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      Red Hot Chili Peppers Top Chart With ‘Unlimited Love’

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      The band reunites with its former guitarist, John Frusciante, and the producer Rick Rubin for its latest album.Everything aligned for Red Hot Chili Peppers’ latest album, “Unlimited Love,” which has opened at No. 1 on the Billboard chart, the band’s second time at the top.The Chili Peppers reunited with its former guitarist, John Frusciante, for the album. He has been in and out of the band since 1988 — with his most recent departure coming after the tour for “Stadium Arcadium” (2006), the group’s last album to go to No. 1. “Unlimited Love” also put the band back in the studio with Rick Rubin, who has produced most of the Chili Peppers’ albums since 1991, but not its most recent, “The Getaway” (2016, with Danger Mouse).And if there were an award for most unusual promotional appearances, it might go to a recent one by Flea, the band’s inimitable bassist, who offered a lunging, psych-funk solo instrumental version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before the Lakers-Nuggets game on April 3. (Did it result in sales or streams of “Unlimited Love”? Who knows, but it’s a must-see for any Chili Peppers fan.)In its first week out, “Unlimited Love” had the equivalent of 97,500 sales in the United States, according to the tracking service Luminate, formerly known as MRC Data. That total includes 19 million streams — modest for a No. 1 album these days — as well as 82,500 copies sold as a complete package, among them a hefty 38,500 copies on vinyl. (On next week’s chart, Jack White’s “Fear of the Dawn” is also expected to arrive with a big vinyl number.)Also this week, “7220,” by the Chicago rapper Lil Durk, is No. 2. The “Encanto” soundtrack is No. 3, Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” holds at No. 4 in its 65th week on the chart — every week but one of that time in the Top 10 — and Olivia Rodrigo’s “Sour” is No. 5. More

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      Camila Cabello Gets in Her Head, and 16 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Kelsea Ballerini, Syd, Oliver Sim 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.Camila Cabello featuring Willow, ‘Psychofreak’Alienation gets an electronic lilt in “Psychofreak” from Camila Cabello’s “Familia,” which is actually stacked with songs about jealousy. In “Psychofreak” she sings about feeling dissociated, insecure and suspicious: “Tryin’ to get connected, no Wi-Fi/tell me that you love me, are you lying?” Against brittle percussion and impassive chords on the off-beats, Cabello sounds relatively unruffled despite what the lyrics say, but Willow (Smith) focuses and ratchets up the anguish. JON PARELESMiranda Lambert, ‘Actin’ Up’Miranda Lambert’s “Actin’ Up” could have been just another feisty, bluesy country-rock song. “I want a sunset ride, a velvet rodeo/A Colorado high, a California glow,” she declares. Its richness is in its arrangement: its stereo, reverbed guitar picking, its syncopated drumming, the echoes and pauses placed behind her boasts. PARELESKelsea Ballerini, ‘Heartfirst’On her 2020 album “Kelsea,” Kelsea Ballerini honed her keen ability to spotlight the sort of anxiety and self-doubt that many other country singers conveniently crop out of the frame. The single “Heartfirst,” though, is all about pushing those impediments aside and jumping headlong into new romance: “That voice in my head says to slow down, but it can’t feel your hands on my hips right now,” she sings. Recommended for anyone who revisited Taylor Swift’s version of “Red” last year and wished someone were still making glimmering, wholehearted pop-country songs like that in the present tense. LINDSAY ZOLADZBanks, ‘Meteorite’Banks’s songs bring a deep wariness to her relationships. “We’re already in bed, you may as well lie,” she sings as “Meteorite” begins. But in this track, syncopation fights pessimism. Handclaps, stop-and-start drums and backup vocals that hint at Balkan and African call-and-response insist that this iffy romance could still push ahead. PARELESPieri, ‘Vente Pa Aca’It was only a matter of time until the textures of hyperpop collided with reggaeton. Consider the Mexican-born, Brooklyn-based artist Daniela Pieri its champion: Her new single “Vente Pa Aca” interlaces a muted dembow riddim, serrated synths and gauzy speaker feedback lifted straight from a PC Music compilation. In an Auto-Tuned shrill, one that carries just enough of a punk edge, she intones, “No te quiero perder/tú y yo hasta el amanecer” (“I don’t want to lose you/Me and you till dawn”). ISABELIA HERRERASyd, ‘Fast Car’“Broken Hearts Club,” the first album in five years from Syd — a member of the R&B collective the Internet and a one-time Odd Future upstart — is mostly an intimate chronicle of a relationship’s demise, but the sultry “Fast Car” conjures a moment before things went sour. A driving, 4-4 beat and glossy ’80s sheen provide a backdrop for Syd’s vaporous vocals (“No one can see inside,” she croons, “do with me what you like”) before a glorious, Prince-like guitar solo breaks the whole song open like a cracked sunroof. ZOLADZOliver Sim, ‘Fruit’Harnessing the high drama of a power ballad, but holding all the airiness of the xx’s gauzy R&B, Oliver Sim’s “Fruit” is the kind of queer anthem only he could make. Produced by his bandmate Jamie xx, “Fruit” is a love letter to a younger self coming to terms with queer identity. “You can dress it away, talk it away/Dull down the flame/But it’s all pretend,” Sim whispers, oozing melancholia. He may have been the last member of the xx to go solo, but it has been well worth the wait. HERRERAFlorist, ‘Red Bird Pt. 2 (Morning)’This one’s a tear-jerker. Emily Sprague — sometimes a solo artist, sometimes the leader of the Brooklyn indie-folk group Florist — recounts the life of her late mother and her own early childhood in a series of vivid, cleareyed snapshots (“I’ve seen photos of the living room, we didn’t have a lot”), sung atop a gentle, fingerpicked chord progression. Synthesizer whirs mingle with bird chirps in the song’s airy atmosphere; Sprague and the band actually recorded it on a porch. That sonic embrace of the natural world becomes even more poignant toward the end of the song, which will appear on a forthcoming self-titled Florist album, when Sprague sings in a peaceful murmur, “She’s in the bird song, she won’t be gone.” ZOLADZDaniel Rossen, ‘Unpeopled Space’“Unpeopled Space,” a dazzling highlight from the former Grizzly Bear guitar virtuoso Daniel Rossen’s first full-length solo album “You Belong Here,” is a searching meditation about leaving the city for the country, as Rossen himself did a decade ago. But his arrangement is so full of compositional surprises and instrumental chatter — shape-shifting acoustic guitar riffs, croaking strings and dynamic percussion from his former bandmate Christopher Bear — that he makes the natural world sound every bit as alive as a teeming metropolis. “Whatever was, whatever will,” he sings to the vast green space around him, “we belong here now.” ZOLADZPink Floyd featuring Andriy Khlyvnyuk of Boombox, ‘Hey, Hey Rise Up’Andriy Khlyvnyuk from the Ukrainian band Boombox returned to his homeland to fight the Russian invasion. From Kyiv, he made an Instagram post of his defiant, full-throated rendition of a resistance anthem, “The Red Viburnum in the Meadow,” singing with a rifle slung across his chest. It moved Nick Mason and David Gilmour of Pink Floyd to build a full-length track around it — their first new Pink Floyd song since 1994, which will benefit Ukrainian relief. Pink Floyd accompanies Khlyvnyuk with somber gravity, buttressing him with organ chords and choir harmonies; a wailing, clawing Gilmour guitar solo sustains the mood of grim determination. PARELESJoyce Manor, ‘Gotta Let It Go’Emo bands tend to be verbose, but Torrance, Calif.’s Joyce Manor are unusually efficient — as if Taking Back Sunday had attended the Guided by Voices school of songwriting. “Gotta Let It Go,” a two-minute ripper from the band’s forthcoming album “40 oz. to Fresno” (out June 10 and named after an autocorrected text about Sublime) showcases the lead singer and guitarist Barry Johnson’s rabid but melodic holler, alongside the sort of crushing waves of distorted guitar that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on late-90s alt-rock radio. “You say it’s cute but you think it’s ugly,” Johnson shouts on the pummeling bridge — yep, a bridge in a two-minute song! Told you these guys are efficient. ZOLADZEl Alfa, Braulio Fogón, French Montana and Kaly Ocho, ‘Máquina de Dinero’El Alfa’s ascent as the king of Dominican dembow has come with its fair share of missteps: diluted EDM bangers, or pop-dembow tracks with a little too much gloss. So “Máquina de Dinero,” from his fourth studio album, “Sabiduría,” is an unexpected bombshell. El Alfa deploys his double entendres and witty raps over a gritty, shrapnel-like beat from his go-to producer Chael Produciendo, its deliciously raw, unfinished texture aligning more closely with the coarseness of his own early hits. His guests are surprising, too — Braulio Fogón and Kaly Ocho, titans of el bajo mundo (the underground dembow scene), along with French Montana. Just try not to laugh out loud when Montana says, “’Rican or Dominican, she bustin’ out the skirt,” and mimics the addictive hook from El Alfa’s summer heater “La Mamá de la Mamá.” HERRERAAlicia Keys, ‘City of Gods (Part II)’Alicia Keys let herself be treated as a mere hook singer alongside Fivio Foreign and Kanye West on “City of Gods,” shunted aside as they touted their careers. But with “City of Gods (Part II)” she reclaims the song as the plea of a spurned lover, begging, “Don’t leave me, go easy,” amid towering piano chords and cavernous bass tones, a voice trying to find its way through the cityscape. PARELESSun’s Signature, ‘Golden Air’Sun’s Signature is the partnership of Elisabeth Fraser from Cocteau Twins and Damon Reece from Massive Attack. In the 1990s, both groups conjured encompassing atmospheres, but in different registers. Cocteau Twins were mistily ethereal; Massive Attack was bassy and seismic. “Golden Air,” the first song from an EP due in June, is more protean. It works through multiple transformations — tinkly Baroque-pop, Minimalist a cappella vocal layers, shimmering psychedelic march — as Fraser sings cosmic musings: “My heart shall say to me/Do with me something.” PARELESS. Carey, ‘Sunshower’S. Carey, a longtime collaborator with Bon Iver, goes for billowing bliss in “Sunshower.” His multitracked falsetto harmonizes with cascading guitars and saxophones as he surrenders to the unexplainable beauty of a deep connection: “I don’t know myself before I knew you,” he realizes. PARELESSam Gendel and Antonia Cytrynowicz, ‘Something Real’One afternoon in Los Angeles, the saxophonist, keyboardist and composer Sam Gendel improvised some songs with Antonia Cytrynowicz, the younger sister of his partner, the filmmaker Marcella Cytrynowicz; at the time Antonia was 11 years old. They haven’t played them before or since. Luckily they recorded them, and realized they were good enough to release as an album; “Live a Little” is due May 13. In “Something Real,” Gendel circled through an undulating, slightly gloomy four-chord keyboard pattern as Antonia mused about what she was hearing: “Never knowing, never feeling/Like a sound, that is nice,” she sang. “You’re nice and gentle.” But dissonant feedback wells up at the end, suggesting that safety is fragile. PARELESMyra Melford’s Fire and Water Quintet, ‘For the Love of Fire and Water: II.’On “For the Love of Fire and Water,” the esteemed pianist and bandleader Myra Melford helms a new band featuring some of the most distinctive players in improvised music today: Ingrid Laubrock on saxophone, Tomeka Reid on cello, Mary Halvorson on guitar and Susie Ibarra on drums. On Track 2 of the 10-part suite, the quintet pulls itself forward with a mix of lethargy and restlessness, Halvorson and Laubrock — longtime musical intimates — carrying the nervy melody over Melford’s halting left-hand pattern, then improvising together in dyspeptic bursts. The tune itself is hard to keep track of, and the meter tough to count, but the stubbornness of the pulse and the resonance of the harmony may linger in your ear long after the track fades away. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO More

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      Can a Brazilian Pop Star Crack the U.S. Market? Anitta Says Yes.

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      In the past decade, the singer has earned fame and the respect of some of Brazil’s most lauded musical elders. Now she’s taking aim at new audiences but hoping to hold on to her roots.“Meiga e Abusada,” the 2013 song that first catapulted the Brazilian singer Anitta to fame, begins with a Lady Gaga sample and a cool assertion. “I get everything I want,” she sings in Portuguese. “But it was so easy to control you.”In the song’s music video, partly filmed in Las Vegas, Anitta frolics around the desert in a cropped plaid shirt, drinks champagne and hits casinos in a limo. It’s a declaration of her prowess made all the more brazen by its timing: Only a couple of months before its release, it had felt like nothing would ever happen for her.“I’m a pessimistic person,” Anitta said in a recent interview, speaking in Portuguese. That’s partly because the odds were never strictly in her favor. “Growing up, my father would say, ‘We’re poor, you can’t study the arts,’” she said. “He thought I’d need a plan B.”She didn’t. Since putting out her first album at age 20, Anitta has gone on to become one of Brazil’s biggest pop stars. In the past decade, she has released four studio albums, performed at the 2016 Olympic opening ceremony and racked up numerous Latin Grammy nominations. Anitta got her start singing in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, and success eventually followed her to the rest of South America, where a string of Spanish-language hits featuring stars like J Balvin and Maluma cemented her status as one of the region’s top performers.The United States market feels like the final frontier. This month, Anitta will perform at both weekends of the Coachella festival. On April 12, her new trilingual album “Versions of Me” — her first since signing with Warner Records in 2021, and her first international LP — arrives. A solo female pop artist from Brazil has never become a star in North America, but Anitta’s team and label are intent on making it happen — and it shows. Featuring tracks produced by established hitmakers including Ryan Tedder, Stargate, and Andrés Torres and Mauricio Rengifo (who produced “Despacito”), the album’s sleek hooks, taut melodies and glossy production signal a clear attempt at breaking her in America.Speaking via video chat from her house in Miami in late February, Anitta was barefaced on the couch, dressed in an orange Versace T-shirt. She looked tired, but her posture was flawless. “I got back yesterday from Rio and I was exhausted. I’d been working Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday without a break,” she said, petting her sleepy Italian greyhound, Plínio. (He had great posture, too.)Born Larissa Machado in Rio de Janeiro’s working-class Honório Gurgel neighborhood, Anitta, 29, first rose to fame after she posted a video of herself singing into a can of deodorant. Her stage name, a homage to a character she’d long admired from an old Brazilian TV show, “Presença de Anita,” came later. In the series, she explained, Anita would say that she wanted to wake up a different person every day: “She could be romantic, sensual, intelligent and crazy all at once.” Anitta likes playing with that idea too.“People have always wanted to define women: Is she the marrying type? Is she the type that likes to go out?” she added. “But I can be both things, right?”Anitta made a name for herself performing at parties around Rio’s favelas. Funk carioca, or baile funk, a vibrant rhythm that emerged in Rio de Janeiro’s predominantly Black working-class neighborhoods in the 1980s, is the soundtrack of choice at these gatherings, where sound systems often blast the genre’s signature tamborzão beat. “I started bothering everyone and asking if I could sing at their events, the proibidas,” Anitta said.Proibida is Portuguese for prohibited. In the early 2000s, the police — who deemed these bailes (dance parties) breeding grounds for gang violence — began violently sweeping events in Rio’s favelas under the guise of public safety. While the genre now plays in some of the country’s wealthiest neighborhoods and in clubs popular with arty crowds in London and Berlin, its creators, especially those who haven’t yet risen to fame, are still marginalized.Anitta onstage in Miami earlier this year. Since putting out her first album at age 20, Anitta has gone on to become one of Brazil’s biggest pop stars.John Parra/Getty ImageAt the height of the moral panic around baile funk, even stars like Anitta didn’t walk away unscathed. When she performed at the Olympic opening ceremony in 2016 alongside the national icons Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, critics lashed out against her inclusion in the event, dismissing her as a “favelada.”“Prejudice hurts,” Anitta said. “But what artists like Caetano, Marisa Monte, Djavan and Bethânia have always told me is that they were the Anitta of their time,” she said, referring to Maria Bethânia and other Brazilian stars who are mostly over 70 (Monte, the youngest of the group, is in her 50s). “Everyone told them they were bums and now they’re icons.”Veloso, one of the country’s most revered singer-songwriters who has collaborated with the singer in the past, praised her in an email. “Anitta is so competent, sincere, direct and likable,” he wrote. “She has captured the zeitgeist in such an impressive way.”In the mid-2000s, M.I.A. and Diplo began to export funk carioca out of Brazil through songs like “Baile Funk One” and a documentary, “Favela on Blast,” but the genre never made it to the pop charts. Anitta still believes it has the potential to go global, though. And while her new album experiments with a range of styles — the Gaga-inspired electro-pop of “Boys Don’t Cry,” the rollicking reggaeton of “Gata” — “Versions of Me” never completely severs ties with her roots.Still, she knows success often takes time. “The main things are patience and persistence,” she said. “We have to do it step by step.”Ryan Tedder, the frontman for the band One Republic who has written hits for Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, agreed to executive produce Anitta’s project halfway through their first studio session. “She’s easily the hardest working person I’ve ever worked with,” he said by phone. “She does not have an off switch.”Tom Corson, co-chairman and chief operating officer at Warner Records, agreed: “Anitta has what it takes to be a global superstar.” The plan? “Obviously we want hit records,” Corson said. “And we’d like to see her as a unique force within the U.S. and global market, toggling back and forth between languages.” The obvious comparison is Shakira.While “Versions of Me” is above all, an international project, Tedder and Anitta were both adamant that Brazilian rhythms had to be a part of it. “I didn’t want to disenfranchise her Brazilian fan base from what she’s already built,” he said.For “Faking Love” — a baile funk-inspired track featuring the American rapper Saweetie — Anitta and Tedder flew the Brazilian producers Tropkillaz to Los Angeles for a session. “The rhythmic movement of an actual funk beat doesn’t use what’s called quantization,” Tedder said, referring to software that makes beats line up perfectly. “You have to program it in with natural human swing.” It took him several tries before he could get it right; Anitta sat and listened until she knew they’d found the one.Anitta is aware that when it comes to her work, she is a perfectionist first. For years, she has worked with a speech therapist to minimize her accent, and even as she was putting the finishing touches on her album, she was rerecording parts of tracks. Would it matter if she sang in English with a strong accent? It shouldn’t, but it does, she said. “I realized that if I spoke slower in meetings or with an accent, people would respect me less,” she said, recalling how she felt when she started doing business in America.Things are different in her personal life, but it’s hard to completely relinquish control when she has lived the bulk of it under a microscope. Anitta, who is bisexual, kept key aspects of her identity — including her sexuality — hidden from the Brazilian press for years. “It was complicated because it was all very taboo at the time,” she said. “Lots of singers weren’t out, and I don’t judge them because I know people really came after me.”It was only after a bodyguard had to chase down someone who took a picture of her kissing a woman at a party that she realized she wanted to stop hiding. “My mom has known that I kiss girls since I was 13, why should I care what other people think?” she said in a second interview, throwing both of her hands up in exasperation as she slouched down on a hotel room couch in Los Angeles.Politically, aspects of Anitta’s life have long been scrutinized too. The singer was criticized in 2018 when she didn’t outright condemn Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro during the early stages of his campaign. But she maintains there’s a reason for that. “I was having my religious initiation,” she said. In Candomblé, which mixes Yoruba, Fon and Bantu beliefs, initiations typically require people to remain secluded for around 21 days: “I had no way of contacting the outside world.”When it became clear Anitta would have to say something, she called a friend, the lawyer, journalist and political commentator Gabriela Prioli, and asked for help. “I didn’t understand anything. I didn’t know what a congressman does or what a councilman does,” she said. “I’m not ashamed to say it because most Brazilians don’t.”In the end, Anitta found the conversation so helpful she decided to start broadcasting political education classes with Prioli on her Instagram, which she hopes to resume ahead of this year’s elections. While she won’t endorse a candidate, Anitta now firmly opposes Bolsonaro. In late March, when lawyers representing the president’s party petitioned Brazil’s supreme electoral court to stop artists from making “political demonstrations” in their sets, Anitta encouraged other performers to defy them. “To my friends who want to speak out: I’ll pay your fine,” she said in an Instagram story.Bolsonaro and Anitta occasionally even butt heads on social media, where the singer boasts 61 million followers on Instagram alone. “He knows his conservative supporters don’t like me, so he uses my name to draw attention to himself,” she said.Her follower count will likely only grow in the coming months. Popularized by the “paso de Anitta” — Spanish for Anitta’s dance move — her TikTok hit “Envolver” is the first song by a Brazilian artist to enter the Top 10 on Spotify’s global chart. In late March, it hit No. 1 there.Anitta’s upcoming Coachella performance on the festival’s main stage marks another first for a Brazilian artist.“I don’t want to think about it,” she said. “It makes me anxious.” But she is thinking about it.Anitta said rehearsals for the show are happening in Rio, where she’s training with one Brazilian and one American choreographer. (“I wanted to combine both cultures.”) And after that? “I’ve only planned my life until Coachella,” she said half-jokingly.“I’m not going to overthink things,” she said. That’s how music becomes formulaic. “I know what I want to do: if things work out, great,” she added. “If they don’t, that’s also great.” She wasn’t always this way. “But I’ve accomplished so much more than I ever thought I would. If I fell asleep now and woke up at 40, I’d still feel like I’d done what I set out to do.” More

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      ‘Kinky Boots’ Sets Summer Return Off Broadway

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      A revival of the Tony-winning Cyndi Lauper-Harvey Fierstein collaboration will begin performances at Stage 42 in July.The sex is back in the heel.The producers Daryl Roth and Hal Luftig announced on Thursday that an Off Broadway revival of “Kinky Boots,” the Cyndi Lauper-Harvey Fierstein collaboration that won the Tony Award for best new musical in 2013, would begin performances at the theater in July.The revival at the 499-seat Shubert theater is set to be directed and choreographed by Jerry Mitchell (“La Cage Aux Folles,” “Legally Blonde”), who directed and choreographed the original Broadway production, which won him his second Tony for choreography.The feel-good musical tells the story of a young Englishman, Charlie Price, who attempts to save his family’s shoe factory by making boots for drag performers. The Broadway production — which starred Stark Sands as Price and Billy Porter as the drag queen Lola, a performance for which Porter won a Tony — closed in April 2019 after 34 preview and 2,505 regular performances.In his critic’s pick review, the New York Times critic Ben Brantley called the musical, which features music and lyrics by Lauper and a book by Fierstein, “a shameless emotional button pusher.” He described its pulsing, earworm-y score as performing “like a pop star on Ecstasy.” (The cast recording won a Grammy for best musical theater album.)“Kinky Boots” has been a significant hit in the nine years since it opened on Broadway, where it grossed $297 million and won six Tony Awards. The show has toured North America and Britain, and productions have been staged in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Poland and Spain.The Off Broadway production is scheduled to begin performances July 26 and open Aug. 25 at Stage 42 in Hell’s Kitchen. No casting has been announced. More

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      ‘A-ha: The Movie’ Review: The Creative Purgatory of the ‘Take on Me’ Trio

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      The documentary about the Norwegian synth-pop band plays like a slavish yet intermittently lucid Wikipedia entry.A tragicomic air clings to bands who light up the sky like a firework and fade away. The Norwegian subjects of “a-ha: The Movie” are best known for their 1985 hit “Take on Me,” but, despite successful shows, seem mired in creative purgatory. Thomas Robsahm and Aslaug Holm’s documentary trawls the band’s career with musings from its three members — Paul Waaktaar-Savoy, Magne Furuholmen and the Ken Dollesque lead singer Morten Harket — and key associates.Bouncing around synth-pop-happy London in the early 1980s, the driven trio of accomplished musicians landed a contract with Warner Brothers. “Take on Me,” with its infectious arpeggios and liberating high notes, made them stars, boosted by a delightful part-animated music video from Steven Barron (who also made videos for “Billie Jean” and “Money for Nothing”).Then what? The documentary reviews the band’s chronology like a slavish yet intermittently lucid Wikipedia entry. We don’t learn how a-ha continued to get the privilege of releasing albums (including denim and shiny-shirt phases at either end of the 1990s) or what kept thousands of fans coming back for more. But we do witness a hundred muted shades of glum and listless: Furuholmen still seems sad about abandoning guitar for keyboards, decades ago, while Harket talks about needing his space. Waaktaar-Savoy’s attitude can be summed up by a sticker behind him in one shot: “No Stupid People.”There’s a slight wonky interest in seeing the grind of recording sessions and fan service. But the film feels promotional enough that it won’t lean into the potential humor of their situation.a-ha: The MovieNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Bobby Rydell, Teenage Idol With Enduring Appeal, Dies at 79

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      He had his first hit in 1959. Six decades later, teamed with his fellow singers Frankie Avalon and Fabian, he was still drawing crowds.Bobby Rydell, a Philadelphia-born singer who became a teenage idol in the late 1950s and, with his pleasant voice, stage presence and nice-guy demeanor, maintained a loyal following on tours even after both he and his original fans were well past retirement age, died on Tuesday in Abington, Pa. He was 79.The cause was complications of pneumonia, said Maria Novey, a spokeswoman.Mr. Rydell and two other affable performers who became stars in those years, Frankie Avalon and Fabian, grew up within about two blocks of one another in South Philadelphia. Long after their days on the pop chart were past them, they enjoyed great success on the oldies circuit. The three had toured extensively together since 1985, billed as the Golden Boys.Mr. Rydell did not just have staying power; he also made a comeback after years of alcohol abuse, which he chronicled in his autobiography, “Bobby Rydell: Teen Idol on the Rocks” (2016), written with the guitarist and producer Allan Slutsky. Near death, he had a kidney and liver transplant in July 2012. By that October he was back, singing on a cruise ship with Mr. Avalon. But five months later, he underwent cardiac bypass surgery. Some of his later appearances were charity promotions for organ donation.By 2014, his schedule was heavy again, including 11 concerts in Australia that February. He continued to perform for the rest of his life.Mr. Rydell performing with the City Rhythm Orchestra In Concert at Lincoln Center in New York City, in 2016.Bobby Bank/WireImage, via Getty ImagesMr. Rydell’s recording prime encompassed the era roughly between 1959, when Elvis Presley was in the Army and Buddy Holly died in a plane crash, and 1964, when Beatlemania hit America. It didn’t hurt that Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand” was broadcast in those years from Philadelphia, the home of Mr. Rydell’s label, Cameo Records.Mr. Rydell’s repertoire included plaintive love ballads; slow, danceable tunes; occasional frenetic rockers like “Wild One” and “Swingin’ School”; and ageless songs like Domenico Modugno’s 1958 hit “Volare,” which became Mr. Rydell’s signature song in his later touring years.Mr. Rydell was a pop phenomenon but hardly a cutting-edge rock star. Still, he sold a lot more records than some of those who were. Over the course of his recording career he placed 19 singles in the Billboard Top 40 and 34 in the Hot 100. His name alone could conjure up an entire era: The 1970s rock musical “Grease,” in both its Broadway and movie versions, was set in 1959 at the fictional Rydell High School.Mr. Rydell was born Robert Louis Ridarelli on April 26, 1942. His father, Adrio, was a machine shop foreman, and in 1995 the city of Philadelphia honored South 11th Street, where he grew up, as Bobby Rydell Boulevard. Mr. Rydell’s 1963 song “Wildwood Days” paid homage to Wildwood, the New Jersey beach town where his grandmother had a boardinghouse and he spent his early summers; like Philadelphia, Wildwood later held an honorary street-naming for Mr. Rydell.Unlike some of the other pretty faces of his era, Mr. Rydell was a real musician. His father, a fan of the big bands, would take him as a child to see Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw at the Earle Theater in Philadelphia. At age 6, he told his father he wanted to play the drums like Gene Krupa, and he was singing in local nightclubs a year or two later.The bandleader Paul Whiteman had an amateur talent show, “TV Teen Club,” on Philadelphia television in the early 1950s. Young Bobby entered the contest when he was 9; he soon became a regular on the show, remaining for three years. Bobby’s father shortened the boy’s name to Rydell for the show.After a brief period as the drummer for a local group, Rocco and the Saints, which included Frankie Avalon on trumpet, Mr. Rydell went solo as a singer. His first three songs on the Cameo label were flops, but he scored in 1959 with “Kissin’ Time,” which Dick Clark, whose show had succeeded Paul Whiteman’s, immediately liked. It reached No. 11 on the Billboard chart.Mr. Rydell’s romantic voice, cute face and regular-guy personality drew screaming girls, but he also had enough adult appeal to be booked at the Copacabana in New York at 19.Reviewing his Copacabana performance in 1961, Variety complimented him on his “sense of career.” “Right now, he’s a teenager’s teenager,” the Variety critic said. “His style is packed with rhythm and bounce and his ‘nice boy next door’ demeanor is quite winning. Even the adults realize this, and it works to his advantage.”By his 21st birthday, Mr. Rydell had made three trips to perform in Europe and three others to Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Japan. In a 2011 interview, he recalled the reaction in Australia: “They stormed the stage, thousands and thousands of kids. The Australian police had to make a wedge to get us out of Sydney Stadium. It was scary, but all in all it was absolutely tremendous.” (Mr. Rydell went on to tour in Australia more than 20 times.)He also recalled that in 1963, in England, the Beatles climbed onto his tour bus to meet him. He didn’t know them, but they knew him. In the 2000 book “The Beatles Anthology,” Paul McCartney was quoted as saying that he and John Lennon based “She Loves You” on a Bobby Rydell song. He didn’t name the song, but his 1960 hit “Swingin’ School” includes a “Yeah, yeah, yeah” refrain. (Some sources say the song was “Forget Him,” which is somewhat similar lyrically.)Ann-Margret and Bobby Rydell in a scene from “Bye Bye Birdie” on the movie set in Hollywood in 1962.Associated PressColumbia Pictures signed him to a contract in 1961. But the only movie in which he made much of an impact was “Bye Bye Birdie,” released in 1963 and based on the hit Broadway musical of the same name, which poked fun at show business in general and rock ’n’ roll frenzy in particular. Mr. Rydell played Hugo Peabody, the meek high school steady of Kim McAfee, played by Ann-Margret, the small-town girl chosen to give the Elvis-like Conrad Birdie a kiss on national television. Dick Van Dyke and Janet Leigh were the film’s stars, but the parts of Hugo and Kim were considerably beefed up in the transition from stage to screen.In a radio interview in 2013 with Ted Yates of CKOC in Hamilton, Ontario, Mr. Rydell explained why he hadn’t stayed in Hollywood to make more movies: “I couldn’t. There was something about the lifestyle in California that I really wasn’t used to. I was basically a South Philadelphia kid, and I was an East Coast guy, and I really couldn’t stay out in California.” (Mr. Rydell also played a nightclub singer in the 1975 film “That Lady From Peking,” which was shot in Australia.)Underscoring his ties to his family and his city, and going against recommendations that he live on the West Coast, Mr. Rydell bought a house in 1963 in Penn Valley, Pa., a suburb of Philadelphia, and moved in with his parents and grandparents. He raised his children there, and moved in 2013 only because the house had grown too big for him and his wife. “I had the good fortune to spend my peak years as a recording artist during the golden age of the TV variety show,” Mr. Rydell wrote in his autobiography. “Throughout the early ’60s, I appeared on almost all of them.” Those included shows hosted by, among others, Ed Sullivan, Johnny Carson, Perry Como, Jack Benny, Milton Berle and, most notably, Red Skelton.After making two appearances on “The Red Skelton Hour” on which he just sang, he appeared in sketches intermittently from 1961 to 1969 as various characters, including Zeke Kadiddlehopper, cousin to Skelton’s country-bumpkin character Clem Kadiddlehopper.“Mr. Skelton fell in love with Bobby,” Mr. Rydell’s personal assistant, Linda F. Hoffman, said in 2013. “His son had passed away, and Bobby always felt he was looked upon by Mr. Skelton as a son. They were very close.”New York Times reviews of two rock ’n’ roll revival shows at Madison Square Garden suggested reasons for both his lesser place in the rock firmament and his future career longevity. In 1975, Ian Dove wrote: “Mr. Rydell is not your hard rocker — his era was in the late 1950s, when rock was being softened and made less frightening. With such songs as ‘Volare,’ he emerges more like a crooner than a rocker.” Reviewing a 1977 show, Robert Palmer wrote that Mr. Rydell “seemed uncomfortable with his rock ’n’ roll hits and would probably have become an Italian crooner had he not grown up in the rock ’n’ roll era.”After his television appearances dwindled, he continued to perform in nightclubs and nostalgia shows, and to tour Australia, until the promoter Dick Fox put the Golden Boys together in 1985, initially for a PBS special. Mr. Rydell, Mr. Avalon and Fabian would perform their own songs and then sing together; there would also be tributes to Frank Sinatra and to Mr. Rydell’s favorite singer, Bobby Darin.“When the three of us are onstage, we’re having fun,” Mr. Rydell said in a 2012 interview with the writer Pat Gallagher. “We’re not trying to fool anybody. Everybody has known us for the better part of 50 years. We just go out there and have fun and the audience can see that.”Mr. Rydell married his high-school sweetheart, Camille Quattrone, in 1968. She died in 2003. He is survived by his wife, Linda J. Hoffman (who is not related to Linda F. Hoffman); two children from his first marriage, Robert Ridarelli and Jennifer Dulin; and five grandchildren.In 2011, Mr. Rydell was characteristically modest. He praised Red Skelton and other show-business veterans for helping him along, recalled that in 1985 the touring trio didn’t think their act would last more than two years, and joked that the “G” sometimes fell off marquees where they performed, making their name “the Olden Boys.”He also said he felt odd that he was one of the first 10 people inducted into the Philadelphia Music Foundation’s Hall of Fame. “Leopold Stokowski, Dizzy Gillespie and Bobby Rydell,” he mused. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”Vimal Patel contributed reporting. More

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      Machine Gun Kelly Has a Second No. 1 Album, ‘Mainstream Sellout’

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      The pop-punk musician’s latest release had the equivalent of 93,000 sales in the United States.Machine Gun Kelly, the onetime rapper who has remade himself into the jester prince of a new wave of pop-punk, opens at No. 1 on the Billboard chart with his latest album, “Mainstream Sellout.”Produced with Travis Barker of Blink-182, and featuring guest appearances by Lil Wayne, Willow and the British band Bring Me the Horizon — plus an audio snippet from Pete Davidson, who has played Machine Gun Kelly on “Saturday Night Live” — the album had the equivalent of 93,000 sales in the United States. That included 69 million streams and 42,000 copies sold as a complete package, according to Luminate, the tracking service formerly known as MRC Data.It is Machine Gun Kelly’s second No. 1 album, following “Tickets to My Downfall” nearly two years ago, and is the first rock album to top the Billboard 200 chart since AC/DC’s “Power Up” in November 2020.Lil Durk’s “7220” is No. 2, the “Encanto” soundtrack is No. 3, Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous” is No. 4 and Olivia Rodrigo’s “Sour” is in fifth place. Any sales bumps from Sunday night’s Grammy Awards — where top prizes were won by Rodrigo, Jon Batiste and Silk Sonic — would be reflected on next week’s chart.Also this week, “Legendaddy” by Daddy Yankee, the first studio album by the reggaeton star in 10 years, which he has advertised as his final release, opens at No. 8, a chart high for him. More

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      Lady Gaga and Silk Sonic Follow the Grammy Formula: Old, but New

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      Despite nods to Gen Z, this year’s show favored history-minded performers like Silk Sonic, Jon Batiste, H.E.R. and Lady Gaga.There is no surer way for a young musician to acquire a quick coat of gravitas than an appearance on the Grammy Awards. And there is no surer way for a young musician to speed the way to the Grammys than by already appearing to be old.Such is the chicken-egg conundrum bedeviling the awards, and also the pop music industry, which coexist in uneasy alliance, looking askance at each other while furtively holding hands. At the Grammys, maturity is rewarded, and often demanded, putting it at direct odds with a music business that continues to valorize youth.At the 64th annual Grammy Awards, which took place in Las Vegas on Sunday night, these tensions were on display in myriad ways. Take Justin Bieber, who began his performance of the glistening, slinky “Peaches” sitting at the piano, singing earnestly and with pulp. For Bieber, 28, not generally regarded as a musician’s musician, it was a pointed ploy, or perhaps a plea.Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak — performing as Silk Sonic — won both song and record of the year for “Leave the Door Open,” a stunningly slick slice of 1970s-style soul. At the show, they nailed the yesteryear aesthetic, too, from suits to hairstyles to mannerisms. Both men, masterful purveyors of retro sonic ideology, are 36.Read More on the 2022 Grammy AwardsThe Irresistible Jon Batiste: The jazz pianist is an inheritor more than an innovator, but he puts the past to use in service of fun.A Controversial Award: Some people questioned the decision to bestow the Grammy for best comedy album to Louis C.K., who has admitted to sexual misconduct.Old, but New: Despite nods to Gen Z, this year’s show favored history-minded performers like Silk Sonic, H.E.R. and Lady Gaga.The Fashion: An exuberant anything-goes attitude was a reminder of why red carpets are fun in the first place.Zelensky’s Speech: Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, addressed the audience in a prerecorded video. Here’s what he said.Jon Batiste, the New Orleans jazz scion and late-night bandleader who won album of the year, delivered a performance that channeled second-line funk, classic soul and just the faintest touch of hip-hop. He is 35.Justin Bieber opened his performance of “Peaches” at the piano.Mario Anzuoni/ReutersThese are the sorts of performances, and performers, the Grammys crave: appearing young but aiming to embody old-fashioned values of musicianship. Because the Grammys telecast draws generations of viewers, and because Grammy voters are drawn from a wide pool that skews older, what emerges on the show, and in the awards themselves, is a kind of piteous compromise that holds real innovation at bay. The artists nominated in the top categories were refreshingly democratic, in terms of genre and age, but Batiste and Silk Sonic bested them all.That meant that the only one remaining for Olivia Rodrigo, nominated in all four, to win was best new artist, which she did. Rodrigo was last year’s clear breakout star, and the prime placement she was given on the telecast, with one of the first performances, indicated the Grammys understood her power. She was a jolt of uncut youth, performing “Drivers License” with a light eau de grunge, and then later thanking her parents when accepting the award for best pop vocal album for “Sour.”But that was something of a head fake, as was most of the show’s opening run of performances, which also included the precocious Grammy fave Billie Eilish, the K-pop group BTS, the reggaeton star J Balvin and Lil Nas X, whose blend of raunch and wit felt slightly tamped down during his medley of recent hits. The only other moment the show approached a moment of honest freshness was when Doja Cat raced to the stage to accept her award for best pop duo/group performance after leaving the room for a bathroom break. She and her co-winner SZA giggled at the snafu, and Doja spoke in the unfiltered manner she’s become known for, which felt fresh in this context: “I like to downplay a lot of [expletive], but this is a big deal.”As for several other young stars, well, they declined to show up — Tyler, the Creator, who won best rap album; Drake, who withdrew himself from consideration in the categories in which he was nominated; the Weeknd, who after last year’s no-nomination debacle has stated he’ll never again submit his music for consideration by the Grammys; Cardi B, nominated just once. (Taylor Swift also did not attend, but that absence did not have the air of a protest so much as an acknowledgment that this year was unlikely to garner her any trophies.)Lady Gaga brought very-old-school flair to a medley of songs from her duet album with Tony Bennett.Chris Pizzello/Invision, Associated PressThat lineup of no-shows could fuel an alternate award show, or concert (as was proposed by the hip-hop mogul J. Prince). And therein lies the Grammys’ Achilles’ heel: It needs artists like these, both for reasons of relevance and also as tribute-payers. As hip-hop has become the dominant sound of pop music, its stars are going to become the elders of tomorrow. If the Grammys continue to alienate its young titans, its attempts to honor the music moving forward will consistently fall flat. (That was emphasized by the oldest featured performer at this year’s show: Nas, 48, who spent half of his set performing 20-year-old songs that deserved a Grammys stage long ago.)This chasm — between the Grammys and youth, between the Grammys and hip-hop — means that the show has to double down on younger stars willing (and excited?) to be in dialogue with the sounds of yesteryear. Some of the most strikingly mature vocals of the night were by Rachel Zegler, singing Sondheim as part of the in memoriam segment. One of the show’s most stirring moments came from the R&B singer-songwriter H.E.R., who has perhaps been over-indexed with awards-show acclaim in recent years. Her performance, alongside Lenny Kravitz, Travis Barker and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, connected her to three generations of funk and rock.And then there is Lady Gaga, the onetime pop disrupter who has become the embodiment of institutional legacy through her ongoing work with the crooner Tony Bennett. Their latest album, “Love for Sale,” won best traditional pop vocal album, and Gaga performed a tribute to Bennett, 95 — who did not attend — singing two of the album’s songs, which originated in the 1930s. Her singing was sharp and invested, making a case for decades-old standards on a contemporary pop stage, the embodiment of the Grammys’ cross-generational goals.It was easy to lose sight of the fact that Lady Gaga is only 36. And looking at the next generation of pop talent — Eilish, Rodrigo, Doja Cat, Tyler, the Creator and beyond — it’s hard not to wonder how long will they be allowed to be young before the Grammys insists they grow up. More