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      Tina Turner, Magnetic Singer of Explosive Power, Is Dead at 83

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      Hailed in the 1960s for her dynamic performances with her first husband, Ike, she became a sensation as a recording artist, often echoing her personal struggles in her songs.Tina Turner, the earthshaking singer whose rasping vocals, sexual magnetism and explosive energy made her an unforgettable live performer and one of the most successful recording artists of all time, died on Wednesday at her home in Küsnacht, Switzerland, near Zurich. She was 83. Her publicist Bernard Doherty announced the death in a statement but did not provide the cause. She had a stroke in recent years and was known to be struggling with a kidney disease and other illnesses.Ms. Turner embarked on her half-century career in the late 1950s, while still attending high school, when she began singing with Ike Turner and his band, the Kings of Rhythm. At first she was only an occasional performer, but she soon became the group’s star attraction — and Mr. Turner’s wife. With her potent, bluesy voice and her frenetic dancing style, she made an instant impression.Their ensemble, soon renamed the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, became one of the premier touring soul acts in Black venues on the so-called chitlin’ circuit. After the Rolling Stones invited the group to open for them, first on a British tour in 1966 and then on an American tour in 1969, white listeners in both countries began paying attention.Ms. Turner, who insisted on adding rock songs by the Beatles and the Stones to her repertoire, reached an enormous new audience, giving the Ike and Tina Turner Revue its first Top 10 hit with her version of the Creedence Clearwater Revival song “Proud Mary” in 1971 and a Grammy Award for best R&B vocal performance by a group.Ike and Tina Turner in performance in Texas in 1964. Their ensemble became one of the premier touring soul acts on the Black circuit; after the Rolling Stones invited the group to open for them, white listeners began paying attention.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images“In the context of today’s show business, Tina Turner must be the most sensational professional onstage,” Ralph J. Gleason, the influential jazz and pop critic for The San Francisco Chronicle, wrote in a review of a Rolling Stones concert in Oakland in November 1969. “She comes on like a hurricane. She dances and twists and shakes and sings and the impact is instant and total.”But if the Ike and Tina Turner Revue was a success, the Ike and Tina Turner marriage was not. Mr. Turner was abusive. After she escaped the marriage in her 30s, her career faltered. But her solo album “Private Dancer,” released in 1984, returned her to the spotlight — and lifted her into the pop stratosphere.Working with younger songwriters, and backed by a smooth, synthesized sound that provided a lustrous wrapping for her raw, urgent vocals, she delivered three mammoth hits: the title song, written by Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits; “Better Be Good to Me”; and “What’s Love Got to Do With It.”We, TinaHow Tina Turner reclaimed her voice, her image and her spirituality.Ms. Turner in 1969. “In the context of today’s show business,” one critic wrote that year, “Tina Turner must be the most sensational professional onstage.”Jack Robinson/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesReferring to its “innovative fusion of old-fashioned soul singing and new wave synth-pop,” Stephen Holden, in a review for The New York Times, called the album “a landmark not only in the career of the 45-year-old singer, who has been recording since the late 1950s, but in the evolution of pop-soul music itself.”At the 1985 Grammy Awards, “What’s Love Got to Do With It” won three awards, for record of the year, song of the year and best female pop vocal performance, and “Better Be Good To Me” won for best female rock vocal performance.The album went on to sell five million copies and ignite a touring career that established Ms. Turner as a worldwide phenomenon. In 1988 she appeared before about 180,000 people at the Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, breaking a record for the largest paying audience for a solo artist. After her “Twenty Four Seven” tour in 2000 sold more than $100 million in tickets, Guinness World Records announced that she had sold more concert tickets than any other solo performer in history.‘Well-to-Do Farmers’Tina Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock on Nov. 26, 1939, in Brownsville, Tenn., northeast of Memphis, and spent her earliest years on the Poindexter farm in Nutbush, an unincorporated area nearby, where she sang in the choir of the Spring Hill Baptist Church.Her father, Floyd, known by his middle name, Richard, worked as the farm’s overseer — “We were well-to-do farmers,” Ms. Turner told Rolling Stone in 1986 — and had a difficult relationship with his wife, Zelma (Currie) Bullock.Ms. Turner in the studio in an undated photo.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images More

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      Pete Brown, Who Put Words to ‘Sunshine of Your Love,’ Dies at 82

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      A British Beat poet, he wrote lyrics for the band Cream and, after it broke up, continued to collaborate with Jack Bruce, the group’s lead singer and bassist.Pete Brown, a British Beat poet who wrote the lyrics to songs by the rock supergroup Cream, including the hits “White Room,” “I Feel Free” and “Sunshine of Your Love,” and who after the band’s breakup collaborated for nearly five decades with Jack Bruce, its lead vocalist and bassist, died on Friday at his home in Hastings, on the southeast coast of England. He was 82.His manager, Peter Conway, said the cause was cancer.Mr. Brown entered Cream’s circle at the request of Ginger Baker, the band’s drummer. They knew each other because Mr. Brown performed his poetry backed by jazz musicians and Mr. Baker had gotten his start in jazz combos; Mr. Baker asked Mr. Brown for help on the lyrics to the group’s debut single, “Wrapping Paper,” which preceded the release of “Fresh Cream,” its first album, in 1966.Mr. Brown quickly discovered a career-long writing partner in Mr. Bruce, whose fluid and propulsive playing provided counterpoint to Mr. Baker’s explosive drumming and the guitar pyrotechnics of Cream’s third member, Eric Clapton.In a short documentary about the making of “White Room” seen on Dutch television in 2018, Mr. Brown recalled, “It became evident that Jack and I had a chemistry, and when we wrote ‘I Feel Free,’ which was a big hit, so everyone went, ‘OK, that’s a team, let it roll.’”Mr. Brown did not provide the lyrics to all of Cream’s songs, but he was the group’s primarily lyricist. On its second album, “Disraeli Gears” (1967), he wrote the words to “Sunshine of Your Love,” a collaboration with Mr. Bruce and Mr. Clapton, as well as “Dance the Night Away” and two other songs.“White Room,” one of four songs he wrote with Mr. Bruce on the band’s third album, “Wheels of Fire” (1968), rose to No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1968. It was the second-highest ranking a Cream single achieved; “Sunshine” had peaked at No. 5 earlier that year.“White Room” began as a poem Mr. Brown wrote, inspired by his stay some years earlier in an actual white room, in an apartment.“I had been semi-destitute, a semi-bum, living on people’s floors, and eventually I began to earn some money from songwriting, and the white room was the first place I moved into,” he told the culture website Please Kill Me in 2022. In the Dutch documentary he added that he had stopped drinking and taking drugs in the room and decided to be a “songwriter rather than an itinerant poet.”“White Room,” begins with these lines:In the white room with black curtains near the stationBlack roof country, no gold pavements, tired starlingsSilver horses ran down moonbeams in your dark eyesDawn light smiles on you leaving, my contentmentI’ll wait in this place where the sun never shinesWait in this place where the shadows run from themselvesMr. Brown in concert in 1970 in Copenhagen. He found his voice as a singer in the decade after Cream broke up, performing with a number of bands.Jorgen Angel/Redferns, Getty ImagesPeter Ronald Brown was born on Dec. 25, 1940, in Surrey, England, with World War II underway. His parents had moved there after fleeing London during the Blitz. His father, Nathan Brown, whose birth name was Nathan Leibowitz, and his mother, Kitty Cohen, sold shoes.Peter started writing poems as a teenager, fired up by the works of Dylan Thomas, Federico García Lorca and Gerard Manley Hopkins. But he detoured, at least temporarily, to journalism, which he studied for nine months in 1958 at the Polytechnic-Regent Street (now the University of Westminster) in London.He returned to verse and published his first poem in 1961 in Evergreen Review, the boundary-breaking literary magazine based in the United States that filled its pages with work by luminaries like Samuel Beckett, Jean-Paul Sartre, Allen Ginsberg, Henry Miller and William Burroughs.In one early poem, “Few,” composed under the fear of nuclear war, Mr. Brown wrote:Alone and half drunk hopefulI staggered into the bogsat Green Park stationand found 30 written on the wall.Appalled I lurched outInto the windy blaring Piccadilly nightthinking surely,Surely, there must be more of us than that.Over the next few years, he was a working poet. He was part of the First Real Poetry Band, which included the guitarist John McLaughlin, and he had a jazz poetry residency at the Marquee Club in London.In 1965, he and more than a dozen other poets from around the world, including Mr. Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, Michael Horovitz and Andrei Voznesensky, read their work at the International Poetry Incarnation, which filled Royal Albert Hall in London. On its website, the venue recalled the event as one “where beatniks met the emerging hippie culture.”The call for help from Mr. Baker jump-started a long songwriting career, first with Cream and then, when Cream split up after two years, with Mr. Bruce on his solo work. He wrote the lyrics to songs on nearly all of Mr. Bruce’s albums, from “Songs for a Tailor” (1969) to “Silver Rails” (2014). One of their collaborations, “Theme for an Imaginary Western,” became a staple in the repertoire of the band Mountain.“I was in awe of Jack,” Mr. Brown told The Guardian in an interview last month. But, he said, “Sometimes we had to have a rest from each other — two very big personalities in the same room sometimes wasn’t good, plus his addictions got in the way.”Mr. Brown, right, with Jack Bruce in 2005. The two began collaborating on songs when Mr. Bruce was the bassist and lead vocalist in Cream, and they continued writing together for nearly five decades.Brian Rasic/Getty ImagesMr. Brown found his own voice, as a singer, in the decade after Cream broke up. He performed with the bands Pete Brown & His Battered Ornaments, Piblokoto!, Back to the Front, Flying Tigers and Bond & Brown, which he formed with the British rock and blues musician Graham Bond. He also began a long songwriting collaboration in the early 1980s with the keyboardist Phil Ryan, a former member of Piblokto!, that produced several albums through 2013.He also helped write most of the songs on “Novum” (2017), Procol Harum’s last studio album. (He replaced Keith Reid, Procol Harum’s longtime lyricist, who died this year.)Mr. Brown’s autobiography, “White Rooms & Imaginary Westerns: On the Road With Ginsberg, Writing for Clapton and Cream — An Anarchic Odyssey” (2010), is being adapted as a documentary by the director Mark Aj Waters but has not yet been finished. Mr. Brown had recently been working on an album, “Shadow Club”; one of his collaborators was Mr. Bruce’s son Malcolm, an electric bassist like his father. (Jack Bruce died in 2014.)“We’ve naturally gravitated to each other,” Mr. Brown told The Guardian, adding that he was planning to write songs with Malcolm Bruce for his next album “as long as I can stay alive for a reasonable amount of time.”Mr. Brown is survived by his wife, Sheridan MacDonald; his daughter, Jessica Walker; his son, Tad MacDonald; and a grandson.Even after he began singing, Mr. Brown said, his admiration for Mr. Bruce initially led him to avoid singing the Cream songs he had helped write.“You know, ‘I’m not good enough,’” he told Dutch television. “Then I suddenly thought, ‘OK, I wrote those songs as well,’ and I thought, ‘It’s kind of about time I started singing some of these songs.’” More

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      Fans Remember Tina Turner as a Resilient Trailblazer

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      Many said her music and her life story were inspirations as she overcame abuse during her marriage to Ike Turner and emerged as a star on her own.Rock and soul singers, civil rights activists and political leaders mourned Tina Turner on Wednesday as a trailblazing artist whose music and life epitomized resilience, determination, heart and the power to not only survive but thrive over five decades in the music industry.“Tina would have so much energy during her performances and was a true entertainer,” Magic Johnson, the former star of the Los Angeles Lakers, wrote on Twitter. “She created the blueprint for other great entertainers like Janet Jackson and Beyoncé and her legacy will continue on through all high-energy performing artists.”As news spread of Ms. Turner’s death, at 83, in Switzerland, many said her life story was an inspiration as she overcame abuse during her marriage to Ike Turner and emerged as a star on her own, with the release of her solo album “Private Dancer” in 1984.“This woman rose like a Phoenix from the ashes of abuse, a derailed career, and no money to a renaissance like I’ve never seen in entertainment,” Sherrilyn Ifill, the former president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said on Twitter. “She became fully herself and showed us all how it’s done.”Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, who toured with Ms. Turner in Britain in 1966 and then in the United States in 1969, in a series of concerts that helped introduce her music to white audiences, said that he was “so saddened by the passing of my wonderful friend Tina Turner.”Tina Turner with Mick Jagger at a Live-Aid concert in Philadelphia in 1985.Rusty Kennedy/Associated Press“She was truly an enormously talented performer and singer,” Mr. Jagger wrote on Instagram. “She was inspiring, warm, funny and generous. She helped me so much when I was young and I will never forget her.”Former President Barack Obama said on Twitter that “Tina Turner was raw. She was powerful. She was unstoppable. And she was unapologetically herself — speaking and singing her truth through joy and pain; triumph and tragedy.”“Today,” he added, “we join fans around the world in honoring the Queen of Rock and Roll, and a star whose light will never fade.”The actress Angela Bassett, who was nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of Ms. Turner in the 1993 film “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” said in a statement: “How do we say farewell to a woman who owned her pain and trauma and used it as a means to help change the world?”“Through her courage in telling her story, her commitment to stay the course in her life, no matter the sacrifice, and her determination to carve out a space in rock and roll for herself and for others who look like her, Tina Turner showed others who lived in fear what a beautiful future filled with love, compassion, and freedom should look like,” Ms. Bassett said. “Her final words to me — for me — were ‘You never mimicked me. Instead, you reached deep into your soul, found your inner Tina, and showed her to the world.’”The R&B and soul singer Aaron Neville recalled when the Neville Brothers toured Europe with Ms. Turner in 1990, selling out shows with more than 70,000 fans in attendance. It was during that tour, he said, when he came up with the idea for his song, “The Roadie Song,” as he watched the crew set up stages all across Europe.“She showed us much love and respect,” Mr. Neville wrote on Twitter. “I know she has a place in the heavenly band.”Ms. Turner’s career began in the late 1950s, when she was in high school in East St. Louis, Ill., and spanned half a century, as she moved from singing R&B and soul into rock and pop. She was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with Mr. Turner in 1991 again as a solo artist in 2021.She gave her final public performance in 2009 and then retired.Beyoncé, left, and Tina Turner perform at the 50th Grammy Awards in Los Angeles on Feb. 10, 2008.Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“Tina Turner was our voice,” Mayor Eric Adams of New York wrote on Twitter. “She’s an icon who knocked down boundaries, shook our soul and redefined music. She overcame so much to become an icon.”Kelly Rowland, the singer formerly of Destiny’s Child, is part of a younger generation of singers who drew inspiration from Ms. Turner: “Thank you Queen, for giving us your all!” she wrote. “We Love You!!”The R&B singer Ciara wrote: “Heaven has gained an angel. Rest in Paradise Tina Turner. Thank you for the inspiration you gave us all.”And rapper and songwriter Kid Cudi wrote that Ms. Turner was a hero to his mother, and “she was the ultimate superhero to me too.” More

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      Tina Turner’s 11 Essential Songs

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      Turner, who died Wednesday at 83, went from R&B shouter to rock queen to pop superstar. Here are some of her greatest musical moments.Like all the greatest pop icons, Tina Turner, who died Wednesday at 83, had more than one life.She started off as an R&B shouter and inexhaustible dancer who, alongside her husband Ike, put on the most exhilarating live show this side of James Brown. Then she was a rock heroine who toured with the Rolling Stones and served as the Who’s Acid Queen. And finally she became the ultimate survivor — the abused woman who left her man in the dust and, without apologies, claimed a crown all her own.Here are some of Tina Turner’s greatest musical moments, on record and on film.Ike & Tina Turner, “A Fool in Love” (1960)Ike and Tina’s early R&B hits are electrifying moments of raw musical power, but in retrospect they are also deeply creepy in their lyrical content. The duo’s first single introduces Tina’s larger-than-life howl and has her sing about a troubled relationship in which her man mistreats her and “got me smilin’ while my heart is in pain,” yet she still promises to “do anything he wants me to.” Those words were written by Ike Turner, who has sole credit as the songwriter.Ike & Tina Turner, “I Idolize You” (1960)More strange and uncomfortable lyrics: Tina professes not love but idolatry, and says that in return, “just a little bit attention you know will see me through.” Tina’s guttural cry atop a walking bass line was the sexiest, most unfiltered sound in music at the time, but it is all but impossible to hear these songs now without wincing at the horror show Tina would later describe about her marriage to Ike.Ike & Tina Turner, “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine” (1961)The biggest hit of Ike & Tina’s early years — it went to No. 2 on Billboard’s R&B chart and was Top 20 pop — is a lighter back-and-forth routine about a couple persevering through their troubles. Again, eww. But at least this time the song was not by Ike. It was written by Rose Marie McCoy along with Joe Seneca and James Lee, and the R&B duo Mickey & Sylvia were involved in the recording.Ike & Tina Turner, “River Deep — Mountain High” (1966)Phil Spector had seen the Ike & Tina Turner Revue — their incredibly high-energy live show, featuring Tina singing and dancing with the backup Ikettes — and recorded this single, written by Spector with Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, for his label, Philles. It tones down Tina’s howls and replaces Ike’s tight band with a somewhat hazy version of Spector’s signature “wall of sound.” The single was a flop, which caused the album of the same title to be delayed by three years in the United States.Ike & Tina Turner, “Proud Mary” (1971)“We never ever do nothin’ nice and easy. We always do it nice and rough.” Thus Tina introduces her biggest hit with Ike, a rollicking Creedence Clearwater Revival remake that went to No. 4. After a stripped-down, “nice and easy” run through the first couple of verses, the full band, with horns and Ikettes, joins in to take it energetically to the finish line.Ike & Tina Turner, “Nutbush City Limits” (1973)Tina, as the sole credited songwriter, tells her own story for once, detailing her upbringing in rural Tennessee, where “you go to the field on weekdays and have a picnic on Labor Day.” It’s played as acid funk, with period-appropriate electric keyboards and a Moog solo. But the song is still a reverie, never imagining a life beyond the small-town simplicities.“The Acid Queen” (1975)For the film version of the Who’s “Tommy,” Tina was cast as the Acid Queen, the “Gypsy” with a wild scream and quivering lips who uses sex and drugs to try to cure the boy. By this point, Tina was a world-famous sex symbol, and her name alone was shorthand for feminine power. It was also not long before she left Ike. But the world would not know her secret for years.“What’s Love Got to Do With It” (1984)By the 1980s, Tina was in her 40s and long past Ike, and her brand was survival. The songs on “Private Dancer,” her breakthrough solo album, were mostly written by men, but they perfectly fit the role of an independent woman who isn’t resigned to being alone. “What’s Love Got to Do With It” is the story of a woman with a broken heart who’s tempted but afraid to try again with love, “a secondhand emotion.”“Better Be Good to Me” (1984)A confident and defiant demand to a man, this was co-written by Holly Knight and was originally released by her band Spider. But it has been Tina’s song ever since, giving her a chance not only to declare “I don’t have no use for what you loosely call the truth,” but also to unleash her raspy roar with “should I?”“We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)” (1985)Tina donned a white mane and postapocalyptic tribal garb for “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome,” in which she starred alongside Mel Gibson. The theme song is squeaky-clean ’80s torch pop, though Tina keeps her costume on for the music video.“The Best” (1989)Originally recorded by Bonnie Tyler, “The Best” is a song of praise to a lover. But if you squint, or sing along as a fan, it could be a paean to Tina herself: “You’re simply the best, better than all the rest.” More

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      Rolf Harris, Disgraced British Entertainer, Dies at 93

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      His career as a musician and a painter over six decades ended abruptly when he was convicted of sexually abusing teenage girls.Rolf Harris, the Australian-born entertainer whose decades-long career on British television ended in disgrace after he was convicted of sexually abusing teenage girls, died on May 10 at his home in Berkshire, England. He was 93.His family announced the death in a statement released on Tuesday. The PA news agency reported that a death certificate gave the cause as neck cancer and “frailty of old age.”Mr. Harris’s career on British television spanned 60 years, but it collapsed in 2013 when he was arrested and charged with a total of 12 attacks on four young girls from 1968 to 1986. He was later sentenced to five years and nine months in prison. At the time of the offenses, the girls ranged in age from 8 to 19, although his conviction for the assault on the 8-year-old girl, an autograph hunter, was later overturned.One of Mr. Harris’s victims was a close friend of his own daughter, Bindi. He was convicted of abusing the girl over the course of six years, beginning when she was 13.“Your reputation lies in ruins, you have been stripped of your honors, but you have no one to blame but yourself,” Judge Nigel Sweeney told Mr. Harris at his sentencing in 2014.“You have shown no remorse for your crimes at all,” he added.Mr. Harris died without apologizing to his victims.The son of Welsh immigrants, Agnes Margaret and Cromwell Harris, Mr. Harris was born on March 30, 1930, in a suburb of Perth, Australia. He moved to Britain when he was 22 — with, he later said, “nothing but a load of self-confidence” — to study at the City and Guilds of London Art School. He made his first appearance on the BBC in 1953, drawing cartoons on a children’s television show.That kicked off a storied career that included everything from international hit songs to lighthearted television shows on which he would demonstrate his skills as a quick-fire painter (think Britain’s version of Bob Ross).“Can you tell what it is yet?” became his famous catchphrase as he brought the canvases to life. It also became the title of his autobiography, published in 2001.A 1964 album by Mr. Harris. He had several hit records in Britain and Australia, and his “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport” reached No. 3 in the United States.JP Roth CollectionOne of Britain’s best-known artists, Mr. Harris was even commissioned in 2005 to paint a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II for her 80th birthday — the whereabouts of which remains a great source of mystery. It was previously voted the British public’s second-favorite portrait of the queen, but it received a notably colder reception from critics.“I was as nervous as anything,” Mr. Harris told the British press in 2008, describing the two sittings he had with the monarch. “I was in a panic.”As a musician, he was known for his use of a colorful array of instruments, including the didgeridoo and the so-called wobble board — an instrument he invented. He featured it in his best-known song, “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport,” a novelty number about an Australian stockman’s dying wishes, which he wrote in 1957.His 1963 rerecording of the song, which reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, catapulted him to stardom in the United States. That same year, he recorded a version with the Beatles for a BBC radio show — the names of each band member playfully incorporated into the lyrics. (“Don’t ill-treat me pet dingo, Ringo.”)The song’s original fourth verse courted controversy because of its use of the word “Abo,” a derogatory slang term for Aboriginal Australians. The verse was included on Mr. Harris’s first recording of the song but omitted from later versions, and he later expressed regret about the lyrics.His career ultimately ended in disgrace a decade ago when he was one of several older media personalities arrested as part of Operation Yewtree, a British police investigation arising from the sexual abuse scandal involving the television presenter Jimmy Savile. Among the others convicted as part of the investigation were Britain’s best-known publicist, Max Clifford, and Stuart Hall, a former BBC broadcaster.After Mr. Harris was convicted in 2014, he was stripped of the honors he had been awarded throughout his career, and reruns of his television shows were taken off the air. He was released on parole in 2017 after serving three years in prison, after which he sank into a reclusive life at his family home in Bray, Berkshire, a quaint village west of London on the banks of the River Thames. Bray is said to have more millionaires than any small town in Britain.Mr. Harris’s survivors include his daughter, Bindi Harris, and his wife, Alwen Hughes. The two married in 1958 after meeting in art school, and she and his daughter stuck with him throughout his trial and prison term.After Mr. Harris’s sentencing in 2014, Judge Sweeney depicted him as an offender who had manipulated his fame.“You took advantage of the trust placed in you because of your celebrity status,” he said.Mr. Harris’s lawyer at the time, Sonia Woodley, pleaded with the judge to be lenient because of his age.“He is already on borrowed time,” she said. More

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      On TikTok, Pop Music Speeds Up

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicTikTok moves fast: the content stream is relentless and easy to scroll through, and music is often sped-up to accompany it. Listening to pop hits there can be disorienting — the music is familiar, but the pace can be unsettling. Seemingly endless remixes from the nightcore and plugg music scene help shape the sonic experience of the app.This movement is also creating a new class of hit. A sped-up version of Miguel’s “Sure Thing” became a staple on the app a couple of months ago, propelling the 12-year-old song to the Top 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and to the top of the Billboard pop airplay chart. The Arizonatears Pluggnb Remix of Lil Uzi Vert’s “Watch This” hit the Hot 100 in February. Almost every artist of note has had their music sped up by a relatively anonymous producer and fed into the app.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about how TikTok reframes listening habits, what fast music achieves that regular-speed music can’t, how musicians are grappling with this new kind of (sometimes unsolicited) attention and how labels are already capitalizing on the trend.Guest:Elias Leight, senior music reporter at BillboardConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      The Brilliance of Blur: Liste to t

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      The band is back, woo-hoo! Revisit 12 of its greatest songs.Graham Coxon and Damon Albarn, Blur’s two opposing forces, showcasing their late-90s haircuts.Chris Pizzello/Associated PressDear listeners,Last week, out of nowhere, the beloved Britpop band Blur announced a new album due July 21 — its first in eight years. Say it with me now: Woo-hoo!“The Ballad of Darren” — recorded in secret and wrapped earlier this year — will be the band’s ninth album, arriving nearly 35 years after Blur was formed. The group’s discography can seem imposing if you’re not familiar with all of its twists and turns, and don’t have anyone to guide you through it. Luckily, you do not have this problem, because Blur is one of my favorite bands.Blur’s career is all about the friction of opposing forces — and those are, for the most part, the band’s charismatic frontman Damon Albarn and its more introverted but equally brilliant guitarist Graham Coxon. The bassist Alex James and the drummer Dave Rowntree are stabilizers, grounding the band’s adventurous sound.In the liner notes to “21,” a 2012 boxed set compiling material from the group’s first seven albums, Rowntree gave what is still perhaps the most succinct summary of the band’s driving tension: “Graham used to say that he wanted to make an album that nobody would want to listen to. But you can’t do that in a band with Damon.” (If you want to read an extended cut of me geeking out on Blur, I wrote a zoomed-out summary of the band’s first two decades in a review of “21.”)A few notes on this playlist, compiled to celebrate Blur’s return. It’s not quite chronological, but it’s meant to show the breadth of the band’s sprawling career. Only two Blur albums are not represented here, and for different reasons: “Modern Life Is Rubbish,” the sophomore effort from 1993, because I find most songs from its follow-up, “Parklife,” to be better examples of what Blur was trying to do in that era; and “Think Tank” from 2003, for the semi-controversial reason that I don’t consider it a Blur album at all, given that almost all of it was recorded without Coxon and I believe the definition of Blur to be a specific alchemical happening between four particular people. (Albarn has even admitted as much in recent years, joking that, if anything, “Think Tank” was a “LUR” album.)Consider this playlist slightly beyond entry level: Blur 201, if you will. I avoided the most obvious songs, presuming that you’re already familiar with “Song 2” at the very least, and maybe also the band’s era-defining mid-90s hits “Girls and Boys” and “Parklife,” or its 1999 stadium-size weepie “Tender.” If you’re not, check those out when you get a moment. But for now, let’s follow the herd down to Greece and dive in.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. “Lot 105” (1994)To set the mood: a zany interstitial from the band’s 1994 masterpiece, “Parklife.” (Listen on YouTube)2. “There’s No Other Way” (1991)Blur began life as a prettily vacant Britpop group that was often lumped in with late-80s U.K. subgenres like Madchester and baggy; the best-case scenario, at that time, was it would become the next Stone Roses. I am happy the quartet grew out of this sound quickly, but there are several perfect pop songs on its 1991 debut album, “Leisure,” including the exquisitely bratty single “There’s No Other Way.” The video for this song is important for several reasons: 1) Damon Albarn’s haircut 2) The Lynchian aesthetic that foreshadows the way Blur would soon come to write songs about the dark underbelly of polite society and 3) Seriously, behold Damon’s 1991 bowl cut. (Listen on YouTube)3. “Country House” (1995)Perhaps best known for beating Oasis’ “Roll With It” in the epochal battle of Britpop on the U.K. charts, “Country House,” from the band’s fourth album, “The Great Escape,” is a wickedly catchy sendup of rich people who abandon the urban rat race for lush, secluded digs in the country — and specifically, of Blur’s former manager and label head David Balfe. It also boasts the only music video ever directed by the artist Damien Hirst, who went to Goldsmiths College with three-quarters of Blur. (Listen on YouTube)4. “M.O.R.” (1997)Blur’s 1997 album — yes, the one with “Song 2” — was the band’s most dramatic stylistic pivot: Here was what until then seemed like a quintessentially British band earnestly and somehow convincingly embracing American indie rock. The propulsive “M.O.R.,” though, is a bridge between Blur’s past and future. The chorus interpolates David Bowie’s arch, vampy “Boys Keep Swinging,” even as Coxon’s distorted, disaffected guitar squalls like J Mascis. (Listen on YouTube)5. “Coffee & TV” (1999)One of just a few Blur songs on which Coxon sings lead vocals, the fan-favorite single “Coffee & TV” is at once prickly and sweet, a steadily chugging tune suffused with an introvert’s romanticism. “Sociability is hard enough for me,” he and Albarn sing in wobbly falsetto. “Take me away from this big, bad world and agree to marry me.” I am not exaggerating when I say I still think about that little milk carton guy all the time. (Listen on YouTube)6. “Tracy Jacks” (1994)A sharp, poignant character study of a middle-aged civil servant on the verge of a nervous breakdown, “Tracy Jacks” is a perfect encapsulation of the band’s widening sociological scope circa “Parklife.” (Listen on YouTube)7. “Charmless Man” (1995)And, from around the same time, here’s a much more acidic snapshot of British life: “Educated the expensive way/He knows his claret from his Beaujolais/I think he’d like to have been Ronnie Kray/But then nature didn’t make him that way.” (Listen on YouTube)8. “Go Out” (2015)I love all the weird art-rock textures and sounds that protrude from this jaunty pop ditty from the band’s 2015 comeback album, “The Magic Whip” — a perfect match for Albarn’s caustic, deadpan vocal. (Listen on YouTube)9. “Beetlebum” (1997)In news that does not surprise me at all, Liam Gallagher has admitted that this is his favorite Blur song. War is over (if you want it). (Listen on YouTube)10. “No Distance Left to Run” (1999)Inarguably the saddest Blur song; no, I won’t be taking any questions at this time. If this gutting ballad — written around the time of Albarn’s breakup with the Elastica frontwoman Justine Frischmann — doesn’t destroy your heart, I don’t even know what to tell you. This is the sound of love dying, with a whimper: “I won’t kill myself trying to stay in your life/I’ve got no distance left to run.” (Listen on YouTube)11. “This Is a Low” (1994)Blur constantly wrestles with ambivalence about Anglophilia, but it can’t hide a certain affection toward its native country on this majestic “Parklife” highlight, which was partly inspired by the band’s habit of listening to BBC shipping forecasts while homesick on tour. (Listen on YouTube)12. “The Universal (Live at Hyde Park)” (2012)On Aug. 12, 2012, Blur played a triumphant reunion concert in London’s Hyde Park, following the Summer Olympics closing ceremony. The excellent and inevitably titled live album “Parklive” captures the ecstatic energy of that night — and especially the soaring singalong “The Universal,” which closed the show in grand style. (Listen on YouTube)Well, here’s your lucky day,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“The Brilliance of Blur” track listTrack 1: “Lot 105”Track 2: “There’s No Other Way”Track 3: “Country House”Track 4: “M.O.R.”Track 5: “Coffee & TV”Track 6: “Tracy Jacks”Track 7: “Charmless Man”Track 8: “Go Out”Track 9: “Beetlebum”Track 10: “No Distance Left to Run”Track 11: “This Is a Low”Track 12: “The Universal (Live at Hyde Park)”Bonus tracksMore exciting news: The New York Times has a new audio app! From time to time, I’ll be recording audio versions of The Amplifier on there, and you can also find Jon Caramanica’s Popcast and Jon Pareles recommending new music, plus a whole lot more Times music content. The app also features read-aloud stories and narrated articles from the worlds of politics, tech, health, food, sports, the entire archive of This American Life and much more. To start exploring, download the New York Times Audio app here. More

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      Linda Lewis, British Singer Whose Voice Knew Few Limits, Dies at 72

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      Inspired by Motown early in her career, she became an acclaimed singer-songwriter and backed the likes of David Bowie, Rod Stewart and Cat Stevens.Linda Lewis, a critically acclaimed soul singer and songwriter whose pyrotechnic voice propelled four Top 10 singles as a solo artist in her native Britain and led to work as a backup vocalist on acclaimed albums by stars like David Bowie, Cat Stevens and Rod Stewart, died on May 3 at her home in Waltham Abbey, outside London. She was 72.Her sister Dee Lewis Clay confirmed the death but did not specify a cause.Ms. Lewis drew raves for her soaring five-octave vocal range and impressed listeners with her genre-hopping instincts, drawing from folk, R&B, rock, reggae, pop and — with more than a nudge from label executives — disco.She grew up studying Motown hits note by note, and her first single, “You Turned My Bitter Into Sweet” (1967), was a joyous up-tempo number that sounded straight out of Berry Gordy’s recording studio on West Grand Boulevard in Detroit.After that she joined the Ferris Wheel, a rock and soul band that was popular on Britain’s club circuit, before moving on to a solo career as a guitar-strumming singer-songwriter and signing with Reprise Records in 1971.“That was a great time,” she said in a 2007 interview with Record Collector magazine. “I was living in a sort of commune, and loads of people were popping in and out. Cat Stevens turned up a lot, as did Marc Bolan and Elton John. There was a lot of jamming going on there, some very creative vibes.”She ended up touring the world with Mr. Stevens (who later took the name Yusuf after converting to Islam), as well as lending her voice to albums like David Bowie’s “Aladdin Sane” (1973) and Rod Stewart’s “Blondes Have More Fun” (1978).Ms. Lewis in concert in 1981. Her record company chose to package her as a disco diva in the late 1970s, but she saw herself differently.Keystone/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesHer first solo album, “Say No More,” released in 1971, failed to make a splash commercially. The next year she released “Lark,” an album marked by a California breeziness that received strong reviews and included the song “Old Smokey,” which the rapper Common sampled in his 2005 song “Go!” An American tour in 1973 helped create buzz.But still, she needed a hit.She found one that same year, with the buoyant, racy single “Rock a Doodle Doo,” which hit No. 15 in Britain (although it failed to chart in the United States). It showed off her range with vocals that swung from husky lows to shimmering highs, to the point that the song could be mistaken for a duet.In the mid-1970s, she signed with Arista Records, whose founder, Clive Davis, chose to package her as a disco diva like Gloria Gaynor. That decision paid dividends, at least commercially. Her 1975 single “It’s in His Kiss,” a Studio 54-ready spin on Betty Everett’s 1964 hit “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss),” reached No. 6 in Britain, although it, too, barely made a splash in the United States.But Ms. Lewis bristled at the forced career turn. “I didn’t really stick to my guns, I’m afraid,” she later said. “I saw myself as a singer-songwriter; they didn’t.”Even so, the album with the single, “Not a Little Girl Anymore,” hit No. 40 in Britain, with Rolling Stone noting that it brought “this multi-styled English artist into the mainstream of contemporary R&B.”By the 2000s, her music had crossed over to a new generation, as she sang on albums by Oasis, Basement Jaxx and Jamiroquai.Ms. Lewis at a festival in Chichester, England, in 2010. By the 2000s, her music had crossed over to a new generation.Chris Jackson/Getty ImagesLinda Ann Fredericks was born on Sept. 27, 1950, in Custom House, an area in the docklands of East London. She was one of six children of Eddie Fredericks, a musician, and Lily Fredericks, who worked as a bus conductor and managed pubs. (It is unclear why the singer chose Lewis as her stage surname.)Her mother had great ambitions for her as a performer and enrolled her in stage school, an experience on which Ms. Lewis did not look back fondly.Her compass was set toward music. She got her first taste of the limelight in her early teens, when her mother took her to see John Lee Hooker perform at a club and pushed her to the stage to belt out, with the blues titan’s permission, a rendition of Martha and the Vandellas’ “Dancing in the Street.”In addition to Ms. Lewis Clay, she is survived by two other sisters, Shirley Lewis and Patsy Wildman; her brothers, Keith and Paul Fredericks; and her son, Jesse. Her three marriages ended in divorce.While Ms. Lewis angled to escape stage school at the earliest possible opportunity, her flirtation with acting was not a complete waste. She made a brief appearance in the Tony Richardson film “A Taste of Honey” (1961). She also popped up as a screaming fan in the Beatles movie “A Hard Day’s Night” (1964).She was not the only future musical notable in the crowd of hysterical Beatlemaniacs. Phil Collins, in his schoolboy jacket and tie, was also on set as an extra. “Many years later, I bumped into him and said, ‘Hey, we made a film together,’” Ms. Lewis told Record Collector. “He gave me a very funny look. I think he thought I was a nutter.” More