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      New Yorker Festival, which runs Will Host Bono and Rep Jamie Raskin

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      The three day-festival beginning on Oct. 7 will also include conversations with stars like Ben Stiller, Chloe Bailey and Sandra Oh.The New Yorker Festival returns for its 23rd edition, featuring conversations with Bono, Quinta Brunson, Ben Stiller, Chloe Bailey, United States Representative Jamie Raskin and more, and will run from Oct. 7-9.Bono, the Irish rock star and more recently the motorbike-riding lion in “Sing 2,” will be in conversation with The New Yorker’s editor, David Remnick, about his new memoir and his decades as an activist and musician. The book, “Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story,” will be released in November.“Like so many memoirs that I’ve read, the most intriguing part is how someone becomes himself or herself,” Remnick said in an interview.Quinta Brunson, who plays the chirpy yet clumsy elementary school teacher in “Abbott Elementary,” will speak with the magazine’s television critic, Doreen St. Félix. And Chloe Bailey (of the R&B sister duo Chloe x Halle) will perform live at the festival after a conversation.Remnick said that politically driven conversations can be had by artists, authors and actors, as well as lawmakers. Raskin, a Democrat of Maryland and a member of the Jan. 6 House select committee, along with three of the magazine’s writers, will join a live taping of The New Yorker’s “The Political Scene” podcast.The political conversation will continue with a talk about Asian American culture and representation, with the chef David Chang, the filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung, the writer Min Jin Lee and the actor Sandra Oh. And the climate activists Sara Blazevic and Molly Burhans, and the climate expert Leah Stokes, will delve into the future of the environment.“All of these people in cultural life are also in many ways connected to the political,” Remnick said.The writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie will return to the festival, where Hari Kunzru, Elif Batuman, Gary Shteyngart, Rachel Kushner and Ottessa Moshfegh will also appear.As for comedy, Molly Shannon and Vanessa Bayer, the actresses and comedians who star in the Showtime series “I Love That for You,” will chat with Susan Morrison, an editor at the magazine. And the comedians Hasan Minhaj, Phoebe Robinson, Billy Eichner and Jerrod Carmichael will also participate in festival conversations, along with the directors Stiller, the duo Daniels, Sharon Horgan and Maggie Gyllenhaal.Remnick said that with the return to theaters and the arrival of vaccine boosters, he feels confident sharing a room with readers, thinkers and performers, and the festival will hold select events virtually.“Part of cultural lifestyle was taken from us, and now it’s bounced back,” he said. More

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      7 New Musicals Are Headed to Broadway This Fall

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      Behind every new New York season are a lot of wannabes, also-rans and hopeless cases to keep track of.I have friends who keep a spreadsheet of every show they’ve seen, cross-indexed to their Playbill collection.I’m the opposite. I toss my Playbills but keep Excel fired up with compulsive catalogs of what’s coming next.Especially for musicals, it’s a highly unreliable list. Some shows have sat on it undisturbed since the 20th century. I don’t think the stage adaptation of “My Man Godfrey,” first announced in 1985 and occasionally re-announced ever since, will ever actually open on Broadway. And was ABBA really going to write a version of “Marty”? No, that must have been a typo — though I’m not sure for what.On the other hand, at least one show I thought would never make it off the list unfortunately did. (Clue: It involved an escape to Margaritaville.) In my “comments” column for dubious entries, I sometimes include useful information like “Whut?”In any case, it’s around this time of year that I traditionally cull and update the herd, getting excited or terrified about what’s headed my way. So far, seven Broadway musicals are in the “definite” column, having been officially announced for the fall.They make an unusual grouping. To begin with, only one, “1776,” is a revival — and that one might as well be new. As reshaped by Diane Paulus and Jeffrey L. Page in the post-“Hamilton” manner, and featuring a cast of women, nonbinary and transgender performers, the American Independence pageant aims to offer a more inclusive history than our real past did.Also unusual: Among the six new musicals, only “A Beautiful Noise,” based on the life and songs of Neil Diamond, is a biographical jukebox. (Will Swenson, who does swagger very well, stars.) And only two others — a very modest proportion compared to most seasons — are Hollywood adaptations.One of those is “Almost Famous,” based on Cameron Crowe’s 2000 coming-of-age film about a young man swept up in a 1970s rock ’n’ roll dream. It may ensure some authenticity that Crowe has written the book for the show, and, with the composer Tom Kitt, the lyrics.The other Hollywood adaptation is “Some Like It Hot,” based on the 1959 Billy Wilder comedy. If you think you’ve seen it onstage before, you’re partly right; it was first turned into a musical, called “Sugar,” in 1972. That version’s score was by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill; this one’s by their natural inheritors, the “Hairspray” team of Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman.The remaining incoming musicals, though no less exciting, may be even more familiar. (I’ve already seen two of them in earlier productions.) “Kimberly Akimbo,” based on David Lindsay-Abaire’s play about a girl with a premature-aging condition, ran Off Broadway, at the Atlantic Theater Company, last season. “KPOP,” a behind-the-scenes look at the Korean pop music industry, was another Off Broadway hit, in 2017. Both will have big adjustments to make for larger theaters and audiences, and I’m eager to see how they do it.Then there’s “& Juliet,” which has been playing in London (with a pandemic interruption) since 2019, and which is the only show on my spreadsheet to start with a typographical symbol. From a distance, it appears to be a mash-up of several Broadway tropes: updated Shakespeare, romantic fantasy and hit parade. Its songs, by Max Martin, are mostly familiar from recordings by Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Backstreet Boys and the like.But the seven sure musicals this fall are only the tip of my Excel iceberg. Slightly below the water line are shows almost certain to announce their arrival quite soon, including the revival of Bob Fosse’s “Dancin’,” the stage adaptation of “The Devil Wears Prada” and the London hit “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie.”Diving a bit deeper, we get to a larger school of wannabes. Many seem fascinating; “Lempicka,” for one, about the hedonistic Polish painter, has been getting good reviews for its various tryout productions.Others seem stuck in development hell. “Harmony,” the Barry Manilow show about a singing group in Nazi Germany, had its world premiere in 1997; it took 25 years to get as far as the tip of Manhattan, where it had a brief run this spring. At its final performance there, Manilow’s collaborator Bruce Sussman told the audience, “I’d like to think of today as only the end of the beginning!”Everyone does, even the bottom feeders, those mystifying creatures someone apparently once considered a good idea. “Magic Mike”? “The Honeymooners”? The Baby Jessica Falls in the Well musical? The adaptation of “Paradise Lost”? (Only one of those is made up.)But for list-compulsives like me — my spreadsheet includes nearly 100 titles, from “A Little Princess” to “Zanna” — the quality of the product hardly matters. What I like to contemplate is the vast array. Sometimes I envision the titles as a swarm of planes taxiing at airports all over the country: “Bhangin’ It,” “Trading Places,” “Black Orpheus,” “Beaches,” even the “Untitled Roy Rogers Musical.” They haven’t lifted off yet, and some of them are out of fuel, but they’re on the runway, eager noses all pointed in our direction. More

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      Shakespeare or Bieber? This Canadian City Draws Devotees of Both

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      For nearly 70 years, Stratford, Ontario, has attracted legions of theater fanatics to its Shakespeare festival. About a dozen years ago, a very different type of pilgrim began arriving: Beliebers.STRATFORD, Ontario — It’s a small city that practically shouts “Shakespeare!”Majestic white swans float in the Avon River, not far from Falstaff Street and Anne Hathaway Park, named for the playwright’s wife. Some residents live in Romeo Ward, while young students attend Hamlet elementary. And the school’s namesake play is often performed as part of a renowned theater festival that draws legions of Shakespeare fans from around the world, every April to October.Stratford, Ontario, steeped in references to and reverence for the Bard, has counted on its association with Shakespeare for decades to dependably bring in millions of tourist dollars to a city that would otherwise have little appeal to travelers.“My dad always said we have a world-class theater stuck in a farm community,” said Frank Herr, the second-generation owner of a boat tour and rental business along the Avon River.Then, about a dozen years ago, a new and typically much younger type of cultural enthusiast began showing up in Stratford’s streets: Beliebers, or fans of the pop star Justin Bieber, a homegrown talent.William Shakespeare Street in Stratford.Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesA star dedicated to Justin Bieber outside the Avon Theater where he would busk as a child.Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesResidents don’t have much trouble telling the two types of visitors apart. One clue: Look at what they are carrying.“They’ve got the Shakespeare books in their hands,” Mr. Herr said of those who are here for the love of theater. “They’re just serious people.”Beliebers, on the other hand, always have their smartphones at the ready to excitedly document the otherwise humdrum landmarks connected to the pop star: the site of his first date, the local radio station that first played his music, the diner where he was rumored to eat.Unlike Shakespeare — who never set foot in this city, named after his birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon, England — Mr. Bieber has genuine and deep connections: He grew up here and is familiar to many.“I know Justin,” Mr. Herr said. “He was always skateboarding on the cenotaph, and I was always kicking him off the cenotaph,” he added, referring to a World War I memorial in the gardens next to Lake Victoria.A cutout of Justin Bieber in the Stratford Perth Museum. The setting is meant to replicate the steps of the city’s Avon Theater. Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesDiane Dale, Mr. Bieber’s maternal grandmother, and her husband, Bruce, lived a 10-minute drive away from downtown Stratford, where the fledgling singer, now 28, could often be found busking on the steps of Avon Theater under their supervision, collecting as much as $200 per day, she said in a recent interview.Those steps became something of a pilgrimage site for Mr. Bieber’s fans, especially those vying to become “One Less Lonely Girl” during his teen-pop dreamboat era.Another popular stop on the pilgrim’s tour was Ms. Dale’s doorstep. After fans rang her doorbell, she would assure them that her grandson was not home, though that didn’t stop them from taking selfies outside the red brick bungalow.“Justin said, if you don’t move, we’re not coming to visit you anymore,” Ms. Dale, a retired sewer at a now shuttered automotive factory in town, recalled. She has since relocated.Businesses in Stratford that benefited from this second set of tourists began speaking of “the Bieber Effect,” a play on the “Bilbao Effect” in reference to the Spanish city revitalized by a museum.Justin Bieber’s grandparents’ former home in Stratford.Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesBut one of the problems with pop fame is that it can be fickle. As fans have aged out of their teen infatuation with the musician, “Bieber fever” has cooled and the number of pilgrims has dropped.The issues that have long afflicted other Canadian cities, like increased housing prices and drug addiction, are more often peeking through the quaint veneer of Stratford, a city of about 33,000 people bordered by sprawling fields of corn in the farmland region of southwestern Ontario.But more than 400 years after his death, Shakespeare’s magnetic force remains fully intact.The theater festival, which draws over 500,000 guests in a typical year and employs about 1,000 people, features Shakespeare classics, Broadway-style musicals and modern plays in its repertoire.Early in the coronavirus pandemic, the festival returned to its roots, staging a limited run of shows outside under canopies, as it did during its first four seasons, starting in 1953. In 1957, the Festival Theater building opened with a summer performance of “Hamlet,” with the Canadian actor Christopher Plummer in the titular role.The Tom Patterson Theater, a new addition to the Stratford Festival.Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesThis year’s production stars a woman, Amaka Umeh, the first Black actor to play Hamlet at the festival.While it’s unknown how popular Mr. Bieber will be four centuries from now, the appeal of someone who has sold over 100 million digital singles in the United States alone doesn’t dissipate overnight.And Stratford has taken steps to permanently memorialize his youth here.Mr. Bieber’s grandparents had hung on to boxes of his belongings, including talent show score sheets and a drum set paid for the by the community in a crowdfunding effort — until a local museum presented them with an opportunity to display the items.“It’s changed the museum forever, in a myriad of ways,” said John Kastner, the general manager of the Stratford Perth Museum.After informing the local newspaper that the museum was opening an exhibition, “Justin Bieber: Steps to Stardom,” in February 2018, Mr. Kastner said, he was flooded with calls from international media.“We were going to do one room, like one 10-by-10 room,” Mr. Kastner said. He called his curator. “I said, ‘We have a problem.’”Angelyka Byrne walking through the Bieber exhibit at the Stratford Perth Museum.Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesThey cut the agricultural exhibition that had been planned for the adjoining space, which proved helpful in accommodating the 18,000 visitors in the first year of the Bieber show, a huge jump in attendance from the 850 who visited the museum in 2013.The Bieber show, on view through at least next year, has brought in thousands of dollars in merchandise purchases, Mr. Kastner said, giving the modest museum some welcome financial cushion.Mr. Bieber has also made a handful of visits, marking his name in chalk on the guest blackboard and donating some more recent memorabilia, including his wedding invitation and reception menu, featuring a dish called “Grandma Diane’s Bolognese.”But even before the Beliebers descended on the town, young people had been coming to Stratford by the busload thanks to organized school visits, with 50,000 to 100,000 students arriving from the United States and around Canada each year.With the exception of the pandemic border closures, James Pakala, and his wife, Denise, both retired seminary librarians in St. Louis, have been coming to Stratford for about a week every year since the early 1990s. Thirty years before that, Ms. Pakala traveled to Stratford with her high school English literature class from Ithaca, N.Y., and the trip has since become a tradition.The Shakespearean Gardens in Stratford.Brett Gundlock for The New York Times“I love Shakespeare and also Molière,” said Mr. Pakala, 78, who was studying his program outside the Festival Theater before a recent production of Molière’s comedy “The Miser.”Other guests enjoy the simplicity of getting around Stratford. The traffic is fairly light, there is ample parking and most major attractions are a short walk from one other, with pleasant views of the rippling river and picturesque gardens.“It’s easy to attend theater here,” said Michael Walker, a retired banker from Newport Beach, Calif., who visits each year with friends. “It’s not like New York, where it’s burdensome, and the quality of the theater here, I think, is better than what’s in Los Angeles or Chicago.”Here for Now Theater, an independent nonprofit that opened during the pandemic and plays to audiences of no more than 50, enjoys a “symbiotic relationship” with the festival, said its artistic director, Fiona Mongillo, who compared the scale of their operations as a Fiat to the festival’s freight train.Performing “Take Care” at the Here for Now Theater in August.Brett Gundlock for The New York Times“It’s an interesting moment for Stratford because I think it’s growing and changing in a really lovely way,” said Ms. Mongillo, citing the increased diversity as Canadians from neighboring cities have relocated to a town that was formerly, she added, “very, very white.”Longtime residents of Stratford, like Madeleine McCormick, a retired correctional officer, said it can sometimes feel like the concerns of residents are sidelined in favor of tourists.Still, Ms. McCormick acknowledged the pluses of the vibrant community of artists and creative people, one that drew her musician husband into its orbit.“It’s a strange place,” she said. “There’s never going to be another place that’s like this, because of the theater.”And Mr. Bieber. More

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      Nirvana Wins Lawsuit Over Naked Baby on ‘Nevermind’ Album Cover

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      Spencer Elden, who was pictured as a baby on the cover of “Nevermind,” argued in his lawsuit that the grunge rock group had engaged in “child pornography.”A federal judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit filed by a man who, as a baby, had graced the cover of Nirvana’s seminal album, “Nevermind,” and argued 30 years later that the iconic photo of him drifting naked in a pool had been a form of sexual exploitation.The man, Spencer Elden, 31, accused Nirvana in his complaint of engaging in child pornography after it used a photo of him for the cover of “Nevermind,” the 1991 album that catapulted the Seattle grunge rock band to international fame.The judge, Fernando M. Olguin, wrote in his eight-page ruling that because Mr. Elden had learned about the album cover more than 10 years ago, he had waited too long to file his lawsuit, making his claims untimely.The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California against the estate of Kurt Cobain; the musician’s former bandmates, David Grohl and Krist Novoselic; and Mr. Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love, among other parties. Bert H. Deixler, a lawyer for the defendants, said in a statement that they were “pleased this meritless case has been brought to a swift conclusion.”Robert Y. Lewis, one of Mr. Elden’s lawyers, did not respond to an email seeking comment on Sunday.The dismissal came after Judge Olguin dismissed the case in January for another reason: Mr. Elden’s lawyers had missed a deadline to respond to a motion for dismissal by the lawyers for Nirvana.Judge Olguin had allowed Mr. Elden’s lawyers to file a second amended complaint to address “the alleged defects” in the defendants’ motion to dismiss.But the dismissal on Friday appeared to end the legal back-and-forth.Mr. Elden, an artist living in Los Angeles County, has gone to therapy for years to work through how the album cover affected him, his lawyers have said, arguing that his privacy had been invaded, according to court records.He had been seeking $150,000 from each of the 15 people and companies named in the complaint.The photo of Mr. Elden, who was then four months old, was picked from among dozens of pictures of babies by the photographer Kirk Weddle. Mr. Cobain envisioned the album cover showing a baby underwater.Mr. Weddle paid Mr. Elden’s parents $200 for the picture, which was later altered to show the baby chasing a dollar bill, dangling from a fishhook.In the years that followed, Mr. Elden’s opinion about the photo changed. Initially, he appeared to celebrate his part in the classic cover, recreating the moment for the album’s 10th, 17th, 20th and 25th anniversaries, though not naked.“It’s cool but weird to be part of something so important that I don’t even remember,” he said in 2016 in an interview with The New York Post, in which he posed holding the album cover at 25.He also expressed anger at the people who still talked about it, telling GQ Australia that he was not comfortable with people seeing him naked. “I didn’t really have a choice,” he said.In their motion to dismiss, lawyers for Nirvana said that in 2003, when Mr. Elden was 12 years old, he acknowledged in an interview that he would probably always be known as the baby on the album cover.According to the lawyers, he said at the time, “I’m probably gonna get some money from it.” More

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      Heilung Puts a Heavy Metal Twist on the Sound of the Vikings

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      The band Heilung performs on replica instruments to recreate the sound world of pre-Christian Europe and bring it into the modern age.BORRE, Norway — “We have vegan potato salad in the medium cauldron,” Maria Franz announced to the 17 members of Heilung, her folk metal band, as they gathered around a campfire here recently. The band was celebrating the release of its third album, “Drif,” at Midgardsblot, a festival that takes place on a Viking burial ground and also includes seminars on Viking culture for an audience of campers, many of whom were dressed up in tunics and cloaks. Earlier that day, festivalgoers joined the band to listen to the new album while sitting on the floor of a replica Viking feast hall rigged up with a speaker system.It was the perfect setting for Heilung, whose work over the past eight years has put a heavy metal twist on the music of pre-Christian Europe. Working with a team of researchers and performing on replica instruments from the period, Heilung produces music that its members describe as “amplified history.” Heilung takes its lyrics from historical texts, like runic inscriptions on archaeological finds, and uses sound sources that would have been available to early European civilizations, such as stones, bones and crude metal objects struck together.Clockwise from top left; Kati Liiri and Jussi Aspivaara at the Midgardsblot festival, in Borre, where Heilung played; Faust, a Heilung band member; a festival attendee; a homemade patch on a vest.David B. Torch for The New York Times“Drif,” for instance, combines throat singing, spoken word, chanting, battle sounds and field recordings from nature. One of Heilung’s songs, “Hakkerskaldyr,” was used in a trailer for a recent Robert Eggers film, “The Northman,” another artistic imagining of ancient Scandinavia.“We’re not claiming that we are doing the exact same thing as our ancestors did, because no one knows,” Franz said. “But it’s our interpretation of how it might have felt.”Heilung has three core members — Franz, Christopher Juul and Kai Uwe Faust — who are supported by a large cast of onstage performers, including actors dressed as Viking warriors, backing singers and drummers.Franz said the band’s project was about more than just focusing on the Viking era, though. Its members want to tap into what they see as a shared ancient history that goes beyond European borders and encompasses all of humanity. For instance, “Marduk,” the last track on the new album, is a recital of 50 names of the highest god of the Mesopotamians. Franz sometimes plays a primitive instrument she brought back from India: a stick, half a coconut, some goat skin and strings. If you look back far enough into history, Juul said, you find that most cultures share similar instruments, and similar myths.Fans of Heilung listening to its new album, “Drif,” inside a replica Viking hall.David B. Torch for The New York TimesThere are other bands in the subgenre of folk metal that draw on pre-Christian history, like the Norwegian group Wardruna. But Heilung stands out for the depth of its historical engagement and the scale of its live performances. The band’s self-released debut album, “Ofnir,” was well-received in folk metal circles, but it was not until the band’s first live shows, in 2017, that Heilung became popular in the broader metal scene.“It was a phenomenon,” said Jonathan Selzer, a music journalist at Metal Hammer magazine. He remembered seeing the band at Midgardsblot, in 2017, when it played the penultimate slot. The set incorporated elaborate costumes, including antlers and animal furs, battle cries and half-naked actors dressed as warriors charging around the stage. This performance set the blueprint for all of Heilung’s stage shows since. “You could just see this realization going through the crowd in real time, from incomprehension to wonder,” Selzer said. “The whole field turned into Viking rave.”Michael Berberian, who signed Heilung after that show to Season of Mist, a metal label he runs, said it was “a band that popped out of nowhere with a complete concept.” He added that “the visual aspects, the costume, the unique music, the production values were all there, fully ready.”Heilung onstage at a concert in Denver last year. The band stands out for the depth of its historical engagement and the scale of its live performances.Maurice NunezFranz, Faust and Juul first met through the Viking re-enactment scene, in which enthusiasts gather to dress up as Vikings, learn about their history and practice their traditions, such as sword fighting and cooking over an open fire. Runa Strindin, Midgardsblot’s founder, said the popularity of Viking re-enactments had exploded over the past five years in northern Europe, spurred by TV shows like “Vikings” and movies like “The Northman,” as well as the inclusion of Norse gods in the Marvel movies.“People are searching for an identity to come closer to something that is missing in their modern lives,” Strindin said, “and they are attracted to the Norse mythologies because it’s so easily adaptable. Whatever suits you, you will find it there.”Norse mythology also resonates with some far-right groups that see it as an endorsement of their ideology, but Heilung’s members strongly reject that worldview. For at least a century in Scandinavia, extreme nationalists have adopted the visual language of ancient runes to suggest an imagined, pre-modern era of racial purity, and neo-Nazis have used the symbols to identify themselves to one another.The connection between Nordic runes and white supremacy is still strong. Anders Behring Breivik, a Norwegian extremist, marked the weapons he used in a 2011 massacre with runes, and the perpetrator of the Christchurch, New Zealand, mosque terrorist attack in 2019 emblazoned a sonnenrad — a rune symbol that was appropriated by the Nazis to embody their ideal vision of an Aryan identity — on his backpack.Selzer, the music journalist, said that, outside the metal scene, many people were wary about bands in the folk metal subgenre, whose merchandise and visual branding features runic symbols or who go to runic inscriptions for lyrics.A Viking battle demonstration at Midgardsblot. Heilung’s core members met through the Viking re-enactment scene.David B. Torch for The New York TimesBarbara Welento, 32, traveled from Poland to hear Heilung.David B. Torch for The New York TimesRunic windchimes at the Midgardsblot.David B. Torch for The New York TimesReclaiming Viking culture, particularly the runes, from neo-Nazis was a central part of Heilung’s mission, Strindin said. Each of the band’s live shows opens with a recited poem that emphasizes the audience’s shared humanity. “Remember that we all are brothers, all people, and beasts and trees and stone and wind,” reads one line.Strindin said that when she was growing up in Norway, in the 1990s, taking an interest in runes was discouraged by teachers and parents, because of their far-right associations. Heilung, she said, was “helping to take those symbols back, and put new meaning to them,” one that emphasized their original, spiritual intentions.“We see music as a cup,” Faust said. “You can have a beautiful cup, but a cup is supposed to transport something. So I was always more interested in the content: What am I doing with these frequencies? What is my intent, with these songs?”At the album listening session in the replica Viking hall, there was a quiet, respectful atmosphere, like a church. People closed their eyes to listen, or read through a booklet of explanatory notes the band had provided to accompany each track.The next day, Heilung played the festival’s headline slot to a crowd of fans who had come from all over the world. Lindsey Epperson, 32, from Tucson, Ariz., who had left the United States for the first time to be there, said the band’s music was “familiar, even though I wasn’t from that time,” adding, “It sounds like home to me.”A hush fell over the crowd as the show began. A performer wafted incense out over the audience, and the rest of the band gathered in a circle to recite the opening poem. They left a break after each line, so the crowd could chant it back with one voice.A couple on a Viking burial mound at dawn at Midgadsblot. “People are searching for an identity to come closer to something that is missing in their modern lives,” said the festival’s founder.David B. Torch for The New York Times More

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      Romeo Santos and Justin Timberlake’s Team-Up, and 10 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Shygirl, Ava Max, Horse Lords and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. 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.Romeo Santos and Justin Timberlake, ‘Sin Fin’Ever the canny collaborator, Justin Timberlake joins Romeo Santos — formerly of the Dominican-rooted boy band Aventura, now a stadium act on his own — to pump up a typically imploring bachata. Both of them are sleek high tenors who can always sound like they’re eager for romance; both also know what it’s like to sing answered by ecstatic screams. “Sin Fin” (“Endless”) is a bilingual pop promise with a stalking undercurrent. Timberlake sings, “Can’t escape my love ’cause it’s yours/Even if you walk out the door it’ll chase you down.” It opens with cathedral-choir harmonies, then buttresses the bongos and syncopated guitar of bachata with pop’s synthesizers and hip-hop’s hype-man cheers. Melding bachata and power ballad, it still begs for love with high drama. JON PARELESAva Max, ‘Million Dollar Baby’Ava Max is partying like it’s 2000 and 2004 on the thumping “Million Dollar Baby,” a sleek, calisthenic pop song that name-checks Clint Eastwood’s Best Picture winner and interpolates “Can’t Fight the Moonlight,” LeAnn Rimes’ once-inescapable “Coyote Ugly” theme song. (Who said Y2K nostalgia was dead!) While Max still hasn’t quite carved out a distinct persona in the pop sphere, she’s proven herself to be a satisfying practitioner of aughts-pop pastiche — there’s even a stuttering echo of “Bad Romance” on the bridge. “She broke out of her chains,” Max sings of her titular, diamond-encrusted heroine, “Turned the fire into rain.” LINDSAY ZOLADZAlex Lahey, ‘Congratulations’On the booming power-pop track “Congratulations,” the Australian singer-songwriter Alex Lahey attempts to process the news that an ex is getting married: “Congratulations,” she sings, dripping with sarcasm, “so happy for your perfect life.” There’s pathos in her voice during the verses — “If I don’t care then why do I still think about you all the time?” — but the chorus is volcanic and cathartic, as Lahey’s colossal guitar tones swell like a sudden surge of inner strength. ZOLADZShygirl, ‘Nike’“Peri-peri, too hot to handle,” the London-based Shygirl boasts with cool confidence on “Nike,” the latest single from her forthcoming debut album, “Nymph.” While the previous songs she’s released from the record have been glitchy and ethereal — think hyperpop crossed with “Visions”-era Grimes — “Nike” is all woozy low-end and spotlit swagger. “He tell me, ‘Nike, just do it,” Shygirl intones on the track (which was produced by the British electronic artist Mura Masa), her delivery full of winking, sensual charisma. ZOLADZHorse Lords, ‘Mess Mend’The instrumental “Mess Mend,” by the Baltimore band Horse Lords, starts out skewed — with chords from a slightly detuned piano hitting unevenly on offbeats — and gets nuttier from there, with a tricky 7/4 meter, a guitar melody that suggests a non-Euclidean hoedown and a gradual devolution into a funky electronic drone, not to mention a final twist. It’s a brainy lark. PARELESVDA, ‘Môgô Kélé’VDA — short for Voix des Anges — is a vocal duo from Ivory Coast that has become a consistent hitmaker in the Ivorian pop style called zouglou, which floats suavely sustained vocals over brisk polyrhythms and glossy synthesizers: airborne tracks that often hold sociopolitical messages. Above the speedy six-beat rhythms of “Môgô Kélé” — a hyperactive mesh of drums, marimbas, flutes and call-and-response vocals — VOA sings about easing tensions that have risen lately between Mali and Ivory Coast, citing their longstanding historical ties. The video shows jailed soldiers; it also gives the VDA a backdrop of both countries’ flags and words like “la paix,” “fraternité” and “union,” while the music sparkles and bounds ahead. PARELESDanielle Ponder, ‘Only the Lonely’“Love is lost and I must walk away,” Danielle Ponder sings, with mournful resolution, in “Only the Lonely,” a ballad that fights back any regrets with the certainty that “You don’t love me, you just lonely.” As the track rises from hollow keyboard tones to grand orchestral melancholy, Ponder’s voice opens up to reveal its bluesy power, with ghosts of Billie Holiday and Nina Simone. By the end she finds herself, once again, nearly alone. PARELESCarm featuring Edie Brickell, ‘More and More’CJ Camerieri, who records as Carm, plays brass instruments in yMusic, a contemporary chamber ensemble he co-founded; he has also backed Bon Iver and Paul Simon. In his own music, he often multitracks his trumpet and French horn into a supportive brass choir, as he does in “More and More,” a collaboration with Edie Brickell as a topliner. She sings about love, almost diffidently, amid sustained swells of brasses and strings. an electronic drumbeat and some echoing trumpet calls raise tensions, only to dissolve them in the undulating warmth of Carm’s orchestrations. PARELESWild Pink featuring Julien Baker, ‘Hold My Hand’John Ross, who leads Wild Pink, went through extensive cancer treatment between the band’s 2021 debut album and its coming one, “ILYSM.” He has explained that “Hold My Hand” came from a moment of “lying on the operating table where a member of the surgical team held my hand right before I went under.” As he whisper-sings to ask, “Will you be there when I come around,” joined by Julien Baker sounding delicate and fond, the band rolls through four rising chords again and again, promising nothing but reassurance. PARELESDawn Richard and Spencer Zahn, ‘Vantablack’The ever-evolving, impossible-to-pigeonhole Dawn Richard once again introduces a new side of herself on the first movement of “Pigments,” an upcoming collaborative album she made with the experimentalist Spencer Zahn. Each track on the album is named for a specific hue: “Coral,” “Sandstone,” “Indigo,” and “Vantablack” make up “Movement 1,” which the pair released in full this week. The culmination “Vantablack” is a tranquil, abstract, and utterly gorgeous contemporary classical soundscape populated by lilting clarinet, Zahn’s airy bass playing, and above it all Richard’s fluttering vocals, which profess a deep and radical comfort in her own skin. ZOLADZSteve Lehman and Sélébéyone, ‘Poesie I’In the hip-hop-jazz-avant-electroacoustic group Sélébéyone — which means “intersection” in the West African language Wolof — the saxophonist, composer and producer Steve Lehman collaborates with rappers from New York City (HPrizm from the Antipop Consortium) and Dakar (Gaston Bandimic), a saxophonist from Paris (Maciek Lasserre) and a drummer based in Brooklyn (Damion Reid). The group’s second album, “Xaybu: the Unseen,” pushes its previous ambitions further. “Poesie I” knocks its rhythms around with piano clusters, drumming that keeps moving the downbeat, hopscotching saxophone lines and a rap from HPrizm that keeps switching up its flow: “These words don’t fit so I’m forcing ‘em in/smashing the edges,” he declares. PARELES More

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      Marcus King, a Bluesy Rocker Who Stared Down His Own Crossroads

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      The 26-year-old singer and guitarist saw terrifying signs and symbols during the making of his new album, “Young Blood.” He steadied himself, and put it all in the music.Ours is an improbable world, in which Birkenstocks and tie-dye — once signifiers of hippie anti-style, as glamorous as trail mix — are now more chic than ever.But in the early 2000s, when the singer and guitarist Marcus King was attending middle school in Piedmont, S.C., this was not the case. In a recent interview, King recalled being made fun of by “teachers and students alike” for showing up to class dressed like a Deadhead.“I was like, ‘Man, I saved up a long time for these Birkenstocks!’” King said. “‘I’m going to wear them all year!’ So I always kind of stood out.”That same unapologetically out-of-step spirit animates King’s second solo album, “Young Blood,” a collection of brawny hard-rock songs in the audibly hirsute tradition of the James Gang, Grand Funk and early ZZ Top — uber-70s outfits whose names have not been trendy musical reference points since Homer Simpson was single and people under 60 used “boogie” as a verb.But in this respect, too, King — who is 26 but looks younger, with a baby face and a goofy, almost triangular smile — has the tastes of a time traveler. He grew up with his father, the blues musician Marvin King, whose record collection was full of music like this.“I was getting spoon-fed these riffs along with my Gerber applesauce, man,” King said in a video chat from Italy, where he’d stepped outside and found Hollywood-quality sunset light. “My dad would give me records to listen to while he was off at work. And I’d just listen to them and learn ’em.”His mother left the family when King was very young. They maintain a relationship, but King says her absence “created the first sense of loss and sorrow in my life”— a predisposition to the blues.In King’s earliest conscious memory, he’s around 4 years old, home alone, strumming his father’s Epiphone El Dorado, which he described as “one of the more off-limits guitars” in the house. Once King acquired his own guitar, it became his closest companion. From the beginning, he was remarkably good at it, too. He was only 11 when he made his professional recording debut, on Marvin King’s album “Huge in Europe” — that’s him on the cover, a pint-size prodigy in shades and a wide-brimmed Stevie Ray Vaughan hat.By the time he was a teenager, King said, “I didn’t want to just be the kiddo guitar player.” He started listening to more jazz, and paying closer attention to vocalists — from Aretha Franklin to David Ruffin to Janis Joplin — whose tone and phrasing he’d then try to emulate on his own instrument.As soon as he was old enough to secure a learner’s permit, he was booking shows at any venue within driving distance. These experiences relieved him of whatever teenage timidity he had left. “Being in the clubs and having to stand your ground is kind of a scary place,” he said. His extracurricular activities made him chronically late for school. “They were so terrible about it, man,” he said. “They tried to put me in juvenile hall for truancy, multiple times.”“My dad would give me records to listen to while he was off at work,” King said of his father, the blues musician Marvin King. “And I’d just listen to them and learn ’em.”Eric Ryan Anderson for The New York TimesHe eventually dropped out, and then toured relentlessly, working his way up to sharing stages and festival bills with the jam-circuit elite. He made three well-received albums of soul-inflected Southern rock as leader of the Marcus King Band, and earned a Grammy nomination for his first solo album, “El Dorado,” released in 2020.Produced by Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, “El Dorado” drew on vintage AM-radio pop, Nudie-suit country and even psychedelia, bringing out a surprising delicacy in King’s preternaturally weathered vocals. But when King and Auerbach began mapping out plans for King’s next album, they quickly decided to tack in the opposite direction, aiming for something more raw and immediate.It was a practical decision, at least at first. “He’s out on the road, on tour, and the venues keep getting bigger and bigger,” Auerbach said in an interview, “and he wanted some songs to help feed that energy he’s experiencing onstage.”But in April, the momentum shifted. “Everything kind of fell apart in my personal life,” King said, his eyes suddenly downcast, narrowing behind his round tinted sunglasses.The album would become a document of this harrowing period. “Every part of me believed this was going to be my last record,” King said, “’cause I just knew I was going to either drink or drug myself to death. I was already on that path.”King started sneaking post-set beers while playing in bars as a teenager; as an adult, he said, he turned to alcohol and drugs to help him play through the pain of a punishing tour schedule. “If you’re tired and you need to get up and go, there’s things that’ll get you up to go. And if you’re depressed as hell, there’s things that will make you not so depressed,” he said. “And if you’re hung over, you do all those things again, and it goes away.”This was particularly unwise given that King was also taking prescription medication. “A lot of people argue that pineapple don’t belong on pizza,” he said. “But I can tell you for a fact that antidepressants and alcohol don’t go together.”Things got dark. King — who’d grown up in the Pentecostal church, whose father believed in messages from God, and whose mother often talked about premonitions and spirits — began to see ominous signs and symbols everywhere. The music of the English rock band Free seemed to follow him around; when King looked up the band’s lead guitarist, Paul Kossoff, he discovered that he’d died — of a pulmonary embolism, after years of drug use — when he was 25.King was 25 when he read this; it didn’t feel like a coincidence. “When you start creating these signs in your mind,” he said, “they start to show up all over the place.”Meanwhile, his relationship with his girlfriend was circling the drain. It was in April that they booked a staycation in Nashville, hoping to rekindle things; it didn’t work. One night he wound up walking the streets after dark, and encountered what he described as an “entity without a face”— a man in a hooded sweatshirt with nothing but a void inside the hood.King said he lets the drama in his life build. “And then I write it in a record.”Eric Ryan Anderson for The New York TimesKing says he wasn’t wearing his glasses at the time — but he was also sober that night. Whatever he’d actually seen, it felt like a message: “A heads-up that the end was coming soon for me, and to get all the work in that I could.”“Young Blood” was in progress, and its track listing tells a story from the abyss — “It’s Too Late,” “Lie Lie Lie,” “Pain,” “Dark Cloud,” “Blues Worse Than I Ever Had.” But the tone of the music itself is defiant, not desperate; King calls it a “real war-cry kind of thing,” an attempt to rise from the ashes.“I’ve been through a lot of those things that Marcus is going through,” Auerbach said. “I can relate, and I was just trying to be supportive the whole time. It was tough when he would come into a writing session and he would be late because things were bad at home. I felt bad for him. But in retrospect, it definitely set the fire of creativity when it came to making the record.”These days King believes that weird night in Nashville was a warning, as opposed to an omen: Get it together, or else. He’s engaged to someone new — the singer Briley Hussey, who he says “kind of pulled me out of that crevasse”— and while he still enjoys the occasional glass of wine, he uses “non-repressive techniques” to deal with whatever demons arise.One of those techniques is music. He was in Tuscany to put the finishing touches on another new record, working in a studio housed in a former 12th-century church at the suggestion of a producer he wouldn’t name.Another new album?“I’ve tried to keep a journal,” King said sheepishly. “And I just can’t keep up with the damn thing. So I just let it all build up. And then I write it in a record.” More

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      Katie Gregson-MacLeod Sang About a ‘Complex’ Love. TikTok Responded.

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      The 21-year-old Scottish folk singer-songwriter found a sudden hit by tapping into the platform’s appetite for melancholy with a striking, sorrowful chorus.If TikTok has made you cry sometime this month, it’s likely thanks to Katie Gregson-MacLeod.On Aug. 4, the 21-year-old Scottish singer-songwriter posted a minute-long chorus to an unreleased song she’d written called “Complex” — an elegiac capturing of the hollow, zombielike experience of loving someone far more than they can, or will, love you back. Her voice is lovely and affecting, somewhere between wistful and determined as she sings about a relationship that’s ongoing, but already over:I’m wearing his boxersI’m being a good wifeWe won’t be togetherBut maybe the next lifeGregson-MacLeod had just written the song, and had no plans to release it. But by the following morning, TikTok had supersized it, finding the eyes and ears of several young female singer-songwriters who have been successful on the app, including Gracie Abrams, Lennon Stella and Maisie Peters.Suddenly, Gregson-MacLeod was a meme, embodying the app’s potential as an amplifier of melancholy. In just a couple of days, “Complex” became a trigger for what felt like a global group hug.“When the chorus did so well, I swore to myself, I am not changing one word of the rest of the song,” Gregson-MacLeod said of the full version of the song released to streaming services.Jaime Molina for The New York TimesTikTok is well-suited to this particular stripe of intimacy, because “people seem to love hearing going as in-depth of someone’s life as they can,” Gregson-MacLeod said last week in a video chat from her family’s home in Inverness, in the Scottish Highlands. “It’s a very online thing, but it’s also the same essence of what people love about people like Elliott Smith and Joni Mitchell. There are so many serious songwriters on there, but the ones that I’ve noticed doing really well are super raw, emotional and very stripped back.”Vulnerability is contagious, and TikTok, which allows users to both imbibe and amplify at the same time, is an optimal accelerant. The success of “Complex” reflects the evolving priorities of TikTok, which in its first couple of years was best known as an accelerant for dance trends, novelty songs and meme-able comedy, but is now just as often a home for sorrow. The shift reflects a partial maturation of the medium somewhere beyond pure escape.With her song gaining so much traction so quickly — the original post currently has 6.9 million views — Gregson-MacLeod did what any savvy young musician would do: She TikToked through it, posting duets with singers covering her, answering fan questions, making new memes, taking note of the interest from people she looked up to (“fletcher and olivia o’brien now know I have an anxious attachment style I was tryna play hard to get”). On Friday, Gregson-MacLeod formally released the full song — now titled “Complex (Demo)” — to streaming platforms, a few days after she signed a deal with the British arm of Columbia Records.The full song is, apart from one small tweak, identical to what she’d already written before her TikTok eruption. “When the chorus did so well, I swore to myself, I am not changing one word of the rest of the song,” she said. “It worked because it was just a moment, and it was a moment that was very real and raw. And then I was kind of like, if I changed too much or anything, then I’m going to be writing reactively and I’m going to be trying to think of what other people are going to want. And actually, it worked because it’s just what happened to me.”She didn’t elaborate on the specific scenario that prompted the song, but said, “For the most part, I write completely autobiographically, pretty much 100 percent.” She continued, “With this song, it was very much just like a very emotional moment, as you can probably tell. Literally just a moment where it all kind of poured out.”Until now, Gregson-MacLeod has been splitting her time between home and college, where she is studying history at the University of Edinburgh. She’s been releasing music on her own for a couple of years, including a frisky indie-pop EP last year, “Games I Play,” and a recent song, “Second Single Bed,” that’s almost as emotionally laserlike as “Complex.” In the last year, she’s found a welcoming home in the Edinburgh folk music scene that congregates around Captains Bar. She is a student of classic folk singers like Mitchell, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, and also younger ones like Laura Marling, Lucy Dacus and, naturally, Phoebe Bridgers: “She’s a bit of a god.”Gregson-MacLeod began posting to TikTok in 2020, a few months into the pandemic. She has a natural way with humor in her posts — part sincere, part can-you-believe-we’re-all-doing-this. Before “Complex” took off, she was a barista at Perk Coffee & Doughnuts (“Inverness’s first doughnut shop,” she noted), and handled the shop’s social media posts. Perk was also where all the A&R representatives who traveled to Inverness to meet her this month ended up hanging out at different tables.“Complex” has allowed Gregson-MacLeod to take her place in an impressive lineage of female singer-songwriters who have used TikTok as an engine over the last two years: Lauren Spencer-Smith (“Fingers Crossed”), Sadie Jean (“WYD Now?”), Lizzy McAlpine (“You Ruined the 1975”), Jensen McRae, poppier singers like Gayle and Tate McRae. (The McRaes are not related.) And of course, the alpha of this phenomenon: Olivia Rodrigo, whose “Drivers License” began life as an acoustic snippet on TikTok before becoming the defining pop song of 2021.Gregson-MacLeod began posting to TikTok in 2020, a few months into the pandemic, and had been studying at college and working in a coffee shop when her song took off.Jaime Molina for The New York TimesOne of the particular quirks of putting vulnerable sentiment into a song is that, if it becomes popular, it no longer truly belongs to you. To have that happen so quickly with “Complex” has been lightly head spinning for Gregson-MacLeod, who is still getting acclimated to the way her song is being absorbed out in the wild.Mostly, she finds it humorous. When someone covers it with a slightly different sentiment in their caption, “I always comment ‘me for real,’” she said. Some people are using her melody and adding different lyrics. “The trend is now to rewrite it, which is, like, mildly insulting,” she said, laughing. “It’s like mainly lovely but you’re like, ‘Hey guys, can the trend be to appreciate what I wrote?’” She participated in a TikTok duet chain with Gayle and Catie Turner, shouting absurdist ad-libs over her tender tune.There have also been a few versions written from a male point of view. “Whenever I hear ‘She’s wearing my boxers,’ I’m like, ‘No,’” she joked. “Read the room, man.”Gregson-MacLeod put “(Demo)” in the title of the finished song because she wanted to be clear that this is just a way station. “I knew that this version had to be first, it had to be the raw emotional moment that it was in the video,” she said. “But it also leaves room for whatever I want to do in a few weeks, a few months or whatever, because I think it’s going to have a long life.” The sentiment belongs to everybody, but the song remains hers. More