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    The Grammys Discover Youth

    A pandemic awards show that seemed poised to disappoint ended up pivoting instead, shifting its focus to women, hip-hop and most crucially, the next generation.The annual postgame bemoaning of the Grammys rarely fails to disappoint. Between its consistently fraught relationship with Black artists, its weighing down of the young with the old, and its stoic resistance to the ways in which pop music is evolving, the ceremony has become as powerful for its symbolic out-of-touchness as for its commemorations.So it would be easy to look at the 63rd annual Grammy Awards, which aired Sunday night from Los Angeles, and underscore what was broken. Beyoncé won four trophies, giving her a total of 28 for her career, the most of any vocalist, tying her for second-most of all time. But these wins, like almost all of them, came in genre categories, not in the biggest, all-genre categories, despite her undeniable influence across the whole spectrum of pop. After sweeping the big four categories last year, Billie Eilish won record of the year for “Everything I Wanted” — a safe choice — and spent her speech repenting by uncomfortably fawning over Megan Thee Stallion.In most years, those would have been the defining moments — well-intentioned acts gone awry. And yet. The Grammys this year were frisky, energetic, largely well-paced and sometimes surprising. They often met popular music where it actually has been over the past year, with performances by central stars of pop, hip-hop, rock and country. Women dominated all the major categories — in addition to Eilish’s victory, Taylor Swift won album of the year for “Folklore,” H.E.R. won song of the year for “I Can’t Breathe” and Megan Thee Stallion won best new artist.But the most crucial aspect of the show was this: Almost all of the performers were under 40, and plenty were under 30. This may seem like an obvious move, but at the Grammys, youth and current relevance have often been treated as inconveniences to be navigated deftly, lest older generations — of artists and, presumably, viewers — feel left out. (This year, given the coronavirus pandemic, there was also likely an impetus to keep elders as far from harm’s way as possible.)Most vividly, that meant several largely unvarnished performances by hip-hop stars, still a shock on the Grammys stage despite the genre’s role at the center of pop evolution for decades. Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B paired for a clever and buoyantly sexual performance of “WAP” that was more erotically direct than any Grammys moment in memory. (Think Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” at the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards, and then some.) Lil Baby’s protest anthem “The Bigger Picture” was rendered as full social justice theater, with a building in flames, a square-off between protesters and shield-bearing police officers, and spoken-word calls for policy improvements.When these performances nodded to the Grammy tradition of melding the new with the old — typically an act of suffocation — it was done cheekily. During Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B’s performance, there was a brief tap dance routine acknowledging the pioneering Black tap dancers the Nicholas Brothers. And DaBaby delivered an intense and fantastically odd performance, in which he was backed by a choir of older women in church robes who appeared to have been given direction to look as comedically shocked as possible.Early in the show, during a Jools Holland-like performance with several acts on adjacent stages, Eilish was theatrically morbid, and Harry Styles was lithe and sinuous. Later, Bad Bunny and Jhay Cortez performed wholly in Spanish, a rare acknowledgment of the power of contemporary Spanish-language music. BTS scaled a rooftop to deliver a dizzying rendition of its hit “Dynamite,” a hyperchoreographed taunt at any performer who opted to be bound to, you know, a stage. And Dua Lipa advertised herself as a nu-aerobics queen, with an impressive set of hi-test disco.For a second year in a row, the Grammys put a spotlight on the teen singer-songwriter Billie Eilish, and her producer, Finneas.Kevin Mazur/The Recording Academy, via Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThrough another lens, Lipa’s performance could be seen as a wink to the music of yesteryear — a classicist with a high-gloss veneer. Typically, those sorts of artists are Grammy stock-in-trade, and there were a handful of them this year, like Silk Sonic, the recently formed union of Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak, who played pointedly retro, shimmery luxury soul. And despite becoming less central to pop music in general, guitars were not in short supply. Black Pumas scuffed up their typically modest rock-soul ever so slightly. Haim played loose, lovely, harmony-rich rock, and Taylor Swift performed a medley of songs from her quarantine albums, reimagining the Grammy stage as a mystical forest haunt.That said, consider it a victory that the Grammys largely opted in favor of youth, even when the mode of creation was old-fashioned. That reflects a dawning awareness that the show — the performances, at least, if not always the awards — has the power to be prescriptive, not simply hoary. Take, for example, its treatment of country music this year: None of the country performers were men, and given that almost every major star of country radio is a man, this was a meaningful gesture. It provided a huge showcase for Mickey Guyton, the first Black woman solo artist ever to receive a nomination in a country category — her rendition of “Black Like Me” was deeply invested and bracing. (Guyton still lost best country solo performance to Vince Gill, a Grammy perennial.) She was followed by sharp, but less pointed performances by Miranda Lambert and Maren Morris (who was inexplicably saddled with a John Mayer cameo).For a sense of the confusingly evolving and ongoing conundrum the Grammys finds itself in, look no further than this year’s hip-hop awards. Best rap album was won by Nas, one of the defining rappers of the … 1990s. This was his first Grammy, won for a little-heralded late-career album — the sort of years-late-dollars-short gesture that is a frequent Grammy occurrence. But best rap song and best rap performance went to Megan Thee Stallion (with Beyoncé), who is in almost every way, besides popular acclaim, a rookie. That the Grammys have honored her so thoroughly so early in her career must feel baffling to the pioneering rappers of decades past. On the other hand, hip-hop has come far enough to have its elders pull out head-scratching wins, just like rock, country and pop old-timers have for generations.The Grammys remain, at heart, a balancing act — a big tent that aims to satisfy everyone, fully pleasing no one. Even the distribution of this year’s major awards, after last year’s Eilish sweep, felt overly conspicuous. But Swift is 31, Megan Thee Stallion is 26, H.E.R. is 23, Eilish is 19. That no one is making them wait for their acclaim is its own sort of victory. More

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    St. Vincent’s Synth-Funk ‘Pain,’ and 9 More New Songs

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe PlaylistSt. Vincent’s Synth-Funk ‘Pain,’ and 9 More New SongsHear tracks by Drake featuring Rick Ross, Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak, Bebe Rexha and others.St. Vincent previews a new album called “Daddy’s Home” with the squelchy “Pay Your Way in Pain.”Credit…Zackery MichaelJon Pareles, Jon Caramanica and March 5, 2021Updated 4:08 p.m. ETEvery 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.St. Vincent, ‘Pay Your Way in Pain’[embedded content]St. Vincent (Annie Clark) piles artifice on artifice on the way to a digitized primal scream in “Pay Your Way in Pain,” from a new album, “Daddy’s Home,” due in May. A throwaway music-hall piano introduction cuts to fat, squelchy 1980s synthesizer tones as she sings, archly but with mounting desperation, about rejection on every front, surrounded by multiples of her own voice processed into gasping, tittering onlookers; they join her to harmonize on the words “pain” and “shame” like decades-later echoes of David Bowie singing “Fame.” It’s droll until it isn’t; at the end, she proclaims, “I want to be loved,” and that last word stretches for a rasping, breathless 17 seconds. JON PARELESNo Rome featuring Charli XCX and the 1975, ‘Spinning’Pros recognize pros. It’s telling that Charli XCX (the Id Girl of hyperpop) and Matty Healy of the 1975 (the most self-conscious yet ambitious arena-rock deconstructionist) both chose to collaborate with No Rome, a Filipino songwriter and producer who melds introversion, melody and electronics. The song ends up on Charli XCX’s turf: teasing, danceable and unstable, flaunting its pitch-shifting and digital edits. But it’s also thoroughly danceable and flirtatious: full of mindless motion. PARELESBruno Mars, Anderson .Paak, Silk Sonic, ‘Leave the Door Open’Both Anderson .Paak and Bruno Mars are diligent students of R&B history, especially devoted to its most opulent, funky and idealistic moments in the pre-disco 1970s. So it’s no surprise that their collaboration — Silk Sonic, though they also keep their own search-optimizing names in the billing — harks back, in “Leave the Door Open,” to the close-harmony seductions of groups like the Spinners, the Manhattans and the Stylistics; yes, kids, that’s an analog tape deck rolling as the video begins. The descending guitar glissando, the glockenspiel, the showy key changes, the contrast of grainy lead and perfectionist backup vocals, the detailed erotic invitation of the lyrics — “Come on over, I’ll adore you” — are all good things to revive. PARELESDrake featuring Rick Ross, ‘Lemon Pepper Freestyle’What’s a palate cleanse for Drake is, for most rappers, out of the reach of their ambition and skill. In between albums, he tosses off songs that focus on his tougher side, leaning in to wordy verses largely bereft of melody. “Lemon Pepper Freestyle” — from his new “Scary Hours 2” EP — is a relaxed classic of the form, full of sly rhymes delivered so offhandedly it almost obscures the technical audacity within. The song features frequent mischief buddy Rick Ross, but promptly dispenses with him so that Drake can embark upon a four-plus minute verse touching on his notary public, some wild times in Vegas, smooth co-parenting (“I send her the child support/She send me the heart emoji”), the deadening effects of too much fame, the overpriced accouterments of too much fame and the usual confession/braggadocio nexus that even after more than a decade still stings: “To be real, man, I never did one crime/But none of my brothers can caption that line.” JON CARAMANICABebe Rexha, ‘Sacrifice’New year, nü-disco. Bebe Rexha turns whispering diva on “Sacrifice” — “Wanna be the air every time you breathe/running through your veins, and the spaces in between” — on an elegant track that includes the faintest nod to Real McCoy’s mid-90s ultra-bouncey “Another Night.” CARAMANICATank, ‘Can’t Let It Show’Tank pours out his regrets and begs for reconciliation on “Can’t Let It Show”: “I should’ve been everything I promised,” he croons in an aching tenor, going on to confess, “I’ve been stupid, heartless/I’ve been useless, thoughtless.” Then, in falsetto, he answers with what’s supposed to be her side of the dialogue: a repurposed Kate Bush chorus — “I should be crying but I just can’t let it show” — that makes him think he still stands a chance because she cares. Or is it all just his wishful thinking? PARELESMaroon 5 featuring Megan Thee Stallion, ‘Beautiful Mistakes’An awkward night out in a thankless marriage between a partner barely trying to save face and a partner trying very hard to do just enough so that observers might not notice how poorly suited the pair are to each other. CARAMANICAAshe and Finneas, ‘Til Forever Falls Apart’Perhaps Finneas is a little frustrated — though well-compensated — while he keeps things quiet (but deeply ominous) when he collaborates with his sister, Billie Eilish, whose vocals tend to be melodic whispers. He goes full-scale, orchestral Wall of Sound, appropriately, to share big crescendos with Ashe on “Til Forever Falls Apart,” which starts as a vow of fidelity but turns into visions of California apocalypse. PARELESOmar Sosa, ‘Shibinda’When the prolific Cuban pianist and composer Omar Sosa toured East Africa with his trio in 2009, he brought along a small recording setup, and captured himself playing with leading musicians in every country he visited. Afterward, he overdubbed additional layers of percussion and piano atop the original recordings; now he has finally released these recordings as an album, “An East African Journey.” In Zambia, Sosa met Abel Ntalasha, a multi-instrumentalist and dancer, whose song “Shibinda” tells of a young man growing into adulthood and preparing to marry. Ntalasha plays the kalumbu, a single-stringed instrument, and sings the song’s central incantation. Sosa gets involved gradually, contributing vocals and percussion and rhythmic spritzes high up on the piano. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOHafez Modirzadeh, ‘Facet Sorey’[embedded content]To make his new album, “Facets,” the saxophonist Hafez Modirzadeh brought three leading jazz pianists into the studio. But before they arrived, he retuned many of the piano’s strings to reflect an old Persian technique of finding notes in the spaces between the tempered scale. On “Facet Sorey,” Modirzadeh doesn’t play a lick of sax; instead, the multi-instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey handles the piece alone, conjuring up conflicted clouds of harmony, letting the piano’s slightly sour tuning create a feeling of rich uncertainty. RUSSONELLOAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More