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      First Favorite Songs Are Like Sonic Baby Pictures

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      How a minor 1989 George Harrison single from the “Lethal Weapon 2” soundtrack opened a young listener’s ears.George Harrison, when he first had an impact on The Amplifier’s author.Pete Still/Redferns, via Getty ImagesDear listeners,What was your first favorite song?I’m not talking about that hip, semi-obscure tune around which you formulated your preteen identity — the one you told everyone at school you loved because it made you seem mysterious and cool. I’m talking about a time before all that, before you were conscious of taste, and all you knew about a song you loved was that it struck a resounding chord somewhere deep inside of you.Here’s what I’m talking about:Shortly after I turned 3, “Lethal Weapon 2” came out on VHS. One night my dad was lucky enough to score this coveted Blockbuster rental, and because it was — gasp! — an R-rated movie, I was not allowed to go in the living room while he was watching it. Of course, for the next two hours there was nowhere in the universe that I wanted to be more desperately than the living room.From my safe, G-rated perch upstairs, I strained to hear any sound I could make out from this tantalizingly forbidden flick. I was getting so cranky about it that my parents made me a compromise: They would let me watch the closing credits of “Lethal Weapon 2” — a black screen filled with a bunch of ascending white words and names I could not yet read. But it didn’t matter, because the song that played while they scrolled was incredible. “Again!” I cried when it was over; they were kind and rewound. There I sat directly in front of the television, enraptured by what turned out to be a very minor 1989 George Harrison single, “Cheer Down.”I didn’t yet know who George Harrison was. I didn’t yet know that it is kind of random that George Harrison wrote the theme song for “Lethal Weapon 2.” I didn’t even know who the Beatles were. I just knew that this evocative, lightly melancholic sequence of chords, that comfortingly gruff voice and those slide guitar notes that streak across the song’s coda like shooting stars made me feel a certain way, and that I wanted to feel that way forever.Before he returned it to the video store — F.B.I. agents, look away! — my dad gamely taped the closing credits for me on a blank VHS. It’s still an inside joke in my family, the story of a 3-year-old future music critic constantly asking her parents to put on “the ‘Lethal Weapon tape,’” just so she could listen to this Harrison song over and over.You can learn a lot about a person from asking about their first favorite songs — it’s the sonic equivalent of looking at someone’s baby pictures. And since I’ve been dropping into your inbox twice a week with this newsletter, I figured it was only fair that you heard a few of mine.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Cat Stevens: “Moonshadow”I am pretty sure someone sang this as a lullaby to me when I was a baby, and to this day the-artist-formerly-known-as-Cat-Stevens’s voice can still make me feel an almost preternatural comfort — a feeling of being swaddled beyond what even the heaviest weighted blanket can offer. My parents got a CD player (state-of-the-art technology) when I was young, and I can still remember being taught how to place “Cat Stevens: Greatest Hits” into the tray very, very carefully and cue up track 8, which was of course my song, “Moonshadow.” (Listen on YouTube)2. Tom Petty: “Free Fallin’”I grew up in New Jersey and did not visit the West Coast until my mid-20s, so throughout my youth the proper nouns in this song sounded exquisitely exotic to me: Mulholland, Ventura Boulevard, this surely indescribably glamorous oasis called “Reseda.” “Free Fallin’” would now probably land on the shortlist of the most overplayed American rock songs of the 20th century, and yet — perhaps the reason I cannot imagine ever getting sick of it — I can still travel back to a time when its lyrics sounded alluringly strange to me, and when I believed there might be actual vampires haunting Ventura Boulevard. (Petty also co-wrote “Cheer Down,” and Jeff Lynne helped produce both of those songs — so clearly the Traveling Wilburys had a hold on my musical taste from an early age.) (Listen on YouTube)3. U2: “Zoo Station”After it came out in late 1991, U2’s angsty, glammy “Achtung Baby” was an absolute staple in my parents’ steel-blue Ford Taurus. Taking it in over and over again from the back seat, this album seemed to contain all of the mysteries of the adult world, set somewhere just beyond my realm of understanding. All I knew was that it sounded cool. And a little scary! On “Achtung Baby,” relatively straightforward rock songs are haunted by weird, ghostly sounds, like the mournful, malfunctioning tape loop at the beginning of “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses,” the eerie distortion of “Until the End of the World” or any number of ghost noises that lurk throughout the tone-setting opener “Zoo Station.” I later realized that a lot of this strangeness was the result of the Edge’s adventurousness with effects pedals and, even more ineffably, Brian Eno’s arty production. (I also realized much later — for shame — that “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” was an iconic second-wave feminist slogan, not a funny lyric that Bono made up.) No matter what U2 does or how many albums it forcefully installs on my iPhone, “Achtung Baby” will always have a special place in my heart for being one of the first records to freak me out — in a good way. (Listen on YouTube)4. Peter Gabriel: “Steam”Peter Gabriel is another artist whose voice and melodic sensibility I’ve been drawn to — disquieted and then subsequently comforted by — for as long as I can remember. The seemingly childlike “Games Without Frontiers” was a song I always loved hearing on the radio, even if its geopolitical message and lyrical content went completely over my head. The one I requested over and over, though, was Gabriel’s punchy, absurdly satirical 1992 single “Steam.” (It boasts what I now regard as the most 1992 music video of all time.) Except I confess that I thought that this song was called … “Steve.” Yes, “Steve.” I imagined on the chorus he was demanding, somewhat menacingly over a telephone, “Give me Steve.” Being a kid is weird. So is this song. (Listen on YouTube)5. Fine Young Cannibals: “She Drives Me Crazy”This song was everywhere as the ’80s became the ’90s — it topped the Billboard Hot 100 for a week in April 1989 — and, to quote a phrase, I just could not help myself. The bright, synthetic textures were such an adrenaline rush to me: the cavernous echo of that hopscotching breakbeat, those jagged lightning-bolt riffs that puncture the production’s perfect sheen, and the acrobatic, androgynous beauty of Roland Gift’s vocals. It sounded like the national anthem of another planet, and I wanted to live there. Even today, I’ll sometimes become obsessed with a song and not realize why I can’t stop listening to it, until I realize: “Duh, it kind of sounds like ‘She Drives Me Crazy.’” I am of course incredibly biased, still being an excitable ’80s baby at heart, but I still think it’s one of the more perfect pop songs ever written. (Listen on YouTube)6. George Harrison: “Cheer Down”Play the “Lethal Weapon” tape! Again! (Listen on YouTube)Give me Steve,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Sonic Baby Pictures” track listTrack 1: Cat Stevens, “Moonshadow”Track 2: Tom Petty, “Free Fallin’”Track 3: U2, “Zoo Station”Track 4: Peter Gabriel, “Steam”Track 5: Fine Young Cannibals, “She Drives Me Crazy”Track 6: George Harrison, “Cheer Down”Bonus tracksA few years back, I wrote about another song that similarly enchanted me as a child, perhaps more than any other: Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” I omitted that track from this playlist because I would prefer that you continue subscribing to this newsletter, but you can read that essay if you’re so inclined.I also love this 2014 column from my old colleague at Pitchfork, the brilliant Jayson Greene, about a song that captivated him at a very early age: Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.”Plus, if you’re looking for new music, this week’s Playlist has fresh tracks from PinkPantheress, Rosalía, Romy and more.Don’t forget: your Pride songs!I’m still collecting your stories and song suggestions for Pride. So, tell me: Was there a certain song that first gave you the courage to come out? Or is there a particular track that, to you, embodies the spirit of Pride? Share your answers here so I can consider them for an upcoming edition of The Amplifier. More

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      12 New Songs From Janelle Monáe, Rosalía, PinkPantheress and More

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      Hear tracks from Rosalía, L’Rain, Romy 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.PinkPantheress, ‘Angel’“One day my baby just went away,” the British pop star PinkPantheress sings on “Angel,” an aching, bittersweet new track from the soundtrack to the upcoming movie “Barbie.” No grand tragedy has occurred here — just some run-of-the-mill ghosting. Still, PinkPantheress manages to squeeze pathos out of the story, thanks to a dreamy melody and a vocal delivery that blends wide-eyed optimism with creeping doubt: “Everyone tells me life was hard but it’s a piece of cake,” she sings, “even if Johnny hasn’t answered in a couple days.” Ken would never! LINDSAY ZOLADZRosalía, ‘Tuya’“Tuya” (“Yours”) is the kind of song Rosalía can apparently toss off at will: a lilting tune carrying a cheerful, amorous boast. “Sex with me is mind-blowing,” she promises. The production, as usual, goes genre hopping: plucked notes on a Japanese koto, a reggaeton beat, some flamenco handclaps and vocal quavers and, for the big finale, a slamming gabber techno beat and hyperpop pitch-shifted vocals. For Rosalía, they’re all within easy reach. JON PARELESRomy, ‘Loveher’A private, intimate confidence goes happily public in “Loveher” by Romy Madley Croft from the xx. “Hold my hand under the table,” she sings with quiet, breathy intensity. “It’s not that I’m not proud in the company of strangers/It’s just some things are for us.” The production — by Jamie xx, Stuart Price and Fred again.. — coaxes her into a proclamation. It evolves from sparse piano notes and a subdued four-on-the-floor beat to full-scale, chord-pounding house, while Romy’s vocal rises into an ecstatic loop: “I love her, I love her.” The beat suddenly falls away at the end, leaving Romy almost a cappella as she insists, “When they ask me I’ll tell them/Won’t be ashamed.” PARELESMadeline Kenney, ‘I Drew a Line’The Oakland singer-songwriter Madeline Kenney fills her sonic canvas with bold, angular shapes on “I Drew a Line,” the latest single from her upcoming album, “A New Reality Mind.” “Had an idea of who to be,” Kenney sings on this tale of self-revision and emotional growth, as a silky saxophone solo suddenly takes the song in a new direction. ZOLADZJanelle Monáe featuring Doechii, ‘Phenomenal’Janelle Monáe’s new album announces its intentions in its title: “The Age of Pleasure.” It’s all about physical, carnal joy as self-affirmation, underlined by Monáe’s full-spectrum mastery of African-diaspora music. “She’s a mystic sexy creature,” Monáe sings in “Phenomenal,” adding, “She’s a god and I’m a believer.” The groove is spring-loaded, Caribbean-tinged and jazzy, and it works through ever-changing variations — with call-and-response vocals, teasing guitar lines, electronics and horns — on the way to a seamless segue into the next song, “Haute.” PARELESJessie Murph and Maren Morris, ‘Texas’Maren Morris has made it her business to prove that country singers listen outside that limited format. Her latest collaboration is with the broody goth-pop songwriter Jessie Murph, and they take mutual delight in slinging radio-unfriendly words in “Texas,” one of Murph’s typically dark, unhappy accusations. Murph and Morris sing about consequences that a man has shrugged off. “I’m cold, I’m lost, I’m ruined/And you go back to Texas,” Murph sings. The video is set at a rodeo, but cowboy hats, mandolin and fiddle can’t lift the darkness. PARELESShamir, ‘Oversized Sweater’In a folk-rock fortress built around steady-strummed guitar, Shamir’s falsetto is simultaneously piercing and doleful as he sings about getting through a heartbreak. His palliatives are binge-watching TV, getting “higher than Mariah’s head” (voice), cuddling up in an oversized sweater and singing “until I believe in love again.” The marching, chiming production suggests he will. PARELESL’Rain, ‘New Year’s UnResolution’Echoes ripple across “New Year’s UnResolution,” a richly unmoored track by Taja Cheek, who records as L’Rain. “I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be in love,” she sings in a blur of reverb, guitar swoops and harmony vocals over a programmed beat. The song ponders longing, time perception and memory, reaching no conclusion but raising evocative questions. PARELESNora Stanley and Benny Bock, ‘Peaches’A lot of the music on “Distance of the Moon” — the debut album from the baby-faced duo of Nora Stanley and Benny Bock — has been added in layers, via laptop, on the second or the 15th pass. They’re working with tons of instruments here: analog synths, Fender Rhodes, digitally programmed percussion, baritone guitar, saxophones, kalimba. Still, the result feels organic and bleary-eyed and miniature, not overworked. Stanley lives in New York, and Bock in Los Angeles, and the sound reflects that distance: This is music with a sense of focus and intimacy, yet a kind of unknowability too. It’s gentle and lovely, but not settled. On “Peaches,” Stanley’s vibrato-heavy saxophone trembles in harmony with a wavy synth, over minimalist drum programming and an undressed two-chord vamp. Fans of Sam Gendel or Alabaster dePlume or (going back further) Jimmy Giuffre will dig the mellow saxophone; anyone who trances out to Laraaji will probably feel the hypnotic pull of the electronic vamp. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOLaura Misch, ‘Portals’The English songwriter and electronic-music producer Laura Misch celebrates a mystical communion of people, nature and art in “Portals” from an album due in October, “Sample the Sky.” Harplike plinks and clicking percussion rise around her voice, enfolded in instrumental and vocal harmonies as she sings that “portals open as you slowly drift through/surrounded by our love.” PARELESBlack Duck, ‘Lemon Treasure’One repeated note and an increasingly assertive beat propel “Lemon Treasure,” a drone and slide-guitar jam from the Chicago trio Black Duck: the bassist Douglas McCombs from Tortoise and Eleventh Dream Day, the guitarist Bill MacKay and the drummer Charles Rumback. McCombs can’t resist hopping through an occasional arpeggio, and Rumback’s drumming grows splashier and more insistent along the way, but the track is MacKay’s showcase. He bears down on chords, lofts raga-tinged scales, hints at the blues and bends and stretches sustained notes; his guitar both rides the beat and taunts it. PARELESRoxana Amed and Frank Carlberg, ‘Pido El Silencio’“Los Trabajos y Las Noches” is a 10-part song cycle that the Argentine vocalist Roxana Amed and the New York pianist Frank Carlberg wrote, using the poetry of Alejandra Pizarnik — a literary hero in mid-20th-century Argentina — as lyrics. Pizarnik’s verse, like Miles Davis’s trumpet playing, was known for its strategic use of silence and restraint. So the album’s first track, “Pido El Silencio,” (“I Beg for Silence”), is an apt opener: nine minutes of forbearance and cycling harmonies and non-resolution. Amed sings the short, mysterious poem repeatedly (in English, it’s: “Although it is late, it is nighttime,/and you’re unable./Sing as if nothing’s happened./Nothing happens”), then she sings in harmony with Carlberg’s piano and Adam Kolker’s tenor saxophone on a wordless bridge. The pianist starts a looming octave chime in the upper register and the band fixes upon a sequence of obscured, sometimes-mucky harmonies, until he finally breaks out into a lyrical solo. But even when Carlberg gets going, there are savory chunks of hesitation embedded in his phrases. RUSSONELLO More

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      Popcast Mailbag! Frank Ocean, Peso Pluma, A.I. Grimes and More

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThe Popcast crew assembles for a semiannual mailbag episode, touching on many of the pressing pop music issues of the moment, including the controversy surrounding Frank Ocean’s Coachella set; the challenges faced by even the biggest pop stars (Sam Smith, Miley Cyrus) trying to follow massive singles; the sudden arrival of artificial intelligence in pop music and evolving notions of authorship; the startling recent growth in the popularity and visibility of música Mexicana and corridos tumbados, with stars like Grupo Frontera and Peso Pluma; and how the framework of genre continues to have meaning even in a universal-jukebox universe.Guests:Jon Pareles, The New York Time’s chief pop music criticJoe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterLindsay Zoladz, The New York Times’s pop music criticCaryn Ganz, The New York Times’s pop music editorConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      Popcast (Deluxe): Taylor Swift and Matty Healy, Plus ‘The Idol’

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:The premiere episode of HBO’s “The Idol,” a maybe(?) satirical psychodrama about a troubled female pop star and the Svengali figure, played by the Weeknd, who worms his way into her orbitNew collaborations from Latto and Cardi B, and Central Cee and DaveRecent developments in Taylor Swift’s world, including blowback from her relationship with Matty Healy of the 1975, and her collaboration with Ice SpiceThe pop music documentary explosion of the last few yearsConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. More

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      ‘Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis)’ Review: Indelible Images by Design

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      Anton Corbijn’s documentary shares anecdotes from the British design studio that devised some of the most famous album covers of the 1970s.The album cover for Pink Floyd’s “Animals” is a collage that shows a pig flying over Battersea Power Station in London. Originally, it was intended to be a photograph, but controlling an inflatable pig at that height was not easy (in fact, it floated into an area where flights approach Heathrow Airport). Nor was it easy to have a man stand still after he had been set on fire, something that was done to create an image for the band’s preceding album, “Wish You Were Here.” Nor was arranging for a restless sheep to lounge on a psychiatrist’s couch in the Hawaiian surf — a photograph that ultimately constituted only a small inset on the original cover for the 10cc album “Look Hear?”These are among the anecdotes shared in “Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis),” a documentary from Anton Corbijn (“Control”) on Hipgnosis, a British design studio that, over roughly 15 years starting in 1968, devised some of the strangest and most innovative art ever put on records. (The name is a portmanteau of “hip” and “gnostic” pronounced like “hypnosis.”)“Squaring the Circle” has the feel of an official portrait. Aubrey Powell, known as Po, who founded Hipgnosis with Storm Thorgerson, holds the center of gravity among the interviewees, who include many of his friends and colleagues. The visuals — sharp black-and-white present-day footage; lots of photographs from Hipgnosis’s heyday — are predictably striking.Structurally, this movie defaults to recounting the genesis of one idea and collaboration after another. (“When you get a call from a Beatle, it was a bit like a call from God,” Powell says of Paul McCartney.) “Squaring the Circle” is slick and enjoyable enough, but it is also, like the company it chronicles, something of a boutique item, and the reminiscences grow faintly monotonous after a while.Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis)Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Astrud Gilberto, ‘The Girl From Ipanema’ Singer, Dies at 83

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      It was the first song she ever recorded. And it played a key role in making the Brazilian sound known as bossa nova a phenomenon in the United States.Astrud Gilberto, whose soft and sexy vocal performance on “The Girl From Ipanema,” the first song she ever recorded, helped make the sway of Brazilian bossa nova a hit sound in the United States in the 1960s, died on Monday. She was 83.Listen to This ArticleFor more audio journalism and storytelling, More

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      7 New Songs You Should Hear Now

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      Listen to Jorja Smith, Silvana Estrada, Miya Folick and more recent highlights.Jorja Smith has carved out a lane slightly below the mainstream with her moody, sophisticated R&B and pop.Liz Johnson ArturDear listeners,There’s “weekly,” “biweekly,” even “triweekly” — but is there a word for something that happens once every four weeks?I’m talking about a word more precise than “monthly.” Quadriweekly? Bi-fortnightly? Whatever it is, that is how frequently I’ve been sending out these dispatches of new music culled from the best of our weekly Playlists.And since another two fortnights hath passed since I last sent one, the time has come again for me to tell you about some more songs you should hear right now. Yes, this very instant!As usual, it’s an eclectic selection, mixing perhaps a few familiar names with some new ones. It’s somewhat varied in language and geography, too: two songs in Spanish (gracias a Silvana Estrada and Lido Pimienta), two from across the pond (courtesy of Blur and Anohni and the Johnsons), and at least one from each country in North America, plus a Moose and a cockroach. Just trust me on that.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Anohni and the Johnsons: “It Must Change”Though the heart-wrenching vocalist Anohni has released powerful solo music in the past decade — most notably the political and poetic electronic album “Hopelessness” in 2016 — her new single “It Must Change” is the first time since 2010 that she has released music with her backing band the Johnsons. That doesn’t mean it’s a retread, though. Soulful, slinky and thematically subversive, “It Must Change” is at once a demand for respect — “The way you talk to me, it must change,” Anohni sings — and a call to accept the constant fluidity of all things. (Listen on YouTube)2. Silvana Estrada: “Milagro y Desastre”I always appreciate Jon Pareles keeping an ear out for new artists from a vast variety of cultures and musical traditions. I have him to thank for introducing me to the Mexican singer-songwriter Silvana Estrada, who won best new artist at last year’s Latin Grammys. Usually known for her sparse, guitar-driven folk songs, “Milagro y Desastre” — miracle and disaster — is something new for Estrada: a song composed largely with looped, layered fragments of her own voice. (See also: her recent, charming cover of Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner.”) The cooed, percussive notes that provide the song’s rhythmic backbone remind me a bit of Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman,” but Estrada’s impassioned singing and distinct ear for melody ultimately take “Milagro y Desastre” somewhere unique. (Listen on YouTube)3. Rob Moose featuring Phoebe Bridgers: “Wasted”What a name: Rob Moose. A prolific string player and arranger for artists like Bon Iver, Brittany Howard and, yes, Phoebe Bridgers, Mr. Moose will, on Aug. 11, release the EP “Inflorescence.” It features guest vocals from all those aforementioned artists, but so far my favorite track is his collaboration with Bridgers, the moody, nocturnal “Wasted.” Though Bridgers has been playing a version of it live for years, Moose’s contributions kick it up a notch — his anxiously plucked notes and graceful crescendos give her existential dread an almost cinematic sweep. (Listen on YouTube)4. Blur: “The Narcissist”Regular Amplifier readers will know about this one already — in its honor, I composed an entire newsletter featuring some of my favorite Blur songs. The British band’s first new single in eight years is, I think, eminently enjoyable; the push and pull between Damon Albarn’s downcast deadpan and Graham Coxon’s cheery backing vocals is classic Blur. (Listen on YouTube)5. Miya Folick, “Cockroach”I’ve been really digging the Los Angeles singer-songwriter Miya Folick’s recently released sophomore album, “Roach.” “Cockroach” is one of its more subdued songs, but it still showcases Folick’s off-kilter edge and her penchant for surprising, emotionally loaded turns of phrase. Though comparing oneself to a cockroach is usually an expression of self-loathing, here Folick employs it as a symbol of grimy resilience: “You can’t kill me.” (Listen on YouTube)6. Jorja Smith, “Little Things”Like many people, I first became aware of the British vocalist Jorja Smith in 2017, when she appeared on Drake’s mixtape “More Life” (“Get It Together” very much still goes). Since then, she’s carved out a lane slightly below the mainstream releasing moody, sophisticated R&B and pop. “Little Things,” which will appear on her upcoming album “Falling or Flying,” is a relatively carefree and kinetic track for Smith — conjuring a sweaty summer night on the dance floor — but that jazzy piano riff adds a signature touch of elegance. (Listen on YouTube)7. Lido Pimienta, “Ein Sof, Infinito”The visionary Colombian-Canadian musician Lido Pimienta wrote this song for “Ein Sof,” a brightly hued short film by the director Orly Anan. Atop a playful though gradually transcendent arrangement of pizzicato strings and soaring synthesizers, Pimienta repeatedly sings with all her heart “cuando sueño contigo” (“when I dream of you”) — a welcome invitation into her vivid imagination. (Listen on YouTube)Quadrilaterally yours,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“7 New Songs You Should Hear Now” track listTrack 1: Anohni and the Johnsons, “It Must Change”Track 2: Silvana Estrada, “Milagro y Desastre”Track 3: Rob Moose featuring Phoebe Bridgers, “Wasted”Track 4: Blur, “The Narcissist”Track 5: Miya Folick, “Cockroach”Track 6: Jorja Smith, “Little Things”Track 7: Lido Pimienta, “Ein Sof, Infinito”Bonus tracks: Your Pride songsHappy L.G.B.T.Q.+ Pride Month, everyone! Later this month, well be publishing a special Pride installment of The Amplifier featuring some of your stories and song suggestions. So, tell me: Was there a certain song that first gave you the courage to come out? Or is there a particular track that, to you, embodies the spirit of Pride? Share your answers here, and you just might be featured in an upcoming newsletter. More

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      Jenny Lewis Keeps Finding the Magic

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      Jenny Lewis didn’t mean to wind up with the marimba.But for the last year, a vintage percussion instrument has occupied pride of place in the singer-songwriter’s forest green home studio. She inherited it from her godfather, Jerry Cohen, a music editor for TV and movies and an amateur musician, who died suddenly last spring. He was a surrogate dad to her, the kind who surreptitiously bought Hanukkah presents when money was tight in her household, and introduced her to jazz records when she was 10. She was the only person in the room with him when he passed away.“He was my mentor and my best friend and the most Jewish of all people in my life,” she said. “Jerry would want me to get lessons on the marimba.”Lewis, the 47-year-old indie artist whose country-rock troubadour style and evocative lyricism has earned her comparisons to songwriting greats from Nashville’s Music Row to Laurel Canyon, has suffered a lot of loss lately. Her mother’s death, in 2017, was the backdrop for her last album, “On the Line,” in 2019. Now, after losing Cohen and another mentor, the album designer and her “rock ’n’ roll dad” Gary Burden, there is “Joy’All,” an album out June 9 that grapples with aging, life cycles and romantic (im)possibility and yet somehow feels vivacious.Lewis inherited the marimba from her godfather, Jerry Cohen, a music editor for TV and movies and amateur musician, who died suddenly last spring.Ariel Fisher for The New York Times“My 40s are kicking my ass,” she sings on the third track over peppy acoustic guitars, “and handing them to me in a margarita glass.” The song is called “Puppy and a Truck,” her latest — and perhaps most lasting — prescription for happiness; she scored them both. “Having survived this moment, I felt like it was important to project something joyful,” she said.The dog, Bobby Rhubarb, a shiny black cockapoo, greeted me with a waist-high leap when I visited Lewis recently at her home at the end of a wildflower-lined canyon road in the San Fernando Valley. The house is called Mint Chip — there’s an ice cream cone etched in stained glass by the garage — and Lewis acquired it after promising to maintain the whimsical touches that the Disney animator who built it in the 1950s installed. It attracts the fantastical too: during the pandemic, Lewis said, she discovered a baby squirrel had been sneaking in and hiding acorns under her pillow.There is more than a little magic to her life. It’s in the way Lewis amplifies the space around her (she decked out that truck, a Chevy Colorado, with ersatz Gucci seat covers) and even the way she made it out of a career as a child actor to succeed in another artistic universe.“She’s a unicorn,” said Soleil Moon Frye, her fellow child star (“Punky Brewster”) and a friend for decades. Even as a preteen, Lewis had musical skills, said Moon Frye, who documented their Hollywood crew’s adolescence in home movies, released as the 2021 documentary “Kid 90.” “We would memorize these hip-hop songs — she was always so good at rapping.”Though she’s pegged as a country-tinged folk rock songwriter, Lewis’s keystone is still hip-hop, reggae, soul and funk — “finding the story in rap-style verses and picking up an acoustic guitar, and kind of marrying the two worlds,” she said. A printout of the Wikipedia entry for “3 Feet High and Rising,” the landmark album by De La Soul, rested on the music stand in her studio; she was paging through it to understand all the samples they had used.Though she’s pegged as a country-tinged folk rock songwriter, her references for “Joy’All” included Tracy Chapman, Portishead and Frank Ocean.Ariel Fisher for The New York TimesHer references for “Joy’All” included Tracy Chapman, whose conversational delivery she admires, Portishead and Frank Ocean. About half of the tracks for the LP were created over two years in Los Angeles. The rest she made in Nashville, where she has also had a home since 2017. It’s her fifth studio album as a solo artist — she started out in popular indie bands, Rilo Kiley and the Postal Service — and her first release on Blue Note Records, the storied jazz label. (After her own tour, she’ll be joining the Postal Service on the road this fall.)Dave Cobb, the Nashville producer (Brandi Carlile, John Prine, Chris Stapleton) who worked on the album, was awe-struck by her ease and perennial good moods. “If you don’t like Jenny Lewis, you don’t like people,” he said. Their sessions, tracking instruments like pedal steel and Mellotron, along with birdsong from Lewis’s Nashville backyard, flowed easily. “To say she led is absolute, because we all played to her,” he said, adding: “Everything she writes about is true. She literally showed up every day with the puppy and her truck.”She has the openness of someone who has spent a lifetime cheerfully talking about herself, and the staggeringly eccentric stories of a showbiz veteran. Sitting on the midnight blue couch in her minimalist living room, Lewis, in a sweatshirt, sunset-hued corduroys and a single gold hoop earring inscribed with her last name, touched on being Jewish; the spiritual guru Ram Dass; the female Elvis impersonator who was her childhood babysitter; the time her mother convinced Lucille Ball to have a sitcom wrap party in their ramshackle house (“Lucy walks in, and she goes, ‘What a dump!’”); and the swap meet in Atlanta where she buys knockoff Gucci socks by the armful. “I would never buy a real Gucci sock — that’s so silly,” she said.Telling stories about Cohen, she cried. When she was a child, he took her to his job on the Universal Studios lot and let her draw and animate her own movies using giant old film machines. Being with him when he died “was probably like the most important moment of my whole life,” she said.Lewis’s parents, itinerant lounge musicians, split when she was a toddler. Her acting career in the ’80s changed the family’s fortunes, for a time, but her mother’s drug addiction and instability outpaced her sitcom earnings. She was estranged from her parents for decades, then reconciled with each late in their lives. Her father’s bass harmonica sits on a stand on her mantel.“On my dad’s deathbed, he basically was like, ‘learn musical theory,’” she said. “So there has been this pressure, from my people, to do better and learn more.”Jess Wolfe, one half of the duo Lucius, befriended Lewis and sings backup on “Joy’All.” “I really understand the need for trying to lift yourself up through your art and hoping that it can do the same for other people — she did that, in her cool, effortless Jenny Lewis kind of way,” Wolfe said.“She’s always had to figure it out and take care of herself,” she added. “She is incredibly resourceful and incredibly clever about how to do something, effectively, efficiently and affordably. Truly, I’m always blown away by her in that sense — I will always feel creative when I’m around her.”“Everything she writes about is true. She literally showed up every day with the puppy and her truck,” the producer Dave Cobb said.Ariel Fisher for The New York TimesAt age 40, after Lewis separated from her longtime partner, the musician Johnathan Rice, she moved to New York for the first time, realizing a teenage ambition. She lived in her pal Annie Clark’s (St. Vincent) apartment for two years, starting the side project NAF there with some friends. Then came Nashville, where she learned how to two-step at a honky-tonk across from the Ryman Auditorium.In a rehearsal at a space covered in red velvet in Nashville last week, which she shared over a video call, Lewis directed her all-female backing band (she seeks out women for the stage and, for this outing, even has a female tour manager — a relative rarity in the industry, and a first for her). “You guys just pedal on that, and let me do my thing,” she said, as they prepared to sing “Acid Tongue,” the title track off her 2008 solo debut. “Let’s get those ‘oohs,’” she instructed. The harmonies rolled in. “Well done,” she told them. “It’s just feeling confident.”Back in L.A., Lewis had confided that aging as an unfiltered, undoctored music star isn’t easy. “I see myself and I don’t always love it,” she said. “But I’m trying to embrace being a woman in her 40s, and all that has to offer.”She is contentedly single now, though trying out a dating app, and itching to write about it — even, she admitted, enjoying that more.“My life is outrageous,” she said, although her songwriting is not straight autobiography. “But if I’m being honest, I’m in every single line.” More