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      How Grace Potter Lost (and Found) a Solo Album, and a New Life

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      In May 2009, Hollywood Records announced that T Bone Burnett — the producer of the Robert Plant and Alison Krauss LP “Raising Sand,” which dominated the Grammys earlier that year — had recently entered the studio with Grace Potter and the Nocturnals to produce the band’s new album. The LP, which would be the Vermont-based bluesy roots-rock group’s third, was slated to come out that fall.The label didn’t mention that the album was in fact a solo vehicle for Potter, then 25, that she recorded with a team of renowned session musicians: the drummer Jim Keltner, the guitarist Marc Ribot, the bassist Dennis Crouch and the keyboardist Keefus Ciancia. “She was like a ball of fire,” Keltner recalled of Potter in a phone call, “and she was really fun to follow.”During an interview in March at her eclectically decorated villa in Topanga, Calif., Potter — a multi-instrumentalist whose soulful voice has earned her comparisons to Bonnie Raitt, Janis Joplin and “a grittier Patty Griffin” — recounted her sense of anticipation over the release of the LP, “Medicine.”“It really felt like something exciting on the horizon,” Potter said, sitting on the couch in her living room dressed in a stylish forest-green jumpsuit. “It was like the secret that we got to keep until it all came out.” Sixteen years earlier, she had described the record as “more of a storyteller, kind of tribal, Motown, voodoo thing” than her earlier output.Then Hollywood shelved the album. The label wanted Potter and the Nocturnals to rerecord the songs with the producer Mark Batson, known for his work with Alicia Keys, the Dave Matthews Band and Dr. Dre. Potter blamed an A&R executive, whom she declined to name, for the decision.She also said that Bob Cavallo, then the chair of the Disney Music Group, which distributes the Hollywood label, was “concerned that the record would age me.” She added, “I’m a young, hot thing. He was like, ‘We don’t want her to seem like she’s 46.’” (In a phone interview, Cavallo, now 85 and retired, couldn’t recall the particulars of the label’s move, but expressed regret that he couldn’t help Potter “get a giant career, because I thought she deserved one.”)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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      How the Cowbell Gave Latin Music Its Swing

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      When life gets loud, let the rhythm get louder.Ran-kan-kan: Long before I could name the source of my excitement, my body responded to the strident signature of Latin dance music. The cowbell strikes like a drum but rings like a horn, the high pitch piercing through salsa’s dense thicket of overlapping patterns. Just when I feel myself drifting from the dance-floor herd, the cowbell summons me back to the rhythm’s raw nerve. Musicians call this function el amarre, from the Spanish amarrar — to fasten, to moor, to seal the deal. A paradox, maybe, that the instrument that brings all the others in line should incite the most euphoric feelings of freedom. I’m already sweating through my silk, so why resist the cowbell’s erotic revelation? When the fever reaches a certain pitch, complexity must give way to relentless repetition — one just-right note, catechized precisely like a prayer. Eso es. Just like that.Prayer, I learned recently, might be the right metaphor: The cowbell we know today is a direct descendant of instruments that spread through West Africa with the early iron-making technology of the Bantu migrations, and that continue to structure the diaspora’s ritual music, from the double-mouthed agogô of Yoruba bembé ceremonies to the triangular ekón of the secret brotherhood known as Abakuá. Like a god, the bell lays down our shared timeline. The sharp attack puts you in your place — enter here, act now — amid the din of drums and dancers. The job of the bell, I’ve been told, is to stay steady.Maybe that’s how these timelines survived the apocalyptic chaos of the Middle Passage. When diverse captives converged on the Caribbean, they sought out substitutes for the instruments they no longer had the freedom to craft. In Puerto Rico, they fashioned bomba drums from rum barrels; in Cuba, they turned the humble wooden crate, used to pack salt cod, into the cajón, whose special resonance later found a place in Spanish flamenco. Soon enough, free people of color gained access to forges for smithing bells from scratch, so I sometimes wonder if it was not only necessity but sheer virtuosity that compelled musicians to play most anything: hoe blades, machetes, paint cans and, yes, ranchland cowbells, struck with the handles of decapitated hammers.In New York City, the improvisations continued: Fania’s Johnny Pacheco stalked the carts in Central Park to steal the copper cowbells hanging from the horses’ necks. Eddie Palmieri, salsa’s founding father, told me how the drummer Manny Oquendo would take his cracked cowbell to a body shop for repair: “What is it with the cowbell?” the welder, used to mending fenders, finally asked. “Well,” Oquendo grunted, “that’s what gives the swing to the band.” By the 1950s, Latin music had become big business, so it’s no surprise the cowbell was perfected and mass-produced right here in the Bronx, by a Puerto Rican auto mechanic named Calixto Rivera: first in his apartment, then, after noise complaints, in a workshop behind Yankee Stadium. If you don’t make the cowbell by hand, Rivera once told The Times, “it doesn’t go coo-coo — it goes blegh-blegh.”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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      France’s Eurovision act, Louane, wants to tell her mom she’s OK.

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      Reporting from from the St. Jakobshalle arena in BaselLouane singing “Maman,” a song addressed to her mother, who died of cancer.Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhen Louane was offered the chance to represent France at Eurovision, she immediately knew what she wanted to sing about: her mother.As a child growing up in a small town, Louane, whose real name is Anne Peichert, watched Eurovision with her parents and five siblings while gathered around the TV eating pizza. Even when it wasn’t Eurovision season, Louane recalled in an interview, her mother would put on videos of Celine Dion’s winning performance from 1988, and they would watch together, mesmerized by the Canadian singer’s voice.Those happy Eurovision sessions ended abruptly in 2014 when Louane’s mother died from cancer.A star in France with five hit albums, Louane, now 28, said that over the past decade she had written and sung many songs expressing grief and anger over her mother’s death.Her Eurovision track, a powerful ballad called “Maman,” has an altogether different message, however. “It’s a letter to my mother saying: ‘I’m finally fine. I’m finally good in my life. I am, myself, a mother,’” Louane said. “It’s a super special song to me.”Louane makes that transformation clear when she sings in French: “I’m better now / I know the way / I’m done walking down this memory lane.”Louane said the track had a secondary message that went beyond her own story. “What I’m going to try and make everyone understand,” she said, “is that even through the deepest pain, deepest sadness, you can find a way to be better, to finally be well.” More

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      To stay in the competition, Malta had to change the lyrics.

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      Reporting from from the St. Jakobshalle arena in BaselLouane singing “Maman,” a song addressed to her mother, who died of cancer.Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhen Louane was offered the chance to represent France at Eurovision, she immediately knew what she wanted to sing about: her mother.As a child growing up in a small town, Louane, whose real name is Anne Peichert, watched Eurovision with her parents and five siblings while gathered around the TV eating pizza. Even when it wasn’t Eurovision season, Louane recalled in an interview, her mother would put on videos of Celine Dion’s winning performance from 1988, and they would watch together, mesmerized by the Canadian singer’s voice.Those happy Eurovision sessions ended abruptly in 2014 when Louane’s mother died from cancer.A star in France with five hit albums, Louane, now 28, said that over the past decade she had written and sung many songs expressing grief and anger over her mother’s death.Her Eurovision track, a powerful ballad called “Maman,” has an altogether different message, however. “It’s a letter to my mother saying: ‘I’m finally fine. I’m finally good in my life. I am, myself, a mother,’” Louane said. “It’s a super special song to me.”Louane makes that transformation clear when she sings in French: “I’m better now / I know the way / I’m done walking down this memory lane.”Louane said the track had a secondary message that went beyond her own story. “What I’m going to try and make everyone understand,” she said, “is that even through the deepest pain, deepest sadness, you can find a way to be better, to finally be well.” More

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      Claude, representing the Netherlands, is a refugee turned pop star.

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      Reporting from from the St. Jakobshalle arena in BaselLouane singing “Maman,” a song addressed to her mother, who died of cancer.Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhen Louane was offered the chance to represent France at Eurovision, she immediately knew what she wanted to sing about: her mother.As a child growing up in a small town, Louane, whose real name is Anne Peichert, watched Eurovision with her parents and five siblings while gathered around the TV eating pizza. Even when it wasn’t Eurovision season, Louane recalled in an interview, her mother would put on videos of Celine Dion’s winning performance from 1988, and they would watch together, mesmerized by the Canadian singer’s voice.Those happy Eurovision sessions ended abruptly in 2014 when Louane’s mother died from cancer.A star in France with five hit albums, Louane, now 28, said that over the past decade she had written and sung many songs expressing grief and anger over her mother’s death.Her Eurovision track, a powerful ballad called “Maman,” has an altogether different message, however. “It’s a letter to my mother saying: ‘I’m finally fine. I’m finally good in my life. I am, myself, a mother,’” Louane said. “It’s a super special song to me.”Louane makes that transformation clear when she sings in French: “I’m better now / I know the way / I’m done walking down this memory lane.”Louane said the track had a secondary message that went beyond her own story. “What I’m going to try and make everyone understand,” she said, “is that even through the deepest pain, deepest sadness, you can find a way to be better, to finally be well.” More

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      The 7 steps to winning Eurovision.

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      Reporting from from the St. Jakobshalle arena in BaselLouane singing “Maman,” a song addressed to her mother, who died of cancer.Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhen Louane was offered the chance to represent France at Eurovision, she immediately knew what she wanted to sing about: her mother.As a child growing up in a small town, Louane, whose real name is Anne Peichert, watched Eurovision with her parents and five siblings while gathered around the TV eating pizza. Even when it wasn’t Eurovision season, Louane recalled in an interview, her mother would put on videos of Celine Dion’s winning performance from 1988, and they would watch together, mesmerized by the Canadian singer’s voice.Those happy Eurovision sessions ended abruptly in 2014 when Louane’s mother died from cancer.A star in France with five hit albums, Louane, now 28, said that over the past decade she had written and sung many songs expressing grief and anger over her mother’s death.Her Eurovision track, a powerful ballad called “Maman,” has an altogether different message, however. “It’s a letter to my mother saying: ‘I’m finally fine. I’m finally good in my life. I am, myself, a mother,’” Louane said. “It’s a super special song to me.”Louane makes that transformation clear when she sings in French: “I’m better now / I know the way / I’m done walking down this memory lane.”Louane said the track had a secondary message that went beyond her own story. “What I’m going to try and make everyone understand,” she said, “is that even through the deepest pain, deepest sadness, you can find a way to be better, to finally be well.” More

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      Bruce Springsteen’s Rowdy ‘Repo Man,’ Plus 11 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by S.G. Goodman, the Lemonheads, Rihanna, Lido Pimienta and more.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 at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Bruce Springsteen, ‘Repo Man’While Bruce Springsteen was recording the somber songs on “The Ghost of Tom Joad” in 1995, he was also, it’s now revealed, blowing off steam with rowdy, lighthearted songs like “Repo Man,” the latest preview of his archival collection “Tracks II: The Lost Albums.” It’s a Chuck Berry-meets-Buck Owens country-rocker that has Springsteen hollering, “You shouldn’t have bought it if you couldn’t have paid!” It’s also a showcase for skidding, careening, scene-stealing solos by Marty Rifkin on pedal steel guitar, abetting Springsteen’s stunt driving as he turns class warfare into comedy.S.G. Goodman, ‘Snapping Turtle’“I grew up hard on bottom land where only crops should grow / Watched people reap what the demons sowed,” S.G. Goodman sings in “Snapping Turtle,” from an album due June 20. She’s from Kentucky, where she grew up and still lives; the cracks and scratches in her voice hark back to Appalachian roots. “Snapping Turtle” is a stoic, six-minute march, a two-chord jam with eerie resonances opening up under drums and guitars. Goodman sings about memories she can’t escape — including a friend who had “a life beat down” — and the bitter lessons of the small town “where my mind gets stuck.”Sofi Tukker featuring Liniker, ‘Intensity’Sofi Tukker — the duo of Sophie Hawley-Weld and Tucker Halpern — sets aside its usual electronic production on its new album, “Butter.” Instead, they visited Brazil, enlisted the producer Marcio Arantes to assemble a mostly acoustic studio band and invited Brazilian musicians like Seu Jorge as guest singers. Most of “Butter” remakes (and unplugs) songs from the duo’s 2024 album, “Bread.” But “Intensity” — with guest vocals from the Brazilian songwriter Liniker — is a new song. Over syncopated acoustic guitar and a crisply sputtering, samba-rooted beat, Hawley-Weld and Liniker celebrate a partnership that’s “way too much / It’s the right amount for me.”yeule, ‘Dudu’Named after the nonsense syllables in its hook, “Dudu” has such a blithe, shiny pop facade that the verses could easily go unnoticed. Yeule — a style-hopping, electronics-friendly songwriter and producer from Singapore — sings about unrequited love that’s turned pathological. “Overdosed from the pain / Woke up in a bed, restrained,” yeule sings. “I screamed and screamed and screamed your name.” But the vocals are so nonchalant, surrounded by whizzing synthesizers and kicked along by a robust backbeat, that the heartache almost evaporates.DannyLux, ‘Sirena’The Mexican American songwriter DannyLux has thrived by playing up his sensitive side, and “Sirena,” the single from his new album “Leyenda,” is no exception. In a waltzing corrido that updates the traditional acoustic guitars with a sheen of reverb, extra vocal harmonies and a sudden shift of texture before the second verse, he insists he’s been hypnotized forever by a woman’s beauty — though he also reminds her that “Other guys would put a price on your body, a price on your kisses.” He’s more sensitive, of course.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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      Who is Dawn Richard, the Danity Kane Singer Who Will Testify at Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s Trial?

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      The musician performed in two of the mogul’s best-known recent acts, Danity Kane and Diddy — Dirty Money. She sued him last year, alleging threats and groping.Dawn Richard, the singer expected to take the stand as a witness at the Sean Combs trial after Casandra Ventura, was part of two of Mr. Combs’s best-known acts over the last two decades. She was in the R&B girl group Danity Kane, familiar to viewers of his MTV reality show “Making the Band,” and a trio called Diddy — Dirty Money.And like Ms. Ventura, she has accused Mr. Combs of misconduct during her time with him, alleging in a lawsuit filed last year that he threatened her, groped her and would fly into “frenzied, unpredictable rages” while he oversaw her career. In response to that suit, a lawyer for Mr. Combs said in a statement that Ms. Richard had “manufactured a series of false claims all in the hopes of trying to get a payday.”Danity Kane was assembled by Mr. Combs during the third iteration of “Making the Band,” which began in 2005. On the show, 11 finalists were winnowed to a final team of five, their name inspired by a superhero character that Ms. Richard had drawn.Ms. Richard, now 41, grew up in New Orleans, and she was the subject of the premiere episode of the show’s third season, as the group visited her hometown and surveyed the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina. That season ended with the quintet’s filming a video for its debut single, “Show Stopper,” which reached No. 8 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart.Danity Kane opened for Christina Aguilera on tour and released two albums before going on a hiatus in 2009. Then, Ms. Richard remained in Mr. Combs’s musical tent as part of Diddy — Dirty Money, a trio that also featured Mr. Combs as well as another singer, Kalenna Harper.After one album, Mr. Combs disbanded the trio — over email — but Danity Kane reunited, releasing a third and final album in 2014. After another break, Danity Kane was active again, from 2018 to 2020.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