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      Popcast (Deluxe): Kim Petras’s New LP and Jennifer Lawrence’s Return

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:The new album from Young Thug, released as his trial has yet to seat a juror after six months; plus word of a new album from Drake, pegged to the release of a new poetry bookThe conclusion of the ongoing legal battle between Kesha and Dr. LukeThe new album from the meta-pop singer Kim PetrasA check-in on “The Idol,” the louche HBO show about the wages of pop stardom, which is on the verge of its season finale“No Hard Feelings,” the May-December quasi-romance that’s serving as a lighthearted comeback vehicle for Jennifer LawrenceA new collaboration from Juice WRLD and Cordae, and a new song from glaiveSnack of the weekConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. More

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      6 Odes to Ohio

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      The state has inspired memorable songs by Randy Newman, R.E.M., King Princess and more.R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, perhaps suggesting we put our heads together and start a new country up.Martial Trezzini/European Pressphoto AgencyDear listeners,For six of the past seven summers, I’ve spent a long weekend visiting college friends in northern Ohio — a part of the country with which I was previously unfamiliar but has now come to feel like a home away from home. A highlight of these trips is always, weather permitting, when we get to tube lazily down the Cuyahoga River. We tend to start the drive with this excursion’s unofficial theme song: “Burn On,” Randy Newman’s wry but warmly sung ode to that time in 1969 that the infamously polluted Cuyahoga caught fire.More than 50 years later, the fact that we can comfortably float in the Cuyahoga speaks to the success of the high-profile cleanup campaigns that have restored the river to its past glory — so much so that in 2019, the conservation association American Rivers named it “River of the Year.” I did not even know that was a thing. Congrats, Cuyahoga!Newman isn’t the only musician to be fascinated by the plight of this particular river. A song called “Cuyahoga” appears on R.E.M.’s great fourth album, “Life’s Rich Pageant”; Michael Stipe uses the word as a metaphor not just for environmental degradation but for the seizing of land — and even language — originally belonging to native people. “This is where they walked, this is where they swam,” Stipe sings, then adds with bitter irony, “Take a picture here, take a souvenir.”Perhaps because of the sing-songy, vowel-heavy composition of its name, the state of Ohio itself has inspired quite a few notable tunes. I collected a few for today’s playlist — from the likes of Harry Nilsson, King Princess and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young — to round out those musical odes to the 2019 River of the Year.Will this be the first in a long series of 50 Amplifier installments, each devoted to songs about a specific state? Well, even Sufjan Stevens couldn’t finish his 50 States Project, so I’d say don’t hold your breath.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Randy Newman: “Burn On”“There’s a red moon rising on the Cuyahoga River,” Newman begins in that inimitable voice, accompanied by his own plinking piano, “rolling into Cleveland from the lake.” Released on his 1972 album “Sail Away,” “Burn On” is featured in the opening montage of the classic 1989 baseball flick “Major League,” because — according to a Wikipedia statement without a citation that I will choose to believe anyway — the director David S. Ward said the song was “the only one he knew of that was about Cleveland, Ohio.” (Had he never heard “Cleveland Rocks”?) (Listen on YouTube)2. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: “Ohio”Recorded just two weeks after the fatal 1970 incident at Kent State University, when the Ohio National Guard killed four students and wounded nine more, the searing “Ohio,” featuring lyrics by Neil Young, was rush-released the following month and effectively tapped into the countercultural consciousness. (Listen on YouTube, because this one isn’t on Spotify for presumably Young-related reasons)3. R.E.M.: “Cuyahoga”On “Life’s Rich Pageant,” “Cuyahoga” is preceded by the jangling single “Fall on Me,” a song about the effects of acid rain. Taken together, these tracks indicate the band’s growing social conscience and its particular focus on environmentalism. (Listen on YouTube)4. King Princess: “Ohio”This rollicking live staple frequently closed out King Princess’s early shows. Some of her fans were so vocally upset that this song did not appear on her debut album that, in a 2019 Instagram story, the artist born Mikaela Straus cheekily wrote, “I recorded a version of Ohio that is almost done so everyone just calm down.” She kept her word: The sultry studio version of the song — addressed to a former flame who’s gone home to the Buckeye state — appeared on the deluxe edition of the album “Cheap Queen.” (Listen on YouTube)5. Damien Jurado: “Ohio”Ohio is also depicted as a mythical elsewhere — a love interest’s faraway home — in this heart-wrenching acoustic ballad by the Seattle singer-songwriter Damien Jurado. It appears on his 1999 album “Rehearsals for Departure” and also on many, many mix CDs I burned in college. (Listen on YouTube)6. Harry Nilsson: “Dayton Ohio 1903”What is it with Randy Newman and Ohio? He wrote this sweetly nostalgic ditty and recorded his own version for “Sail Away,” though in the spirit of mixing thing up, I chose Harry Nilsson’s version from the earlier, 1970 album “Nilsson Sings Newman.” The song recalls a simpler time, when people dropped by for tea and, perhaps, the Cuyahoga ran clear and blissfully inflammable. (Listen on YouTube)Burn on, big river,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Odes to Ohio” track listTrack 1: Randy Newman, “Burn On”Track 2: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, “Ohio”Track 3: REM, “Cuyahoga”Track 4: King Princess, “Ohio”Track 5: Damien Jurado, “Ohio”Track 6: Harry Nilsson, “Dayton Ohio 1903”Bonus tracksThis 2009 New York Times report, pegged to the 40th anniversary of the Cuyahoga catching fire, has a lede so vivid it is worth quoting in full: “The first time Gene Roberts fell into the Cuyahoga River, he worried he might die. The year was 1963, and the river was still an open sewer for industrial waste. Walking home, Mr. Roberts smelled so bad that his friends ran to stay upwind of him.”Also, it feels almost sacrilegious to talk about the music of Ohio and not mention Guided by Voices, so cue up “Glad Girls” — or another of the approximately 71 billion rippers the Dayton band has recorded over its career — and crank the volume up. More

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      Kylie Minogue’s ‘Padam Padam’ and the Queer Club-Pop Canon

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThe song defining Pride month this year is Kylie Minogue’s “Padam Padam,” a thumping tease that’s lightly campy and has taken on outsize importance as a gay nightlife anthem and meme-culture staple.For Minogue, 55 — a bona fide superstar abroad but more of a pop curio here — it’s one of a handful of breakthrough moments that have cemented her embrace among gay listeners. But “Padam Padam” is also part of a longer list of diva anthems — from Lady Gaga, Madonna, and many others — that become, in effect, gay canon.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about “Padam Padam” and how songs get inscribed into the gay pop canon, Minogue’s not-quite-stardom in the United States, and how a younger generation of pop aspirants like Rina Sawayama and Charli XCX perform their embrace of their gay fans.Guest:Jason P. Frank, news writer at VultureConnect 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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      Kelly Clarkson’s ‘Chemistry’ Draws on Familiar Formulas

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      With a big voice and big personal changes to sing about, Clarkson ends up with arrangements that don’t match the power and rawness of the emotions fueling them.When a musician known in part for her fiery breakup anthems announces the dissolution of her marriage, fans can sometimes react with an impolite if somewhat understandable presumption: “Well, at least the divorce album will be good.”That was the response in 2019, when Adele separated from her now ex-husband Simon Konecki, though she certainly fanned the flames: In the promotional cycle for her 2021 album “30,” when a fan asked what her new record would be about, Adele replied with the instantly memed quote, “Divorce, babe, divorce.” Still, she rose to the challenge: “30” was her most radically honest and stylistically adventurous album yet.Earlier this year, when Kelly Clarkson — another beloved, recently divorced powerhouse vocalist — announced the release of “Chemistry,” expectations were high for some scorched-earth catharsis from the woman who unleashed the feel-good breakup song of the millennium, “Since U Been Gone.” After a holiday album and a covers EP, “Chemistry” is the first album of original pop material Clarkson has released in six years, following the debut of her popular, Daytime Emmy-winning talk show and her 2020 split with her husband, Brandon Blackstock. The track list — featuring song titles like “I Hate Love,” “My Mistake” and “Red Flag Collector” — practically screamed divorce, babe, divorce.But Clarkson, 41, said she wanted “Chemistry” to depict a full arc of a relationship, including its high points. “Favorite Kind of High,” an upbeat, electro-pop tune that Clarkson wrote with the producer Jesse Shatkin and Carly Rae Jepsen, attempts to capture the fizz of new infatuation. (A remix by David Guetta kicks the song into an even higher gear.) The slower, sultry “Magic” addresses a more long-term devotion: “Magic takes time, and I’ve got my sights and they’re set on you,” she sings breathily. Clarkson delivers these vocals with her signature virtuosity, but she doesn’t quite inhabit these relatively faceless songs as fully as she does when she’s singing about love gone wrong.Clarkson has always brought a sharp authenticity and feisty independence to her recording career. The popular “Kellyoke” segment on her daytime program has become a showcase for her genuine appreciation for all sorts of music and proof that she can sing expertly in just about any genre.“Chemistry” never quite lives up to her reputation for excellence, though, and it fails to find a sound that fits the rawness of much of its subject matter. The album is often a showcase for the elemental power of Clarkson’s voice and occasionally for her clever turns of phrase as a lyricist, but the arrangements too often rely on modern pop clichés rather than push for innovation or reach back to the soulful traditionalism of her 2017 LP, “Meaning of Life.”The production — helmed by Clarkson’s longtime musical director Jason Halbert and her frequent producer Shatkin, along with new collaborators Rachel Orscher and Erica Serna — often feels excessively compressed and synthetic, keeping Clarkson’s voice and emotion at an unfortunate remove. “Down to You,” with its sassy, hair-flipping energy, has a few zingers — “I tried to be your friend/I won’t make that mistake again” — but its sputtering, faceless chorus demands about 1 percent of her voice’s potential wattage.The wrenching, piano-driven torch song “Lighthouse,” on the other hand, gives her a little more breathing space and puts a spotlight on one of the album’s most impassioned vocal performances. “My Mistake” relies on a more synthetic pop sound, but its swooping melody gives her more room to vamp. It’s one of only two songs on the record Clarkson didn’t help write; she imbues the other, the booming, ’80s-inspired pop-rock standout “High Road,” with a lived-in weariness and convincing emotional maturity: “To become stronger, you have to listen/Keep it open, don’t try to hide it/And if you need love, don’t try to fight it.”Perhaps surprisingly for a record born from the heartbreak of divorce, “Chemistry” is at its most distinct when it abandons the weight of pathos and allows Clarkson to get loose. Across the final trio of songs, starting with the octave-leaping “Red Flag Collector,” she switches gears into a more conversational delivery — teasing out a sensibility shared by country, cabaret and Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never, Ever Getting Back Together” — and lets her quirky personality lead. Steve Martin, of all people, plays banjo on the stylistically restless “I Hate Love,” while Sheila E. provides percussion on the breezy finale “That’s Right.”These three songs may still be about a breakup, but they’re not tear-jerkers: “Turns out I like things that you don’t,” Clarkson sings on the closer, before hitting the beach — which he hated, apparently — and reconnecting with herself. “Chemistry” ultimately feels like a missed opportunity for more depth and daring, but at least it sometimes sounds like a vacation.Kelly Clarkson“Chemistry”(Atlantic) More

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      Joni Mitchell Finally Returned. Her Fans Were Waiting.

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      The crowd at the singer-songwriter’s first announced concert in more than two decades was intergenerational and grateful.The Joni Jam, featuring a cast of collaborators, was part of Brandi Carlile’s Echoes Through the Canyon festival.On the night of June 10 at the majestic Gorge Amphitheater in George, Wash., on the lip of the Columbia River, the 79-year-old singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell played her first headlining show in 23 years. Her appearance had the air of a comet’s return: rare, breathlessly awaited and well worth camping out all night. That many concertgoers had traveled long distances made the experience feel all the more like a Mitchell song — perhaps one of the poetic highway travelogues recorded on her 1976 album “Hejira,” or even one of the romantic, intercontinental voyages she sang about on her 1971 landmark “Blue.” It was a crowd dotted with tie-dye and graying braids, yes, but also one full of lifelong friends reunited, mothers and children bonding over intergenerational musical tastes and enough homemade Mitchell T-shirts to rival Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. As Mitchell said to the adoring crowd as it held glowing cellphone lights aloft, paraphrasing one of her most memorable songs, “You’re stardust, and golden.”Loretta Pervier Grant, 64, a lifelong Mitchell fan, had never seen her play live. So she and her husband, Larry Grant, 65, drove from Arizona for the show.From left: Rose Paisley, Julie Chinnock, Vivian Pedegana, Lola Pedegana and Greg Pedegana. Rose Paisley’s daughters wore their grandmother’s clothes to the show, including her cowboy boots and jewelry.Dan Waldron and Elizabeth Ford drove from Canada to see Mitchell’s show.Suzanne Park, 64, said she grew up listening to Mitchell’s music in the ’60s and ’70s, and would play her songs on her guitar in high school. More

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      The Majesty of the Cure’s Live Show

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      Robert Smith’s band cast a spell on New York this week. Listen to a playlist that showcases the long-running group’s onstage power.Robert Smith onstage at Madison Square Garden on Thursday, during what’s become one of the year’s buzziest tours.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesDear listeners,Earlier this week, I was listening to “Pictures of You,” one of the many great singles by the British band the Cure, on the subway. It’s a song I’ve heard approximately one million times, and yet when I put it on, time still seems to slow down and everything around me becomes suspended in a romantic haze. I am almost positive the strangers sitting across from me were engaged in a simple conversation about directions. But as Robert Smith yelped dreamily — “Remembering you standing quiet in the rain, as I ran to your heart to be near” — I convinced myself that one of them was actually expressing their unrequited love.Such was the perspective-altering spell the Cure cast Thursday, on the closing night of a sold-out, three-show run at Madison Square Garden. Given its longevity, stylistic variety and staggering quantity of singles, the Cure is almost too easy to take for granted. But the buzz surrounding this current U.S. tour — “The Cure Are This Summer’s Hottest Rock Tour. Yes, Really,” declared a recent headline in Rolling Stone — suggests we have finally decided to appreciate, en masse, these unlikely, 60-something rock gods in all their glory and enduring weirdness.And we’re going to do the same today here at The Amplifier, with a playlist culled entirely from the Cure’s live albums. (Listen along on Spotify as you read.)Earlier this year, Smith became something of an internet folk hero when he publicly took on Ticketmaster for adding its usual litany of mysterious fees to tickets his fans had purchased; he also tried to limit scalpers’ resales to keep prices affordable. (In a rare concession, Ticketmaster agreed to partially refund some Cure fans.)Thursday night, I got the sense that this was not something Smith was just doing for show: This is a band that noticeably, palpably cares about its fans.The merch prices were the lowest I’ve seen at a venue like the Garden in many years — at $25, T-shirts were going for about half what most arena-filling acts charge these days. And onstage, Smith emitted a sincere sense of gratitude that I found transfixing. He spent the first five minutes of the set walking to every single corner of the stage and gazing out intensely, as though he were trying and very nearly succeeding in the impossible task of making meaningful eye contact with every one of the thousands of people in the arena.Yes, Smith still styles himself like a kinder, gentler version of the Joker. But that is about the only concession to spectacle the band makes onstage. The Cure held the audience in a trance without any of the special effects, pyrotechnics or state-of-the-art visuals that most other artists use at a venue that size. Here were six guys just playing their instruments, occasionally striking exaggerated rock poses, but mostly just letting this majestic music speak for itself.At 64, Smith’s voice has held up almost eerily well. There it was, filling the venue to the rafters in the present tense: that same distinct, keening howl heard on beloved records like “Three Imaginary Boys,” “Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me” and “Disintegration.” But perhaps the most striking revelation of the live show is Simon Gallup — one of the most appropriately named bassists in rock history — who plays his instrument slung low and constantly reminds the audience how integral his playing is to the Cure’s overall sound. Down in the murky depths of a Cure song, Gallup plays so insistently that his bass riffs are usually as hummable as whatever Smith and Reeves Gabrels (speaking of great rock names) are playing on guitar.Today’s playlist is an appreciation for the Cure’s reign as a top-notch live act. Save for a few tracks from the excellent 1993 live album “Show” — recorded in Auburn Hills, Mich., in the afterglow of the band’s 1992 album “Wish” — it is mostly filled with recordings from the last decade or so.You’ll hear songs from the band’s headlining sets at festivals like the British event Bestival and the artist-curated Meltdown festival, which Smith hosted in 2018. Many songs come from the most immaculately recorded of the Cure’s later live albums, “Anniversary 1978-2018,” which documented a triumphant, career-spanning set at London’s Hyde Park. In those recordings, you’ll hear the engulfing majesty of “Plainsong,” the springy bounce of the perpetual singalong “Just Like Heaven” and the slightly slower tempo at which they have been playing “Boys Don’t Cry,” which teases out some of the sumptuous atmospherics of what was once a spikily arranged post-punk song.May the whole playlist put you in one of those dreamy, rose-colored hazes that brings out the drama and romanticism in everything.Let’s cut the conversation and get out for a bit,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“The Majesty of the Cure Live” track listTrack 1: “Pictures of You (Live in Hyde Park)”Track 2: “Lovesong (Live in Hyde Park)”Track 3: “In Between Days (Live in Auburn Hills, Mich.)”Track 4: “Just Like Heaven (Live in Hyde Park)”Track 5: “The Last Day of Summer (Live in London)”Track 6: “Plainsong (Live in Hyde Park)”Track 7: “Friday I’m in Love (Live in Auburn Hills, Mich.)”Track 8: “Boys Don’t Cry (Live in Hyde Park)”Track 9: “Jumping Someone Else’s Train (Live at Bestival 2011)”Bonus tracksAs we do each Friday, we’ve selected a Playlist’s worth of new releases for you to enjoy this weekend. This time around, you’ll hear collaborations between Beck and Phoenix, Amanda Shires and Bobbie Nelson, and a brand-new track from Aphex Twin, among other gems. More

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      Beck and Phoenix’s Bouncy Synth-Pop Team-up, and 8 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Palehound, Jaimie Branch, Aphex Twin and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage, and The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Beck and Phoenix, ‘Odyssey’Double bill challenge: write a song with the act sharing the tour to prove compatibility. Beck and the French electro-pop band Phoenix, who will hit the road together this summer, have done just that. Their collaboration, “Odyssey,” finds common ground in synthesizer-centered 1980s pop, specifically Talking Heads’ 1980 “Once in a Lifetime” plus a lot of marimba or xylophone overdubs. Homer’s “Odyssey” was a long, brutal journey home. This “Odyssey” is much more comfortable. JON PARELESMaisie Peters, ‘Run’“If the man says that he wants you in his life forever — run!” That’s what the English songwriter Maisie Peters advises after a relationship with someone who was “too good to be true.” It’s a brisk, beat-driven battle-of-the-sexes song that could be a slogan. PARELESAphex Twin, ‘Blackbox Life Recorder 21f’Brooding synthesizer chords and dependable but ever-shifting drumbeats run through Aphex Twin’s first official release in five years, the inscrutably titled (as usual) “Blackbox Life Recorder 21f,” from an EP due July 28. Melodically, the track is a dirge, but until the rhythm drops away at the end, the percussion is there to party no matter how grim the surroundings. PARELESJaimie Branch, ‘Take Over the World’The trumpeter and bandleader Jaimie Branch, who was 39 when she died last year, left behind raucous, defiant recordings that will be released in August as a posthumous album, “Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((World War)).” Branch determinedly fused jazz, electronics and punk spirit, and in “Take Over the World” she starts out chanting “Gonna gonna take over the world/and give it back-back-back-back to the l-l-land,” whooping up high as she’s joined by pummeling, New Orleans-flavored drums and rhythmically droning cello and bass. She plays a taunting, growling trumpet solo; she puts her vocals through an electronic warp. Her fury gathers a fierce, joyful momentum. PARELESPalehound, ‘Independence Day’“We broke up on Independence Day, crying while the next door neighbors raged,” El Kempner begins on this single from indie-rockers Palehound’s forthcoming album “Eye on the Bat,” atop a chord progression that chugs wearily, like Wilco’s “Kamera.” That memorable line sets the scene for this bleary, blurred snapshot of a relationship’s end, full of wry humor and hard-won wisdom. “Even if I could, it would kill me to look back,” Kempner sings, musing on the sadness of the road not taken. “No, I don’t wanna see the other path.” LINDSAY ZOLADZAmanda Shires and Bobbie Nelson, ‘Waltz Across Texas’The country artists Amanda Shires and Bobbie Nelson recorded the generation-bridging album “Loving You” shortly before Nelson’s 2022 death at age 91, and the result is a testament to the collaborative spirit and light, intuitive touch as a pianist that she retained up until the very end of her life. The album’s opening number “Waltz Across Texas,” the Western swing classic made famous by Ernest Tubb, showcases their easy musical chemistry: Shires’s fluttery voice is playful but reverent to the source material, and Nelson’s notes are as elegantly spaced and glimmering as stars in a night sky. ZOLADZFaye Webster, ‘But Not Kiss’Faye Webster trades in deceptive nonchalance. She brings her sly, sleepy voice to “But Not Kiss,” singing about the wary, ambivalent beginnings of a relationship: “I want to see you in my dreams but then forget,” she sings, “We’re meant to be — but not yet.” Each quiet, folky declaration is answered by a rich burst of instruments: physical responses outpacing rational decisions. PARELESThe Smile, ‘Bending Hectic’What would it feel like to drive off a Mediterranean mountainside? Leave it to the Smile — Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead with the jazz drummer Tom Skinner — to consider that possibility in this nerve-racking eight-minute track. “Bending Hectic” moves from contemplating the view to getting suicidal on curvy Italian mountain roads, from quiet guitar picking and contemplation to disaster scored by Greenwood’s dissonant string arrangements. Takeaway: Choose that van driver carefully. PARELESAmbrose Akinmusire, ‘Cora Campbell’Ambrose Akinmusire recorded his newest album, “Beauty Is Enough,” at Paris’s towering Saint-Eustache cathedral, without an audience or a band — just his trumpet and the natural reverb of the hall. He approached the album, which is entirely improvised, as something of a rite of passage: So many of his horn-playing heroes had done solo albums at crucial career junctures, he’d known he would at some point too. Akinmusire has a huge knowledge of jazz history, but he pushes himself to avoid relaxing within it; you’ll never hear him falling back on references. Instead he’s built one of the most ineffable styles in jazz, full of smoldering feeling, but with a startling quietness at its core. (The LP’s cover art approximates this well: a faint, almost bodily shape, barely emerging from an all-black background.) On “Cora Campbell,” the last of the LP’s 16 tracks, you’ll hear him squeeze his notes tightly, letting them tremor and wriggle a bit. Seventy seconds in, he turns the notes he’s been toying with into a steady pattern, then challenges himself to splice higher pitches and glissandos into its gaps. It’s not overloaded, but he’s never at rest. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO More

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      Teresa Taylor, Butthole Surfers Drummer and Face of Generation X, Dies at 60

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      In addition to playing with the audacious Texas band, she helped define the image of an aimless generation with her role in the 1990 film “Slacker.”Teresa Taylor, a drummer for the Texas acid-punk band Butthole Surfers who became an emblem of Generation X aimlessness and anomie with a memorable appearance in Richard Linklater’s 1990 film “Slacker,” died on Sunday. She was 60.Her death was announced on Monday in a Twitter post by the band. The cause was lung disease.Cheryl Curtice, her partner and caregiver, wrote on Facebook that Ms. Taylor “passed away clean and sober, peacefully in her sleep, this weekend.”“She was so brave, even in the face of her horrible disease.”Ms. Taylor, also known as Teresa Nervosa, addressed her long battle with what she called an “end stage” lung condition, which she did not identify, in a 2021 Facebook post.“I don’t have cancer or any harsh treatments,” she wrote, detailing her daily use of an oxygen tank in a small apartment that had a television mounted on a swivel fed by “mega cable,” and that she lived with her cat, Snoopy. “I know I smoked like a chimney and this is to be expected,” she added. “My spirits are up.”Members of Butthole Surfers in Austin, Texas, in 1987.Pat Blashill​​Ms. Taylor was born on Nov. 10, 1962, in Arlington, Texas, to Mickey and Helen Taylor. Her father worked for IBM as a mechanical engineer. In her youth, she honed her skills with the drumsticks performing with marching bands in Austin and Fort Worth with King Coffey, who would later join her as part of Butthole Surfers’s distinctive twin-drummer approach, each playing in unison on separate kits.She never considered drumming as a career. “It was like, because you were a girl, you didn’t think of having any future in it,” she was quoted as saying in the 2007 book “Women of the Underground: Music” by Zora von Burden.She eventually dropped out of high school and met the singer Gibby Haynes and the guitarist Paul Leary, who had founded Butthole Surfers in San Antonio in 1981, while renting them space in the downtown Austin warehouse where she was living. In 1983, they invited her on a tour of California.During Ms. Taylor’s tenure, which lasted much of the 1980s, the band never scored a hit record although they eventually found success atop Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks chart with the song “Pepper,” from 1996. But mainstream acceptance was very much not the point — as their name made clear.Mixing a taste for Dadaism and Nietzsche with a cyclone-force howl, Butthole Surfers proved audacious even by punk standards. Concerts featured naked dancers, flames, bullhorns and slide shows that included morbid films of surgeries and garbage fires. “Their live shows were an assault on the senses,” observed the music site Rock and Roll True Stories in a 2021 retrospective.With its hand-grenade musical approach and black humor (their 1987 album “Locust Abortion Technician” featured a cover image of eerily joyful clowns in greasepaint inspired by the costumes of the serial killer John Wayne Gacy), the band attracted an ardent cult following among Gen X ironists and hollow-eyed nihilists (not to mention Kurt Cobain of Nirvana).As the decade drew to a close, Ms. Taylor left the band after experiencing seizures she attributed to the strobe lights the band used onstage. In 1993, she had surgery for a brain aneurysm.Ms. Taylor, center, in a still from the film “Slacker,” with, from left, the actors Scott Marcus and Stella Weir.Orion ClassicsDespite her exit from the band she had made her name with, her biggest taste of fame was yet to come.In “Slacker,” she made a memorable appearance playing an addlebrained opportunist wandering the streets trying to sell a jar from a medical laboratory with purported pop-culture significance. “I know it’s kind of cloudy,” her character insists, “but it’s a Madonna Pap smear.”The film was an artfully ragged series of vignettes about young eccentrics played largely by nonprofessionals knocking around Austin. Premiering in the early days of “Seinfeld,” it was a movie about nothing that captured the spirit of twentysomethings who, according to the clichés of the day, cared about nothing and aspired to nothing.The film’s title became a nickname for a generation, and with her indelible appearance on the movie’s poster and other packaging materials, Ms. Taylor became a face of it — a slack-jawed youth, her skinny arms thrust into her pockets in a gesture both bored and rebellious.“We talked about doing a drugged-out freak kind of character going on about Madonna,” Ms. Taylor said in a 2001 interview with The Austin American-Statesman, recalling her experiences on set. “I had a rock star attitude and a big ego. I demanded a hat and sunglasses for the scene. I did not want my face to be seen. And it became an image.”She would go on to work at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired in Austin, according to The Austin Chronicle, and was writing a memoir about her time with the band.Information about survivors was not immediately available.As the years rolled by, her rock star swagger may have faded, but not, it seemed, her sense of irony. “I am the ultimate slacker,” she told The American-Statesman. “I’m on disability for depression, I get a check every month and I watch a lot of TV.” More