music

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      ‘It’s Time!’ Mariah Carey Reflects on 30 Years as Queen of Christmas

      by

      Getting her usual early start on the holiday, the powerhouse vocalist and songwriter looks back on the phenomenon she created.When the record company came knocking, Mariah Carey wasn’t sure about making a Christmas album.“I felt it was too early in my career,” she said in a recent interview, recalling the early ’90s. But she had always loved Christmas, and so she got to work on arrangements for some of her favorite seasonal classics, like “Joy to the World” and “Silent Night,” and filled her recording studio with vibrant decorations like trees and lights. All she and her writing partner Walter Afanasieff needed were some original songs.Then one late night, she recalled, the distinctive opening melody line of one song came to her as she tapped it out on a small Casio keyboard — “ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding,” she sang over Zoom. For the lyrics, she said, she racked her brain for something that felt meaningful. Then, “I started thinking about: ‘I don’t want a lot for Christmas.’”Carey performing Christmas songs at St. John the Divine in Manhattan in December 1994.Kevin.Mazur/Archive, via WireimageAnd at Madison Square Garden in December 2019.Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for McThirty years after its release in 1994, that song, “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” has become one of the longest-charting singles in any genre, spending 65 weeks on Billboard’s Hot 100, and perhaps the best-known original holiday song of the last half-century. The album, “Merry Christmas,” has sold 18 million copies and would become synonymous with the season, blasting from cars, mall speakers and party playlists, and cementing Carey’s role as the Queen of Christmas. And the season? Well, that begins on Nov. 1 — when Carey has declared, “It’s time.”Carey spoke with The New York Times ahead of a 21-date holiday tour that starts this month. It comes as she is teasing new, non-Christmas music, in what would be her first studio album in six years.

      View this post on Instagram A post shared by Mariah Carey (@mariahcarey) We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      Their Songs Blew Up on TikTok, So These Musicians Tweaked Their Sets

      by

      Social media platforms and streaming services are leading younger listeners to new (and old) music. Artists are making sure they feel at home at live shows.DJ Paul, a founder of the Oscar-winning Memphis hip-hop group Three 6 Mafia, was enjoying some tequila at a pool party in the Hollywood Hills two years ago when a friend shoved a cellphone in front of him. The rapper was surprised to see TikTok videos uploaded by “young white girls” dancing and rhyming along to one of the coarser moments from “Half on a Sack,” a slightly menacing song the group released 17 years earlier. The lyrics described sex and drug use on a tour bus.“I’m like, ‘Whoa,’” he remembered in an interview, laughing. “And when I do my concerts, you see the same kind of girls out there singing that line. They go crazy.”Paul said that “Half on a Sack” had long been a staple of the group’s live set lists, but the crowd response has been more uproarious in the wake of its viral moment.The rapper Project Pat, who has been touring with Three 6 Mafia this year, said he regularly performed “Life We Live,” his 23-year-old song that’s been used in almost three million TikTok videos. It’s seen a 130 percent increase in Spotify streams, as well.Project Pat has seen “Life We Live,” a song he released in 2001, gain a new life on TikTok.Aaron J. Thornton/FilmMagic, via Getty Images“I always looked at the rap game as a business,” Pat said. “I didn’t never look at it like I’m putting my pain and all that” into the art. “If you gon’ pay for this, I’m gonna tell you what you want to hear,” he added in his distinctive Memphis accent.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      Part-Time Farmers, Part-Time Rock Stars: A Chinese Band’s Unlikely Rise

      by

      The band, Varihnaz, has gained fans by offering an alternative to China’s hyper-polished, fast-paced modern life, with songs about pesticides and poultry raising.Before setting out on his band’s first national tour, before recording another album and before appearing on a major television network, Ba Nong had one task: finishing the summer harvest.Standing in a field edged by rolling hills, two days before the first tour date in late September, Ba Nong, the frontman of the Chinese band Varihnaz, looked over the yellowed remnants of the rice stalks he had spent the past few months tending.“The land gets to rest, and I get to go play,” he said.Planning around the harvest may be an unconventional way to manage an ascendant music career, but Varihnaz is an unconventional band.For its members — two farmers and a former bricklayer from rural Guangxi in southwestern China — the land and their music are inseparable. Rather than the usual staples of love and longing, their lyrics dwell on pesticides and poultry rearing.Varihnaz means “fields filled with fragrant rice flowers,” in the language of Guangxi’s Zhuang ethnic minority. To fans, the group offers a refreshing break from China’s hyper-commercialized popular entertainers, with music about a simpler, slower way of life, an alternative to the intense competition of modern Chinese life.Ba Nong hopes his music helps people consider shrugging off mainstream expectations themselves. “The more tolerant and developed a society is, the more diverse its lifestyles should be, too,” said the musician, who is 44.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Theater

      Broadway Is Singing Louis Armstrong’s Songs. Here Are 6 Classics.

      by

      When Christopher Renshaw was growing up in England in the 1950s and ’60s, everybody knew about Louis Armstrong. “He was an icon for me as a child,” he said. “He was just there — he’s smiling, he’s funny.”But when Renshaw — whose directing credits include the 1996 Broadway production of “The King and I” and “Taboo,” which he conceived with Boy George — was approached about creating an Armstrong musical, he quickly learned that the musician was far more than just the affable, popular entertainer he saw on television.Armstrong’s story sprawls across five decades, numerous musical and social upheavals, and his own creative breakthroughs from the revolutionary 1920s recordings with his Hot Five band to worldwide celebrity with the ’60s pop smashes “Hello, Dolly!” and “What a Wonderful World.”That story is now being told on Broadway in “A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical,” which is in previews at Studio 54, following a 2021 premiere in Miami and runs in New Orleans and Chicago. For the show’s creative team, exploring the offstage struggles and tensions of this cultural and musical titan was as important as illustrating his pioneering, radical work as a trumpeter and singer.“Louis Armstrong was a real Black man,” James Monroe Iglehart, who is portraying Armstrong and is one of the directors, said, noting the ways Armstrong’s image was cleaned up and deracinated for Hollywood and television. “We worked really hard to show that side of him, the good and the bad.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      The Music Industry Is Hoping Halloween Can Be the New Christmas

      by

      Eyeing the big business of holiday music, a few of pop’s major players are trying to expand the market for Halloween hits.When Ashnikko was growing up in North Carolina, their family told them that Halloween was satanic. But for each of the last six years, the alt-pop rapper and singer (who uses she/they pronouns) has observed what remains a fairly unusual tradition: releasing a single tied to a day better known for costumes and candy.This year’s track is the final entry in a seasonal series of gleefully lewd songs now packaged as an EP, “Halloweenie I-VI,” and available on “oxblood red” vinyl. Although perhaps not especially appropriate for a trick-or-treat night with the kids, the set reflects its creator’s idea of the holiday as a space for freedom through the grotesque.“I feel very passionately about Halloween music,” Ashnikko said, noting the day’s roots in the Celtic harvest festival Samhain as well as its prominence in L.G.B.T.Q. history. “It’s camp. It’s carnal. It’s macabre. It’s, like, silly. It’s the only holiday where all of those get to exist at once.”It’s also an $11.6 billion business, one that pop’s major players are increasingly tapping into. Ashnikko’s six “Halloweenie” songs have racked up a combined 100.3 million on-demand streams in the United States as of Oct. 17, according to the tracking service Luminate.The Weeknd, who hosted a haunted house at Universal Studios Hollywood two years ago, has returned with “Nightmare Trilogy,” a maze with a soundtrack from the singer. It opened eight days earlier than in 2019.“Monster Mash,” Bobby Pickett’s enduring Halloween anthem from 1962, has returned to the Billboard Hot 100 the last three years ahead of the holiday. And Billboard estimated last year that the hit could generate $1 million in annual combined revenue.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Music

      DJ Clark Kent, Who Introduced Jay-Z to the Notorious B.I.G., Dies at 58

      by

      He was a producer and club D.J. who helped rappers find their voices and fortunes, and who later became known as a raconteur of hip-hop history.Antonio Franklin, known as DJ Clark Kent, a widely respected hip-hop insider for four decades who had influential relationships with many leading rappers, died on Thursday at his home in Greenbrook, a township in northern New Jersey. He was 58. The cause was colon cancer, his wife, Kesha (Vernon) Franklin, said.Mr. Franklin’s career followed the trajectory of hip-hop itself. He entered the scene just as it was taking shape, in New York in the 1980s, and he reached prime time when rap itself did, in the mid-90s. After being a club D.J. for years, he moved on to work as a producer and took jobs with Atlantic Records and Motown.In 1995, he produced a rap classic — and his first hit song — with “Player’s Anthem” by Junior M.A.F.I.A., a group formed by the Notorious B.I.G., who also appeared on the track. The song became a breakout single for the group and introduced Lil’ Kim to the international hip-hop audience.The next year, he produced three songs on Jay-Z’s debut album, “Reasonable Doubt.” His most noteworthy contributions were to the song “Brooklyn’s Finest.” Mr. Franklin provided the vocals for the hook, and he suggested to Jay-Z and his manager, Damon Dash, that they include Notorious B.I.G. on the track. The two somewhat hesitantly agreed — without realizing that Mr. Franklin had already asked Notorious B.I.G. to wait downstairs. The collaboration took place instantly.That kind of behind-the-scenes orchestration was ordinary for Mr. Franklin. In 1998, he saw a young man who went by Shyne freestyling in a barbershop, then introduced him to Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs, who signed him to a record deal on the spot.“I practically knew every rapper before they made their records,” Mr. Franklin told the pop culture publication Complex. “They wanted to be familiar with the D.J.s and what was happening in hip-hop. I was happening in hip-hop.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Theater

      Mimi Hines, a Replacement Star in ‘Funny Girl,’ Dies at 91

      by

      She was best known as half of a comedy team with her husband, Phil Ford, until her hall-filling voice earned her raves in a role made famous by Barbra Streisand.Mimi Hines, a powerful singer and live-wire comedian who etched her name in Broadway lore as the replacement for Barbra Streisand in the original production of “Funny Girl,” died on Oct. 21 at her home in Las Vegas. She was 91.Her death was confirmed by her lawyer and friend Mark Sendroff.A “mischievous sprite,” as The New York Times once called her, the diminutive Ms. Hines brought an outsize energy to her work, whether she was dishing out one-liners in nightclubs as half of a comedy-and-song duo, Ford & Hines, with her husband, Phil Ford, or delivering showstopping numbers to packed houses on Broadway.During her peak in the 1950s and ’60s, journalists often noted her elfin quality and her distinctive facial features — cleft chin, deep dimples and wide, toothy grin — which she was not shy about using as a comic prop.When Mike Wallace interviewed her and Mr. Ford in 1961, he informed her that a newspaper writer had recently described her as “two buck teeth and a carload of talent.”“That’s not true,” she responded. “My whole mouth is buck.”Ms. Hines and Mr. Ford got their first big break in 1958 on “The Tonight Show,” which at the time was hosted by Jack Paar. It was the first of several “Tonight” appearances they would make over the years. Her rendition of the song “Till There Was You” from “The Music Man” moved Mr. Paar to tears.“It was a magic night on TV,” Ms. Hines said in a 1963 interview with The Prince Herald Daily Tribune of Saskatchewan. “They say 12 million people saw it.” They also appeared on several episodes of “The Ed Sullivan Show,” as well as on many other variety and talk shows.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Three New Books Make the Case for Music as Medicine

      by

      Three new books make the case for music as medicine. In “The Schubert Treatment,” the most lyrical of the trio, a cellist takes us bedside with the sick and the dying.My colleague Dwight Garner is a great connoisseur of the quotation. I find myself stumbling around this week in the dark corners of the misquotation. Music may indeed have charms to “soothe the savage beast,” as is oft-declared, but the line actually ends “a savage breast,” and is attributable not to William Shakespeare, but to William Congreve, from his 1697 play “The Mourning Bride.”Now you know.Music’s soothing and stimulating effect — its use as a kind of medicine — is the subject of at least three books published this year. This is not a new therapy, but a blooming hot spot of research.I’ve been poking around there for a while, curious to figure out why my mother, a retired professional violist and pianist with advancing dementia, retains so much of her memory (including the ability to sight-read) in this particular realm. She still plays weekly string quartets and piano duos and sings in perfect harmony with Alexa’s somewhat middlebrow choices, though an old game of name-the-composer has faded.THE SCHUBERT TREATMENT: A Story of Music and Healing (Greystone, $24.95), by the cellist and art therapist Claire Oppert, is a slim but shimmery account of performing on her “forever instrument” for a series of patients with varied afflictions, including the inevitable final one.Oppert’s father was a beloved company doctor for several theaters in Paris, who himself played the piano, and she has worked with Howard Buten, a professional clown, novelist and psychologist specializing in autism. (This field teems with polymaths.) Though she tangles dutifully with charts, data and analytics, her philosophy is holistic: “trust and gratitude before the splendor of all things: This is life’s foundation, its bedrock.”Or, more bluntly: “Ten minutes of Schubert is the equivalent of five milligrams of oxy,” the chief of the palliative care unit at a Paris hospital tells her. (Maybe this is why Donald J. Trump played “Ave Maria” at that recent rally-turned-swayfest.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More