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      Oliver Anthony Says ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ Is Not a Republican Anthem

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      “I wrote this song about those people,” Oliver Anthony said of his No. 1 hit, after presidential candidates answered a question about his Billboard hit at their first debate.The singer Oliver Anthony, whose song “Rich Men North of Richmond” has soared to the top of the Billboard singles chart, released a YouTube video on Friday denouncing Republicans and conservative outlets for co-opting his song.“It was funny seeing that presidential debate,” Anthony said. “I wrote that song about those people.”A clip of Anthony performing was played by Fox News moderators at the start of the Republican presidential debate on Wednesday night in Milwaukee, after a series of videos of Americans lamenting conditions under President Biden, including inflation and homelessness. The clip showed Anthony — with guitar in hand and two dogs at his feet — singing: “These rich men north of Richmond / Lord knows they all just wanna have total control.”The song, which Anthony uploaded to YouTube earlier this month, had caught fire with conservative figures like Matt Walsh and Laura Ingraham, who described it as an authentic expression of working-class American life. Widely perceived as a conservative anthem, it also drew critiques from some on the left, who called the lyrics racist.At the debate, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida was the first to respond to a question asking why the song had struck a chord with so many Americans.“Our country is in decline,” Mr. DeSantis said. “This decline is not inevitable. It’s a choice.” He added, “Those rich men north of Richmond have put us in this situation.”Anthony said Friday it “cracks me up” that the candidates had been forced to listen to his song onstage, because he was singing about powerful people like them.The new video showed him behind the wheel of his truck, as heavy rain pelted the windows. “That song has nothing to do with Joe Biden,” he said. “You know, it’s a lot bigger than Joe Biden.”Anthony, who is from Farmville, Va., also said that he was fed up by what he perceived to be the weaponization of his music by both the right and left.“It’s aggravating seeing people on conservative news try to identify with me like I’m one of them,” he said. “I see the right, trying to characterize me as one of their own. And I see the left trying to discredit me.”The left, he added, had misinterpreted his lyrics as being attacks on the poor when, he said, he was trying to defend them. “I’ve got to be clear that my message like with any of my songs, it references the inefficiencies of the government.”Reason, a libertarian magazine, had lauded what it perceived as Anthony’s anti-tax message. But liberal commentators were troubled by a lyric about the “obese milkin’ welfare.” The folk singer Billy Bragg even wrote his own version of the song and cautioned Anthony about punching down.At first, Anthony appeared to welcome the attention from conservatives. He granted Fox News the right to use it in the debate, Politico reported. And he gave an interview to the network, saying that he had been motivated to write the song because of his own struggles, which he assumed were shared by others.“It resonates the suffering in our world right now, like even in our own country,” he said then. “We’ve had years of people feeling depressed and hopeless and every time you look at the T.V. or get online everything’s negative.” He added that “corporate media and education” had helped to sow division.Anthony returned to that theme in his video on Friday, saying that despite how it may appear, his music had actually united people.“It’s driving people crazy to see the unity that’s come from this from all walks,” Anthony said. “This isn’t a Republican and Democrat thing. This isn’t even a United States thing. Like, this has been a global response.”Anthony, who could not immediately be reached for an interview on Friday evening, described himself as a “nobody” who through some divine intervention had been tasked with sending a message that things needed to change. Before his meteoric rise to fame, he was an unknown songwriter. Although he performs as Oliver Anthony, his full name is Christopher Anthony Lunsford.“I don’t know what this country is going to look like in 10 or 20 years if things don’t change,” he said. “I don’t know what this world is going to look like. And like, something has to be done about it. You know?” More

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      Haptic Suits Let You Feel Music Through Your Skin

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      Jay Alan Zimmerman, a deaf composer and musician, was used to positioning himself near the speakers at clubs, straining to feel the vibrations of songs he could not hear.So when he was invited to test a new technology, a backpack, known as a haptic suit, designed for him to experience music as vibrations on his skin — a kick drum to the ankles, a snare drum to the spine — he was excited.“With captioning and sign language interpretation, your brain is forced to be in more than one place at a time,” Mr. Zimmerman, who began losing his hearing in his early 20s, said in a recent video interview.“With a haptic system,” he continued, “it can go directly to your body at the exact same moment, and there’s real potential for you to actually feel music in your body.”The type of haptic suit Mr. Zimmerman first tested, now nearly a decade ago, has recently become more accessible to the public. The devices were available at events this summer at Lincoln Center in New York City — including at a recent silent disco night, an event in which people dance while listening to music via wireless headphones — as well as at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, in March, a Greta Van Fleet concert in Las Vegas and a performance at Opera Philadelphia.The devices, which translate music into vibrations that are transmitted to different points on the suit, are designed to be worn by both hearing individuals and those who are deaf or have hearing loss. Developed by the Philadelphia-based company Music: Not Impossible, the device consists of two ankle bands, two wrist bands and a backpack that fastens with double straps over the rib cage. Wearing one of them feels a little like a full-body bear hug from a massage chair.Haptic suits, which are also used in virtual reality and video games, have been around for several decades. But the Music: Not Impossible suits are unique because the devices turn individual notes of music into specific vibrations. Other companies are also producing haptic products designed to capture the sonic experiences of various events. Examples include the crack of a baseball bat at a sporting event transmitted through vibrating seats, or more everyday experiences like the sound of a dog barking translated through a pattern of buzzes on a wearable bracelet.“There’s a revolution in haptic technology going on right now,” said Mark D. Fletcher, a researcher at the University of Southampton in Britain, who studies the use of haptics for supporting people who are deaf or have hearing loss.The development of the suits has benefited from recent advancements in microprocessors, wireless technology, batteries and artificial intelligence, he said, all key components in the emerging market of wearable haptic devices.The device consists of two ankle bands, two wristbands and a backpack that fastens with double straps over the rib cage.Mick Ebeling, the founder of the Los Angeles-based Not Impossible Labs, was first inspired to experiment with haptic suits in 2014 when he saw a video of an event featuring a deaf D.J., with bass-heavy music pulsing through speakers facing the floor and people dancing barefoot. Mr. Ebeling wanted to find a better way for deaf people to experience music.Daniel Belquer, a composer who has a master’s degree in theater, soon came on board to find a way to transmit the experience of music straight into the brain. That mission, Mr. Belquer said, soon expanded to a goal of creating a tactile experience of music that was available for everyone, including people without hearing loss.Mr. Belquer joined the project because he was interested in helping the deaf community, but also because he was intrigued as a composer. He had written a master’s thesis on listening and was already producing sound with vibrating objects in his own shows.Mr. Belquer worked with engineers at Avnet, an electronics company, to produce a more nuanced haptic feedback system for use with musical experiences, which creates a sensation of touch through vibrations and wireless transmission without lag time. But the first prototypes were heavy and not sensitive enough to really translate the music.“As a composer, artistic expression is important, not just the tech side,” he said.He solicited feedback from members of the deaf community, including Mandy Harvey, a deaf singer and songwriter; as well as Mr. Zimmerman, the composer; and the sign language interpreter Amber Galloway.Mr. Zimmerman said that the first version of the device he tested was “not satisfying.”“Imagine having seven or eight different cellphones strapped to various parts of your body, attached to wires,” he said. “And then they all just start going off randomly.”Mr. Belquer worked to perfect the technology, he said, until up to 24 instruments or vocal elements in a song could each be translated to a different point on the suit.By 2018, he had created the first version of the current model, which offers three levels of intensity that can be set individually, as well as a fully customizable fit.Amanda Landers, a 36-year-old sign language instructor at Syosset High School on Long Island who has progressive hearing loss that began around the time she was in high school, said she thinks the suits are a radical way to create access for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.She first wore one of the vests last year, during a private demonstration with Mr. Belquer and Flavia Naslausky, the head of business development and strategy at Music: Not Impossible, after coming across the Not Impossible Labs website while researching emerging technologies for people with hearing loss to show her students.The company played her snippets from the film “Interstellar,” whose composer, Hans Zimmer, was nominated for an Academy Award for best original score. The biggest surprise, Ms. Landers said, was the intensity of the sensations.“When the song was getting lower, not only did the different parts of you vibrate; it actually got softer and more in-depth,” she said in a recent video interview. “And when it was louder, my whole body was shaking. Just the level of precision they put into it was astounding.”Lincoln Center made the Music: Not Impossible haptic suits available at two of its silent disco nights this summer. Attendees also listened to music via wireless headphones.The technology, which has been tested at a range of up to three-quarters of a mile from a stage, works for both throbbing bass tracks and classical pieces (it was mostly dance-pop and electronic music in the mix at a silent disco on a recent Saturday night at Lincoln Center).“What they’re doing is so important,” Ms. Landers said of Music: Not Impossible’s vision of creating a shared musical experience for all concertgoers. “People often look at inclusivity as something that’s like, ‘Oh, that’s so complicated,’ and then they don’t do it, but it’s not that hard.”Music: Not Impossible currently provides the suits to organizations as part of a full-package deal, which includes up to 90 suits; a team of on-site staff members who will assist people with getting them on, answer questions and troubleshoot the technology; as well as a team of “vibro D.J.s” trained to customize the vibration transmission locations for each song in a set.Prices start at a few thousand dollars for a “basic experience,” Mr. Belquer said, which includes a couple of suits and a vibro D.J., and can reach six figures for experiences that absorb a significant part of the company’s 90-suit inventory in the United States.(Lincoln Center, which has made the suits available at a few events each summer since 2021, had 75 suits at two silent disco nights and a Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra concert this summer, up from the 50 it offered per event last year.)“The only requirement that we make on that front is that the deaf and hard-of-hearing never get charged for our experience,” Mr. Belquer said.Attendees at Lincoln Center’s silent disco nights swayed to dance-pop tracks. But the unaffordability for most consumers is one reason that haptic suits, while promising, are currently an impractical option for most individuals who are deaf or have hearing loss.Dickie Hearts, a 25-year-old actor and artist in New York who was born Deaf and counts himself a regular among the city’s club scene, had the chance to try an earlier version of the Music: Not Impossible suits at a concert in Los Angeles around eight years ago. (Deaf is capitalized by some people in references to a distinct cultural identity.)While he appreciates the intention behind them, he said, he prefers having live American Sign Language interpretation alongside captions that convey the lyrics.“Feeling the vibration has never been an issue for me,” he said in a recent video call, conducted with the assistance of an ASL interpreter. “I want to know what the words are. I don’t want to have to reach out to my hearing friend and be like, ‘Oh, what song are they playing?’”Another concern, he said, is that the packs could make Deaf people targets for bullies. At the event where he tested them in Los Angeles, he said, only Deaf people were using them, which made him feel singled out.But, he added, if hearing individuals in the audience were wearing the suits as well, as at Lincoln Center’s silent disco nights, he would be interested in being part of that.Mr. Belquer said that Music: Not Impossible hoped to create a product everyone could use.That vision came to life at the Lincoln Center silent disco. As dusk fell, about 75 people, wearing either red, green or blue flashing headphones had a chance to experience the suits. They bopped and swayed to pulsing dance-pop tracks sometimes alone, carving their own circle of rhythm, and sometimes in groups.“It’s like raindrops on my shoulders,” said Regina Valdez, 55, who lives in Harlem.“Wow, it’s vibrating,” said Lucas Garcia, 6, who appeared surprised as he looked down at his vest. His parents, Chris Garcia and Aida Alvarez, who were also wearing vests, danced nearby.It was — as designed — impossible to tell who was deaf and who was hearing.But Mr. Zimmerman, who first tested the suits, said he was still hoping for a few more tweaks.“I would like to have it be so good that a beautiful note on violin would make me cry,” he said. “And a funny blast of a trombone would make me laugh.”Katie Van Syckle More

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      Jerry Moss, the ‘M’ of A&M Records, Is Dead at 88

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      In partnership with Herb Alpert, he turned a small independent label into a powerhouse with a roster full of superstars.Jerry Moss, who with the trumpeter Herb Alpert founded A&M Records, which at its peak from the 1960s to the ’80s was an independent powerhouse behind hits by the Carpenters, the Police, Janet Jackson, Peter Frampton and Mr. Alpert’s group, the Tijuana Brass, among many others, has died at his home in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles. He was 88.His family announced the death in a statement on Wednesday.Over their more than 30 years with A&M, Mr. Moss and Mr. Alpert developed an eclectic roster — Cat Stevens, Carole King, Supertramp and the grunge band Soundgarden all released music there — and established the label’s reputation for being supportive of artists and treating them fairly.Sting, who signed to A&M with the Police in 1978 and has remained associated with the label throughout his career, said in an interview on Thursday that those values radiated directly from Mr. Moss and Mr. Alpert.“They were gentlemen,” he said. “I think their extraordinary success was really predicated on those very human qualities — not being ruthless businessmen or kill-or-be-killed people. They were artist friendly.”Built from humble beginnings in Mr. Alpert’s garage, A&M — its name was taken from the initials of its founders’ last names — became a major force in pop music and eventually earned its founders a huge payday. In 1989, they sold A&M’s recorded music business to PolyGram for a reported $500 million (about $1.2 billion in today’s money), though Mr. Moss and Mr. Alpert continued to manage the label until 1993. In 2000, they sold Rondor, their music publishing catalog, to Universal Music for an estimated $400 million.Mr. Alpert set the tone for how the label interacted with musicians after what he said in an interview on Thursday were his own unhappy experiences, early in his career, with big labels that had treated him “like a number.” That approach also gave some negotiating leverage to A&M, which in its early days lacked the financial resources of its corporate competitors in pursuing new acts.Mr. Moss, who began his career promoting pop and doo-wop records to radio stations, ran the business side of A&M with its longtime president, Gil Friesen, who died in 2012. But he also insisted on fair dealings with artists.“You can’t force people to do a certain kind of music,” Mr. Moss said in an interview with The New York Times in 2010. “They make their best music when they are doing what they want to do, not what we want them to do.”Early on, A&M signed the country singer Waylon Jennings, who cut a handful of singles but disagreed about his career trajectory with Mr. Alpert, who favored pop material. When Mr. Jennings got an offer from RCA Victor’s Nashville office, A&M agreed to release him from his deal.“I looked at Jerry and said, ‘This guy is going to be a big artist.’ He said, ‘I know,’” Mr. Alpert recalled. “At that point I realized we could be a big success with that attitude. We let Waylon out of the contract. He went on to a great career, and we remained friends with him.”Mr. Moss with one of A&M’s most successful artists, Janet Jackson, with platinum albums for her 1986 album, “Control.” The label’s eclectic roster also included (among many other artists) the Police, Peter Frampton and the Carpenters.Lester Cohen/Getty ImagesJerome Sheldon Moss was born in the Bronx on May 8, 1935, to Irving and Rose Moss. His father was a department store salesman, his mother a homemaker.Mr. Moss graduated from Brooklyn College in 1957. While waiting tables at a resort, he met Marvin Cane, one of the founders of Coed Records, who offered him a job pitching records to radio stations for $75 a week. His first big success was the doo-wop ballad “16 Candles” by the Crests, which reached No. 2 on the Billboard pop singles chart in late 1958.Mr. Moss moved to Los Angeles intending to enter the television business, but instead he soon set himself up again as a radio promoter. It was there that he met Mr. Alpert, who had worked as a songwriter and was attempting to establish himself as a vocalist under the name Dore Alpert.In 1962, the two young men went into business together, investing $100 apiece. They released “Tell It to the Birds,” a single credited to Dore Alpert, on a label they called Carnival.After learning that another record company was already using that name, they settled on A&M for their next release: “The Lonely Bull,” a trumpet-led instrumental with atmospheric sounds recorded at a bullfighting ring in Mexico. They borrowed $35,000 to press the single, which went to No. 6 and immediately put A&M on the map.By 1966, A&M was as successful as any label in pop music. That year, Mr. Alpert and the Tijuana Brass outsold the Beatles and had four albums in the top 10 at the same time. The group dominated the easy-listening market of the era with hits like “A Taste of Honey” and “Spanish Flea”; Mr. Alpert himself had a No. 1 vocal hit in 1968 with “This Guy’s in Love With You.” A&M also signed the Brazilian pianist and bandleader Sérgio Mendes and his band Brasil ’66, which toured with Mr. Alpert.In 1966 the label moved into Charlie Chaplin’s former film studio lot in Hollywood. A&M later signed another huge soft-pop act, the Carpenters, and, through deals with other labels, put out records by Cat Stevens (who now goes by the name Yusuf Islam) and Carole King, including her blockbuster 1971 LP, “Tapestry.”In 1976, A&M released Mr. Frampton’s double live album “Frampton Comes Alive!,” which became one of the defining rock hits of the decade, eventually going eight times platinum. In the 1980s, A&M signed Ms. Jackson, whose album “Control” (1986) went to No. 1 and established her as a major talent.After selling A&M, Mr. Moss and Mr. Alpert briefly ran another label, Almo Sounds, whose artists included Gillian Welch and Garbage. The founders were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as nonperformers in 2006.Mr. Moss’s survivors include his wife, Tina Moss; two sons, Ron and Harrison; two daughters, Jennifer and Daniela; and five grandchildren.Mr. Moss at a Songwriters Hall of Fame event in New York in 2012.Theo Wargo/Getty Images North AmericaIn his later years, Mr. Moss had notable success owning racehorses. One, Giacomo — named after one of Sting’s sons — won the Kentucky Derby in 2005, at extraordinary odds. Another racehorse, Zenyatta, was named after one of the Police’s albums, “Zenyatta Mondatta” (1980).Mr. Moss was active in local philanthropy. In 2020, he and his wife donated $25 million to the Music Center, a performing arts complex in downtown Los Angeles that includes the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Ahmanson Theater, Walt Disney Concert Hall and other spaces.But Mr. Moss said that he was at his happiest making records with Mr. Alpert.“It is the best feeling in the world,” he told The Times. “I’d turn to Herbie and say, man, what in the world did we do to deserve this?” More

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      Pharrell Williams Shares His Inspirations, From Henry Taylor to ‘Jabberjaw’

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      Pharrell Williams — the clothing designer who succeeded Virgil Abloh in February 2023, just over a year after his death, as Louis Vuitton’s men’s creative director; the Grammy-winning record producer behind such pop masterpieces as Justin Timberlake’s “Justified” (2002) and Clipse’s “Hell Hath No Fury” (2006); the musician and performer who in conversation casually refers to the French electronic duo Daft Punk as “the robots” and Karl Lagerfeld as “Karl” — doesn’t like talking about himself. “This is absolutely Dante’s ‘Inferno,’” he said over the phone this past June, a few days after lighting up Paris’s Pont Neuf with his spectacular debut for the French fashion house. At one point, it seemed like he might give up on the conversation altogether. “This is straight up like voice mail syndrome,” he said. “I mean, do you like listening to yourself on voice mail?” Williams, 50, was raised in Virginia Beach by his father, Pharaoh, a handyman, and his mother, Carolyn, a teacher. It was there that he met numerous lifelong collaborators, including Chad Hugo, his producing partner in the Neptunes, a duo as important to the sound of hip-hop over the past 30 years as the Funk Brothers were to Motown in the 1960s. A dedicated polymath who shifts between styles, genres and media, Williams is his best, most creative self in the presence of water. He grew up in a housing project called Atlantis, right by the beach; today, he holds an annual music and art festival in Virginia Beach called Something in the Water. And when he’s not in Miami on Biscayne Bay, he spends his time in Paris, where he has a music studio at the LVMH headquarters overlooking the Seine.At top: “This was taken in Los Angeles last year, a few months before the Louis Vuitton announcement. Being a producer and a creative director are similar. I can go from apparel to drums, from trunks to melodies. Within my design studio, I have a section allocated to music, so I go back and forth all day.”Left: Launchmetrics/Spotlight. Right: © Henry Taylor, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Fredrik NilsenLeft and right: “I wanted to work with [the American artist] Henry Taylor [whose paintings, one of which is shown here, were embroidered onto garments and bags from Williams’s first collection for Louis Vuitton]. It’s not lost on me that this appointment was given to another Black man from America. This is pivotal for us, you know, after Virgil, our brother who’s gone back up to the stars. I think it’s important that we continue to tell interesting stories. I don’t have an agenda — I am the agenda. I want not only people who look like me but people who don’t look like me to be inspired by this moment. And working with an artist like Henry Taylor helps tell that story.”From left: Dre Rojas; courtesy of Helen Williams; Sam HayesLeft: “This was taken at a Chanel show in Africa last year. [Williams was a brand ambassador from 2014 to 2022.] We went to Dakar, Senegal, and I had on a fresh pair of [Adidas] Sambas. Years ago, I’d asked Karl [Lagerfeld, Chanel’s longtime creative director who died in 2019] to take the house to Africa, and he said we would get to it, but he passed before we got a chance to.”Center: “My oldest son [Rocket, pictured here with Williams at Disney World in 2012] makes beats. We [Pharrell and his wife, the model and fashion designer Helen Williams] also have triplets. It’s a triple handful. We say it’s beautifully intense and intensely beautiful.” Right: “We turned a house in Miami into a studio. I have no idea [when we set it up], but it’s been a couple of years. I’m terrible with chronology: I live in the moment, but I process things in the future and I get lost in the past. In Miami, it’s all about the weather and the humidity. It’s always been very inspiring to me. It’s fun to record there on the water, which sounds like a flex, but it’s really not.” From left: Kourtrajmeuf; Vinyls/Alamy; Dre RojasLeft: “With this Vuitton appointment, it’s like I’m a perpetual student. If I’m the king of anything, it’s the king of being a pupil. I knew I wanted to work on Damier [the brand’s signature checkerboard pattern]. I’ve always loved pixelated camo, so we did it with Damier, leveling it up, and that’s how we got Damouflage [pictured here on a model during a fitting earlier this year]. Being surrounded by so many talented people is the best. I mean, I’m an Aries, so I’ve always been superimpulsive. But without the resources and the people, I’d be just like every other person with a great idea.”Center: “As a kid, I listened to a lot of records my aunt would play in her house. Parliament-Funkadelic had songs that blew my mind. I also think [Kraftwerk’s sixth studio album] ‘Trans-Europe Express’ (1977) happened around that time. Atlantis was like this neighborhood in a bubble. It’s where music was everything and, when certain songs came on, it was like a musical happening right there in front of you. You could either be a part of it or you could stand back and watch.” Right: “This picture was taken earlier this year at Le Café V [a Louis Vuitton cafe in Osaka]. Japan is my favorite place. On my 50th orbit, I had a birthday party organized by [the Tokyo-based artistic director of Kenzo and hip-hop producer] Nigo. One of the most amazing gifts is his presence in my life. Twenty years ago, I needed to go to Japan to record something, so Nigo arranged for me to come to his studio, which is basically a compound on five floors of a building. One floor is a showroom, one is a photo studio, another is a recording studio, and I was like, ‘Wow, this guy lives what’s in his head.’ That changed me. I was so used to bragging because that was the world I came from. And then I met Nigo, who barely said anything. He didn’t have to. Humility is in the Tokyo air like the humidity in Virginia.”From left: Dr. Carolyn Williams; Hanna-Barbera/Photofest; Columbia/PhotofestLeft: “I think this picture is from around 1976, so when I was 3 years old. I’m the third of eight kids — two sisters and five brothers. I want to say ‘Star Wars’ (1977) came out around then. I just remember being back in the Atlantis apartments in Virginia Beach. I didn’t know life was as hard as it was, because it was fun to me.” Center: “My favorite cartoon as a kid was ‘Jabberjaw’ (1976), and the band he played in was called the Neptunes. So that’s where the name [of his songwriting and production duo with Chad Hugo] came from.”Right: “I love watching movies to escape. But the funny thing is, I couldn’t tell you from what. My favorite movie is ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ (1977). I relate to Richard Dreyfuss’s character and the alien.” More

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      How Metallica Hard-Wires a Different Set List Every Night

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      On Aug. 4, Metallica played the first North American date of its M72 World Tour in New Jersey.Each show is designed to be different, with its own distinct set list. The band’s drummer, Lars Ulrich, broke down the opening night set — and explained some of the other cues, too. How Metallica Hard-Wires a Different Set List Every NightThe metal institution is on the road supporting its 11th album. Drawing on four decades of songs, the drummer Lars Ulrich keeps fans, and his bandmates, on their toes.Aug. 16, 2023, 5:00 a.m. ETIn Metallica’s frenetic 1983 ode to headbanging, “Whiplash,” the band’s guitarist and lead singer, James Hetfield, barks, “We’ll never stop, we’ll never quit, ’cause we’re Metallica.” Somehow, across four decades marked by success but also death, addiction and at least one very public near-implosion, the band has kept its word.This year, Metallica released its 11th full-length studio album, “72 Seasons.” Its debut LP, “Kill ’Em All,” also turned 40, just days before the quartet arrived in New Jersey for the first North American date on its M72 World Tour. Metallica isn’t the only band doing stadium tours even as its members pass 60, but not every band makes its bones slamming through songs that regularly top 190 beats per minute.That tenacity was evident on a Friday night this month at MetLife Stadium as the tour touched down in East Rutherford. Drums pounded. Riffs chugged. Solos melted the faces off an all-ages crowd of about 80,000, dressed almost exclusively in black.But how does a band keep it fresh after, by the drummer Lars Ulrich’s count, performing “Master of Puppets” 1,697 times onstage? The answer is by constantly “mixing it up,” said Ulrich, who creates the band’s set lists the day of each show — a “safeguard,” he added, “against ending up on autopilot.”That may sound obvious, but it wasn’t always the case. “Thirty years ago, we took going out and executing a set really seriously,” Ulrich explained by phone last week, when the goal was nailing everything “almost like in a robotic way.”Metallica — which also features the guitarist Kirk Hammett and the bassist Robert Trujillo — started fiddling with its encores and covers as its catalog kept growing. About 20 years ago, on the “St. Anger” tour, the group set an ambitious goal: Never again play the same set list twice.From left: Kirk Hammett and James Hetfield of Metallica onstage at MetLife Stadium on Aug. 4.Bryan Derballa for The New York TimesDates on the M72 tour, which run through September 2024, are organized around “no repeat weekends,” featuring two shows in each city with two different lists and two different sets of opening acts. (The band will play two weekends in Mexico City, where the tour wraps up.) The stage is doughnut shaped, with fans standing inside and out; the setup allows band members to face different parts of the crowd at different times, and it relies on four drum setups, creating multiple front rows.“Mixing it up” with the set list itself is a surprisingly complex affair. Metallica productions go big, and the band’s elaborate program of pyrotechnics, lighting and interstitial audio-video, among other flourishes — the New Jersey show included a drop of dozens of giant black-and-yellow beach balls — has historically discouraged major changes to the list. Having four drum kits this time didn’t simplify things.Eventually, the band developed what Ulrich called a “slot” system based on the band’s different “food groups” of songs, a reference to their feel and tempo. Slot 1 (of 16) on the M72 tour, for example, will always be an upper-mid-tempo fan favorite — Day 1 at MetLife, it was “Creeping Death” — that has a quickly recognizable opening riff: not too fast or complicated. But the songs in that slot will rotate. Slot 10 should always be a ballad, like “Nothing Else Matters.” The closer is always “Master of Puppets” or “Enter Sandman.”Ulrich also keeps careful data about what song the band has played where, and tries to tailor the set list accordingly.“At times it turns into a science” he said. “We’re in Montreal now, and I’ll have all the info for the last 20 years that we’ve played Montreal in front of me. And I can put a set list together where the deeper cuts will not be repeated.”Certain songs, like “Sandman,” “Puppets” and “One,” are in constant rotation. Ulrich said the band calls them the “toe-tapping favorites” — an odd, and perhaps ironic, choice of words for songs better known for headbanging.A lot of bands begin to mellow as they mature; by most accounts, that happened to Metallica over three decades ago, enough time for the band to have since come full circle. Like the band’s two most recent albums, “72 Seasons” continues Metallica’s return to the thrash-metal style that defined its early years, and the tour supporting it has thus far followed suit: light on covers and ballads, heavy on the heavy. New shredders like “72 Seasons” and “Lux Aeterna” slot tightly into lists packed with thrash classics like “Seek & Destroy” (1983), “Battery” (1986) and “Blackened” (1988).Ulrich spoke in detail about the set list from that first night at MetLife and helped decipher some of the notes. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.‘Creeping Death’“This is one we would call a fan favorite, and it’s not one that we always play. It’s got really good energy in the riff, and it sits in a kind of an up-tempo place without being so super fast that it just becomes, like, an indistinguishable roar. But it’s got good accents, good dynamics. It’s got a breakdown after the second chorus and the guitar solo, where it goes to a shout-along part where James gets everybody pretty engaged. [‘Die! Die! Die!’]What makes a good opening song? I mean, ask a hundred people, you get a hundred different answers. So none of this is science. But after a while, you start figuring out instinctively that this song maybe works better than this other song. Often when you are touring on the back of an album, the default is to open with the opening track off the album that you’re touring with. I wanted purposely to not do that, just to sort of challenge ourselves.”‘72 Seasons’“’72 Seasons’ is the opening song on the latest album, and it’s also the title track. It has a real forward motion and a lot of energy, and I think it’s really representative and indicative of the head space and the mood and the energy of the new album. So it feels like a great way to kind of introduce what we’re doing these days.The title refers to the first 18 years of your life; in broad strokes, it’s basically the idea that the first 72 seasons of your life shape who you become, for better or worse — and as you move through life, you’re trying to expand on those experiences, or maybe shake them, get away from them.”‘Fade to Black’“We’re all very open about where we’re at with our moods and all of us dealing with various levels of mental health. And that feels like it’s less of a taboo than it was, say, 20 or 30 years ago. I think James, increasingly, is very comfortable onstage talking about how he’s doing and how he’s feeling, and often he’ll send ‘Fade to Black’ off with some personal thoughts or something that relates to how he’s doing in that moment, in the spirit of sending good energy to people who are receiving it from a place of struggle. And the takeaway message is that you’re not alone, and that we’re in this together. I’m an only child. I’ve struggled with being an outsider and a loner all my life. And, you know, being in a band, playing concerts and all that is the best remedy for me to feel that I’m not alone.”‘Orion’“It’s one that we have enjoyed playing a little bit more in recent years — we actually opened with it when we played with the Rolling Stones. It has a unique palette and illustrates the different songwriting inspirations and influences that exist within the band. When we’re playing it, the spirit of Cliff [Burton, the band’s original bassist, who died in a 1986 bus crash] is definitely present in the building. And Robert channels Cliff’s spirit in the part that he’s playing so incredibly well. It’s a beautiful, beautiful moment.”‘Master of Puppets’“‘Master of Puppets’ is actually the song we’ve played the most live; it’s been a part of every tour since we released it. It got a significant, unexpected boost last year when it became part of the ‘Stranger Things’ finale. And who would’ve thought that a 37-year-old song that’s over eight minutes long and is pretty heavy throughout would resonate in the way that it does with a new and younger generation of listeners? But how crazy cool is that?”What’s the ‘Hang’ Cue?“‘Hang’ means basically the songs are connected — that there’s no, like, full stop. It doesn’t go to silence. So it just means stay on a chord. And then the next song comes out of that rather than out of a vocal introduction or a tape.”From left: Hetfield, the bassist Robert Trujillo and the drummer Lars Ulrich. The band is always mixing up its set lists, Ulrich said, to avoid “ending up on autopilot.”Bryan Derballa for The New York TimesThe Four Drum Kits“This is the first time we’ve done a 360-degree stage in a stadium setup. We tried to crack the code on that for years. Everything that we had done always had a center point. We were going down this rabbit hole a year ago, and all of a sudden it was like, Well, hang on, why does the band have to be in the center? And then it was like, What’s the opposite of the band being in the center? And that would be the fans being in the center. And that’s when we came up with the doughnut concept, where you play on the doughnut itself and then the fans are in the doughnut hole. And then, well, where do the drums go? Then the concept of the four drum kits — one drum kit in each of the four different directions — came up, and then it sort of went from there.You know, all this [expletive] makes a lot of sense when it’s in an email or it looks really good on a napkin. Nine months later you’re in the first venue trying to figure out what the [expletive] you’re doing.”

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      Magoo, Rapper and Former Timbaland Collaborator, Dies at 50

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      Melvin Barcliff, who rapped under the name Magoo, was a teenager in Virginia when he joined a hip-hop scene that still influences music today.The rapper Magoo, a foundational member of a groundbreaking hip-hop scene that emerged in Virginia in the 1990s and that included his collaborators Timbaland, Missy Elliott and Pharrell Williams, has died at 50.Magoo, whose birth name was Melvin Barcliff, died this weekend in Williamsburg, Va., according to his wife, Meco Barcliff, and a statement from his family. Barcliff said that he had no known health problems other than asthma, but that he had not been feeling well in the past week. The coroner’s office was still investigating the cause, she said.Magoo was a child when rap music was first broadcast on the radio, and he credited it with helping save him from a difficult early childhood in Norfolk, Va. At first, he thought hip-hop was something he could dance and listen to, but was made only by people in the Northeast, he said in an April 2013 interview for the hip-hop oral history collection at the College of William & Mary.As rap music began to drift from the coasts and Atlanta to radios and record stores in Virginia, Magoo realized at 14 years old that it was an art form he could practice, too. At Deep Creek High School in Chesapeake, he made friends with other teenagers who also wanted to rap including Timothy Mosley, also known as Timbaland, who became a renowned music producer.Magoo and his associates in the Virginia Beach area, including Pharrell Williams and Missy Elliott, would go on to exert a heavy influence on music in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Magoo and Timbaland formed a duo and between 1997 and 2003 put out three albums. “Welcome to Our World,” their first collaboration, included the track “Up Jumps da’ Boogie,” featuring Elliott and Aaliyah, which reached No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100, their highest charting effort. Critics noted the project as a step in Timbaland’s development as a producer, and compared Magoo to Q-Tip, one of the rappers in the Queens group A Tribe Called Quest.On Monday morning, Timbaland posted on Instagram several videos and photos of the two together and said in one caption: “Tim and Magoo forever.”Elliott wrote on Instagram on Monday that she met Magoo when they were teenagers and that he gave her the nickname “Misdemeanor,” telling her it was because “it’s a crime to have that many talents.”Though Magoo faded from the spotlight as his early collaborators’ stars continued to rise, Barcliff said that her husband had always preferred to be behind the scenes.She said that they separated five or six years ago but that they were still family.The couple met on Aug. 10, 1996, at a club, she said. Even though Magoo was a great dancer, she said, she would learn a few months later that he did not like to go out because it was too much like being at work. “That’s when I found out: No more clubbing for me,” she said.Magoo met Tim Mosley, also known as Timbaland, in 10th grade. They were part of a group of friends who started rapping together in the 1990s.Johnny Nunez/WireImage, via Getty ImagesBarcliff said that she had a 2-year-old daughter, Detrice “Pawtt” Bickham, when they met, and that Magoo raised her as his own. As a family, they loved going to theme parks, including Busch Gardens and Kings Dominion.Magoo’s survivors include the aunt and uncle who raised him and whom he considered his mother and father, Magdaline and Hiawatha Brown, and his two sisters, Portia Brown and Lynette Hawks.In the William & Mary interview, Magoo said that his aunt, who went by Mag, inspired his rap name, Mag-an-ooh, which he then shortened.He said in the interview that his aunt took him in when he was 4 years old. He said he most likely would have been taken into state custody without his aunt’s care and he “probably would have ended up away from family and wouldn’t have been in the position to become what I was able to become.”He treasured the memory of the first time he heard a rap song, he said. He could still remember where he was standing, in another aunt’s house, when he heard the track, “Rapper’s Delight,” by the Sugarhill Gang.“It just changed my whole perspective on life because, like I said, I was, 6 or 7 at the time,” Magoo recalled. “I was only three years away from being with my real mother who had abused me, so I hadn’t completely get over that abuse, but rap music became my blanket.”Alain Delaquérière More

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      Taylor Swift Announces Fourth Album Rerecording During Eras Tour

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      Swift announced the October release of “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” during a concert in California on Wednesday.It’s Taylor Swift’s summer. We’re all just living in it.During a concert for her Eras Tour in California on Wednesday night, Swift announced the release date of “1989 (Taylor’s Version),” a rerecording of her 2014 album, “1989.” It will come out on Oct. 27, the same date that the original album was released nine years ago.It should come as no surprise that fans, both in the stadium and on the internet, freaked out.“Surprise!!” Swift wrote on social media. “The 1989 album changed my life in countless ways, and it fills me with such excitement to announce that my version of it will be out October 27th.” She added that this was her “most FAVORITE rerecord I’ve ever done.”The album includes hits like “Shake It Off” and “Blank Space.”Taylor Swift announcing #1989TaylorsVersion tonight at SoFi Stadium! #LATStheerastour #TSTheErasTour pic.twitter.com/zCSzcEWT2b— The Eras Tour (@TSTheErasTour) August 10, 2023
      Swift has been rerecording her first six albums to regain control of them after the master recordings were sold. In 2019, the music executive Scooter Braun purchased Big Machine, Swift’s old label — and with it, the original recordings for Swift’s first six albums. The sale, Swift said at the time, had “stripped me of my life’s work.”Since then, the back catalog has changed hands again. Braun’s company sold the rights to Swift’s music to Shamrock Capital, an investment firm founded by Roy E. Disney, a nephew of Walt Disney, for more than $300 million.In 2019, Swift announced her plan to rerecord the albums, and she has since released “Fearless,” “Red” and “Speak Now.”Announcing the new version of “Fearless” in 2021, Swift wrote on Twitter that, “Artists should own their own work for so many reasons, but the most screamingly obvious one is that the artist is the only one who really knows that body of work.”That album, called “Fearless (Taylor’s Version),” came with six additional songs that were not featured on the original “Fearless,” Swift’s 2009 mainstream breakthrough that won four Grammy Awards.Now, Swift is in the middle of her Eras Tour, which has become an international business and cultural juggernaut this summer, with fans clamoring for tickets and demand putting ticketing systems under stress.The show Wednesday night was the sixth at SoFi stadium outside Los Angeles, and the final one in the first United States leg of the tour. (More shows are planned in the United States in fall 2024.) Swift’s next shows will be in Mexico this month, with later dates in Argentina, Brazil, Japan and Europe. In total, 146 stadium dates have been booked for the Eras Tour.Although Swift’s box office numbers aren’t publicly released, the trade publication Pollstar has estimated that Eras Tour earnings will surpass $1 billion when she gets to Singapore in March.Swift fans — or “Swifties” — are known to see signs in everything Swift does or posts online, and they had speculated that she might announce her rerecording of “1989” on Wednesday night. SoFi Stadium had also teased a “surprise” on social media. More

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      Rodriguez, Singer Whose Career Was Resurrected, Dies at 81

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      Two albums in the early 1970s went largely unnoticed in the United States, but not overseas. Then came the 2012 documentary “Searching for Sugar Man.”Rodriguez, a Detroit musician whose songs, full of protest and stark imagery from the urban streets, failed to find an American audience in the early 1970s but resonated in Australia and especially South Africa, leading to a late-career resurgence captured in the Oscar-winning documentary “Searching for Sugar Man” in 2012, died on Tuesday. He was 81.A posting on his official website announced his death but did not say where he died or provide a cause.Rodriguez’s story was, as The New York Times put it in 2012, “a real-life tale of talent disregarded, bad luck and missed opportunities, with an improbable stop in the Hamptons and a Hollywood conclusion.”Rodriguez — who performed under just his surname but whose full name was Sixto Diaz Rodriguez — was playing bars in Detroit in the late 1960s, his folk-rock reminding those who heard it of Bob Dylan, when the producer Harry Balk signed him. In the documentary, Dennis Coffey and Mike Theodore, who would go on to produce his first album, “Cold Fact” (1970), told of hearing Rodriguez at a particularly smoky establishment called the Sewer on the Detroit River, where he was playing, as he often did, with his back to the audience.“Maybe it forced you to listen to the lyrics, because you couldn’t see the guy’s face,” Mr. Coffey said.A single released under the name “Rod Riguez” went nowhere. “Cold Fact,” released on the Sussex label, drew a smattering of favorable notices; its first track, “Sugar Man,” gave the documentary its title.“Rodriguez is a singing poet/journalist, telling stories of today,” Jim Knippenberg wrote in The Cincinnati Enquirer. “He does it with a voice much like Dylan’s, very Dylanesque imagery and a musical backing dominated almost entirely by a guitar. But he’s not a Dylan carbon. Rodriguez is much more explicit.”Mostly, though, the album went unnoticed in America, as did its follow-up a year later, “Coming From Reality.”“Getting the records cut was easy,” Rodriguez told The Sydney Morning Herald of Australia in 1979. “Getting them played was a lot harder.”Rodriguez performing in Paris in 2013. He found a fan base overseas and went on tour after the documentary was released to rave reviews.Pierre Andrieu/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHe was being interviewed by an Australian newspaper that year because, while he had settled into a life as a laborer and office worker in Detroit (though still playing bars and even running unsuccessfully for various political offices), he had — unknown to him — been developing fans overseas. Australia was one place where his music had found an audience, and in 1979 he was invited to tour there. He returned in 1981 for a few shows with the band Midnight Oil and released a live album in Australia.Rodriguez’s music had found an even bigger following in South Africa, which was still under apartheid and cut off from the rest of the world in many respects. He seemed to have no idea how popular he was there, especially among white South Africans uncomfortable with apartheid and the country’s rigidly conservative culture.“To many of us South Africans, he was the soundtrack to our lives,” Stephen Segerman, owner of a Cape Town record store, said in the documentary. “In the mid-’70s, if you walked into a random white, liberal, middle-class household that had a turntable and a pile of pop records, and if you flipped through the records, you would always see ‘Abbey Road’ by the Beatles, you’d always see ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ by Simon and Garfunkel, and you would always see ‘Cold Fact’ by Rodriguez. To us, it was one of the most famous records of all time. The message it had was ‘Be anti-establishment.’”In the mid-1990s Mr. Segerman began trying to find out more about the mysterious artist known as Rodriguez and how he had died; rumors were rampant that he had killed himself onstage, died of an overdose, and so on. He joined forces with Craig Bartholomew-Strydom, a journalist who was also searching for Rodriguez, and eventually they found the singer, still living in Detroit. A 1998 tour of South Africa followed, with Rodriguez playing six sold-out shows at 5,000-seat arenas.“It was strange seeing all those bright white faces, all of them knowing every word to every one of my songs,” he told The Sunday Telegraph of Britain in 2009.After the South Africa tour he played shows in England, Sweden and other countries. In the United States, the label Light in the Attic rereleased “Cold Fact” in 2008 and “Coming From Reality” in 2009.“Searching for Sugar Man,” which focused on two men and their search for Rodriguez, won the Oscar for best documentary feature.Sony Pictures Classics/courtesy Everett Collection
      And there was another round of rediscovery ahead. In 2012 Malik Bendjelloul released “Searching for Sugar Man,” his first and only documentary (he died in 2014), to rave reviews. The film, which won the Oscar for best documentary feature, concentrated on the search by Mr. Segerman and Mr. Bartholomew-Strydom and included an interview with Rodriguez, who in the aftermath found himself at the Hamptons International Film Festival and embarking on a fresh round of touring.Matt Sullivan founded Light in the Attic Records, which reissued Rodriguez’s albums.“His words and music were brutally honest and raw to the core,” he said by email. “It instantly struck a chord the second we heard it, and still does, nearly 20 years later.”Sixto Diaz Rodriguez was born on July 10, 1942, in Detroit. His mother, Maria, died when he was a boy. His father, Ramon, was a laborer who became a foreman at a steel plant.He said that he started playing the guitar at 16.“Of course I’ve been into Dylan forever,” he told The Times in 2012, “and also Barry McGuire, the whole ‘Eve of Destruction’ thing.”During his period of relative anonymity after the release of his albums, he earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy at Wayne State University in Detroit.Information about his survivors was not immediately available.The “Coming From Reality” album includes a song called “Cause,” a lament about hard times and life’s disappointments.“They told me everybody’s got to pay their dues,” Rodriguez sings. “And I explained that I had overpaid them.”But in the 2009 interview with The Sunday Telegraph, he was more serene about his unusual career path.“My story isn’t a rags to riches story,” he said. “It’s rags to rags, and I’m glad about that. Where other people live in an artificial world, I feel I live in the real world. And nothing beats reality.” More