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    ‘Once Upon a One More Time,’ the Britney Spears Musical, Is Closing

    The show, which was capitalized for $20 million, will end its Broadway run on Sept. 3 after 123 performances. Its producers say they are planning a national tour.“Once Upon a One More Time,” a pop musical using the songs of Britney Spears, will close on Broadway on Sept. 3 after opening to mixed reviews and failing to find an audience.The musical was a costly misfire, capitalized for $20 million at a time when many Broadway shows have been struggling with rising costs and diminished attendance after a pandemic shutdown that made an always challenging industry even more difficult.“Once Upon a One More Time” is about a group of fairy tale heroines whose outlook on their familiar stories is shaken when the book club to which they belong encounters a feminist classic, “The Feminine Mystique” by Betty Friedan.The musical features some of Spears’s biggest hits, including “Baby One More Time,” “Toxic” and “Circus.” The songs have several writers but were originally performed and recorded by Spears; the musical’s book is by Jon Hartmere and it was directed and choreographed by Keone and Mari Madrid.The musical was first announced in 2019, with plans for an initial production in Chicago, but that production was delayed until the following spring and then canceled by the pandemic. Ultimately, the show started its first run in late 2021 at the Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington, D.C., where reviews were weak but sales were strong.Spears’s relationship to the show was never clear. The show repeatedly described itself as “fully authorized and licensed post-conservatorship by Britney Spears,” and she wished the cast and crew well on Instagram in June, writing, “I’ve seen the show and it is so funny, smart and brilliant 🤩 !!!”But Spears did not attend a public performance, and her fan base never fully mobilized to see the production. The show’s grosses were soft from the get-go, peaking at $701,425 during the week of its opening, which is not nearly enough to sustain a musical of this scale. During the week that ended Aug. 13, the show played to houses that were only 47 percent full, and grossed just $512,008.The show began previews on May 13 and opened on June 22 at the Marquis Theater. At the time of its closing it will have played 123 performances.The lead producers are James L. Nederlander and Hunter Arnold; they said in a statement on Monday that they were planning a national tour as well as “multiple international productions.”The closing announcement comes at a difficult time for Spears. Last week her husband, Sam Asghari, filed for divorce just over a year after they got married. More

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    Sexual Abuse Suits Against Michael Jackson’s Companies Are Revived

    An appeals court in California determined that lawsuits by two men who say Jackson molested them as children can proceed.Two men who have accused Michael Jackson of sexually abusing them as children are able to resume their lawsuits against companies owned by the singer, who died in 2009, a California appeals court ruled on Friday.The men, Wade Robson, 40, and James Safechuck, 45, have alleged that Mr. Jackson sexually abused them for years and that employees of the two companies — MJJ Productions Inc. and MJJ Ventures Inc. — were complicit, acting as his “co-conspirators, collaborators, facilitators and alter egos” for the abuse. The suits say that employees of the companies owed a “duty of care” to the boys and failed to take steps to prevent abuse.Mr. Robson’s and Mr. Safechuck’s stories were featured in the 2019 HBO documentary “Leaving Neverland,” in which the men accused Mr. Jackson of molesting them and cultivating relationships with their families to access the boys’ bodies.“Everybody wanted to meet Michael or be with Michael,” Mr. Safechuck said in the film. “He was already larger than life. And then he likes you.”The two companies are now owned by Mr. Jackson’s estate, which has repeatedly denied that he abused the boys.“We remain fully confident that Michael is innocent of these allegations, which are contrary to all credible evidence and independent corroboration, and which were only first made years after Michael’s death by men motivated solely by money,” Jonathan Steinsapir, a lawyer for Mr. Jackson’s estate, said in a statement after the decision.Vince Finaldi, a lawyer for Mr. Safechuck and Mr. Robson, said in a statement that the court had overturned “incorrect rulings in these cases, which were against California law and would have set a dangerous precedent that endangered children.”Mr. Robson and Mr. Safechuck filed their suits against the companies in 2013 and 2014, respectively, but both cases were dismissed in 2017 because they exceeded California’s statute of limitations. They were reopened in 2020 after a new state law provided plaintiffs in child sex abuse cases an additional period to file lawsuits.In October 2020 and April 2021, the suits were again dismissed when a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled that the two corporations and their employees were not legally obligated to protect the men from Mr. Jackson.But on Friday, California’s Second District Court of Appeal ruled that “a corporation that facilitates the sexual abuse of children by one of its employees is not excused from an affirmative duty to protect those children merely because it is solely owned by the perpetrator of the abuse.”In a concurring opinion, Justice John Shepard Wiley Jr. said that for the purposes of civil liability, the corporations did the sole bidding of Mr. Jackson, who had a duty of care to Mr. Robson and Mr. Safechuck.“So did Jackson’s marionettes, because Jackson’s fingers held every string,” he said, adding, “These corporations could have taken cost-effective steps to reduce the risk of harm.”The cases, which were consolidated in the appeals court, will now go back to a trial court.In his lawsuit, Mr. Robson, who is now a choreographer and director, says that Mr. Jackson molested him from age 7 to 14. After meeting Mr. Jackson through a dance competition when he was 5, Mr. Robson performed in his music videos and released an album on his record label.According to his suit, the abuse started in 1990 when Mr. Jackson invited Mr. Robson and his family to stay at his Neverland Ranch in California. Mr. Robson and Mr. Jackson slept in the same bed and touched each other’s genitals, according to the suit. Over the next seven years, the suit said, they engaged in sexual acts including masturbation and oral sex.The suit says that employees of MJJ Productions witnessed the abuse and that employees of the two companies took steps to ensure that Mr. Jackson was alone with Mr. Robson and other children.Mr. Safechuck’s lawsuit says he was one of several children entrapped by the companies’ “child sexual abuse procurement and facilitation organization.” According to his suit, Mr. Safechuck met Mr. Jackson during filming for a Pepsi commercial in late 1986 or early 1987 and later became a dancer for Mr. Jackson.Mr. Jackson showed the 10-year-old boy how to masturbate while on tour in 1988, the suit alleges, and abused Mr. Safechuck hundreds of times over the next four years. The employees of MJJ Productions and MJJ Ventures coordinated the visits, according to the suit.Before these lawsuits, Mr. Jackson twice faced criminal investigations into the possible sexual abuse of children.In 1994, the district attorneys for Los Angeles and Santa Barbara Counties decided not to proceed with charges that Mr. Jackson had molested three boys because the “primary alleged victim” decided not to testify. Mr. Jackson, who denied any wrongdoing, had reached a $20 million civil settlement with the boy’s family.In 2003, a Santa Barbara County district attorney charged Mr. Jackson with several counts of child molesting and serving alcohol to minors. After a 14-week trial in 2005, he was acquitted by a jury. More

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    Dolly Parton Reunites Two Beatles, and 12 More New Songs

    Hear tracks by aespa, Guns N’ Roses, Cautious Clay and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage, and The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Dolly Parton featuring Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, ‘Let It Be’Leave it to Dolly Parton to reunite the Beatles — or at least the surviving members, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr — for a rousing rendition of “Let It Be,” which will appear on her star-studded November album “Rockstar.” Accompanied by Peter Frampton on guitar and Mick Fleetwood on drums, Parton dives headfirst into the song’s reverent spiritualism, as she did on her great 2001 cover of Collective Soul’s “Shine.” Her “Let It Be” hews closer to the original arrangement, as McCartney leads the way with his memorable piano progression and Frampton lets a mid-song solo rip. Were it done with anything less than absolute conviction, the whole thing would feel like a superfluous rock star indulgence. But the earnest, serene warmth of Parton’s voice makes it work, as she enlivens one of the most familiar songs in rock history with her own particular glow. LINDSAY ZOLADZJoni Mitchell, ‘Help Me (Demo)’“Help Me” from the sleek 1974 Los Angeles pop album “Court and Spark” was Joni Mitchell’s commercial pop pinnacle — not that making hit records was ever her priority. Now, a demo from her new collection, “Archives, Vol. 3: The Asylum Years (1972-1975)” proves that the song’s wildly leaping, sliding, syncopated melody and insistent emotional argument were already clear even when her only accompaniment was her guitar. A few lyric changes, a studio band and a horn arrangement were only embellishments. JON PARELESGuns N’ Roses, ‘Perhaps’Now that Slash and Duff McKagan have rejoined Guns N’ Roses (who are currently on a North American stadium tour), fans are hoping that a new album will arrive faster than “Chinese Democracy” did. At the very least, they have a new single: the mid-tempo, piano-driven rocker “Perhaps.” “Perhaps I was wrong,” Axl Rose growls with uncharacteristic contrition, later adding, “My sense of rejection is no excuse for my behavior.” Is it about the band members themselves mending fences? Perhaps. But the song transcends such earthbound concerns as lyrical content once it finds its footing and crescendos into the stratosphere with a vintage Slash solo. ZOLADZKyle Gordon featuring DJ Crazy Times and Ms. Biljana Electronica, ‘Planet of the Bass’Big beats and fractured English helped 1990s Eurodance songs scale the charts. A savvy parody, “Planet of the Bass,” by the comedian Kyle Gordon (a.k.a. DJ Crazy Times) with many collaborators, is now a full-length song after conquering TikTok. Who could argue with — or even rationally process — thoughts like, “When the rhythm is glad/there is nothing to be sad” or “Women are my favorite guy”? It’s all about momentum, so put on those sunglasses and pump up the synthesizers. Is every hit now just a joke on mass culture nostalgia? PARELESaespa, ‘Better Things’The K-pop group aespa has an elaborate marketing mythos involving A.I. avatars in the metaverse — none of which matters to the computer-tooled, syncopated pleasures of “Better Things.” It’s a kiss-off that demotes an ex back to being a “No. 1 fan/now you can only see me at a sold-out show.” The track runs on two chords, brisk Caribbean-tinged percussion and ever-changing top-line strategies: cooing melodies, stacked-up harmonies, a smidgen of rap, a little a cappella, all pushing forward. PARELESKarol G, ‘Mi Ex Tenía Razón’The Colombian songwriter Karol G released “Mañana Será Bonito” (“Tomorrow Will Be Pretty”), an album filled with songs about breaking up and healing, in February. Her follow-up is a sassier 10-song mixtape, “Mañana Será Bonito (Bichota Season),” that includes “Mi Ex Tenía Razón”: “My Ex Was Right.” Not exactly. She sings that he was right that she’d never find someone like him — instead, she found somebody better. She delivers her taunt sweetly, in a breezy, unhurried cumbia; clearly, she has moved on. PARELESCherry Glazerr, ‘Ready for You’In “Ready for You,” a desperate introvert testifies to how her shyness and xenophobia battle her longing for company. “Wish I could meet you with my eyes/I’m sick inside my twisted mind,” Clementine Creevy sings, in a track that uses the distorted guitars and soft-loud dynamics of grunge to capture the stress of a simple encounter. PARELESGuillermo Klein Quinteto, ‘Criolla’The Argentine-born, New York-based composer and pianist Guillermo Klein is best known for the rhythmically propulsive, richly woven compositions that he writes for Los Guachos, his 11-piece big band. On his newest album, “Telmo’s Tune,” Klein applies his tool kit to a series of compositions for a smaller band, working with just the saxophonist Chris Cheek, the bassist Matt Pavolka, the drummer Alan Mednard and the pianist Leo Genovese, who doubles with Klein on keyboards. Cheek’s soprano sax soars on the opening track, “Criolla,” as the rest of the band plays around with a polyrhythmic foundation that’s never more dicey than it is satisfying. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOQuavo, ‘Hold Me’“Hold Me” is a plea for comfort that’s rapped and sung by Quavo from Migos, whose nephew and Migos member, Takeoff, was shot dead in 2022. With phantom voices harmonizing over minor chords, it calls for divine and earthly solace, never sure if they will materialize. PARELESCautious Clay, ‘Moments Stolen’On “Karpeh,” the Blue Note Records debut of Cautious Clay, the Cleveland-born singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist uses a jazz musician’s tools in service of self-interrogating pop balladry, singing restless songs of half-exposed emotions and frustrated romance that land somewhere in the vicinity of Steve Lacy’s recent work. On “Moments Stolen” (its title a winking jazz reference), Cautious Clay — nee Joshua Karpeh — admits that he has lost faith in a relationship that he might not have ever wanted to work out in the first place. RUSSONELLOK.D. Lang, ‘Because of You’In a Guardian article published on Thursday, K.D. Lang celebrates Tony Bennett, her friend and collaborator, who died last month at 96. “He loved to sing for everybody,” Lang said, marveling at his well-documented blend of character, humility and devotion to the democratic power of song. Bennett and Lang recorded and performed together at various times over the past three decades, starting after she had recently come out as queer, and she remembered feeling “aware that our duet was radical.” This week she released a new version of “Because of You,” the ballad that gave Bennett his first No. 1 hit in 1951, which they reprised on his Grammy-winning 2006 album, “Duets: An American Classic.” Lang sings here with the casual, unrefined grace that she and Bennett have in common, over pillowy piano chords and an upright bass. Proceeds will go toward Exploring the Arts, the nonprofit that Bennett founded with his wife, Susan Benedetto. RUSSONELLOSufjan Stevens, ‘So You Are Tired’Sufjan Stevens returns to his folky side in “So You Are Tired,” a gentle, doleful, quietly resentful parting song from an album due this fall. “I was the man still in love with you/when I already knew it was done,” he sings, in a waltz carried by rippling, fragmented patterns of piano and guitar, joined by voices harmonizing oohs and ahs, seeking serenity after the bitterness. PARELESEmber, ‘Snake Tune’A feeling of momentum develops gradually and a bit unstably on “Snake Tune,” which slowly coalesces around the pulpy, thrummed harmonies of Noah Garabedian’s bass and the lazy precision of Vinnie Sperrazza’s cymbal strokes. Caleb Wheeler Curtis alternates between alto saxophone and trumpet, sounding neither in a hurry nor willing to be held back in any way. The track comes from “August in March,” the newest album from the improvising trio known as Ember. RUSSONELLO More

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    Get Close: 10 Gems From the Pretenders

    With a new album due in September, Chrissie Hynde’s band played a tiny club show in New York that inspired a spin through its catalog.From left: Martin Chambers and Chrissie Hynde onstage in 1980.Graham Wiltshire/Redferns, via Getty ImagesDear listeners,On Wednesday night, I was one of approximately 600 sardines crammed into Manhattan’s Bowery Ballroom for a very special concert. We were packed so tightly, I couldn’t move an inch; even clapping felt like a precarious use of my elbows. Did I mention it is August, in New York, and the humidity has been hovering around 75 percent for days? If this show were mediocre, or even just good, I might have lasted half the set at best. But there was no way I was leaving. Because we were there, in an impossibly small club, seeing the rock legends the Pretenders.The night before, Chrissie Hynde and company had played for a crowd roughly 100 times larger, opening for Guns N’ Roses at MetLife Stadium. But on this tour — the band’s first since it had to cancel its 2020 shows because of, well, 2020 — the Pretenders are doing something unexpected and fun: In between those huge stadium gigs, they’re playing smaller capacity venues like the Atlantis in Washington, D.C. and the iconic Stone Pony in Asbury Park, N.J.At MetLife, they played the hits: “Brass in Pocket,” “Back on the Chain Gang,” “I’ll Stand by You.” The set list at the Bowery leaned more heavily on deep cuts and fan favorites. I knew and loved some of these already, but I confess my knowledge of the Pretenders’ catalog skews more toward the mainstream, so the Bowery show also opened my ears to a few great tunes with which I was unfamiliar — and which, of course, I want to share with you in today’s playlist, which is culled entirely from Wednesday night’s set.At 71, Hynde still carries herself like one of the coolest and most badass people on the planet. She commanded the stage with her skunked-out black eye makeup, spitfire attitude and impressively strong pipes; as ever, she sings in a singular, sneering enunciation that’s neither American nor British, but more as if the birth country listed on her passport was just “rock ’n’ roll.” (She still loves repping her home state, Ohio, though, as this playlist will show.)Though Hynde is the only original member touring with this iteration of the Pretenders (Martin Chambers, the group’s original, on-again-off-again drummer, sent his regards, Hynde told the crowd), the band absolutely smokes. The standout is the lead guitarist James Walbourne, who has the skills and the hairdo of a rockabilly virtuoso. He’s toured with the band since 2008 and has co-written two Pretenders albums with Hynde: the 2020 LP “Hate for Sale” and the band’s forthcoming 12th album “Relentless,” which will be out Sept. 15.“To live forever, that’s the plan, the longest living mortal man,” Hynde sings on “Let the Sun Come In,” an anthemic single from “Relentless.” It’s tongue-in-cheek, but also haunting given the band’s history with untimely death: Two original members, the guitarist James Honeyman-Scott and the bassist Pete Farndon, died of drug-related causes shortly after the band’s second album was released.Hynde has seen firsthand how fleeting rock stardom — even life itself — can be, and she’s let her survivor’s grit guide her now for more than four decades. The Bowery show was a reminder that she’s a living legend, not to be taken for granted — a woman in a man’s world who refused to sand down her rough edges or follow someone else’s playbook to artistic fulfillment. “We don’t have to fade to black,” she sang on Wednesday night, still tough as nails. “Let the sun come in.”Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. “Turf Accountant Daddy”This pummeling, bluesy rock number about a no-good bookie comes from the 2020 album “Hate for Sale.” In classic Pretenders fashion, it features a finger-wagging vocal, blustery distortion and a reference to a city in Ohio: “She’ll never know in Cincinnati/He’s never gonna show, the turf accountant daddy.” (Listen on YouTube)2. “Downtown (Akron)”Speaking of Ohio: Here’s a propulsive ode to Hynde’s hometown, from the 1990 album “Packed!” C’mon! (Listen on YouTube)3. “Time the Avenger”Hynde can really cut a self-important man down to size with her observant lyricism and eye-rolling delivery. She chides an unfaithful businessman in this jittery tune from the Pretenders’ classic 1984 album “Learning to Crawl,” but she conveys some empathy for his futile attempts to outrun the nagging metronome of mortality: “Time to kill another bottle of wine, to help paralyze that little tick, tick, tick, tick.” (Listen on YouTube)4. “Boots of Chinese Plastic (Live)”This galloping rocker kicks off the Pretenders’ 2008 album “Break Up the Concrete,” though this version, from the 2010 release “Live in London,” best captures the kinetic energy of the band’s Bowery show. (Listen on YouTube)5. “Thumbelina”I love this lyric, which comes toward the end of this road-weary, rockabilly-influenced tune from 1984: “It must seem strange, love was here then gone/And the Oklahoma sunrise becomes the Amarillo dawn.” (Listen on YouTube)6. “Tequila”A short version of this cry-in-your-shot-glass ballad appeared on the 1994 album “Last of the Independents,” but at the Bowery, Hynde and her band played the full song, which has been released on various bonus collections and deluxe editions over the years. “I drink tequila,” she sings in the song’s opening moments, “’cause I can’t have your lips tonight.” (Listen on YouTube)7. “Gotta Wait”A dark, antsy energy propels this blown-out track off “Alone,” the 2016 album that Hynde recorded with a cast of session musicians and the producer Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys (another Akron band). Time, once again, is the avenger here: “You gotta wait, wait, hold the date and hesitate — wait.” (Listen on YouTube)8. “You Can’t Hurt a Fool”Performing this soulful ballad from “Hate for Sale,” Hynde delivered perhaps her most impassioned vocal of the night, briefly casting aside the armor of her guitar and getting vulnerable. “You can’t hurt a fool,” she crooned sorrowfully. “Don’t even try.” (Listen on YouTube)9. “Let the Sun Come In”This guitar-driven tune — one of several “Relentless” tracks the band played at the Bowery — plays out like an elegy to lost band members and a galvanic call to keep writing, touring and rocking out: “With a soul that can’t be perished,” Hynde sings, “with a song that’s always cherished.” (Listen on YouTube)10. “Precious”Poetically barbed and spikily self-assured, “Precious” kicks off the Pretenders’ indelible self-titled 1979 debut and introduces Hynde as a transfixing, take-no-prisoners talent. Honeyman-Scott’s guitar crouches in wait and pounces into action at the perfect moment, while the tight rhythm section keeps the tempo at an aggressive strut. “Not me, baby, I’m too precious,” Hynde sneers at the song’s thrilling climax, before hocking one of rock history’s most well-earned expletives like an expertly aimed spitball. (Listen on YouTube)You shouldn’t let your manners slip,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Get Close: 10 Gems From the Pretenders” track listTrack 1: “Turf Accountant Daddy”Track 2: “Downtown (Akron)”Track 3: “Time the Avenger”Track 4: “Boots of Chinese Plastic (Live)”Track 5: “Thumbelina”Track 6: “Tequila”Track 7: “Gotta Wait”Track 8: “You Can’t Hurt a Fool”Track 9: “Let the Sun Come In”Track 10: “Precious”Bonus tracksIn today’s new music Playlist, there’s a just-released song from the Pretenders’ tour mates Guns N’ Roses, plus a previously unreleased Joni Mitchell demo, Dolly Parton’s Beatles reunion and much more. Listen here. More

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    Jerry Moss, the ‘M’ of A&M Records, Is Dead at 88

    In partnership with Herb Alpert, he turned a small independent label into a powerhouse with a roster full of superstars.Jerry Moss, who with the trumpeter Herb Alpert founded A&M Records, which at its peak from the 1960s to the ’80s was an independent powerhouse behind hits by the Carpenters, the Police, Janet Jackson, Peter Frampton and Mr. Alpert’s group, the Tijuana Brass, among many others, has died at his home in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles. He was 88.His family announced the death in a statement on Wednesday.Over their more than 30 years with A&M, Mr. Moss and Mr. Alpert developed an eclectic roster — Cat Stevens, Carole King, Supertramp and the grunge band Soundgarden all released music there — and established the label’s reputation for being supportive of artists and treating them fairly.Sting, who signed to A&M with the Police in 1978 and has remained associated with the label throughout his career, said in an interview on Thursday that those values radiated directly from Mr. Moss and Mr. Alpert.“They were gentlemen,” he said. “I think their extraordinary success was really predicated on those very human qualities — not being ruthless businessmen or kill-or-be-killed people. They were artist friendly.”Built from humble beginnings in Mr. Alpert’s garage, A&M — its name was taken from the initials of its founders’ last names — became a major force in pop music and eventually earned its founders a huge payday. In 1989, they sold A&M’s recorded music business to PolyGram for a reported $500 million (about $1.2 billion in today’s money), though Mr. Moss and Mr. Alpert continued to manage the label until 1993. In 2000, they sold Rondor, their music publishing catalog, to Universal Music for an estimated $400 million.Mr. Alpert set the tone for how the label interacted with musicians after what he said in an interview on Thursday were his own unhappy experiences, early in his career, with big labels that had treated him “like a number.” That approach also gave some negotiating leverage to A&M, which in its early days lacked the financial resources of its corporate competitors in pursuing new acts.Mr. Moss, who began his career promoting pop and doo-wop records to radio stations, ran the business side of A&M with its longtime president, Gil Friesen, who died in 2012. But he also insisted on fair dealings with artists.“You can’t force people to do a certain kind of music,” Mr. Moss said in an interview with The New York Times in 2010. “They make their best music when they are doing what they want to do, not what we want them to do.”Early on, A&M signed the country singer Waylon Jennings, who cut a handful of singles but disagreed about his career trajectory with Mr. Alpert, who favored pop material. When Mr. Jennings got an offer from RCA Victor’s Nashville office, A&M agreed to release him from his deal.“I looked at Jerry and said, ‘This guy is going to be a big artist.’ He said, ‘I know,’” Mr. Alpert recalled. “At that point I realized we could be a big success with that attitude. We let Waylon out of the contract. He went on to a great career, and we remained friends with him.”Mr. Moss with one of A&M’s most successful artists, Janet Jackson, with platinum albums for her 1986 album, “Control.” The label’s eclectic roster also included (among many other artists) the Police, Peter Frampton and the Carpenters.Lester Cohen/Getty ImagesJerome Sheldon Moss was born in the Bronx on May 8, 1935, to Irving and Rose Moss. His father was a department store salesman, his mother a homemaker.Mr. Moss graduated from Brooklyn College in 1957. While waiting tables at a resort, he met Marvin Cane, one of the founders of Coed Records, who offered him a job pitching records to radio stations for $75 a week. His first big success was the doo-wop ballad “16 Candles” by the Crests, which reached No. 2 on the Billboard pop singles chart in late 1958.Mr. Moss moved to Los Angeles intending to enter the television business, but instead he soon set himself up again as a radio promoter. It was there that he met Mr. Alpert, who had worked as a songwriter and was attempting to establish himself as a vocalist under the name Dore Alpert.In 1962, the two young men went into business together, investing $100 apiece. They released “Tell It to the Birds,” a single credited to Dore Alpert, on a label they called Carnival.After learning that another record company was already using that name, they settled on A&M for their next release: “The Lonely Bull,” a trumpet-led instrumental with atmospheric sounds recorded at a bullfighting ring in Mexico. They borrowed $35,000 to press the single, which went to No. 6 and immediately put A&M on the map.By 1966, A&M was as successful as any label in pop music. That year, Mr. Alpert and the Tijuana Brass outsold the Beatles and had four albums in the top 10 at the same time. The group dominated the easy-listening market of the era with hits like “A Taste of Honey” and “Spanish Flea”; Mr. Alpert himself had a No. 1 vocal hit in 1968 with “This Guy’s in Love With You.” A&M also signed the Brazilian pianist and bandleader Sérgio Mendes and his band Brasil ’66, which toured with Mr. Alpert.In 1966 the label moved into Charlie Chaplin’s former film studio lot in Hollywood. A&M later signed another huge soft-pop act, the Carpenters, and, through deals with other labels, put out records by Cat Stevens (who now goes by the name Yusuf Islam) and Carole King, including her blockbuster 1971 LP, “Tapestry.”In 1976, A&M released Mr. Frampton’s double live album “Frampton Comes Alive!,” which became one of the defining rock hits of the decade, eventually going eight times platinum. In the 1980s, A&M signed Ms. Jackson, whose album “Control” (1986) went to No. 1 and established her as a major talent.After selling A&M, Mr. Moss and Mr. Alpert briefly ran another label, Almo Sounds, whose artists included Gillian Welch and Garbage. The founders were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as nonperformers in 2006.Mr. Moss’s survivors include his wife, Tina Moss; two sons, Ron and Harrison; two daughters, Jennifer and Daniela; and five grandchildren.Mr. Moss at a Songwriters Hall of Fame event in New York in 2012.Theo Wargo/Getty Images North AmericaIn his later years, Mr. Moss had notable success owning racehorses. One, Giacomo — named after one of Sting’s sons — won the Kentucky Derby in 2005, at extraordinary odds. Another racehorse, Zenyatta, was named after one of the Police’s albums, “Zenyatta Mondatta” (1980).Mr. Moss was active in local philanthropy. In 2020, he and his wife donated $25 million to the Music Center, a performing arts complex in downtown Los Angeles that includes the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Ahmanson Theater, Walt Disney Concert Hall and other spaces.But Mr. Moss said that he was at his happiest making records with Mr. Alpert.“It is the best feeling in the world,” he told The Times. “I’d turn to Herbie and say, man, what in the world did we do to deserve this?” More

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    Lily Allen’s Second Act

    Lily Allen didn’t know why she agreed to be interviewed for this article.On a recent morning, sitting outside a London cafe, the British singer said she had paused earlier for a moment of reflection. “I was like, ‘Why am I doing this?’” she said. “I sort of wonder why I put myself in these situations, and open myself up to criticism.”Allen, 38, hypothesized that the answer might be narcissism, or her resignation to the requirements of being in the public eye. “It’s been my life since I was like 18 years old,” she said.Since Allen burst onto the pop music scene in the mid-00s with lilting reggae-infused tracks like “Smile,” her relationship with the press has been fraught. She has always been outspoken — in her lyrics, in interviews and on social media — and for many years, she was a fixture in Britain’s tabloid newspapers. In 2009, she obtained a court order to stop paparazzi following her around London.“It’s not a very nice feeling,” she said of that kind of attention. “Especially when you’re in your early 20s, and you’re still trying to figure out who you are in the world.”Now, Allen lives in New York, where she largely goes unrecognized. She was back in London because she has also left music behind — at least for now — and turned her attention to acting, instead.Allen is currently playing a lead role in a West End revival of “The Pillowman,” the 2003 play by the “Banshees of Inisherin” writer and director Martin McDonagh, which runs at The Duke of York’s Theater through Sept. 2.“I still get to play with the human experience,” she said of this career transition, “but I don’t have to put my heart on my sleeve as much” as in her — often very personal — songs.Paul Kaye and Lily Allen in “The Pillowman,” at Duke of York’s Theater in London.Johan PerssonAllen’s mother is a film producer and her father an actor, but as a teenager she was drawn to music. When she was 19, in 2005, she signed to the Regal/Parlaphone label and built a following on the then-nascent social media site MySpace. According to Michael Cragg, who recently wrote a book on British pop music, the music scene at the time “was kind of mired in ‘The X Factor’ and TV talent shows.” The consensus, he added, “was that pop needed a bit of a kick up the bum.”Clad in prom-style dresses, chunky gold jewelry and sneakers, Allen was a new kind of British pop star. With a London accent, she sang her own funny and provocative lyrics about messy relationships, sex and self-loathing. “A young woman singing and presenting themselves in that way felt very exciting,” Cragg said.Her first two albums — “Alright, Still” and “It’s Not Me, It’s You” — were commercial and critical successes, but the making and marketing of a third, “Sheezus,” in 2014, was more fraught: In interviews, she has described having an “identity crisis” at the time, as she tried to be both a pop star and a new mom.In 2018, Allen’s next release, “No Shame” — a low-key record that addressed her divorce and feelings of isolation — was nominated for the Mercury Prize, but Allen has since become disillusioned with the music industry, she said. “It’s so competitive, it’s so rooted in money and success and digital figures,” she added. “I’m just not interested in doing any of that.”Allen performing in London in 2007. Her prom-style dresses and strong London accent made her stand out among the pop stars at the time.Suzan Moore/Press Association, via ReutersAt around the same time, she also changed her relationship to alcohol and drugs. “From 18 to about four or five years ago just feels like a bit of a haze, because I was literally just off my face the whole time,” Allen said. “I was using fame as well — that was an addiction in itself: the attention and the paparazzi and the chaos.”Allen’s “four year sober birthday” fell on the date of this interview, she said, and it seemed that chaos had abated. Three years ago, she married the “Stranger Things” actor David Harbour, 48. Her life in New York with him and her two daughters from her previous marriage was “pretty leisurely,” she said.So when she was approached about an acting role in the West End show “2:22 A Ghost Story,” she “was like, ‘No, I don’t act and I live in New York, so no thanks,’” she said. But Harbour convinced her to take the gig, and it earned her a nomination in the Olivier Awards, Britain’s equivalent to the Tony’s.In “The Pillowman,” Allen plays Katurian, a writer living in a totalitarian state, who is questioned about a string of child murders that remind the authorities of her fictional stories. Like much of McDonagh’s work, it’s as dark as it is comic.Allen said she saw a through line between McDonagh’s “dark and sick humor” and the lyrics of the songs she used to write. In rehearsals, she added, “I would say things that people might ordinarily be shocked by, and you look at Martin, and he’d be smiling.”“I still get to play with the human experience,” Allen said of her career transition to acting, “but I don’t have to put my heart on my sleeve as much.”Ellie Smith for The New York TimesAllen’s turn as Katurian is the first time the role has been played by a woman, and her casting gives Katurian’s interrogation scenes, in which she is verbally and physically abused by two detectives, a different weight.“The play really is about patriarchal brutality,” said Matthew Dunster, the production’s director. “I said to Martin, ‘This is going to be really difficult for audiences to take, this slight woman being treated to brutally so early on in the piece,’ and Martin said, ‘Isn’t that the point?’”Dunster also directed Allen in “2:22 A Ghost Story,” and he said he had seen her grow as an actor. “What was thrilling to me was to see her taking ownership of her own process,” he said.When “The Pillowman” ends, Allen intends to return to New York. Her priority would be settling her two daughters into middle school, she said, but she had also applied for acting courses.One day, she said, she hoped to land lead roles in films and television. But, for now, she added, she was leaving herself open “to any opportunities that come my way.” More

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    Sean Paul Is Still Busy

    The song is a giddy exaltation of oscillating hips in full swing, of beautiful backsides and the beautiful forms they belong to as they get jiggy, get crunked up, percolate. It is a knight’s declaration of courtly love to his five fair ladies: Jodi, Rebecca, Annabella, the Misses Donna and Cana. It is a lover’s sincere exhortation to his beloveds to shake that thing, made with a sly exuberance that is both worshipful and raunchy.This is the seminal dancehall classic “Get Busy,” a 21-year-old party anthem that has been the source of dance-floor awakenings for generations of horny teenagers and young adults. And the knight paying homage to the things he is so respectfully asking the ladies to shake is Sean Paul, arguably Jamaica’s most famous musical export to the United States since Bob Marley. Two decades ago, after dethroning 50 Cent’s “In Da Club” from its No. 1 spot on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, “Get Busy” did for Sean Paul what “Taxi Driver” did for Paul Schrader and “Liebesträume No. 3” did for Franz Liszt. This was the work that made an instant legend of its creator, who until then had been only a moderately successful purveyor of dancehall, Jamaica’s musical successor to reggae.Young people today seem to be discovering Sean Paul with the same delight their elders once did in middle school. On TikTok, the barometer of all contemporary youth relevance, influencers like Charli D’Amelio and Addison Rae, who were un- or barely born in 2003, can be found participating in viral dance challenges to “Get Busy,” while millennial comedians 10 years their senior make videos about the unfairness of being in seventh grade when the song was ruling clubs. Like low-rise jeans, going-out tops and the “Fast & Furious” franchise, Sean Paul is one of those ubiquitous elements of Y2K-era American life that is experiencing a thundering resurgence.Paul performing at “MTV Spring Break” in Miami Beach in 2003.Scott Gries/Getty ImagesSting and Paul onstage at the Grammy Awards in 2004. Paul’s “Dutty Rock” won the award for best reggae album.Frank Micelotta/Getty ImagesI sat down with Paul on a salubrious June afternoon — “salubrious” was his choice of word — on Hellshire Beach near Kingston, where sargassum clogs the shoreline and clusters of shacks jostle for limited space on the ever-shrinking sands. At one of these establishments (either Screechy’s or Screechie’s, depending on whether you believe the indoor spelling or the outdoor one), covers were removed from platters of fried red snapper as Paul, wearing bright-orange cargo shorts and a T-shirt emblazoned with the word “DUTTY,” unrolled his smoking paraphernalia. He was by turns sprightly and pensive. The party-boy persona that once made him a megastar has evolved into that of a fun but responsible uncle — the one who still knows how to throw a party but will also ensure that everyone eats well and gets home safely afterward. The night before, for instance, in the courtyard of a studio I was told had been built by Shaggy and his former manager, I watched some of Paul’s associates smoke from a many-feet-long chalice pipe as they waited to begin rehearsals for a coming tour. When Paul drove up, he announced that he had brought a case of mangoes from his own orchard, and I was treated to the wholesome tableau of a group of grown men tearing into a cardboard box, each extracting a mango and biting in with sighs and groans of unadulterated relish. The rehearsal featured breaks to crack open bottles of industrial-strength white rum — and loud shouts of laughter, including at my saying I shouldn’t drink while working and at my frozen expression when I did finally try a sip. This jovial gathering of dad bods, dad shorts and dad jokes more resembled the vibe of an after-school band rehearsal than a multiplatinum recording artist preparing to play a sold-out arena — perhaps because some of these guys really have known Paul since his earliest days in music.As Paul explained to me at Screechy/ie’s, for his life to become what it is now — that of a Grammy-winning artist with YouTube views in the multiple billions and a catalog of beloved classics — a series of extremely fortunate events had to occur. And a fair number of them, he didn’t have much say in. Long before he became the bandannaed and cornrowed Sean Paul who entranced the American public, Sean Paul Ryan Francis Henriques was just another young offshoot of Jamaica’s famous Henriques clan, one of the oldest Jewish families on the island, who immigrated there from Portugal in the 17th century. Paul, who has British and Chinese heritage on his mother’s side, actually grew up Catholic in solidly respectable Uptown Kingston, watching the raucous parties thrown at his grandmother’s home by an enterprising aunt who ran a sound system. Kingston is a city that takes parties seriously, and the sound system was a key 20th-century innovation — a portable setup of amplifiers, turntables and mountains of speakers, all orchestrated by a D.J. and an M.C., who truck the equipment to makeshift venues and use its booming sound to draw crowds. Paul and his younger brother, Jason, were both enamored of this family business; Jason actually recalls falling asleep in a bass box as a child. It was both brothers’ earliest immersion in music, listening to the Uptown crowds dance to Michael Jackson beats blended with the dancehall and reggae rhythms of Kingston. Despite the legacy Paul was born into, his childhood was shaped by absences — like that of his father, Garth, who would disappear for months at a time, leaving his wife, Frances, hunting door to door, asking neighbors if they had seen him. He would materialize, months later, perhaps having whiled away the time in Mexico, once having crashed a Cherokee 6 plane stuffed full of marijuana in the Everglades. When Paul was 13, his father was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 15 years in prison. This devastated Paul — not because his father had been much of a presence in his life but because what little he had of him would now be gone. It felt, he says, like “that’s forever — Oh, I’ll never see this dude again.”Paul with his father, Garth Henriques, at the National Stadium swimming pool in Kingston.via Sean PaulHis mother sent him to Wolmer’s Boys’ School, among the oldest in Jamaica. Paul, who until then had been a bit of a dreamer, was thrust into a teenage milieu far removed from his former Jewish prep school; he began getting in fights with kids who teased him about his father being in prison. He was saved from a descent into hooliganism by swimming, a sport for which the Henriques family is well known. Both of Paul’s parents were champion swimmers, and he carried on that legacy, representing Jamaica at international competitions and as a water-polo player, his days beginning at 5:30 a.m. and spent training furiously.Still, his grades weren’t good enough to get him into college, which was beyond his mother’s means anyway. He enrolled in a program for hotel management and learned the basics of French cuisine (yes, Sean Paul of “Temperature” fame knows how to make hollandaise); for a time he worked as a bank teller while making demo tapes in private. He would freestyle with a group called the Dutty Cup Crew, and there was a time when his father, newly released from prison, tried to introduce him to people in the music industry. But watching Sean — thoughtful, introspective Sean — pursue a career as an M.C. and dancehall toaster still seemed outlandish to those around him. He recalls a well-intentioned friend getting drunk at a party and crying while asking him why he was throwing his life away.Paul in 1992. While privately making demo tapes, Paul worked as a bank teller and learned the basics of French cuisine while enrolled in a hotel-management program.Michael WoodsThe real hitch in his early career wasn’t his demeanor; it was the subjects he wanted to write about. The young Sean Paul was intensely affected by the differences he saw in the quality of life between Uptown and Downtown Kingston. The early songs he wrote were of a subgenre classified as conscious reggae — socially minded stuff, meant to highlight the injustices he saw around him. He didn’t see any trouble with this until a producer took him aside and told him flat out: No one wanted to listen to conscious songs from a light-skinned Uptown kid. He might have had a father in prison for manslaughter and a mother who, he says, did tie-dye to support the family, and he might have grown up occasionally eating callaloo picked from the backyard, but on paper he was a posh boy with a surname and family legacy that made it impossible for him to be taken seriously while singing about wealth inequality. Crestfallen but persuaded, Paul pivoted, channeling his sensitivities into the topics producers wanted him to sing about: parties, women and weed. One result was “Baby Girl,” a stripped-down track in which Paul entreats a woman to dry her eyes, leave her no-good man and come to him — a man who will “love yuh fi yuh body, but more fi yuh brain.” To him, Paul says, this was still a conscious song: “In dancehall, you always sing big of the ladies, how good they look or about wanting to get with them. But you never sing about: ‘I hear you in trouble? You’re in a relationship where you’re being abused? I’ll be there for you.’ That’s what the song was about.”In dancehall, masculinity is often a kind of balloon animal the M.C. inflates and twists into aggrandized shapes. In her book “Dancehall: Origins, History, Future,” the professor Donna P. Hope identifies the “six G’s” lyrics tend to dwell on (gun, gyal, ghetto, gays, ganja, God) and how each can be used to underline the vocalist’s machismo. The genre had made inroads into the U.S. market before — from Super Cat, Shabba Ranks, Beenie Man, Ini Kamoze — but if Paul would one day top them all, perhaps it’s because even at the peak of his party-boy persona, he understood that longing for things you cannot have is a universal sentiment. He has spent his entire career writing soft-focus love songs and ballads of unrequited yearning; they’re just disguised as songs to grind pelvises to. “Temperature” promises to “shelter you from the storm.” “Rockabye” is an earnest tribute to single mothers. On “Give It Up to Me,” he promises “love so clear/It gonna make you shine, and once you are mine/We be rockin it until the end of time.” These are club tracks, but if you, just hypothetically, happened to be listening to them on repeat during your fifth hour of silently hiccup-sobbing into a pillow (don’t ask), they would absolutely deliver in that arena as well.“Baby Girl” was Paul’s first local radio hit, earning him some popularity in Jamaica and paving the way for his first U.S. studio album. But it was his sophomore LP, “Dutty Rock,” that made Sean Paul into the commercial leviathan he is today. In 2002, a brief New York Times article noted an interesting new record featuring 19 songs, by different artists, all built on the same bewitching “riddim,” a basic beat for dancehall artists to record over. Created by a producer named Steven (Lenky) Marsden, the Diwali riddim — named after the Hindu festival — was built on frenetic syncopated hand claps that escalate over an underlying boom. At the time, Marsden had no sense of the classic he had created. But if you were alive in the early 2000s, you simply could not escape the contagious sound of this percussive loop, which would bounce and undulate its way through the culture everywhere, from Lumidee’s charmingly off-key hit “Never Leave You (Uh Oooh, Uh Oooh)” to Wayne Wonder’s “No Letting Go.” Paul in Norbrook, an upscale neighborhood in Kingston, in July. A younger Paul had wanted to sing about wealth inequality, until a producer told him that no one wanted those songs from an uptown kid like him. Naila Ruechel for The New York TimesMarsden received a phone call from VP Records asking if he would lend the riddim to one of their buzzy new artists: Sean Paul. The result was “Get Busy,” a monstrous hit that transformed Paul’s career and helped sell nearly six million copies of “Dutty Rock.” Back in the clubs-cars-and-Cristal era of R.&B., the “Get Busy” music video was an anomaly, too, depicting a party that would be recognizable to suburban diasporas everywhere: adults gathered around a dining table, young people crowding the unfinished basement below, an angry Caribbean dad in a loud batik-print shirt yelling at the youths to “stop banging on the damn furnace.”Paul is now closer to the age of that video dad than the basement party-starter he played. In the intervening years, he has remained booked and busy, ushering in a steady procession of hit songs, both his own and in collaborations with other pop stars. Whether you have recognized it or not, a new song of his has likely made its way to you in the past eight years — perhaps by way of “No Lie,” his collaboration with a sandpaper-voiced, prefame Dua Lipa; his work with the actor Idris Elba on the rambunctious “Boasty”; or his guest feature on Sia’s “Cheap Thrills,” which seemed to blare constantly from the stock-exchange-size H&M in Times Square in the summer of 2017. Paul may now be an elder statesman of dancehall, but he is still producing, recording and performing with vigor. As for the Jodi in “Get Busy,” she’s now his wife. I am one of those millennials who discovered Sean Paul at age 12 — but I also grew up in a secluded, almost cultlike boarding school in India, where we were forbidden any sort of internet access and had little idea what was popular among people our age in the outside world. My only familiarity with reggae was by way of an English guy named Steven Kapur who grew dreadlocks, called himself Apache Indian and sang in a Punjabi-inflected patois about wanting an arranged marriage with a dainty Indian girl who would make him rotis. I did recognize the Diwali riddim, but only because the Lumidee hit based on it would play when Megan Fox’s character appeared onscreen in the Lindsay Lohan classic “Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen.” Still: Somehow, by way of some entrepreneurial soul who knew how to burn pirated music onto CDs, “Get Busy” would play on repeat at my all-girls school’s gatherings with boys from a neighboring school, where chaperones were stationed at every corner to prevent anyone from getting even remotely busy. Whether it’s at a grimy nightclub or in an auditorium full of emotionally stunted teenagers avoiding eye contact in Dehradun, India, there are a few things likely to occur whenever a D.J. puts on “Get Busy” for a crowd of the right age. There will be squeals of recognition as Paul booms “SHAKE … THAT … THING,” each word with its vertiginous pause. Then the delirious, almost incantatory hand claps will start to register: “It’s the ignition of those butterflies,” he told me. As Paul’s exuberant melodies combine with the boisterous throb of the Diwali riddim, listeners’ hips and waists acquire a sentience of their own, moving as if threatening to secede from the rest of the body.This was true in 2003 — some 40-year-olds I asked wistfully confirmed this for me — and it remains true two decades later. I watched Paul live in concert, not once but twice, last year in New York. He was a consummate showman, with unflagging reserves of energy, leaping around in front of the giant Jamaican flag draped over the D.J. console overseen by his brother. Paul seemed to know exactly who his audience was, and to this audience he gave exactly what we wanted: his biggest hits, opening immediately with the iconic intro of “Get Busy,” to which we all lost our minds. On both occasions, I witnessed elder millennials try hip movements far beyond our joints’ collagen levels. Each time I felt as though I had been factory reset as a person.Paul at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 2022.Charles Sykes/Invision, via Associated PressThe members of Paul’s preteen fandom — whether that means me in 2003 or the kids browsing TikTok a year ago — might not have had any frame of reference for the parties and spliffs that he was singing about, the Jamaican patois he was singing in or his place in the lineage of dancehall. But a thumping party track is a thumping party track, and not knowing the lyrics would not stop any of us from, as one recent video elegantly put it, “throwing ass” to his bangers, then or now. For decades, Paul has offered the service so much great pop does: distilling a mythical idea of the perfect party, the always-pumping club, and delivering it into the minds and ears of people who will not learn for years that real clubgoing tends to be much more tedious and involve uncomfortable shoes. For someone like me — someone who, until I moved away from home, wasn’t even allowed to go to parties, let alone parties with sexually suggestive dancing — Paul’s songs were about the poetry and promise of dark, sweaty basements and libidinous gyrations. Neither was part of my life at 12, and neither are part of it as a not-so-young-anymore adult with an office job. But Paul’s best songs take all your amorphous longings and feelings of exile — whether imposed by a pandemic or a boarding school or a lost youth — and exorcise them.I can’t wait for the weekend, I can’t want to see that girl again: That, Paul told me in Kingston, is the type of anticipation he puts into his songs. Because if there is one thing he has understood since he was 14, it is the stultifying restlessness that lurks beneath the lives of suburban teenagers. Today he considers it his artistic purpose to exalt uncomplicated ease and pleasure. His legacy is the pure euphoria that erupts on faces when he performs “Get Busy.” The fact that he has been doing this for more than 20 years struck him, recently, when he realized that the nieces and nephews who were infants when the song took off are now old enough to drink and party and experience their uncle’s concerts. “And then they start going to the shows,” he giggled, “and they’re like, Yo?!” At 22, he said, he had wanted to sing about social evils. At 50, he has found peace simply taking people’s minds off them.Iva Dixit is a staff editor at the magazine, where her past articles have included an ode to the delights of eating raw onions and an exploration of the popularity of the TV show “Emily in Paris.” This is her first feature for the magazine. Naila Ruechel is a photographer originally from Jamaica known for lush, elegant imagery with a heightened sense of intimacy. More

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    How Metallica Hard-Wires a Different Set List Every Night

    On Aug. 4, Metallica played the first North American date of its M72 World Tour in New Jersey.Each show is designed to be different, with its own distinct set list. The band’s drummer, Lars Ulrich, broke down the opening night set — and explained some of the other cues, too. How Metallica Hard-Wires a Different Set List Every NightThe metal institution is on the road supporting its 11th album. Drawing on four decades of songs, the drummer Lars Ulrich keeps fans, and his bandmates, on their toes.Aug. 16, 2023, 5:00 a.m. ETIn Metallica’s frenetic 1983 ode to headbanging, “Whiplash,” the band’s guitarist and lead singer, James Hetfield, barks, “We’ll never stop, we’ll never quit, ’cause we’re Metallica.” Somehow, across four decades marked by success but also death, addiction and at least one very public near-implosion, the band has kept its word.This year, Metallica released its 11th full-length studio album, “72 Seasons.” Its debut LP, “Kill ’Em All,” also turned 40, just days before the quartet arrived in New Jersey for the first North American date on its M72 World Tour. Metallica isn’t the only band doing stadium tours even as its members pass 60, but not every band makes its bones slamming through songs that regularly top 190 beats per minute.That tenacity was evident on a Friday night this month at MetLife Stadium as the tour touched down in East Rutherford. Drums pounded. Riffs chugged. Solos melted the faces off an all-ages crowd of about 80,000, dressed almost exclusively in black.But how does a band keep it fresh after, by the drummer Lars Ulrich’s count, performing “Master of Puppets” 1,697 times onstage? The answer is by constantly “mixing it up,” said Ulrich, who creates the band’s set lists the day of each show — a “safeguard,” he added, “against ending up on autopilot.”That may sound obvious, but it wasn’t always the case. “Thirty years ago, we took going out and executing a set really seriously,” Ulrich explained by phone last week, when the goal was nailing everything “almost like in a robotic way.”Metallica — which also features the guitarist Kirk Hammett and the bassist Robert Trujillo — started fiddling with its encores and covers as its catalog kept growing. About 20 years ago, on the “St. Anger” tour, the group set an ambitious goal: Never again play the same set list twice.From left: Kirk Hammett and James Hetfield of Metallica onstage at MetLife Stadium on Aug. 4.Bryan Derballa for The New York TimesDates on the M72 tour, which run through September 2024, are organized around “no repeat weekends,” featuring two shows in each city with two different lists and two different sets of opening acts. (The band will play two weekends in Mexico City, where the tour wraps up.) The stage is doughnut shaped, with fans standing inside and out; the setup allows band members to face different parts of the crowd at different times, and it relies on four drum setups, creating multiple front rows.“Mixing it up” with the set list itself is a surprisingly complex affair. Metallica productions go big, and the band’s elaborate program of pyrotechnics, lighting and interstitial audio-video, among other flourishes — the New Jersey show included a drop of dozens of giant black-and-yellow beach balls — has historically discouraged major changes to the list. Having four drum kits this time didn’t simplify things.Eventually, the band developed what Ulrich called a “slot” system based on the band’s different “food groups” of songs, a reference to their feel and tempo. Slot 1 (of 16) on the M72 tour, for example, will always be an upper-mid-tempo fan favorite — Day 1 at MetLife, it was “Creeping Death” — that has a quickly recognizable opening riff: not too fast or complicated. But the songs in that slot will rotate. Slot 10 should always be a ballad, like “Nothing Else Matters.” The closer is always “Master of Puppets” or “Enter Sandman.”Ulrich also keeps careful data about what song the band has played where, and tries to tailor the set list accordingly.“At times it turns into a science” he said. “We’re in Montreal now, and I’ll have all the info for the last 20 years that we’ve played Montreal in front of me. And I can put a set list together where the deeper cuts will not be repeated.”Certain songs, like “Sandman,” “Puppets” and “One,” are in constant rotation. Ulrich said the band calls them the “toe-tapping favorites” — an odd, and perhaps ironic, choice of words for songs better known for headbanging.A lot of bands begin to mellow as they mature; by most accounts, that happened to Metallica over three decades ago, enough time for the band to have since come full circle. Like the band’s two most recent albums, “72 Seasons” continues Metallica’s return to the thrash-metal style that defined its early years, and the tour supporting it has thus far followed suit: light on covers and ballads, heavy on the heavy. New shredders like “72 Seasons” and “Lux Aeterna” slot tightly into lists packed with thrash classics like “Seek & Destroy” (1983), “Battery” (1986) and “Blackened” (1988).Ulrich spoke in detail about the set list from that first night at MetLife and helped decipher some of the notes. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.‘Creeping Death’“This is one we would call a fan favorite, and it’s not one that we always play. It’s got really good energy in the riff, and it sits in a kind of an up-tempo place without being so super fast that it just becomes, like, an indistinguishable roar. But it’s got good accents, good dynamics. It’s got a breakdown after the second chorus and the guitar solo, where it goes to a shout-along part where James gets everybody pretty engaged. [‘Die! Die! Die!’]What makes a good opening song? I mean, ask a hundred people, you get a hundred different answers. So none of this is science. But after a while, you start figuring out instinctively that this song maybe works better than this other song. Often when you are touring on the back of an album, the default is to open with the opening track off the album that you’re touring with. I wanted purposely to not do that, just to sort of challenge ourselves.”‘72 Seasons’“’72 Seasons’ is the opening song on the latest album, and it’s also the title track. It has a real forward motion and a lot of energy, and I think it’s really representative and indicative of the head space and the mood and the energy of the new album. So it feels like a great way to kind of introduce what we’re doing these days.The title refers to the first 18 years of your life; in broad strokes, it’s basically the idea that the first 72 seasons of your life shape who you become, for better or worse — and as you move through life, you’re trying to expand on those experiences, or maybe shake them, get away from them.”‘Fade to Black’“We’re all very open about where we’re at with our moods and all of us dealing with various levels of mental health. And that feels like it’s less of a taboo than it was, say, 20 or 30 years ago. I think James, increasingly, is very comfortable onstage talking about how he’s doing and how he’s feeling, and often he’ll send ‘Fade to Black’ off with some personal thoughts or something that relates to how he’s doing in that moment, in the spirit of sending good energy to people who are receiving it from a place of struggle. And the takeaway message is that you’re not alone, and that we’re in this together. I’m an only child. I’ve struggled with being an outsider and a loner all my life. And, you know, being in a band, playing concerts and all that is the best remedy for me to feel that I’m not alone.”‘Orion’“It’s one that we have enjoyed playing a little bit more in recent years — we actually opened with it when we played with the Rolling Stones. It has a unique palette and illustrates the different songwriting inspirations and influences that exist within the band. When we’re playing it, the spirit of Cliff [Burton, the band’s original bassist, who died in a 1986 bus crash] is definitely present in the building. And Robert channels Cliff’s spirit in the part that he’s playing so incredibly well. It’s a beautiful, beautiful moment.”‘Master of Puppets’“‘Master of Puppets’ is actually the song we’ve played the most live; it’s been a part of every tour since we released it. It got a significant, unexpected boost last year when it became part of the ‘Stranger Things’ finale. And who would’ve thought that a 37-year-old song that’s over eight minutes long and is pretty heavy throughout would resonate in the way that it does with a new and younger generation of listeners? But how crazy cool is that?”What’s the ‘Hang’ Cue?“‘Hang’ means basically the songs are connected — that there’s no, like, full stop. It doesn’t go to silence. So it just means stay on a chord. And then the next song comes out of that rather than out of a vocal introduction or a tape.”From left: Hetfield, the bassist Robert Trujillo and the drummer Lars Ulrich. The band is always mixing up its set lists, Ulrich said, to avoid “ending up on autopilot.”Bryan Derballa for The New York TimesThe Four Drum Kits“This is the first time we’ve done a 360-degree stage in a stadium setup. We tried to crack the code on that for years. Everything that we had done always had a center point. We were going down this rabbit hole a year ago, and all of a sudden it was like, Well, hang on, why does the band have to be in the center? And then it was like, What’s the opposite of the band being in the center? And that would be the fans being in the center. And that’s when we came up with the doughnut concept, where you play on the doughnut itself and then the fans are in the doughnut hole. And then, well, where do the drums go? Then the concept of the four drum kits — one drum kit in each of the four different directions — came up, and then it sort of went from there.You know, all this [expletive] makes a lot of sense when it’s in an email or it looks really good on a napkin. Nine months later you’re in the first venue trying to figure out what the [expletive] you’re doing.”

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