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      Green Day Gets Loud Again on ‘Saviors’

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      On “Saviors,” its 14th studio album, the pop-punk trio returns to stadium-sized rock.Praising a return to form is a barbed compliment at best. It implies recent missteps, a decline, the waning of youthful inspiration, the toll of a long career — perhaps all of them at once. It suggests that the sensible way forward is to double back. Still, “Saviors,” Green Day’s new album, is a decisive, even overdetermined return to form.Ever since its beginnings in the late 1980s, Green Day has stayed contentious. Billie Joe Armstrong has sung about personal grievances — including struggles with himself — as well as the ways they intersect with larger political currents, most ambitiously on the band’s 2004 concept album, “American Idiot,” which went on to be adapted into a Broadway musical.The band can still cause a stir. In recent years, Armstrong has been performing the song “American Idiot” by changing the line “I’m not a part of a redneck agenda” to end with “the MAGA agenda” instead. But when he sang that phrase on broadcast TV this past New Year’s Eve, right-wing media seized on the line to raise a fuss.“Saviors” finds contemporary targets. It opens with “The American Dream Is Killing Me,” which goes barreling ahead as Armstrong derides conspiracy theories and anti-immigrant attitudes, touches on homelessness and real-estate exploitation and declares that as a nation, “We are not well.”In “Living in the ’20s,” Armstrong confronts a decade that’s brought supermarket shootings and murder hornets, while in the quick-strummed “Strange Days Are Here to Stay,” he sings about bleak expectations: “I can’t see this ending well/Now that it’s too late.”While Green Day has pushed against power structures, it has honored musical ones. With Armstrong on guitar and vocals, Tré Cool on drums and Mike Dirnt on bass, there has always been a virtuosic neatness behind Green Day’s blare.Green Day arrived as a proud heir to the fast, blunt, tuneful, sometimes sarcastic, sometimes candid punk that the Ramones had formulated in the 1970s. As Green Day’s catalog grew, it became clearer that the band was well aware of generations of guitar bands, from its grunge contemporaries back through Van Halen, Cheap Trick, Boston and Aerosmith to the Who and the Beatles.Green Day invariably delivers precisely arranged songs with clear-cut verses, choruses and bridges. Its 1994 album, “Dookie” — with hits including “Basket Case” and “Welcome to Paradise” — heralded the commercial breakthrough of punk-pop that was simultaneously raucous and high-gloss.“Saviors” trumpets its connections to Green Day’s past. For its international tour this year — to be joined along the way by bands including Smashing Pumpkins, Rancid and the Hives — Green Day has announced it will play all the way through both “Dookie” and “American Idiot,” coinciding with their 30th and 20th anniversaries. Green Day made “Saviors” with Rob Cavallo, the co-producer of both albums, who last worked on Green Day’s three stripped-down 2012 albums “¡Uno!,” “¡Dos!” and “¡Tré!”Green Day’s more recent albums had strained to be different: noisier, murkier and often using all its resources to simulate lo-fi recording. “Saviors,” by contrast, is forthrightly lavish. Guitars and vocals are multi-layered, and the drum sound is gigantic; orchestral arrangements appear out of nowhere. The band proudly blasts again in songs like the standout track, “Dilemma,” in which Armstrong — who entered rehab after an onstage tirade in 2012 — grapples with trying to stay sober. “I don’t want to be a dead man walking,” he proclaims over stadium-shaking guitar chords.“Saviors” revisits the production approach of the so-called “loudness war” of the 1990s and 2000s, when it seemed studios sought to make, as Meat Loaf sang, “everything louder than everything else.” The waveforms of nearly every song on “Saviors” measure as what recording engineers call “brickwalled” — pushed to a constant, flattened peak. On a playlist alongside tracks that include more ups and downs, that loudness is supposed to feel exciting. But on an entire unrelenting, 15-track album, it grows wearing.Perhaps it’s inevitable that on Green Day’s 14th studio album, some of the songs have beats and chord progressions that can feel like retreads. On “Saviors,” the production often strives to offset familiarity with impact. Yet “Father to a Son” — in which an uncertain parent vows to try his best — unmistakably echoes “Wake Me Up When September Ends,” even with an orchestra now supplementing the power chords.For sonic variety, Green Day flaunts its rock scholarship. “Bobby Sox” — with Armstrong singing about the homey comforts he’d offer a girlfriend, a boyfriend or a best friend — is an outright homage to Pixies, exploding from a quiet verse to a crashing chorus. And the depressive but stubborn “Goodnight Adeline” could almost have been an arena march from Oasis.“Saviors” doesn’t hide its craftsmanship or self-consciousness, but they are a means to an end. Green Day is still angry, disgusted, worried and no longer so amused about the state of the world. This time, the band has decided to shout about it.Green Day“Saviors”(Reprise/Warner) More

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      Annie Nightingale, Pathbreaking British D.J., Is Dead at 83

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      She was initially told there was no room for her on BBC Radio 1 because a woman’s voice lacked the authority of a man’s. Once she was on the air, she stayed there for 53 years.Annie Nightingale, who became the first female disc jockey on BBC Radio 1 in 1970 and remained a popular personality there until her final show, late last year, died on Jan. 11 at her home in London. She was 83.Her family announced the death in a statement but did not cite a cause.“This is the woman who changed the face and sound of British TV and radio broadcasting forever,” Annie Mac, a longtime BBC Radio D.J., wrote on Instagram after Ms. Nightingale’s death.Ms. Nightingale became well known in music circles in the 1960s as a columnist in British newspapers. And she was a familiar face to stars like the Beatles, whom she interviewed at the Brighton Hippodrome in 1964.“As Derek Taylor liked her, she was welcome at Apple,” the Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn said in an email, referring to the Beatles’ press officer and the company they founded in 1968.In 1967, she applied to be a D.J. on BBC Radio 1, the pop music outlet that had just been started in reaction to the rise of popular offshore pirate stations.But she found herself up against the station’s sexist hiring policy. She was told that its all-male D.J. lineup represented “husband substitutes” to the housewives who were listening, and that a woman’s voice would lack the authority of a man’s.“It came as a huge shock,” Ms. Nightingale told The Independent in 2015. “I was almost amused. What do you mean, ‘No women’? Why not?”But in October 1969, the BBC offered her an on-air trial. Before her first appearance, she told The Manchester Evening News, “I am sure that a lot of girls would make marvelous D.J.s if given the chance.”Before Ms. Nightingale became a D.J., she had become well known in music circles through her columns in British newspapers.Virginia Turbett/RedfernsShe was hired the next year for a weekday record review program, “What’s New,” and two years later she became a host of an evening progressive-rock show, “Sounds of the 70s.” Later in the decade, she became the host of a Sunday afternoon request show and a music interview program. She hosted a variety of other shows through last year.“From Day One, I chose the records I wanted to play and stuck to it ever since,” she said in her autobiography, “Hey Hi Hello: Five Decades of Pop Culture From Britain’s First Female DJ.” (2020). “I preferred the evenings, where I wouldn’t have to introduce playlist tunes I didn’t like. That would have been like lying to me.”Anne Avril Nightingale was born on April 1, 1940, in the Osterley district of London. Her father, Basil, worked in the family’s wallpaper business. Her mother, Celia, was a foot doctor. As a girl, Anne listened to children’s programs on her father’s radio and came to love that it could tune in to distant cities.“I still feel when you’re broadcasting, you don’t know where it’s going and it could be reaching outer space somewhere, and I am still in love with that, completely,” she said in an interview in 2018.After graduating from the Lady Eleanor Holles School, she studied journalism at Regent Street Polytechnic (now the University of Westminster) in London. She began her journalism career soon after, first as a reporter for The Brighton and Hove Gazette and then at The Argus, in Brighton, where she wrote a music column called Spin With Me. She later wrote a music column for a national tabloid, The Daily Sketch.In 1964, she collaborated with the pop group the Hollies on a book, “How to Run a Beat Group.”She found a measure of television fame on BBC’s “Juke Box Jury,” where she was part of a guest panel that reviewed new record releases, and as the host of “That’s For Me,” a record request program on ITV, and the Rediffusion network’s quiz show, “Sing a Song of Sixpence,” both in 1965.But she was best known for her time at BBC Radio 1, which began with some rocky moments because of her inexperience — like the time there was eight seconds of dead airtime when she accidentally pressed an “off” switch while a record was playing.“What I found difficult in those early days was being bad technically,” she told The Western Daily Press of Bristol in 1979. “Every time I made a mistake I thought they’d all say, ‘Oh yes, woman driver!’”She remained the only female D.J. on BBC Radio 1 — the “token woman,” she said — for 12 years. In 2010, when she was more than halfway through her 41st year there, Guinness World Records cited her for having had the longest career ever for a female D.J. (That record has since been surpassed twice, by the Peruvian broadcaster Maruja Venegas Salinas and Mary McCoy, a D.J. in Texas.)“It was not until the 1990s and the ‘girlification’ of Radio 1 with the likes of Sara Cox, Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball that Nightingale’s exceptionality became her longevity and impact rather than her gender alone,” Lucy Robinson, a professor at the University of Sussex, and Dr. Jeannine Baker, who at the time was with Macquarie University, wrote on the BBC website.Ms. Nightingale’s success went beyond radio. In 1978, she was named a host of BBC’s live music television show “The Old Grey Whistle Test,” where she focused on new wave music.After John Lennon was killed on Dec. 8, 1980, Ms. Nightingale and members of the “Whistle Test” staff were trying to round up people to talk about him. During the program, a producer appeared in the studio and told Ms. Nightingale, “Paul’s on the phone and he wants to speak to you.”“I had no idea who he meant,” she recalled on the podcast “I Am the Eggpod” in 2018. It was Paul McCartney.Ms. Nightingale in 2015. Throughout her career she championed new music, from progressive rock to acid house and grime.Graham Prentice/Alamy“He wanted to say thank you on behalf of Linda and himself and Yoko and George and Ringo,” she said. “And that’s what really got me.” She added: “I got back in front of the camera and it’s live and I thought right, right, you’re the messenger. And he said, ‘You know how it was.’”Ms. Nightingale’s survivors include a son, Alex, and a daughter, Lucy, whose name was inspired partly by the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.” Her marriages to Gordon Thomas, a writer, and Binky Baker, an actor, ended in divorce.Throughout her career, Ms. Nightingale championed new music — from progressive rock to acid house to grime.She described her visceral connection to new music when she was interviewed in 2020 on the popular BBC Radio 4 program “Desert Island Discs.”“It’s a thrill, it’s absolutely so exciting,” she said. “I actually get a physical sensation. I get shivers up and down my legs when I hear something that becomes very successful.” More

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      Sleater-Kinney’s 10 (or Actually 11) Best Songs

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      As the band’s 11th album arrives, listen back through the strongest moments in its catalog.From left: Janet Weiss (formerly of Sleater-Kinney), Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker.Chad Batka for The New York TimesDear listeners,I first heard the band Sleater-Kinney when I was a teenager, and it’s not an exaggeration to say it changed my life. The early 2000s were a particularly macho time in rock music — all wounded emo boys and nü-metal aggressors — and even in the late ’90s it was difficult to find female musicians lauded for how well they played their instruments rather than the way they looked. Then I happened upon a live recording of Sleater-Kinney playing its 1997 song “Words and Guitar,” and it blew my hair back like I’d entered a wind tunnel.The band sounded huge — loud and furious and virtuosic in its precision. The drummer, Janet Weiss, played harder than pretty much anyone I’d ever seen, of any gender, and she sometimes wore pigtails. Clearly, that meant I could do anything. Clearly, this was the best band in the universe.I still believe that Sleater-Kinney’s two-decade, eight-album stretch from 1995 to 2015 ranks among the strongest runs ever by an American band. But its last three albums, released since Weiss left the group, have largely left me cold. That was an inconvenient truth I had to confront this week when I reviewed Sleater-Kinney’s latest release, “Little Rope.”The album is a dark, brooding meditation on grief — the guitarist and singer Carrie Brownstein lost her mother and stepfather while she was writing these songs — and it does have fleeting moments of that old magic. But I’d be lying, or blindly stanning, if I said I rank this new album with the band’s best work. Something difficult about being a music fan and a critic is the fact that our longtime faves still have the potential to disappoint us.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?  More

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      Dolly Parton Covers Billy Joel, and 8 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Mumford & Sons and Pharrell Williams, Julian Lage, feeo and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes), and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Dolly Parton, ‘The Entertainer’Now that she’s released the deluxe edition — in honor of her 78th birthday, on Friday! — Dolly Parton’s already sprawling double album “Rockstar” runs nearly three hours long and clocks in at an indefatigably rockin’ 39 tracks. This makes finding the album’s buried treasures that much more exhausting, but luckily one sparkles out from the heap of newly released bonus tracks: her ornately arranged and deeply felt cover of Billy Joel’s 1974 single “The Entertainer.” Joel’s version was full of a young upstart’s gimlet-eyed cynicism — “If you’re gonna have a hit, you gotta make it fit, so they cut it down to 3:05,” he sang on a kind of spiritual sequel to the earlier “Piano Man” — but Parton sings it from the opposite end of a long career, finding fresh meaning in his words. “I know the game, you’ll forget my name,” she sings, with a slight ache in her voice. “And I won’t be here in another year, if I don’t stay on the charts.” Given that “Rockstar” became the highest-charting album of Parton’s career just a few months ago, that fate seems, blessedly, unlikely. LINDSAY ZOLADZMumford & Sons and Pharrell Williams, ‘Good People’The unlikely pairing of Mumford & Sons with Pharrell Williams has yielded a decidedly un-folksy song. After a brief head-fake intro of acoustic guitar, it’s a foot-stamping, tambourine-shaking vow of solidarity, revival and burgeoning power: “Good people been down so long/And now I see the sun is rising.” Biblical language and church-choir harmonies insist on a return to righteousness, but they leave it to the listener to decide exactly what’s righteous and who the good people are. JON PARELESReyna Tropical, ‘Cartagena’The guitarist and songwriter Fabi Reyna, who led She Shreds in the 2010s, now records as Reyna Tropical. In “Cartagena,” from an album due in March, “Malegría,” she sings about finding oneness with nature. A lilting beat, ricocheting percussion and layers of intertwined guitars and marimbas hint at Congolese soukous as Reyna enjoys “a moment of peace” and exults, in Spanish, “Let the environment caress me”; it sounds like sheer delight. PARELESAnycia featuring Latto, ‘Back Outside’Two Atlanta rappers — the rising star Anycia and the trusted hitmaker Latto — join forces on the brassy “Back Outside,” both sounding utterly unbothered. Anycia’s low, laid-back rasp provides a fitting foil for Latto’s bounding exuberance; “I don’t know how to sing, but I’m her,” Latto spits, taking a quick breath as the punchline lands. ZOLADZThe Dandy Warhols featuring Frank Black, ‘Danzig With Myself’Bitter cynicism — or is it realism? — courses through “Danzig With Myself”; the punny title is the song’s only hint of comedy. With Frank Black (a.k.a. Black Francis) from Pixies to drive home the grunge connection, the song harnesses a blunt riff and all sorts of guitar noise to back observations on a dystopian, disinformation-saturated moment: “I can’t believe how many people want to deceive us/And I can’t believe how many people want to receive it.” PARELESJulian Lage, ’76’The acoustic guitarist Julian Lage has worked in all sorts of styles as a leader and as a sideman with John Zorn, Charles Lloyd and others. “76” is from “Speak to Me,” an album due March 1. It’s a jauntily asymmetrical tune that rides a bluesy riff and a backbeat from the drummer Dave King of the Bad Plus. Lage takes some modal and chromatic detours, and the pianist Kris Davis flings around free-jazz clusters, but the track never loses a rowdy roadhouse spirit. PARELESMagic Tuber Stringband, ‘Days of Longing’The duo from North Carolina that records as Magic Tuber Stringband connects Appalachian tradition to Minimalism, meditation and perhaps post-rock, carrying forward the ideas of musicians like John Fahey and Sandy Bull. In “Days of Longing,” Courtney Werner on fiddle and Evan Morgan on 12-string guitar share a waltz that transforms itself from folksy warmth to harrowing dissonance to an unfinished resolution, refusing easy comfort. PARELESJlin featuring Philip Glass, ‘The Precision of Infinity’What would Philip Glass sound like with a beat to kick his music forward? The electronic musician Jlin provides a definitive answer in “The Precision of Infinity” from “Akoma,” an album due in March. She chops up bits of Glass’s solo-piano arpeggios, two-note ostinatos and wordless singers and sets them to quick-changing but insistent programmed and sampled percussion, as she relocates his long dramatic arcs into an era of fractured attention spans. PARELESfeeo, ‘It Was Then That I’“I felt God in your touch,” sings feeo — the English songwriter and producer Theodora Laird — in a song about sublime physical communion. Her backup is sparse, pulsing electronic sounds that come together as chords, pull apart and realign; she sounds fulfilled, fascinated and enthralled. PARELES More

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      Sleater-Kinney ‘Little Rope’ Review: 11th Album Born From Tragedy

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      The band’s 11th album, “Little Rope,” was born out of tragedy, but feels curiously restrained.Nearly 20 years ago, when Sleater-Kinney released its towering seventh album, “The Woods,” there was a convincing case to be made that the trio was the most vital, and underrated, working American rock band.Born of the fervent feminist spirit of the riot grrrl movement and the Pacific Northwest’s fertile D.I.Y. scene, the group spent the second half of the ’90s releasing increasingly sophisticated punk albums and eventually, on its righteous 2002 release “One Beat,” maturing into one of the few indie-rock bands making meaningful protest music in the aftermath of 9/11.On “The Woods,” Sleater-Kinney managed to kick things into an even higher gear. The twitchy electricity of Carrie Brownstein’s guitar, the embodied howl of Corin Tucker’s vocals and the earth-quaking force of Janet Weiss’s drums collided in a glorious cacophony, making noise that sounded less like songs than melodic thunderstorms.There are dim echoes of that fury on “Little Rope,” Sleater-Kinney’s 11th album and its second since Weiss’s departure in 2019. The new LP has more oomph and darkness than the band’s self-produced 2021 LP “Path of Wellness” and more emotional resonance than its mechanical 2019 effort “The Center Won’t Hold.” But even in its wildest moments, when compared to the band’s mightiest work, “Little Rope” sounds unfortunately diminished and curiously restrained.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?  More

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      Broadway Shows to See This Winter and Spring

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      Broadway Shows to See This Winter and SpringA guide to the shows onstage now and scheduled to arrive this winter and spring, including “Cabaret,” “Hell’s Kitchen” and “The Outsiders.”What to See | Getting Tickets Illustrations by Golden CosmosWhat to SeeAnd suddenly, Broadway is packed again. After an autumn that wasn’t exactly overwhelmed with openings, spring is looking absolutely jammed, with 19 productions currently set to open between now and the deadline for Tony Awards eligibility in late April. But right now we’re in a quieter part of the season, which for audiences means deals are afoot — including the two-for-one offers that are part of Broadway Week, underway through Feb. 4.Last ChanceLeslie Odom Jr. and Kara Young, center, with the rest of the “Purlie Victorious” cast at the Music Box Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesGutenberg! The Musical!Silliness runs amok in this musical comedy duet starring Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells (Tony nominees for “The Book of Mormon”) as Bud and Doug, a pair of theater-loving goofballs with big Broadway dreams for their show about Johannes Gutenberg, the 15th-century inventor of the printing press — so they’re giving a performance, playing all the roles themselves, to persuade an audience of producers. Written by Scott Brown and Anthony King (“Beetlejuice”), the show is directed by Alex Timbers, a Tony winner for “Moulin Rouge!,” who staged an endearingly zany Off Broadway production of “Gutenberg!” in 2006. (Through Jan. 28 at the James Earl Jones Theater.) Read the review.HarmonyBarry Manilow and Bruce Sussman retell the true story of the Comedian Harmonists — a Weimar-era vocal sextet of Jewish and gentile Berliners — in this long-gestating musical. With a cast that includes Chip Zien, Sierra Boggess and Julie Benko, the show is directed and choreographed by the Tony winner Warren Carlyle. Notably, this is not a jukebox show; the music, written and arranged by Manilow, is original. (Through Feb. 4 at the Ethel Barrymore Theater.) Read the review.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?  More

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      How Ariana Grande’s ‘Yes, And?’ Relates to Madonna’s ‘Vogue’

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      Madonna’s 1990 hit “Vogue” has enjoyed a recent renaissance. Ariana’s Grande’s first solo song in three years leans on its sound, but the similarities end there.There was never a question that Madonna’s 1990 pop-house classic “Vogue” was a tidal wave. But over the past year and a half, the song that helped bring the sounds of underground queer culture to the mainstream has continued to create powerful ripples.Since 2019 — when the track’s release was chronicled on the FX drama “Pose” alongside discussions about authorship and authenticity — the hit has been experiencing a slow, steady resurgence. In 2022, Beyoncé mashed it up with her ballroom-referencing “Break My Soul,” updating Madonna’s rap to pay tribute to Black pop icons, and starting last year, the remix was given prime placement on both Beyoncé’s and Madonna’s tours. Ariana DeBose performed a heavily memed adaptation of “Vogue” at the 2023 BAFTA Awards, and “Vogue” even garnered the ultimate symbol of 2020s relevance: It was sampled by the Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny on his album “Nadia Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana.”Now “Vogue” is the animating reference on “Yes, And?,” the comeback single by Ariana Grande, who has spent three years out of the pop spotlight filming the movie version of “Wicked.” Like the original, written and produced by Madonna and Shep Pettibone, Grande’s song — credited to Grande, Max Martin and Ilya Salmanzadeh — features snappy synth drums; bright, syncopated stabs of piano; and a spoken-word bridge. But “Yes, And?” isn’t an invitation to the dance floor; it’s a rebuttal to Grande’s critics. So while it sounds superficially like “Vogue,” it doesn’t really feel like it.In the first part of her career, Grande was mainly a classicist with roots in hip-hop soul, ’90s R&B and brassy show tunes. Her fifth album, “Thank U, Next” from 2019, introduced a shift: Adopting the cadences and textures of contemporary rap, Grande provided raw, up-to-the-minute commentary on her personal life.“Yes, And?” attempts to marry the two sides of her music, providing a throwback musical canvas that she embellishes with her responses to those gossiping about her looks and her latest relationship, with her “Wicked” co-star Ethan Slater. While its bones are unmistakably rooted in “Vogue,” the song takes some turns: A pitched-up vocal sample makes the track feel busy, and Grande, a gifted singer, can’t resist the impulse to fill its empty spaces with high trills and flowery runs. When she approaches the final chorus, she belts the song’s title phrase as if she’s the world’s most effusive improv enthusiast.Paying tribute to an iconic song is risky business — just ask the many stars who have interpolated or sampled recent hits, only to come off like craven impersonators — and “Vogue,” in particular, is a masterpiece of elegance and restraint. Unlike many Madonna singles, “Vogue” is a remarkably selfless endeavor; it was inspired by the bold, creative queer pioneers of New York’s ballroom culture, and pays tribute to the scene without laying claim to it or assuming its struggles.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?  More

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      Lil Nas X, Ariana Grande and 21 Savage Kick Off 2024

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:Lil Nas X’s comeback single “J Christ,” a continuation of his trollcore pop narrative, with its ostentatious video and punchline-heavy media rolloutThe new 21 Savage album “American Dream,” the first blockbuster hip-hop album of the year, with many high-profile features and some reckoning with the immigration case that nearly derailed his careerThe sonic shift in Ariana Grande’s new song, “Yes, And?,” her first solo single in three yearsNew tracks from Bizarrap featuring Young Miko, and Jastin MartinSnack of the weekConnect 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