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      An Avett Brother Meets a Founding Son: John Quincy Adams

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      Bob Crawford is part of the folk-rock band the Avett Brothers. He’s also the host of a new podcast about the sixth president.Some professional musicians spend their days on the tour bus staring out the window, sleeping or pursuing various routes to oblivion. For Bob Crawford, the bassist for the folk-rock band the Avett Brothers, history has been his distraction of choice.“On the van, and later the bus,” he said recently in a video interview from his home near Durham, N.C., “I would read history books.”One day, he picked up Sean Wilentz’s mammoth study “The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln.” From there, he moved on to “several books about Martin Van Buren,” as well as studies of Andrew Jackson, the rise of the two-party system and the knockdown congressional debates over slavery in the 1830s.Now, he’s put it all together in “Founding Son: John Quincy’s America,” a six-episode podcast about John Quincy Adams, America’s sixth president and a man, Crawford argues, for our own fractured times.“He knows democracy is on the line, he knows slavery is a moral evil,” Crawford said of Adams, who became a leading antislavery voice in the House of Representatives, where he served after leaving the White House. “He’s one of those transcendent characters. He deserves to be in the pantheon.”“Founding Son,” available through iHeartRadio starting April 13, is the latest entry in the crowded field of history podcasts. But it’s one where Crawford (who composed and played the show’s old-timey mandolin theme) hopes to use his musical celebrity and serious historical chops to illuminate a complex, formative period in the evolution of American democracy.The Early Republic, as scholars call it, may be a rich field of study. But it’s largely a blank for most Americans, who are a bit foggy on what exactly happened between the American Revolution and the Civil War.Adams, the only president to serve in Congress after leaving office, is a vehicle for tracing the arc of the period, which saw the United States transform from a nation dominated by its founding elites (like the Adamses) into an expansionist, populist democracy where every white male had the vote, regardless of property or station.“Founding Son” focuses on John Quincy Adams, the only president to serve in Congress after leaving the White House (and the earliest American president to be photographed).Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesAs a seven-year-old, Adams, the son of John Adams, witnessed the Battle of Bunker Hill, when his mother, Abigail, took him to the top of the hill to watch the gunpowder rise in the distance. And he lived long enough to serve in the House alongside Abraham Lincoln.And in an impossibly dramatic ending, Adams (spoiler alert!) died in the Capitol, after having a cerebral hemorrhage as he stood up to cast a vote relating to the Mexican-American War, which he opposed.“It’s almost poetic,” Crawford said. (Oh, Adams also wrote poetry.)Crawford, 52, grew up in Cardiff, N.J., where he recalled himself as an unimpressive student, although one with a passion for history. He recalled how one of his high school teachers, Mr. Lawless, would ask the class, “Does anyone who isn’t Bob know the answer?”If there was one person he wished he could have interviewed for the podcast, Crawford said, it was William Lee Miller, the author of “Arguing About Slavery,” who died in 2012.Kate Medley for The New York TimesOver an hour-long conversation about the podcast, Crawford, his upright bass visible on a stand behind him, regularly pulled books from the shelf to underline a point. (William Lee Miller’s “Arguing About Slavery,” he said, was a particular inspiration.) He repeatedly apologized for diving into a rabbit hole before diving into another one.With his neatly trimmed hair and soulful eyes, he gives off the vibe of the intense, idealistic high school history teacher who is also “in a band.” Except that Crawford (who earned a master’s degree in history online in 2020) really is in a band.Crawford joined with Scott and Seth Avett in 2001, after a decade of jobs that included selling shoes, working in movie production and slinging grilled cheese sandwiches “in the parking lot of Grateful Dead shows,” as the band’s official bio puts it. (In an email, Crawford clarified it was actually Phish.)Scott Avett, the band’s banjo player and co-writer, said that the podcast reflected Crawford’s steadfast character.“He does hold a lot of facts, and it’s really impressive,” said Avett (who voices dialogue for Charles Francis Adams, one of John Quincy’s sons, and the abolitionist Theodore Dwight Weld). “But that’s not the point, which is how he carries those facts and who he is when expressing them.”Crawford, center, onstage with Scott and Seth Avett of the Avett Brothers.CrackerfarmAnd it’s not just Crawford’s friends who are impressed. Wilentz, who appears on the podcast, also praised his historical chops.“He’s really quite versed,” Wilentz said. “He had a lot of really specific questions to ask, some of which I didn’t know the answer to.”Crawford’s side gig as a history podcaster started in 2016 with “The Road to Now,” which he created with the historian Benjamin Sawyer. (Recent episodes have covered Benghazi, Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy and the history of March Madness.)Last year, Crawford hosted “Concerts of Change,” a SiriusXM docuseries about human rights benefit concerts from the 1970s to the 1990s. While working on that, he got an invitation from a friend to pitch a show to iHeart, and suggested Adams.The initial response was lukewarm. “They asked, was he involved in any true crime?” Crawford recalled.But eight months later, they bit. Will Pearson, the president of iHeartPodcasts, said what ultimately sold him on the project was the combination of Crawford’s enthusiasm and knowledge and the unfamiliarity of the John Quincy Adams story.“In my opinion one of the strongest elements of a good history podcast is the element of surprise,” he said.Crawford wrote the show (a coproduction of iHeartPodcasts, Curiosity Inc., and School of Humans) himself, with help from James Morrison, a producer who also works on the Smithsonian podcast “Side Door.” (Adams is voiced by Patrick Warburton, familiar to some as Elaine’s boyfriend on “Seinfeld.” Andrew Jackson is voiced by Nick Offerman, of “Parks & Recreation.”)Crawford with notes for the podcast. “He’s really quite versed,” said the historian Sean Wilentz, who appears on the podcast.Kate Medley for The New York Times“Founding Son,” which takes a largely chronological approach, has a certain whiskery dad-history vibe. There are dramatic set pieces (some with Ken Burns-style voice-overs and sound effects) about events like the battle of the Alamo and the 1838 burning of Pennsylvania Hall, an abolitionist meetinghouse in Philadelphia that was destroyed by a racist mob. (Burns himself pops up as the voice of Roger Baldwin, the lawyer who represented the enslaved people who revolted aboard the Amistad.)But even as Crawford focuses on elite politics and Congressional maneuvering, he makes clear that politics was far from just a white man’s game.He acknowledges the crucial role of Black abolitionists like David Walker, whom he likens to the Black musicians who inspired rock ‘n’ roll — the creative sparks who are rarely given enough credit.And he notes that the antislavery petition drives of the 1830s, which led to the notorious “gag rule” forbidding any mention of slavery in Congress, were largely the work of women, who played a growing role in national politics despite being denied the right to vote.“Founding Son” underlines the story’s resonance to contemporary politics, with terms like “one-term president,” “alternative facts” and “deep-state cabal.” There are even accusations of a “stolen election,” after Adams — despite losing the popular and electoral votes — was elevated to the presidency in 1825, following a back room deal in Congress.)But Crawford, who calls himself an “unaffiliated” voter, also allows plenty of room for those aspects of history that don’t satisfy a contemporary thirst for a simplistic morality play.Crawford said he wanted to avoid turning the past into an oversimplified morality play. In history, he said, “everyone’s a hero, everyone’s a villain.”Kate Medley for The New York TimesConsider the treatment of Adams’s archrival, Andrew Jackson. Today, Jackson — a slaveholder who pursued a brutal policy of Native American removal, in defiance of the Supreme Court — is anathema to Democrats who not so long ago celebrated him as a founder of the party. And Crawford seconds the opinion of Lindsay Chervinsky, a historian featured on the podcast: There’s a word for him, and it’s “not a nice one.”But he also notes that it was Jackson who blocked John C. Calhoun’s doctrine of “nullification,” which held that the Constitution allowed states to reject federal legislation.As for Adams, for all his noble fight against slavery, some of his rhetoric — like his lament that American leaders, unlike Europe’s, were “palsied by the will of our constituents” — does not sound great today.In history, Crawford said, “everyone’s a hero, and everyone’s a villain.”As for today’s politics, he laments the intensity of the polarization, and the loss of any connection with a “shared reality.” But the dysfunction, as he sees it, is not equally shared.“Today the parties are clearly out of balance,” he said. “And yes, it seems to be that the Republican Party of 2023 bears no resemblance to its former self.”What comes next, he said, “is a story for someone else to tell many years from now.” In the meantime, he’s outlining another history podcast he hopes to record.“It’s juicy and reflects this moment,” he said, launching into an enthusiastic elevator pitch. “I’m not dallying in presentism — not doing that! But man.”He paused: “And I’ve already got a whole shelf of books.” More

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      Caroline Rose Takes Her Indie Rock Show on the Road

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      On a chilly day in New England at the start of a 43-city tour, the indie singer kills time before falling into the arms of her fans.BURLINGTON, Vt. — “I don’t mind walking in the rain,” Caroline Rose said on a recent afternoon, looking through the window of Crow Bookshop.It was about 40 degrees outside and pouring. Ms. Rose wasn’t dressed for the weather, but at least she was wearing a hat, with a camouflage pattern and the words “Buck Fever” across the front. Burlington, she said, was much nicer in the summer.Ms. Rose, an indie rocker who grew up on Long Island and lives mostly in Austin, Texas, had spent about seven months in this city writing the songs that appear on her new album, “The Art of Forgetting,” which chronicles a difficult breakup. She was back in Burlington to play the fourth show of an international tour that will keep her on the road into August.Standing in the “Psychology” section of the bookstore, Ms. Rose, 33, referred to the breakup that had inspired her new record. “I didn’t even really plan on splitting with my partner,” she said. “I thought we were going to work on it. But at a certain point I was like, I have so much I need to work on myself. It just felt irreconcilable for me. It makes me emotional to think about.”Her manager, Ari Fouriezos, whose hair had recently been bleached blond like Ms. Rose’s, lingered by the door.Crow Bookshop was one of the spots Ms. Rose frequented when she was living in Burlington early in the pandemic. Oliver Parini for The New York Times“I hadn’t done a kind thing for myself in a long time,” Ms. Rose continued, her voice wobbling. “Investing time in myself, it felt like the first nice thing I had done for myself in a really long time. And then, after that, it was like a deeper and deeper dive into my own head.”“The Art of Forgetting” is a departure from her previous albums, in which the singer, leaning into her theater-kid background, had often assumed alternate Caroline Rose-like personas. This time around she is simply, frighteningly, herself.She pulled down a book from a shelf: “The Body Keeps the Score” by Bessel van der Kolk, a 2014 New York Times best seller about the physical and mental effects of trauma.“It changed my life, reading this,” she said. “It has to do with memory and the way our bodies might hold onto memories, even though our brain might forget. After reading this book, I realized there was a lot of stuff in my own life that my mind has just buried.”Outside the store, in the cold rain, Ms. Rose said she wanted to see if her favorite Burlington bar, Light Club Lamp Shop, was open. True to its name, lamp shades were strewn on the windowsill, but inside it was dark was empty.We kept walking — away from the restaurants and outdoor gear shops of the town center and onto the tree-lined streets of a residential neighborhood, dodging puddles and enduring several comically dreary splashes from passing cars.Ms. Rose onstage for soundcheck, practicing the song “Miami.”Oliver Parini for The New York TimesOutside a drab Victorian-style house with Halloween decorations on one of the front doors, Ms. Rose pointed to a window on the first floor.“That was my little room,” she said. Ms. Rose’s sound engineer, Jon Januhowski, had invited her to crash with him when her relationship in Austin was coming undone. It was April 2020, and Ms. Rose spent the quiet lockdown days messing around on her guitar and recording snippets of songs on her phone. A black and white cat named Rosie kept her company.“I felt very honored, because I didn’t learn how to pet a cat until I was 26,” she said.Someone else was living in the house now. Warm yellow light peeked through a gap in the curtains.Ms. Rose walked back to the town center, checking once more to see if Light Club Lamp Shop had opened. No luck, although it was after 4 p.m. The owners kept odd hours, she said, adding that it seemed like a nice way to live, to come and go as you please.Ms. Rose drinks a hot toddy with mezcal every night before she goes onstage. Her bandmate Lena Simon is on the sofa.Oliver Parini for The New York TimesTo some, it may seem as if the life of an itinerant musician assumes this shape. But Ms. Rose said she often longs for a simpler way of life. While making “The Art of Forgetting,” she said she unexpectedly fell in love with a woman whom she had met through mutual friends. She added that they’ll probably settle down in Los Angeles for a bit after the tour, which will take her to more than two dozen cities in the North America before stops in Britain, Germany, France, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands.“I want to live my life and take a break after this,” she said. “I don’t know what that will look like. But it’s the not-knowing part that excites me the most.”Ms. Fouriezos, her manager, reminded her that she was due at the club for soundcheck in about an hour. Ms. Rose suggested a quick bite first and started heading toward a small cafe, Stone Soup. Earlier that day, she said, she’d had breakfast there with her parents, who had driven up from Center Moriches, N.Y., with their dog, Paco, an 11-year-old mutt.At this hour, only Stone Soup’s buffet was available. We piled our plates with rice, sweet potatoes, salad and tofu. There was a silence as we ate. We were damp and cold.“So, how’s everyone feeling?” Ms. Rose said cheerily.Ms. Rose played the songs from “The Art of Forgetting” in the order in which they appear on the album. Before she went on, she talked through the transitions with her bandmates.Oliver Parini for The New York TimesShowtimeMs. Fouriezos was behind the wheel of a 2015 Subaru Forester, with Ms. Rose riding shotgun, as they pulled up to Higher Ground, a onetime movie theater that had been gutted and made into a music venue. A few people were sweeping rainwater off the roof. In the parking lot, Mark Balderston, Ms. Rose’s affable tour manager, told her that the club had sprung a leak.“It’s not dangerous or anything,” he added.Inside, a table had been laid with merch, including a pack of tissues that read, “I cried at the Caroline Rose show.” During soundcheck, she played two songs: “Miami,” which starts softly before building into an edgy power ballad, and “Jill Says,” which is named for her therapist. Then Ms. Rose stepped down from the stage and practiced getting up and down from a trunk in the middle of the concert floor for a stunt that was meant to be a high point of the show.“Caroline loves antics,” Ms. Fouriezos said.In a narrow hallway backstage, a table wedged into a corner was laden with chili and cookies. Ms. Rose’s bandmates Riley Geare, Michael Dondero, Glenn Van Dyke and Lena Simon fixed tea, made drinks with the tequila and seltzer on the dressing table, and changed their outfits. Ms. Rose put on a red and white two-piece set with a spear-point collar.For her performance, Ms. Rose wore a two-piece set wit a spear-point collar created by Peter Heon and based on a design she drew on a napkin.Oliver Parini for The New York TimesIn the greenroom, Abbie Morin, the lead singer of the band opening, Hammydown, emphasized the importance of stretching before a performance to prevent a “bang-over” — a neck condition that can arise from headbanging during a show.Mr. Balderston, a tall man dressed in black, popped in and out of the room as the hall filled with about 450 people. Ms. Rose sipped from a hot toddy made with mezcal, her usual preshow drink. Then she dropped beads of various tinctures under her tongue. “Touring involves a lot of tinctures,” she said.At around 8, Mr. Balderston gave the two-minute warning, and the band pulled into a group hug, chanting, “Let’s have fun! Let’s have fun!”The crowd was rapt during the show, quiet for the quiet songs and loud for the loud ones. The concert was more stylized than the usual club show, with the singer separated from her bandmates by a scrim that cast their silhouettes against bright colors, creating a kind of Pop Art tableau.Ms. Rose had come up with the concept, and Ms. Van Dyke executed her vision with the help of a lighting director, John Foresman, who has worked with indie rock stalwarts like Car Seat Headrest and Mitski. The result, Ms. Rose said onstage, was “the most high-tech form of D.I.Y. you can imagine.”There were a few hitches. Ms. Rose asked to begin “Miami” again, after a false start; and there was an unplanned interlude before “Jill Says,” when her keyboard briefly stopped working. She made light of the snags, saying, “My ultimate goal for my career is to make music A.I. can’t reproduce. What you’re experiencing is a human performance.”Ms. Rose’s concert merch included a pack of tissues that read “I cried at the Caroline Rose show.” It looked like some of her fans did.Oliver Parini for The New York TimesWhen it came time for “The Kiss,” a song about yearning “for the kiss of someone new,” Ms. Rose descended from the stage and wandered into the crowd. Her voice seemed to be floating, and the audience members undulated to make way for her. She stepped up onto the trunk.“We’re going to do a trust fall,” Ms. Rose told the room. “Get close.”As the music shimmered, she let herself drop, closing her eyes. Audience members caught her and gingerly passed her to the front of the hall.“Send me around again!” she said. “Send me around again!” More

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      8 New Songs You Should Hear Now

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      A dive into tracks by Tyler, the Creator, Feist, Bully and more recent highlights.Tyler, the Creator released a new track as part of an expanded edition of “Call Me if You Get Lost.”Luis “Panch” PerezDear listeners,I have a constantly replenishing playlist on my phone called “Thursday Nights and Friday Mornings.” It’s named for the time I do some of my most focused new-music listening, in preparation for the publication of the Playlist, a weekly feature that I compile with my colleagues Jon Pareles and Jon Caramanica.* Each Friday, we recommend a handful of songs released in the past week, a task that helps me stay on top of all (well, most) of the new music that comes out in a given week, and often the Jons’ picks point me toward what I missed.Every few weeks, I’ll be sending out an Amplifier digest of recent Playlist highlights. Today, we’ve got a mix of some possibly familiar names (Lucinda Williams; Feist; Tyler, the Creator) and hopefully some new ones, too.Listen along here on Spotify as you read.1. Jess Williamson: “Hunter”This is one of my favorite new songs right now. It’s from the Texas-born singer-songwriter Jess Williamson, whose music I’ve been following since her haunting 2014 debut, “Native State.” Last year, she teamed up with a fellow musician from the South, Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee, and formed a country duo called Plains. Williamson’s contributions to Plains’ excellent record “I Walked With You a Ways” felt like a step forward for her as a songwriter, and I hear that growth on “Hunter,” the first single from her next solo album, “Time Ain’t Accidental,” out in June. It’s a bittersweet song about the spiritually exhausting process of looking for love, but on the chorus Williamson sounds hopeful and replenished, reminding herself, “I want a mirror, not a piece of glass.” (Listen on YouTube)2. Bully: “Days Move Slow”My former colleague at Vulture Jesse David Fox once compared an early song from Alicia Bognanno’s grungy power-pop band Bully to “Sugarhigh,” the fictional alt-rock hit that Renée Zellweger’s character sings at the end of “Empire Records” — and now I will never un-hear that similarity as long as I live. (It’s definitely a compliment.) I interviewed Bognanno over video chat in August 2020, and I remember a very sweet dog named Mezzi dozing behind her. (A dog lover myself, I always ask my interview subjects about their pups. Always.) Sadly, Mezzi has since passed on, but “Days Move Slow,” from the forthcoming Bully album “Lucky for You,” is both an ode to her memory and a chronicle of Bognanno trying to propel herself out of the muck of grief. That probably makes it sound like a downer, but the song has a resilient, upbeat energy about it — sort of like an excitable canine. Rest in power, Mezzi! (Listen on YouTube)3. Rosalía and Rauw Alejandro: “Beso”Some couples announce their engagement with a ring pic on Instagram. Rosalía and Rauw Alejandro, two of the brightest Spanish-language stars in the current pop firmament, hinted at theirs in a music video. Their sweet and sultry duet “Beso” is a highlight from their recently released collaborative EP, “RR” — and proof of their musical chemistry. (Listen on YouTube)4. Tyler, the Creator: “Sorry Not Sorry”Fun fact: In 2021, only two albums made appearances on all three of our critics’ Top 10 lists — Olivia Rodrigo’s head-turning debut “Sour” and Tyler, the Creator’s sprawling rap odyssey “Call Me if You Get Lost.” Last week, Tyler released an expanded edition featuring a few new tracks, including this one, the gregarious “Sorry Not Sorry.” I really like this song’s Jekyll-and-Hyde energy, as a repentant Tyler apologizes for a number of personal and professional slights and then, occasionally, a brasher version of himself takes it right back: “Sorry to the fans who say I changed — ’cause I did.” (Listen on YouTube)5. Mahalia: “Terms and Conditions”I’m a total mark for any song that mines and cleverly updates the sounds of Y2K pop or “TRL”-era R&B. (See also: The entire output of the young British girl group Flo.) “Terms and Conditions,” from the 24-year-old singer Mahalia, does just that. It’s giving me hints of Mya, Destiny’s Child and a whole lot of J. Lo’s glimmering millennial time capsule “If You Had My Love.” But it’s also got a contemporary twist, as Mahalia tells a potential suitor what she won’t tolerate (“If you look at her, consider bridges burned”), flipping the dry language of contractual agreements into something confident, fun and flirty. (Listen on YouTube)6. Lucinda Chua featuring yeule: “Something Other Than Years”Like the Mahalia song, I have my colleague Jon Pareles to thank for this next Playlist pick, from the London-based songwriter Lucinda Chua. “Something Other Than Years” is a sparse, hypnotic duet with the Singaporean musician yeule, which finds Chua pleading in a glassy voice, “Show me how to live this life,” a request that seems to be answered by yeule’s celestial melody. Jon describes the rest of Chua’s new album “Yian” as a collection of “meditations seeking serenity — often just two alternating chords, set out slowly on keyboard and sustained by orchestral strings.” (Listen on YouTube)7. Feist: “Borrow Trouble”I love it when Feist — an artist often associated with calm and quietude — lets loose and makes a ruckus, as she does on this stomping tune from her upcoming album, “Multitudes.” Wait for her primal screams at the very end! (Listen on YouTube)Two Lucindas in a single playlist? Better believe it. The country-rock legend Lucinda Williams’s voice has sounded defiant since at least the 1980s, but since recovering from a 2020 stroke, her survivor’s rasp has taken on a whole new gravitas. “New York Comeback” — from the upcoming album “Stories from a Rock N Roll Heart” — has Williams’s characteristic grit and lack of sentiment (“No one’s brought the curtain down,” she sings wrly, “maybe you should stick around”) but there’s something poignant about hearing Amplifier fave Bruce Springsteen (along with his wife and bandmate Patti Scialfa) singing backing vocals to support her as if he’s just one more rock ’n’ roll lifer nodding to another. (Listen on YouTube)These are my terms and conditions,Lindsay*If the grammatically correct plural of “attorney general” is indeed “attorneys general,” maybe I should say “Jons Pareles and Caramanica.”The Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“8 New Songs You Should Hear Now” track listTrack 1: Jess Williamson, “Hunter”Track 2: Bully, “Days Move Slow”Track 3: Rosalía and Rauw Alejandro, “Beso”Track 4: Tyler, the Creator, “Sorry Not Sorry”Track 5: Mahalia, “Terms and Conditions”Track 6: Lucinda Chua featuring yeule, “Something Other Than Years”Track 7: Feist, “Borrow Trouble”Track 8: Lucinda Williams, “New York Comeback”Bonus TracksA few of you have written in to ask if we archive previous Amplifier playlists on Spotify. We do! The easiest way to find them is through our account page, where we also archive all the weekly Friday Playlists, too.And speaking of reader emails: Special thanks to Sharon Smith for — after I mentioned that Bob Dylan won his first Grammy nearly two decades into his career, for his 1979 song “Gotta Serve Somebody” — directing me to this blistering performance of Dylan playing the song live at the 1980 Grammys. (Kris Kristofferson, as you’ll see, was loving it.) Apparently the producers asked him to cut the song down to three or four minutes; he played for six and a half. Classic Bob! More

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      Taylor Swift Fans Grapple With Joe Alwyn Breakup Reports

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      After “Entertainment Tonight” and People published stories reporting that the singer’s relationship with Joe Alwyn was over, many Swifties went online to vent their feelings.To quote Taylor Swift’s own lyrics, “The rumors are terrible and cruel, but honey most of them are true.”Fans of Ms. Swift spent much of the weekend grappling with the possibility that the “Midnights” singer and her longtime boyfriend, the British actor Joe Alwyn, had broken up, after reports from “Entertainment Tonight” and People magazine said the couple was through.“ET” was vague about how it had come by the information, saying in its story on Friday afternoon only that it had “learned” that Ms. Swift and Mr. Alwyn had split. A few hours later, People matched the report with a story of its own citing an unnamed person close to the pair as its source. Both outlets said the breakup had occurred weeks ago.With no comment from Ms. Swift, Mr. Alwyn or their representatives, fans of the singer were not sure whether to trust what they had read. Ms. Swift’s publicist, Tree Paine, did not immediately respond to requests for comment for this article.“I think it’s a poorly written, unconfirmed article,” Brittany Browning, a 30-year-old writer who lives in St. Petersburg, Fla., said of the “ET” story.She added that she didn’t believe the pair had really split up and predicted that Mr. Alwyn would make an appearance at Ms. Swift’s next concert stop, in Tampa, Fla., “out of spite.” (Mr. Alwyn has not been sighted at any of Ms. Swift’s tour stops thus far.)Another fan, Tiffany Hammer, a tarot card reader from Puyallup, Wash., was also skeptical. “I won’t believe it’s true until I hear something officially affiliated with Swift, whether that’s Tree or whether that’s her mom mentioning it casually in an interview a year from now,” Ms. Hammer, 37, said, referring to Ms. Swift’s longtime publicist, who has become a celebrity in her own right among fans. “As respectfully as possible, it’s none of our business until we know what she wants us to know.”Ms. Hammer noted that some Swifties have gone into an online frenzy as they try to digest the unconfirmed report.“On Reddit, people are combing through her lyrics about this supposed breakup and grieving something that’s not even confirmed yet,” she said. “It’s like, your poor parasympathetic nervous system. Give yourself a breather until you know everything.”Other fans accepted the reports as truth, albeit with caution.“I think that media literacy is really important, and I have the benefit of having a few more years on some of these newer Swifties or younger Swifties,” said Katherine Mohr, a 31-year-old project manager from Madison, Wis. “I’ve been through the wringer on celebrity gossip before and know who you can trust and who you can’t.”Ms. Mohr said she had not been quick to believe earlier gossip items concerning Ms. Swift, including those about marriage, pregnancy and some recent online speculation on why the singer had made a change in her set list, replacing “Invisible String,” a love song believed to be about her relationship with Mr. Alwyn, with a different number. But the articles from “Entertainment Tonight” and People were enough to persuade her that the breakup news was legit.“There is a seriousness factor to this that there wasn’t with any of those rumors, and we need to be able to tell the difference,” Ms. Mohr said. “Otherwise, we’re never going to be able to survive in celebrity culture knowing what’s true and what’s not.”Morgan Chadwick, 27, recalled meeting Ms. Swift at an event years ago and chatting with her about how the two women had been dating their boyfriends for the same amount of time. Ms. Chadwick, a graphic designer in Chicago, said she would often joke to her boyfriend, who is now her husband, that each new love song Ms. Swift wrote was about them.“He would always roll his eyes,” she said.“It’s sad, but also I’m an adult,” Ms. Chadwick added.She said she wasn’t sure what to make of the breakup reports. “They’ve been so private in their relationship that I don’t know that there’s going to be any sort of confirmation other than, like, she might make some comment at a show, or he’s going to show up at a show,” Ms. Chadwick said.Katie Devin Orenstein, 23, a recent college graduate living in New York, said she is counting down the days until she gets to see Ms. Swift at one of her concerts in New Jersey in May. She is, however, rethinking her outfit, which she had planned to wear as a nod to “Invisible String”: a teal shirt and yogurt shop employee uniform in homage to the line “teal was the color of your shirt when you were 16 at the yogurt shop.”She added that she’ll be looking to Ms. Swift for the final word on her relationship status.“Every single thing she does onstage, especially those surprise songs, everyone’s going to analyze it like it’s the damn Torah,” Ms. Orenstein said. More

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      Morgan Wallen Spends a Fifth Straight Week at No. 1

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      The country superstar, on his latest chart streak, holds off challenges from the sardonic pop singer Melanie Martinez and a deluxe reissue from Tyler, the Creator.For the fifth time in a row, the country superstar Morgan Wallen tops the Billboard album chart with his latest extra-long LP, “One Thing at a Time,” easily holding off challenges from new releases by the singer Melanie Martinez and the indie-rock supergroup boygenius.In its latest week, the 36-track “One Thing,” Wallen’s third studio album, had the equivalent of 173,000 sales in the United States, including 216 million streams and 8,000 copies sold as a full album, according to the tracking service Luminate.It is Wallen’s latest streak atop the chart. At the beginning of 2021, he released “Dangerous: The Double Album” — which had 30 tracks — and held the No. 1 spot for 10 weeks straight, despite a temporary ban on country radio after he had been caught on video using a racial slur.Martinez, a teenage contestant on “The Voice” a decade ago who has since explored a sardonic form of art-pop as a recording artist, lands at No. 2 with her latest release, “Portals.” It had the equivalent of 142,000 sales, including 61 million streams and 99,000 copies sold as a complete album; in its physical form, “Portals” came in 21 versions, including 14 CDs in a rainbow of collectible variations — autographed, with “puzzle” or lenticular covers, with a tank top — along with six vinyl LPs and a cassette.Tyler, the Creator, jumped 134 spots to No. 3 with the deluxe version of his 2021 album “Call Me if You Get Lost,” which had 78 million streams and 11,000 copies sold as a complete package.Boygenius, featuring three acclaimed singer-songwriters — Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus — opens at No. 4 with its first full album, “The Record,” after an EP released five years ago. “The Record” had the equivalent of 67,000 sales, including 18 million streams and 53,000 copies sold of the full album.SZA’s “SOS” holds at No. 5 in its 17th week out. More

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      Mötley Crüe Guitarist’s Lawsuit Says He Was Kicked Out

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      Mick Mars accused his bandmates of gaslighting him and cutting him out of future profits after he said he was retiring from touring.Mick Mars, the guitarist for the veteran hair-metal band Mötley Crüe, filed a lawsuit this week accusing his bandmates of pushing him out of the group and cutting him out of its future profits.The lawsuit, filed on Thursday in Superior Court in Los Angeles County, details a falling out that the band had with Mars after he announced in October that he was retiring from touring, citing chronic pain from an inflammatory disease that affects the spine.The rest of the band responded, the suit says, by convening an emergency shareholders’ meeting of Mötley Crüe’s main corporate entity to throw Mars out of the band, fire him as a director of the corporation and take away his shares. The lawsuit says Mars has a 25 percent stake in each of the band’s affiliated business entities.“It is beyond sad that, after 41 years together, a band would try to throw out a member who is unable to tour anymore because he has a debilitating disease,” said Edwin F. McPherson, Mars’s lawyer. “Mick has been pushed around for far too long in this band, and we are not going to let that continue.”Mötley Crüe formed in Los Angeles in 1981 and became one of the most popular of the so-called hair-metal bands. Mixing glam-rock theatrics, heavy metal riffs and radio-friendly pop hooks, they were fixtures on MTV in the 1980s and, by that decade’s end, had topped the Billboard 200 chart with their 1989 album, “Dr. Feelgood.” The band’s tell-all memoir, “The Dirt,” which chronicled their rise to fame and rocky history, was adapted into a Netflix biopic in 2019.Mars, 71, whose real name is Robert Alan Deal, joined Mötley Crüe shortly after it was founded and, according to the lawsuit, came up with the band’s name. He was diagnosed at 27 with ankylosing spondylitis, an inflammatory disease that can cause the vertebrae to fuse over time. The disease has caused his spine “to seize up and freeze completely solid,” the suit says, adding that he is in chronic pain and is not able to move his head in any direction.Last fall, Mars told his bandmates that, because of his “debilitating” ankylosing spondylitis, he couldn’t physically “handle the rigors of the road” and would no longer tour with the band, the suit says. Mars, who last performed with Mötley Crüe in Las Vegas on Sept. 9, 2022, said he would still record and perform with the band in a “residency situation.”After Mars publicly announced the change on Oct. 26, the band issued a separate statement saying that he had “retired” and that a guitarist named John 5 was replacing him.The other band members — Nikki Sixx, Vince Neil and Tommy Lee — called the emergency shareholders’ meeting, where they sought to fire Mars from seven band-affiliated corporations and limited-liability corporations, the lawsuit says. Those entities — Mötley Crüe Inc.; Mötley Crüe Touring Inc.; Red, White and Crue Inc.; Masters 2000 Inc.; Cruefest LLC; Mötley Records LLC; and Masters 2008 LLC — are listed as defendants in the lawsuit, which demands that Mars be allowed to review the band’s business records. He is also seeking reimbursement for his legal fees.Mars claims in his lawsuit that the band also demanded that he sign an agreement that his share of future touring profits and sales of merchandise featuring the band’s name and logo be reduced to 5 percent from 25 percent, and that he receive no income from sales of merchandise that “named or depicted” his replacement in the band.Sasha Frid, a lawyer for the band, said the lawsuit was “unfortunate and completely off base.” He said that Mars and other band members signed an agreement in 2008 that nobody would receive money from performances if they resigned.“Despite the fact that the band did not owe Mick anything — and with Mick owing the band millions in advances that he did not pay back — the band offered Mick a generous compensation package to honor his career with the band,” Frid said in an emailed statement. “Manipulated by his manager and lawyer, Mick refused and chose to file this ugly public lawsuit.”The lawsuit sheds light on the band’s tumultuous personal relationships, accusing Sixx, Mötley Crüe’s bassist, of making decisions on the band’s behalf without consulting his bandmates. Sixx also “gaslighted” Mars in recent years, the suit says, telling him that his guitar playing was subpar, that he often played the wrong chords onstage and that he had “some sort of cognitive dysfunction.”Frid provided The New York Times with signed declarations from seven members of the band’s crew, including the band’s production manager, who said Mars’s performance on Mötley Crüe’s 2022 stadium tour was “by far the worst I have ever seen in my years with the band.”“Mötley Crüe always performs its songs live, but during the last tour Mick struggled to remember chords, played the wrong songs and made constant mistakes which led to his departure from the band,” Frid said. “The band did everything to protect him, tried to keep these matters private to honor Mick’s legacy and take the high road.”In his lawsuit, Mars acknowledged occasionally playing the wrong chords on tour, but said it was because of a faulty in-ear monitor that made him unable to hear his guitar. Instead, he accused the other band members, including Sixx, of miming to recordings onstage. More

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      At 81, Ann-Margret Is Finally Living Her Rock ’n’ Roll Dream

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      Ann-Margret has always spoken in a voice that falls somewhere between a purr and a coo. But at her home on a recent rainy day in Los Angeles, she broke up her usual gauzy tones with deep and gutsy growls. “One, two, three o’clock rock!!!” she half-bellowed and half-yelled over a video chat, echoing the opening line from “Rock Around the Clock,” Bill Haley’s raucous 1954 smash.A few minutes later, she snarled through the opening salvo of “Splish Splash,” the highly caffeinated 1958 hit by Bobby Darin, only to follow it with the outburst, “I love rock ’n’ roll!” Her tone was far more Joan Jett than Kim McAfee, the sprightly character she played in “Bye Bye Birdie,” the movie that simultaneously made her a household name and the hottest pinup of 1963.Ann-Margret — pronounced as one name, not two — has always been rock ’n’ roll adjacent, though that’s rarely talked about today given her long and varied career as an actress and a singer of lounge classics. She co-starred with Elvis Presley in one of his most beloved films, “Viva Las Vegas,” provided a flirty foil to a character meant to affectionately send him up in “Birdie,” and had a personal relationship with him of varying description.Ann-Margret and Elvis Presley on the set of “Viva Las Vegas.” “We looked at one another and all of a sudden, I would do a pose and he’d be doing the same pose. We connected that way,” she said.Silver Screen Collection, via Getty ImagesShe also commanded a lead singing role in Ken Russell’s gaudy movie version of the Who’s rock opera “Tommy,” and earned a Grammy nomination for best new artist in 1962 after scoring a Top 20 hit with “I Just Don’t Understand,” one of the first recordings to feature a fuzz-toned guitar. Her song inspired a Beatles cover on the BBC two years later and, in 2014, the band Spoon recorded a version of her take, not the Fab Four’s.Yet, it’s only now, at the improbable age of 81, that Ann-Margret is getting the chance to assert herself as a full-on rock ’n’ roll goddess — if a winking one. On Friday she will release “Born to Be Wild,” the first album in the star’s career of 60-plus years to focus squarely on rock standards, all of which she handpicked, including Steppenwolf’s biker anthem referenced in the title and “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” which Elvis famously gyrated through in his own version.A host of legit rockers leaped at the chance to support her in this lark of a project, including the “Tommy” creator Pete Townshend, who sang and played whiplash guitar on her version of the Everly Brothers’ “Bye-Bye Love”; Steve Cropper, who added Memphis cred to “Son of a Preacher Man”; and Joe Perry, who shot stinging solos into her take on “Rock Around the Clock.” The album also features cameos from peers like Cliff Richard (82) and Pat Boone (88).“What she has done is extraordinary,” Townshend said by phone from London, adding an expletive for emphasis. “She picked up the silver thread that links her to the very genesis of rock ’n’ roll history. There’s a mischievousness to that, a light touch that’s perhaps necessary but also real.”Townshend compared receiving the invitation to play on her album to the time, in 1993, when he “was summoned to play with the Ramones. You know you won’t say no,” he added.“I feel the way I felt when I was 10 years old whenever the music plays,” Ann-Margret said.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesFrom the dining room of the Benedict Canyon home she has lived in since 1968, Ann-Margaret said she’d long harbored hopes of making a record like “Born to Be Wild.” “Deep inside I’ve wanted to do this kind of album forever,” she explained. She alluded to her outfit — a black sweater, tight leggings and leather boots that rose past the knee: “This is what I’ve been wearing since I first came to Los Angeles,” she said. “This is what I’m comfortable in.”She’s just as comfortable with language that dates from the ’50s, peppering her speech with words like “gadzooks” and “egad.” Looking youthful with her trademark auburn sweep of hair, Ann-Margret has also retained the coquettish character that first made her a star, giggling often when she speaks and never giving away more than she wants to. It was her original image, more than her music, that inspired Brian Perera, the head of Cleopatra Records, which specializes in projects of a historical nature, to propose the album to her.“When you look at vintage photos of her, she’s wearing a leather jacket and riding a motorcycle, so the thought of her doing a rock ’n’ roll record really fit,” he said in an interview.The “Born to Be Wild” album cover drives that home. It reproduces a 1967 poster created for her first Vegas show that finds her in a form-fitting jumpsuit while straddling a Triumph Tiger motorcycle. “I don’t think I can get into that jumpsuit today,” she said, and laughed. “But I can sure try!”Ann-Margret has always been rock ’n’ roll adjacent, though that’s rarely talked about today given her long and varied career as an actress and as a singer of lounge classics. Bettmann, via Getty ImagesAnn-Margret has always been hot for motorcycles. Her father and uncle rode them when she was a child in Sweden, and when she saw Marlon Brando straddle one in “The Wild One,” “that was it. I had to have one,” she said. “I didn’t know many women who rode bikes back then.”She still rides a Harley specially designed for her in lavender. It makes a perfect complement to her Cadillac, finished in her favorite shade: “Hot pink!” she exclaimed.It could be a twin to Elvis’s famously pink Caddy. The relationship between Ann-Margret and E.P., as she calls him, has been the subject of gossip for decades, but she still won’t speak about the personal aspects of it — only their creative link. “We looked at one another and all of a sudden, I would do a pose and he’d be doing the same pose. We connected that way,” she said.Her record company tried to stress the connection by having her record “Heartbreak Hotel,” but she never had much of a career as a hitmaker. It was her acting in “Carnal Knowledge” — praised in a New York Times review from 1971 — that convinced Townshend that she could really deliver in “Tommy.” While he called the major male actors in the 1975 film — Jack Nicholson and Oliver Reed — “egomaniacal, whiskey drinking lunatics,” he said that Ann-Margret was a consummate professional. She even carried off the absurdity of playing Roger Daltrey’s mother though she was just two years his senior.“I’m just happy to be alive,” Ann-Margret said. “I have the same friends I’ve had for 60 years, and I feel the way I felt when I first met them.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesOne of Ann-Margret’s most famous moments in “Tommy” involved geysers of baked beans being shot directly at her. “They came down a chute and then — pow! — it threw me about five feet back!” she said. “And it smelled!” She recalled that Russell said her character was meant to be experiencing a nervous breakdown during the scene, but to some viewers it looked more like she was having an orgasm. “That’s fine with me!” she added brightly.Townshend thinks the director, Russell, took a bit too much pleasure in having her do the scene repeatedly. “Ken loved to have a beautiful woman in his clutches covered in beans,” he said. “Let’s just do it again!”For the new album, he believes Ann-Margret made a perfect choice in having him perform with her on the Everly Brothers song. “My acoustic guitar style is loosely based on Don Everly’s,” he said.Pat Boone, who played Ann-Margret’s love interest in the 1963 musical “State Fair,” was at first taken aback by the song she chose for their duet, “Teach Me Tonight,” which he called “a love scene in a song.” “I thought, ‘What am I doing singing this?’” Boone said. “I’m 87 at that point and she’s got to be 80. I had to do it humorously.”So he ad-libbed the lines “I think we just wrote an octogenarian love song” and “I’ll have to turn up my hearing aid.” For the record, “I don’t wear hearing aids,” Boone added with a laugh.More saucy wit appears in a song Ann-Margret chose from her Vegas act, “Somebody’s in My Orchard,” which includes lines like “Somebody digs my fig trees/Somebody loves their juice.” “Oh, to see people’s faces when they finally realize what I’m singing about,” she said mischievously.Despite all the album’s humor, Paul Shaffer, who played piano on “The Great Pretender,” insists that her Vegas-style approach to music isn’t just camp. “She delivers the goods,” he said.When comparing her with young female entertainers like Taylor Swift and Demi Lovato, he added, “Aren’t they really doing Ann-Margret’s act?”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesLike all of the album’s guests, Shaffer recorded his parts separately from the star. He noted that her voice on the recording is lower and huskier than when she last cut an album, a gospel work reflecting her faith that was released 10 years ago. But Perera of Cleopatra Records believes Ann-Margret’s chestier tone works for the grinding sound of early rock. He added that “there isn’t a lot of new music coming from artists whose careers started in the ’50s and early ’60s. That makes it special.”The musicians who appear beside Ann-Margret on the album marveled over her ability, at 81, to convey a come-hither sexuality in her singing. To her, it makes an important point — that eroticism doesn’t have a cutoff date. At the same time, she made sure to deliver her sensuality with humor, and kept the tone of the music light.The only time she turned sad in our talk was when mentioning her husband, the actor Roger Smith, who served as her manager for much of their 50-year relationship and who died in 2017. Last year, she also lost her old friend and “Bye Bye Birdie” co-star Bobby Rydell, who died before he could finish a track he started for the album. Small wonder, when asked about how she feels about her upcoming 82nd birthday, she said, “I’m just happy to be alive. I have the same friends I’ve had for 60 years, and I feel the way I felt when I first met them.”Singing has the same effect: “I feel the way I felt when I was 10 years old whenever the music plays.” More

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      Inside “Night of 1000 Kates,” a Kate Bush-Themed Variety Show

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      The “Night of 1,000 Kates,” an annual variety show in Philadelphia, taps into the singer Kate Bush’s lasting appeal.PHILADELPHIA — For the last nine years, a variety show inspired by the British art pop singer Kate Bush has promised a “Night of 1,000 Kates.”This year’s edition, held on April 1, delivered on the event’s numerical promise for the first time; some 1,100 people attended, according to the show’s organizers. Many of the celebrants wore crimson dresses, dark sequins and other fancy goth attire inspired by Ms. Bush, who, as in years past, was present only in spirit.Some 80 other performers, including professional and amateur musicians, dancers and video artists, participated in more than 20 acts inspired by the sexagenarian British singer. The crowd at Union Transfer, a concert hall just outside Philadelphia’s Chinatown, was almost twice as big as that of last year’s show.Danielle Redden, 45, a founder of “Night of 1,000 Kates,” said it started as a party for “our friends and community of queers and weirdos” to celebrate their appreciation for Ms. Bush. Cookie Factorial, 42, another founder, said: “I don’t think that any of us thought it would be an enduring, legacy-type event.”Some 80 performers — including a harpist, left, and other musicians, dancers and video artists — participated in more than 20 acts at the event.Aaron Richter for The New York TimesThe rising interest in “Night of 1,000 Kates” reflects the lasting appeal of Ms. Bush, whose 1985 song “Running Up That Hill (a Deal With God)” topped charts in 2022 — some 37 years after it was released — thanks largely to its prominently use in “Stranger Things” on Netflix.Aaron Mack, 23, a wardrobe supervisor for a theater group in Philadelphia, was born decades after Ms. Bush’s career started to take off in the 1970s. He nevertheless identified himself as “Kate Bush’s No. 1 fan.”Mr. Mack said he wants to get “a Kate Bush tramp stamp” tattooed on his lower back to express his admiration for the singer. “It’s going to be a portrait of her,” he added, surrounded by things that have come to symbolize Ms. Bush, like the red shoes on the cover of her 1993 album, “The Red Shoes.”Donna Petrecco, 48, a real estate agent in Fallsington, Pa., said she has been listening to Ms. Bush’s music for most of her life. Ms. Petrecco, a former cheerleader for the Philadelphia Eagles, came to the show for the first time with two friends — Lisa Coslanzo, 51, and Kita Delgado, 46 — both of whom also used to cheer for the Eagles.Ms. Delgado, who lives in Fairless Hills, Pa., wore shimmering silver pants for the occasion. She said she was most excited about seeing the dance performances. But she also came to dance herself, at the after-party.This year’s “Night of 1,000 Kates” delivered on the event’s numerical promise for the first time; some 1,100 people attended, according to the show’s organizers.Aaron Richter for The New York TimesCelebrants in crimson dresses cut a rug during the after-party, which raged until about 2 a.m.Aaron Richter for The New York Times“You’ll find these sparkly pants dancing in the corner in two hours,” said Ms. Delgado, who runs a dog-boarding business. She and her friends, she added, “can still throw down a little bit.”Many performers and attendees said part of the event’s appeal is its unbridled enthusiasm. “I would describe it as a bunch of fabulous weirdos decked out in their best ready to have a great time,” said Alex Melman, 33, a director of technology at an advocacy group in Philadelphia.Mr. Melman’s band, Roof of the World, was new to the performance lineup this year. The group performed Ms. Bush’s song “Wild Man,” about spotting Yetis in the Himalayan mountains. Its act was preceded by a harpist-keyboardist duo’s rendition of Ms. Bush’s song “And Dream of Sheep,” and was followed by a group of dancers wearing white-lace outfits and holding scepters filled with dry ice, which turned into vapor as they performed.“The tone of the show, like Kate’s work, is a mix of deeply earnest and really, really silly,” said Kelly Crodian, a 38-year-old artist in Philadelphia, whose video art set to Ms. Bush’s song “Suspended in Gaffa” was featured at the event.Brian O’Sullivan, 31, an occupational therapist in Philadelphia, described the show as having “avant-garde, weird, Enya and Bjork vibes” and the humor of “Cathy” comics.Mr. O’Sullivan, a three-time attendee, hopes the event can retain its eccentricity as it grows. “We’ve got to keep it a little bit underground,” he said. “My biggest fear is that this is going to become corny.”From left, one of the more avant-garde outfits at the show; a sign used Ms. Bush’s likeness to encourage mask-wearing; and a guest enjoying a performance. Aaron Richter for The New York TimesThough the “Night of 1,000 Kates” has evolved, certain elements have remained the same, including the final act of the show: a dance lesson, led by most of the night’s performers, to some of the choreography from the video for Ms. Bush’s 1978 hit single, “Wuthering Heights.” Another tradition is the after-party, which this year raged until about 2 a.m.Keira Wilson, a 37-year-old career counselor in Baltimore, has attended the show off and on since it started in 2014. She said it has managed to retain its unique spirit even as it has become bigger.“Over the last couple of years I have watched many of my friends take on many formations of Kate Bush,” Ms. Wilson said. “Each year this entire project gets bigger and bigger. And I’m really excited to see that happen.” More