music

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Katy Perry’s ‘143’ Is Bad. Her Timing Is Worse.

      by

      The pop singer’s latest LP, “143,” has been gleefully panned, but its musical faults aren’t as remarkable as Perry’s failure to read the current cultural moment.Less than 24 hours after its release last Friday, Katy Perry’s seventh studio album, “143,” had already earned a place in pop musical infamy.It debuted on Metacritic, a website that collects and quantifies music reviews, with a score of 35 out of 100, becoming the site’s lowest-rated album since 2011 and the worst-reviewed album by a female artist in its 23-year history. Seemingly the kindest thing any critic said about “143” was that it “falls short of total catastrophe.” Online, dunking on Perry became a semiprofessional sport, as representatives of rival stan armies posted about her supposed downfall with irrepressible glee.But is “143” really that bad? It certainly lacks the sparkle, personality and campy wit that characterized “Teenage Dream,” Perry’s blockbuster 2010 album. (Along with Michael Jackson’s “Bad,” “Teenage Dream” is the only album to spawn five No. 1 hits.) But none of the songs on “143” are as ostentatiously awful as some of Perry’s previous failures, like, say, “Bon Appétit,” the Migos-assisted nadir of her 2017 album, “Witness,” or the track from her 2013 release, “Prism,” on which she sang about a night out doing (gulp) “Mariah Carey-oke.” The defining qualities of “143” are its blandness, anonymity and deadeyed seriousness — rather surprising for a woman whose 2022 Las Vegas residency, “Play,” found her singing beside a 16-foot toilet.Unfortunately, dull, uninspired pop albums come out all the time, and plenty of Perry’s pop star peers have also recently had to reckon with diminishing sales. It was highly unlikely that a new album was going to launch Perry, who in recent years has been appearing as a judge on “American Idol,” back to pop’s epicenter. Despite a lead single (the anthemic synth-pop number “Never Really Over”) far superior to anything on “143,” Perry’s 2020 album, “Smile,” failed to make much of an impression. But it also did not prompt the outsized scorn and schadenfreude that has accompanied her latest release.I can’t say I’ll be putting “143” in heavy rotation, but I also do not think it is the worst album I have heard since 2011, nor the most odious collection of music made by a woman in over two decades. (It is also not a total commercial failure, projected to debut with around 40,000 units sold in its first week.) The album’s anodyne jams might not tell us much about Katy Perry, but the Great Flop of “143” says a lot about the way pop is consumed, evaluated and discussed in this particular moment, when music is just one part of the package. Listeners are more aware than ever how the cotton candy is made, debating the merits of various figures who were once tucked behind the curtain: producers, writers and in some cases even managers and publicists. In a time when an album’s promotion and rollout strategy are often scrutinized as heavily as its content, Perry was already doomed to fail.A mediocre album from a pop star past her commercial peak, “143” probably would have come and gone without much notice were its rollout not prone to so many cringe-inducing gaffes, like the controversy surrounding the music video for the blithe, house-inflected single “Lifetimes,” which prompted a government investigation for filming on a UNESCO World Heritage nature reserve off the coast of Spain.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

    • 88 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Lhasa’s Music Captivated Audiences Everywhere but Here

      by

      At Pop Montreal, tribute concerts on Sept. 29 and 30 will honor the memory of Lhasa de Sela, the American-born multilingual singer-songwriter.Montreal’s wide-ranging music scene has been one of its calling cards for decades, with border-crossing success stories like the ambitious rock band Arcade Fire, the arty electro-pop artist Grimes and the renowned post-rock modernists Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Yet one of the musicians most beloved there is the spellbinding Lhasa de Sela, who wrote and sang in English, French and Spanish, but remains largely unknown in the United States.She was usually referred to simply as Lhasa, and before she died of breast cancer in 2010 at 37, she became a platinum-selling recording artist in Canada, with genre-busting albums that synthesized Romani music, Mexican rancheras, Portuguese fados, Americana, chansons française and South American ballads, marrying them with mystical, romantic and intensely personal lyrics.In Europe, where Lhasa was a mainstay of the festival circuit, and lived in Marseilles for several years, she became a star on the strength of her intimate performances. But in the United States, where she was born and spent most of her childhood, Lhasa’s multilingual recordings proved too much of a marketing challenge for her American record companies, even after she toured with Sarah McLachlan’s traveling festival, Lilith Fair.Feist, Calexico, Juana Molina, Silvana Estrada and many other stars will perform in the tribute concerts that will cap this year’s Pop Montreal festival on Sept. 29 and 30. Their homage underscores an enduring love affair between a city and an artist who made just three otherworldly albums, including a last, self-titled album, all in English, that she hoped would finally establish her in her home country.Bia Krieger, the Brazilian-born, Montreal-based singer who was a friend of Lhasa’s, said, “Iconic is the right word” to describe her. “There’s a circle of people here that cherish her.”Lhasa is now even woven into the landscape of her old neighborhood, Mile End, which is anchored at its southern end by a huge mural of the singer created by a local artist, Annie Hamel, and, on the north by Parc Lhasa de Sela, a children’s playground the city erected in her memory.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 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Strange Cellmates in a Brooklyn Jail: Sean Combs and Sam Bankman-Fried

      by

      Mr. Combs is sleeping in the same dormitory-style room as Mr. Bankman-Fried, the crypto mogul who was convicted of fraud.Sean Combs is living in the same unit of a Brooklyn jail as Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto mogul convicted of fraud, sleeping in a dormitory-style room with a group of other defendants assigned to the same section, according to a person familiar with the living arrangements.Mr. Combs has been held in the jail, the Metropolitan Detention Center, for nearly a week, since federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment charging him with racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking in what the government has called a “decades-long pattern of physical and sexual violence.”He has pleaded not guilty to all charges, and his lawyers argued strenuously for him to be released on bail, proposing to a judge that he put up a $50 million bond and hire a security team to monitor him at all hours. The judge rejected the proposal, saying that he had concerns about Mr. Combs attempting to witness tamper, landing him in a special housing unit that often holds high-profile inmates.A spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons said the agency “does not provide information about conditions of confinement, including housing assignments or internal security practices for any particular incarcerated individual.”Mr. Bankman-Fried has been housed in the jail, known as M.D.C., since last year, when his bail was revoked after a judge ruled that he had violated conditions of his release. In the lead-up to his trial, his lawyers complained that he had only intermittent internet access and could not adequately prepare for his case. They said that Mr. Bankman-Fried, a vegan, was subsisting on a diet of water, bread and peanut butter.Mr. Bankman-Fried, who founded the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, was convicted of masterminding a sweeping fraud in which he siphoned billions of dollars of his customers’ money into venture capital investments, political contributions and other lavish spending. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison.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 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Sean Combs’s Arrest Has the Music World Asking: Is Our #MeToo Here?

      by

      Activists and survivors are hopeful for change after the industry, which has a pervasive party culture, largely avoided the accountability that swept Hollywood and politics.The arrest of Sean Combs last week, on charges including sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, represents a stunning reversal of fortune for the hip-hop impresario, who as recently as a year ago was feted as an industry visionary before a sudden series of sexual assault accusations.The indictment against Mr. Combs accuses him of running a criminal enterprise centered on abusing women, and of using bribery, arson, kidnapping and threats of violence to intimidate and silence victims. He has denied the allegations and pleaded not guilty to the charges.But Mr. Combs’s arrest has also stirred the hopes of activists and survivors of sexual violence that his case may finally lead to lasting change in the music industry. Though long seen as inhospitable to women, the business has largely avoided the scrutiny and accountability that swept Hollywood, politics and much of the media world at the peak of the #MeToo movement in the late 2010s.There is no single explanation for why music dodged a similar reckoning. Some point to the industry’s decentralized power structure, its pervasive party culture and a history of deference to artists and top executives.“Sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll, the looseness with sexuality — that is baked into the culture of the music industry,” said Caroline Heldman, a professor at Occidental College and a longtime activist. “Unfortunately, that means that rape culture is baked into it, because there aren’t mechanisms of accountability.”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

    • 100 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      A Note From Irving Berlin, the ‘Nation’s Songwriter’

      by

      The lyricist and composer wrote thousands of compositions — and one stern letter to The New York Times.Few songwriters and composers were as prolific as Irving Berlin, whose vast musical catalog includes well-known songs such as “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” “Cheek to Cheek” and “Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better).” By some accounts, he wrote well over 1,200 songs during his career, including the scores for 18 films and 19 Broadway shows.His 1942 song “White Christmas,” most famously performed by Bing Crosby, remains a holiday classic, and his patriotic hit “God Bless America,” released in 1938, is considered an unofficial national anthem.Berlin’s legacy survives not only in tunes, but in organizations he created that influenced the musical world. In 1914, he helped found the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, or ASCAP, a music licensing agency that today, per its website, secures the royalties and legal rights for over one million songwriters, composers and music publishers. In 1919, he broke away from Ted Snyder and Henry Waterson, with whom he had built the successful music publishing company Waterson, Berlin & Snyder Co., and established his own. He was also behind the Music Box Theater in Manhattan.In the Morgue, The New York Times’s physical clippings library, there’s a thick file on Berlin. One of the items inside is a letter, dated April 14, 1924, that Berlin sent to The Times. In the letter he made clear that he had no existing ties to Waterson, Berlin & Snyder Co., which had recently filed a lawsuit against ASCAP. The lawsuit, in part, “sought to compel the defendants to account for all of the licenses issued permitting the broadcasting of the songs and musical compositions belonging to the plaintiff,” as The Times had reported days earlier.Berlin explained that he had “severed” his connection to the firm years earlier. He implored The Times to make this distinction in forthcoming articles: “I would consider it a special favor if you make it perfectly clear that I, Irving Berlin, have no connection whatsoever with the firm of Waterson, Berlin & Snyder.” (The firm filed for bankruptcy in 1929.)Berlin lived to be 101; when he died in 1989, The Times called him the “nation’s songwriter” in his obituary. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Music

      A Concert Celebrates Jimmy Carter’s 100th Birthday, With Music and Thanks

      by

      The night included gospel hymns and “America the Beautiful” and the B-52s lighting up the Fox Theater, one of the oldest auditoriums in Atlanta, with a performance of “Love Shack.” In one moment, the crowd was on its feet as Angélique Kidjo, the acclaimed Beninese musician, sang and danced. In another, they shimmied and sang along to a cover of “Ramblin’ Man.”The collection of artists and performances transcended generations, genres and geography. But one thread bound them together on Tuesday night: affection for former President Jimmy Carter, which they were eager to express in celebration of his coming 100th birthday.“You can see he had a relationship to music — look at how we gathered here together tonight,” said the country singer Carlene Carter, who is not related to the former president but said he still feels like kin. “He used it as a powerful tool to bring people together.”The civil rights leader Andrew Young, seated, and his wife, Carolyn, standing, share a laugh with, from left, Thomas and Henry Carter, great-grandchildren of Jimmy Carter and Jason Carter, his grandson.Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesCarter’s actual birthday was still almost a couple of weeks away, and Carter himself was 160 miles away, at home in Plains, Ga., where he has been in hospice care for the past 19 months. But the concert was intended as a gift, one that will be broadcast as a special on Georgia Public Television on Oct. 1. The family said he plans to watch as part of his birthday festivities.The concert in many ways mirrored the scope and ambitions of the man it was celebrating: Global and idealistic in its reach, but firmly planted in Georgia, molded by religious and cultural traditions as well as the rich but complicated history of the rural South.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

    • 113 Shares109 Views

      in Music

      Natasha Rothwell and Samara Joy on Finding Their Voices

      by

      The “How to Die Alone” creator and actress and the Grammy-winning jazz singer talk about genre, improvisation and romantic comedies.Admiration Society shows two creative people in two different fields in one wide-ranging conversation.The television actress and writer Natasha Rothwell grew up as an itinerant Air Force kid and started her career in improvisational comedy at places like New York’s Upright Citizens Brigade; she credits both experiences with nurturing her resilience and curiosity. After writing for “Saturday Night Live” in 2014 and then appearing in the 2016 Netflix series “The Characters,” she was hired to write on “Insecure” (2016-21), Issa Rae’s breakthrough Black rom-com HBO series. Rothwell, 43, became better known, however, for portraying Kelli, the show’s frank, sexually free sidekick. She then went on to play Belinda, a disillusioned masseuse at a Hawaiian resort, on the first season of Mike White’s “The White Lotus” in 2021. She’ll reappear on that show’s third season, which airs on Max early next year. And she just finished her showrunning debut as the creator and star of “How to Die Alone,” a New York-set comedy-drama series that premiered on Hulu earlier this month. She plays Mel, a single airport employee whose near-death experience shocks her into living a deeper life.Rothwell is also a jazz obsessive who’s put in many hours of karaoke. One of her favorite artists is Samara Joy, who at the age of 24 has already won three Grammys: Best New Artist and Best Jazz Vocal Album in 2023, followed by Best Jazz Performance this year. Descended from two generations of gospel singer royalty (her grandparents co-founded the Savettes; her vocalist-bassist father toured with Andraé Crouch), Joy excels at rebooting jazz standards with tight new arrangements and dreamy, conversational lyrics. In 2020, while still a student at the State University of New York’s Purchase College, she performed Duke Ellington’s “Take Love Easy,” inspired by Ella Fitzgerald’s 1974 version, in a video posted to Facebook that became a pandemic-era viral hit. She has since released two albums, both influenced by her love of contemporary romance narratives.Joy has been touring almost nonstop for the past three years but, by early summer, when she spoke with Rothwell for the first time one evening, she had completed her third album, “Portrait,” which comes out in October. Their conversation took place over video — Joy at her parents’ home in the Bronx and Rothwell calling in from Thailand, where she’d just filmed White’s show. “Both of us are closing some chapters,” said Rothwell — and each was eager to cheer the other on. By the end of a 90-minute conversation, they’d already made plans to meet soon in person.Natasha Rothwell: When I was watching the Grammys [earlier this year], you would’ve thought I’d caught the spirit in my hotel. I was screaming for you, girl. You so deserved [it]. Where are you in New York?Samara Joy: I’m in the Bronx right now, where I grew up. But I’m moving to Harlem.N.R.: I used to live in New York. I’m in L.A. now, but I set everything I write and produce in New York because I’m trying to get a studio to pay me to come back.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

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Theater

      ‘You’re Basically on a Broadway Stage, With New Friends’

      by

      At the touring dance party Broadway Rave, the playlist is all show tunes. But don’t worry, no house remixes of “I Dreamed a Dream” here.Julia Cochrane drove for four hours, to New York from Boston, so she could spend last Saturday night immersed in all things Broadway. But not in Manhattan.Instead, she headed to Huntington, Long Island. There, over 100 people packed into Spotlight at the Paramount, a small bar attached to a concert hall, for a touring dance party called Broadway Rave, at which theater kids turned theater adults dance and sing onstage in between shots of tequila.“People who love this, they just want to come together,” said Cochrane, 22, who attended with her friend Hannah Opisso, 23, a Long Island resident who learned about the dance party via Instagram. “It’s like you’re basically on a Broadway stage, with new friends.”“You see these folks get onstage and have the courage to be up there,” said Ethan Maccoby, whose company presents Broadway Rave.Ye Fan for The New York TimesCochrane and Opisso met as students at the State University of New York, Plattsburgh, where Broadway cast albums were their pregame music of choice. Last weekend, Broadway musicals brought them together again, and at one point they took the stage to sing “Meet the Plastics” from the “Mean Girls” musical.Attendees don’t have microphones — this isn’t karaoke — but they are encouraged to rush the stage to sing and dance when their favorite songs come on. And the term “rave” is a misnomer: The playlist is mostly uncut cast album material — though last weekend those theater fans may have caught the remix flair at the beginning of “Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats.” Other songs that night included “Out Tonight” (“Rent”), “Popular” (“Wicked”), “Sincerely Me” (“Dear Evan Hansen”) and a few tracks from “Hamilton,” including “The Schuyler Sisters” and “Wait for It.”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