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      How Did ‘Beau Is Afraid’ Land a Mariah Carey Song? Indies Have Their Ways.

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      A well-written letter and other methods of persuasion can help reduce the cost of expensive hits and produce unforgettable results.Beau, the addled midlife wreck played by Joaquin Phoenix in “Beau Is Afraid,” isn’t just afraid, he is terrorized: harassed, beaten, stabbed and even kidnapped in a surreal black comedy that often feels less like a conventional film than a three-hour panic attack. (In the hands of high-anxiety auteur Ari Aster, of “Hereditary” and “Midsommar” fame, consider that a compliment.)Thanks to his monstrous mother, he has become a man resigned to life without love or companionship. Then, deep in the movie comes a reprieve — a late chance at romance with his childhood crush (Parker Posey), soundtracked, incongruously, to the lilting strains of Mariah Carey’s smash 1995 ballad “Always Be My Baby.” Things go obscenely, catastrophically awry from there, as they are wont to do with Beau, but the song plays on.When the scene played at a preview at the Metrograph Theater in Manhattan this month, a packed room of industry insiders, press and celebrities that included Phoenix and the actor Robert Pattinson collectively gasped in recognition, then cheered. How exactly did the queen of five-octave pop end up here? For Aster, it turns out, there was never a second choice.“Ari had written a first draft of the script over 10 years ago, and ‘Always Be My Baby’ was in it from the very beginning,” said his production partner, Lars Knudsen, who also works frequently with filmmakers like Robert Eggers (“The Northman”) and Mike Mills (“Beginners”). “I honestly didn’t know how integral and crucial it was to him to have that song until we were in the edit, but we knew that it was going be very expensive, and that Mariah might not approve it. There was a feeling like, ‘Look, we’ll try, but we likely won’t be able to afford it.’”Nevertheless, Aster penned what Knudsen called “a very beautifully written letter” to the singer and pleaded his case; improbably, she said yes. When she first received the request, Carey said via email, “I was quite intrigued. Then, as I watched the scene, I was a bit shocked at first because of my prudish nature (ha!), but immediately understood the importance of that particular moment.”The writer-director Ari Aster wrote a letter to Carey, one strategy indie directors use when they can’t afford a song.A24She continued, “I’m really happy with the way people are responding to it, and thrilled that Ari is being recognized for his talent, creativity and artistic vision.”(Several days after the Metrograph screening, Carey briefly lit the internet ablaze when she appeared beaming on the red carpet alongside Posey and Aster at the film’s official New York premiere, resplendent in black leather.)“Beau” is perhaps the most prominent recent example of indie movies — many of which seem to stem from the tastemaking studio A24 — that stake their wildest hopes on finagling the rights to an instantly recognizable and often formidably expensive pop song. When the pairing goes well, it can be a zeitgeist-y boon for the kind of projects that rely more on word of mouth than marketing (in addition, of course, to fulfilling the highly specific vision of their creators).Think of ’N Sync’s elastic boy-band anthem “Bye Bye Bye,” which runs prominently throughout “Red Rocket,” the 2021 festival hit from writer-director Sean Baker (“The Florida Project”) about a washed-up porn star, or Paris Hilton’s featherweight bop “Stars Are Blind,” which provides a rare moment of levity in the bleak hard-candy noir of Emerald Fennell’s 2020 “Promising Young Woman.”A movie like “Guardians of the Galaxy” has Marvel Studios to underwrite its wall-to-wall usage of hits by David Bowie, the Jackson 5 and Marvin Gaye, among others. (The franchise’s director, James Gunn, once said he had paid “a million dollars” for a single song.) For small independent projects like “Aftersun,” though, the dreamy, elliptical father-daughter drama by the first-time director Charlotte Wells, a track like Queen and Bowie’s anthem “Under Pressure” — used to harrowing effect in a climactic scene — can easily consume the entire budget.That’s where highly personal appeals to the artist or estate with rights to the song — and no small amount of serendipity — often come into play. For “American Honey” (2016), a sexually frank verité road trip with a largely unknown cast, the British director Andrea Arnold had little choice but to get permission after the fact, or recut the film entirely; tracks including Rihanna and Calvin Harris’s “We Found Love” were not overlaid but woven into scenes that had already been shot.In that case, said Knudsen, who also produced “Honey,” both artists were moved enough by the material to not only give their permission, but also provide a sort of friends-and-family discount: “If it had been made by a bigger studio, then obviously we would have to pay” full price, he said. “But because we were an under-five-million-dollar movie with a reputable director who was trying to tell this very personal story where that song was the center of it, I think it definitely helped.”In the right circumstances, of course, less-expected collaborations like these can very much serve the musicians, too, even when they reduce their fees — a feedback loop of indie cred and mainstream appeal that confers fresh relevance to both parties.“When you make a convincing case, the publishing companies and the artists do understand,” Knudsen said. “I mean, ‘American Honey’ played in competition at Cannes, and A24 released it. If there wasn’t a sliding scale, then no independent film would be able to have any of these songs in their movies.”For directors like Arnold or Aster, those scenes become signatures. And for a certain kind of cinephile, “those songs will just have a very different place in their hearts. So that’s good for everyone, right?”Little Indie, Big Song“Aftersun”: David Bowie and Queen’s classic “Under Pressure” underpins the emotional climax of this impressionistic 2022 drama, which earned Paul Mescal an Oscar nomination for best actor.“Red Rocket”: ’N Sync’s 2000 hit “Bye Bye Bye” bookends this scrappy 2021 film, a character study of a prodigal porn star (Simon Rex) returning to his Texas roots.“Promising Young Woman”: Paris Hilton’s “Stars Are Blind” provides a rare moment of connection for two damaged characters in this highly stylized 2020 neofeminist revenge tale.“American Honey”: The Rihanna-Calvin Harris banger “We Found Love” becomes a sort of central theme for conflicted lovers played by played by Sasha Lane and Shia LaBeouf in this 2016 road movie.“Spring Breakers”: Britney Spears’s lachrymose 2003 ballad “Everytime” plays as a girl gang in pink balaclavas goes on a crime spree led by a demented James Franco in this 2013 nihilist comedy. More

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      Moogs and Muppets: Record Shopping in Brooklyn

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      Picking through the bins at the Academy Records Annex, and rediscovering “Switched-On Rock,” as well as albums by Tim Hardin and Otis Redding.Lindsay ZoladzDear listeners,It’s time for another installment of the recurring Amplifier segment My Record Haul, honoring the serendipity and bargains that can be found at brick-and-mortar shops. Today’s features weird and wonderful finds from one of my favorite places in Brooklyn, the Academy Records Annex.I’ve been shopping at the Academy Records Annex (the Brooklyn offshoot of Academy Records on 12th Street in Manhattan) for long enough that I’ve visited it in three different locations: its huge former home on North 6th Street in Williamsburg; the Greenpoint spot it moved to in 2013 right by the East River*; and, now, its brand-new store in the same neighborhood, at 242 Banker Street.My latest visit was particularly fruitful — especially in the dollar bins — and I’ve put together a playlist from the records I bought that day. It’s fun, breezy and, as you’ll see at the very end, contains a few unexpected musical connections.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. The Moog Machine: “Get Back”I have a morbid fascination with the many novelty synthesizer records that were pumped out in the late 1960s after Wendy Carlos’s “Switched-On Bach” became an unexpected commercial hit. By 1970, there was “Switched-On Country,” “Switched-On Bacharach” (clever) and my personal favorite in title if not in execution, “Switched-On Santa.” I did not own a copy of “Switched-On Rock,” one of the most popular of the bunch, and when I saw a cheap one in the crates, I could not resist. Please enjoy what I hope is one of the strangest Beatles covers you’ll ever hear, centered around a Moog modular synthesizer just five years after it was invented. For all their overwhelming kitsch, there’s something I genuinely love about the “Switched-On” records and this era of electronic music in general, when there was a palpable sense of wonder (and slight confusion) about what these newfangled machines could actually do. (Listen on YouTube)2. Otis Redding: “Mr. Pitiful” (Live at the Whiskey a Go Go, 1966)A year before his untimely death, Otis Redding played a three-night, seven-show residency at the Whiskey a Go Go, the famed Los Angeles rock club that at that point didn’t book many soul acts as headliners. This quick, ecstatic performance of Redding’s own “Mr. Pitiful” is just a taste of the brilliance that the audience (which, according to the liner notes, on this particular night included Bob Dylan) witnessed at those shows. It comes from the 10-track “In Person at the Whiskey a Go Go,” which was released in 1968. But if you’re looking for more Otis (and really, who isn’t?), a comprehensive boxed set of the complete Whiskey recordings was released in 2016. (Listen on YouTube)3. John Cale: “Dead or Alive”Remember just a few weeks ago, when I sent out a newsletter about John Cale and raved about his 1981 post-punk record “Honi Soit”? Just days later, I managed to find a copy in Academy Records’ New Arrivals section! Record-shopping serendipity is a beautiful thing. (Listen on YouTube)4. Tim Hardin: “Don’t Make Promises”Tim Hardin, if you’re not acquainted, was a superbly talented folk singer-songwriter who lost his battle with addiction in 1980, at just 39. While he could have done a lot more, the work he left behind is sterling. This jaunty little tune is one of my favorites on a 1970 Golden Archives Series compilation — a record that I totally forgot I already owned. I have no regrets, though, since it was a dollar-bin find too good too pass up, and I’m sure I can locate a friend who wants it. (Listen on YouTube)5. Roger Miller: “Dang Me”Perhaps the best dollar I have spent this year was on an unscratched copy of the goofball country singer Roger Miller’s greatest hits. It is scientifically and psychologically impossible to stay in a bad mood while listening to Miller: I have tested this hypothesis many times over. Same goes for this zany video of Dick Clark interviewing him on a 1964 episode of “American Bandstand,” which gives Miller an opportunity to do his impression of a telephone. (Listen on YouTube)6. Chuck Berry: “Memphis, Tennessee”Speaking of value (and, oddly enough, telephone operators), I was pleased to find a two-LP compilation of Chuck Berry songs in the bargain bin for just $2. “Memphis, Tennessee” isn’t one of his hardest rockers, but it’s a favorite nonetheless. (Listen on YouTube)7. Kermit and Fozzie: “Movin’ Right Along”OK, maybe this was the best dollar I’ve spent this year: a pristine copy of the soundtrack from “The Muppet Movie.” The LP cover alone made me smile and filled me with memories of a movie I loved as a kid, but this particular bop was the one that really brought me back. At first I thought I would put it on the playlist as a lark, especially since there’s been a relative lightheartedness to today’s selections. But then, while scrutinizing the liner notes of “Switched-On Rock,” I noticed a wild coincidence: The keyboardist on that Moog record was Kenny Ascher, the jazz pianist and composer who co-wrote the songs on the “Muppet Movie” soundtrack with Paul Williams. So, unexpectedly, today’s playlist ends where it began. I will say it again: Record-shopping serendipity is a beautiful thing. (Listen on YouTube)Footloose and fancy free,Lindsay*The Academy Records Instagram boasted of the new space, “It’s bigger! It’s clean! It doesn’t smell weird!” As a loyal customer I would contest the implication that the previous Oak Street location smelled weird, but I can confirm that there was some lovely, musky incense burning at 242 Banker Street, so I will admit, at least on the day that I visited, that this new space is the best-smelling Academy Records Annex yet.The Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Moogs and Muppets: Record Shopping in Brooklyn” track listTrack 1: The Moog Machine, “Get Back”Track 2: Otis Redding, “Mr. Pitiful (Live at the Whiskey a Go Go)”Track 3: John Cale, “Dead or Alive”Track 4: Tim Hardin, “Don’t Make Promises”Track 5: Roger Miller, “Dang Me”Track 6: Chuck Berry, “Memphis, Tennessee”Track 7: Kermit and Fozzie, “Movin’ Right Along”Bonus tracksA person dressed head-to-toe as Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker. An inflatable boa constrictor worn around someone’s neck. An inflatable alligator crowd surfing. A Jerry Springer T-shirt worn in seemingly earnest tribute. (R.I.P.) These were just some of the things I saw on Saturday night, when I left the rational world behind and went to a sold-out 100 gecs show.100 gecs are the sonically anarchic duo of Laura Les and Dylan Brady; if you’re unfamiliar with them, my colleague Joe Coscarelli’s recent profile is a great primer. Their latest album, “10,000 gecs,” is a brash, frequently hilarious assault on good taste — and with each passing day I become more certain that it’s one of my favorites of the year. (See: the towering, Blink-182-esque “Hollywood Baby” or, in keeping with our Kermit theme, the absurdist and deliriously catchy “Frog on the Floor.”) Its appeal is perhaps impossible to explain (or, some might say, justify) but I keep coming back to an idea that the critic Julianne Escobedo Shepherd articulated in her astute review of the album for Pitchfork: “It’s a re-evaluation of the most déclassé and dunderheaded rock genres that roiled the 2000s, positing that when it’s not delivered by misogynistic frat guys, it can be terrific music. 100 gecs are speaking to and for the regressive ids of us all; dumb [expletive] should be inclusive too.” A lot of the punk-rock humor espoused by the bands I grew up with was, when you held it up to the light, woefully homophobic, sexist or racist — sometimes all of the above. Like Shepherd, I appreciate the more inviting inanity of this new generation of weirdos. As I realized, chanting “gecs! gecs! gecs!” among my fellow misfits on Saturday night: The kids are all right. More

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      Gordon Lightfoot, Hitmaking Singer-Songwriter, Is Dead at 84

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      His rich baritone and gift for melodies made him one of the most popular artists of the 1970s with songs like “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and “If You Could Read My Mind.”Gordon Lightfoot, the Canadian folk singer whose rich, plaintive baritone and gift for melodic songwriting made him one of the most popular recording artists of the 1970s, died on Monday night in Toronto. He was 84. His death, at Sunnybrook Hospital, was confirmed by his publicist, Victoria Lord. No cause was given.Mr. Lightfoot, a fast-rising star in Canada in the early 1960s, broke through to international success when his friends and fellow Canadians Ian and Sylvia Tyson recorded two of his songs, “Early Morning Rain” and “For Lovin’ Me.”When Peter, Paul and Mary came out with their own versions, and Marty Robbins reached the top of the country charts with Mr. Lightfoot’s “Ribbon of Darkness,” Mr. Lightfoot’s reputation soared. Overnight, he joined the ranks of songwriters like Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and Tom Paxton, all of whom influenced his style.When folk music ebbed in popularity, overwhelmed by the British invasion, Mr. Lightfoot began writing ballads aimed at a broader audience. He scored one hit after another, beginning in 1970 with the heartfelt “If You Could Read My Mind,” inspired by the breakup of his first marriage.In quick succession he recorded the hits “Sundown,” “Carefree Highway,” “Rainy Day People” and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” which he wrote after reading a Newsweek article about the sinking of an iron-ore carrier in Lake Superior in 1975, with the loss of all 29 crew members.For Canadians, Mr. Lightfoot was a national hero, a homegrown star who stayed home even after achieving spectacular success in the United States and who catered to his Canadian fans with cross-country tours. His ballads on Canadian themes, like “Canadian Railroad Trilogy,” pulsated with a love for the nation’s rivers and forests, which he explored on ambitious canoe trips far into the hinterlands.His personal style, reticent and self-effacing — he avoided interviews and flinched when confronted with praise — also went down well. “Sometimes I wonder why I’m being called an icon, because I really don’t think of myself that way,” Mr. Lightfoot told The Globe and Mail in 2008. “I’m a professional musician, and I work with very professional people. It’s how we get through life.”Performing in London in June 1973.Michael Putland/Getty ImagesGordon Meredith Lightfoot Jr. was born on Nov. 17, 1938, in Orillia, Ontario, where his father managed a dry-cleaning plant. As a boy, he sang in a church choir, performed on local radio shows and shined in singing competitions. “Man, I did the whole bit: oratorio work, Kiwanis contests, operettas, barbershop quartets,” he told Time magazine in 1968.He played piano, drums and guitar as a teenager, and while still in high school wrote his first song, a topical number about the Hula Hoop craze with a catchy last line: “I guess I’m just a slob and I’m gonna lose my job, ’cause I’m Hula-Hula-Hoopin’ all the time.”After studying composition and orchestration at the Westlake College of Music in Los Angeles, he returned to Canada. For a time he was a member of the Singing Swinging Eight, a singing and dancing troupe on the television show “Country Hoedown,” but he soon became part of the Toronto folk scene, performing at the same coffee houses and clubs as Ian and Sylvia, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and Leonard Cohen.He formed a folk duo, the Two Tones, with a fellow “Hoedown” performer, Terry Whelan. The duo recorded a live album in 1962, “Two Tones at the Village Corner.” The next year, while traveling in Europe, he served as the host of “The Country and Western Show” on BBC television.As a songwriter, Mr. Lightfoot had advanced beyond the Hula Hoop, but not by a great deal. His work “didn’t have any kind of identity,” he told the authors of “The Encyclopedia of Folk, Country and Western Music,” published in 1969. When the Greenwich Village folk boom brought Mr. Dylan and other dynamic songwriters to the fore, he said, “I started to get a point of view, and that’s when I started to improve.”In 1965, he appeared at the Newport Folk Festival and made his debut in the United States at Town Hall in New York. “Mr. Lightfoot has a rich, warm voice and a dexterous guitar technique,” Robert Shelton wrote in The New York Times. “With a little more attention to stage personality, he should become quite popular.”A year later, after signing with Albert Grossman, the manager of Mr. Dylan and Peter, Paul and Mary, Mr. Lightfoot recorded his first solo album, “Lightfoot!” With performances of “Early Morning Rain,” “For Lovin’ Me,” “Ribbon of Darkness” and “I’m Not Sayin’,” a hit record in Canada in 1963, the album was warmly received by the critics.Real commercial success came when he switched to Warner Brothers, initially recording for the company’s Reprise label. “By the time I changed over to Warner Brothers, round about 1970, I was reinventing myself,” he told the Georgia newspaper Savannah Connect in 2010. “Let’s say I was probably just advancing away from the folk era, and trying to find some direction whereby I might have some music that people would want to listen to.”Lightfoot with his 12-string guitar at the 2018 Stagecoach Festival in Indio, Calif.Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for StagecoachMr. Lightfoot, accompanying himself on an acoustic 12-string guitar, in a voice that often trembled with emotion, gave spare, direct accounts of his material. He sang of loneliness, troubled relationships, the itch to roam and the majesty of the Canadian landscape. He was, as the Canadian writer Jack Batten put it, “journalist, poet, historian, humorist, short-story teller and folksy recollector of bygone days.”His popularity as a recording artist began to wane in the 1980s, but he maintained a busy touring schedule. In 1999 Rhino Records released “Songbook,” a four-disc survey of his career.Mr. Lightfoot, who lived in Toronto, is survived by his wife, Kim Hasse, six children — Fred, Ingrid, Miles, Meredith, Eric and Galen — and several grandchildren, according to Ms. Lord, his publicist. His first two marriages ended in divorce. His older sister, Beverley Eyers, died in 2017.In 2002, just before going onstage in Orillia, Mr. Lightfoot collapsed when an aneurysm in his abdominal aorta ruptured and left him near death. After two years spent recovering, he recorded an album, “Harmony,” and in 2005 he resumed his live performances with the Better Late Than Never Tour.“I want to be like Ralph Carter, Stompin’ Tom and Willie Nelson,” Mr. Lightfoot told the CBC in 2004. “Just do it for as long as humanly possible.”Vjosa Isai More

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      Taylor Swift and Morgan Wallen Dominate Billboard’s Album Chart

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      Wallen spends an eighth week at No. 1 with “One Thing at a Time,” and Swift lands three albums in the Top 10, including the new vinyl set “Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions.”Half of the Billboard album chart’s Top 10 this week belongs to Morgan Wallen and Taylor Swift, with Wallen holding two slots, including No. 1, and Swift taking three.Wallen’s 36-track “One Thing at a Time” remains at the top for an eighth time, with the equivalent of 149,000 sales in the United States, according to the tracking service Luminate. His previous release, “Dangerous: The Double Album,” is No. 7.Agust D — better known as Suga of the K-pop titans BTS — debuts at No. 2 with his first solo studio album, “D-Day.” It had the equivalent of 140,000 sales, including 18 million streams and 122,000 copies sold as a complete album.Swift opens at No. 3 with “Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions,” a two-LP vinyl set released on April 22 as part of Record Store Day, an annual promotion in which artists and labels issue one-day special releases. It was limited to 75,000 copies in the United States, and every one of them was sold, according to Luminate. That is the biggest week for any album on vinyl so far this year, Billboard said.Swift, who is still playing stadiums on her Eras Tour, also occupies No. 4 this week, with her latest studio album, “Midnights,” and No. 10, with “Lover,” from 2019.Also this week, YoungBoy Never Broke Again, the prolific Louisiana rapper, arrives at No. 5 with his new “Don’t Try This at Home,” which features guest appearances by Nicki Minaj, Mariah the Scientist, Post Malone and others. The 33-track album, his 14th to reach the Top 10, had the equivalent of 60,000 sales, including 88 million streams. More

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      Ticketmaster Finds Itself in a Royal Mess Over Coronation Concert

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      Some British residents said they received misleading emails suggesting they had secured free tickets to the concert for the coronation of King Charles III at Windsor Castle.At five minutes past noon on Tuesday, Ticketmaster sent Joe Holmes and many others in Britain an email: “Congratulations, you have been successful in the ballot” for two tickets to King Charles’s coronation concert.Mr. Holmes, a student in his final year at the University of Essex, saw it immediately while checking his email and rushed to click the link to claim his tickets to the concert, an official coronation event that will take place a day after King Charles III is crowned — only to be met with a message saying that none were available.He was one of dozens of people who believed they had secured entry to the concert before being quickly let down once they tried to collect tickets. Many Twitter users posted screenshots of the same “congratulations” email Mr. Holmes received this week and expressed frustration about the confusing messaging; one user called the email “disgraceful” and said Ticketmaster had a “total shambles of a system.”It was “immediate excitement and then immediate disappointment,” Mr. Holmes said on Friday. He had already sent a screenshot of the email to his sister in celebration and believed his next step would be to book a train to the event.Ticketmaster was tasked with issuing 10,000 free tickets to the concert being held on May 7 through balloting, a process that fans are saying the site has made a mess of. It comes a few months after the company canceled the public sale of tickets to Taylor Swift’s latest tour because of high demand, which spurred public outrage, a lawsuit from fans and a Senate hearing.Ticketmaster said in an emailed statement on Friday that people who had been selected in earlier rounds of balloting had three weeks to claim their tickets to the coronation concert. On Tuesday, after that time had expired, “unclaimed tickets were released on a first-come, first-served basis to those who had previously applied and were unsuccessful,” the company said. “These inevitably went very quickly.”A tweet from the company’s U.K. page on Tuesday announced the tickets had “sold out.” Replies to the tweet included stories of experiences similar to that of Mr. Holmes.The application to be included in the balloting was open from Feb. 10 through Feb. 28. Tickets were to be allocated “based on the geographical spread of the U.K. population,” according to the British royal family’s website.Katy Perry, Lionel Richie and Take That will headline the concert, which is being organized and broadcast by the BBC. It is the first to be held on the grounds of Windsor Castle, the royal family said. Mr. Holmes, who said his mother traveled to London for the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana in 1981, wanted to attend the concert to be present for “a part of history.”The email from Ticketmaster said Mr. Holmes was one of a “randomly selected group of ballot winners” offered tickets in a “supplementary round” that would be on “a first-come, first-served basis.” It urged him to “act quickly.” But farther down, it said he would have until noon on April 27 to claim the tickets, after which “they will be re-allocated.”Even so, Mr. Holmes said he acted within minutes to no avail. It was unclear how many tickets were actually available, or how many people received the same email about them.He searched Twitter and found many others who said they had a similar experience.Janine Barclay, 58, who received the same email on Tuesday, declined a lunch invitation for May 7 because she thought she was headed to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. “I was telling everybody about this,” she said on Friday, “and then I’ve got egg on my face.”She received the email while she was out of the house and put off claiming the tickets, thinking she had a couple of days. Ms. Barclay said she was grateful that she lived close enough to Windsor Castle that her instinct was not to book a hotel or travel.“They misled people,” Mr. Holmes said, but he added that he knew to expect disappointment in these situations. “We know how it goes with concerts these days,” he said. “It’s so hard to get tickets, it’s an event itself.” He plans to watch the concert on television at a family barbecue.Beyond bad blood with Swifties, Ticketmaster was criticized in March when fans tried to attend the final round of the Eurovision Song Contest and some complained that glitches left them ticketless. The Cure said last month that Ticketmaster agreed to issue refunds to some fans after they complained of high ticket fees.“It is a fiasco,” said Ms. Barclay, a swim coach and teacher in Pinner, England, who was excited to take her husband to the coronation concert. “For a big company like this,” she said, “you would have thought that they would have handled it better.” More

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      Mark Stewart, Fiery British Rocker, Is Dead at 62

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      His band, the Pop Group, was anything but pop, blending anti-authoritarian fury with a ferocious mix of punk, funk and experimental jazz.Mark Stewart, the incendiary frontman of the British post-punk band the Pop Group, whose explosive mix of funk, noise rock, free jazz experimentalism and anti-authoritarian rage made a mockery of the group’s sunny name, died on April 21. He was 62.His death was announced in a statement by his London-based recoding label, Mute. It provided no other details.The Pop Group emerged in Bristol, England, in 1977, as punk rock was shaking the foundations of the British music scene. Mr. Stewart found inspiration in punk’s iconoclastic fury. “There is the arrogance of power,” he once said, “and what we got from punk was the power of arrogance.”Onstage, the band created a cyclone force that put many punk bands to shame. Gyrating manically and barking rebellious lyrics through his pouty, Jagger-esque lips, Mr. Stewart whipped audiences into a frenzy with songs like “We Are All Prostitutes,” the band’s best known single, from 1979, which reached No. 8 on the British indie charts. The lyrics include these lines:We are all prostitutesEveryone has their priceEveryoneAnd you too will have to learn to live the lieLive performances by the Pop Group hit with “such indomitable force and such sudden visceral rage that I could barely breathe,” the musician and writer Nick Cave wrote in a tribute on his website, The Red Hand Files, after Mr. Stewart’s death.Righteous fury was as intrinsic to Mr. Stewart’s personality as it was to his music. “Mark taught me many things about life,” Mr. Cave added, including the idea that “sleeping was a bourgeois indulgence, and that the world was one giant corporate conspiracy, and that one way to win an argument was to just never, ever stop shouting.”The band scarcely made a dent commercially, but that made sense, given its contempt for all things capitalist. As Mr. Stewart put it in a 2015 interview with The Arts Desk, a culture site, “The Pop Group were really that Situationist idea of an explosion at the heart of the commodity.”Mr. Stewart performing onstage in 2012 in Leeds, England. After the Pop Group broke up, he remained prolific, collaborating with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, Tricky and Massive Attack, and releasing a string of eclectic solo albums.Andrew Benge/Redferns, via Getty ImagesMark Stewart was born in Bristol, in South West England, on Aug. 10, 1960, one of two sons of an engineer father and a mother who worked with children with learning disabilities.Bristol in the 1970s was a rough town, Mr. Stewart once said, and his towering stature — he was already 6 feet 6 inches tall as a preteen — made him a tempting potential recruit for local boot-boy gangs. But the thug’s life was not for him; music was his passion — even though he and his friends considered themselves musical misfits, scouring junk shops for obscure jazz and funk records, wearing mohair sweaters inspired by the Sex Pistols and staging punk shows at a local youth center.“The local gangs really, really had it in for me,” he said in the Arts Desk interview. “They wanted me to join their gangs but didn’t realize I was only 12. They thought I was about 20. So they’d smash all the youth club windows. I had to climb out of toilet windows.”Music was a way out. “If there’s not too much going on in the town you’re in, you dream,” he said in 2014 interview with Vice.Mr. Stewart formed the Pop Group in 1976 along with the band’s original members: John Waddington (guitar), Simon Underwood (bass), Gareth Sager (guitar and saxophone) and Bruce Smith (drums).The band’s name came from Mr. Stewart’s mother. “I think she said, ‘Oh, Mark’s forming a pop group,’” he told Vice. And at the outset, he said, “we thought we were.”The band’s first album, “Y,” which was released in 1979 and produced by the British dub master Dennis Bovell, made little commercial impact.“These heavyweight journalists thought we were being deliberately obtuse,” Mr. Stewart told Vice, although NME, the taste-making British music publication, called the debut “a brave failure. Exciting but exasperating.”The Pop Group did anything but mellow on its second album, “For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder?,” released the next year; it crackled with angry denunciations of Thatcher-era England. Though some dismissed it as “self-righteous soapbox agitprop,” the critic Simon Reynolds wrote in “U.K. Post-Punk,” a 2012 collection of his essays, the album, like “Y,” came to be a considered a classic by many.In a look back at the album upon its rerelease in 2016, the site Punknews.org observed: “This is the noise of a collapsing society caught on tape, running through the gamut of paranoia and death. Dig it.”The band broke up not long after the second album’s release, but Mr. Stewart remained prolific, collaborating with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, Tricky and Massive Attack, and releasing a string of eclectic solo albums over the years that, characteristically, were as subtle as a bazooka.The first, “Learning to Cope With Cowardice,” from 1983, was rereleased in 2006. It inspired the music site Pitchfork to note the single-minded intensity of this “possible madman and authority-critiquing refusenik that was marginalized in his own time, only to later be viewed as a seer.”Little is publicly known about Mr. Stewart’s personal life, and information about his survivors was not available.In 2010, he reunited with the Pop Group and released two more albums, “Citizen Zombie” (2015) and “Honeymoon on Mars” (2016). Both its albums and live performances showed that the band, and Mr. Stewart, had not lost a flicker of their fire.“It was good to be reminded of how singular and beautifully abrasive the Pop Group could be,” Ben Beaumont-Thomas of The Guardian wrote in a review of a 2010 London performance, “and how dreadfully conservative most rock music since sounds in comparison.” More

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      Jack Harlow Goes Deep on Race and Rap, and 8 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Jessie Ware, Joy Oladokun, Miguel 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.Jack Harlow, ‘Common Ground’On his third major label album, “Jackman,” Jack Harlow leans away from the lithe boasts that shaped “Come Home the Kids Miss You,” his 2022 breakthrough LP. Instead, he pivots to issues — specifically, on the opening track “Common Ground,” the issue of whiteness. It’s a fleet, acute look at the ways white participants in hip-hop cloak themselves, to be present but not quite seen (or maybe vice versa): “Reciting rap lyrics about murder and cash profit/Get to feel like a thug but don’t have to act on it.” White rappers rapping about the condition of whiteness in hip-hop isn’t new, and Harlow has addressed these themes on earlier releases; he raps about these topics with self-awareness and skepticism (though not quite self-indictment). But as he is beginning to become a bigger mainstream rap star, he’s not shrugging off the conversation as if it doesn’t apply to him anymore. JON CARAMANICAJessie Ware, ‘Freak Me Now’The British pop singer Jessie Ware pivoted to disco on her excellent 2020 album “What’s Your Pleasure?,” but she shifts n into a higher gear on its ecstatic follow-up, “That! Feels Good!,” out on Friday. The kinetic, house-inflected dance-floor anthem “Freak Me Now” is a highlight, and its vampy attitude and attention to sonic detail finds Ware in complete control of her vision. “That sparkle in my eye, you are a jewel, baby,” she purrs on the verse, as if an entire glittering, sweaty congregation of partygoers is orbiting around her confident stillness. LINDSAY ZOLADZFour Tet, ‘Three Drums’Fresh off a raucous, last-minute gig headlining Coachella with his pals Skrillex and Fred again.., Kieran Hebden has released “Three Drums,” a slow-burning, eight-minute reverie that’s much more subdued than what he played for the festival crowd. But such is the duality of Four Tet. “Three Drums” contrasts the textures of live percussion and otherworldly synth gradients, resulting in a hypnotic composition that ebbs and flows like an ocean. ZOLADZMiguel, ‘Give It to Me’Miguel returns to one of his favorite modes — the flirt — in “Give It to Me,” which is blunt: “I like what you got,” he repeats. He has plenty of blandishments, among them “I’ll be your doctor, let me operate.” But he surrounds them with a production, credited to Scoop DeVille, that keeps melting down and reshaping itself around him: with synthesizers and handclaps, with hard-rock guitars, with echoey backup voices. It’s as if he wants to try every possible seduction strategy, all at once. JON PARELESJoy Oladokun, ‘Somebody Like Me’“I’ve watched even my best intentions turn into disaster/Everything goes backwards,” Joy Oladokun sings in “Somebody Like Me” from a new album, “Proof of Life.” It’s a plea for consolation and support from friends and from God; it’s a confession and a rallying cry. “I’ve never been as honest as I want to be/when I need help through,” she adds. The syncopated beat is steady, yet she knows the sentiment is widely shared. PARELESBebe Rexha & Dolly Parton, ‘Seasons’Aging, loneliness and despair aren’t the usual makings of Bebe Rexha’s songs, so the folky “Seasons” is unexpected — even more so with the appearance of Rexha’s duet partner, Dolly Parton. They sing in close harmony through the song, and Rexha adapts her voice to share Parton’s feathery vibrato, but Parton is upfront in the bridge. “How come nobody warns us about what’s coming for us?” she sings. “That you live and die alone.” PARELESThe 3 Clubmen, ‘Aviatrix’Andy Partridge, the often elusive co-founder of XTC, has re-emerged with two longtime collaborators, Jen Olive and Stu Rowe, as the 3 Clubmen. “Aviatrix” is a warped, meter-shifting, proudly eccentric pop extravaganza. The lyrics touch on historical and modern aviation, from “made like a bird out of canvas and sticks” to “your seat is a flotation device,” while the music just keeps piling things on — percussion, flute, saxophones, vocal harmonies, lead guitar — all wrapped around a bouncy acoustic guitar lick that loops all the way through. PARELESBill Orcutt, ‘The Life of Jesus’The guitarist Bill Orcutt has recorded in all sorts of configurations, from raucous punk to acoustic ruminations to tautly composed minimalistic electric ensembles. His new album, “Jump on It,” returns to solo acoustic guitar, a format in which he can be pristinely meditative or wildly eruptive at any moment. “The Life of Jesus” promises stability at first, steadily tolling a major chord. But midway through, breakneck dissonant lines burst out; when consonance returns, it seems far more fragile. PARELESRob Moose featuring Brittany Howard, ‘I Bend But Never Break’The violinist Rob Moose, a founder of the chamber group yMusic, has been a ubiquitous studio musician and string arranger for — among hundreds of credits — Miley Cyrus, Sufjan Stevens, Bon Iver, Arcade Fire, John Legend, Phoebe Bridgers and Alabama Shakes. Brittany Howard, Alabama Shakes’ leader, returns the favor with her song “I Bend But Never Break,” which will appear on Moose’s EP due in August, “Inflorescence.” Howard sings about seeking, and claiming, the strength to rise above obstacles and tribulation: “I am not fearless but fear will stop me,” she vows. She’s backed by a lush, cello-rich, harmonically convoluted string ensemble, as her solo testimony gives way to a choral affirmation. PARELES More

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      U2’s Music Shaped My Life. Then It Helped Save It.

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      While I was undergoing treatment to eradicate a tumor, listening to songs from the band’s long career became its own vital form of medicine.The radiation oncology department in the basement of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York does not seem like a regular home for rock ’n’ roll. But every business day for almost seven weeks this year, U2 blared over the speakers at my request.I became a fan in the late 1980s and have attended nine of the band’s concerts, though I probably fall short of superfandom. I remember listening to songs from “The Joshua Tree” album as a preteen on my staticky clock radio, struck by U2’s carefully crafted music that builds into anthems, and lyrics exploring weighty but personal themes, like love and religion. In the 1990s, I watched its mesmerizing Zoo TV tour in the pouring rain from the nosebleed seats of the old Giants Stadium in New Jersey. My wife, Amy, and I danced to “In a Little While” at our wedding. In many ways, the group has provided the soundtrack to my life.That importance gained new dimension in the summer of 2022, when I was diagnosed with a benign tumor the size of a lime near my pituitary gland. I had surgery to remove it, only to develop a rare bleeding complication that left me in intensive care for about a week. I required emergency transport and five units of blood to survive.While my complication (thankfully) is on track to heal, a small bit of the tumor remains. In March, I finished a 30-session radiation cycle to keep the mass from growing again. All of my medical drama led to dozens of trips to Mount Sinai. And it brought many chances to request U2.Patients undergoing recurring care like radiation sometimes get their choice of music, which makes it easier to relax and keep still. Meditative or classical music are popular choices, according to the radiation technicians at Mount Sinai. My choice was slightly different.U2 served two purposes. One part, of course, was escape. At every treatment, for weeks upon weeks, I changed into a gown, laid on a table and had a suffocating mesh plastic mask installed on my head to ensure that I would not move or twitch. The M.R.I.s required absolute stillness for up to 35 minutes or more.Hearing U2 helped, especially in the latter parts of the radiation treatment, when the routine became harder to bear. Bono’s philosophical words, Adam Clayton’s steady bass, Larry Mullen Jr.’s crisp drums and the Edge’s ringing guitars — that was my focus. U2’s songs often surfaced memories that took me far from the treatment room: a high school trip (“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”), a college breakup (“One”), time spent in another city (“Beautiful Day”).The music also served a utilitarian purpose. U2’s songs routinely clock in at about four minutes long. That knowledge allowed me to estimate how much of the treatment remained. Radiation typically took me about 20 minutes, or four to five U2 songs. M.R.I.s lasted about eight songs.At the initial M.R.I. that kicked off my medical journey, I had no idea that music was even an option. Holding still in silence, the M.R.I. seemed to take eons to complete as the machine heated up and emitted ominous loud beeps and crackles. At my second scan, I asked about the possibility of audiobooks or music. Yes, they had Spotify, a technician said. My U2 treatment plan was born.During my many trips to Mount Sinai, I have heard music from the band’s five-decade catalog in random order. Sometimes, I reframed the songs in light of my circumstances. “Stories for Boys” (1980) made me think of my 6-year-old son and how I hoped to raise him longer. “Ultraviolet (Light My Way)” (1991) and “Kite” (2000) brought about thoughts of my 11-year-old daughter. “Every Breaking Wave” (2014) took me to a sunny beach. “With or Without You” (1987) popped up most often, sparking a feeling one might get if a best friend just walked into the room.Every once in a while, Spotify sent out a song that I had not heard before, often a B-side or an obscure dance version of a track (How many times did the band rearrange “Mysterious Ways”?). For my fifth M.R.I., the technicians mistakenly put on a karaoke version of a U2 album with no words. Luckily, the songs were a close-enough facsimile of — though definitely not even better than — the real thing.The song that induced the most catharsis during treatment? “Where the Streets Have No Name.” With its ethereal organ and guitar and racing beat, the song conjures images of speeding down an empty desert highway. Basically, the opposite of lying in a hospital bed.Life’s saving graces come in all sizes, with the small ones often accumulating and surprising us with their bigness when we least expect it. I think about the village of people that has helped me during this health crisis. Doctors, nurses, support staff, family, friends, colleagues. My wife, Amy, especially. Count U2 among them.Theodore Kim is Director of Career Programs for The New York Times. More