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

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

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

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

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      Kesha and Dr. Luke Settle Defamation Lawsuit

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      The producer and pop singer had been involved in a nearly decade-long legal saga that began with a contract disagreement.The pop super-producer and songwriter known as Dr. Luke has dropped a defamation lawsuit against the singer Kesha, a former protégée who had accused him of rape in a 2014 lawsuit, the two parties announced in a joint statement on Thursday. The announcement signaled the end of a nearly decade-long legal saga that has riveted the music world and come to define both artists’ intertwining public narratives.The statement, posted to social media accounts belonging to both individuals, said that Kesha and Dr. Luke had “agreed to a joint resolution of the lawsuit,” which was scheduled to go to trial next month in New York after years of delays.In a pair of quotes attributed to each musician separately but presented together, Kesha said, “Only God knows what happened that night,” adding: “As I have always said, I cannot recount everything that happened. I am looking forward to closing the door on this chapter in my life and beginning a new one. I wish nothing but peace to all parties involved.”Dr. Luke, born Lukasz Gottwald, added, “While I appreciate Kesha again acknowledging that she cannot recount what happened that night in 2005, I am absolutely certain that nothing happened. I never drugged or assaulted her and would never do that to anyone. For the sake of my family, I have vigorously fought to clear my name for nearly 10 years. It is time for me to put this difficult matter behind me and move on with my life. I wish Kesha well.”In a ruling earlier this month, the New York Court of Appeals reversed an earlier decision by a lower court, calling Dr. Luke a “public figure,” which would have raised the bar to prove defamation at trial by requiring him to prove that Kesha had acted with actual malice. The court added that a state judge should have allowed Kesha to file counterclaims against Dr. Luke for distress and damages.No criminal charges were ever filed in the case.The legal back-and-forth began when Kesha claimed in a 2014 civil filing in California that she should be released from her recording contract with Dr. Luke, one of the industry’s most successful behind-the-scenes figures, because the producer had “sexually, physically, verbally and emotionally abused” her since she was a teenager. The singer cited a 2005 incident not long after the pair began working together in which Kesha said she was drugged and raped by Dr. Luke after a party.The pair worked together closely for the next decade, selling millions of albums and scoring two No. 1 hits, “Tik Tok,” in 2009, and “We R Who We R,” in 2010. But in her 2014 lawsuit, Kesha said that abuse from the producer, which included insults about her appearance and weight, had pushed her to the point that she “nearly lost her life.” Eventually, as the #FreeKesha campaign built online, stars including Adele, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Fiona Apple, Ariana Grande and Kelly Clarkson rallied behind Kesha’s cause.“I cannot work with this monster,” Kesha wrote in a 2015 affidavit, years before #MeToo became a rallying cry in the entertainment industry and beyond. “I physically cannot. I don’t feel safe in any way.”Lawyers for Dr. Luke, a notoriously private figure in the industry, said throughout the legal fight that the rape and abuse accusations — which they called “extortionist threats” by Kesha, her lawyer at the time, Mark Geragos, and her mother — stemmed only from contentious contract negotiations that began in 2013.Dr. Luke countersued for defamation in New York, and pointed to additional contracts that Kesha signed after the alleged 2005 rape, in addition to a sworn deposition, from 2011, in which Kesha said, “Dr. Luke never made sexual advances at me.”In a statement on Thursday, Christine Lepera, a lawyer for Dr. Luke, said the producer “has been consistent from day one that Kesha’s accusations against him were completely false. Kesha’s voluntary public statement clears Luke’s name as it proves she had no ground to accuse him of any wrongdoing.”For years, the cases wound their way through legal systems on two coasts. And while Kesha seemed to dominate in the arena of public opinion — culminating in an all-star performance of a survivor’s anthem at the Grammy Awards in 2018 — most of her legal claims were rejected in court or withdrawn, leaving her on the defensive in Dr. Luke’s remaining defamation suit.In 2016, a New York judge tossed Kesha’s own counterclaims of infliction of emotional distress, gender-based hate crimes and employment discrimination, citing a lack of evidence and jurisdiction. (Her California suit was stayed in favor of the New York action, and later dropped.)As the legal battle continued, Kesha said that Dr. Luke’s “scorched earth litigation tactics” had halted her ability to release music on his label, Kemosabe Records, then a joint venture with Sony Music. (“Dr. Luke promised me he would stall my career if I ever stood up for myself for any reason,” the singer wrote in her 2015 affidavit. “He is doing just that.”)But when her lawsuit stalled, Kesha began once again releasing albums via Dr. Luke’s companies, referring obliquely but definitively to their plight on the LPs “Rainbow” (2017), “High Ground” (2020) and “Gag Order,” released last month. While the albums helped grow Kesha’s public persona from a wild party girl into an underdog feminist icon, they struggled commercially; “Gag Order” debuted in May at No. 187 on the Billboard 200, selling just 8,300 copies.Dr. Luke, for a time, saw his career sink, as well. Following a string of chart-topping singles with artists like Katy Perry, Cyrus and Clarkson in the 2000s and early 2010s, the producer struggled for years to find hits amid the Kesha backlash. After working intermittently under pseudonyms, Dr. Luke has since returned to the mainstream — while remaining very much a background figure — finding success (and Grammy nominations) with acts like Doja Cat, Kim Petras, Nicki Minaj and Latto.Last month, Dr. Luke was named ASCAP’s pop songwriter of the year for the third time, following wins in 2010 and 2011. More

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      ‘Rock & Roll Man’ Review: An Alan Freed Biography

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      A bio-show about the radio D.J. Alan Freed, one of rock music’s early popularizers, dutifully plays the hits.The musical “Rock & Roll Man” starts with an attention-grabbing gambit: It is 1965, and J. Edgar Hoover is prosecuting the D.J. and promoter Alan Freed, then at death’s door. Hoover has accused Freed of destroying “the American way of life by inventing the genre of music which you named rock and roll.”A good clue that the scene takes place not in reality but in the mind of the ailing Freed (Constantine Maroulis, from “Rock of Ages” and “Jekyll & Hyde”) is that he is defended by Little Richard (Rodrick Covington) — who is quick to point out that his client did not actually invent rock.What Freed did do was play R&B singles on the radio shows he hosted in Cleveland and then New York, introducing so-called race records to white audiences. He then marketed the music as “rock and roll.”The bulk of this bio-show, which opened on Wednesday at New World Stages, consists of a flashback that unfurls infinitely more conventionally than the prologue.In the early 1950s, Freed discovers new sounds at a record store run by Leo Mintz (Joe Pantoliano), and he immediately falls in love with the raucous music bringing white and Black teenagers together. His growing success as a D.J. takes him to New York, where he starts associating with Morris Levy (Pantoliano again), the shady record label and nightclub owner.Gary Kupper, Larry Marshak and Rose Caiola’s book dutifully strings together a parade of hits by the likes of LaVern Baker (Valisia LeKae), Jerry Lee Lewis (Dominique Scott), Chuck Berry and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins (both played by Matthew S. Morgan). But Randal Myler’s production never generates early rock’s chaotic, often suggestive energy. Freed may have imagined the trial, but it reflects a time when rock was seen as an attack on the sexual and racial order; the show, however, make it hard to understand why Freed and the artists he championed were seen as a threat to American values.Freed was an interesting fellow, and his life was plenty rock ’n’ roll. Unfortunately, the show mostly skims over the fact that in addition to hobnobbing with Levy — they both eventually went down for payola — Freed overindulged in booze and women. The storytelling is especially haphazard when dealing with his family life.Even worse is that since Freed himself did not sing, Maroulis — a former “American Idol” contestant who is the rare musical-theater performer able to convincingly rock — doesn’t get to do any of the hits and is instead stuck performing perfunctory originals written by Kupper. He gets to let loose a little on the title number, at the very end of the show, but by then it’s too little and way too late.Rock & Roll ManAt New World Stages, Manhattan; newworldstages.com. Running time: 2 hours. More

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      A Britney Spears Jukebox Musical Hopes for #SeeBritney Energy

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      “Once Upon a One More Time” is bringing hits like “Toxic” and “Circus” to Broadway. Will Spears’s fiercely protective base embrace it?The book writer for “Once Upon a One More Time,” the Britney Spears jukebox musical opening on Broadway Thursday night, often returns to a memory from five years ago, when Spears sat in a Manhattan theater a few rows in front of him and watched an early reading of the show.“I was just watching her and it was like, ‘Is she going to like this?’” the writer, Jon Hartmere, said recently, recalling his relief whenever he saw Spears clap along or smile as one of her songs came on. “It was pure delight.”A campy fairy-tale spoof that sidesteps the bio-musical formula to focus on a cast of disillusioned Disney princesses and storybook protagonists, “Once Upon a One More Time” is the latest in a long line of jukebox musicals that have plumbed the catalogs of acts including Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, Michael Jackson, Tina Turner and the Temptations in pursuit of box office gold.The musical offers Spears-themed merchandise.Ye Fan for The New York TimesWith a track list stacked with hits such as “Stronger,” “Toxic” and “Circus,” the show has the potential for boffo success, but it also faces unique challenges. Originally conceived when Spears was under a conservatorship that gave her father vast control over her life, the production has assured fans that the show was fully authorized by the pop star herself after she was freed from the arrangement. But it is unclear how much her fiercely loyal fan base — whose activism helped fuel the unraveling of the conservatorship — will embrace it. It would likely only take one spirited comment from Spears, a 41-year-old star with a reputation for unfiltered and unpredictable social media posts, to win or lose that audience.Fans inside and outside the production have been keeping a close eye on Spears’s famously active Instagram account to see if she opines on the show (she hasn’t, yet). And cast and crew members have sought assurances internally that the production’s profits are benefiting Spears herself, rather than her former managers or her father, James P. Spears, who was named her conservator amid concerns about her mental health and went on to exercise control over her personal life and finances for more than a decade, even as she continued to perform.“As artists, we just want her to be able to make her own decisions and to live her life the way she hoped to,” said Keone Madrid, who directed and choreographed the show with his creative partner and wife, Mari Madrid. “We all yearn to honor her work.”Hunter Arnold, one of the show’s lead producers, said Spears signed the contract herself after the conservatorship was terminated and that no one else in Spears’s camp currently has a deal to receive profits.The outfit Taylor McKenzie wore to the musical was inspired by the one that Spears wore in the “Baby One More Time” video.Ye Fan for The New York TimesA representative for Spears did not make her available for an interview but confirmed the timing of the most recent deal and added that the singer had provided notes in response to videos of the Madrids’ choreography.The opening comes at a time when Spears’s life has continued to be the subject of gossip items. Since the legal arrangement was terminated, Spears has announced her marriage to Sam Asghari, something she had said she was not able to do under the conservatorship, and briefly returned to the music industry, releasing a track with Elton John. The legal battle over winding down the conservatorship has continued in Los Angeles, where her lawyers have lodged objections to some of the accounting during the conservatorship years.Within the production, the desire to please Spears has sometimes meant seizing on the dribs and drabs of information that they get from representatives of a reclusive megastar.Britney likes fairy tales? The show is based in a world where Cinderella, Snow White and Rapunzel are friends. Britney loves butterflies? The production made props of the insects and made the show’s branding into what looks like butterfly-shaped rainbow floodlights, which theatergoers can pose with outside the theater. (“That might be an example of where we had tried to lean in too hard,” Hartmere said of the show’s monthlong tryout in Washington, D.C., noting that the show had gotten rid of a “butterfly vortex” for the Broadway production.)”Once Upon a One More Time” invites fans to pose for shareable pictures. “The spirit of it has always been serving her desires,” Arnold said.Because of revelations around how Spears’s father and former management company benefited financially from the conservatorship, the musical’s financial structure has been a central point of scrutiny for some fans.Initially, production papers from late 2019 listed a company called Shiloh Standing, Inc., which was started by Spears’s father shortly after the creation of the conservatorship, as being entitled to 7.5 percent of the production’s net profits, according to documents filed with New York State’s attorney general’s office. Larry Rudolph, Spears’s former manager, was also slated to receive funds, including a $30,000 executive producer fee, plus $1,500 per week.The show’s creators have tried to cater to the wishes of Spears and her fandom.Ye Fan for The New York TimesBut plans for a short run in Chicago in 2020, followed by a Broadway transfer, were scuttled by the pandemic, the show was put on hold and, in that time, Spears’s world was transformed. Leslie Papa, a spokeswoman for the show, said that Spears’s contract was negotiated and signed in 2022, after the termination of the conservatorship, and provides all compensation directly to her.Arnold said Spears has a stake in the show’s royalties through music licensing proceeds, in addition to an underlying rights deal, which he said was carved out in recognition of her role in popularizing the music, even if other lyricists and music producers own much of the rights to the songs. He declined to specify the exact payment structure for Spears, and it is not included in government filings thus far.According to a copy of a 2022 budget for the Broadway musical that was shared with The New York Times by someone who was not authorized to discuss the production, the advance payment for the underlying rights deal associated with the show was $80,000. Arnold noted that with successful Broadway shows, royalties often quickly outpace initial advances.Several high school seniors from Pennsylvania came to see the show. Ye Fan for The New York TimesSo far some of the biggest social media accounts associated with the movement to end the conservatorship, known as #FreeBritney, have said little about the musical, especially in contrast to the fan excitement around the Elton John collaboration.But many of the ticket holders at previews at the Marquis Theater are quick to label themselves as devoted Britney fans, and they react with delight at the show’s many knowing references to the pop star, which include a snippet of the original choreography from “Oops! … I Did It Again” that tends to make the audience erupt. Because they spent their early teenage years internalizing Spears’s dancing on MTV, the Madrids, who are known for their narrative choreography and staccato isolations, consider themselves “natural extensions of her and her work.”“Her music has always been around in my life in one way or another,” Mari Madrid said.Those references are like a running inside joke that most of the audience seems to understand. The crowd doesn’t hear the word “Britney” through the entire show — it’s only at the end that the speakers blast the pop star’s most famous opening line: “It’s Britney, bitch.” None of the show’s official merchandise carries Spears’s image, but one fast-selling tote bag proclaims, “It’s Broadway, bitch.”Stoyanka Damyanova, who is visiting from Bulgaria, was there seeing the musical for the third time.Ye Fan for The New York TimesNelson Saavedra Jr., the owner of the #FreeBritney page on Reddit, has opted to support the show and has attended two preview performances already, noting that any direct assessment from Spears would influence his own thinking on it.“Britney signed the deal after she was free so let’s just move on and take that at face value,” Saavedra said. “Of course, that would change tomorrow if she said, ‘Please don’t go see this play.’”Audience members can be forgiven for thinking that the musical’s central theme — a cohort of famed damsels in distress taking control of their own lives — is some grand metaphor for Spears’s release from the conservatorship, but Hartmere said the parallels are just coincidence.“It’s this story about women learning what they can and should have out of life,” Hartmere said. “That’s always been the story from the get-go.”For Hartmere, returning to that memory of Spears watching that early performance also engenders some anxiety: What if she ends up disappointed that some songs did not make the final cut? The show’s creators could not figure out how to make the risqué lyrics from her 2016 track “Clumsy” fit for children, so the song was removed.Right now, the creators can only wait to see if Spears decides to attend a performance — which, they acknowledge, is anyone’s best guess.Michael Paulson and Liz Day contributed reporting. More

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      Pink Floyd, ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and Me

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      Last October, when Roger Waters brought his “This Is Not a Drill” tour through Austin, Texas, he also took the time to record a nearly three-hour appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast. These are typically rambling affairs, guided by the host’s idiosyncratic curiosities, and about halfway through, following a riff by Waters about nuclear […] More

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      Readers’ Picks: 12 Pride Anthems

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      A playlist with personal stories about the ways music plays a vital role in struggles, triumphs and self-expression.Diana Ross’s “I’m Coming Out” has soundtracked many more.Mike Blake/ReutersDear listeners,A few weeks ago, I asked you to submit songs to help create the ultimate Pride playlist. As usual, you delivered. Big time.Today’s Amplifier is made up entirely of your suggestions and your stories. Some of these songs gave you the courage and enthusiasm to come out, and some are the tracks that you think best encapsulate the spirit of Pride.A few might be a little obvious — could we really have a Pride playlist without Diana Ross and Sister Sledge? — but that just makes them easier to share with your chosen family. Some of these songs address the queer experience directly, while others have been adopted — perhaps with a flair of camp — as unofficial anthems. And, as you may have guessed, almost all of them will make you want to dance.Thank you to each and every one of you who submitted a song and your comments; it was a total joy to read about the ways that music has played such a vital role in your struggles, your triumphs and your self-expression. As one reader (who also wrote the entry for the fourth song on the playlist) so eloquently put it, “Pride is all about overcoming the shame, the fear, the darkness in our lives and coming alive.” Amen to that.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Thelma Houston: “Don’t Leave Me This Way”1976 was the year I “emerged.” I discovered the joy and positive energy in the clubs filled with others like me. We danced and built important, supportive friendships, and found safety in numbers. Coming out was a longer journey of self-acceptance. This song was heard over and over, and brought everyone out on the dance floor together. It gave me hope. — Mark Pettygrove, Palm Springs, Calif. (Listen on YouTube)2. Perfume Genius: “Slip Away”Most of Perfume Genius’s songs speak to queer desires/experiences, but this one is especially colorful. “Slip Away” is a queer ballad about a relationship constantly under scrutiny by others, ultimately choosing each other over external pressures. It took years for me to start dating after I came out, but this song continued to remind me of the validity and power of queer love, no matter what anyone else may say or do. — Arley Sakai, Portland, Ore. (Listen on YouTube)3. Sophie B. Hawkins: “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover”“Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover” by Sophie B Hawkins gave voice to my gay teen desire in a way that I couldn’t articulate at the time. She sings about a kind of exquisite longing that is so germane to the queer experience: uncontrollably erotic, unrequited, transgressive and liberating. This song gave me permission to step into feelings that had hitherto been scary to me. It gave me permission to love. — Brendan Healy, Toronto (Listen on YouTube)4. Joe Jackson: “Steppin’ Out”I moved to San Francisco when this song was popular, and while the song is not specifically L.G.B.T.Q.-themed, it was all about the strong positive energy of living life out loud. San Francisco was a place to explore who I was, to get away from family and expectations and fears. I knew Joe Jackson was gay … I felt that he was talking to us! — David Silver, Kalaheo, Hawaii (Listen on YouTube)5. Tom Robinson Band: “2-4-6-8 Motorway”This was 1978, and my biggest fear as a teenage proto-gay in Scranton, Pa., was not that I would be shunned by my family, or die alone, or anything similarly dramatic. I worried that I would have to grow a mustache and learn to love disco. The existence of the out gay rocker Tom Robinson suggested that there were other options. “(Sing if You’re) Glad to Be Gay” is a more obvious T.R. choice, but “2-4-6-8 Motorway” was much more fun. — Michael Logan, Los Angeles (Listen on YouTube)6. Bronski Beat: “Smalltown Boy”As a 19-year-old gay woman, the song “Smalltown Boy” by Bronski Beat gave me courage to come out and escape to a world where women could love women, men could love men. “Smalltown Boy” is not necessarily about running away from a heterosexual upbringing but toward pride, freedom and acceptance. — Dawn Groundwater, New York (Listen on YouTube)7. Madonna: “Holiday”I like to joke that I came out the same time Madonna’s first album did. Coming out in suburbia in 1983 was so different. There were zero role models and not even a place to go to find my people. To me, “Holiday” was a metaphor for that place where I could live inside a bright, shiny rainbow. — J.P. Streeter, Alameda, Calif. (Listen on YouTube)8. Pet Shop Boys: “Go West”When I need a burst of gay freedom I dance it out to “Go West” by the Pet Shop Boys. It makes me feel like there’s a perfect place where I can really start a new life … in the open air … where people like us are free to be who we are! Go ahead and listen to it. I dare you to not be dancing by the end! — Jack Terry, Northville, Mich. (Listen on YouTube)9. CeCe Peniston: “Finally”I was a couple of years into my military career and had been on temporary duty in June 2001. I took a few extra days of leave at the end, which happened to coincide with Seattle Pride. Even though it was cool and rained off and on, the outdoor stage at the Eagle had CeCe singing “Finally” at the first Pride event I’d ever attended, and it felt amazing to “finally” be there. She gave it her all for the slightly damp crowd. I couldn’t believe my luck to hear these ladies I’d hammed to in high school and went back for Pride in Seattle a couple more times when I could. — Eric, Kentucky (Listen on YouTube)10. Diana Ross: “I’m Coming Out”My coming out song at the age of 38 was “I’m Coming Out” by Diana Ross. After all of the great disco/gay-themed songs of the late ’70s, this is the one that got to me and led me to take that big step, partly due to the fact that it was by the legendary Diana Ross, who had such influence, being a global star. Everyone loved this song, making it an easy access statement for me in my quest to come out. — Harry N. Cohen, Queens (Listen on YouTube)11. Cass Elliot: “Make Your Own Kind of Music”Every single word of that song captures the feelings of knowing you are different and sharing that with the world will be hard. It may be rough, you may be alone, but you have that special song that the world needs to hear. Somehow, the dose of reality in that song, that you may lose some people in your life who “cannot take your hand,” is oddly reassuring. There may be a price to pay to sing your song, but it pales in comparison to the feeling of being free to sing it. I heard it first in the movie “Beautiful Thing,” bought the soundtrack, listened to it on repeat for what seemed liked hundreds of times and then came out to my family and friends. — Jared Schrock, Pittsburgh (Listen on YouTube)12. Sister Sledge: “We Are Family”As a young woman who grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, I felt quite alone as I realized I was a lesbian. The first time I heard “We Are Family” by Sister Sledge in a gay/lesbian bar and every person in the room hit the dance floor for a group dance, I knew I wasn’t alone. Many of us have to create our own families, families of choice, because our biological families rebuke us. “We Are Family” says right out loud that you can create a family. — Becky Wood, North Carolina (Listen on YouTube)“We Are Family” still feels like optimism one dreams for in Pride — in melody, production, lyric, and in spirit, more so than any other song I know of. — Patience NewburyAt the legendary show bar/entertainment complex El Goya in Ybor City, Fla., the entire drag show cast came onto the stage at the end of the Friday and Saturday night performances to lead the S.R.O. crowd in this iconic song. By this time the eclectic and dapper crowd have abandoned their tables to line the perimeter of the ample show bar and belt out the song right along with the queens. For the first time in my life, I felt a part of a group. Seems like we all had arrived at a big family reunion and everyone knew all the words as we joined hands and looked each other right in the eye. Finally, we were united and we were home. — Nina Gros, Louisville, Ky.Padam padam,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Readers’ Picks! 12 Pride Anthems” track listTrack 1: Thelma Houston, “Don’t Leave Me This Way”Track 2: Perfume Genius, “Slip Away”Track 3: Sophie B. Hawkins, “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover”Track 4: Joe Jackson, “Steppin’ Out”Track 5: Tom Robinson Band, “2-4-6-8 Motorway”Track 6: Bronski Beat, “Smalltown Boy”Track 7: Madonna, “Holiday”Track 8: Pet Shop Boys, “Go West”Track 9: CeCe Peniston, “Finally”Track 10: Diana Ross, “I’m Coming Out”Track 11: Cass Elliot, “Make Your Own Kind of Music”Track 12: Sister Sledge, “We Are Family”Bonus tracksYes, this playlist is mostly upbeat and celebratory, but plenty of you also shared the songs that made you feel seen in your lower moments. I particularly appreciated this suggestion, from Kenny in Brooklyn, of the young Chicago singer-songwriter Claud’s melancholy ballad “Tommy”:“This song helped me name the unique depression that comes with body dysmorphia. Listening to ‘Tommy’ made me realize that I will be happier in relationships once I accept being trans. It’s a very sad song about not being seen in your body, and there’s a comfort that comes with sharing and naming that sadness with others.” More

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      Elton John Warns of ‘Growing Swell of Anger and Homophobia’ in U.S.

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      “We seem to be going backwards,” the pop superstar warned as he lamented the curtailing of L.G.B.T.Q. rights in the United States, particularly in Florida.The British pop superstar Elton John lamented the “growing swell of anger and homophobia” in the United States and described several laws recently passed in Florida that curtail L.G.B.T.Q. rights as “disgraceful.”“It’s all going pear-shaped in America,” John, a longtime leader for gay rights and visibility, said in an interview published Tuesday in Radio Times, in which he pointed to a rise in violent incidents and recent legislation curtailing rights. “We seem to be going backwards. And that spreads. It’s like a virus that the L.G.B.T.Q.+ movement is suffering.”More than 520 pieces of such legislation have been introduced in over 40 states this year, a record, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group.“I don’t like it at all,” John said, referring to the increasingly hostile climate. “It’s a growing swell of anger and homophobia that’s around America.”John, 76, will headline Glastonbury, Britain’s biggest music festival, on Sunday, as his lengthy final tour, Farewell Yellow Brick Road, heads toward its finale in Stockholm on July 8. The tour, which will have had over 330 dates, began in 2018 but was interrupted by the pandemic as well as John’s hip surgery.As he prepared to perform at Glastonbury, the last British date on the tour, John said that he did not know if the rising anti-L.G.B.T.Q. sentiment is as prevalent in Britain. “I don’t know if it’s around Britain, because I haven’t been here that much,” he said.But he called the scandal around the prominent British news anchor Phillip Schofield — who recently resigned after admitting he had a relationship with a younger man — “totally homophobic.”“If it was a straight guy in a fling with a young woman, it wouldn’t even make the papers,” John said.In the interview with Radio Times, John said he might eventually be open to doing a residency after his farewell tour ends, “but not in America.” That, his representatives said, is for the same reason that he had decided to stop touring: He wants to spend more time with his husband and children, who live in Britain.Last year, John — who objected to his songs being played at rallies for former President Donald J. Trump — performed at the Biden White House. “I just wish America could be more bipartisan,” John said as he sat at his piano. After his set, President Biden awarded John the National Humanities Medal. More