanks to artists like Pixies and Nirvana.This one will leave you with a new appreciation for a year in which so many great songs were released. Reach out, touch faith, and enjoy the enduring bounty of music from 1989.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Janet Jackson: “Miss You Much”Let’s kick things off with the first single from Janet Jackson’s pop opus “Rhythm Nation 1814,” released in September 1989. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis’s unparalleled production really makes this one sound gigantic. (Listen on YouTube)2. De La Soul: “Me Myself and I”Built around a sample of Funkadelic’s “(Not Just) Knee Deep” (among a few other songs), De La Soul’s crossover hit is a playful ode to self-acceptance. (As the group’s Posdnuos put it, “The press was referring to us as the hippies of hip-hop. This song became a way to express that this wasn’t a gimmick, and that we were being ourselves.”) “3 Feet High and Rising,” the debut album featuring this single, ranked No. 1 on the Pazz & Jop Poll, the Village Voice’s (former) annual barometer of critical consensus. (Listen on YouTube)3. The Stone Roses: “She Bangs the Drums”In May 1989, the Manchester pop-rockers the Stone Roses released their beloved, ambitious, and impossible-to-top self-titled debut album. Dreamy, singalong hooks abound, as on this exuberant single. (Listen on YouTube)4. R.E.M.: “Pop Song 89”Though R.E.M.’s sixth album, “Green,” came out in late 1988, I couldn’t resist including this cheekily titled leadoff track, which was — true to its prophecy — released as a single in 1989. (Listen on YouTube)5. Depeche Mode: “Personal Jesus”In a 1990 Spin interview, Martin Gore of Depeche Mode said that the band’s hit from the year before was inspired by Priscilla Presley’s memoir, “Elvis & Me”: “It’s about how Elvis was her man and her mentor and how often that happens in love relationships; how everybody’s heart is like a god in some way,” he said. “We play these godlike parts for people but no one is perfect, and that’s not a very balanced view of someone, is it?” Something tells me he’ll be interested in Sofia Coppola’s upcoming movie “Priscilla,” based on the same source material. (Listen on YouTube)6. Beastie Boys: “Egg Man”Many people still consider “Paul’s Boutique,” Beastie Boys’ ambitious 1989 celebration of the art of sampling, to be the group’s masterpiece. “Egg Man” may be one of the sillier songs on the album — it is, quite literally, about how the mischievous Boys liked to egg people — but the craft that went into its construction is still clear. (Listen on YouTube)7. Love and Rockets: “So Alive”Goth rock was steadily seeping into the mainstream by 1989, as evidenced by the success of the Cure’s ”Disintegration” and this darkly glittering surprise hit from the British alt-rockers Love and Rockets, which hit No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. (Listen on YouTube)8. Madonna: “Cherish”I do not need to remind you that “Like a Prayer” is a great song, so how about this slightly-less-overplayed hit from Madonna’s triumphant fourth album? If there were a Drug Store Music Hall of Fame (and there should be), I would nominate this song. (Listen on YouTube)9. Pixies: “Debaser”Not to get all “High Fidelity,” but “Debaser” — that ecstatically bizarre welcome into the wonderful world of “Doolittle” — has got to be one of the greatest Side 1, Track 1’s ever. (Listen on YouTube)10. Elvis Costello: “Veronica”“Is it all in that pretty little head of yours?” Elvis Costello sings on this bittersweet midcareer hit, inspired by his grandmother’s struggle with Alzheimer’s. “What goes on in that place in the dark?” Co-written with Paul McCartney (which makes sense, given the faint echoes of “Eleanor Rigby”), “Veronica,” which peaked at No. 19 on the Hot 100, became Costello’s highest-charting single in the States. (Listen on YouTube)11. Public Enemy: “Fight the Power”“1989, the number of another summer,” Chuck D begins on this incendiary call to consciousness, written for “Do the Right Thing,” Spike Lee’s film of the same year. “Fight the Power” was a lightning rod upon release, and 34 years later it remains a potent indictment of racism and a richly textured tribute to Black art. (Listen on YouTube)12. Nirvana: “About a Girl”In the summer of 1989, a little-known rock band from Seattle released its debut album, “Bleach,” on the indie label Sub Pop. It would have been hard to predict then that Nirvana’s next studio album would have a seismic effect on the music industry, but the craft of “Bleach” tracks like “About a Girl” certainly displays the nascent songwriting talent of the band’s leader, Kurt Cobain. (Listen on YouTube)13. Galaxie 500: “Strange”Elsewhere beneath the mainstream, the indie trio Galaxie 500 released its great second album, “On Fire,” in October 1989. Though sometimes associated with shoegaze and dream-pop, there’s a sky-scraping boldness and a stirring emotion animating the LP’s fourth track, “Strange.” (Listen on YouTube)14. Kate Bush: “This Woman’s Work”One of the more wrenching songs ever written about childbirth, Kate Bush initially composed “This Woman’s Work” for the 1988 John Hughes movie “She’s Having a Baby.” The following year, she released this slightly different version as the closing track on her album “The Sensual World.” (Don’t sleep on Maxwell’s cover, either.) (Listen on YouTube)15. Indigo Girls: “Closer to Fine”And finally, it’s Barbie’s favorite track on the Indigo Girls’ 1989 self-titled album. Thanks to its inclusion in this summer’s hot-pink blockbuster, “Closer to Fine” is experiencing a well-deserved resurgence, but plenty of soul-searchers have been belting along to it in their cars since ’89. (Listen on YouTube)Don’t know about you, but I am un chien Andalusia,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“15 Great Songs from 1989 (The Year, Not the Album)” track listTrack 1: Janet Jackson, “Miss You Much”Track 2: De La Soul, “Me Myself and I”Track 3: The Stone Roses, “She Bangs the Drums”Track 4: R.E.M., “Pop Song 89”Track 5: Depeche Mode, “Personal Jesus”Track 6: Beastie Boys, “Egg Man”Track 7: Love and Rockets, “So Alive”Track 8: Madonna, “Cherish”Track 9: Pixies, “Debaser”Track 10: Elvis Costello, “Veronica”Track 11: Public Enemy, “Fight the Power”Track 12: Nirvana, “About a Girl”Track 13: Galaxie 500, “Strange”Track 14: Kate Bush, “This Woman’s Work”Track 15: Indigo Girls, “Closer to Fine”Bonus TracksIf you’re looking to read something about that other 1989 thing, well … I wrote about its most provocatively titled “From the Vault” track.I also — busy week — published a profile of the independent-minded Gen Z pop star PinkPantheress, who graciously did not make fun of me for not going on as many roller coasters as she did while I was reporting this story. Bless her for that.Plus, if you’re looking for some new music as an alternative to that big release that shall not be named, let Jon Pareles and Giovanni Russonello provide you with some recommendations, from artists like Mr Eazi, Kevin Sun, Silvana Estrada and more. More

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      Madonna Kicks Off Celebration Tour in London

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      After a health-related delay, the pop superstar launched her Celebration Tour in London with a performance devoted to her full catalog of hits.They wore pearls with crucifixes, lace gloves, tulle skirts and body-sculpting corsets. Some even crimped their hair and drew on fake beauty moles, while others wore simple white T-shirts with only the letter M on the back. Spanning generations, the concertgoers arriving at the O2 Arena in London used Saturday night as an opportunity to dress in their favorite Madonna era, even if that was decades before they were born.Madonna, 65, is on the road for the first time since 2020 with her global Celebration Tour, a stage spectacle touching on more than 40 of her hits across four decades. The show opened at the O2, a 20,000-capacity arena, three months after its planned first date, following a health scare for the pop icon. In June, Madonna was hospitalized shortly before the tour’s scheduled debut in Canada. At the time, her manager said she had a “serious bacterial infection” that resulted in the singer staying in an intensive care unit for several days.Madonna swore that the tour — her first devoted to her full catalog of hits, rather than to a specific album release — would go on. In recent weeks, she has filled her Instagram account with tantalizing, and very on-brand, images from rehearsals, showing her dressed in a lacy black bustier, practicing onstage steps and resting her fishnet-clad knees.Fans waited out a 30-minute delay before Madonna arrived onstage in London, opening with a medley of hits before acknowledging the challenges that had led to the moment. “How did I make it this far? Because of you,” she said, adding, “But I will take a bit of credit, too.”Fans of the pop star Madonna taking pictures in front of her posters outside the O2 Arena in London.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesIt was clear from the beginning that this concert would be as much a journey through Madonna’s career as it would a bona fide dance party. Set on an elaborate stage that jutted out into the audience, several hanging retractable screens showed images of the singer. At other times, they displayed powerful portraits, as when she launched into “Live to Tell” and the screens displayed images of Freddie Mercury, Arthur Ashe and more people who died from AIDS.For more than two hours, with the help of her dancers and some of her six children, Madonna blazed through her catalog of songs, singing several hits like “Holiday,” “Like a Prayer,” “Hung Up,” “Ray of Light” and “Bad Girl.” Her costumes were sexy, religious and futuristic.Though the show had been in the works for months, it was not without technical difficulties. Early on, Madonna paused the show so the sound could be reset. She entertained the audience during the delay by speaking at length about her rise to stardom while technicians worked behind the scenes. Later in the show, between songs, Madonna expressed concern for those affected by violence in Israel and the Gaza Strip. “It breaks my heart to see children suffering, teenagers suffering, elderly people suffering, all of it is heartbreaking,” she said. “Even though our hearts are broken, our spirits cannot be broken.”When the tour was announced in January, it immediately became one of the year’s big-ticket events. But it appears to be far from sold out.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesMadonna also reflected on her health struggles this year. “I forgot five days of my life, or my death,” she said. “I don’t really know where I was, but the angels were protecting me.“If you want to know my secret, and you want to know how I pull through and how I survive, I thought, ‘I’ve got to be there for my children. I have to survive for them,’” she said. She then led the crowd in a singalong of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.”The 24 performers onstage notably did not include a live band: Stuart Price, the tour’s musical director, told the BBC that “the original recordings are our stars.” The stage, which encompasses 4,400 square feet, was designed to echo Manhattan neighborhoods, as well as the wedding cake from Madonna’s 1984 MTV Video Music Awards performance of “Like a Virgin.” During the show, she is swept across the venue in a square-framed box 30 feet off the ground.Carla Nobre, 38, of Nottingham said that seeing Madonna in concert had been on her bucket list, but that she had been disappointed with the performance.“There was too much talking,” she said.Jenni Purple, 54, from the southern coast of England said the concert, which was her first time seeing Madonna live, had been “absolutely incredible.” “I loved all the medleys, I loved the costumes, I loved all the dances,” she said with a broad smile. “Everything was just mind-blowing.”In the past, Madonna’s tours have been news-making events tied as much to her latest music as to her cycle of stylistic reinventions. But Celebration is essentially the pop superstar’s Eras Tour, as Taylor Swift has styled her latest outing: a staged romp through decades of hit songs and signature looks, giving fans a chance to relive her career as a stages-of-life experience. (Seventeen of Madonna’s previous costumes were recreated for the tour, and some of the merchandise for sale includes replicas from past treks.)With her Virgin Tour in 1985, Madonna introduced herself as a punk-glam dance star whose every crucifix pendant or flap of denim was zealously adopted by fans. Who’s That Girl (1987) and Blond Ambition (1990) grew increasingly elaborate as Madonna pushed the fashion envelope with looks like Jean Paul Gaultier’s memorable cone bra and set the bar for bold, imaginative pop megatours. The Girlie Show (1993), in which Madonna appeared as a dominatrix, was the accompaniment to a period of daringly explicit material like her “Sex” book and “Justify My Love” video, which was banned from MTV.After an eight-year absence from the road, Drowned World (2001) reintroduced Madonna as a new mother, an electro-pop heroine and an acolyte of kabbalah, a form of Jewish mysticism. In more recent years, her Confessions Tour (2006) cast her in late-70s disco style, and Rebel Heart (2015-16) found her playing guitar, in addition to executing the complex choreography for which she is known. Her most recent tour, Madame X, which was cut short by the Covid-19 pandemic, saw Madonna looking to reinvent her stage performance once again in a more intimate, almost cabaret form, mostly eschewing arenas for spaces like the Brooklyn Academy of Music.For Madonna, the 78-date Celebration Tour is a chance to assert her star power in a year when live music has been dominated by Swift and Beyoncé — women who, like Madonna before them, have used talent and deep media savvy to remake pop stardom in their own image. In July, Beyoncé acknowledged the debt, when Madonna, making one of her first public appearances after her hospitalization, attended Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour in New Jersey. “Big shout-out to the queen,” Beyoncé called out during a performance of the “Queens Remix” of her song “Break My Soul,” which blends in Madonna’s 1990 smash “Vogue” — another hit that mined, and honored, gay dance culture of that period.Madonna returned the acknowledgment on Saturday, playing a bit of the same remix during an interstitial moment.(From left to right) Iien McNeil, Susie Petersen, Maria Belova and Suzy Burroughs posing in front of the venue before the show.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesWhen Madonna’s latest tour was announced in January, it immediately became one of the year’s big-ticket events — and yielded a micro-flood of hot takes about the singer’s age. But the tour appears to be far from sold out; Ticketmaster still shows many seats available at some major venues like Barclays Center in Brooklyn, where Madonna will start the North American leg of the tour with three shows in December.Back in 2009, Madonna’s Sticky & Sweet Tour set box-office records when it sold more than $400 million in tickets. Since then, the economics of live music have exploded; Beyoncé has already well exceeded that amount with her Renaissance shows, and Swift may well sell close to $2 billion in tickets by the time her Eras Tour is completed.Legacy has clearly been on Madonna’s mind lately. Last month, the 1989 Pepsi commercial that introduced her song “Like a Prayer” — before it was pulled amid outrage over its music video, which featured an interracial kiss and the singer dancing in front of burning crosses — was finally aired again during the MTV Video Music Awards.Maia and Aisha Letamendia Moore, 17-year-old twin sisters, wore looks that drew from the Like a Virgin and Vogue eras.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesMadonna, who had been paid $5 million for the promotion — and kept the money — said on social media: “So began my illustrious career as an artist refusing to compromise my artistic integrity.” She added, “Thank you @pepsi for finally realizing the genius of our collaboration. Artists are here to disturb the peace.”It was clearly on fans’ minds as well. Aisha and Maia Letamendia Moore, 17-year-old twins from southern England, near Brighton, wore looks that drew on the Vogue and Like a Virgin eras. “I think she’s such an influence,” Maia said. “She did so many things that were so controversial. She wasn’t scared to do it, she wasn’t scared what people would say.”Others mentioned rumors that Celebration could be Madonna’s last tour. Helen Dawson, 47, who said she first saw Madonna during the Who’s That Girl Tour in 1987, would abide no such thought. “Never, she won’t give up,” Ms. Dawson said. “This is just a new celebration, a new era.” More

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      in Theater

      ‘Holidays,’ a Madonna Musical, Pays Tribute to the Star

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      “Holidays,” the first musical to include the pop icon’s songs, arrives just days before her “Celebration” tour starts. But matching the star’s talents is a challenge.Two lovers belting “Open Your Heart.” A misunderstood woman exhorting a roaring audience to “Express Yourself.” A gay wedding extravaganza set to “Like A Prayer.”No, this isn’t a preview of the stage antics in Madonna’s highly anticipated “Celebration” tour, which starts Saturday in London, at the O2 Arena. In Paris, the French stage director Nathan Guichet has started the party early with “Holidays,” a plucky new musical inspired by the global pop icon.It’s a wonder no Madonna jukebox musical has made it to the stage until now. Her back catalog brims with highly theatrical songs, and if “Holidays” is any indication, it doesn’t take a big-budget, bells-and-whistles production to get admirers of the pop icon to buy tickets.This two-hour show, which is set to run at the Alhambra theater through Jan. 28, features just four performers and one (very pink) set.Guichet has woven 15 Madonna songs into a fictional script performed in French. It is centered on four childhood friends, with somewhat contrived results: A number of twists and turns clearly exist to shoehorn songs into the show. (A character somehow lands in San Pedro, the island mentioned in “La Isla Bonita,” solely to cue Madonna’s 1986 track.) Yet by the end of a recent performance, Parisians were on their feet, fully hung up on Madonna nostalgia.Madonna performing during her Blond Ambition tour, in Rotterdam in 1990. “Holidays” tries to capture the star’s many talents.Gie Knaeps/Getty ImagesThe French capital is an unlikely setting for the first Madonna musical. Still, the newfound popularity of American-style musicals in France means there is a hunger for new titles, while producing costs are lower than on Broadway. “Holidays” came together in a year or so with a budget hovering around $1 million, according to its lead producer, Stéphane Pontacq. (For comparison, Broadway’s “Jagged Little Pill,” a jukebox musical inspired by the music of Alanis Morissette, was capitalized for up to $14 million in 2019.)Guichet, who has directed and produced original productions including a ”reimagining of “The Snow Queen,” said in an email that he was inspired by an interview Madonna gave to The Daily Star newspaper in 2012. “I’d sanction my songs to be made into a musical,” she said at the time. “But I wouldn’t do it myself, I don’t think that would interest me.”“Holidays” premiered just as global curiosity surrounds Madonna, who turned 65 in August. In June, she postponed “Celebration,” her 12th world tour, because of what her manager called a “serious bacterial infection.” The U.S. leg of the tour has now been rescheduled to start in December, following a series of concerts in Europe.There is little doubt that “Celebration” will be a lavish affair: Delivering a show to remember is what Madonna does, and has been doing consistently for four decades. Part of the challenge, when staging a tribute like “Holidays,” is trying to match her many talents.It is clear from the singing numbers in “Holidays,” all set to recorded music, that Madonna’s history of gutsy performances has challenge the performers to go above and beyond. The four women who carry the show all have moments of brilliance, and work hard to make the often dubious script shine.In it, a young heiress who is about to get married, Louise, gathers three friends she hasn’t seen in well over a decade. Their passion for Madonna united the quartet as teenagers, and every year, on Aug. 16, Madonna’s birthday, they would come to mark that special “holiday.”They reconvene as adults in Louise’s childhood home in a French village, which features a full-on Madonna altar: an eccentric pink bedroom suite designed for the girls by Louise’s doting father, covered in portraits of their idol.It takes a while for the four characters to gel. Louise, played by Juliette Behar, starts off as a manic pixie blonde, a “Material Girl” proxy with an over-excited delivery. Of her three friends, one, Valentina (Fanny Delaigue), has become a mysterious, provocative star in the United States, not unlike Madonna herself; another, Nikki, is a travel blogger with a history of family abuse. The fourth, Suzanne, is the proverbial underdog, who stayed in their local town and is stuck in underpaid jobs.The production weaves together Madonna songs into a fictional story centered on four childhood friends.NeibaPhotoThroughout, the main thing the four women have in common is Madonna. What “Holidays” gets right is what the star represents for many women: A sense of freedom and empowerment, the belief that they could break free of existing norms. It quickly becomes clear that Louise and her future husband don’t see eye to eye, and her friends encourage her to think beyond what is expected of her. Similarly, in a nod to Madonna’s longstanding L.G.B.T.Q. activism, a gay romance links two of the four friends, and blossoms movingly with the song “Secret.”“Holidays” isn’t a Madonna-backed venture. Promotional material for the production names her as infrequently as possible and the playbill’s plot summary only refers to the “famous pop star” who inspired the main characters. Luckily for the producers, it doesn’t take much to telegraph the mystery star’s identity. The poster art for “Holidays” closely mirrors one of Madonna’s best-known portraits, with her head tilted back and eyes closed on the cover of her 1986 album “True Blue.”Still, as fan tributes go, “Holidays” is a welcome reminder that Madonna’s catalog has rare staying power — and offers space for others to make their mark onstage. As Suzanne, Ana Ka brings serious vocal chops to the table, and lends heart to a character that could easily feel miserabilist.And the charismatic Nevedya, a budding musical star in France who recently headlined a production inspired by Josephine Baker, takes the role of Nikki and runs with it. A consummate dancer and singer, she brought striking arm flourishes and even a death drop to a “Vogue” number that otherwise felt a little timid, and in her hands, “Papa Don’t Preach” became a powerful plea to a father attempting to clip her wings.Madonna herself will be in Paris with “Celebration” in November. Until then, “Holidays” is an entertainingly upbeat stand-in. More

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      Book Review: ‘Madonna: A Rebel Life,’ by Mary Gabriel

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      Mary Gabriel’s biography is as thorough as its subject is disciplined. But in relentlessly defending the superstar, where’s the party?MADONNA: A Rebel Life, by Mary Gabriel“I want to be alone,” Greta Garbo’s dancer character famously said in “Grand Hotel,” a quote permanently and only semi-accurately attached to the actress after she retreated from public life. Garbo was first on the list of Golden Agers in one of Madonna’s biggest hits, “Vogue,” but the pop star has long seemed to embody this maxim’s very opposite. She wants to be surrounded, as if with Dolby sound.“Before Madonna even had a manager, she had a court of valets and minstrels following her everywhere,” the record executive Seymour Stein observed.Though technically a solo vocalist, Madonna has been backed by dancers from the beginning of her career in the early 1980s. She has six children: two biological, four adopted from Malawi. Many more consider themselves her spiritual offspring: gay men to whom she’s been den mother; younger female performers she’s inspired.And she’s trooped around the world with an elastic entourage of friends, writers, producers, directors, handlers, photographers, publicists, reporters and fans, all of whom helpfully populate Mary Gabriel’s big, indignant new biography of her: a dogged, brick-by-brick bulwark against any detractors bobbing in the moat of her castle.“Madonna: A Rebel Life” is one of those books you measure in pounds, not pages: almost three, which would have been more if the publisher hadn’t decided to post the endnotes and bibliography online rather than printing them. It’s not going to fit on the little shelf of the StairMaster at the gym — a classically Madonna piece of exercise equipment — though you might hoist it afterward for wrist curls.If you wander into an aerobics class instead, not only are chances high that the instructor will play a song from Madonna’s catalog, but she’ll probably be wearing a hands-free headset microphone — and that is muy Madonna as well. As Gabriel notes, though the technology was used before by pilots and Kate Bush, it was her subject who popularized it on her 1989 “Blond Ambition” tour.For this book, though, the woman born Madonna Louise Ciccone in 1958, the same year as Prince and Michael Jackson, stayed quiet. Her voice is piped through from plentiful previous interviews, recorded performances and the occasional post on Instagram, where early in the pandemic she outcringed the Gal Gadot “Imagine” video with one of herself naked in a bath amid floating rose petals, declaring Covid-19 “the great equalizer.”The closest Gabriel gets to Madonna in the actual flesh is half a dozen conversations with her brother, Christopher Ciccone, whose best-selling 2008 memoir, “Life With My Sister Madonna,” caused at least temporary estrangement between the siblings, longtime professional collaborators. (Madonna’s sense of betrayal is hard to jibe with her ardent defense of free personal expression.)Gabriel also talks to 30-odd other sources, surprisingly few for the scope of the work, and turns up a few interesting archived nuggets, such as Norman Mailer, in an early draft of the more than 200 he wrote for a 1994 Esquire profile, describing Madonna as a “pint‐size” Italian American (he used an ethnic slur instead) “with a heart built out of the cast‐iron balls of a hundred peasant ancestors.”Previous Madonnagraphers have either been breathily unauthorized — Andrew Morton, J. Randy Taraborrelli — or taken a more “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” approach; universities have offered entire courses on her. Gabriel brings extra intellectual cred to the task. “Love and Capital,” her book about Karl Marx and his wife, Jenny, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award; her group portrait of five female painters, “Ninth Street Women,” was rhapsodically received. But she doesn’t describe her own connection to this project, as she did the others, and this reader was left wondering if it might be less love than capital.Not that Gabriel doesn’t make a diligent case for Madonna’s cultural importance: inviting us to consider, for example, her Mylar-encased coffee-table book “Sex,” pummeled with judgment when it was published in 1992, in the same light as James Baldwin’s novel “Giovanni’s Room.” She airs at length the praise of the curator Jeffrey Deitch, who worked with Madonna on a 2013 multimedia installation called “X‐STaTIC PRo=CeSS.”Maybe we’ve all miscast Madonna as the Queen of Pop — a dubious analogue to Aretha Franklin’s Queen of Soul — and she’s closer, on a mass scale, to Karen Finley, the performance artist who used to smear her nude body in chocolate or honey? Indeed, describing the period Madonna lived in Miami, Gabriel writes of her “daily ritual of covering herself in honey and jumping into Biscayne Bay, where she floated until the honey melted away,” with no apparent concern for sharks.“Madonna: A Rebel Life” is organized as a busy, seven-decade, mostly urban travel itinerary. Like Franklin, Madonna lost her mother early and was raised in Detroit, where her father, who also had half a dozen children, “thought we should always be productive,” she said. Her Barbie would tell Ken: “I’m not gonna stay home and do the dishes. You stay home! I’m going out tonight. I’m going bowling, OK, so forget it!” Among her formative influences were J.D. Salinger and Anne Sexton (literary); the Shangri-Las and David Bowie (musical); Martha Graham and Frida Kahlo (visual). “The sight of her mustache consoled me,” she said of the latter.I might be biased as a native who craved rubber bracelets and lace socks and waited to hear if FM radio played “Borderline” through the “la-la-la-la,” but the section when Madonna arrives in New York City, though well trafficked, is one of the most compelling in this book. She eats French fries out of garbage cans; learns guitar at an abandoned synagogue in Flushing Meadows nicknamed “the Gog”; brings a demo tape to the DJ booth at Danceteria; and, signed by Stein from his hospital bed, hangs with a “coterie” of artists that included Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. She was also raped at knife point on a rooftop, an ordeal not publicly aired until the punishing Abel Ferrara film “Dangerous Game” in 1993.Having segued to Hollywood (and later Broadway and the West End), she gave the middle finger to its male establishment: walking away from an early marriage to Sean Penn, cursing out David Letterman on the air and roundly shushing Harvey Weinstein when he offers feedback on “Truth or Dare,” her 1991 documentary. (“I don’t care what your point of view is,” she tells him. “I never want to hear it. Who the hell are you to tell me what kind of film I should be doing?”) Her onetime paramour Warren Beatty, who directed her in “Dick Tracy,” mocked how she wanted to live on-camera all the time; who with an iPhone now does otherwise?Madonna is rightly celebrated here as a pioneer of AIDS education — she lost countless friends to the disease — and a genuine philanthropist. But as she grows more practiced with the press and isolated by her fame, the book softens and suffers. The muchness of Madonna, her cross-disciplinarity — from MTV to “Evita” — seems impossible to corral.Madonna’s drug is work — she makes a discipline of even decadence — and “A Rebel Life” increasingly becomes a litany of remote description and tabulation: boundaries crossed, records broken, shows staged, money made, countries visited, foreign cultures sampled. “All artists appropriate,” is how Gabriel defends her against a frequent charge. “It is called inspiration.”Clichés sneak into her prose. Madonna is burning the candle at both ends, igniting a firestorm and is a lightning rod for controversy. She has never taken the road most traveled, but does take a long hard look in the mirror.Speaking of mirrors: Gabriel acknowledges Madonna’s talent for self-reinvention, but oddly ignores her transformation after cosmetic procedures and the resultant backlash — a sensitive matter to parse, but hardly irrelevant for someone whose oeuvre has been so entwined with image. “I’m going to make it easier for all those girls behind me when they turn 60,” the star said when promoting her 2019 album, “Madame X.” Well, some of those girls want to know why she can’t shake her skull-topped cane at the anti-aging industrial complex.“A Rebel Life” hits its marks but rarely soars, as Madonna did suspended by cables during her Drowned World tour. (Rather, the book is submerged in names, places and dates and historical exposition.) Then again, assessing Madonna’s legacy before she has a chance to recover from recent health setbacks may be an impossibly premature endeavor.“The verdict time and again would be that she had gone too far, that her career was over,” Gabriel writes. “Time and again, the jury was wrong.”MADONNA: A Rebel Life | By Mary Gabriel | Illustrated | 858 pp. | Little, Brown & Company | $38 More

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      Madonna Officially Postpones Celebration Tour

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      The pop superstar’s global outing spotlighting her decades of hits will begin in October in Europe. “My focus now is my health,” she wrote on social media.Madonna’s North American tour is officially postponed.Two weeks ago, the pop star’s new Celebration Tour — a greatest-hits outing announced to great media fanfare in January, which was set to open this week — was put on an undefined “pause” after the singer’s manager said she had been admitted to a hospital with “a serious bacterial infection.” Rampant concern and speculation ensued among fans and within the music business about Madonna’s well-being, as well as the fate of her world tour, which had the potential to be one of the year’s biggest events.On Monday, a message from Madonna on social media clarified that the entire North American leg of her tour — 41 shows, about half the total that had been announced for the full world outing — would be rescheduled, and that the tour would now open in Europe in October. Live Nation, which is producing the tour, asked fans to “hold onto their tickets as they will be valid for the new dates once announced.”“My focus now is my health and getting stronger and I assure you, I’ll be back with you as soon as I can!” Madonna, 64, wrote in her first statement since her manager’s post on June 28. She also posted a photo that appeared to show her in her home in Manhattan.“I’m on the road to recovery and incredibly grateful for all the blessings in my life,” she added.Ticket sales for Madonna’s tour opened with a splash; according to an announcement in March, more than 40 dates had already sold out by then. But a glance at further dates on Ticketmaster’s website shows a number of locations — Sacramento; Tulsa, Okla.; even Barclays Center in Brooklyn — where plenty of seats are available.Last week, Beyoncé canceled a date in Pittsburgh, and postponed two others, over what was announced as issues with “production logistics and scheduling.”Rescheduling a major tour, for any reason, can be a complex and expensive process these days, music executives say. That is because with the return of live music after its shutdown by the Covid-19 pandemic, large venues typically lock in their schedules many months in advance, with little wiggle room for changes. In its announcement about the Madonna tour, Live Nation said simply, “Rescheduled dates will be announced as soon as possible.” More

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      Madonna Hospitalized with Infection, Postpones ‘Celebration’ Tour

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      The 64-year-old pop icon was hospitalized for several days and remains under medical care, her agent said. A new start date for her tour has not been announced.Madonna was hospitalized for several days with a “serious bacterial infection,” forcing her to postpone her forthcoming “Celebration” tour, her manager said on Wednesday.The 64-year-old pop icon developed the infection on Saturday, leading to a stay in an intensive care unit, her manager, Guy Oseary, wrote on Instagram.“Her health is improving, however she is still under medical care,” he said. “A full recovery is expected.”Madonna’s world tour was set to begin on July 15 in Vancouver and to last seven months, highlighting songs from the past 40 years of her career.A new start date for her tour has not been announced.Madonna announced her tour, which would be her 12th, in January, with a five-minute black-and-white video that showed her speaking at a dinner party with a group of famous friends. Her conversation and party games made references to her some of her songs, like “S.E.X.” and “La Isla Bonita,” as well as her documentary and concert film “Truth or Dare.”“I am excited to explore as many songs as possible in hopes to give my fans the show they have been waiting for,” Madonna said in the video.Tickets for her “Celebration” shows in New York, London, Paris and Amsterdam sold out in minutes, according to Billboard.The tour, produced by Live Nation, was to span about 40 cities before concluding in Mexico City on Jan. 30, 2024.In North America, she had stops planned in Detroit, Chicago, New York, Miami and Los Angeles. In Europe, she was scheduled to perform in London, Barcelona, Paris and Stockholm.Caldwell Tidicue, a New York comedian better known as Bob the Drag Queen, was slated to appear as a guest on all dates of the tour.“The Celebration Tour will take us on Madonna’s artistic journey through four decades,” the tour announcement said.After announcing the tour, Madonna collaborated with the pop and R&B singer The Weeknd and rapper Playboi Carti on the single “Popular.” The collaboration brought her back to Billboard’s Hot 100 chart for the first time in years. More

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      Readers’ Picks: 12 Pride Anthems

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      A playlist with personal stories about the ways music plays a vital role in struggles, triumphs and self-expression.Diana Ross’s “I’m Coming Out” has soundtracked many more.Mike Blake/ReutersDear listeners,A few weeks ago, I asked you to submit songs to help create the ultimate Pride playlist. As usual, you delivered. Big time.Today’s Amplifier is made up entirely of your suggestions and your stories. Some of these songs gave you the courage and enthusiasm to come out, and some are the tracks that you think best encapsulate the spirit of Pride.A few might be a little obvious — could we really have a Pride playlist without Diana Ross and Sister Sledge? — but that just makes them easier to share with your chosen family. Some of these songs address the queer experience directly, while others have been adopted — perhaps with a flair of camp — as unofficial anthems. And, as you may have guessed, almost all of them will make you want to dance.Thank you to each and every one of you who submitted a song and your comments; it was a total joy to read about the ways that music has played such a vital role in your struggles, your triumphs and your self-expression. As one reader (who also wrote the entry for the fourth song on the playlist) so eloquently put it, “Pride is all about overcoming the shame, the fear, the darkness in our lives and coming alive.” Amen to that.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Thelma Houston: “Don’t Leave Me This Way”1976 was the year I “emerged.” I discovered the joy and positive energy in the clubs filled with others like me. We danced and built important, supportive friendships, and found safety in numbers. Coming out was a longer journey of self-acceptance. This song was heard over and over, and brought everyone out on the dance floor together. It gave me hope. — Mark Pettygrove, Palm Springs, Calif. (Listen on YouTube)2. Perfume Genius: “Slip Away”Most of Perfume Genius’s songs speak to queer desires/experiences, but this one is especially colorful. “Slip Away” is a queer ballad about a relationship constantly under scrutiny by others, ultimately choosing each other over external pressures. It took years for me to start dating after I came out, but this song continued to remind me of the validity and power of queer love, no matter what anyone else may say or do. — Arley Sakai, Portland, Ore. (Listen on YouTube)3. Sophie B. Hawkins: “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover”“Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover” by Sophie B Hawkins gave voice to my gay teen desire in a way that I couldn’t articulate at the time. She sings about a kind of exquisite longing that is so germane to the queer experience: uncontrollably erotic, unrequited, transgressive and liberating. This song gave me permission to step into feelings that had hitherto been scary to me. It gave me permission to love. — Brendan Healy, Toronto (Listen on YouTube)4. Joe Jackson: “Steppin’ Out”I moved to San Francisco when this song was popular, and while the song is not specifically L.G.B.T.Q.-themed, it was all about the strong positive energy of living life out loud. San Francisco was a place to explore who I was, to get away from family and expectations and fears. I knew Joe Jackson was gay … I felt that he was talking to us! — David Silver, Kalaheo, Hawaii (Listen on YouTube)5. Tom Robinson Band: “2-4-6-8 Motorway”This was 1978, and my biggest fear as a teenage proto-gay in Scranton, Pa., was not that I would be shunned by my family, or die alone, or anything similarly dramatic. I worried that I would have to grow a mustache and learn to love disco. The existence of the out gay rocker Tom Robinson suggested that there were other options. “(Sing if You’re) Glad to Be Gay” is a more obvious T.R. choice, but “2-4-6-8 Motorway” was much more fun. — Michael Logan, Los Angeles (Listen on YouTube)6. Bronski Beat: “Smalltown Boy”As a 19-year-old gay woman, the song “Smalltown Boy” by Bronski Beat gave me courage to come out and escape to a world where women could love women, men could love men. “Smalltown Boy” is not necessarily about running away from a heterosexual upbringing but toward pride, freedom and acceptance. — Dawn Groundwater, New York (Listen on YouTube)7. Madonna: “Holiday”I like to joke that I came out the same time Madonna’s first album did. Coming out in suburbia in 1983 was so different. There were zero role models and not even a place to go to find my people. To me, “Holiday” was a metaphor for that place where I could live inside a bright, shiny rainbow. — J.P. Streeter, Alameda, Calif. (Listen on YouTube)8. Pet Shop Boys: “Go West”When I need a burst of gay freedom I dance it out to “Go West” by the Pet Shop Boys. It makes me feel like there’s a perfect place where I can really start a new life … in the open air … where people like us are free to be who we are! Go ahead and listen to it. I dare you to not be dancing by the end! — Jack Terry, Northville, Mich. (Listen on YouTube)9. CeCe Peniston: “Finally”I was a couple of years into my military career and had been on temporary duty in June 2001. I took a few extra days of leave at the end, which happened to coincide with Seattle Pride. Even though it was cool and rained off and on, the outdoor stage at the Eagle had CeCe singing “Finally” at the first Pride event I’d ever attended, and it felt amazing to “finally” be there. She gave it her all for the slightly damp crowd. I couldn’t believe my luck to hear these ladies I’d hammed to in high school and went back for Pride in Seattle a couple more times when I could. — Eric, Kentucky (Listen on YouTube)10. Diana Ross: “I’m Coming Out”My coming out song at the age of 38 was “I’m Coming Out” by Diana Ross. After all of the great disco/gay-themed songs of the late ’70s, this is the one that got to me and led me to take that big step, partly due to the fact that it was by the legendary Diana Ross, who had such influence, being a global star. Everyone loved this song, making it an easy access statement for me in my quest to come out. — Harry N. Cohen, Queens (Listen on YouTube)11. Cass Elliot: “Make Your Own Kind of Music”Every single word of that song captures the feelings of knowing you are different and sharing that with the world will be hard. It may be rough, you may be alone, but you have that special song that the world needs to hear. Somehow, the dose of reality in that song, that you may lose some people in your life who “cannot take your hand,” is oddly reassuring. There may be a price to pay to sing your song, but it pales in comparison to the feeling of being free to sing it. I heard it first in the movie “Beautiful Thing,” bought the soundtrack, listened to it on repeat for what seemed liked hundreds of times and then came out to my family and friends. — Jared Schrock, Pittsburgh (Listen on YouTube)12. Sister Sledge: “We Are Family”As a young woman who grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, I felt quite alone as I realized I was a lesbian. The first time I heard “We Are Family” by Sister Sledge in a gay/lesbian bar and every person in the room hit the dance floor for a group dance, I knew I wasn’t alone. Many of us have to create our own families, families of choice, because our biological families rebuke us. “We Are Family” says right out loud that you can create a family. — Becky Wood, North Carolina (Listen on YouTube)“We Are Family” still feels like optimism one dreams for in Pride — in melody, production, lyric, and in spirit, more so than any other song I know of. — Patience NewburyAt the legendary show bar/entertainment complex El Goya in Ybor City, Fla., the entire drag show cast came onto the stage at the end of the Friday and Saturday night performances to lead the S.R.O. crowd in this iconic song. By this time the eclectic and dapper crowd have abandoned their tables to line the perimeter of the ample show bar and belt out the song right along with the queens. For the first time in my life, I felt a part of a group. Seems like we all had arrived at a big family reunion and everyone knew all the words as we joined hands and looked each other right in the eye. Finally, we were united and we were home. — Nina Gros, Louisville, Ky.Padam padam,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Readers’ Picks! 12 Pride Anthems” track listTrack 1: Thelma Houston, “Don’t Leave Me This Way”Track 2: Perfume Genius, “Slip Away”Track 3: Sophie B. Hawkins, “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover”Track 4: Joe Jackson, “Steppin’ Out”Track 5: Tom Robinson Band, “2-4-6-8 Motorway”Track 6: Bronski Beat, “Smalltown Boy”Track 7: Madonna, “Holiday”Track 8: Pet Shop Boys, “Go West”Track 9: CeCe Peniston, “Finally”Track 10: Diana Ross, “I’m Coming Out”Track 11: Cass Elliot, “Make Your Own Kind of Music”Track 12: Sister Sledge, “We Are Family”Bonus tracksYes, this playlist is mostly upbeat and celebratory, but plenty of you also shared the songs that made you feel seen in your lower moments. I particularly appreciated this suggestion, from Kenny in Brooklyn, of the young Chicago singer-songwriter Claud’s melancholy ballad “Tommy”:“This song helped me name the unique depression that comes with body dysmorphia. Listening to ‘Tommy’ made me realize that I will be happier in relationships once I accept being trans. It’s a very sad song about not being seen in your body, and there’s a comfort that comes with sharing and naming that sadness with others.” More

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      A Lost (and Found) John Coltrane Recording, and More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Claud, Silvana Estrada, Hannah Georgas and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. 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, and The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.John Coltrane featuring Eric Dolphy, ‘Impressions’The strongest live recordings John Coltrane ever made — the ones that seem to capture his locomotive, shape-shifting powers at full speed, totally unbridled — come from his lengthy run at the Village Vanguard in fall 1961. At that point he had moved away from writing in complex, Fibonacci-like patterns of harmony; studying spiritual music, especially from India and Africa, he’d redoubled his commitment to structural simplicity. In short order, he would assemble the lineup that we now know as his classic quartet. On those Vanguard recordings you can hear it all happening: He’s moving fast, unburdening himself of the past, trying out new lineups and reworking his repertoire in real time.But this was a process that had been ongoing. There is always a back story. And this week, Impulse! Records announced that in July it will release an album of newly unearthed recordings that Coltrane made at the Village Gate, just blocks away from the Vanguard, two months before that run.There are a few big headlines here. For one thing, the album includes the only known live capture of Coltrane performing his composition “Africa.” But the big attraction is that Eric Dolphy — the visionary multi-reedist who played a key part in Coltrane’s musical development, and stars in those Vanguard tapes — plays almost as prominent a role here as the bandleader. On the album’s lead single, a 10-minute version of Coltrane’s “Impressions,” Dolphy’s bass clarinet doubles with McCoy Tyner’s piano as Coltrane plays the “Pavanne”-inspired melody, then both horn players turn in spiraling, fuming solos, drawing smoke out of the song’s simple form. The drummer Elvin Jones and the bassist Reggie Workman charge ahead so intensely, they barely even have time to swing. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOBizarrap and Peso Pluma, ‘Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 55’The Mexican songwriter Peso Pluma continues his push toward global audiences in a collaboration with Bizarrap, the hitmaking Argentine electronic-music producer. He sings about being spurned, drunk, rebounding and flaunting his blingy Patek Phillipe watch as Bizarrap quantizes regional Mexican acoustic sounds — the syncopated chords and trombone of a brass band, the slapping bass lines of a bajo sexto, solos on high-strung Mexican guitars — into a computerized track. It sounds like there’s some Auto-Tune added to Peso Pluma’s growl, too. Near the end, Bizarrap plays a few EDM synthesizer chords that suggest club tracks are only a remix away. JON PARELESThe Weeknd with Playboi Carti and Madonna, ‘Popular’Here’s a cowbell-driven critique of a dystopian social-media dynamic, from the soundtrack of the new HBO show “The Idol.” Over a sleekly minimal funk track, the Weeknd sings, “Kill anyone to be popular/Sell her soul to be popular.” He enlisted the ultimate celebrity-savvy pop star, Madonna, to pop in with backups: “Spent my whole life running from your flashing lights,” she claims. “You can’t take my soul.” It’s not everyone’s predicament, but the Weeknd bets listeners care about it. PARELESTy Dolla Sign, ‘Motion’Ty Dolla Sign finds a new groove on the breezy, house-inflected single “Motion,” which is driven by a looped piano and an insistent beat. “Something takes over when we dancin’,” he croons nimbly on the summer-ready track, which was produced by Will Larsen and Stryv. “Bodies around us caught up in the wave.” LINDSAY ZOLADZBettye LaVette, ‘Hard to Be a Human’“Hard to Be a Human” is from Bettye LaVette’s next album, “LaVette!,” due June 16; it’s a set of songs by Randall Bramblett. LaVette sings about humankind as a flawed creation — “You gotta stop and wonder/Baby, why were you born?”— over a sputtering, tumbling Afrobeat groove, anchored like Fela’s music by a burly baritone saxophone. Every rasp and break in her voice sounds like one more obstacle overcome. PARELESHigh Pulp featuring James Brandon Lewis, ‘Dirtmouth’High Pulp, a Los Angeles collective with Seattle origins, blurs jazz, funk, math rock and indie rock. Its third album is “Days in the Desert,” due July 28. For “Dirtmouth,” a musicianly, meter-shifting fusion piece, it enlisted the saxophonist James Brandon Lewis, who bursts into its minimalistic cycles with breath and gusto: a leaping, sprinting, stop-start human presence roiling the systematic composition. PARELESHannah Georgas, ‘Better Somehow’The Canadian songwriter Hannah Georgas digs into her own insecurity to fight against it, pushing herself to confront someone who can “insult me so casually.” She doesn’t want a rupture; as the production ascends from a modest folk-rock strum to a big harmony chorus, she only hopes honesty will clear the air, so “I can love you better.” PARELESClaud, ‘Crumbs’“I can feel the little things adding up, the little crumbs I hate cleaning up,” the Chicago singer-songwriter Claud murmurs on this tender, muted acoustic tune from “Supermodels,” due in July. The sweetly shrugging register brings Clairo to mind, as Claud, who uses they/them pronouns, stacks vivid, accumulating snapshots of a relationship in stasis. In the end, though, they sing with a resigned sigh, “I will for you, I will for you, whatever you want.” ZOLADZSilvana Estrada, ‘Milagro y Desastre’Most of the songs the jazz-loving Mexican songwriter Silvana Estrada released in 2022 — on the album “Marchita” and the EP “Abrazo” — were sparse and pensive. “Milagro y Desastre” (“Miracle and Disaster”) begins in the same spirit, with plain keyboard chords and the possibility that “No one is going to save themselves.” But midway through, she finds companionship. She decides to stay with someone until morning; she’s joined by a growing string ensemble and bolstered by a traditional beat and vocal harmonies. As she repeats the title, she sounds content, and ready, to face down miracles or disasters. PARELESGunn Truscinski Nace, ‘On Lamp’The guitarists Steve Gunn and Bill Nace and the drummer John Truscinski, improvisers whose paths have overlapped in various ensembles, have made a trio instrumental album, “Glass Band,” that’s due in July. It includes “On Lamp,” an undulating, not-quite-ambient piece that threads a wandering, slow-motion melody through a stereo dialogue of acoustic guitars and subdued tom-tom syncopations, like a glimpse of a distant caravan. PARELES More