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      Noah Kahan’s Rootsy Rock Revival

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicNoah Kahan’s song “Stick Season” currently sits at No. 43 on the Billboard Hot 100. On its own, that’s a moderately impressive feat. But it’s more remarkable because “Stick Season” is the title track of an album released just over a year ago. Via diligent touring and an instinctual grip on how to leverage TikTok, Kahan has squeezed a fan favorite so hard it became a hit.That success arrives a few years into Kahan’s career, which began with more straight-ahead pop and shifted into rootsier territory during the pandemic. He inflects his songs with bits of Vermont attitude and lore, and has collaborated with Zach Bryan and Kacey Musgraves.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about how Kahan’s niche stardom has given way to pop acclaim, how Vermont figures into his songwriting and sound, and how he revisits the rustic mainstream rock of the early 2010s.Guests:Rebecca Jennings, a senior correspondent at VoxJason Lipshutz, executive director, music at BillboardConnect 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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      What the Suburbs Did for Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen

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      A new book by the author Jim Cullen explores the uncanny parallels between the careers of these two musicians, and how they were products of their time and place.It was the 25th anniversary concert celebrating the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame at Madison Square Garden in 2009 when Bruce Springsteen bellowed to the crowd: “Are you ready for the bridge-and-tunnel summit meeting right here, right now? Because Long Island is about to meet New Jersey on the neutral ground of New York City!”Out came Billy Joel, and the two performed a set together of their greatest hits. Springsteen crooned on Joel’s “New York State of Mind,” while Joel returned the favor on Springsteen’s “Born to Run.” The two had crossed paths occasionally in their hit-making careers, but never in such a high profile way.In retrospect, it was surprising it had taken so long. The author Jim Cullen argues in his new book released in October, “Bridge and Tunnel Boys: Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, and the Metropolitan Sound of the American Century,” that Springsteen and Joel’s careers had more uncanny parallels than most realize, and that their rise was a product of socioeconomic conditions of the era, particularly the growth of the suburbs. In fact, the author argues, it’s likely that Joel and Springsteen could only have become famous at the time they did.Both were born within months of each other. Both are intrinsically identified with their home states — Springsteen with New Jersey, Joel with New York. They both came from the suburbs — Freehold, N.J., for Springsteen, and Hicksville, N.Y., for Joel. Both were signed to Columbia Records and released their first albums the same year. Their careers started off slow — and almost sputtered completely — but broke through around the same time with records that would make them famous — Springsteen’s “Born To Run” (1975) and Joel’s “The Stranger” (1977).Mr. Cullen, a historian who has written several academic books about pop culture, discussed the connection between the two that formed the thesis of his latest book.These are edited excerpts from the conversation.What does the rise of Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen in the 1970s say about the era they were living in?They lived in what you might call the golden age of the American dream. This was the period when the American dream was most realizable on a mass basis. As products of suburbia, they were sort of in the cockpit of this.One of the things I found interesting when I started to look into their lives was that they were actually products of downward mobility. Their immediate families had suffered reverses in the generation before they were born. And then, of course, they caught the wind of this massive economic and social current in the aftermath of World War II.Mr. Cullen, a historian, has written several academic books about pop culture.Frances F. Denny for The New York TimesWhat were the conditions in the music industry that helped make someone like Joel or Springsteen such a success?The record business had been immensely profitable in the years prior to these guys making it. And so there was just a lot of money floating around to invest in new acts in a way that there really hadn’t been before or after this.Another is that the business was designed at that point to reward the thing that these two guys did really well, which was to perform live. This was an era when touring supported records — rather than the age we live in, which is the other way around.The last thing I would say is that the industry was much more tolerant of failure than it had been before or since. So both of these guys could literally afford to make a couple of records that stiffed before they built up enough of a head of steam to really take off commercially.People might argue that when we talk about the rise of the suburbs, we’re really talking about the rise of a white middle class. I don’t think there’s any question that these guys were beneficiaries of their racial identity. Broadly, their relative affluence gave them a leg up. That’s inarguable.I will say that both of these people had a very strong vision of integration as sort of the aesthetic basis of their work.Are there modern-day equivalents to Joel and Springsteen?One of the ways in which they were also really beneficiaries of their time is that they were products of what I’ll call generally an age of broadcasting. And I mean that not just in terms of television, but especially in terms of radio. There was a kind of shared national audience.I did a book on “All in the Family,” a television show [in the 1970s] that got 50 million viewers a week. The finale of “Game of Thrones,” people got excited because it got 10 million viewers. It’s just a different world. So it’s not easy for anybody to continue to do what Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen did. Not because Springsteen or Joel were sort of Promethean artists, but because they were beneficiaries of a media infrastructure that was very rewarding to them.Having said all that, I do think that there are figures who approach what they did. Beyoncé comes to mind as someone who’s built a very large, broad audience over a long period of time and inspires a level of commitment and engagement that I think is comparable. The obvious other example is Taylor Swift, who in commercial terms, has probably exceeded them. More

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      Gen Z Beatles Fans Come Together on TikTok

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      “Can’t believe it’s 2023 and I get the joy of hearing a new Beatles song for the first time ever,” a 23-year-old says in a video post.Eloise Smith, 23, posted a reaction video on TikTok immediately after listening to “Now and Then,” the Beatles song released on Thursday.“Can’t believe it’s 2023 and I get the joy of hearing a new Beatles song for the first time ever,” Ms. Smith, who has a forearm tattoo rendering of the band’s “Abbey Road” album cover, wrote in the video’s caption.In an interview, she added that she was a third-generation fan: Her grandmother introduced her father to the Beatles, and her father introduced them to her.“I was 1 when George Harrison died,” Ms. Smith said.Ms. Smith, a civil servant who lives in Manchester, England, said she was “thrilled” weeks ago when she heard about “Now and Then.” The ability to immediately react and connect with other fans of the band through social media has made the experience of hearing a new Beatles song richer, she added.“Rather than just being in the kind of bubble of your friends, you can speak to people all over the world about it,” she said.The Beatles came late to digital media. The group did not sell downloads of its songs at Apple’s iTunes store until 2010, seven years after it had opened for business. When streaming became the main medium for music fans, the Beatles held out once more, waiting until 2015 before making the band’s work available on Spotify, Apple Music and other platforms.The decision to go digital allowed new generations of listeners to more easily discover a group that had won the adoration of mobs of screaming fans in the 1960s. Now, Gen Z listeners regularly post Beatles-related videos on social media platforms.

      @earlgreylou i am having a big ol’ emotional moment rn #nowandthen #thebeatles ♬ Now And Then – 2023 Mix – The Beatles “This song is my Roman Empire,” one listener wrote in a TikTok post, referring to a meme claiming that men think about the Roman Empire at least once a day. In the comments of the video, several people replied that the video was making them teary. “Sobbing,” they wrote. Others said that they were excited to listen to the song with their grandparents.Skylar Moody, 24, said she spent most of Thursday trying to avoid “Now and Then” spoilers. A superfan whose social media presence is almost entirely devoted to all things Beatles, she wanted to record her reaction to her first listen, which meant waiting until she was finished with work. She kept her phone on silent all day, lest she accidentally hear a snippet of “Now and Then” while scrolling online.Ms. Moody, who lives in New Jersey and goes, fittingly, by @lucyinthesky.lar on TikTok, said she became a Beatles fan after watching “A Hard Day’s Night,” the group’s 1964 film, during a music history class in high school. She described the Beatles’ online fandom as “very diverse and also unified.”“No matter what age or demographic you’re in,” she said, “we can all come together in one agreement that we love the Beatles.”She continued: “This is where we find our people now. It’s so easy to go on social media and find a fan community of people to talk to that will understand you.”Late on Thursday afternoon, she made a reaction video of herself listening to “Now and Then” in her car. “I’m listening to the Beatles! In 2023!” she exclaimed, clutching her face through a two-minute clip in which she describes what she’s hearing.The Beatles’ company, Apple Corps, has billed “Now and Then” as the group’s “last song.” It’s the third Beatles release since John Lennon’s death in 1980, after “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love” in the mid-1990s. All three were built on home demo recordings made by Mr. Lennon.“My heart feels so heavy right now, but in a good way,” Ms. Moody said in another TikTok video, adding, “We are experiencing their last song together, and this is going to go down in history. I’m so happy that we get to share it all together and that we’re able to share our thoughts like this online with people who get it.”Ms. Smith, the civil servant in England, said that she would try not to wear out “Now and Then” in the coming days. “I’ve been kind of listening to it every once in a while, to savor it,” she said, “because it’s such a big deal.” More

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      Britney Spears escribió sus memorias con otros autores. Entérate aquí

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      El libro de la estrella del pop es una obra colectiva. Otros tres autores participaron.“Si me sigues en Instagram, pensabas que este libro iba a estar escrito con emojis, ¿no?”, escribe Britney Spears al final de su libro de memorias, La mujer que soy.Britney Spears ha declarado que completar el libro publicado hace poco —un relato de su periplo desde Luisiana hasta la cima de las listas de éxitos del pop y una tutela que le negó el control de su carrera y sus finanzas— requirió una enorme cantidad de terapia. Y para llevar la historia al papel, contó con la ayuda de “colaboradores”, como ella los llama en los agradecimientos del libro.“Ustedes saben quiénes son”, escribe sin dar nombres.Según dos personas cercanas al proyecto, que hablaron bajo condición de mantener su anonimato porque no estaban autorizadas a declarar públicamente, tres escritores —todos autores de éxito por derecho propio— colaboraron de manera significativa con el libro de memorias de Spears.Ada Calhoun, autora de cuatro libros de no ficción, entre ellos Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me, ayudó a crear el primer borrador, dijeron las dos personas. Sam Lansky, exeditor de la revista Time, autor del libro de memorias The Gilded Razor y de la novela Broken People, fue el siguiente en unirse al proyecto. El libro se completó con la ayuda de Luke Dempsey, un escritor fantasma y editor que ha publicado libros bajo su propio nombre y trabajó con Priscilla y Lisa Marie Presley en Elvis by the Presleys.Ada Calhoun fue parte del equipo que le brindó ayuda a Spears con sus memorias.Laurel Golio para The New York TimesEs práctica habitual que los famosos colaboren de cerca con autores de probada valía cuando deciden contar su vida, afirmó David Kuhn, codirector ejecutivo de la agencia literaria Aevitas Creative Management.“¿Cuánta gente crees que trabaja en un libro de memorias presidenciales, o en uno de los libros de Michelle Obama?”, preguntó Kuhn, que ha representado al autor ganador del premio Pulitzer Liaquat Ahamed y a la comediante Amy Schumer. “Porque si eres Michelle Obama, parte de lo que creo que pedirás de tu colaborador o de tus editores son diferentes perspectivas de diferentes lectores”.“Podrías querer la opinión de una persona de 30 años”, añadió, “porque quieres que los de la generación milénial se sientan identificados con el libro. Puede que quieras que un editor masculino ofrezca su perspectiva, porque quieres que atraiga en la medida de lo posible a un público masculino, además del público femenino más obvio”.Así pues, la creación de La mujer que soy no fue muy distinta de la de éxitos pop contemporáneos, que suelen contar con aportes de numerosos colaboradores.La columna Page Six del New York Post fue la primera en informar, en febrero de 2022, la noticia del “gran acuerdo” para el libro de memorias de Spears. Fue adquirido por Gallery Publishing Group, un sello de Simon & Schuster que ha llevado a muchos artistas y personalidades a las listas de los más vendidos, entre ellos Chelsea Handler, Tiffany Haddish, Olivia Newton-John y Omarosa Manigault Newman.Spears agradeció a “colaboradores” en sus memorias sin aportar nombres. Gallery Books, vía Associated PressUna de las principales personas implicadas en la adquisición, según tres personas con conocimiento de la operación, fue Cait Hoyt, agente literaria de CAA, quien es mencionada en los agradecimientos del libro. Otra figura clave fue el abogado Mathew Rosengart, socio del bufete Greenberg Traurig, que ayudó a Spears a librarse de la tutela en 2021. (Hoyt y Rosengart no hicieron comentarios).Tras la firma del acuerdo, Spears viajó a Maui, un viaje que documentó en Instagram. Mientras estaba allí, escribió extensamente sobre su vida en cuadernos y se reunió con Calhoun para una serie de entrevistas largas, dijeron las dos personas cercanas al proyecto. El borrador que Calhoun ayudó a elaborar se completó en primavera, poco antes de que Spears se casara con el actor y entrenador personal Sam Asghari en una ceremonia en su casa de Los Ángeles. (Calhoun no respondió a las peticiones de comentarios).A Spears le pareció en un momento que la voz del libro no se parecía lo suficiente a la suya, según una persona cercana al proyecto. Entonces apareció Lansky, cliente de Hoyt, cuyos dos libros fueron publicados por Gallery.Los antecedentes de Lansky parecen haberlo hecho idóneo para el proyecto. Hace una década, escribía para el sitio web musical Idolator, donde ejercía de “apologista residente de Taylor Swift, entusiasta de las divas y monstruo del sarcasmo”. En su libro de memorias, The Gilded Razor, dice sentirse “atrapado en algún lugar entre un niño y un adulto: lo bastante adulto como para hacer las cosas bien de vez en cuando, pero lo bastante joven como para no saber que eso no siempre sería suficiente”.Esas palabras también podrían describir a Spears, que empezó a trabajar en el mundo del espectáculo a los 10 años y lanzó la canción “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” a los 20. Antes de sumergirse en el proyecto, Lansky hizo otra ronda de entrevistas con ella a través de Zoom y por teléfono, dijeron las dos personas. (Lansky no hizo comentarios). Sam Lansky, autor de dos libros, trabajó en las memorias el verano pasado. Jeff Spicer/Getty Images para Atlantis The RoyalEn otoño, Dempsey se unió al proyecto, aseguraron las personas. Una colaboradora constante durante todo el proceso fue Lauren Spiegel, editora de Gallery que fue responsable del libro éxito en ventas de Anna Kendrick, Scrappy Little Nobody. (Dempsey y Spiegel no hicieron comentarios).Spears solo ha concedido una entrevista a la revista People con motivo de la publicación de La mujer que soy. No describe los pormenores de ser autora por primera vez, pero tiene claro por qué decidió contar su historia.“Por fin llegó la hora de alzar la voz y hablar claro, y mis seguidores merecen oírlo directamente de mí”, señaló. “No más conspiraciones, no más mentiras: solo yo como dueña de mi pasado, presente y futuro”.Jacob Bernstein es reportero de la sección Styles. Además de escribir perfiles de diseñadores de moda, artistas y celebridades, ha centrado gran parte de su atención en temáticas LGBT, la filantropía y el mundo del diseño de muebles. Más de Jacob Bernstein More

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      ‘In the Court of the Crimson King’ Review: 50 Years of Off-Kilter Rock

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      Toby Amies’s documentary dives into the history of the British progressive rock band King Crimson and its chief disciplinarian, Robert Fripp.The director Toby Amies’s documentary “In the Court of the Crimson King” is part road chronicle and part retrospective, and captures King Crimson, the adventurous British rock ensemble, at what may be the end of its existence. Robert Fripp, for years the band’s sole original member, has strongly suggested that its 2021 tour would be its last. (It hasn’t toured since.)One of the originators of the subgenre called progressive rock or art rock, King Crimson is, depending on whom you ask, either impossibly pretentious or startlingly adventurous. Fripp, an endlessly thoughtful and meticulously articulate guitarist, is the group’s most tireless and paradoxical explainer in the film. He’s fond of pronouncements like, “For silence to become audible, it requires a vehicle. And that vehicle is music.”At one point Fripp describes his experience in the band from 1969 to 2016 as “wretched.” What changed in 2016? He put together a group of stellar musicians who did as he requested. The film features their thoughts along with interviews with past members who had strong differences with Fripp.While the YouTube videos Fripp and his wife, the singer Toyah Willcox, began making during the pandemic reveal the guitarist as a mild-mannered, eccentric, uxorious madcap, he can come off like an egghead martinet in the context of the band he has helmed for half a century. But he is as hard on himself as he is on anyone else, practicing the guitar four to five hours a day and subjecting himself to other forms of discipline such as taking a cold shower in the morning: “Your body doesn’t want to go under a cold shower,” he says in the film. “So you’re saying to your body, ‘Do as you’re told.’”Bill Rieflin offers another perspective on the band, as a musician who chose to spend his last years alive touring with Crimson. He died of cancer in 2020. His devotion renders Fripp’s adages about the sacred nature of music-making palpable.In the Court of the Crimson King: King Crimson at 50Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Britney Spears’s Memoir Sells 1.1 Million Copies in U.S. in First Week

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      Sales of “The Woman in Me,” which chronicles the pop star’s life, from stardom as a teen to the conservatorship that controlled much of her adulthood, demonstrate tremendous interest in Spears’s story.Britney Spears’s much-anticipated memoir, “The Woman in Me,” sold 1.1 million copies in all formats in the United States in its first week on sale, the book’s publisher, Gallery Books, announced on Wednesday.The early sales number puts Spears’s book in the ballpark of some of the best-selling celebrity memoirs in recent years. In the same time frame, Prince Harry’s memoir sold 1.6 million copies in the United States, while that of Mary Trump, former president Donald J. Trump’s niece, sold 1.4 million when it debuted in 2020.Spears and her team took an atypical approach toward promoting the book, in which Spears recalls her rise to fame as a teenage pop sensation, followed by her years spent in a strictly controlled conservatorship. Unlike Prince Harry, who participated in a series of high-profile interviews to promote his book’s release — including appearances on “60 Minutes” and “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” — Spears did not do any face-to-face interviews. She instead provided People magazine with sneak-peek excerpts and emailed quotes and promoted the book online to her millions of social media followers.As has been the case with other recent big sellers, the 1.1 million sales figure for Spears’s memoir included purchases of the audiobook. It was read by the actress Michelle Williams, though Spears herself read a short introduction.A news release from Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, announcing the sales numbers quoted Spears as saying, “I poured my heart and soul into my memoir, and I am grateful to my fans and readers around the world for their unwavering support.”(Published figures put the price tag for Spears’s memoir between $12.5 million and $15 million.)In its 275 pages, “The Woman in Me” includes Spears’s recollections of her childhood growing up in the small Louisiana town of Kentwood, her early years on “The Mickey Mouse Club” and her hard work in the recording studio to produce her first album after landing a record deal at 15 years old. Its most talked-about revelations center on her relationship with Justin Timberlake — during which, she writes, she got an abortion after he said they were too young to be parents. The book frequently returns to the challenges of living under intense public scrutiny, particularly when it came to her body, her sexuality, her relationships and her parenting of her two sons.The book is Spears’s first full account of her 13 years under a conservatorship, which her father, James P. Spears, was granted in 2008 amid a custody battle and Britney Spears’s series of public struggles. A judge terminated the legal arrangement in 2021. In the memoir, Spears describes an adulthood in which security personnel dispensed her medications and put parental controls on her iPhone.Kristen McLean, an industry analyst for Circana BookScan, which tracks book sales numbers, said on Wednesday that Spears’s memoir seemed as though it had a good chance of surpassing one million in print sales in the United States this year. Only one adult nonfiction title — Prince Harry’s “Spare” — has reached that height so far.McLean said the success of Spears’s book was a strong indicator for a robust holiday book market, driven in part by a string of popular nonfiction titles including Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk, Michael Lewis’s book about the FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and Jada Pinkett Smith’s memoir.“It feels like the adult nonfiction market is waking up,” McLean said.Elizabeth Harris More

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      Dwight Twilley, Rootsy Power-Pop Hitmaker, Dies at 72

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      With a sound inspired by the Beatles and Elvis Presley, he climbed the charts and drew critical praise in the 1970s and ’80s. But long-term stardom proved elusive.Dwight Twilley, a singer and songwriter from Tulsa, Okla., who fused Merseybeat melodicism with a chugging rockabilly energy, earning critical praise if not stardom as a progenitor of what came to be called power pop, died on Oct. 18 in Tulsa. He was 72.His wife, Jan Twilley, said the cause was a cerebral hemorrhage. Mr. Twilley had been hospitalized for several days after suffering a stroke while driving alone and crashing into a tree.Heavily influenced by both the Beatles and Elvis Presley, Mr. Twilley made his mark in the mid-1970s with the Dwight Twilley Band, which he formed with a friend from his teens, the drummer and vocalist Phil Seymour. The band signed to Shelter Records, co-founded by a fellow Oklahoman, the musician and producer Leon Russell, in 1974, and released its first single, “I’m on Fire,” the next year.A roadhouse rafter-shaker leavened with syrupy pop hooks, the song shot to No. 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 and drew critical praise. The San Francisco Chronicle was particularly extravagant, calling it “the best debut single by an American rock ’n’ roll band ever.”But the band was unable to capitalize on the momentum, as the partnership behind Shelter dissolved, leading to lengthy delays on a follow-up single and album. The Dwight Twilley Band’s first album, “Sincerely,” finally came out in 1976 but fizzled commercially, rising no higher than No. 138 on the Billboard album chart.Even so, critics were again effusive in their praise. In a review in Rolling Stone, Bud Scoppa called it “the best rock debut album of the year,” comparing the Dwight Twilley Band to the acclaimed band Big Star.“Like Big Star, the Twilleys wrap themselves handsomely in ’60s filigree, with an emphasis on pre-psychedelic Beatles, adding some rockabilly echo for greater resonance,” Mr. Scoppa wrote. “They do it so well and with such personality that it seems nothing short of miraculous.”The band’s second album, “Twilley Don’t Mind” (1977), offered still more hook-laden confections, along with guest vocals by Tom Petty. While it failed to spawn a hit like “I’m on Fire,” it did manage to climb to No. 70 on the Billboard chart.The band found itself lumped in with what became known as the Tulsa sound, which included bluesy rockers like J.J. Cale and Elvin Bishop. The categorization made little sense to Mr. Twilley, who was best known as a pop craftsman.“I think nobody at the time knew what the Tulsa sound was,” he said in an interview this year with the British music website Americana UK. “It was a big mystery, everyone was running around — where’s that Tulsa sound at? — and nobody knew.”He was equally baffled when critics, responding to his knack for low-fi, high-energy pop, called him a father of new wave. “I’m new wave one day and power pop the other and rock ’n’ roll sometimes,” he said in a 2017 interview with the music writer Devorah Ostrov. “You know, whatever.”He added, “It was a lot more fun when everybody was just trying to make great rock records.”Mr. Twilley was interviewed by Dick Clark when he appeared on “American Bandstand” in 1984.ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content, via Getty ImagesMr. Twilley was born on June 6, 1951 in Tulsa. A music lover from an early age, he found inspiration for his future career by watching the Beatles’ storied first performance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1964.“The songs were so great, the voices were great, they looked great and then they had all these chicks screaming at them,” he said in the Americana UK interview, “so I was like, that looks like a good job.” While in middle school, he formed a band called the Intruders.Three years later, the Beatles figured into another pivotal moment. As a high school student at Thomas Edison Preparatory, he started talking with Phil Seymour, another music-loving teenager from his neighborhood, while waiting in line at a movie theater to see a screening of “A Hard Day’s Night.”The two later went back to Mr. Twilley’s house to work on songs that Mr. Twilley had written. The two of them, with occasional contributions from a guitarist named Bill Pitcock IV, performed around Tulsa for several years, taking the name Oister. After a detour through Memphis, where the musicians brought a honky-tonk grit to their sound, they eventually landed in Los Angeles and signed with Shelter as the Dwight Twilley Band.Mr. Twilley, right, with Phil Seymour. The two met as teenagers and went on to form the Dwight Twilley Band.Mark Sullivan/Getty ImagesThe band’s run turned out to be brief. Mr. Seymour left in 1978 and pursued a solo career. (He died of lymphoma in 1993.)Mr. Twilley embarked on a long and prolific solo career. He released his first album under his own name, “Twilley,” in 1979.His third album, “Jungle” (1984), rose to No. 39 and featured his other best-known song, the infectious “Girls.” Released as a single and buoyed by a racy locker-room video recalling the teenage comedy “Porky’s,” it climbed to No. 16 on the Hot 100, the same spot “I’m on Fire” had reached.Mr. Twilley continued to release music for decades. His last studio album, “Always,” came out in 2014.Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.Mr. Twilley seemed to take the ups and downs of his career in stride. “I was just a damn genius when I was young, and I just got stupider and stupider each year afterwards,” he told Americana UK.Still, he added: “It was an adventure, you know, a kind of amazing adventure. You are a kid, and all the other musicians in the world are trying to make a record, a little disk with their name on it and their picture on the sleeve and things like that, and trying to get on the radio, and we were able to accomplish that.” More

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      Huey Lewis and the News Musical Is Coming to Broadway in March

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      “The Heart of Rock and Roll” is a romantic comedy featuring songs by the chart-topping 1980s band.“The Heart of Rock and Roll,” a new musical powered by the songs of Huey Lewis and the News, is coming to Broadway in the spring.The show, which had an initial run in 2018 at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego, is a comedy about a couple whose romance must navigate their rock band and corporate life aspirations.The musical is scheduled to begin previews March 29 and to open April 22 at the James Earl Jones Theater. Casting has not yet been announced.Marketed as a “feel-great musical,” the show features the upbeat songs of Huey Lewis and the News, a pop-rock band whose heyday was in the 1980s, and whose hit “The Power of Love” is also featured on Broadway in “Back to the Future: The Musical.”“The Heart of Rock and Roll” (that title is also the name of one of the band’s most popular songs) is directed by Gordon Greenberg (“Holiday Inn”), choreographed by Lorin Latarro (who is also choreographing a Broadway revival of “The Who’s Tommy”), and features a book by Jonathan A. Abrams based on a story by Abrams and Tyler Mitchell. Abrams and Mitchell have worked primarily in film and television.Mitchell is also producing the show with Hunter Arnold and Kayla Greenspan; the production is being capitalized for up to $16 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. More