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      Britney Spears Writes of Having Abortion While Dating Justin Timberlake

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      The pop star included the detail in her upcoming memoir “The Woman in Me”; Timberlake did not immediately respond.Britney Spears wrote in her much-awaited memoir that she had an abortion during her relationship with Justin Timberlake, according to excerpts released Tuesday by People Magazine.“Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy,” the excerpt reads, according to People. “He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young.”Representatives for Timberlake did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Spears and Timberlake dated for a few years starting when she was 17 and he was 18, generating a tabloid frenzy as they made their ascents as two of the defining pop stars of the late 1990s and early 2000s.Their relationship became subject to public scrutiny again in 2021, after a New York Times documentary, “Framing Britney Spears,” included a re-examination of the world’s reaction to their breakup, which was framed in the media as being Spears’s fault — partly because a music video by Timberlake implied that Spears had cheated on him. Without going into detail, Timberlake apologized to Spears in an Instagram post, saying that he had “failed” her.The memoir, called “The Woman in Me” and slated for release next week, is Spears’ first in-depth account of her life and career and is being published in the aftermath of her release from a legal conservatorship that governed her life for more than 13 years.The collection of excerpts released so far recall the heady days leading up to her getting a record deal at 15, her inner monologue as she held a live snake in the famous moment at the 2001 Video Music Awards, and her loss of passion for performing while under the strictures of the conservatorship, which was instituted amid a series of public struggles in 2007 and 2008.“I would do little bits of creative stuff here and there, but my heart wasn’t in it anymore,” the excerpt read. “As far as my passion for singing and dancing, it was almost a joke at that point.”The end of the conservatorship nearly two years ago was preceded by waves of outrage from fans who called themselves the #FreeBritney movement and held rallies in Los Angeles for the end of the legal arrangement, which was largely overseen by her father, James P. Spears.Since it ended, Spears, 41, has gotten married, separated from her husband and released two singles; she has shared bits of her rage about the conservatorship in Instagram posts, but her memoir will include the most significant — and organized — insights yet into her thoughts on the ways in which the minutiae of her life were under others’ control even as she worked as an international pop star.In the excerpts released so far, Spears rewinds back to her days as a preteen in “The Mickey Mouse Club” — recalling a truth-or-dare kiss with Timberlake, a fellow cast member — and to coming close to being cast as the lead opposite Ryan Gosling in “The Notebook,” a role that ultimately went to Rachel McAdams.She recalls her childhood growing up with parents that she would later blame for exerting too much control over her life, telling a story about how her mother, Lynne Spears, would let her drink cocktails as an eighth grader. And she discusses the constant pressures surrounding her body, writing how, during the conservatorship years, her father “repeatedly” told her that she “looked fat and that I was going to have to do something about it.”“I’d been looked up and down, had people telling me what they thought of my body, since I was a teenager,” one excerpt said. “Shaving my head and acting out were my ways of pushing back. But under the conservatorship I was made to understand that those days were now over. I had to grow my hair out and get back into shape. I had to go to bed early and take whatever medication they told me to take.”Spears had privately pushed for years to end the conservatorship, but she left no doubts about her position in 2021, when she told a judge in Los Angeles that the arrangement was “abusive,” saying that she was forced to work when she didn’t want to and prevented from removing her birth control device when she wanted to have more children. Her father has long maintained that the conservatorship had always been intended to protect his daughter from exploitation.The memoir pushes back fiercely on the idea of that the conservatorship was for her own good: She writes, according to an excerpt, that the arrangement made her into a kind of “child-robot,” a shadow of her former self, asserting that male artists had mismanaged their money and dealt with substance abuse problems without being treated as she had.“There was no way to behave like an adult, since they wouldn’t treat me like an adult, so I would regress and act like a little girl,” one of the excerpts said, “but then my adult self would step back in — only my world didn’t allow me to be an adult.” More

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      Cher on Her First Christmas LP, a New Beau and 25 Years of ‘Believe’

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      The superstar talks about finding her recording voice again, getting Stevie Wonder (and Tyga) to appear on her holiday album and still finding the love for her hits.Though she’s been a singer and performer for six decades, Cher had never made one of pop’s most ubiquitous (and commercially viable) releases: a Christmas album. “I just didn’t want to,” she said. “I didn’t know how I would fit into it. I didn’t know how Christmas music and Cher could come together and be harmonious.”Then, suddenly — being Cher — she changed her mind. “Christmas,” out Friday, is a 13-track romp through holiday music, with guest appearances from Stevie Wonder, Cyndi Lauper, Michael Bublé, the rapper Tyga, and Darlene Love, who reprises “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”, on which Cher first sang backup at 17. “There was no way I was going to do her song without her,” she said.Just back from Paris Fashion Week, she spoke by phone from her California home, in a wide ranging conversation that touched on her affinity for assisting homeless people — “Just going and sitting down on the sidewalk, talking and interacting; I really loved it” — the time she went to Pakistan to save an elephant (there’s a documentary); and her new gelato pop-up, called, of course, Cherlato.At 77, Cher has also recently suffered loss, including the deaths of her longtime friend Tina Turner in May and of her mother, Georgia Holt, at 96, just before the holidays last year; the album is dedicated to her. But she also has reason to be hopeful, like an unexpected romance with the music producer Alexander Edwards, 40 years her junior, who encouraged her to go back in the studio, she said. He is credited as a producer on “Christmas,” and was responsible for the collab with Tyga.“It was a surprise that he got T to be on it,” she said of “Drop Top Sleigh Ride,” a syncopated track that fit with her holiday party vibe. “I knew I wanted to make something that was fun — Christmas needs to be that,” she added. “It needs to be lighthearted because, you know, who knows what next Christmas will bring.”Performances are in the works; she is also busy finishing her memoir — which, she admitted, is intense and all-consuming. “I’ve lived too long, and done too many things.”These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How did your first musical conversations with Alexander go?He talks about music a lot and we play music a lot. And he knew from knowing me what I would like. There are certain chord progressions and sounds on any record that your body responds to, your emotions respond to. He just had me pegged so right. And he said, Cher, you need to go — well, he doesn’t call me Cher. But he said, baby, you need to get back in the studio because you are not finished. You need to bring what you have back to the world. And I was like, Oh, come on, dude. But he was serious. He didn’t even ask to produce. I just thought it would be really cool for him to do it and me to have something that was a very now sound.How did your relationship start?We’ve had a one-year anniversary. We met at Fashion Week — we were in the same picture at the end of the Ann Demeulemeester show. Then I went off to visit Tina in Switzerland.My friend gave him my number, and he texted me. I was like, Dude, this is not going to work out. Come on. I mean, he was very, very nice. We just got to be friends and then by the time we saw each other, we were more. It’s still crazy.I’m like, old enough to be his — oh, I’m probably older than his mother. It doesn’t work on paper, but it seems to work in whatever reality we’ve created.How did you prepare for the album?I haven’t sung in years. So I call my unbelievable teacher, Adrienne Angel, who I love like the sun and the moon. She’s 96; she’s been my teacher since my 40s — when I was making movies, I didn’t sing. Bernadette Peters told me that she had saved her when she was doing “Sunday in the Park with George.” Bernadette said, if you want to get your voice back, go to her. I just wanted it to sound like my voice. I didn’t want to have to lower any keys. That’s always the dead giveaway. My doctor said I have the vocal cords of a 25-year-old girl.I remember I had a conversation with Barbra Streisand once on a telethon we were doing. She leaned over and said, Cher, why are you still doing this? I was still on the road. And I said, Because there’s going to come a day where I can’t do it. And I don’t want to have thought that I could have done my art longer, and chose not to.I mean, look, you don’t usually have a very great voice at 77, right? But it seems like a lot of us are having some sort of resurgence. I don’t know what it is. Revenge of the old people.Your landmark single “Believe” is about to have a deluxe rerelease for its 25th anniversary. It helped popularize Auto-Tune.The sound for “Believe” started with an argument that Mark [Taylor, her longtime producer] and I had. The verse was not good. And he kept saying, Cher, you’ve got to sing it better, you’ve got to sing it better. And finally I said, Dude, if you want it better, get somebody else. And I walked out.And then, the next morning, I’d seen this guy, this beautiful guy [Andrew Roachford] on a morning show, singing into a vocoder. I called Mark — can we do it into a vocoder? He said, I just got this thing called a pitch machine, and I’m playing around with it.I went in later to listen and we both just jumped out of our chairs and high-fived. I said, you don’t even know it’s me! He said, Well, that’s what I was afraid of. I said, No, it’s perfect. I love this.You couldn’t have had any idea about its legacy — it changed music.No, of course not. We were just trying to fix a problem. The other day, Alexander was telling me that sometimes, when someone can’t sing all that well, they use it. That was something I didn’t really know.Do you mind that sound being associated with you?Are you kidding? I love it. I mean, young people don’t know it came from me, but it’s OK. Maybe old people don’t know either. You know what I believe? What comes to you, belongs to you. That’s my theory about life.What’s your relationship to ambition at this point in your life?Look, I’m working my ass off, so I must be ambitious. If I don’t have the love for it, I wouldn’t do it. But I’m proud of this album, too. And I love everyone on it. I never had people on my albums before, and I didn’t plan to. It kind of started with Cyn [Cyndi Lauper]. I said, I’m going to do this Christmas album, and I’m not even sure what I’m asking, but I just want to know that if I need you, that you’ll be there. She said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, fine.”And then I did a Stevie song [his rendition of “What Christmas Means to Me”], but there were parts that I just didn’t know how to access. Because it belongs to him, not to me. So I did my version, and I sent it to him. I thought I was going to have to, like, get down on bended knee — but I didn’t. He said, Cher, is it one of my songs? Do you want me to play harmonica on it? When he said yes, my sister and I were in my bedroom and I just ran around and jumped up and down on my bed. I was yelling, “Stevie Wonder is going to be on my album!”Are you watching other veteran performers now, to see how you might do things differently?I’m not going to do things differently. If people come to see you, they want you to do things they like. I remember seeing Bob Dylan — I think it was “Blood on the Tracks.” And I went to the first concert and some of the songs I went, “What is this?” He got tired of singing the songs the same way. But people really want to hear their favorite song exactly the same way. It doesn’t make any difference if I’m tired of it. I have to find it inside myself to love it and to love what I’m doing.Had you thought much about this stage of your career?I never thought I would get here. I mean, my age is so frightening. It’s like, the numbers are so big. And I keep thinking, Where did it go? I was busy working. While I was busy being Cher, how did this happen? No one’s given me any info.I still have a lot of energy and I can still be really excited about things. I live in Malibu. I can see the ocean, and that’s my favorite thing. I love my house. I’m grateful.How do you celebrate Christmas?I don’t cook, but everyone ends up at my house. Stragglers, family. We’ve got lots of kids around, and teenagers. Mostly we’re just talking and acting crazy and watching movies and hanging out. We don’t put on really Christmas music, just fun music. But music doesn’t seem to be a large part of it. Everybody’s talking too loud. More

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      My Haul From the WFMU Record Fair

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      Rounding out a record collection with finds from the Beach Boys, Kraftwerk and Roberta Flack.Scenes from a great day album shopping in Queens.Lindsay ZoladzDear listeners,Over the weekend, I spent some time at the WFMU Record and CD Fair — a New York institution returning in person for the first time since 2019. A fund-raiser for the great, listener-supported radio station, this year’s Record Fair featured over 100 dealers hawking vinyl and other musical sundries at the Knockdown Center in Queens. I browsed for hours, and by the time I was done my back was sore from hunching over crates and my arms ached from all the records I was toting around. Who says record collecting isn’t a sport?That lingering pang in my shoulder, though, meant I left with a pretty decent record haul — which I used to create today’s playlist.Some people go to record fairs ready to drop big bucks on rare finds and coveted collectibles. That wasn’t my aim, though: I was in it for the cheap thrills and spontaneous discoveries. I found, for example, a fantastic, good-as-new-condition Ike & Tina Turner live album I’d never heard, at a stand where most records were marked down to 50 percent off in the event’s final hours. (Given that deal, I threw in a copy of Dinosaur Jr.’s scuzzy classic “You’re Living All Over Me” at the last minute, too.) For $5 or less, I acquired records by Bob Dylan and Roberta Flack.But I also learned about the perils of the discount bin. When I added a $3 copy of Waylon Jennings’s “Greatest Hits” to my pile, I thought I’d checked the condition of the LP. But apparently I hadn’t looked at the label. For when I pulled it out of its sleeve yesterday and went to play it, I found that I was actually in possession of … Neil Diamond’s “12 Greatest Hits, Volume II.” Talk about a rude awakening.Overall, though, the fair was a blast, and an opportunity to connect with record sellers in a setting way more personable than ordering something off Discogs. Each stall had its own style and personality quirks — like the one graciously offering a questionably large bowl of free “I More

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      Joan Jett Loves the New York Liberty. The Feeling Is Mutual.

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      As an early fan of the W.N.B.A. team, the musician saw the squad lose four championship series. This week, she returned courtside to cheer another attempt.Joan Jett’s unmistakable voice was carrying, and she was pretty sure it was working some magic.The New York Liberty had taken a slim lead against the Las Vegas Aces in the third quarter of Game 3 of the W.N.B.A. finals on Sunday, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer was doing her part, bellowing along with the crowd’s “De-fense” chant from her courtside perch at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. When the Aces started to go cold, Jett took it as a sign.“I’m hoping they recognize my voice and I’m messing up their shot,” the husky-throated musician said, using an expletive. “It’s all mental, you know what I’m saying?”It was a must-win contest for the Liberty, who were down 2-0 in the best-of-five series. As Jett kept up her boisterous chant, the Aces missed six consecutive shots. The Liberty went on an 8-0 run, and the diminutive singer and guitarist jumped up to high-five the 6-foot-3 former Liberty center Sue Wicks, a friend.Some 10 years had passed since Jett last attended a W.N.B.A. game (her summer touring schedule got in the way), but she fell quickly back into the playoff delirium she had enjoyed as a courtside fixture in the late 1990s and early ’00s, when the team made the final round of the playoffs four times but failed to win a title.The rock star said she first fell for the game in 1996 when the N.C.A.A. asked her permission to use Joan Jett and the Blackhearts’ cover of “Love Is All Around” to promote the women’s basketball tournament. The following year, the W.N.B.A. began its first season and Jett bought Liberty season tickets, often showing up to big games with a red cloth voodoo doll she used to taunt opposing players.“She’d hold it up and stab that dang thing!” Teresa Weatherspoon, the former Liberty guard, said during halftime. “When you talk about the Liberty, you have to mention Joan’s name. Any battle we had on the floor, Joan was in it with us.”Jett grew up a self-described tomboy in Rockville, Md., and became a fan of Major League Baseball’s Baltimore Orioles at age 11, after her father took her to see the pitcher Jim Palmer throw a no-hitter. Her intersection with sports continues today: She still follows the Orioles faithfully, and is known to set up livestreams on the drum riser during shows so she can follow along. The theme song for “Sunday Night Football,” is an adapted version of the Blackhearts hit “I Hate Myself for Loving You,” performed by Carrie Underwood.During her early days of W.N.B.A. fandom, Jett opted to sit directly behind the bench instead of courtside with the other celebrities. (“It just feels more inside basketball to me,” Jett said. “You can hear the coaches talking.”) The Liberty would slap her hand on their way onto the floor. Jett occasionally came to practices, and once even flew to Houston with the team for a finals game.Jett developed particularly close friendships with Weatherspoon and Wicks, who remembers being so star-struck the first time she saw Jett at Madison Square Garden, where the Liberty initially played, that she almost knocked over Rebecca Lobo, the team’s center. Wicks had a copy of “The Hit List,” Jett’s 1990 album, while playing overseas in Europe, and said it had been a “great friend” to her during lonely stretches abroad. “For me, she’s a goddess,” Wicks said.In 1999, Ray Castoldi, the Garden’s organist, asked Jett and the Blackhearts to record “Unfinished Business,” a song he had written for the Liberty after their crushing finals loss that year. Jett not only cut the track the following season, but filmed a video with the team and performed the song at halftime during a game.“It’s hard to explain the energy,” Jett said of those early years. “I was on the outside looking in, but they made me feel like I was on the inside. It was a fun, really inclusive time.”Jett feels a natural kinship with athletes, who, like longtime touring bands, travel with a tight-knit team and are expected to perform on command. And like the athletes in the W.N.B.A., who have carved out a professional place for themselves while expanding the public’s idea of what women are capable of doing, Jett broke down boundaries in music: battling to prove to record labels and crowds that she deserved to be a frontwoman despite her prodigious talent. “We’re people that could relate to what each other was doing,” she said.Crystal Robinson, a former Liberty forward with whom Jett remains close, said the recognition was mutual: “For us, it was just the fact that she supported us,” she said. “She was fighting that female battle before we started. We had this camaraderie.”Jett’s return to the Liberty on Sunday was an overdue homecoming. Before the game, she nursed a beer as she held court with Wicks and Robinson at a table in the Barclays’ V.I.P. lounge. The recently retired W.N.B.A. star Sue Bird came by to pay her respects, as did the actors Jason Sudeikis and Michael Shannon, who portrayed Kim Fowley, the manager of Jett’s band, the Runaways, in a 2010 film.As the restaurant emptied before game time, Jett got restless. “I feel like we’re missing stuff!” she said giddily, before heading toward the court to find her seat. Just before tipoff, Becky Hammon, the Aces head coach who had been a Liberty guard in her playing days, spotted Jett taking a photo of her from across the court and struck a quick pose.Once the game started, Jett was up out of her seat to cheer on nearly every Liberty point. She gleefully taunted Hammon after a Jonquel Jones bucket (“Three-pointer, Becky!”), and debated foul calls with Wicks and Robinson. When Jones blocked a shot from the Aces star A’ja Wilson in the third quarter, Jett removed her black jean jacket to cheers from the crowd. “It’s hot in here!” she shouted back.After the Aces went cold in the third quarter, the Liberty stretched their lead. “I feel good,” Jett said. “But they’ve broken my heart before.”She appeared on the Jumbotron soon after, gamely swinging a Liberty towel overhead as “I Love Rock ’n Roll” blared on the public address system. Then, she fired T-shirts into the crowd with an air cannon, with the crowd roaring for her.“I felt the love,” Jett said. But she was mainly focused on her potential as a tactical influence: “It reminds Las Vegas that I’m here, and that can make them nervous.”She needn’t have worried. The Liberty found their rhythm in the second half and defeated the Aces, 87-73, extending the series to a Game 4, which will be played in Brooklyn on Wednesday. Should the team force a Game 5, it will play for the franchise’s elusive, first-ever title.“You’ve got to be back Wednesday!” a fan told Jett as the clock wound down. “You’re clearly the good luck charm.”But Jett is prepared for any outcome. “That’s the nature of being a sports fan,” she said. “To be there through the tough times and the good times.” More

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      Madonna Kicks Off Celebration Tour in London

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      After a health-related delay, the pop superstar launched her Celebration Tour in London with a performance devoted to her full catalog of hits.They wore pearls with crucifixes, lace gloves, tulle skirts and body-sculpting corsets. Some even crimped their hair and drew on fake beauty moles, while others wore simple white T-shirts with only the letter M on the back. Spanning generations, the concertgoers arriving at the O2 Arena in London used Saturday night as an opportunity to dress in their favorite Madonna era, even if that was decades before they were born.Madonna, 65, is on the road for the first time since 2020 with her global Celebration Tour, a stage spectacle touching on more than 40 of her hits across four decades. The show opened at the O2, a 20,000-capacity arena, three months after its planned first date, following a health scare for the pop icon. In June, Madonna was hospitalized shortly before the tour’s scheduled debut in Canada. At the time, her manager said she had a “serious bacterial infection” that resulted in the singer staying in an intensive care unit for several days.Madonna swore that the tour — her first devoted to her full catalog of hits, rather than to a specific album release — would go on. In recent weeks, she has filled her Instagram account with tantalizing, and very on-brand, images from rehearsals, showing her dressed in a lacy black bustier, practicing onstage steps and resting her fishnet-clad knees.Fans waited out a 30-minute delay before Madonna arrived onstage in London, opening with a medley of hits before acknowledging the challenges that had led to the moment. “How did I make it this far? Because of you,” she said, adding, “But I will take a bit of credit, too.”Fans of the pop star Madonna taking pictures in front of her posters outside the O2 Arena in London.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesIt was clear from the beginning that this concert would be as much a journey through Madonna’s career as it would a bona fide dance party. Set on an elaborate stage that jutted out into the audience, several hanging retractable screens showed images of the singer. At other times, they displayed powerful portraits, as when she launched into “Live to Tell” and the screens displayed images of Freddie Mercury, Arthur Ashe and more people who died from AIDS.For more than two hours, with the help of her dancers and some of her six children, Madonna blazed through her catalog of songs, singing several hits like “Holiday,” “Like a Prayer,” “Hung Up,” “Ray of Light” and “Bad Girl.” Her costumes were sexy, religious and futuristic.Though the show had been in the works for months, it was not without technical difficulties. Early on, Madonna paused the show so the sound could be reset. She entertained the audience during the delay by speaking at length about her rise to stardom while technicians worked behind the scenes. Later in the show, between songs, Madonna expressed concern for those affected by violence in Israel and the Gaza Strip. “It breaks my heart to see children suffering, teenagers suffering, elderly people suffering, all of it is heartbreaking,” she said. “Even though our hearts are broken, our spirits cannot be broken.”When the tour was announced in January, it immediately became one of the year’s big-ticket events. But it appears to be far from sold out.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesMadonna also reflected on her health struggles this year. “I forgot five days of my life, or my death,” she said. “I don’t really know where I was, but the angels were protecting me.“If you want to know my secret, and you want to know how I pull through and how I survive, I thought, ‘I’ve got to be there for my children. I have to survive for them,’” she said. She then led the crowd in a singalong of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.”The 24 performers onstage notably did not include a live band: Stuart Price, the tour’s musical director, told the BBC that “the original recordings are our stars.” The stage, which encompasses 4,400 square feet, was designed to echo Manhattan neighborhoods, as well as the wedding cake from Madonna’s 1984 MTV Video Music Awards performance of “Like a Virgin.” During the show, she is swept across the venue in a square-framed box 30 feet off the ground.Carla Nobre, 38, of Nottingham said that seeing Madonna in concert had been on her bucket list, but that she had been disappointed with the performance.“There was too much talking,” she said.Jenni Purple, 54, from the southern coast of England said the concert, which was her first time seeing Madonna live, had been “absolutely incredible.” “I loved all the medleys, I loved the costumes, I loved all the dances,” she said with a broad smile. “Everything was just mind-blowing.”In the past, Madonna’s tours have been news-making events tied as much to her latest music as to her cycle of stylistic reinventions. But Celebration is essentially the pop superstar’s Eras Tour, as Taylor Swift has styled her latest outing: a staged romp through decades of hit songs and signature looks, giving fans a chance to relive her career as a stages-of-life experience. (Seventeen of Madonna’s previous costumes were recreated for the tour, and some of the merchandise for sale includes replicas from past treks.)With her Virgin Tour in 1985, Madonna introduced herself as a punk-glam dance star whose every crucifix pendant or flap of denim was zealously adopted by fans. Who’s That Girl (1987) and Blond Ambition (1990) grew increasingly elaborate as Madonna pushed the fashion envelope with looks like Jean Paul Gaultier’s memorable cone bra and set the bar for bold, imaginative pop megatours. The Girlie Show (1993), in which Madonna appeared as a dominatrix, was the accompaniment to a period of daringly explicit material like her “Sex” book and “Justify My Love” video, which was banned from MTV.After an eight-year absence from the road, Drowned World (2001) reintroduced Madonna as a new mother, an electro-pop heroine and an acolyte of kabbalah, a form of Jewish mysticism. In more recent years, her Confessions Tour (2006) cast her in late-70s disco style, and Rebel Heart (2015-16) found her playing guitar, in addition to executing the complex choreography for which she is known. Her most recent tour, Madame X, which was cut short by the Covid-19 pandemic, saw Madonna looking to reinvent her stage performance once again in a more intimate, almost cabaret form, mostly eschewing arenas for spaces like the Brooklyn Academy of Music.For Madonna, the 78-date Celebration Tour is a chance to assert her star power in a year when live music has been dominated by Swift and Beyoncé — women who, like Madonna before them, have used talent and deep media savvy to remake pop stardom in their own image. In July, Beyoncé acknowledged the debt, when Madonna, making one of her first public appearances after her hospitalization, attended Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour in New Jersey. “Big shout-out to the queen,” Beyoncé called out during a performance of the “Queens Remix” of her song “Break My Soul,” which blends in Madonna’s 1990 smash “Vogue” — another hit that mined, and honored, gay dance culture of that period.Madonna returned the acknowledgment on Saturday, playing a bit of the same remix during an interstitial moment.(From left to right) Iien McNeil, Susie Petersen, Maria Belova and Suzy Burroughs posing in front of the venue before the show.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesWhen Madonna’s latest tour was announced in January, it immediately became one of the year’s big-ticket events — and yielded a micro-flood of hot takes about the singer’s age. But the tour appears to be far from sold out; Ticketmaster still shows many seats available at some major venues like Barclays Center in Brooklyn, where Madonna will start the North American leg of the tour with three shows in December.Back in 2009, Madonna’s Sticky & Sweet Tour set box-office records when it sold more than $400 million in tickets. Since then, the economics of live music have exploded; Beyoncé has already well exceeded that amount with her Renaissance shows, and Swift may well sell close to $2 billion in tickets by the time her Eras Tour is completed.Legacy has clearly been on Madonna’s mind lately. Last month, the 1989 Pepsi commercial that introduced her song “Like a Prayer” — before it was pulled amid outrage over its music video, which featured an interracial kiss and the singer dancing in front of burning crosses — was finally aired again during the MTV Video Music Awards.Maia and Aisha Letamendia Moore, 17-year-old twin sisters, wore looks that drew from the Like a Virgin and Vogue eras.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesMadonna, who had been paid $5 million for the promotion — and kept the money — said on social media: “So began my illustrious career as an artist refusing to compromise my artistic integrity.” She added, “Thank you @pepsi for finally realizing the genius of our collaboration. Artists are here to disturb the peace.”It was clearly on fans’ minds as well. Aisha and Maia Letamendia Moore, 17-year-old twins from southern England, near Brighton, wore looks that drew on the Vogue and Like a Virgin eras. “I think she’s such an influence,” Maia said. “She did so many things that were so controversial. She wasn’t scared to do it, she wasn’t scared what people would say.”Others mentioned rumors that Celebration could be Madonna’s last tour. Helen Dawson, 47, who said she first saw Madonna during the Who’s That Girl Tour in 1987, would abide no such thought. “Never, she won’t give up,” Ms. Dawson said. “This is just a new celebration, a new era.” More

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      After ‘Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,’ Stream These 8 Great Concert Movies

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      For that live show experience, these films capture exhilarating music by Beyoncé, Shakira, A Tribe Called Quest, Talking Heads and more.If you saw “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” in a theater and enjoyed the vicarious thrill of watching a concert onscreen, here are eight more films of live shows — picked by the Culture desk writers — that will give you a taste of the same experience.Beyoncé, ‘Homecoming’Available to stream on NetflixBeyoncé just announced a new concert film, due in December. Until then there’s her 2018 performance at Coachella. It was the stuff of legends. Marching bands! A Destiny’s Child reunion! So when “Homecoming” dropped on Netflix the next year, it truly felt like a gift. The film is one of intriguing contradictions, feeling both intimate and outsize at once. You see the painstaking hard work in every stunning piece of choreography and hear it in every breathtaking vocal, yet Queen Bey makes it look effortless. Mekado MurphyTalking Heads, ‘Stop Making Sense’In theatersWhat elevates “Stop Making Sense” — and what has made its recent 40th anniversary rerelease now in theaters such a sensation — is its formal elegance. David Byrne begins alone onstage with a tape player and, as fellow musicians gradually accrue with each song, ends as the large-suited ringleader of a rock ’n’ roll circus. The director Jonathan Demme knows he doesn’t need spectacle or special effects to transfix: He just allows each frame to fill with the charisma of a great band. Lindsay Zoladz‘Summer of Soul’Available to stream on Disney+ and HuluIf 1970’s “Woodstock” is one of the defining concert documentaries, “Summer of Soul,” released in 2021, acts as a sort of complement and rejoinder to it. Questlove’s Oscar-winning film exuberantly unearths footage of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival — which took place the same summer as Woodstock — and cuts together some of the most extraordinary performances from artists like Stevie Wonder, Sly and the Family Stone, Gladys Knight, Nina Simone and so many more. Questlove includes interviews with participants and attendees that contextualize the sets musically and historically, but the film’s power is the ability to make you feel as if you are in the crowd even if you are just sitting on your couch. Esther ZuckermanThe Rolling Stones, ‘Gimme Shelter’Available to stream on MaxThis 1970 documentary directed by the Maysles brothers and Charlotte Zwerin is known as something of a Zapruder film for the death of the ’60s, with its footage of a killing at the Rolling Stones’ free concert at Altamont Speedway a year earlier. Still, the movie’s great music gets across the promise that was lost: Mick Jagger in an Uncle Sam top hat and a long lavender scarf, hip-thrusting his way through “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” The Flying Burrito Brothers raving up “Six Days on the Road” when it still seemed like Altamont could be “the greatest party of 1969.” And most explosively, Tina Turner, singing “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” and giving a microphone the time of its life. David Renard‘Depeche Mode: 101’Available to stream or rent on major platformsThe Music for the Masses tour brought the British synth band’s yearning songs — reverberating like confessional hymns in a cathedral — to the Rose Bowl and beyond in 1987-88. “Depeche Mode: 101” takes in the smokily lighted shows (with lead singer Dave Gahan in a billowing white shirt) and the bright-eyed “bus kids,” fans who went along for the ride. D.A. Pennebaker tunes into the heartbeat of Depeche Mode’s electronic sound, co-directing with Chris Hegedus and David Dawkins. Nicolas Rapold‘Rage Against the Machine: The Battle of Mexico City’Available to rent or buy on most major platforms.I would wager this is the only concert film, directed by Joe DeMaio, that periodically cuts away from the performance to show documentary segments about the Zapatistas, the rebel political group of southern Mexico. Tonally, it’s a turn-of-the-century time capsule: The frenetic live footage (recorded in 1999 and released in 2001) seems to have been edited by a can of Red Bull. But the band’s knockout blend of overt leftist ideology and inventive, funky rap-over-metal holds up. Look for the guitarist Tom Morello’s rhythmic tapping of the unplugged tip of his guitar cable to make music, like somebody using the board game Operation as an instrument. Gabe Cohn‘Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest’Available to stream on the Criterion ChannelMichael Rapaport’s documentary about the groundbreaking rap group A Tribe Called Quest isn’t exactly a concert film per se, but it is bookended by a pair of critical tours: a 2008 run that rapper Q-Tip bitterly declares backstage is its last performance ever, and another in 2010 that sees the trio cautiously reuniting. In between is a vibrant tribute, particularly enhanced after Phife Dawg’s death in 2016, and a no-frills look at the story of a singular group that changed hip-hop, even as success distanced them from one another. Brandon Yu‘Shakira: Live From Paris’Available to rent or buy on most major platformsIf Shakira’s recent performance at the MTV Video Music Awards impressed you, this 2011 release will floor you. Singing in three languages (often while dancing vigorously) and playing multiple instruments, the Colombian megastar commands the stage with a magnetic intensity. There isn’t much artifice on display here, only Shakira surrendering her entire body to the vitality of her genre-defying, globally inspired music. Take as proof her sensational belly dancing during “Ojos Así” or her transition from tenderness to fury in the rock ballad “Inevitable.” Carlos Aguilar More

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      Taylor Swift ‘Eras Tour’ Movie Review: Look What We Made Her Do

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      Swift’s cultural phenomenon arrives on the big screen with lots of little revelations, along with some what-could-have-beens.We could talk, I suppose, about all Taylor Swift’s done for the economy, friendship bracelets, seismology and Travis Kelce. But her greatest nonmusical achievement is the innocuous art she’s made of the gape. On a 50-foot screen, the various apertures of her mouth constitute a spectacle. There’s the “Who? Me?,” the “yeah I said it,” the “ouch,” the “ooooo,” the “gosh golly” and the “Sally Field wins another Oscar.” Hers is the story of “oh.”That glee is a reason to be happy about the movie that’s been assembled from her live show — “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” which was shot at SoFi Stadium outside Los Angeles, the final stop on the tour’s first leg. “Happy” because it’s recorded what a gladdening agent Swift can be on a stage and the stamina summoned to power that agency for the better part of three hours. The movie’s about 165 minutes long, and she’s as ebullient descending into the stage, for her farewell, as she is in the opening minutes magically materializing upon it. The first words she speaks to the 70,000 people hooting for her are, “Oh, hi!,” as if SoFi were a shower we’d caught her singing in.In June, when Swift landed at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., the pushing and screaming — by five high schoolers — to my immediate rear ceased at about the two-hour mark. I turned to check on the state of their ecstasy and found a pile of fatigue — the human version of that crumpled face emoji. Her glee had outlasted theirs, her zing had them zung. If nothing else, this movie’s a monument to that: Swift’s illusion of ease. She doesn’t work as physically hard or as loosely or hydraulically as her dancers. She’s not a Jackson. And she doesn’t sing as enormously or as exquisitely as a Streisand, Carey, Dion or Knowles-Carter. Nor is her show — produced as discrete segments devoted to nine of Swift’s 10 albums — the cultural gymnasium Madonna requires. Swift plays to her enhanced strengths: candied pitch, arresting stature, toothsome songwriting, winking, the very idea of play. Not far into things, right around “Cruel Summer,” she announces that we’ve encountered “the very first bridge of the evening.” There are more to come, because not since Lionel Richie has a major pop star so enjoyed the pleasure in the might of her bridgecraft.It wasn’t until this movie that Swift’s 10-minute breakup ballad “All Too Well,” which she performs alone downstage in a glittering robe and an acoustic guitar, struck me as an achievement of genuine theater. Rapt in a movie theater, I felt the song’s heart-wrung pique in a new way. Some of that comes from watching Swift’s face register the ache, tsking recrimination. The rest comes from the song pooling outward into anthem territory. Live, it’s like watching someone woodwork “American Pie” until it resembles “Purple Rain.”“Eras” is studded with little revelations like that. Another: the “Reputation” section of the show contains her freest, most ambitious singing and movement. That album is the first in which she approximates the mischievous, cunning, swaggy music that Beyoncé or Rihanna could make. But the kick of its first six songs is that Swift invites the dare. She spends this part of the show dressed in a serpentine unitard. She knows.One more aha: Swift can command a stage. I’d never thought of her as someone a camera has to take in. But anytime she’s in one of those glittering bathing suits and a pair of spangled knee-high boots, the length of her demands in-taking. She can strike a formidable pose. But early, when she points to different spots in SoFi and those sections start to roar, she jokes that that kind of power is “dangerous” before kissing her biceps, except I don’t think she’s joking. She understands her power and she’s skilled at performing the accident of having so much of it, like she can’t also believe how the country would react if she, say, started going to football games and chest-bumping folks and being associated with a thing of nearby chicken fingers. Her embodiment of lightness and blitheness and insouciance constitutes a talent. Another gape: Did I do that?The show confirmed my sense that Swift can’t be serious — doesn’t want to be — for long, lest she be labeled self-serious. She’s fine with attention but less so with her own monumentality. That discomfort strikes me as the source of the Taylor-as-Godzilla imagery of “Anti-Hero,” a dirge in jam’s clothing. In concert, Swift is as committed to skipping like a cartoon first grader along the stage as she is to sashaying and skulking around it. She’d rather be running than standing still, accruing meaning. She’d rather use her body for screwball comedy than for totemism. She knows what a holy object we’ve made and seems to be trying to undercut that. These are thoughts that could occur to you live in the moment of the show itself. But now the camera permits you to savor it.So it’s a shame that the shots here are all over the place — the stage, the sky, too close, too far, too kinetic; only occasionally, in medium close-ups, just right. The director is Sam Wrench, and it’s unclear whether he’s making a movie or a salad. Under the circumstances, he’s done the best he probably could. For one thing, his camera operators and editors have to compete with the jumbo monitors that project what’s at the center of the stadium to its farthest reaches. Few movie screens can hold a candle to one of those — the screen at my theater wasn’t one of them, anyway. The projected image delivers a Swift who seems to be in higher resolution than the woman onstage. The breakthroughs in screen imaging have changed the concert-going experience for better and worse. They’ve democratized it, and that’s great.You can actually experience Swift more clearly in the upper decks than in the inner circles. The concert screens literalize her cultural magnitude. But they seem like hell on good filmmaking. Unless, no one prioritized attempting to shoot around them so that Swift isn’t being upstaged by herself. Of course, that inner-circle seat is, if not priceless (there was definitely a price tag), then certainly far more valuable since, whenever Swift makes her way to the stage’s lip, we can shove a phone in her face. That introduces a modern eyesore for a concert film: other people’s movies. The “Eras” crew has clearly aimed to keep the amateur films mostly out of the shots. But they’re there, nonetheless, as intrusive in a movie as they are at the show itself.Concertgoers can actually experience Swift more clearly in the upper decks than the inner circles, our critic writes, but the screens that enable that at a live show are an obstacle for filmmakers.TAS Rights Management/Variance FilmsWhat is it we should expect from a concert movie? Cinema or fax? “Eras” is proof that an event took place and that the event was fun. There’s more it could have been, of course. “More” just opened a few weeks ago — well, reopened in the form of “Stop Making Sense,” the 1984 concert movie Jonathan Demme made from a few Talking Heads shows, also in Los Angeles. The film predates the camera phone but not the audience. You barely hear one, and he rarely cuts away to it. The film captures one man expanding into a family and the family into a kind of small choir. Maybe Swift is too big for that movie’s living-room approach. But surely there’s a more imaginative strategy to bring her to us than point-and-shoot.I know. “Eras” wasn’t made to be art. It was made to be an index of art that got made. It was made for posterity. Oh — and for the hundreds of people in the parking lot at every Eras show who could sort of hear Swift and had to make do with seeing only each other. The movie is for them. And they’re gonna gape their faces off. More

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      Readers Pick the Ultimate Fall Playlist

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      Listen to reader-submitted songs that capture the moodiness of fall.Charlie Brown and the gang set the tone.via Everett CollectionDear listeners,Last week, I asked you to submit a song that feels like fall. So many of you responded with such evocatively autumnal suggestions that it became quite a daunting task to whittle them down to a relatively compact and cohesive listening experience — but I somehow managed, and I have that playlist for you today.Autumn, according to many of you, seems like a time of coexisting opposites. It’s about the warmth sought during the season’s first chill. It’s about endings and beginnings, deaths and rebirths, longtime traditions enlivened by new circumstances. Autumn’s signature cocktail is a strange brew of anticipation and nostalgia, like the new-school-year stress dreams that visit so many of us even when we’ve long (long) since graduated.In a word — and one that aptly serves as the title of one of the songs on this playlist — it’s a season that signals change.Your song submissions ranged across genres, generations and moods. But there were also quite a few consensus picks: the Kinks’ “Autumn Almanac,” Tom Rush’s version of “Urge for Going,” and Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May” were among the most popular suggestions, and they all make appearances here. (What is it about fall and mandolin solos?) There were plenty of surprising selections too, from the likes of Slowdive, Sade and Warren Zevon.Many thanks to anyone who submitted a song! It’s always such a joy to read your comments and to hear directly from the Amplifier community. As I said, it was difficult to choose from so many great selections, but I think this particular playlist captures something fundamental about the spirit of the season.So throw on some flannel, grab a steaming mug of something and press play.Listen along on Spotify while you read.1. Vince Guaraldi: “The Great Pumpkin Waltz”It doesn’t truly feel like autumn until my family watches Charlie Brown together. Now that I’m in high school it’s a bit harder to find a time where everyone is available, but we’ll make it work! — Caroline Didizian, Pennsylvania (Listen on YouTube)2. Rod Stewart: “Maggie May”Fall makes me think of change, melancholy, approaching the end. All encapsulated in Rod Stewart’s most famous song as his summer fling comes to an end and he has to “get on back to school.” The reflection in the song feels sad but not spiteful, final but fair. — Matt Zacek, Minnesota (Listen on YouTube)3. The Kinks: “Autumn Almanac”This one covers all the bases — brisk weather, falling leaves and fall colors, cozy times with your people, and the exacerbation of rheumatism. I mean, I’m guessing that the Brits weren’t doing the pumpkin-spice thing in the ’60s, but barring that, it’s pretty darned autumnal. — Sarah Engeler-Young, Location withheld (Listen on YouTube)4. Lucinda Williams: “Fruits of My Labor”Nature plays a game of roulette every fall. After months of growth, some trees turn crimson, some fade to muddy brown. Williams reveals that relationships face a similar moment of reckoning. “Lemon trees don’t make a sound, ’til branches bend and fruit falls to the ground,” she sings, alongside a drawling harmonica that is both warm and heartbreaking. — Alex Skidmore, San Francisco (Listen on YouTube)5. Sade: “The Sweetest Gift”I always remember how the writer Alan Hollinghurst called autumn “the time of year when the atmosphere streamed with unexpected hints and memories, and a paradoxical sense of renewal.” This is a song that feels wrapped in that same tug between acceptance of the past and a sense of protection over a quieter future. — Tiernan Bertrand-Essington, Los Angeles (Listen on YouTube)6. Warren Zevon: “Tenderness on the Block”I have three daughters and the youngest is still in college — but I associate fall with them going off to school and not needing my wife and I as much as they used to. Zevon captures how melancholy their leaving makes me feel. — John Peebles, Morris Township, N.J. (Listen on YouTube)7. Big Thief: “Change”Fall is a time of transition: the hectic energy of the summer slows, the weather cools, the school year begins. On “Change,” Adrianne Lenker mourns the end of a relationship and recognizes how challenging it can be to adapt to changing circumstances. But she ultimately asks the listener — and herself — to move forward and search for meaning in their new reality: “Would you walk forever in the light to never learn the secret of the quiet night?” — Trammell Saltzgaber, Brooklyn, N.Y. (Listen on YouTube)8. Slowdive: “When the Sun Hits”Most of their songs feel like fall to me, but this especially. This is evening walk music. — Zac Crain, Dallas (Listen on YouTube)9. Led Zeppelin: “Ramble On”I have a memory of driving back to Florida for the fall semester after spending a delightful summer working on Cape Hatteras, N.C. This song came on and the leaves were actually falling all around. It’s a specific moment from decades ago, and a vivid visual memory every time I hear this song. — Allison McCarthy, St. Petersburg, Fla. (Listen on YouTube)10. Tom Rush: “Urge for Going”Whenever the sky grows a chilly gray, I have to listen (repeatedly) to Tom Rush’s exquisite version of Joni Mitchell’s “Urge for Going.” The guitar alone sends chills creeping up the spine. Hunker up against the wind and enjoy. — Mick Carlon, Barnstable, Mass. (Listen on YouTube)11. Nick Drake: “Time Has Told Me”Of course, being Nick Drake, it is redolent of loss and fallen leaves and short days with rain and wind. Like all his work, it has a pastoral scent and a sense of English melancholy and peat fire. Devastatingly beautiful, as is the fall. — Paul Cameron Opperman, Location withheld (Listen on YouTube)12. Eva Cassidy: “Autumn Leaves”The ache in her voice as she evokes the melancholy that summer’s end brings never fails to make my breath catch. You can picture the leaves falling like tears. — Bonnie Holliday, Arrington, Va. (Listen on YouTube)13. Billie Holiday: “Autumn in New York”The warmth of Billie Holiday’s voice and the cool notes of Oscar Peterson’s piano put me in a smoky jazz club, away from the chill of the sunset. It’s a sense of transformation. Summer is ending, but what is beginning? — Janet Hartwell, Key West, Fla. (Listen on YouTube)14. Nanci Griffith: “October Reasons”The song begins, “I’m gonna open up the window and let in October,” as if October is a friend waiting to be greeted. It’s how I feel about fall: the cooler temperatures, the changing color of the leaves. It’s a friend I want to let in, and Nanci’s song encompasses this feeling. — David Sponheim, Minnetonka, Minn. (Listen on YouTube)It’s late September and I really should be back at school,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Readers Pick the Ultimate Fall Playlist” track listTrack 1: Vince Guaraldi, “The Great Pumpkin Waltz”Track 2: Rod Stewart, “Maggie May”Track 3: The Kinks, “Autumn Almanac”Track 4: Lucinda Williams, “Fruits of My Labor”Track 5: Sade, “The Sweetest Gift”Track 6: Warren Zevon, “Tenderness on the Block”Track 7: Big Thief, “Change”Track 8: Slowdive, “When the Sun Hits”Track 9: Led Zeppelin, “Ramble On”Track 10: Tom Rush, “Urge for Going”Track 11: Nick Drake, “Time Has Told Me”Track 12: Eva Cassidy, “Autumn Leaves”Track 13: Billie Holiday, “Autumn in New York”Track 14: Nanci Griffith, “October Reasons”Bonus TracksMy own personal fall song is a pretty obvious choice: Neil Young’s “Harvest.” It’s right there in the title, sure, but there’s also something so oblique and stirring about the melody of this song and the imagery of its lyrics that continues to haunt me each time I listen. “Harvest” has, to me, that mixture of chill and warmth, of familiarity and strangeness, that make a great fall song. (Plus, you know, it’s literally called “Harvest.” From the album “Harvest.” What more can I say?)Also, on this week’s Playlist, you can hear new music from Bad Bunny, boygenius, Sleater-Kinney, and more. Check it out here. More