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      Donna Summer’s Bedazzled Closet and Ephemera Will Go Up for Auction

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      Eleven years after her death, the disco legend’s family has combed through her possessions, deciding to sell many of her glittering dresses, manuscripts and paintings.For nearly a decade after Donna Summer’s death in 2012, her home in Nashville remained like a shrine to the Queen of Disco’s decades-long music career.Beaded gowns that she had worn onstage remained tucked away along with designer pumps in the upstairs closet; ephemera such as an annotated album cover design for “She Works Hard for the Money” were stored downstairs; and in the basement, there was an accumulation of brightly colored paintings, awards and gold records.Never eager to talk about death, Summer — who died of lung cancer at 63 — had not given directions for what should be done with her possessions, her husband, Bruce Sudano, said recently. It was only in the past few years that Summer’s family was ready to fully comb through her belongings at the Nashville home, many of which will go up for sale at Christie’s next month, the auction house announced Friday.“You’d go into these spaces and it would be almost a time capsule of your life,” said Brooklyn Sudano, one of Summer’s three daughters.One of the items up for sale is a silver goblet that Summer often had onstage with her, filled with caffeine-free Pepsi. Brooklyn Sudano remembered that when she and one of her sisters were on tour with their mother in the 1990s, one of their jobs would be to stir the soda inside the goblet to get rid of any bubbles. (“While she’s singing she can’t be burping,” she explained.)The singer drank flat, caffeine-free Pepsi from this silver goblet during performances, her family said. Christie’s estimates that the cup will sell for between $400 and $600.Courtesy of Christie’sA versatile singer-songwriter whose music spanned funk, dance, rock and gospel, Summer shot to fame in 1975 with the erotic extended cut of “Love to Love You Baby,” followed by the pioneering electronic song “I Feel Love,” whose pulsating club beat can be heard in Beyoncé’s “Summer Renaissance.”The announcement by Christie’s comes shortly before HBO’s release on Saturday of a new family-backed biographical documentary, directed by Roger Ross Williams and Brooklyn Sudano. Chronicling Summer’s rise from a cast member in a German production of “Hair” to an international superstar, the film, called “Love to Love You, Donna Summer,” is as much about her personal life as her career, discussing her struggles with depression, physical abuse by a boyfriend, and her chapter as a born-again Christian.The auction includes glamorous possessions and others that are more mundane. On the glamorous end: a glittering blue and green dress Summer wore in the music video for her 1983 song “Unconditional Love,” a rhinestone-studded dress and bolero jacket that she wore at a concert in 1995, and a collection of the diva’s sunglasses.As for the mundane — but perhaps intriguing to the most devoted of fans — the sale includes unworn shoes and a dozen unused Louis Vuitton towels.“There are people in the world who love her,” said Bruce Sudano, who is in charge of caring for her estate. “It felt like we can’t just hoard all of this stuff for ourselves.”An early draft of Donna Summer’s 1977 song “Now I Need You,” written by the singer on hotel stationery.Courtesy of Christie’sSummer’s rhinestone-spotted evening dress, worn onstage in 1995, is estimated to sell for between $1,500 and $2,500.Courtesy of Christie’sThe online sale, which Christie’s expects to garner about $200,000 to $300,000, begins on June 15. A portion of the proceeds from the sale will go to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Save the Music Foundation and the Elton John AIDS Foundation, the auction house said.One item, a poster for a 1998 concert supporting the nonprofit Gay Men’s Health Crisis, gestures to the history of Summer’s at times strained relationship with L.G.B.T.Q. fans, many of whom boycotted her music in the ’80s after they had helped to fuel its rise.The documentary briefly addresses that history, with Summer’s husband recounting how an off-the-cuff comment onstage — “God didn’t make Adam and Steve, he made Adam and Eve,” he recalled her saying — deeply hurt many gay fans. Summer worked to repair her relationship with the fan base, especially after New York magazine wrote that she had described the AIDS crisis as a “divine ruling” on gay people, a report she fiercely denied and ultimately sued over.The sale also includes about 15 paintings and manuscripts with scrawled lyrics, including for the 1977 song “Now I Need You,” written on stationery from a hotel in Munich, as well as edits in pencil to the lyrics for the hit “On the Radio.”Brooklyn Sudano scrutinized documents like those while piecing together the HBO film, which she said bolstered her belief that her mother was not a pop star engineered by outside forces, but rather an artist who was deeply involved in creating the hits that made her famous.“People just saw her as this persona,” she said. “I don’t think that they truly understood that she was an artist and had an active role in creating the Donna Summer that people knew.” More

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      Why Do We Listen to Sad Songs?

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      When Joshua Knobe was younger, he knew an indie rock musician who sang sorrowful, “heart-rending things that made people feel terrible,” he recalled recently. At one point he came across a YouTube video, set to her music, that had a suicidal motif. “That was the theme of her music,” he said, adding, “So I had this sense of puzzlement by it, because I also felt like it had this tremendous value.”Listen to This ArticleFor more audio journalism and storytelling, More

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      Forests, Band from Singapore, Played On After U.S. Robbery

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      Forests, a band from Singapore, ended its tour in New York in high spirits, two weeks after being robbed in California.The band, Forests, did not miss a show.ForestsAn international rock band’s first U.S. tour is a moment to be celebrated, a sign that years of hard work have paid off. But just a few days into their American debut, the members of Forests, an emo rock band from Singapore, endured another rite of passage for some musicians traveling the United States when they stopped for the night at a California hotel.When they returned to their rental van a few hours later, they realized they’d been robbed.“In Singapore I kind of made a joke about it, like, oh, you know, your band is only legit if your stuff got stolen,” said Darell Laser, 36, the bassist. “Then it really happened.”Forests and the Oklahoma band they were touring with, Ben Quad, are hardly the first musicians to be robbed while on tour in America. (In 1999, Sonic Youth famously lost an entire truck’s worth of gear to a thief, also in California.) But the experience was still a shock for a band from a country as safe as Singapore.“It was the worst luck ever,” said Chris Martinez, 29, a Forests fan from San Diego who discovered the band years ago on a business trip to Singapore.The robbery prompted an outpouring of concern from both bands’ fans, and more than $9,000 in donations allowed them to buy replacement instruments. They did not miss a show, and they ended their tour in high spirits with a sold-out concert at a bar in Queens on Tuesday.“They seem to have moved past it,” said Mr. Martinez, who donated $200 to the bands’ crowdfunding campaign after learning of the robbery. “Keeping a positive attitude and trying not to let it bring them down.”Forests and Ben Quad had some instruments, along with other goods, stolen from their parked rental van while they were sleeping in a hotel after a show. ForestsThe May 1 robbery made for a surreal early leg of a cross-country tour — entitled “Get in losers, we’re going to Walmart” — that Forests had spent months planning and years looking forward to. It happened a few days after their tour began in Seattle and a few hours after their gig in Oakland.When the tired musicians from the two bands straggled into a Hampton Inn in Hayward, Calif., at about 1:30 a.m., they left their gear in the 15-passenger rental van they were sharing for the tour. They parked next to a security camera as a precaution, but it didn’t help: When they returned to the parking lot after 11 a.m., they noticed that some of their guitars, a bass, pedals, clothing and a box with cash from merchandise sales had been stolen.The theft was the latest in an area of California where property crimes like shoplifting and car break-ins are on the rise. The hotel management told the bands that its security footage did not show a theft. A location tag on one instrument appeared to show that the stolen gear had been taken to an Oakland apartment building, but the police said there was no easy way to get it back.“The cops told us, ‘Hey, there’s nothing we can do unless it ends up in a pawnshop,’” said Edgar Viveros, 27, Ben Quad’s lead guitarist. The pawnshops they called said that it had not.Instead of canceling the tour, the bands decided to play on with borrowed gear. They also set up a crowdfunding page and were surprised to see how quickly donations rolled in — $6,000 in about four hours.The robbery was “kinda heartbreaking,” Imre Griga, 23, a fan in Columbia, Mo., who attended three of the bands’ tour dates this month, said in an email. “I think the entire community felt Forests deserved much better for their first tour in America.”Within a few days, members of both bands were playing with new instruments. They went a little longer without the pedal board that Ben Quad typically uses to play samples, like the theme from an “Austin Powers” movie, between sets. But a replacement for that, too, was eventually found.Forests first played with borrowed instruments after the theft, then bought replacements after fans donated more than $9,000.ForestsBack home in Singapore, the story of the robbery, and the fan support, made headlines. Some readers commented about their own experiences of getting robbed in the United States. Others wondered how the three members of Forests, who all have day jobs and tour on their vacations, could have been so naïve.For Forests, it was not their first international tour: They have performed across the Asia-Pacific region over the years. But on their first tour of America, they loved watching the landscape — deserts, trees, snowy mountains — whip past the van’s windows.They also kept a list of “crazy things” they had seen, like people fighting in convenience stores, or the woman in Seattle who threw her luggage down three flights of stairs in a subway station. The band’s drummer, Niki Koh, 31, said he particularly enjoyed visiting a store that sold guns, knives and hunting gear — “ everything that we won’t find in Singapore.”“It’s culture shock,” he said, speaking in a video interview from Kansas City. “But at the same time, it’s very interesting.” More

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      Jessie Ware Is Dancing Into Her Second Act

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThe fifth Jessie Ware album, “That! Feels Good!,” is a robust, richly sung neo-disco manifesto, among the most vibrant music the singer has released. It marks a solidification of Ware’s second phase, following her early years making restrained club-soul and adult-contemporary R&B.This second phase was made possible at least in part by the success of “Table Manners,” the podcast she hosts with her mother, which has become central to Ware’s public flowering as a relatable celebrity. Now, she is making music that’s playful and untethered, but just as crisply delivered as ever.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about midcareer sonic switches, the importance of fantasy in music making, and how freedom outside of one’s music career can lead to liberation within it.Guests:Caryn Ganz, The New York Times’s pop music editorLindsay Zoladz, a pop music critic for The New York Times and writer of The Amplifier newsletterConnect 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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      Hannah Jadagu Turns Small Moments Into Big Pop Songs

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      The 20-year-old N.Y.U. student’s debut album, “Aperture,” aims for emotions and earworms.What does it mean to be a pop songwriter in 2023? Part of the job is what it has always been: coming up with catchy melodies, terse lyrics and instrumental hooks; creating crisply defined verses and choruses; capturing short attention spans while tapping into broadly shared experiences.“Pop structure is always happening in my songs,” said Hannah Jadagu, 20, whose debut album, “Aperture,” will be released on Friday. In a video chat from her dorm room at New York University, she added, “I love a good hook or a good chorus. I love a good banger. I love a pop hit.”Jadagu’s dorm room is spartan. One otherwise bare wall is decorated with a poster of a fierce-looking woman’s face, origin unknown; Jadagu rescued it from a discard pile. Another displays a few posters and passes from her recent tours; Jadagu paused her college education in 2022 to tour and write her album. Her room is now primarily a musician’s work space, with her computer, a MIDI keyboard and three guitars close at hand. When she came to N.Y.U., where she’s now in her third year, she contemplated becoming a music supervisor and leaned into studies of music as a business, but soon she began to focus on her own songs.Jadagu has a distinct visual presence — a cascade of long, blond braids frames her face — and a contagious smile, particularly noticeable when she’s citing musicians she’s learned from, famous and less so. She mentioned Charli XCX, Frank Ocean, SZA, Haim, Billie Eilish, Tame Impala, the Beatles, Ellie Goulding, CeeLo Green, Clairo, beabadoobee, Vampire Weekend, Steve Lacy, Snail Mail, M.I.A., Grouplove, Winnetka Bowling League, Ritt Momney, the Japanese House, Kevin Abstract and more. Many of them, she freely admits, have had an immediate influence on whatever song she was working on when she heard them.Most of the songs on “Aperture” lean into pop’s eternal subject: uncertain romance. She sings about being scared to get serious in the folk-to-grunge “Lose”; about trying to get someone to forget an ex in the lurching, psychedelia-tinged “Six Months”; and about trying to figure out where she stands in a relationship in “Say It Now,” which expands from a winsome plaint into a stomping pop chorus.“I’m not a dramatic person in my everyday life,” she said. “But when I sit down to write something, I’m like, How can I explain how this feels big to me, even though I might not show it on the outside?”“I owe everything to SoundCloud because it helped me build a little bit of confidence,” Jadagu said of the platform where she first released her music.Makeda Sandford for The New York TimesShe added, “When you’re a songwriter, it could be that even the smallest thing happens and then you’re like, ‘That’s going to be a big song.’ There’s a way of taking something in your life, even if it’s just a small moment, and then making it into this big experience for people to listen in on.”Throughout her album, Jadagu’s music keeps shifting styles, veering from indie rock to electronic to warped R&B. “I told my manager I want to be able to make an album where it feels like there are no borders,” she said. “I wanted each song to be different.”Jadagu has a singular sense of melody. Her phrases hopscotch around, full of angular leaps that also feel easy and conversational. Those melodies turn out to be equally effective whether they’re leaping across distorted guitar chords, suave keyboards or abstract soundscapes.Greta Kline, who records as Frankie Cosmos, became one of Jadagu’s early admirers and mentors. “She’s got an encyclopedic knowledge of all the different ways that music can go,” Kline said in an interview. “And she can picture all those parts before even laying them down. She’s got an amazing producer’s mind. And she knows everything cool that’s going on.”Kline added, “She’s going to be a star. I just hope someday I get to open for her.”Jadagu has always been absorbed in music. She grew up in Mesquite, Texas, the Dallas suburb where her parents settled after immigrating from Zimbabwe in the 1990s. She soaked up pop, hip-hop and indie rock from the radio and from the albums of her older sister, Tymie. She attended church regularly — along with youth groups and church camp — and sang in the choir, where she learned to love building vocal harmonies.Jadagu turned away from the church when she was in high school. “I know the Bible,” she said. “But it just got to a point where I was like, ‘I don’t know if this is something I’m really fully believing in with my heart.’”Two songs that frame the album, “Explanation” and “Letter to Myself,” sympathetically explore how believers seek answers to fundamental questions. “Everyone is looking for an explanation/Put your faith and hope in something,” Jadagu sings as the album begins. Then she starts to wonder: “How do you know?”In high school, Jadagu studied classical percussion and joined the school’s drum line. She also picked up electric guitar at 16, learning her favorite songs on her own. But as early as elementary school, she had already started recording her own music on computers.“I’ve always just had a knack for wanting to be on some electronic device, making some sounds,” she said. When she was told to play math games on the computer, she would secretly open up GarageBand and just start making beats. “Or I’d go to pbskids.org, and they had an ‘Arthur’ game where Arthur could help me make a song.”In high school, her songwriting grew more serious, and Jadagu started uploading her music to SoundCloud, cannily using hashtags like #indie, #electronic and #relaxing that drew her first listeners to a song she has now taken down, “Night Drive Boy.”“I woke up the next day and it had 2,000 plays,” she said. “I was, like, ‘Oh, people like my music.’ And even though it was an algorithmic thing that happened, I still felt like maybe I could keep doing this and keep posting them, not just for myself. I owe everything to SoundCloud because it helped me build a little bit of confidence.”“I love a good hook or a good chorus,” Jadagu said. “I love a good banger. I love a pop hit.”Makeda Sandford for The New York TimesJadagu’s self-released music somehow reached the Sub Pop label, which signed her in her senior year of high school. She recorded “What Is Going On?,” a five-song EP released in 2021, entirely on her iPhone, using GarageBand with a guitar and an outboard microphone. “People are always like, ‘Wow, you made your EP on an iPhone, how incredible!’ And I’m like, ‘I just didn’t have money,’” she said with a smile and a shrug.With “Aperture,” Jadagu had a budget for a studio and a producer. After constructing her new songs on her own, she worked with the French producer Max Robert Baby, selecting him as a collaborator after he sent her his own version of “Say It Now.” Via video interview from France, Max recalled that Jadagu sent back “a Google document detailing every second of the track, every teeny bit of the production I made,” adding, “She’s so precise. She’s a brilliant woman, really.”Working remotely and then together — in a historic French studio, Greasy Records — they turned Jadagu’s new songs into ever more surreal studio concoctions, toying with textures and spatial effects, coming up with whimsical countermelodies and head-spinning cross-rhythms. “I’ve never seen such maturity and determination — to make something that’s really her but also really OK with her influences,” Max said. “She had an idea, coming into the studio, how she wanted each song to sound, and that vision was crystal clear.”“Aperture” is absolutely 21st-century pop: personal and technical, candid and knowing, physical and virtual, shrewdly engineered. “Ever since I started making music, I’ve always had dreams of at least being heard by people,” Jadagu said. “Pop songs are supposed to be able to connect to almost anyone, and they’re supposed to be an earworm.”“I think there’s nothing better than hearing something catchy,” she added. “You’re walking on the street later and you’re like, ‘Oh no!’ That’s when you’re doing your job — where you’ve made something that is just so infectious that it’s burrowed itself into someone’s subconscious. So they start singing it when they’re cooking, later. You know?” More

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      Why I’m Obsessed With This KC and the Sunshine Band Song

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      A deep dive into the 1982 track “(You Said) You’d Gimme Some More.”KC and the Sunshine band, likely demanding more.David Redfern/Redferns, via Getty ImagesDear listeners,Every once in a while, I’ll be telling you about a random song I am currently obsessed with in an attempt to explore the root of this fascination (and perhaps convince you to join me). Today, it’s a little-known gem from KC and the Sunshine Band.Yes, KC and the Sunshine Band. Hear me out.The year is 1982. Seven years after “(That’s the Way) I Like It.” Three years after the notorious Disco Demolition Night. A year after the arrival of MTV.The hit-making formula that had worked so well for KC and the Sunshine Band throughout the commercial height of disco — from 1975 to 1976, they had four No. 1 songs on the Billboard Hot 100! — was not going to cut it anymore. It was the ’80s now. The future. The moment had come to trash the bell-bottoms, buy a bunch of criminally expensive synthesizers, and set a low-budget and audaciously low-concept music video in an abandoned arcade. It was time for “(You Said) You’d Gimme Some More,” the irresistible and barely remembered leadoff track from the Florida band’s 1982 album, “All in a Night’s Work.”I was previously unaware that KC and the Sunshine Band ever sounded like this. There’s a dark intensity to “Gimme Some More” — a warped synthesized bass backbone and a hard-driving, mechanized beat that undercuts those signature blasts of celebratory brass. The first time I heard this track, I could have easily been convinced that it was produced not by the group’s founders, Harry Wayne Casey and Richard Finch, but Giorgio Moroder.I must here confess that the first time I heard this song was not that long ago. And that the reason it came into my life is, shall we say, accidentally Anglophobic: Remember right after Queen Elizabeth died last year, when a bunch of Irish soccer hooligans went viral for singing some regally disrespectful lyrics to the tune of KC and the Sunshine Band’s “Give It Up”? Well, that reminded my boyfriend that “Give It Up” is actually a pretty great song, and when he went to stream “All in a Night’s Work,” he stumbled upon this stone-cold jam.You know those songs that become localized smash hits within your friend circle or group chat? “Gimme Some More” quickly became one of those. It’s now the song I put on when I have control of the aux cord, usually challenging unsuspecting people to guess — just try and guess — who recorded it. A few months ago I made a friend play it in his car and then also forced him to watch the entire seven-and-a-half-minute music video. His verdict: “Something about this guy’s energy is frightening to me.”The Moroder comparison isn’t so far-fetched. The producer behind both Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby” (1975) and Blondie’s “Call Me” (1980) made the transition from disco to new wave about as gracefully as a musician could: His was an aesthetic path worth following. But it’s easy to understand why the ecstatic, upbeat “Give It Up” was an easier sell coming from the “Boogie Shoes” guy than the more aggressive and nervy “Gimme Some More.”I will not vouch for every song on “All in a Night’s Work”; the next track is titled “Party With Your Body” and contains the lyric, “Now Jazzercise is the latest trend.” So to make this journey down the rabbit hole of ’80s KC and the Sunshine Band a little gentler on you, I’ve made a short playlist that throws in a few contemporary Moroder tracks — ones that also bridge those gaps between disco, funk and new wave. I have not secured an abandoned arcade for you to dance in. That work I will leave up to you.Don’t stop what you’re doin’,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Gimme Some More (and More)” track listTrack 1: KC and the Sunshine Band, “(You Said) You’d Gimme Some More”Track 2: Giorgio Moroder, “Chase”Track 3: Donna Summer, “Pandora’s Box”Track 4: Giorgio Moroder, “Palm Springs Drive (American Gigolo Soundtrack Version)”Track 5: KC and the Sunshine Band, “Give It Up”Bonus tracksThis week I am mourning the loss, in a brutal Game 7 of the N.B.A.’s Eastern Conference semifinals, of my beloved but singularly star-crossed Philadelphia 76ers. To them, through tears, I dedicate Boyz II Men’s “End of the Road.”And to sweet, 31-year-old Bobi, the world’s oldest dog: Oasis’s “Live Forever.” It is beautiful to me that a dog who was born before the release of “Definitely Maybe” is still alive. More

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      Listen to the Mother of All Playlists

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      Hear songs by Brandi Carlile, 2Pac, Merle Haggard and more for Mother’s Day.Brandi Carlile’s “The Mother” is one of the more honest songs about motherhood in the canon.Ricardo Nagaoka for The New York TimesDear listeners,A lot of music about motherhood gets a bad rap.Given how much our culture devalues women’s work — and domestic work most of all — this shouldn’t be terribly surprising, but it’s still a bummer. That nebulously defined genre of dad rock has, over the years, earned a begrudging cultural respect, but the phrase “mom rock,” in the rare instances it’s used, still sounds like an insult.I remember discussing this double standard a few years ago when I was interviewing the singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell, who won a Tony for her score for the hit musical “Hadestown” and releases incisively observed folk music under her own name. Becoming a mother had ushered in a drastic change in her perspective — “a relocation of myself in the world and in my family,” in her words. She wanted to be able to write about that experience with all the richness and depth it deserved, even if it ran the risk of being labeled, as she put it with a laugh, “culturally irrelevant mom art.”Luckily, plenty of other songwriters have charted the choppy waters of motherhood — and of being mothered — proving it to be one of the most complicated, challenging and (at least sometimes) rewarding of human experiences. In honor of Mother’s Day (don’t forget: this Sunday!), I’ve put together a playlist of songs that reflect motherhood in all of its unruly complexity.But at the same time: not too unruly, on this day of celebrating moms. There is a time and a place for Danzig’s “Mother,” but it is neither now nor here on this playlist. Ditto John Lennon’s primal scream of “Mother,” though the Beatles’ “Julia” might have been a more appropriate choice. I would here like to acknowledge the existence of the Spice Girls’ “Mama” and Good Charlotte’s “Thank You Mom” without asking you to listen to them.The aforementioned Anaïs Mitchell, however, did make the cut, along with an eclectic group of artists including 2Pac, Brandi Carlile and Beyoncé. Mamma mia, here we go.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Kacey Musgraves: “Mother”The shortest, sparsest song on Kacey Musgraves’s 2018 album, “Golden Hour,” is also the most emotionally piercing. “I’m just sitting here, thinking ’bout the time that’s slipping and missing my mother,” the country renegade sings with heartbreaking plaintiveness, before zooming out a generation and imagining that her own mother is probably doing the same. Musgraves has said that “Mother” is one of the “Golden Hour” songs she wrote while tripping on LSD — but don’t tell her mom that part. (Listen on YouTube)2. Beverly Glenn-Copeland: “La Vita”The pioneering composer and new age artist Beverly Glenn-Copeland has, in recent years, experienced a long-delayed and much deserved uptick in popularity thanks to a series of reissues and the enthusiastic embrace of a younger generation of musicians. The enchanting “La Vita,” from Copeland’s self-released 2004 album “Primal Prayer,” features operatic vocals from the soprano Maggie Hollis, over which Copeland intones a stirring lyric that ends with a profoundly grounding reminder: “And my mother says to me, ‘enjoy your life.’” (Remember that refrain; it’s going to make another appearance later in this playlist.) (Listen on YouTube)3. Brandi Carlile: “The Mother”Carlile doesn’t sugarcoat the experience of motherhood in this beautifully written standout from her 2018 album, “By the Way, I Forgive You,” but that gives the song a lived-in honesty, and makes its warmth come across as something more powerful than empty sentiment. “They’ve still got their morning paper and their coffee and their time,” she sings of her “rowdy” friends without children. But for all that is lost, she realizes, so much has also been gained since the birth of her daughter: “All the wonders I have seen I will see a second time from inside of the ages of your eyes.” (Listen on YouTube)4. Merle Haggard: “Mama Tried”“Instead of life in prison I was doing one-to-15 years,” Merle Haggard once admitted of the slight embellishment as to how he spent his 21st birthday in one of his most famous (and semi-autobiographical) songs. “I just couldn’t get that to rhyme.” Though its title gives repentance some lip service — hey, at least he’s not blaming her! — Haggard still sounds like a hellion on this 1968 hit. The more sincere Mother’s Day gift would arrive much later, in 1981, when he released the gospel album “Songs for the Mama That Tried,” and even put sweet Flossie Mae Harp on the cover. (Listen on YouTube)5. 2Pac: “Dear Mama”The rap game “Mama Tried”? Of his cleareyed but thoroughly loving tribute to his mother, Afeni Shakur, Tupac once said, “I aimed that one straight for my homies’ heartstrings.” Mission accomplished. (Listen on YouTube)6. Anaïs Mitchell: “Little Big Girl”This one’s a heartstring-tugger, too. Mitchell is caught between being a child and an elder on “Little Big Girl,” a poignant song from her 2022 self-titled album. There’s a striking moment toward the end when she catches her reflection in a window and sees her mother, tired, “coming home from work.” Mitchell sings with great empathy, “Tell her you love her/Tell her you’re her.” (Listen on YouTube)7. Beyoncé featuring Blue Ivy: “Blue”Named after Beyoncé’s first child, “Blue” is all the more tender for its placement at the end of her imperial 2013 self-titled album; it follows “Heaven,” a wrenching ballad about suffering a miscarriage. Bey’s candor about both the grief of pregnancy loss and the joys of a hard-won motherhood helped this album feel like a turning point in her career: the beginning of her grown-woman era. (Listen on YouTube)8. The Shirelles: “Mama Said”The vocal sound of most ’60s girl groups was chatty and communal — a musical means of sharing wisdom, commentary and advice from woman to woman. This classic from the great early ’60s hitmakers the Shirelles passes on some maternal know-how that mama acquired in the days when she, too, was just a teenager in love. (Listen on YouTube)9. Romy: “Enjoy Your Life”Remember that Glenn-Copeland refrain? The xx’s Romy Madley Croft samples it to extraordinary effect in this recently released and stirringly soulful solo single. “I made a promise to my mother to stop worrying ’bout my problems,” she sings, as Glenn-Copeland’s voice rings out like a compassionate elder bestowing glowing benevolence on a musical daughter: “My mother says to me, ‘Enjoy your life.’” (Listen on YouTube)Hi, Mom,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“The Mother of All Playlists” track listTrack 1: Kacey Musgraves, “Mother”Track 2: Beverly Glenn-Copeland, “La Vita”Track 3: Brandi Carlile, “The Mother”Track 4: Merle Haggard, “Mama Tried”Track 5: 2Pac, “Dear Mama”Track 6: Anaïs Mitchell, “Little Big Girl”Track 7: Beyoncé featuring Blue Ivy, “Blue”Track 8: The Shirelles, “Mama Said”Track 9: Romy, “Enjoy Your Life”Bonus TracksSome wise words from the Swedish pop queen Robyn, on her 2010 song “Include Me Out”: “All hail to the mamas, who hold it down/Hail to the pillar of the family/This one’s for the grannys, take a bow.”Also, few songwriters have captured the experience of adoption as poignantly and prismatically as Joni Mitchell did on “Little Green,” from her legendary 1971 album, “Blue.”Speaking of Joni: Hear a newly released recording of her performing “Both Sides Now” at last year’s Newport Folk Festival (and music from Dolly Parton, Rhiannon Giddens and more) in this week’s Playlist. More

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      How Liverpool Put on a Song Contest for Ukraine

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      This year’s event would be “Ukraine’s party,” a broadcasting official said. It just happens to be taking place in Britain.When Ukraine won last year’s Eurovision Song Contest, it gained the right to hold this year’s event. And despite Russia’s invasion, it insisted it would do it.Ukraine’s public broadcaster issued plans to host the spectacle in the west of the country, out of reach of Russian missiles, while politicians, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, said the nation would make it work.Even some foreign leaders backed its cause. Last summer, Boris Johnson, Britain’s prime minister at the time, told reporters that Ukraine won Eurovision “fair and square,” so it should host, regardless of the war.“It’s a year away,” Johnson said. “It’s going to be fine.”But Ukraine’s dream of staging this year’s Eurovision has failed to materialize. On Saturday night, the final of the glitzy contest — which is expected to draw a television audience of around 160 million — will take place 1,600 miles from Kyiv, in Liverpool, England.Last summer, after months of discussions, the European Broadcasting Union, which oversees the contest, agreed with Ukrainian authorities to the change of location. With Britain finishing second in last year’s contest, it was an obvious choice. Its public broadcaster, the BBC, agreed to organize the event.This is Britain’s ninth time hosting the contest since it began in 1956, but the BBC team knew this year would be different. Broadcasters that host Eurovision normally use the contest to advertise their country and its culture to a global television audience. This time, Britain would need to take a back seat.Commemorative merchandise on sale in central Liverpool.Mary Turner for The New York TimesThe Ukrainian flag displayed in a Liverpool branch of McDonald’s.Mary Turner for The New York TimesThe historic buildings on Liverpool’s waterfront were lit up in the colors of the Ukrainian flag on Wednesday.Mary Turner for The New York TimesMartin Osterdahl, the executive supervisor for Eurovision at the European Broadcasting Union, said in an interview that this year’s event would be “Ukraine’s party.” Britain just happened to be hosting it, he added, echoing a sentiment made by a British pop act.Shortly after the switch was announced, the BBC introduced a contest to select a city to stage the finals, eventually picking Liverpool over six other contenders. In October, the BBC hired Martin Green, an event producer who oversaw the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2012 London Olympics, to oversee the event.In a recent video interview, Green, 51, said he flew immediately to Warsaw and met with Ukrainian broadcasting officials.Those officials said they wanted a Eurovision that was a huge “celebration of great Ukrainian culture — past, present and future,” Green recalled. They also wanted the reality of Russia’s invasion shown onscreen — something with the potential to strike a downbeat tone for the traditionally campy, showy spectacle. But they insisted the contest should still be fun, Green said.Alyosha, who was Ukraine’s Eurovision entry in 2010, performing in Liverpool on Wednesday.Mary Turner for The New York Times“It was really important to have that blessing — that permission — about the nature and style of the show,” Green said.Back in Britain, Green had just eight months to arrange the contest. He assembled a team — including outside agencies — to work on the event. (Over 1,000 people have contributed, he said.) Every week, his staff had video calls with Ukrainian colleagues to discuss and agree on aspects of the competition. Those included this edition’s slogan, “United by Music”; its stage design; and the special performances that take place onstage during breaks from the competition.Sometimes, Green said, the Ukrainian side had to delay scheduled calls at the last minute “because an air raid siren had gone off,” or cancel meetings entirely because of power cuts.“Those were incredibly sobering moments,” Green said. “Ukrainians have such a sheer force of will to carry on, that sometimes you could easily forget.”German Nenov, a creative director with Ukraine’s public broadcaster, was a vital sounding board for the British team, Green said. In a recent interview, Nenov said it was sometimes “surreal” to be discussing sparkly outfits and dance performances as Russian bombs fell on Ukraine. “These past six months have probably been the most emotional of my life,” he said. “But thanks to Eurovision, I was able to stay strong. It gave me the ability to go on.”German Nenov, a creative director with Ukraine’s state broadcaster, in Liverpool. “These past six months have probably been the most emotional of my life,” he said.Mary Turner for The New York TimesNenov, 33, is overseeing several special performances by Ukrainian musicians that will play during competition breaks. With those, he said, he wanted to change viewers’ perceptions of his country. When Ukraine hosted Eurovision in 2005 and 2017, he added, those broadcasts featured clichés of traditional life, including embroidered outfits and dancing girls with flowers in their hair. “That’s not Ukraine,” Nenov said; this time, he would show a more modern vision of the country.Both Nenov and Green declined to give details of Saturday’s grand final, insisting it should come as a surprise for television viewers, but both said the show included Ukrainian and British pop stars. The war would be mentioned, Green said, but in an elegant fashion that was appropriate for “a great big singing competition.”Osterdahl, the European Broadcasting Union official, said that this year’s collaboration between two countries to host Eurovision was “unprecedented.” But if Ukraine wins again on Saturday, he would need another country to step up to host Ukraine’s next party. One day, he said, he hoped the war would end, and Ukraine could host for itself. More