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    9 Great Songs Recorded at Electric Lady Studios

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    A new documentary spotlights the Greenwich Village creative hub. Listen to tracks by Jimi Hendrix, Patti Smith, Frank Ocean and more that were recorded there.Patti SmithVagabond Video/Getty Images.Dear listeners,I’m a sucker for any documentary that features scenes of people at a recording studio’s mixing board, isolating tracks from a great, intricately layered song.* Over the weekend, I watched a new film that, I am happy to report, features plenty of such footage: “Electric Lady Studios — A Jimi Hendrix Vision,” a recently released documentary that charts the origins of the famed, still vital Greenwich Village landmark.Located at 52 West 8th Street and formerly an avant-garde nightclub, the property that would become Electric Lady was purchased by Jimi Hendrix and his manager in 1968. Over the next two years, they poured somewhere around $1 million of their own money into its construction. (When the cash flow dried up, Hendrix would go play some live gigs and return with enough dough to pay the contractors.) Hendrix initially dreamed up Electric Lady as his own personal recording studio, a place where he and his friends could experiment freely without incurring exorbitant hourly rates. But, tragically, Hendrix did not live long enough to use it much at all. Construction was finally completed in August 1970; Hendrix died, at 27, on Sept. 18 of that year.Word had already gotten out that Electric Lady was special, combining state-of-the-art technology with a groovy atmosphere that made it a more comfortable place to hang out than most cramped, sterile recording studios. Thanks to some early bookings by marquee artists like Carly Simon, Led Zeppelin and Stevie Wonder, Electric Lady managed to stay afloat in those precarious first years after Hendrix’s death. More than 50 years later, it has survived ownership changes, gentrification and huge shifts in recording technology, remaining a crucial link between popular music’s past and present. Today, it’s arguably as busy as it’s ever been: Taylor Swift, Zach Bryan and Sabrina Carpenter are just a few stars who have recently laid down tracks there.Today’s playlist traces Electric Lady’s decades-long history via nine very different songs recorded within its hallowed walls. I’ve arranged them in chronological order, so you can gradually hear the way the sounds of pop music have changed over time. I hope that you’ll also hear certain echoes between now and then — similarities in the soft-rock confessions of Simon and Swift, or the genre-blurring explorations of Wonder and Frank Ocean.These are, of course, just a sampling of the thousands and thousands of songs that have been recorded at Electric Lady throughout the years. Next time you find yourself scouring a favorite LP’s liner notes or Wikipedia credits, don’t be too surprised if you see that familiar address.This is our place, we make the rules,Lindsay* (The Fleetwood Mac episode of “Classic Albums” where Lindsey Buckingham pulls up individual vocal and instrumental tracks from “Rumours” is my personal gold standard.)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

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      Why Do Pop’s Biggest Stars Adore Michael Uzowuru?

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      The producer has helped A-listers including Donald Glover, SZA, Halsey and Frank Ocean to elevate their craft. How much longer can he avoid the spotlight?Shortly into a Monday morning piano lesson, Michael Uzowuru came alive. Seated at a black grand piano in a long, sunlit room, he warmed up with finger exercises and scales before his instructor, Riko Weimer, asked him to improvise a composition using diminished chords as a foundation. Closing his eyes, he kneaded his way into a languid, contemplative melody, his head bent gently over the keys.“I generally have a lesson plan,” Weimer said when Uzowuru stopped, “but then he digests it in one try.”Uzowuru, 32, sipped from a porcelain cup of espresso, rolled the sleeves of his bright pink sweater to his elbows and resumed playing. Four mornings a week, he drives 20 minutes from the Los Angeles home he shares with his girlfriend and son to Weimer’s Atwater Village studio. When he isn’t intensely working on his craft — “It almost hurts, the distance I feel between where I am and where I want to be,” he later lamented — he is helping some of the most influential figures in pop music spark their own imaginations.Uzowuru may not have the name recognition of Jack Antonoff or Rick Rubin, but his work with artists including Beyoncé, FKA twigs, Frank Ocean, Halsey, Rosalía and SZA has solidified him as a collaborator that A-list artists seek out to sharpen and elevate their craft. His reputation for concocting elegant, distinctive pop songs — like Ocean’s “Nights,” or twigs’s “Cellophane” — has made him one of contemporary music’s most respected producers even as he remains absent from the public eye.On Friday, his latest high-profile collaboration — “Bando Stone & the New World,” the sixth album from Donald Glover, a.k.a. Childish Gambino — arrives, 17 songs filled with dramatic rock, clever rap and silky R&B that were driven by a concept for a film: an artist recording his masterwork on a remote island as civilization collapses around him.“For a while I thought he was some sort of shady character,” Glover said in a phone interview, with a laugh. “He works with Frank and that whole camp, and they’re very mysterious. I was intimidated.”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

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      8 Crush Songs for Valentine’s Day

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      Hear tracks by Frank Ocean, Alicia Keys and of course, the Jets.Frank Ocean.Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDear listeners,Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, but for today’s playlist I wanted to give you something more specific than a collection of love songs. (For one thing, that mix would be approximately three billion tracks long.) Here, instead, is a playlist of crush songs.How exactly to define a crush? I’m glad you asked, because earlier this week The Times published an entertaining history of the word’s etymological evolution. For all the experts consulted in the piece, I most appreciated the definition offered by one reporter’s 7-year-old daughter: A crush “means you are in love with someone but the other person doesn’t know.” She added, “If you walk past them, all your blood goes up to your head, and it feels so startling.”Naturally, this state of being has provided inspiration for all sorts of notable songwriters, like Bruce Springsteen, Frank Ocean and Alicia Keys. As you’ll hear on this playlist, though, crush songs run the emotional gamut from painfully heart-wrenching to light and flirty, sometimes even with a bit of self-deprecating humor thrown in.Valentine’s Day is too often considered a holiday only for those already lucky and content in love. But if you’ve got your eye on someone special and haven’t let them know yet, or if you’re just trying to ride things out until you catch the ick and are finally liberated, let this playlist be your soundtrack. Consider it a candy heart from me to you. Crank it up and get ready to pine.Got a beach house I could sell you in Idaho,LindsayListen along while you read.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

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      Popcast Mailbag! Frank Ocean, Peso Pluma, A.I. Grimes and More

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThe Popcast crew assembles for a semiannual mailbag episode, touching on many of the pressing pop music issues of the moment, including the controversy surrounding Frank Ocean’s Coachella set; the challenges faced by even the biggest pop stars (Sam Smith, Miley Cyrus) trying to follow massive singles; the sudden arrival of artificial intelligence in pop music and evolving notions of authorship; the startling recent growth in the popularity and visibility of música Mexicana and corridos tumbados, with stars like Grupo Frontera and Peso Pluma; and how the framework of genre continues to have meaning even in a universal-jukebox universe.Guests:Jon Pareles, The New York Time’s chief pop music criticJoe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterLindsay Zoladz, The New York Times’s pop music criticCaryn Ganz, The New York Times’s pop music editorConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      Frank Ocean Shows Us a More Human Way to Perform

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      As live concert broadcasts have grown increasingly staid, his electrifying Coachella set gave us an unruly digital experience to share.Frank Ocean was constructing an ice-skating rink in the Sonoran desert. This was his reported plan — to headline the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on the night of April 16 inside, or in front of, or atop a frozen pool, defying the basic logic of weather. What better metaphor could there be for an artist seemingly allergic to the typical mechanisms of the music industry than to accept the headlining slot at Coachella and then subvert it, to stage the opposite of the festival’s arid environment by scheming an icy exhibition among the sickening dust and heat? The rumored set design was ultimately scrapped, but the very concept of Ocean’s doomed ice rink felt symbolic — maybe of how distant this king of pop-world disenchantment felt from Coachella’s surroundings to begin with.I was not in the desert. Nor did I really believe that I would be able to watch Ocean’s set — his first major public performance since 2017 — on an officially sanctioned livestream. Before he came onstage, YouTube clarified that Ocean’s 10:05 p.m. Pacific Standard Time set would not be broadcast on Coachella’s own stream — his representatives say he was, in fact, never scheduled to appear on the stream — though this was not surprising. Enigma has always been a tenet of Ocean’s public persona. Having previously spurned the Grammy Awards, dismissed major record labels and called attention to the very nature of livestreaming with his 2016 visual album, “Endless,” Ocean was primed to opt out without apology.It did not stop fans; links to spontaneous Instagram Live streams, by those on the ground, abounded. As it approached 1:05 a.m. in New York, I opened one of these links on my desktop and sat for an hour, waiting. Tens of thousands of us clicked on and waited. It was democratizing — there are no V.I.P. sections that I know of on Instagram Live — and the rumor was that Lorde was waiting in the same stream, too. We were all in it, waiting in the Frank Ocean IG Live, together.When the music finally started, this particular improvised stream proved to be shaky — while the set quickly revealed itself to be an unconventional, at-times rough-hewed spectacle — cutting in and out as Ocean sang a rock version of “Novacane,” his 2011 breakthrough single about emotionless sex and a couple who meet at Coachella. Fortunately, I soon found @Morgandoesntcare, a young musician from North Carolina who facilitated the guerrilla video stream that brought Ocean’s set to the masses, reaching 130,000 viewers. Ocean’s absence from the official stream felt like a refusal of that frictionless status quo. Maybe Ocean said no to the sanctioned livestream because he knew his set wouldn’t be what he “intended to show,” as he acknowledged in a statement later that week. (According to that statement, he sustained a leg injury in the days before Coachella, requiring a rework of the show.) Maybe the choice was intuitive. It’s enticing, however, to wonder if he made the decision in order to reject our on-demand culture of convenience. Some industry prognosticators have wondered if livestreams could supplant in-person concerts in the future — though it doesn’t seem likely — as ticket prices surge at the hands of exploitative corporations and make large-scale concertgoing increasingly unattainable to anyone but the rich. Livestreamed concerts by mainstream artists are often more like note-by-note recitals. With streaming more broadly, the data-driven music companies want to find patterns, to engineer us further into a culture of predictability. Intentionally or not, Ocean’s absence from the official stream felt like a refusal of that frictionless status quo. Watching a teenager’s ad hoc broadcast instead made for a more unruly digital experience that could not be predicted, planned for, optimized or controlled.The day after Ocean’s set, it still consumed my thoughts. Though I had watched it on a trembly hand-held broadcast that cut in and out, I felt that I had not only witnessed but participated in something significant — not in spite of but because of the spontaneous stream. Most reviews disagreed, criticizing how Ocean stoked “confusion” and commenting that his songs didn’t sound the way they do on his records. When I watched alone in my bedroom more than 2,000 miles away, these qualities made the music feel alive. Liveness has always carried with it an expectation of, and invitation into, risk and imperfection. But the media landscape’s flood of manicured concert-film and livestream events has largely normalized staid, smooth performances, a trend that mirrors the streaming era’s broader preference for formulaic culture. Lauryn Hill’s commitment was to presenting the truest version of herself, not appealing to commercial interests.Ocean’s set seemed like a rebuke of this trend. New arrangements of his most beloved songs, like “Bad Religion” and “White Ferrari,” sounded more astral and expansive than ever. “Solo” approached something resembling starry electric jazz and nearly brought me to tears. The speech Ocean gave about his younger brother, who died in a car accident in 2020 and with whom he went to Coachella multiple times, immediately did. The songs sometimes showed their seams, letting his voice reach higher and skate the sky. Delicate acoustic takes of “Pink + White” and “Self Control” brought to mind the intimacy of a theoretical Ocean appearance on “MTV Unplugged.”Pop music history is filled with incidents in which celebrated artists polarized their audiences from big stages, but one important precedent is Lauryn Hill’s 2001 performance on “MTV Unplugged.” On that show, and the unvarnished album that followed the next year, “MTV Unplugged No. 2.0,” she sang her biblical hip-hop folk profundities in a gorgeous raspy voice, accompanied by her acoustic guitar. In between songs, she delivered monologues of uncompromising creative wisdom. At the time, this live session was considered bewildering and met with divided reviews. Hill’s commitment was to presenting the truest version of herself, not appealing to commercial interests. “Fantasy is what people want,” Hill said then, “but reality is what they need.”You can imagine the now-35-year-old Ocean growing up, absorbing Hill’s messaging and reflecting his own unpolished reality in concert. When he played Coachella in 2012, he covered “Tell Him” from “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.” Ocean has a documented fondness for her “Unplugged” performance: His song “Rushes,” from “Endless,” interpolates Hill’s “Just Like Water”; he once rapped over a sample of “I Gotta Find Peace of Mind,” a track on which Hill cries. “What I am is what I am, and I can’t be afraid to, you know, to expose that to the public,” Hill said during the “MTV Unplugged” performance. She defended her right to let her voice crack, which was a reflection of her lived experience. Such honesty calls people to be artists. But contemporary streaming culture, and the rigid aesthetic standards it widely supports, are hostile to frayed edges.On the spontaneous Ocean Instagram stream, I caught glory in flickers. Ocean’s set, which he himself called “chaotic” while emphasizing the “beauty in chaos,” was a presentation of his own humanity. In a just popular culture, that is what a “live” album, “live” stream, “live” concert and “live” artist is: raw, fallible and human.Source photographs: Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse, via Getty Images; Getty Images; Timothy Hearsum/The Image Bank/Getty Images.Jenn Pelly is a freelance writer, contributing editor at Pitchfork and author of “The Raincoats.” More

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      Frank Ocean Pulls Out of Coachella Weekend 2 Set, Citing Leg Injury

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      The singer-songwriter’s performance there on Sunday was his first large-scale concert in years, but his scheduled second act has been canceled in response to medical advice, a representative said.Frank Ocean will not perform at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival this weekend because of a leg injury, a representative for the singer-songwriter said Wednesday, noting that the injury had prevented his performance there last Sunday from going on as planned.Ocean’s much-anticipated set on Sunday for the festival’s opening weekend was his first large-scale concert in years, but the set drew mixed reviews, with some calling out its tardiness and technical bumps. Later on, reports emerged that the set had been abruptly reconfigured ahead of the nighttime performance.The statement from Ocean’s representative, Anna Meacham, said that he had suffered a leg injury on the festival grounds days before his first scheduled performance, leading to the preshow scramble.“Frank Ocean was unable to perform the intended show but was still intent on performing, and in 72 hours, the show was reworked out of necessity,” the statement said. “On doctor’s advice, Frank Ocean is not able to perform weekend 2 due to two fractures and a sprain in his left leg.”Representatives for Coachella did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the cancellation. The festival’s other headliners are scheduled to repeat from the first weekend — Bad Bunny on Friday and the K-pop group Blackpink on Saturday — with other performers throughout the weekend including Björk, Blink-182, Burna Boy, Gorillaz, Rosalía and many more.Coachella has dealt with major last-minute cancellations before. Last year, Kanye West (now known as Ye) pulled out as one of the event’s three headliners amid personal upheaval and was replaced by the D.J. group Swedish House Mafia with the Weeknd as a special guest, a performance that was already on the bill.Sunday’s performance had been years in the making, after the plan for Ocean to headline Coachella in 2020 was scuttled by the pandemic. This year’s festival was viewed as the singer’s re-emergence, but there were early signs that it was not going according to plan.Most of the festival was livestreamed on YouTube throughout the weekend, and fans were anxiously awaiting the same for Ocean’s set, but late on Sunday, YouTube announced that it would not be part of the livestream. Ocean took the stage about an hour late, then ended abruptly, saying, “I’m being told it’s curfew.”Some fans and critics complained that the singer was hard to see throughout the set — which included hits like “Bad Religion” and “White Ferrari” — and that there were pauses throughout. (Justin Bieber disagreed with the naysayers, writing on Instagram that he was “blown away” by Ocean’s performance and that “his artistry is simply unmatched.”)The original plan for the performance was likely much more intricate than what Coachella attendees witnessed. Two hockey players, Dan and Chris Powers, said in a podcast released Tuesday that they had rehearsed for about a month with other ice skaters before they were suddenly cut from the show the day of.In a statement on Wednesday, Ocean said of his set: “It was chaotic. There is some beauty in chaos. It isn’t what I intended to show but I did enjoy being out there and I’ll see you soon.”Joe Coscarelli More

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      Frank Ocean Headlines Coachella and Plays Reworked Songs

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      During his first large-scale performance in years, the enigmatic singer suggested a new album was coming, just “not right now.”Three years after a much-hyped headlining set was foiled by the pandemic — and nearly six years since his most recent large-scale concerts — the venerated but rarely heard from singer-songwriter Frank Ocean closed the opening weekend of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on Sunday with a typically emotional performance of reworked favorites, and a hint that a new album was coming.Wearing a bright blue jacket with the hood pulled tight around his face, Ocean took to the stage around an hour late, beginning with a rock version of “Novacane,” his 2011 debut single that describes meeting a girl at Coachella, before playing reworked versions of hits including “Bad Religion” and “White Ferrari.”Soon, he walked to the front of the stage — beneath vast screens — and explained he was performing on Sunday because he used to regularly attend the desert festival with his younger brother, Ryan Breaux, who died in a car crash in 2020. Ocean said one of his “fondest memories” was dancing with his brother in a tent there to the rap duo Rae Sremmurd.“I know he would have been so excited to be here with all of us,” Ocean added.Ocean, 35, has not released an album since 2016, with minimal public appearances, only a few singles and a luxury fashion line in between. At times on Sunday, he was barely visible to the crowd despite the large screens, as his hourlong set — which included a DJ interlude from the Paris-based producer Crystallmess — rounded out the festival weekend’s headline performances, following the Puerto Rican pop star Bad Bunny on Friday and the K-pop girl group Blackpink on Saturday.Ocean’s stage time was perhaps meant to be longer. But after playing “At Your Best (You Are Love),” his version of an Isley Brothers track once covered by Aaliyah, Ocean announced: “Guys I’m being told it’s curfew, so that’s the end of the show.”The festival — one of the pre-eminent events in the pop music calendar, with some 125,000 daily attendees, regardless of who’s booked onstage — was held once again at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, Calif., its home nearly every year since 1999, and also livestreamed via YouTube. Other performers across the three days included Rosalía, Burna Boy, Gorillaz, Blondie (with Nile Rodgers), boygenius and the rap producer Metro Boomin, with special guests Future and the Weeknd.Coachella’s other headliners this year included the Puerto Rican pop star Bad Bunny and the K-pop girl group Blackpink.Emma Mcintyre/Getty Images For CoachellaOcean had initially been slated to headline in April 2020, before Coachella was postponed and then canceled twice because of Covid-19; the festival returned last year without Ocean, featuring the headliners Billie Eilish, Harry Styles and Swedish House Mafia instead. Coachella repeats for its second annual weekend from Friday to Sunday.Given those canceled appearances, Ocean’s set on Sunday was highly anticipated, even by those unable to get tickets. Most of the festival was livestreamed on YouTube throughout the weekend and thousands of music lovers waited online Sunday to watch Ocean’s set, too. But YouTube said in a tweet late Sunday that the livestream of his concert would not go ahead. Hundreds of social media users immediately expressed their frustration with crying emojis and animated GIFs.On Monday, neither YouTube nor Coachella responded to a request for comment about why Ocean’s set wasn’t streamed. (Björk, who also performed on Sunday, was not shown on the livestream either.)At the festival, Ocean, who has lately been selling jewelry through his luxury brand Homer, kept his overall presentation minimal, as well: “NO FRANK OCEAN MERCHANDISE,” read a sign on the grounds, to the disappointment of some fans.Having long built its name on genre-spanning spectacle, rare appearances, debuts and reunions — from the Tupac Shakur hologram and Beyoncé’s 2018 tour de force to reconciliations between core members of Pixies, Rage Against the Machine, Outkast, Guns N’ Roses and more — Coachella had more than just Ocean’s re-emergence this past weekend. On Friday, the pop-punk group Blink-182 appeared with its classic lineup — the trio of Mark Hoppus, Tom DeLonge and Travis Barker — for the first time since 2014. The band was a late addition to the festival, with its set not announced until Wednesday.And on Saturday, the enigmatic British singer and producer Jai Paul, whose sparse career output makes Ocean seem prolific, performed his first ever concert. Starting off in near-darkness and without a word to the crowd, Paul appeared initially nervous, but was smiling broadly by the end of the 11-track set. While Paul’s performance was not shown live online, it later appeared in full on the official YouTube stream.On Saturday at Coachella, the British singer and producer Jai Paul performed his first ever concert. Julian Bajsel + Quinn Tucker at Quasar MediaSome of the biggest cheers during his set came for “BTSTU,” a track that mixes Prince-like sensuality with fuzzy electronics and has been sampled by both Drake and Beyoncé. “I know I’ve been gone a long time,” Paul sang, “but I’m back and want what is mine.”Ocean first rose to promise with “Nostalgia, Ultra,” a 2011 mixtape. In the years since he has become a cult favorite, a major-label star, a Grammy winner, a chart-topper and a disrupter of those very systems, only further fueling the fan mythology around him. Following the success of his 2012 debut album, “Channel Orange,” Ocean waited four years to release a follow-up, eventually unveiling two projects — one, the visual album “Endless,” to satisfy his record deal, and another, “Blonde,” released independently — along with a magazine titled Boys Don’t Cry.Although Ocean released a few one-off singles and played a small slate of concerts, mostly at festivals, the following year, he soon receded from view again.In 2019, in association with his internet radio show Blonded, Ocean attempted to start a series of club nights — dubbed PrEP+ after the H.I.V. prevention drug — that he called a “homage to what could have been of the 1980s NYC club scene” if the medication had existed then. After three events in New York and two additional singles, plans to expand the parties into “larger raves across the world” were spoiled by the pandemic, the singer said later in a statement delivered to fans via merchandise.He added, seemingly in the third person, “The Recording Artist has since changed his mind about the singles model, and is again interested in more durational bodies of work.”Onstage at Coachella, Ocean didn’t debut any new music in full, but he did mention a new album was on the way. As the vast audience screamed in delight, Ocean quietened the crowd. “Not right now,” he said. “It’s not right now.” More

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      10 (or, Actually, 11) Songs That Explain Me

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      Introducing a new newsletter dedicated to music discovery, and your host, Lindsay Zoladz.Illustration by The New York Times; Bob Berg/Getty Images (Fiona Apple)Dear listeners,Welcome to the first installment of The Amplifier — a twice-weekly note about songs (new and old) worth hearing. I want The Amplifier to bring that mixtape-from-your-friend feeling back to musical discovery. Too often, in the streaming era, our choices are at the mercy of a shadowy, impersonal algorithm. The Amplifier will be a return to something more intimate and human.Of course, that requires you knowing at least a little bit about me and my particular musical perspective.But the easiest way to fill a music critic with crippling panic is to pose that seemingly simple question: “What’s your favorite song?” Most of us are likely to get defensive and philosophical, asking whether you mean “favorite” or “best,” and how you personally would define those terms — all as a stalling tactic while we spin through the bulging Rolodex of all the songs we’ve ever loved, trying and probably failing to arrive at a sufficiently revealing choice.So rather than make a monolithic list of My Favorite Songs of All Time — one that I’d immediately be adding tracks to in my head as soon as I hit send — I thought I’d opt for the more inviting language of a popular social media prompt: “10 Songs That Explain Me.”Except that I just. Could. Not. Do it. No matter how many times I tried, I always ended up with an extra song. So consider this to be a 10-song playlist with a bonus track — or perhaps an early indication that the knobs on this Amplifier go to 11.Listen along here on Spotify as you read.1. Nina Simone: “Ain’t Got No — I Got Life”Only Nina Simone could transform two relatively kitschy numbers from the musical “Hair” into a song of self that rivals Walt Whitman. Simone is a lodestar to me: The excellence that she demanded from herself, the attention she demanded from her audiences and the classical virtuosity she brought to popular music all make her one of the greats. This rousing song can lift me out of just about any funk, and with such efficiency! Simone only needs less than three minutes to remind you exactly what it means to be alive. (Listen on YouTube)2. Fiona Apple: “Shameika”I grew up in suburban New Jersey and came of age in the late ’90s: a place and a time when conformity was currency. I wasn’t very good at fitting in, and like many an angsty youth, I found a kindred spirit in Fiona Apple. I first heard (and became obsessed with) her poetic and moody debut album, “Tidal,” when I was on the precipice of middle school, which is about the age Apple imagines herself to be in this elegantly unruly song from her 2020 album “Fetch the Bolt Cutters.” I see a lot of myself in it — both in the young, dissatisfied girl Apple remembers herself to be, and in the adult writer who made it out of that environment intact enough to tell the story. In my headphones, at least, Fiona said I had potential. (Listen on YouTube)3. The Dismemberment Plan: “Superpowers”When I was 18, I moved to Washington, D.C., for college and lived there until I was 25. My friend Drew put this song on a mix for me a few years into that stretch, and for a time it became my anthem: The Dismemberment Plan — an arty, verbose four-piece from D.C. that had broken up shortly before I got there — was a perfect bridge between the introspective emo I liked in high school and the more experimental strains of indie-rock I got into in college. Nothing brings me back to the ennui of early adulthood like the band’s 1999 classic “Emergency & I,” but my favorite of its records is the one that has “Superpowers” on it, “Change.” Luckily I got to catch a couple of amazing D-Plan reunion shows before I left town. (Listen on YouTube)4. Grimes: “Genesis”I have this theory that moving to New York knocks at least five years off your behavioral age. I made it here at 25, but for the first few years it felt like a second adolescence: catching shows every night at a bunch of now-defunct Williamsburg venues, making new friends, vying for the car stereo’s aux cord. Very often, the iPod was playing Grimes’s light and blissful album “Visions,” or sometimes just “Genesis” on repeat. It’s a song that can still make me feel, for a fleeting four minutes, like I’m the main character in my own video game and I’ve figured out the cheat code that makes me invincible. (Listen on YouTube)5. Frank Ocean: “Self Control”And here is the B-side of my roaring 20s: Frank Ocean’s tender voice was and remains a balm for whatever failure, loneliness and disappointment life decided to throw my way. (Consider “Self Control” a way to sneak another one of my favorite artists, and homes-away-from-home, onto this list, too, since the eclectic Philadelphia indie-rocker Alex G plays guitar on the track.) (Listen on YouTube)6. The Flying Burrito Brothers: “Wild Horses”Let’s continue wallowing while turning back the clock a bit to hear from another one of my all-time favorite singers, Gram Parsons. (I recently went on a Nashville vacation that was at least partially a spiritual pilgrimage to see his infamously sinful Nudie suit in the Country Music Hall of Fame.) A lot of the older music I love most has a kind of “near miss” quality about it — history’s beautiful losers, the artists who didn’t break through but deserved to, the ones who gesture toward all sorts of alternative presents and what-ifs. Maybe that’s why I prefer Parsons’s vocal take of “Wild Horses” to Mick Jagger’s more familiar one. (The Sundays’ version is great, too.) There’s a wobbly brokenness to it that I find incredibly moving, especially the way he emphasizes “a dull aching pain.” The origins of the song are notoriously disputed, but some insist that its titular line was inspired by something that Marianne Faithfull croaked when she came out of a six-day coma in 1969 — “wild horses couldn’t drag me away” — and that is one of those rock ’n’ roll stories that, even if it’s apocryphal, I have chosen to believe. (Listen on YouTube)7. Big Star: “Daisy Glaze”Speaking of music history’s beautiful losers: Big Star, one of my favorite rock bands ever. Like many a teenage millennial, I first came to the band through one of the numerous covers of the acoustic ballad “Thirteen” (“one of my almost-good songs,” the ever-humble Alex Chilton once said). Once I’d immersed myself in the band’s back catalog, I became belatedly furious that it had never been as famous as Led Zeppelin. I will always be exhilarated by the moment in the middle of “Daisy Glaze” when Jody Stephens’s three kick-drum thumps initiate a sudden tempo change — a perfect encapsulation of the band’s thrilling brilliance. (Listen on YouTube)8. The Mountain Goats: “Up the Wolves”I got into the Mountain Goats toward the end of high school — my friend Matt and I would drive from Jersey diner to diner, listening to their seemingly limitless discography — and John Darnielle is probably my favorite contemporary lyricist. The album “The Sunset Tree,” and this song in particular, have gotten me through many a dark night of the soul. I have now seen the Mountain Goats live more times than I can count — I lost track in the low 20s — and I am not yet numb to the emotional power of these songs. They played “Up the Wolves” a few months ago at Webster Hall, and after all these years, it still made me cry like a big teenage baby. (Listen on YouTube)9. Buffy Sainte-Marie: “The Circle Game”This one’s a total cheat: a sneaky way to mention two artists I adore — Buffy Sainte-Marie and Joni Mitchell, who of course wrote “The Circle Game” — on a single track. Joni is probably my favorite living songwriter, and there are about 100 other songs of hers I could have chosen. But I like the story behind this cover, recorded when Joni was still a fledgling songwriter to whom the then-better-known Buffy was trying to bring some attention. Suffice to say, it worked. (Listen on YouTube)10. The Raincoats: “No Side to Fall In”I’ve identified as a feminist throughout many different cultural and personal phases: in seventh grade when the boys told me girls couldn’t skateboard; in college, when it was a somewhat unfashionable concern that meant I read a lot of literary theory; these days, when a more watered-down version of the word has been co-opted to sell things on Instagram. All throughout, music has given me the strength to keep fighting, dreaming and resisting psychic death. To me, the great post-punk group the Raincoats are emblematic of a kind of utopian feminist freedom: a sonic universe where women can sound like and do anything they want — yes, even skateboarding. (Listen on YouTube)11. Van Morrison: “Ballerina”Oh, Van the (Facebook-hating) Man, my problematic fave. “Astral Weeks” is an album I love deeply, but I’ve always thought “Ballerina” should be the closing track. Since this is my playlist, with my rules, let’s try it out. I love this clip of a very young Leonard Cohen explaining to a confused interviewer on Canadian television what it feels like to be in “a state of grace.” It’s that “kind of balance with which you ride the chaos that you find around you.” I have found no better description of how I feel when I listen to this song. (Listen on YouTube)Thanks for listening,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“10 (or, Actually, 11) Songs That Explain Me” track listTrack 1: Nina Simone, “Ain’t Got No — I Got Life”Track 2: Fiona Apple, “Shameika”Track 3: The Dismemberment Plan, “Superpowers”Track 4: Grimes, “Genesis”Track 5: Frank Ocean, “Self Control”Track 6: The Flying Burrito Brothers, “Wild Horses”Track 7: Big Star, “Daisy Glaze”Track 8: The Mountain Goats, “Up the Wolves”Track 9: Buffy Sainte-Marie, “The Circle Game”Track 10: The Raincoats, “No Side to Fall In”Track 11: Van Morrison, “Ballerina”The song that explains youI’m really excited to go on this musical journey with you. I also want to make this newsletter a place for conversations about the songs and artists that mean something to you, so I’ll occasionally be asking for your thoughts on the topics we cover in this newsletter — and I’d love to hear from all of you.Today, I want to know: What’s a song that explains you? Tell me about it.If you’d like to participate you can fill out this form here. We may use your response in an upcoming edition of The Amplifier.Bonus tracksIf you want to read me going even deeper on my love of Fiona Apple, here’s an essay I wrote a few years back, as part of NPR’s “Turning the Tables” series on female artists. (My dear friend Jenn Pelly also tracked down the real-life Shameika and wrote a wonderful article about her.)And, if you’re a Van Fan, here’s me going incredibly long on “Astral Weeks,” for The Ringer, on the occasion of the album’s 50th anniversary.Finally, if you’re inclined to read my recent profile of the great Buffy Sainte-Marie (I was pinching myself just outside the Zoom frame!), might I suggest following it with this delightful clip of her showing Pete Seeger, on his short-lived TV show “Rainbow Quest,” how to play a mouth bow. More

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      How Stormzy Crafted His Latest Album, ‘This Is What I Mean’

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      The British rapper was inspired by a variety of artists, including his sister, in making his third album.LONDON — Early in 2020, Stormzy thought he knew what kind of album he wanted to make. He wanted it to be “proper hard,” the British rapper said in a recent video interview.But then the pandemic hit, and “This Is What I Mean,” Stormzy’s recently released third album, ended up being made in a period of stillness when there was nothing to do except “chill, look after my dogs and make an album, and hear my thoughts and listen to God,” he said.Making the record from this space was a change of pace for Stormzy, 29, born Michael Ebenezer Kwadjo Omari Owuo Jr. He is now Britain’s highest profile rapper, and has built an ever-growing portfolio of initiatives for Black Britons and other people of color.Musically, he’s credited with being instrumental in Britain’s revival of grime music, and he was the first solo Black British artist to headline Glastonbury Festival.But when it came to making “This Is What I Mean,” “I didn’t have my cape on, ” he said. “I was just Mike, just navigating life.” The pandemic meant he had psychic distance from his public persona, and physical distance from the trappings of fame; the resulting album takes the introspection present on his previous projects and digs deeper.On the video call, Stormzy discussed some of the artists that influenced his making the record. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.‘Marcy Me’ by Jay-ZRozette Rago for The New York Times“Marcy Me,” from Jay-Z’s 2017 album “4:44,” exemplifies what Stormzy respects most about the New York rapper: his seemingly effortless delivery of effortful penmanship.“That takes dedication to your craft, and that takes studying your craft,” Stormzy said, “where you are now able to come out and rap at the highest level, and make it look like you just rolled out of bed.”A line could be drawn between “4:44,” which is, in part, a sonic confessional, and “This is What I Mean,” which is also an exercise in vulnerability. “I feel like with any great art that you consume, I think that it consciously or subconsciously inspires you,” Stormzy said, adding that seeing Jay-Z be so vulnerable “made me feel like, OK, that’s what we’re doing.”‘All of the Lights’ by Kanye WestThe influence of Ye, the scandal-prone artist formerly known as Kanye West, is “unashamedly” present on the titular song on “This Is What I Mean,” Stormzy said.That track takes cues from “All of the Lights,” off West’s 2010 album “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.” One of Stormzy’s favorite songs by West, “All of the Lights” is ambitious and baroque, loaded with short interludes from other artists. Stormzy thinks of the song as a painting, and the musicians, producers and instrumentalists the artist’s tools.“This Is What I Mean” is a similar exercise in ambition. “I’ve made that song with three different producers; I’ve got, like, five or six of my favorite artists on it and we were just painting,” Stormzy said.Beyoncé’s Live PerformancesLarry Busacca/Getty ImagesStormzy has a rule: If someone discredits Beyoncé’s artistry, “I don’t trust them.”His performances are often high energy, and feature theatrical moments. At the 2018 Brit Awards, he performed under a rain machine as rows of balaclava-clad men sat behind him, reminiscent of Da Vinci’s “Last Supper.” (Similar imagery was also invoked on the cover of his debut record “Gang Signs and Prayer.”)“There’s no one who has inspired my live show like Beyoncé,” he said. After watching her 2018 Coachella performance ahead of his own headline performance at Wireless Festival, he called his creative director to say they needed to start over.“When people see my Glasto, they see my tour, I’m like, yeah, that’s me trying to be a fraction of Beyoncé’s live show,” he said.Rachael AnsonReferences to Rachael Anson, Stormzy’s older sister, are littered across his discography. A D.J., Anson has hosted a show on a female-led online radio station and crafted mixes for the likes of Apple Music.Growing up in South London, Anson not only encouraged his ambitions, but also lent a practical ear when he was starting out. “The only thing that used to irk her about my raps was my flow,” he said. “My sister is the queen of vibes, she is so at one with music.”Her opinion continues to loom large for him: “Even now when I write, I’m like, aah, Rachael’s going to hear that” and she’s going to love it, Stormzy said.Frank OceanVisionhaus#GP/Corbis, via Getty ImagesIn Stormzy’s opinion, the singer Frank Ocean is the “most gifted songwriter of my generation.”Stormzy is a rapper who often sings, and said he has taken cues from the way Ocean’s music shows that “melody doesn’t need to be complicated to be beautiful.”“He hits pockets of melody that are really sweet to my spirit,” Stormzy said. “I’ve learned that from him, I can use my voice — whatever remit I live in with my vocal ability — to find these sweet pockets of melody.” This is especially clear on two songs on his new album, “Firebabe” and “Holy Spirit,” which Stormzy sings throughout.‘Growing Over Life’ by Wretch 32Stormzy is equally likely to rap over a drill beat, spit on a gospel song or croon over a piano: “Excellent rap is not always rooted in the energy and the gangster,” he said. He shares this proclivity with one of his musical heroes, the British rapper Wretch 32, born Jermaine Sinclaire Scott.Wretch’s refusal to be bound by any of the thematic or sonic restraints that are often found in M.C. culture has informed Stormzy’s approach to music. This is especially true of Wretch’s 2016 album, “Growing Over Life,” which engages with the personal and political treatment of Black people in Britain.Listening to the record, “I just used to be so blown away,” Stormzy said. “The best rapper in our country is rapping over these beautiful melodies, these beautiful pieces of music.”Wretch’s influence can be heard on the track “Please,” from “This Is What I Mean.” Backed by a piano, Stormzy is candid about his relationship with his father: “Please Lord give me the strength to forgive my dad / For he is flawed and so am I.” More