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      How the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Is Trying to Evolve

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      John Sykes, the chairman of the organization behind the hall, talks about the ouster of Jann Wenner, the need to diversify inductees and surprises at this year’s ceremony.The 38th annual Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony will take place at Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Friday, bringing Kate Bush, Willie Nelson, George Michael, Sheryl Crow, Missy Elliott, Rage Against the Machine and the Spinners into pop music’s leading pantheon.In addition, Chaka Khan, Al Kooper and Bernie Taupin will receive the musical excellence award. DJ Kool Herc and Link Wray will be inducted as influences and Don Cornelius, the “Soul Train” creator and host who died in 2012, will be honored as a nonperformer.This year’s event comes at a pivotal moment for the Rock Hall, which has been under pressure for years to diversify its ranks, and in particular to admit more women. While the hall is already home to pop heroines like Aretha Franklin, Madonna, Joan Jett and Whitney Houston, overall women are woefully underrepresented, making up fewer than 100 of the nearly 1,000 inductees since 1986.The institution’s public image problems were compounded recently when Jann Wenner, the Rolling Stone magazine co-founder who helped start the Rock Hall, spoke to The New York Times about “The Masters,” his book of interviews with stars like Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen and John Lennon — all of them white men. Justifying the absence of women and people of color, he said that none were “as articulate enough on this intellectual level” and did not qualify as “philosophers of rock.”The response was harsh and immediate, including from the Rock Hall itself: The day after Wenner’s interview was published, the board of the hall’s governing foundation voted to eject him immediately.But the effort to remake the Rock Hall has been underway for several years now, and many give credit to John Sykes, a longtime media executive who took over from Wenner as chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation in 2020. He has pushed the hall to diversify its makeup, particularly on its nominating committee, which largely operates outside of the public eye. This year the hall even opened up its definition of rock ’n’ roll, calling it “a spirit that is inclusive and ever-changing.”Still, change is taking time at an institution that has spent the better part of four decades heavily favoring male artists over females.Four years ago, Evelyn McDonnell, a music critic and journalism professor at Loyola Marymount University, published an essay that included detailed numbers about the hall’s ranks. According to her research, just 7.7 percent of individuals who had been inducted to that point were women.McDonnell has updated her numbers for 2023. Despite a sharp increase in the number of female inductees in recent years — among them Dolly Parton, Tina Turner, Carly Simon and the Go-Go’s — she found that only 8.8 percent of people in the hall are women.“They’ve dug themselves into such a hole,” McDonnell said in an interview, “that you really have to do something structural and significant to turn the ship around.”The Rock Hall prefers to count each act as one inductee, no matter how many members it has; using that methodology, the hall says that 15 percent of inductees are, or include, women.In an interview last week, Sykes addressed the hall’s progress so far, as well as its need for further change. He also spoke about plans for this year’s ceremony, including a surprise appearance by Olivia Rodrigo.Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.When you became chairman of the foundation, what was your mission or goal? Did you see it as an institution in need of change?I saw it as an institution that, like the music, had to continue to evolve. Rock ’n’ roll music, since its inception in the ’50s, has constantly evolved to different sounds, different styles. But one thing it’s had in common is attitude and spirit. My top priority coming in was to remind the music community that rock ’n’ roll was not rock. It was not one sound. It was an amalgam of rhythm and blues, country and gospel created in the ’50s. And it kept evolving.Number two, I needed to reset the board and the nominating committee to reflect those artists that we’re honoring. So we added nine new board members, four women, four African Americans. What I’m trying to do now is to update the general voting body that actually decides who gets in the Hall of Fame, to reflect the artists that are eligible. I want to make sure the voting body is young and diverse enough to really make the most educated decisions about who should be inducted.The biggest complaint has been about a relative lack of women inductees. How have you addressed that specifically?What I’ve tried to do with the nominating committee is shine a light on the fact that these women and people of color have been underrecognized and need to be nominated and then inducted. So if you look at the last three years, we’ve inducted the Go-Go’s, Tina Turner, Carole King, Dolly Parton, Carly Simon, Pat Benatar. Sylvia Robinson, who started the first hip-hop label. Elizabeth Cotten, great blues player. Kate Bush, Sheryl Crow, Missy Elliott, Chaka Khan.We have to do better, but we’re making progress.How do you actually make that change? How can you increase the representation of women without putting a thumb on the scale of what’s supposed to be a deliberative process?It starts with the people you put on the nominating committee. We have six more members now on the committee, and we’ve been focusing on putting more women and people of color on the committee, because that’s how it starts.Number two, we just remind them to understand the genesis of rock ’n’ roll. It doesn’t hurt to basically refresh people every year as to where this came from, and the fact that all of these sounds are to be honored.Why was it important for the board to take action against Jann Wenner so quickly?This had nothing to do with Jann Wenner as a person or anything about his history. It would have happened to anyone on that board who said those things. That’s what I made clear to the entire boardroom when we discussed this. Because those things go against the heart and soul of what the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is all about. Rock ’n’ roll doesn’t know color. It doesn’t know gender. And for us to have one of our board members say that, we felt that we couldn’t do our jobs continuing with someone like that as part of our community.When you talk about the evolution of the Rock Hall and how it includes other genres, it raises the question of boundaries. Like, what isn’t it?Rock ’n’ roll is what’s moving youth culture, what a 16-year-old is obsessed with. The only other qualification I would put on it is which of those artists inspired those that followed. In the ceremonies you’ll see Harry Styles, Pink, Olivia Rodrigo, Dave Matthews, Ed Sheeran come up and play. I call those Future Hall of Famers. They’re there because they’re so inspired by those artists that are getting inducted.Olivia Rodrigo is coming in this year. Last year she got up and sang “You’re So Vain” by Carly Simon. She’s going to play with Sheryl Crow this year. It’s this mutual admiration that connects the past with the present.What is your night like at the ceremony? When there’s a question of whether such-and-such will perform, or if there’s one member the others are feuding with, are you the negotiator backstage?I’m one of the negotiators. We have a great team that works on the show, along with Joel Peresman, the president. And if there’s an issue we’ll go to the artists. But at the end of the day, we’re all fans.The drama can be good, right?Rock ’n’ roll is not always nice. So if the members of Blondie all don’t want to stand on the stage together, well, sometimes you’ll hear it come out. We don’t edit anything. They’re free to do whatever they want. And yeah, if there is a little bit of animosity or rebellion, you know, that’s rock ’n’ roll. More

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      How Britney Spears Wrote ‘The Woman in Me’

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      Three authors helped Britney Spears get her life story on the page.“If you follow me on Instagram, you thought this book was going to be written in emojis, didn’t you?” Britney Spears asks at the end of her memoir, “The Woman in Me.”She has said that completing the recently published book — an account of her journey from Louisiana to the top of the pop charts and on to a conservatorship that denied her control of her career and finances — required an enormous amount of therapy. And to get the story on the page, she had the help of “collaborators,” as she called them in the book’s acknowledgments.“You know who you are,” she writes, without naming names.According to two people close to the project, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, three writers — all successful authors in their own right — made significant contributions to Ms. Spears’s memoir.Ada Calhoun, the author of four nonfiction books, including “Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me,” helped create the first draft, the two people said. Sam Lansky, a former editor at Time magazine who wrote the memoir “The Gilded Razor” and the novel “Broken People,” was the next to join the project. The book was completed with the assistance of Luke Dempsey, a ghostwriter and editor who has published books under his own name and worked with Priscilla and Lisa Marie Presley on “Elvis by the Presleys.”Ada Calhoun was among those who lent a hand to Ms. Spears’s memoir.Laurel Golio for The New York TimesIt is common practice for celebrities to work closely with proven authors when they decide to tell their life stories, said David Kuhn, the co-chief executive of the literary agency Aevitas Creative Management.“How many people do you think work on a presidential memoir, or one of Michelle Obama’s books?” said Mr. Kuhn, who has represented the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Liaquat Ahamed and the comedian Amy Schumer. “Because if you’re Michelle Obama, part of what I imagine you might want from your collaborator or your editors are different perspectives from different readers.“You might want a 30-year-old’s opinion,” he added, “because you want millennials to relate to the book. You might have a male editor offer his perspective, because you want it to appeal as much as possible to a male audience, as well as the more obvious female audience.”The creation of “The Woman in Me” was thus not unlike that of contemporary pop hits, which typically rely on the contributions of numerous collaborators.The New York Post’s Page Six column first reported the news of the “bombshell deal” for Ms. Spears’s memoir in February 2022. It was acquired by Gallery Publishing Group, a Simon & Schuster imprint that has taken many entertainers and personalities to the best-seller lists — among them Chelsea Handler, Tiffany Haddish, Olivia Newton-John and Omarosa Manigault Newman.Ms. Spears thanked “collaborators” in the acknowledgments section of her memoir without naming names.Gallery Books, via Associated PressA principal person involved in the acquisition, according to three people with knowledge of the deal, was Cait Hoyt, a literary agent at CAA, who is thanked in the book’s acknowledgments. Another key figure was the lawyer Mathew Rosengart, a partner at the firm Greenberg Traurig, who helped Ms. Spears extricate herself from the conservatorship in 2021. (Ms. Hoyt and Mr. Rosengart had no comment.)After the deal was signed, Ms. Spears traveled to Maui, a trip she chronicled on Instagram. While there, she wrote extensively about her life in notebooks and met with Ms. Calhoun for a series of lengthy interviews, the two people close to the project said. The draft Ms. Calhoun helped put together was completed in the spring, shortly before Ms. Spears married the actor and personal trainer Sam Asghari in a ceremony at her home in Los Angeles. (Ms. Calhoun did not reply to requests for comment.)Ms. Spears came to believe that the book’s voice did not sound enough like her own, according to a person close to the project. In came Mr. Lansky, a client of Ms. Hoyt’s whose two books were published by Gallery.Mr. Lansky’s background seems to have made him a good fit for the project. A decade ago, he wrote for the music website Idolator, where he served as the “resident Taylor Swift apologist, diva enthusiast, and snark monster.” In his memoir, “The Gilded Razor,” he writes of being “caught somewhere between a child and adult — grown up enough to get things right from time to time but still young enough not to know that wouldn’t always be enough.”Those words might also describe Ms. Spears, who started working in show business at age 10 and released the song “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” at 20. Before diving into the draft, Mr. Lansky did another round of interviews with her over Zoom and by phone, the two people said. (Mr. Lansky had no comment.)Sam Lansky, the author of two books, worked on the book last summer.Jeff Spicer/Getty Images For Atlantis The RoIn the fall, Mr. Dempsey came aboard, the people said. A constant collaborator throughout the process was Lauren Spiegel, an editor at Gallery who edited Anna Kendrick’s best-selling book, “Scrappy Little Nobody.” (Mr. Dempsey and Ms. Spiegel had no comment.)Ms. Spears has given only one interview timed to the publication of “The Woman in Me,” with People magazine. She does not describe the nuts and bolts of being a first-time author, but is clear on why she decided to tell her story.“It is finally time for me to raise my voice and speak out, and my fans deserve to hear it directly from me,” she said. “No more conspiracy, no more lies — just me owning my past, present and future.” More

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      An Introduction to the Mountain Goats

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      How do you start listening to a band with 22 albums? We’re here to help.The Mountain Goats just released their 22nd album. Wondering how to dig into a catalog this deep? We have a guide.Jackie Lee YoungDear listeners,When an artist you’re curious about but unfamiliar with has an extensive back catalog, it can be difficult to know where to start. Sometimes a trusted guide is needed. And when people learn I’m a fan of the Mountain Goats — the wildly prolific, verbose and cult-beloved group led by the singer-songwriter-novelist John Darnielle — I am sometimes called upon to be that guide. I’ve made multiple “introduction to the Mountain Goats” mixes and playlists for friends over the years, and today I’ve made one for you.The occasion is the band’s new album — its 22nd! — “Jenny From Thebes,” which is a kind of sequel to the great 2002 Mountain Goats album “All Hail West Texas.” “Jenny From Thebes” is a rich and rewarding listen, but for the uninitiated it would be a strange place to start. Which is why I am here to initiate you into the world of one of the greatest American songwriters currently working.Darnielle started the Mountain Goats in the early 1990s as a solo project; he would record most songs (often directly onto a Panasonic boombox) right after he’d written them, which gave early Mountain Goats albums a sense of rough-hewed urgency. Beginning with the 2002 release “Tallahassee” — a song cycle about a doomed married couple — he began making more polished studio recordings with other producers and filled the Goats out into a full band. The current lineup includes the longtime bassist Peter Hughes, the drummer and frequent “Best Show With Tom Scharpling” guest Jon Wurster and the multi-instrumentalist Matt Douglas.Darnielle’s writing strikes a difficult balance between weightiness and levity. Some of his songs are about incredibly heavy topics — abuse, addiction, spirituality — but there’s a wit, a precision and a humanity to his voice that makes his music cathartic rather than depressing. That sensibility has translated into a particularly fervent and still expanding base of fans, who do things like make elaborate podcasts called “I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats.”The Mountain Goats are something of an acquired taste: They’re earnest and wordy, and Darnielle’s vocals strike some people as too … well, goatlike*. There are people in my life who have given them a fair chance and decided they’re just not for them. Fine. But I also have several decades-long friendships in which a mutual love of the Mountain Goats is a major component. My dear pal Matt first introduced the band to me almost 20 years ago (!) when he played me “Going to Georgia” while we were driving aimlessly around the New Jersey suburbs, and the world seemed to stand still. All these years later, we’re still going to shows, trading rarities and debating the merits of each new release. They’re just that kind of band.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. “Jenny”Some of the best Mountain Goats songs — like this one, from “All Hail West Texas” — seem like they’re trying to slow time and preserve an ecstatic moment as precisely as possible (“Our house faced west,” Darnielle specifies here, “so the big orange sun positioned at your back lit up your magnificent silhouette”). This song introduces the motorcyclist Jenny, for whom the Mountain Goats’ new album is named. (Listen on YouTube)2. “This Year”Perhaps the best-known Mountain Goats song (for good reason; it’s fantastic), “This Year” is also the most anthemic track from “The Sunset Tree,” the wrenching, straightforwardly autobiographical 2005 album on which Darnielle grappled with his relationship to his abusive stepfather, who had recently died. Though grounded in his own teenage experience, which he vividly reanimates here, the chorus features a rousing, universal survivor’s battle cry: “I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me.” (Listen on YouTube)3. “Cubs in Five”From one of the earliest Mountain Goats releases, the 1995 EP “Nine Black Poppies,” this passionately sung fan favorite lists a number of highly improbable events: “The Canterbury Tales” returning to the best-seller list, the narrator loving an old flame like he used to and, perhaps most improbably of all, the long-cursed Chicago Cubs winning the World Series. Twenty-one years after this song was released, they actually did it — though, contrary to Darnielle’s prophecy, it took the Cubs seven games. (Listen on YouTube)4. “Harlem Roulette”One of the finest Mountain Goats songs in the last decade or so, this full-band standout from the 2012 album “Transcendental Youth” is an impressionistic snapshot of the last day in the life of Frankie Lymon, the precocious soprano who sang “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” and died of a heroin overdose at age 25. The hook to this song is at once simple and devastating: “The loneliest people in the whole wide world are the ones you’re never going to see again.” (Listen on YouTube)5. “Damn These Vampires”If the rough edges of the early Mountain Goats recordings aren’t to your liking, try this gentler and more polished piano-driven song, from the 2011 album “All Eternals Deck.” The beautiful chorus melody in particular shows the gradual refinement of Darnielle’s songwriting. (Listen on YouTube)6. “Golden Boy”And now, the sillier — and yet, somehow, more spiritual — side of the Mountain Goats: an ode to a specific brand of Singaporean peanuts that Darnielle hopes to enjoy in the afterlife. “There are no pan-Asian supermarkets down in hell,” he sings on this recording from the 2002 compilation “Ghana,” “so you can’t buy Golden Boy peanuts there.” Troublingly, in a 2020 performance of this song released as a part of the “Jordan Lake Sessions” series, Darnielle noted, “I’d just like to point out, that for God knows how long, we have in fact been living in a world in which the company that once made these peanuts no longer makes them. You do the math.” (Listen on YouTube)7. “No Children”A (very) darkly funny song that became an incredibly unlikely TikTok sensation in 2021 (I have read the explainers and I still don’t fully understand why), “No Children” is the centerpiece of the Mountain Goats’ 2002 album “Tallahassee.” This song has also been a longtime staple in live Mountain Goats sets, perhaps because of how fun it is to scream, “I hope you die! I hope we both die!” in a crowded room at the top of one’s lungs. (Listen on YouTube)8. “Choked Out”Many of the Mountain Goats’ recent LPs have been concept albums, digging into some of Darnielle’s enthusiasms like vintage action films (last year’s “Bleed Out”), the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (“In the League of Dragons,” from 2019) and, on the inspired 2015 release “Beat the Champ,” professional wrestling. The frenzied rocker “Choked Out” is a highlight from that one. (Listen on YouTube)9. “Woke Up New”On this single from the devastating 2006 album “Get Lonely,” Darnielle paints almost too vivid a picture of the first day after a breakup, when a lover has moved out and their absence makes the familiar suddenly strange: “The first time I made coffee for just myself, I made too much of it/But I drank it all just ’cause you hated when I let things go to waste.” (Listen on YouTube)10. “Up the Wolves”Quite possibly my personal favorite Mountain Goats song ever — though don’t actually make me choose! — here’s another galvanic standout from “The Sunset Tree.” (Listen on YouTube)11. “Going to Georgia”Though it’s one of the Mountain Goats’ most beloved early songs (and the first one I ever heard), Darnielle mostly stopped playing this song live around 2012, because he worried that it romanticized gun violence and toxic relationships. (He once added when discussing the matter onstage, “I’m not ashamed of the song, the song has a vibe, I can’t deny it, and I listen to Cannibal Corpse, you know.”) Regardless, it’s an important entry in the Mountain Goats’ catalog, and the recorded version from the 1994 album “Zopilote Machine” contains some of Darnielle’s most urgent and impassioned bleating. (Listen on YouTube)12. “Against Pollution”Released in 2004, “We Shall All Be Healed,” one of the first Mountain Goats albums recorded with a full band, is a powerful collection of songs inspired by Darnielle’s and his friends’ adolescent struggles with drug addiction. Though some listeners were put off by the cleaner production sound when it first came out, I’ve come to appreciate it as one of the band’s best and most unappreciated albums. There’s a quiet power to this penultimate track, which toggles between the banal and the monumental, the sacred and the profane. (Listen on YouTube)13. “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton”A parable about the importance of keeping youthful dreams alive, told through the bittersweet story of West Texas metal-heads Jeff and Cyrus, this lo-fi gem is another of the best-loved Mountain Goats songs — and the reason you’re likely to hear people yelling “Hail Satan!” at their live shows. Listen and you’ll understand. (Listen on YouTube)Forty miles from Atlanta, this is nowhere,Lindsay* The band’s name is not actually a reference to Darnielle’s singing style, but rather to the Screamin’ Jay Hawkins song “Yellow Coat.”The Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“An Introduction to the Mountain Goats” track listTrack 1: “Jenny”Track 2: “This Year”Track 3: “Cubs in Five”Track 4: “Harlem Roulette”Track 5: “Damn These Vampires”Track 6: “Golden Boy”Track 7: “No Children”Track 8: “Choked Out”Track 9: “Woke Up New”Track 10: “Up the Wolves”Track 11: “Going to Georgia”Track 12: “Against Pollution”Track 13: “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton”Bonus TracksEarlier this week, Sam Sodomsky of Pitchfork published a great Q. and A. with Darnielle that dug into his process. “When I talk I get more and more animated, and my brain kind of boils,” Darnielle said at one point. “I can sustain that boil for a long time — but it also makes you do things like leave bags on subways.”Also, back in my own Pitchfork days, I spoke with Darnielle for a new interview format we were trying out, where we asked musicians what songs they would listen to in certain life situations. Let’s just say that Darnielle came prepared. With a lot of Danzig. More

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      Aaron Spears, Drummer for Usher and Ariana Grande, Dies at 47

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      He received a Grammy nomination for Usher’s 2004 album “Confessions” and played on tracks by Ariana Grande, Lady Gaga and many other major pop musicians.Aaron Spears, a Grammy-nominated drummer who played with Usher, Ariana Grande and many other major pop stars, has died. He was 47.His death was confirmed on Monday in a statement on his official Instagram account by his wife Jessica that was co-signed by the couple’s son August. The statement did not provide details about other survivors or specify a time, place or cause of death. Representatives for Spears could not immediately be reached for comment late Monday night.In 2004, he earned a Grammy nomination as a producer for Usher’s album “Confessions,” which sold more than 15 million copies worldwide. The next year, Spears drummed during the Grammys for a medley of Usher’s “Caught Up” and James Brown’s “Sex Machine,” a performance that made the drumming community take notice.Over the years, Spears would play with Grande, Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga and Lil Wayne, among many other artists.“You’ve seen Aaron drum prolly 5-10 times in your life if you attend concerts & sometimes without knowing,” Questlove, the D.J., drummer and producer, said in an Instagram post on Monday. “That’s how much in demand his services were.”Aaron Spears was born on Oct. 26, 1976, according to a profile published by Remo, a drumming equipment manufacturer that sponsored him.He was from Washington D.C., grew up in the Pentecostal faith and developed an interest in drumming through his involvement with the church. As a child, he later said in an interview with the German show drumtalk, he would sit on someone’s lap in church playing “the stuff up top” while they played the pedals.One of his first professional gigs was drumming in Gideon Band, a group with a style spanning jazz, rock and R&B. He demonstrated his musical prowess by never repeating a “chop,” or rhythmic phrase, the band said in a statement.Moving from the local scene in Washington to the national one was intimidating, Spears said.“The level of musicianship had me questioning if I belonged there,” he told drumtalk in 2018. “I just didn’t know if I was ready to make the jump.”He clearly did belong. For nearly two decades after his breakthrough performance at the Grammys, Spears played with a long list of major artists, including Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys. He also performed on “Late Night with Seth Meyers” and was the music coordinator and drummer for a season of the television show “The Masked Singer.”Offstage, Spears held drum clinics and master classes around the world. During one such educational visit this year to Southern University in Baton Rouge, La., he sat in for a performance with the school’s marching band, the Human Jukebox.But even after a long career, Spears expressed humility about his success, saying that he was careful to “stay relatable” and avoid developing a false sense of entitlement.“The success that I’ve had is not necessarily because of me,” he said in a video published in May on the website of Ludwig Drums, one of his sponsors. “It’s really the connection that I’ve had with other musicians has helped to make me better.” More

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      Blink-182 and the Rolling Stones Return Rock to the Top 10

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      The pop-punk heroes’ latest LP debuts at No. 1, and the Stones’ first collection of original songs in 18 years opens at No. 3.New releases by Blink-182 and the Rolling Stones score high on the Billboard album chart this week, while the music industry waits to see just how gigantic Taylor Swift’s latest rerecording will turn out to be.Blink-182, the pop-punk heroes that first made a splash in 1999 with bratty-slash-catchy hits like “All the Small Things” and “What’s My Age Again?,” land at No. 1 with “One More Time…,” the group’s first release in over a decade to feature its classic lineup of Tom DeLonge, Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker. The band last topped the Billboard 200 chart in 2016 with “California,” with Matt Skiba standing in for DeLonge — whose non-Blink-182 work at the time included playing with his other group, Angels & Airwaves, and being a U.F.O. researcher.“One More Time…” had the equivalent of 125,000 sales in the United States, including 30 million streams and 101,000 copies sold as a traditional album, according to the tracking service Luminate. Those albums were sold in various packages, like nearly a dozen vinyl variants and a deluxe version containing a CD, band shirt and “custom, full-color box.”Drake’s “For All the Dogs” holds at No. 2, and the Rolling Stones’ “Hackney Diamonds,” the group’s first album of new material in 18 years, and first studio LP since the death of its drummer Charlie Watts in 2021, opens at No. 3 with 8.4 million streams and 94,000 copies sold as a complete album. It is the Stones’ 38th LP to reach the Top 10. (In Britain, “Hackney Diamonds” went to No. 1.)Bad Bunny’s “Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana” (“Nobody Knows What Will Happen Tomorrow”), last week’s top seller, falls to fourth place, and Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” is No. 5.Next week should be all about Swift. “1989 (Taylor’s Version),” the fourth installment in her rerecording project, was released last Friday and is set for a blockbuster debut, though it is still too soon to know just how big. On its first day alone, the new “1989” racked up 110 million streams and sold more than 250,000 copies in the United States, according to early data from Luminate that was reported by Billboard.This week, Swift’s “Cruel Summer” is the No. 1 single for a second time in a row, with 21 million streams, 7,000 downloads and a radio audience of 80 million. More

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      ‘The War on Disco’ Explores the Racial Backlash Against the Music

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      “The War on Disco,” a new PBS documentary, explores the backlash against the genre and the issues of race, gender and sexuality that informed it.The plan was simple enough: Gather a bunch of disco records, put them in a crate and blow them to smithereens in between games of a doubleheader between the Chicago White Sox and Detroit Tigers at Comiskey Park. What could possibly go wrong?This was the thinking, such as it was, behind Disco Demolition Night, a July 1979 radio promotion that went predictably and horribly awry. The televised spectacle of rioters, mostly young white men, storming the field in Chicago, sent shock waves through the music industry and accelerated the demise of disco as a massive commercial force. But the fiasco didn’t unfold in a vacuum, a fact the new “American Experience” documentary “The War on Disco” makes clearer than a twirling mirror ball.Premiering Monday on PBS, “The War on Disco” traces the rise, commodification, demise and rebirth of a dance music genre that burned hot through the ’70s, and the backlash against a culture that provided a safe and festive place for Black, Latino, gay and feminist expression. Originating in gay dance clubs in the early ’70s and converted into a mainstream sensation largely through the 1977 movie “Saturday Night Fever,” disco engendered simmering resentment from white, blue-collar kids who weren’t cool enough to make it past the rope at Studio 54 and other clubs. The film details disco’s role as a flashpoint for issues of race, class, gender and sexuality that still resonate in the culture wars of today.“Saturday Night Fever” helped turn disco from a club phenomenon into a mainstream sensation.Alamy, via PBS“These liberation movements that started in the ’60s and early ’70s are really gaining momentum in the late ’70s,” Lisa Q. Wolfinger, who produced the film with Rushmore DeNooyer, said in a video call from her home in Maine. “So the backlash against disco feels like a backlash against the gay liberation movement and feminism, because that’s all wrapped up in disco.”When the Gay Activist Alliance began hosting feverish disco dances at an abandoned SoHo firehouse in 1971, routinely packing 1,500 people onto the dance floor, the atmosphere was sweaty and cathartic. As Alice Echols writes in her disco history book “Hot Stuff,” gay bars, most of them run by the mob, traditionally hadn’t allowed dancing of any kind. But change was in the air largely because of the ripple effect of the Stonewall uprising in 1969, when regulars at a Greenwich Village gay bar fought back against the latest in a series of police raids. Soon discos were popping up throughout American cities, drawing throngs of revelers integrated across lines of race, gender and sexual orientation.Some of disco’s hottest artists were Black women, including Gloria Gaynor and Linda Clifford (who is a commentator in the film). Many of the in-demand DJs, including Barry Lederer and Richie Rivera, were gay. In its heyday disco was the ultimate pop melting pot, open to anyone who wanted to move through the night to a pulsating, seemingly endless groove, and a source of liberation.“The club became this source of public intimacy, of sexual freedom, and disco was a genre that was deeply tied to the next set of freedom struggles that were concatenate with civil rights,” said Daphne Brooks, a professor of African American studies at Yale University who is featured in the film, in a video interview. “It was both a sound and a sight that enabled those who were not recognized in the dominant culture to be able to see themselves and to derive pleasure, which is a huge trope in disco.”Studio 54 in 1978, as seen in “The War on Disco.” The club was famous for its glamorous clientele and restrictive door policy.Alamy, via PBSAll subcultures have their tipping points, and disco’s began in earnest in 1977. The year brought “Saturday Night Fever,” the smash hit movie about a blue-collar Brooklynite (a star-making performance from John Travolta) who escapes his rough reality by cutting loose on the dance floor. Inspired by the movie, middle-aged thrill seekers began dressing up in white polyester and hitting the scene. The same year saw the opening of Studio 54 in Manhattan, which became famous for its beautiful-people clientele and forbidding door policy.“There was this image of the crowd outside the door on the news, with people being divided into winners and losers,” said DeNooyer, the “War on Disco” producer. “And the majority were losers because they didn’t get by the rope. It was an image that spoke powerfully, and it certainly encouraged a view of exclusivity.”At least one man had reason to take it all personally. Steve Dahl was a radio personality for Chicago’s WDAI, spinning album rock and speaking to and for the white macho culture synonymous with that music. On Christmas Eve in 1978 Dahl lost his job when the station switched to a disco format, a popular move in those days. He didn’t take the news well. Jumping to WLUP, Dahl launched a “Disco Sucks” campaign and, together with the White Sox promotions director Mike Veeck, spearheaded Disco Demolition Night.Organizers expected around 20,000 fans on July 12, 1979. Instead, they got around 50,000, some of whom sneaked in for free. Admission was 98 cents (WLUP’s frequency was 97.9), leaving attendees plenty of leftover cash for beer. Located in the mostly white, working-class neighborhood of Bridgeport, Comiskey Park had a built-in anti-disco clientele.During the first game of the doubleheader, fans threw records, firecrackers and liquor bottles onto the field. By the time the crate of records was blown up, the place was going nuts, with patrons storming the field and rendering it unplayable. The White Sox had to forfeit the second game.The Disco Demolition Night promotion at Chicago’s Comiskey Park quickly spun out of control, with thousands of people storming the field.Chicago History Museum, via PBSThere were other anti-disco protests around the country in the late ’70s, but none so visible or of greater consequence. As the film recounts, reaction was swift; radio consultants soon began steering toward nondisco formats. “Disco Demolition Night was a real factor, and it did happen very quickly,” DeNooyer said. “And we hear from artists in the film who experienced that.” Gigs started drying up almost immediately.Commercial oversaturation didn’t help. Disco parodies were becoming rampant, including a memorable one in the 1980 comedy “Airplane!,” and novelty songs had been around since Rick Dees’ “Disco Duck” in 1976 (followed up by the lesser-known “Dis-Gorilla” in 1977). But the film makes clear that the Disco Demolition fiasco and resultant coverage was a major factor in the death of disco’s mainstream appeal.“The War on Disco” also features a 2016 interview with Dahl, who insists racism and homophobia had nothing to do with that particular display of anti-disco fervor. Demolition Night attendees who were interviewed for the film echo this sentiment.“I would not dispute that is their truth,” Brooks said. “But I think one of the insidious ways that white supremacy has done a number on this country is that it permeates every aspect of our cultural lives. People don’t want to be told that they’re entangled in something that’s not entirely of their control.”It’s also important to note that disco didn’t die so much as its more mainstream forms ceased to be relevant. The music and the culture morphed into other dance-ready genres including house music, which ironically emerged in Chicago. When you go out and cut loose to electronic dance music, or EDM, you are paying homage to disco, whether you know it or not. The beat is still pulsating. The sexual and racial identities remain eclectic. The Who may have bid “Sister Disco” goodbye in their 1978 song, but the original spirit lives on. As Brooks put it, “Its vibrancy and its innovations just continued to gain momentum once the spotlight moved away from it.”The culture, and its devotees, outlived the clichés. Disco is dead. Long live disco. More

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      Who Is Troye Sivan Now?

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicThe pop singer Troye Sivan released “Something to Give Each Other,” his third album — and first in five years — earlier this month to largely positive reviews.But while Sivan, 28, may have grown into his musical and visual identity with a string of recent singles and videos that borrow from 1990s dance music, meme culture and international cinema, he has not yet broken through as the mainstream gay male pop star many expected when his career began.A one-time YouTube vlogger who was born in South Africa and raised Orthodox Jewish in Australia, Sivan came out as a young teenager and has been matter-of-fact in songs and interviews about his sexuality. Earlier this year, Sivan appeared ably as an actor in HBO’s much-maligned music industry satire, “The Idol,” about a pop star and her team being sucked into the dangerous web of a cult leader.Yet despite his rising public profile and artistic confidence, Sivan has found less commercial success with “Something to Give Each Other,” which debuted at No. 20 on the Billboard album chart, than his less self-assured previous two albums, “Bloom,” in 2018, and “Blue Neighborhood,” from 2015.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about this new iteration of Sivan’s sound and persona, where he fits into pop’s growing middle class and the ceilings he may still face as an openly gay male performer.Guests:Harry Tafoya, a freelance writer for Pitchfork, NPR and othersShaad D’Souza, a freelance writer and critic for The Guardian, The New York Times and othersConnect 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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      15 Great Songs From 1989 (the Year, Not the Album)

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      A playlist celebrating a staggeringly great year in music: Pixies, Janet Jackson, De La Soul, Madonna, Indigo Girls and more.Pixies want you to know that 1989 was really a stunning year in popular music. Gie Knaeps/Getty ImagesDear listeners,Today’s playlist is a homage to the music of 1989. Yes, the year. Why, you ask? Does it have anything to do with … you know … a certain musician rereleasing one of her most popular albums, with a title referencing the year she was born? I have no idea what you’re talking about. I simply wanted to celebrate a staggeringly great year in music.Consider just some of the albums released during this annus mirabilis: “Like a Prayer.” “3 Feet High and Rising.” “Paul’s Boutique.” “Doolittle.” “Rhythm Nation 1814.” “Pretty Hate Machine.” “Disintegration.” “Full Moon Fever.” “The Stone Roses.” “Bleach.” I could go on, but I have a playlist to get to.For brevity’s sake, I limited myself to 15 songs. I left off some artists who have made appearances on previous playlists; I adore “Disintegration,” for example, but I also did an entire Cure playlist a few months ago. Some 1989 hits, too, are so ubiquitous — “Love Shack,” “Free Fallin’,” “Like a Prayer” — that I don’t need to put them on the playlist: You will probably hear them in the next few days as a result of simply going about your life. And some omissions are just personal. As a small child, I was so terrified of Jack Nicholson’s “Joker” in the Tim Burton-directed “Batman” that Prince’s No. 1 hit “Batdance” still kind of creeps me out.That still left plenty of great songs to choose from, though. On this playlist, 1989 reveals itself to be a year when inventive, imaginative sampling had reached the mainstream in the music of Beastie Boys, De La Soul and Public Enemy; a generation of female pop stars like Madonna and Janet Jackson were coming into their power; and the alt-rock wave was beginning to form underground thanks to artists like Pixies and Nirvana.This one will leave you with a new appreciation for a year in which so many great songs were released. Reach out, touch faith, and enjoy the enduring bounty of music from 1989.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Janet Jackson: “Miss You Much”Let’s kick things off with the first single from Janet Jackson’s pop opus “Rhythm Nation 1814,” released in September 1989. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis’s unparalleled production really makes this one sound gigantic. (Listen on YouTube)2. De La Soul: “Me Myself and I”Built around a sample of Funkadelic’s “(Not Just) Knee Deep” (among a few other songs), De La Soul’s crossover hit is a playful ode to self-acceptance. (As the group’s Posdnuos put it, “The press was referring to us as the hippies of hip-hop. This song became a way to express that this wasn’t a gimmick, and that we were being ourselves.”) “3 Feet High and Rising,” the debut album featuring this single, ranked No. 1 on the Pazz & Jop Poll, the Village Voice’s (former) annual barometer of critical consensus. (Listen on YouTube)3. The Stone Roses: “She Bangs the Drums”In May 1989, the Manchester pop-rockers the Stone Roses released their beloved, ambitious, and impossible-to-top self-titled debut album. Dreamy, singalong hooks abound, as on this exuberant single. (Listen on YouTube)4. R.E.M.: “Pop Song 89”Though R.E.M.’s sixth album, “Green,” came out in late 1988, I couldn’t resist including this cheekily titled leadoff track, which was — true to its prophecy — released as a single in 1989. (Listen on YouTube)5. Depeche Mode: “Personal Jesus”In a 1990 Spin interview, Martin Gore of Depeche Mode said that the band’s hit from the year before was inspired by Priscilla Presley’s memoir, “Elvis & Me”: “It’s about how Elvis was her man and her mentor and how often that happens in love relationships; how everybody’s heart is like a god in some way,” he said. “We play these godlike parts for people but no one is perfect, and that’s not a very balanced view of someone, is it?” Something tells me he’ll be interested in Sofia Coppola’s upcoming movie “Priscilla,” based on the same source material. (Listen on YouTube)6. Beastie Boys: “Egg Man”Many people still consider “Paul’s Boutique,” Beastie Boys’ ambitious 1989 celebration of the art of sampling, to be the group’s masterpiece. “Egg Man” may be one of the sillier songs on the album — it is, quite literally, about how the mischievous Boys liked to egg people — but the craft that went into its construction is still clear. (Listen on YouTube)7. Love and Rockets: “So Alive”Goth rock was steadily seeping into the mainstream by 1989, as evidenced by the success of the Cure’s ”Disintegration” and this darkly glittering surprise hit from the British alt-rockers Love and Rockets, which hit No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. (Listen on YouTube)8. Madonna: “Cherish”I do not need to remind you that “Like a Prayer” is a great song, so how about this slightly-less-overplayed hit from Madonna’s triumphant fourth album? If there were a Drug Store Music Hall of Fame (and there should be), I would nominate this song. (Listen on YouTube)9. Pixies: “Debaser”Not to get all “High Fidelity,” but “Debaser” — that ecstatically bizarre welcome into the wonderful world of “Doolittle” — has got to be one of the greatest Side 1, Track 1’s ever. (Listen on YouTube)10. Elvis Costello: “Veronica”“Is it all in that pretty little head of yours?” Elvis Costello sings on this bittersweet midcareer hit, inspired by his grandmother’s struggle with Alzheimer’s. “What goes on in that place in the dark?” Co-written with Paul McCartney (which makes sense, given the faint echoes of “Eleanor Rigby”), “Veronica,” which peaked at No. 19 on the Hot 100, became Costello’s highest-charting single in the States. (Listen on YouTube)11. Public Enemy: “Fight the Power”“1989, the number of another summer,” Chuck D begins on this incendiary call to consciousness, written for “Do the Right Thing,” Spike Lee’s film of the same year. “Fight the Power” was a lightning rod upon release, and 34 years later it remains a potent indictment of racism and a richly textured tribute to Black art. (Listen on YouTube)12. Nirvana: “About a Girl”In the summer of 1989, a little-known rock band from Seattle released its debut album, “Bleach,” on the indie label Sub Pop. It would have been hard to predict then that Nirvana’s next studio album would have a seismic effect on the music industry, but the craft of “Bleach” tracks like “About a Girl” certainly displays the nascent songwriting talent of the band’s leader, Kurt Cobain. (Listen on YouTube)13. Galaxie 500: “Strange”Elsewhere beneath the mainstream, the indie trio Galaxie 500 released its great second album, “On Fire,” in October 1989. Though sometimes associated with shoegaze and dream-pop, there’s a sky-scraping boldness and a stirring emotion animating the LP’s fourth track, “Strange.” (Listen on YouTube)14. Kate Bush: “This Woman’s Work”One of the more wrenching songs ever written about childbirth, Kate Bush initially composed “This Woman’s Work” for the 1988 John Hughes movie “She’s Having a Baby.” The following year, she released this slightly different version as the closing track on her album “The Sensual World.” (Don’t sleep on Maxwell’s cover, either.) (Listen on YouTube)15. Indigo Girls: “Closer to Fine”And finally, it’s Barbie’s favorite track on the Indigo Girls’ 1989 self-titled album. Thanks to its inclusion in this summer’s hot-pink blockbuster, “Closer to Fine” is experiencing a well-deserved resurgence, but plenty of soul-searchers have been belting along to it in their cars since ’89. (Listen on YouTube)Don’t know about you, but I am un chien Andalusia,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“15 Great Songs from 1989 (The Year, Not the Album)” track listTrack 1: Janet Jackson, “Miss You Much”Track 2: De La Soul, “Me Myself and I”Track 3: The Stone Roses, “She Bangs the Drums”Track 4: R.E.M., “Pop Song 89”Track 5: Depeche Mode, “Personal Jesus”Track 6: Beastie Boys, “Egg Man”Track 7: Love and Rockets, “So Alive”Track 8: Madonna, “Cherish”Track 9: Pixies, “Debaser”Track 10: Elvis Costello, “Veronica”Track 11: Public Enemy, “Fight the Power”Track 12: Nirvana, “About a Girl”Track 13: Galaxie 500, “Strange”Track 14: Kate Bush, “This Woman’s Work”Track 15: Indigo Girls, “Closer to Fine”Bonus TracksIf you’re looking to read something about that other 1989 thing, well … I wrote about its most provocatively titled “From the Vault” track.I also — busy week — published a profile of the independent-minded Gen Z pop star PinkPantheress, who graciously did not make fun of me for not going on as many roller coasters as she did while I was reporting this story. Bless her for that.Plus, if you’re looking for some new music as an alternative to that big release that shall not be named, let Jon Pareles and Giovanni Russonello provide you with some recommendations, from artists like Mr Eazi, Kevin Sun, Silvana Estrada and more. More