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      Paula Abdul Accuses Nigel Lythgoe of Sexual Assault During ‘American Idol’

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      Ms. Abdul filed a lawsuit against Mr. Lythgoe, a producer of the reality show, that accuses him of assaulting her in an elevator.Paula Abdul filed a lawsuit on Friday against Nigel Lythgoe, a former longtime producer of “American Idol,” accusing him of sexually assaulting her when she was a judge on the reality show in the early 2000s.In the lawsuit, Ms. Abdul says that during one of the early seasons of “American Idol,” Mr. Lythgoe shoved her against the wall of a hotel elevator, grabbed her genitals and breasts and began “shoving his tongue down her throat.” Ms. Abdul said in the lawsuit that she tried to push Mr. Lythgoe away, and that when the elevator doors opened, she ran to her hotel room and called one of her representatives in tears.Mr. Lythgoe helped turn “American Idol” into a phenomenon in the United States in 2002 after developing an earlier iteration of the show in Britain. He was also a creator of “So You Think You Can Dance,” on which he appeared as a judge for 16 seasons.Representatives for Mr. Lythgoe did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Saturday.Both Mr. Lythgoe and Ms. Abdul, who rose to fame as a choreographer and pop star in the late 1980s, became fixtures of American reality television as judges with the power to turn promising singers and dancers into stars. Ms. Abdul spent eight seasons on “American Idol,” entertaining viewers with her gushing commentary and playful rivalry with her fellow judge Simon Cowell.After leaving “American Idol,” Ms. Abdul was a judge on “So You Think You Can Dance,” working alongside Mr. Lythgoe in 2015 and 2016. She says in the lawsuit that Mr. Lythgoe again made advances during this time, while she was at his home to discuss work.“Lythgoe forced himself on top of Abdul while she was seated on his couch and attempted to kiss her while proclaiming that the two would make an excellent ‘power couple,’” the lawsuit said. “Abdul pushed Lythgoe off of her, explaining that she was not interested in his advances, and immediately left Lythgoe’s home.”The lawsuit, which was filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, said Ms. Abdul did not speak publicly about the encounters because she feared retaliation from Mr. Lythgoe.Ms. Abdul is suing under a California law that allows people making sexual assault accusations to file claims outside the statute of limitations for a limited period of time.In her lawsuit, Ms. Abdul, 61, also accused Mr. Lythgoe, 74, of verbal harassment, saying that he called her at one point and told her they should celebrate because “it had been ‘seven years and the statute of limitations had run.’”Ms. Abdul also brought the lawsuit against production companies behind “American Idol” and “So You Think You Can Dance,” accusing them of negligence. Representatives for the shows and the production companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.When Ms. Abdul left “American Idol” in 2009, there was speculation that her exit was the result of disagreements about pay disparities with the show’s male faces.In her lawsuit, Ms. Abdul says that as a judge on “American Idol,” she was “discriminated against in terms of compensation and benefits.” She describes her relationship with the show’s producers and other judges as “strained from the start,” saying that she was the target of “constant taunts” from Mr. Lythgoe and others involved in the show and that selective editing made her appear “inept.”Mr. Lythgoe was a largely behind-the-scenes figure with “American Idol,” leaving as an executive producer of the show about a decade ago, but he has been center stage on “So You Think You Can Dance,” turning himself into a performing arts impresario and advocate for dance education. He is scheduled to return as a judge in the spring. More

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      Jermaine Jackson Is Accused of Sexual Assault in Lawsuit

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      In a complaint filed Wednesday in Los Angeles, Rita Barrett says the musician raped her at her home in 1988. Mr. Jackson has not yet responded.Jermaine Jackson, one of Michael Jackson’s older brothers and a founding member of the Jackson 5, was accused of sexual assault in a civil suit filed Wednesday in California.In the suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, Rita Barrett accuses Mr. Jackson, 69, of sexual abuse, sexual battery, sexual assault, harassment and rape relating to an incident that she says happened at her Los Angeles home in 1988. In the court papers, Ms. Barrett says that Mr. Jackson forcefully entered her home and assaulted her, inflicting “severe emotional, physical and psychological injury, including humiliation, shame, and guilt, economic loss, economic capacity and permanent emotional distress.”The suit lists Mr. Jackson, Jermaine L. Jackson Music Productions and Work Records, a business Mr. Jackson founded, as defendants. Mr. Jackson could not be reached for comment.Ms. Barrett’s court filing says she came into contact with Mr. Jackson through her role as a musician’s contractor and as a member of a union that represents musicians. The complaint says she also knew Mr. Jackson through Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown Records, who had a personal and business relationship with Mr. Barrett’s husband. Mr. Gordy could not be reached for comment.In her suit, Ms. Barrett says that she told Mr. Gordy what happened the following day, but he “withheld and concealed the acts, further perpetuating the coverup and allowing Mr. Gordy, Defendant Jackson and others in the business relationship to continue to reap profits derived from Mr. Jackson’s work and reputation for years to come.”Ms. Barrett is requesting a jury trial.Michael Pellegrino, president of Artists Management Agency, which has represented Mr. Jackson since 2014, said the agency would be parting ways with the musician because of the suit.“We have a zero-tolerance policy concerning these matters,” Mr. Pellegrino wrote in an email to The Times on Friday. “We wish him well but we must feel comfortable about who we represent and unfortunately at this moment we must take in consideration our other clients who do not feel comfortable with the current allegations.”Jeff Anderson, a lawyer for Ms. Barrett, said that his client decided to file the suit after learning that California’s Sexual Abuse and Cover-Up Accountability Act allows certain sexual abuse claims to be revived that would otherwise be barred by the statute of limitations.“The first thing that she and we want by having brought this case is for it to be known that Jermaine Jackson committed a very serious crime,” Mr. Anderson added. More

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      Jim Ladd, Free-Form Radio Trailblazer, Is Dead at 75

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      An institution of the airwaves in Los Angeles and beyond, he capitalized on the freedom the FM band offered in the 1970s to blaze his own path.Jim Ladd, a maverick Los Angeles disc jockey who helped pioneer free-form FM radio in the 1970s, and who went on to become a rock institution and an inspiration for Tom Petty’s song “The Last DJ,” died on Dec. 17 at his home near Sacramento, Calif. He was 75.The cause was a heart attack, his wife, Helene Hodge Ladd, said.With his laid-back manner and his considerable equestrian skills, Mr. Ladd was known to longtime listeners as the Lonesome L.A. Cowboy, after a 1973 song by the New Riders of the Purple Sage. His expansive musical knowledge, saucy humor and outspoken political views made him a celebrity in rock circles — not only in Los Angeles, where he had storied runs at KLOS and KMET, but also nationally, thanks to his long-running hourlong syndicated series, “Innerview.”“Innerview,” which made its debut in 1974, featured interviews with countless rock luminaries, including the Beach Boys, Led Zeppelin and Elton John. It was heard on some 160 stations around the country.The same class of rock deity could often be found lounging around Mr. Ladd’s treehouse-like home perched on the wooded hillsides of Laurel Canyon. His house drew friends like Stevie Nicks, George Harrison and Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, who featured Mr. Ladd on his second solo album, “Radio K.A.O.S.” (1987).More interested in challenging listeners with new sounds than spinning the same old chart-toppers, Mr. Ladd was well suited to the early days of free-form radio, which was made possible by a 1964 Federal Communications Commission rule preventing AM stations from repeating more than 50 percent of their formats on commonly owned FM stations in a single market.Mr. Ladd was said to be an inspiration for the Tom Petty song “The Last DJ,” an indictment of commercial radio.This allowed countless D.J.s like Mr. Ladd, on stations around the country, to shatter the Top 40 format on FM and take control of their own programming in an era when experimentation in rock was ascendant and rock itself was hailed as a force for social change.“Free-form radio was an approach to the music, and the show itself, which resulted in a highly personal and completely spontaneous new art form,” he wrote in his 1991 memoir, “Radio Waves: Life and Revolution on the FM Dial.”“Most of us never thought of it as a job,” he wrote. “A job was something ‘straight people’ did to earn ulcers. For us, it was more of a calling. We were guerrilla fighters for a generation of creative explorers, inmates who took over the asylum for just one purpose — to play with the public address system.”Mr. Ladd got his first access to this public address system in the late 1960s at KNAC in Long Beach, Calif., where he challenged listeners’ ears by playing the latest underground tunes and challenged authorities with his political passions, for example by stacking songs like “Universal Soldier” by Donovan, “The Unknown Soldier” by the Doors and “I Don’t Wanna Be a Soldier Mama I Don’t Wanna Die” by John Lennon as a musical protest against the Vietnam War.“The music at that time was filled with radical new ideas and a unique generational perspective,” Mr. Ladd wrote. “Alternative points of view not heard on the six o’clock news came through the music loud and clear. Songs about the peace movement, civil rights, Vietnam, drugs and the generation gap — and massive quantities of sex.”James William Ladd was born on Jan. 17, 1948, in Lynwood, Calif., the oldest of three children of Obie and Betty Ladd. His father was a bank loan manager who won three bronze stars as a medic in World War II; his mother was a banker.Mr. Ladd was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2005.Lucy Nicholson/ReutersHis family moved to Vacaville, Calif., near Sacramento, when he was a child. After graduating from Vacaville High School, he returned to Southern California to study at Long Beach City College before joining KNAC.Mr. Ladd spent the early 1970s at the powerhouse Los Angeles rock station KLOS before moving to a rival station, KMET, where he remained until 1987, when the station changed its format and began showcasing smooth jazz. In his book, he derided the new sound as “a computer-programmed Valium tablet, dentist-office music for yuppies.”Even as FM rock stations moved toward more rigid playlists in the 1980s, Mr. Ladd fought to maintain his independence, in both music and message, often running afoul of station management. With his outspoken ways, he was said to be an inspiration for the 2002 Tom Petty song “The Last DJ,” an indictment of commercial radio that featured lyrics like “Well, the top brass don’t like him talking so much/And he won’t play what they say to play.”In the liner notes for the album of the same name, Mr. Petty thanked Mr. Ladd for “his inspiration and courage.” “Let’s say it may have been partially inspired by me,” Mr. Ladd said in a 2015 video interview.“I don’t want to say it’s about me,” he added, “but I am very, very honored, obviously.”Mr. Ladd made stops at multiple stations over the years. In 2011 he joined SiriusXM satellite radio, where he was a host on the Deep Tracks channel. He remained there until his death.In addition to his wife, Mr. Ladd is survived by a brother, Jon, and a sister, Veronna Ladd.In a 2000 interview with The Los Angeles Times, when Mr. Ladd was back at KLOS, he broke out a handful of papers: the station’s playlist schedule, which mapped out the songs to be played over the course of the day — until his slot at 10 p.m., which remained blank. As in the old days, he could play what he chose. The only thing listeners could count on was Mr. Ladd serving up his trademark catchphrase, “Lord have mercy.”When asked why he was allowed to follow his own muse when other D.J.s at the station were not, Mr. Ladd responded, “Stubbornness, stupidity, doggedness.”The station’s program director, Rita Wilde, quoted in the article, offered a different take: “Not that many people, if you gave them the freedom, would know what to do with it.” More

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      The Beatles, Taylor Swift and More Pop Stars Mess With the Past

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      Who says hindsight is 20/20?Musicians keep getting tempted to revisit recordings they made long ago, and in 2023, flashbacks from the Beatles and Taylor Swift drew worldwide attention. Some temptations are technological; others have business imperatives. Wielding the latest digital tools, some powered by artificial intelligence, musicians and labels have been busily exploring their vaults and hard drives, many of them thoroughly convinced that they now have a better idea of how their older music is supposed to sound. Do they?Recorded music is many things: an expression, a structure, a physical performance, a series of decisions large and small, an artifact of memory and emotion, a souvenir of a particular time. But all of those aspects end up as a waveform, which can then be treated like any other information. The digital era and its computer-engineering paradigms have made that information infinitely malleable: just a starting point for version 2.0, 3.0 and beyond. A.I. is only going to make things more complicated as it reconfigures all the information available online.But with music, an update isn’t necessarily an improvement. It might be an anachronism or a betrayal instead.One of the hardest decisions for any artist is knowing when something is finished. That choice might be made after endless deliberation, on a deadline, on a whim, under the influence — who knows? In the vinyl era, that decision was usually final, give or take alternate mixes for singles, radio and clubs. Listeners reacted to, and bonded with, the music in its fixed form.Digital loosened things up — at first out of necessity, as vast analog catalogs were transferred to new formats, and then more innovatively, as musicians reveled in the possibilities of vastly expanded multitracking, sampling, editing and even glitching. Remixes, remasters, mash-ups, ghost duets — all kinds of second-guessing ensued, including among musicians themselves who were older but not necessarily wiser as artists. In the streaming era, even an official release date doesn’t make things final; Kanye West, now Ye, kept revising his 2016 LP “The Life of Pablo” — making previous iterations vanish online — well after its initial release.There are obvious commercial incentives for looking back. For many artists, as well as their marketers, it’s easier creative work to revisit sure things than to forge brand-new material. And there’s hardly a more time-tested selling point than claiming that a well-loved product is new and improved.Pop has been busily plumbing its archives since the dawn of the digital era, but 2023 brought some high-profile time-warping. The Beatles empire heralded the release of “Now and Then,” which is billed as the last song that all four members worked on, even asynchronously. It’s built from a John Lennon demo from the late 1970s that the other three Beatles started rearranging in the 1990s. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr did recording sessions to complete the track in 2022, using recent software that could cleanly separate out Lennon’s vocal.The surviving Beatles tidied up the song, strengthening the beat and jettisoning some of Lennon’s more self-doubting lyrics and lacing it with elements (like vocal harmonies) lifted from other Beatles songs. They were deliberately looking back where the Beatles of the 1960s had determinedly pushed ahead. It’s a 21st-century song, as much “now” as “then.”“Now and Then” arrived as part of the latest Beatles reissues: new, expanded, remixed versions of the anthologies known as the Red and Blue albums, “The Beatles/1962-1966” and “The Beatles/1966-1970” (now also designated “The 2023 Edition”). They are the continuation of the Beatles’ longtime efforts to wring every possible product out of their catalog: concept compilations (“Love Songs,” No. 1 hits on “1”), expanded — and illuminating — reissues that include unreleased session tapes, a “naked” mix of “Let It Be,” a megamix for Cirque du Soleil (“Love”).The Red and Blue albums, originally released in 1973, were many young listeners’ primers on the Beatles: a whirlwind career ruthlessly pared down to what two LPs could hold. The 2023 editions have more songs; they’re now three-LP sets, diluting the canon established by the original compilations. And as with the other painstakingly reworked 21st-century Beatles releases, they fidget with countless sonic details: panning instruments to different places or moving them into the center, separating parts that had been blurred or blended, bringing out new details, crisping things up.The new mixes offer a contemporary mixture of analytical clarity and arbitrary tweaks. But they don’t entirely trust that the groundbreaking 1960s Beatles already knew what they were doing in the first place — and that their artistic achievement was shaped by how the Beatles dealt with the era’s studio technology, limitations and all. People encountering the songs on streaming services may not notice which version they’re getting: the ones all the Beatles chose to release, or the new ones.A different kind of reclamation project continued when Taylor Swift released “1989 (Taylor’s Version),” her remake and expansion of her breakthrough pop album from 2014: nearly note-for-note reconstructions of the previously released songs, plus five other songs “from the vault” that she has said didn’t fit the original album. Swift has impeccable personal reasons for the do-over; she does not own the master recordings she made for the Big Machine label, even though the songs are hers. Meanwhile, her latest fans get a chance to experience a “new” Swift album as though it were being released for the first time.Yet an unimpeachable business statement is different from an artistic one. On “1989” — with the Swedish pop master Max Martin as executive producer — Swift was boldly and indelibly redefining herself. She left behind the country radio format, cranked up the beats and loops and honed her pop concision. The album has a spirit of both discipline and discovery, of kicking old expectations to the curb while flexing new skills.And that’s something the remake can’t recapture. Instead of a breakthrough, it’s more like an assignment or an exercise, diligently revisiting every instrumental layer and vocal inflection. It’s thoroughly, unblinkingly professional, but the stakes are lower. Time-warp paradoxes start with the first track, “Welcome to New York.” Swift sings, “Everybody here wanted something more/Searching for a sound they hadn’t heard before” — as she rebuilds a sound the entire world has now heard before.Of course, there’s an outlier and counterexample — as always in music — to leaving the past alone. In 2023, the Replacements released “Tim: Let It Bleed Edition,” a boxed set including a full-length remix of the band’s 1985 album “Tim” by the longtime producer and engineer Ed Stasium.“Tim” was the Replacements’ fourth album but its first on a major label, at a time when “indie credibility” seemed to matter. That identity crisis was central to the songs Paul Westerberg wrote: “God what a mess/On the ladder of success,” he sang in “Bastards of Young.”“Tim” was produced by Tom Erdelyi of the Ramones, who made it unfriendly to radio play; it’s distant, muted and unnecessarily murky, perhaps to resist any accusations that the Replacements were selling out. Stasium’s remix brings out all kinds of things that were recorded but downplayed in the original production: snappy but untamed drumming, guitars that wrangle and cackle, Westerberg’s heartfelt and rowdy vocals.Even with this mix, “Tim” probably wouldn’t have been an album-radio hit; the band was still too scrappy for mid-1980s gatekeepers. But the remixed “Tim” is the rare case where second thoughts can change things for the better. On streaming services and in the box, the Replacements don’t hide their earlier choices; the past and present versions of the album are both included. At least we can still know which is which.Digital possibilities are only going to scramble things further, untethering artistic products from their original inspirations and proportions. Oil paintings are being remarketed as environments. Albums are getting a new round of spatialized Dolby Atmos remixes. A.I. will be generating countless variations, pastiches and fakes. But amid the flood of new versions, let’s not forget to identify, recognize and celebrate the originals. More

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      ‘Priscilla,’ Olivia Rodrigo and the Year of Girlhood and Longing

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      When she was just 14, Priscilla Beaulieu, an Air Force brat stationed with her family in Germany, met one of the planet’s biggest pop stars. The pair formed a connection, and when it was time to temporarily part ways, he left her with a keepsake.That gift, an Army issue jacket from Elvis Presley, is an important symbol in the movie “Priscilla,” hanging from her bedroom wall like a poster ripped from a magazine. The film’s director, Sofia Coppola, seems to be making a point about the gaping age gap between teenager and heartthrob (24 and a year-plus into military service), but also about the universality of a girl’s crush — relatable, all-consuming.In class soon after, in a scene that reminded me of Britney Spears anxiously counting down the seconds until the bell in the “ … Baby One More Time” video, a daydreaming Priscilla fidgets at her desk. You can almost see the cartoon hearts floating above her head as Coppola offers this unsettling portrait of an adolescent drawn into an age-inappropriate relationship. But her knowing depiction of girlhood longing stayed with me, too. Because whether you were a teenage girl in 1959 or in 2023, that specific ache — in love, or what you think is love — will probably feel familiar.I noticed that pang — the kind that comes from badly wanting something seemingly just out of reach — surfacing in our entertainments this year: full-throated and kicking down doors on “Guts,” Olivia Rodrigo’s hilarious, if wrenching, relationship album; simmering to a boil in “Swarm,” the series about an obsessed fan with a gnawing hunger; and yearning for validation in “Don’t Think, Dear,” a dancer’s devastating memoir of a ballet career that stalled at the barre. Girls giving voice to their pain even when they couldn’t fully make sense of it. Girls spilling their guts.The Cruel Tutelage of Alice Robb“Ballet had given me a way to be girl,” a “specific template,” Alice Robb writes in “Don’t Think, Dear.”To middle school, she wears her hair scraped into a bun, a leotard instead of a bra. She trains at the New York City Ballet’s prestigious school. At 12, though, struggling to keep up, she’s expelled after three years of study. The rejection is unshakable, and the sting goes on for decades. Desperate for a do-over that never comes, she enrolls in less prominent dance academies, where she’s heartbroken to encounter girls with flat feet and messy buns. She stalks old classmates on social media, and for 15 years, keeps up a dutiful stretching routine that she hopes will maintain the outlines of a ballet body, one that telegraphs her as “special.”“The dream of being a ballerina begins with the dream of being beautiful,” Robb writes. Anyone who has ever pulled on a tutu, this pink puff of fabric imbued with something indescribably feminine, is probably nodding at this assessment of ballet’s initial pull. American girlhood is practically wrapped in blush tones, with ballet as a kind of shared rite. It’s there at every stage: in the aspirant of the popular “Angelina Ballerina” children’s books and in the nostalgic young enthusiasts who’ve recently given the art form’s aesthetics a name, balletcore, playing dress-up with the uniform. But for those like Robb who see ballet not as a phase, but a pursuit, letting go is hard. To fail at ballet is to fail at being a girl.That’s not true, of course. But wounds sustained in girlhood, when you’re not yet emotionally equipped to mend them, tend to linger. With each page, I rooted for Robb, now a journalist in her 30s, to find the position that would let her plant her feet back on the ground.Alice Robb at Steps in Manhattan.Laurel Golio for The New York TimesAnd I thought of an Olivia Rodrigo lyric: “I bought all the clothes that they told me to buy/I chased some dumb ideal my whole [expletive] life.” That’s how Rodrigo, the 20-year-old pop supernova, deals with the anguish of rejection on her sophomore album, “Guts”: She thrashes.Rodrigo realizes that, in its first throes, “Love Is Embarrassing.” (It is.) On that throbbing track, she admits the hold “some weird second-string loser” has on her. On another, “Get Him Back,” she jokingly lays out a conflicted revenge plot as the bridge drops to a whisper: “I wanna kiss his face, with an uppercut,” she confesses. “I wanna meet his mom — just to tell her her son sucks.” She’s cataloging her humiliations, but she’s laughing at them, too.She refuses to wallow for long, and I’m convinced this is partly what gives the album its buoyancy. (It’s an approach that, in hindsight, would have given me more relief than the semester I spent writing love-stricken poetry on tiny notecards at my university’s performing arts library after a brutal breakup.)Headfirst Into HeartbreakGirlhood, strictly marked in years, comes to a close in the waning years of adolescence. But for some, I think this period calls for a less tidy metric, one that makes room for a soft transition into late girlhood, or adolescence — with all of its intensifying feeling — and then post-girlhood, with its own round of heartbreaks. Lauryn Hill was 23 in 1998 when she released a relationship album for the ages. “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,” multiplatinum and Grammy-winning, tracked her recovery from a series of rumored breaks: with her hip-hop trio, the Fugees, and one of her bandmates, Wyclef Jean, with whom she was said to have shared a stormy romance. For a generation of us, it was as if she’d found our own love letters and read each one out loud.This fall, reunited with her bandmates, the girl from South Orange, N.J., returned to the stage to breathe new life into that indelible collection. On opening night of a short-lived tour, I watched from the Prudential Center in nearby Newark as Hill wailed the exasperated plea from “Ex-Factor”: “No matter how I think we grow, you always seem to let me know it ain’t working.” It had been 25 years since Hill’s “Miseducation”; a quarter-century for perspective, love and motherhood to right-size once outsize feelings. She sang the words she’d written all those years ago, but this time her voice was tinged with unmistakable joy.Lauryn Hill on the 25th anniversary of “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” tour.Mathew Tsang/Getty ImagesThere is longing in the fictional world of “Swarm,” but little joy. Dre (Dominique Fishback), a socially awkward 20-something, spends her days posting online tributes dedicated to her favorite artist, a Beyoncé stand-in named Ni’Jah.“I think the second she sees me, she’d know how we’re connected,” Dre tells her roommate.Dre is a “Killer Bee,” one of a hive of obsessive fans, and she will live up to the name: She soon sets off on a violent cross-country spree, picking off Ni’Jah’s unsuspecting online critics. After each kill, famished, Dre devours anything she can get her hands on — a leftover apple pie, a sandwich. It becomes clear that she’s not hungry at all; what she’s starved for — longing for — is connection. In that sense, she’s not so different from the scores of women and girls who packed concert stadiums this past summer, adorned in sparkling silver or baring arms stacked with friendship bracelets.A Girl Walks Into Her KitchenWhile I contemplated girlhood and longing this year, I was also cheered by how girls have prioritized their own delight. My favorite entry in that category was Girl Dinner, a TikTok trend that transformed a simple meal, meant to be enjoyed solo, into a satisfying feast — “a bag of popcorn, a glass of wine, some bread, some cheese and a hunk of chocolate,” as Jessica Roy put it in The New York Times this summer.The idea was to put convenience first, ostensibly leaving more time and space for the pleasures that elaborate meal prep and cleanup might not. The concept of Girl Dinner, which also embraces the internet appetite for giving ordinary things a fresh polish by renaming them, felt like an antidote to longing. A reminder that sometimes being full, all on your own, can be just as fulfilling. More

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      Tom Smothers and the John Lennon Connection

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      He was close with John Lennon, and had a sophisticated understanding of wine, politics and literature. He only played the bumpkin onstage.I read the news today, oh boy.John Lennon’s lyric popped into my head Tuesday as soon as I read the texts from my friend Marcy Carriker Smothers. The first was a photo of a guitar next to a fire and Christmas poinsettia. The second included the news. “Beautiful and peaceful passing today at 1:40P. We had a lovely Christmas.”Tom Smothers had been in hospice for months so word of his passing induced a sigh not a gasp. I thought of the “Day in the Life” lyric not because of the circumstances of his death — Tom was 86 and died of lung cancer — but because Lennon and Tom were close. At the 1969 Montreal recording of “Give Peace a Chance,” only two acoustic guitars strum along. One is held by Lennon; the other by Tom.Tom came to the antiwar movement with sad bona fides. His father was a West Pointer who said goodbye to his namesake son in 1940, before heading to the Pacific to defend liberty. He never returned.Nothing funny about that origin story. Still, through music, Tom and his younger brother, Dick, found their way to comedy and created an act that instantly impressed Jack Paar, the “Tonight” show host, who remarked in 1961, “I don’t know what you guys have but no one’s going to steal it.”Six years later, the brothers debuted “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” their seminal variety show that used comedy to satirize issues like the Vietnam War, racial politics and drugs.Despite the heavy topics, Tom came across as lighthearted and simple. During an audience question-and-answer session, a woman once asked, “Are you both married?”“No, ma’am. We’re just brothers,” Tom said.Smothers was close with John Lennon and played guitar on “Give Peace a Chance” in 1969 in Montreal. In real life, Tom thought and felt deeply. He cared about social justice and the creative process. He labored over details. The biggest contradiction was Tom’s onstage persona. A classic Smothers Brothers sketch would begin with the two singing a song until Tom interrupted or screwed up the words so badly that Dick pulled the plug. This would lead to wry observations or an argument that built to a punchline. The brothers would then return to the song, providing the sketch with a natural and satisfying finish. At heart, this was character comedy with Dick playing the bass and the straight man and Tom playing the guitar and the fool.In an early episode, the brothers came out singing the Maurice Chevalier hit “Louise” while sporting boater hats. They paused to discuss the French and romance, and Tom instantly claimed familiarity. “You really know about those French wines and women?” Dick challenged Tom.“Oh I know all about that stuff.”The audience laughed, doubting his claim.Dick was not about to let Tom off the hook. “French wine — what do you know about it?” he pressed.“It gets you drunk,” Tom replied, nailing the punchline with exquisite timing.In real life, Tom knew everything about wine. For decades, he owned and operated a vineyard in Sonoma that produced award-winning merlot and cabernet sauvignon. At first, he lived in a barn on the property, then later designed a main house with a huge stone fireplace and views in every direction so that you could follow the sun throughout the day. If the hot tub could talk, it would tell spicy stories about parties in the 1960s and ’70s and probably be the only one that could remember what happened.By the time I visited Smothers-Remick Ridge Ranch, the hot tub was a place for kids to splash around. I’d first met Tom in 1988, when I was hired as a writer for the variety show’s second life. While working on the reboot, I roomed with the associate producer, Marcy Carriker, who married Tom in 1990. Their two children — Bo and Riley Rose — would play with my own two kids. Marcy co-hosted a food and wine radio show with Guy Fieri, so dinner was always delicious. After the meal, Tom would sit by the fire, reading a thick novel.Smothers played the guitar and the fool; his brother played the bass and the straight man.Mark Junge/Getty ImagesIt was a picture of domesticity that didn’t last. Soaking in wine country meant a lot of drinking, and the more Tom drank, the less fun he became. Knowing how brilliant and generous he could be, I found it painful to watch his behavior shift. If this seems harsh, I mention it because the truth mattered to Tom. Marcy and I would go on long walks to discuss the situation. We came up with a phrase that summed things up: “It’s tomplicated.”Tom and Marcy separated 15 years ago but never divorced. And when Tom grew ill, she was there for him along with their children. “They have been rocks,” Marcy texted me hours after he died. She told me that over the last few months, Tom had never had a stranger care for him. She, Bo, Riley Rose and Marty Tryon, Tom’s former road manager, watched over him.And so Tom spent a lovely Christmas Eve and Day surrounded by his family. He slipped away the next afternoon. As always, exquisite timing.I hope Tom will be remembered. He was last on TV three decades ago, so except for comedy nerds, no one under 40 would have reason to recognize him. If you’re curious, there’s a smart 2002 documentary, “Smothered,” about the brothers’ getting fired from CBS, and an excellent book by David Bianculli, “Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.” Both the film and book reiterate what history has made clear: Tom was absolutely right about war being stupid and civil rights being worth fighting for. In his own way, he, too, defended liberty.Or try sliding down a YouTube rabbit hole where you’ll stumble over early routines from Steve Martin, whom Tom hired as a writer before encouraging him to perform. I never met an entertainer who was more respectful of other people’s talents than Tom. He adored so many fellow artists, including Harry Belafonte, Harry Nilsson, Martin Mull, and (Mama) Cass Elliot, who lights up one of my favorite sketches from the 1968-69 season.The concept is simply Elliot singing her hit “Dream a Little Dream” to Tom as he tries to fall asleep in a big brass bed. Tom doesn’t say a word but gets plenty of laughs. The bit is sweet, original, musical and funny. When you strip away the tomplications, Tom was all those things. More

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      in Music

      12 Key Music Collections, From Future to the Who

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      Whitney Houston’s gospel music, Future’s prolific mixtape run, a chunk of Joni Mitchell’s archives and a soundtrack of Brooklyn’s early discos arrived in new packages this year.Artists were eager to revisit the past in 2023 — some tweaking recent albums (like Taylor Swift), others revisiting long-dormant work in the vaults (like the two surviving Beatles). Boxed sets and reissue collections serve a different purpose, helping put catalogs and musicians into context, and bringing fresh revelations to light. Here are a dozen of the best our critics encountered this year.Julee Cruise, ‘Floating Into the Night’(Sacred Bones; one LP, $22)The absorbing, unconventional debut album from the deep-exhale vocalist Julee Cruise, who died in 2022, was produced by Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch; the three had previously collaborated on music for Lynch’s 1986 alt-noir film “Blue Velvet.” This batch of songs, released in 1989, plays as an extension of that fun-house mirror, lightly terrifying universe, with twisted 1950s melodies meeting destabilizing, plangent guitars meeting Dali-esque shimmers. “Falling” became the theme song for “Twin Peaks” in instrumental form, but its full vocal version is the essential one. Songs like that, “The Nightingale” and “Into the Night” feel, even now, sui generis — not exactly dream-pop or new age, but something utterly amniotic. And lightly harrowing, too. JON CARAMANICADeYarmond Edison, ‘Epoch’(Jagjaguwar; five LPs, four CDs, 120-page book, $130)Anna Powell Denton/JagjaguwarBon Iver didn’t come out of nowhere. Before he started that project, Justin Vernon was in DeYarmond Edison, a pensive, folky but exploratory band that made two albums before splitting up; other members formed Megafaun. DeYarmond Edison — Vernon’s middle names — delved into folk, rock, Minimalism and bluegrass, learning traditional songs but also experimenting with phase patterns. It made two studio albums and left behind other songs, including “Epoch.” This extensively annotated boxed set includes songs from Mount Vernon, DeYarmond Edison’s jammy predecessor, along with DeYarmond Edison’s full second studio album (though only part of its first), unreleased demos, intimate concerts, collaborations outside the band and Vernon’s 2006 solo recordings. It’s a chronicle that opens up the sources of a style getting forged. JON PARELESWe 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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      in Theater

      Best Arts Photos of 2023

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      Peter Fisher for The New York Times2023 in Retrospect: 59 Photographs That Defined the Year in ArtsDeadheads, ballerinas and Mick Jagger: As 2023 winds down, revisit a memorable handful of the thousands of images commissioned by our photo editors that capture the year in culture.Marysa Greenawalt More