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      Nilüfer Yanya’s Music Is a Family Affair

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      The British musician has long collaborated on videos with her sister. Her new album, “Painless,” stems from exploring her lineage, and what exactly it means to “be from somewhere.”Sometime last year, while on vacation with her two sisters, the British musician Nilüfer Yanya was listening to the mastered recording of her second album, “Painless,” for the first time.“We were getting really excited,” her older sister, Molly Daniel, recalled on a recent video call, especially about “Stabilise,” an antic number built atop a guitar riff as intricate and tightly wound as a labyrinth. “I was like manically dancing around and directing the video,” Daniel said, “Like, then you run here, then you’re on a bike, then you do this, then you’re in a car.”Eventually, Daniel did direct the video, in which Yanya jogs and cruises around London while insisting defiantly, “I’m not waiting for no one to save me.” The collaboration was an extension of the powerful role family has played in Yanya’s music since she first picked up the guitar — a gift for a teenage Daniel that landed in her sister’s hands. “Each time you’re pushing the limits in your head of what you can achieve and what you can do together,” Yanya, 26, said in a separate video call. “My idea of what’s possible and realistic now is so much bigger than when I started out.”Many of the lyrics on “Painless,” Yanya’s excellent new album out Friday, deal with what she described as the connection between your “environment and the way you feel or the way you think about something.” It was created at a time when Yanya was re-examining her lineage and her ties to her homeland, an experience that forms an unspoken undercurrent connecting these songs.Yanya’s parents are both visual artists: her mother is a textile designer and her father a painter whose work has been exhibited in the British Museum. Daniel — a filmmaker, photographer and creative director — has directed every one of her sister’s music videos, beginning with the moody, low-budget clip for “Small Crimes,” from Yanya’s 2016 debut LP. Her younger sister, Elif, is a visual artist and designer.Calling from her manager’s office in London on a February morning, clad in a kelly-green turtleneck sweater and wired earbuds, Yanya recalled weekend family outings in West London and sketching in museums, but added that her upbringing wasn’t completely bohemian. “When people say, ‘Oh, you’ve got artist parents,’ they imagine you painting on the walls and being real hippies,” she said. “But they were quite strict, serious about homework and school.”Once Yanya got ahold of the guitar, she played constantly. When she started performing at local shows and open mic nights, Daniel glimpsed a part of her sister’s inner life that she’d never before seen. “It’s like, oh, there’s this whole side of you that we don’t know,” she said.In conversation, Yanya is soft-spoken and thoughtful but not necessarily shy; Daniel described her as “calmly confident.” (And tirelessly musical: “She hums 24/7.”) Since her first EP, “Small Crimes” from 2016, Yanya’s music has often sounded like someone’s private stream-of-consciousness externalized in the legible grammar of well-crafted melodies. Her singing voice can move deftly from a low, smoky hush to a suddenly impassioned wail.Yanya’s breakout came with her acclaimed 2019 album “Miss Universe,” an eclectic collection of spiky indie-rock, singer-songwriter meditations and even a few jazz-influenced compositions. The album’s sounds were so varied, Yanya said, that she decided to come up with a thematic concept to tie it all together. And so “WWAY Health” was born — a fictitious self-help service that allowed Yanya, in surreal and darkly hilarious interludes spaced throughout the album, to lampoon modern wellness culture. “Congratulations, you have been chosen to experience ‘paradise,’ as a part of our What Will You Experience? Giveaway,” she intones in a robotic voice on one such track. “Don’t forget to leave a review in the comments section.”“It just seems like a waste of an opportunity not to work with my family when I can,” Yanya said, “because everyone seems to make cool things.”Adama Jalloh for The New York TimesWhen she began writing “Painless,” though, she wanted the album’s through line to be not thematic so much as “a more cohesive, signature sound.” Skittish electronic-influenced beats, textured guitar tones and introspective lyrics are woven together on “Painless” to create an immersive listening experience. The songs are enlivened by subtle flourishes and small moments of upended expectations, like the guitar distortion that blossoms after the final chorus of the record’s centerpiece “Midnight Sun.” “In some kind of way I am lost,” Yanya sings with a stirring mix of melancholy and hope on the affecting final track. “In another life I was not.”“Painless” was created when Yanya was reconsidering her family history. Her father is Turkish, and moved from Istanbul in the 1980s to work in London’s art scene. Her mother is of Irish and Barbadian descent, and the ancestors on Yanya’s maternal grandfather’s side were enslaved. Though she always knew this, Yanya said it has recently caused her to think more deeply about her own sense of place, her relationship to England, and what exactly it means to “be from somewhere.”After George Floyd’s murder, Yanya’s aunt was inspired to research and map out their family’s history more meticulously than ever before, and even to meet with the living ancestors of her family’s enslavers. The experience affected Yanya deeply. “I used to feel like my family’s history wasn’t necessarily tied into the history of this country, and I felt I didn’t have as many ties to where I was,” she said. “But now I’m seeing those ties, and they’re a bit more insidious than I’d imagined.”On Instagram, Yanya has publicized the work of Tteach Plaques, an organization that seeks to “contextualize statues, buildings and institutions enriched by the trans-Atlantic slave trade.” Last August, Tteach installed a plaque in Bristol Cathedral honoring the life of Yanya’s great-great-great grandfather John Isaac Daniel, who was born enslaved to a British family that owned sugar plantations in Barbados. The exhibit featured photographs and biographies of his descendants, including Yanya and her siblings.Before this reckoning, Yanya and her family also sought to demystify the process of making art. In 2015, Daniel started Artists in Transit, a program that provides art supplies to communities in need. Before the pandemic, Daniel and Yanya were bringing art projects to migrant families in Greece, and in the past two years they’ve been focused on outreach closer to home, in London. “You can make a career” out of art, she said, “and you can make jobs out of it, so it should always be an option for everybody.”Her family members continue to set this example for her, and even as Yanya gears up to release and tour her second full-length record, she remains curious about art forms other than music. Last year, she took an evening printmaking course taught by her father at a nearby college. “You’re learning how to print onto metal plates, etching into it, and using acid,” she said. “It’s a very technical process, so that was really cool.”What best prepared her for a career in music, she said, was getting to observe her parents in the everyday rhythms of an artist’s life: driving to shows, unpacking materials, hanging paintings. “You can kind of see the labor behind it that you don’t really think about,” she explained. “As I was growing up, seeing how much time they put into their work and practice really solidified in my head that this is work and it doesn’t really stop. It’s not something where you get somewhere and you stop doing it. It’s constantly going on, and constantly changing.”“It just seems like a waste of an opportunity not to work with my family when I can,” she added, “because everyone seems to make cool things.” More

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      Dua Lipa Brings Her Lockdown Anthems to the Arena

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      The pop star’s second album, “Future Nostalgia,” is ambitious and impressive. Onstage, the production didn’t match the LP’s ecstasy.Many of the best Dua Lipa songs start with an easily absorbable concept — “Physical,” “Levitating,” “Cool” — and emanate outward from there. Her music is fleet, stomping and appealingly icy: industrial-grade club-pop that’s mindful of history while flaunting the latest in polish and panache.The songs are very tightly wound, though. Lipa is a lightly regal singer who often sounds removed from the hiss and purr of her production, as if she’s performing to the track and not with it. Great dance-floor-oriented music often connotes abandon, but Lipa exudes control. She’s a pop superstar, but not quite a full pop personality.Maybe that’s why on Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden, she, like the other 20,000 or so people in attendance, came to sing along to Dua Lipa songs.That is, naturally, what many have been doing for the past few years, especially the two since the release of Lipa’s “Future Nostalgia,” one of the first excellent albums of the Covid era. It was, for a little while, the soundtrack of our collective hallucination about the possibilities that had been wrested away by social isolation, a set of clinically ecstatic, pointedly unbendable anthems designed for megaclubs that wouldn’t reopen for months or more.Given the sheer popularity of Lipa’s music, the show was modest.The New York TimesIn many ways, Lipa, 26, is a pop superstar for diminished times. From Madonna to Katy Perry to Lady Gaga to Rihanna to Billie Eilish, the most successful figures in the last few decades of pop music built worlds. They are philosophers of the body and aesthetics as much as sound.Lipa’s music doesn’t ask questions, though, or suggest alternate interpretations. It is — especially on songs like the buoyant “New Rules” and “Electricity” (made with Mark Ronson and Diplo, working under the Chicago house music-evoking name Silk City) — perhaps overly studious, though in the best way. At times, Lipa sounds like she’s doing devoted analysis of the club-pop of the early 1990s, not a nostalgist so much as a historical re-enactor.But Lipa’s ambition isn’t academic-scaled, it’s domination-focused. And that requires something more than pinpoint recreations. This performance, part of her Future Nostalgia Tour, had the thrill of listening to Lipa songs on the radio — a wonderful way to lose yourself when you have to keep your eyes on the road.Given the sheer popularity of Lipa’s music, the show was modest, a concept-less, box-checking production that severely underplayed Lipa’s stadium-size goals. A meager arrangement of balloons dropped from the rafters during “One Kiss.” Lipa and her dancers oozed through a pro forma umbrella routine during “New Rules.” Later, a handful of orbs and stars limply dangled from the ceiling. During “We’re Good,” Lipa sat on the stage singing, while nearby, an inflatable lobster hovered … menacingly? Not quite that. More woozily. (The accompanying animation on the big screen at the back of the stage recalled Perry’s cheekiness, which is not generally part of Lipa’s arsenal.)Throughout the night, Lipa was flanked by dancers and roller skaters.The New York TimesThe New York TimesThroughout the night, Lipa was flanked by up to 10 dancers and two roller skaters. She is a labored dancer, choosing choreography that emphasizes small, tart movements while telegraphing big sentiment: a power stomp out to the end of the runway on “New Rules,” an extreme dose of hair whipping on “Future Nostalgia.” But rarely did the theater of the presentation match the drama of the songs themselves.As for the songs, the arrangements were faithful and emphatic — they filled the space that the happenings onstage did not. Lipa never sang more forcefully than the arsenal of backup singers and prerecorded vocals that were bolstering her. On her albums, she sings with an occasional growl, but whenever those moments arose here, she appeared to pull back from the rigor. (Lipa’s dancers were given an elaborate video introduction at the beginning of the show. At the end of the night, she introduced her band members by name, but — pointedly? — not her backup singers.)It was not unpleasant — “Break My Heart” was cheerful, “Don’t Start Now” was punchy, “Cool” was ethereal. But these were closed loops, reinforcement of feelings already experienced more than jumping-off points for growth. All in all, inhibition outweighed risk — a perfect recreation of a time when we were all inside, wondering if we’d ever be set free.“Future Nostalgia” was, for a little while, the soundtrack of our collective hallucination about the possibilities that had been wrested away by social isolation.The New York Times More

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      The Enigma of Big Thief

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherThe Brooklyn band Big Thief has become one of the indie-rock breakout success stories of recent years. With its evolving indie-folk sound, the band has inspired both passionate fandom and committed detractors — it is an intimately-scaled band that inspires big feelings. Its fifth album, “Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You,” is out now.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the sonic evolution(s) of Big Thief, the space the band occupies in contemporary indie-rock circles (and in the historical arc of indie’s embrace of American heritage music), and how to think critically but generously about music that doesn’t necessarily speak to you as a listener.Guests:Jon Dolan, reviews editor at Rolling StoneSam Sodomsky, associate editor at PitchforkConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      ‘Encanto’ Soundtrack Is No. 1 for a Seventh Week

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      Music from Disney’s latest animated movie continues to dominate the Billboard 200 and Hot 100, where the song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” is on top for a fifth time.On the music charts, it is Disney’s world, and everyone else is just living in it.This week, the soundtrack to Disney’s “Encanto,” featuring songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda, is the No. 1 album for a seventh time, while its song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” notches its fifth No. 1 on the singles chart.The album’s numbers have been slipping, though with little major competition lately “Encanto” has easily remained on top. In its latest week, the soundtrack had the equivalent of 90,000 sales in the United States, including 115 million streams and 11,000 copies sold as a complete package, according to MRC Data, Billboard’s tracking arm. At its peak, about a month ago, songs from “Encanto” were drawing about 140 million clicks each week on streaming services.“Encanto” sails above albums by Gunna (No. 2) and Morgan Wallen (No. 3), each with about 41,000 equivalent sales. “The Highlights,” a hits compilation by the Weeknd released a year ago to capitalize on his performance at the Super Bowl LV halftime show, is No. 4. Another nearly year-old album, Olivia Rodrigo’s “Sour,” is in fifth place.The highest-charting new album is “2 Alivë” by the Oregon rapper Yeat, with guest appearances by Young Thug and Gunna. It opens at No. 6 with 32,000 sales — barely a third of the “Encanto” total — including 45 million streams. More

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      Florence + the Machine’s Conflicted Coronation, and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Bonnie Raitt, Kehlani, Mahalia 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.Florence + the Machine, ‘King’Career vs. family. Artistic inspiration vs. a stable life. “The world ending and the scale of my ambition.” Florence Welch takes them all on in “King,” which affirms both the risks and rewards of her choices. Like many of the songs Welch writes and sings for Florence + the Machine, “King” moves from confessional to archetypal in a grand, liberating crescendo, while its video elevates her from a tormented partner to something like a saint. JON PARELESBonnie Raitt, ‘Made Up Mind’It’s an old story: the bitter end of a romance. “Made Up Mind,” written and first recorded by a Canadian band called the Bros. Landreth, tells it tersely, often in one-syllable words: “It goes on and on/For way too long.” On the first single from an album due April 22, “Just Like That,” Bonnie Raitt sings it knowingly and tenderly, after a scrape of guitar noise announces how rough the going is about to get. PARELESKehlani, ‘Little Story’Kehlani has long narrated tales of devastating romance, but “Little Story,” the latest single from the forthcoming album “Blue Water Road,” opens a portal to a world of candor. Sounding more self-assured and tender than they have in years, the singer (who uses they/them pronouns) curls the honeyed sways of their voice over the delicate strumming of an electric guitar. “You know I love a story, only when you’re the author,” Kehlani sings, pleading for a lover’s return. Strings crescendo into blooming petals, and Kehlani makes a pledge to embrace tenderness. “Workin’ on bein’ softer,” they sing. “’Cause you are a dream to me.” ISABELIA HERRERACarter Faith, ‘Greener Pasture’A bluesy lite-country simmerer in which the cowboy does not stick around: “I was his Texaco/A stop just along the road/I shoulda known I ain’t his last rodeo.” JON CARAMANICANorah Jones, ‘Come Away With Me (Alternate Version)’With the 20th anniversary of Norah Jones‘s millions-selling debut, “Come Away With Me,” arrives a “Super Deluxe Edition” featuring this previously unreleased alternate take of the title track, with the band work shopping the song. There’s a constant, pendulum-swinging guitar part in this version, matching the songwriter Jesse Harris’s lulling bass figure and pushing the band along. Ultimately you can see why this take didn’t make the cut: The biggest draw is Jones’s matte, desert-rose voice, and it seems most at home when in no hurry, cast in lower contrast to the rest of the band. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOPorridge Radio, ‘Back to the Radio’One electric guitar chord is strummed in what seems to be 4/4 time, repeated, distorted and topped with additional noise for the first full minute of “Back to the Radio.” Then Dana Margolin starts singing, decidedly turning the 4/4 to a waltz as the lyrics push toward a confrontation with someone who matters: “We almost got better/We’re so unprepared for this/Running straight at it.” The song is pure catharsis. PARELESMahalia, ‘Letter to Ur Ex’The threat is both restrained and potent in “Letter to Ur Ex” from the English songwriter Mahalia. She’s singing to someone trying to maintain a connection that has ended: “You can’t do that any more,” she warns. “Yeah, I get it/That don’t mean I’m gonna always be forgiving.” Acoustic guitar chords grow into a programmed beat and strings; her voice is gentle, but its edge is unmistakable. PARELESEsty, ‘Pegao!!!’The Dominican American artist Esty collides genres and aesthetics like a kid scribbling on paper. “Pegao!!!,” from her new “Estyland” EP, mashes up the singer’s breathy, coy raps and sky-high melodies with razor-sharp stabs of synth and a skittish, percussive dembow riddim. She declares her imminent ascent in the music industry, whispering, “They say I’m too late/But I feel like I’m on time.” Her visual choices are part of the plot too: between the anime references, her love for roller skating (which has made her famous on TikTok) and a head full of two-toned braids, Esty’s aesthetic is a kind of punk dembow, her own little slice of chaotic good. HERRERAMura Masa featuring Lil Uzi Vert, PinkPantheress and Shygirl, ‘Bbycakes’Here is how layered things can get in 21st-century pop. The English producer Mura Masa discovered “Babycakes” by the British group 3 of a Kind. He pitched it up and sped it up, keeping the catchy chorus hook. He also connected with Pink Pantheress, Lil Uzi Vert and Shygirl. The new, multitracked song is still both a come-on and a declaration of love, but who did what is a blur. PARELESR3hab featuring Saucy Santana, ‘Put Your Hands On My ____ (Original Phonk Version)’Saucy Santana’s “Material Girl” is the optimal viral hit — easy to shout along with, organized around a catchy phrase, full of performative attitude. For Saucy Santana, onetime makeup artist for the rap duo City Girls turned reality TV star, its emergence as a TikTok phenomenon a couple of months ago (more than a year after the song’s initial release) was a classic case of water finding its level. And now, a future full of promising party-rap club anthems beckons. This easy-as-pie collaboration with the D.J.-producer R3hab is an update of Freak Nasty’s “Da Dip,” one of the seminal songs of Atlanta bass music, and a bona fide mid-1990s pop hit as well. It doesn’t top the original, but it doesn’t have to in order to be an effective shout-along. CARAMANICALil Durk, ‘Ahhh Ha’The first single from the upcoming Lil Durk album, “7220,” is full of exuberant menace. Lil Durk raps crisply and with snappy energy while touching on awful topics, including the killing of his brother DThang and of the rapper King Von, and instigating tension with YoungBoy Never Broke Again. In the middle of chaos, he sounds almost thrilled. CARAMANICAKiko El Crazy, Braulio Fogón and Randy, ‘Comandante’On “Comandante,” two generations of eccentrics — the Dominican dembow newcomers Kiko el Crazy and Braulio Fogón, alongside the Puerto Rican reggaeton titan Randy — join forces for a send-off to a cop who threatens to arrest them for smoking a little weed. Randy drops a deliciously flippant, baby-voiced hook, and Fogón’s offbeat, anti-flow arrives with surprising dexterity. When that timeless fever pitch riddim hits, you’ll want every intergenerational police satire to go this hard. HERRERACharles Goold, ‘Sequence of Events’The drummer Charles Goold and his band are hard-charging on “Sequence of Events,” the opening track to his debut album as a bandleader, “Rhythm in Contrast.” He starts it with a four-on-the-floor drum solo that has as much calypso and rumba in it as it does swing. When the band comes in — the slicing guitar of Andrew Renfroe leading the way, with Steve Nelson’s vibraphone, Taber Gable’s piano and Noah Jackson’s bass close on his heels — that open approach to his rhythmic options remains. Goold graduated from Juilliard, probably the premiere conservatory for traditional-jazz pedagogy, but he’s also toured with hip-hop royalty. All of that’s in evidence here, as he homes in on a sincere update to the midcentury-modern jazz sound. RUSSONELLO More

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      What Happens When a ‘Heritage Act’ Wants More Than Playing the Hits?

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      Tears for Fears are returning with their first new album in 18 years. The group is one of a number of veteran bands releasing fresh music after lengthy pauses.When Tears for Fears released their album “Everybody Loves a Happy Ending” in 2004, the English pop duo’s future, or lack thereof, seemed clear.“I thought that was the last hurrah,” the singer-guitarist Roland Orzabal said on a recent video call from a house he owns in Los Angeles. “I thought it was a beautiful way of putting a full-stop at the end of the sentence.”Tears for Fears had experienced a remarkably successful run in the 1980s, highlighted by worldwide hits including “Shout,” “Head Over Heels,” “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” and “Sowing the Seeds of Love.” The group had already endured a nasty breakup in the early ’90s, after which Orzabal carried on under the Tears for Fears banner while his erstwhile bandmate, the singer-guitarist Curt Smith, made solo albums, both to diminished returns, before they patched up their differences.But in the music industry, there’s rarely a full-stop at the end of the sentence. While pop music is often a measure of the current moment, it has always been borne back ceaselessly into the past. Bands rarely break up; they go on hiatus. A successful career can outlive the performer that once powered it. Nothing, not even death, can stop the rumbling engine of commerce. Minting new hits and new stars is a gamble, but the past is the closest the music industry has to a sure thing.For a time, Tears for Fears participated, somewhat ambivalently, in this nostalgia industrial complex, playing their hits on periodic tours of casinos and wineries and the summer festival circuit. But while the life of what the industry calls a heritage act was enriching, it wasn’t that engaging.“We were getting a bit bored with it,” Smith said on a separate video call from his home in Southern California. “Us being a heritage act was never going to work because we need new material to keep us excited. Trying to find that new material was the hard part.”This was the particular jumping-off point for the protracted odyssey that would eventually yield the band’s first album in 18 years, “The Tipping Point,” due Friday. But this tension between commerce and art is hardly unusual for any artist with a catalog of past hits. Reconciling it often takes time.Tears for Fears released their most successful album, “Songs From the Big Chair,” in 1985.Brian Rasic/Getty ImagesTears for Fears is just one of a number of veteran acts that’s re-emerged as a recording entity in recent months after an extended period on the sidelines. Abba, Jethro Tull, Wet Wet Wet, the Temptations, the Boo Radleys and Men Without Hats all have also just released their first albums of new material in more than a decade, or are about to. For some, the pandemic likely played a role in their return. With touring shuttered for long stretches of the past two years, many artists were losing income. And with long stretches to sit around, songwriters, unsurprisingly, often write songs.Eddie Roeser, the guitarist-singer for the Chicago alt-rock trio Urge Overkill, who released its first studio album in 11 years, “Oui,” on Feb. 11, said, “the only gateway to playing together and having fun is working on new things.” Urge scored modest hits in the 1990s with “Sister Havana” and a cover of Neil Diamond’s “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon,” but Roeser was wary of becoming “a greatest hits machine. Anybody who does music professionally dreads going up and playing the one song people came to the show for.”In the 1980s, the English synth-pop duo Soft Cell often refused to play its biggest hit, “Tainted Love,” on tour. “We were so sick of it,” said David Ball, the group’s multi-instrumentalist. “Nostalgia Machine,” a song from “Happiness Not Included,” Soft Cell’s first album since 2002 (due in May), is a cheeky nod to the industry’s obsession with the past. “It’s really about the fact that everything is recycled and reused,” Ball said.He and the singer Marc Almond originally reconnected at the behest of Universal Records, to discuss a Soft Cell boxed set the company was releasing in 2018. The pair agreed to perform what was then billed as a “final” show at London’s 02 Arena that year.“I said to Marc, ‘Don’t say ‘final.’ Never put ‘final’ on anything,’” Ball said, laughing. “At that point, we didn’t foresee the pandemic. I think everybody had a lot of time to sit and contemplate, and he thought, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.’” The duo sent new tracks back and forth during Covid lockdowns in Britain, and made the entire album remotely.Advances in home recording also aided the Doobie Brothers, who released “Liberté,” their first album of new songs in 11 years, in October. “To get the whole band in there, it used to take weeks or even a couple of months to do an album,” the singer-guitarist Tom Johnston said. Now, “we could have an album done in a week and a half.”From left, the Doobie Brothers in the early 1970s: Patrick Simmons, Tiran Porter, John Hartman, Michael Hossack and Tom Johnston.Joan ChaseAnd the Doobies today, from left: Patrick Simmons, John McFee and Tom Johnston.Clay Patrick McBrideTears for Fears began working on new material more than six years ago and said they were steered by their then manager, the industry veteran Gary Gersh, into teaming with professional songwriters for a series of writing sessions. “They’d come up with this backing track that sounded like classic Tears for Fears,” Smith said. “But we’ve done that already. By the end, it was kind of depressing.”The pair powered through, and by 2016, had 12 finished tracks. They began negotiating with Universal, who already owned the rights to most of the band’s catalog, but the label suggested putting off releasing a new album and instead dropping a second greatest hits compilation — the first came out in 1992 — packaged with two new songs.“Universal said, ‘The Greatest Hits will put you back in the limelight, then we’ll go with the album!’” Orzabal said. But after the hits package was released, there was no deal in place obligating Universal to release the new album, and it wasn’t picked up.This created something of an existential crisis for the band. Orzabal wasn’t sure what to do with these new songs; Smith wanted nothing to do with them. “It all sounded like a bunch of vain attempts at a hit single,” Smith said. “I said, ‘If this is really what you want to do, you should, but I can’t be involved.’”Before Orzabal could decide his next move, the rest of his life cratered. His then-wife, Caroline, died after a long, debilitating bout with alcoholism and depression. In the wake of her death, Orzabal struggled with his own mental health, and spent time in and out of hospitals and rehabs.He wrote the new album’s title track about the harrowing experience of watching Caroline flit between life and death in a hospital bed. The song energized him, and a conversation was arranged with a record label to discuss releasing new Tears for Fears music. After the meeting, their manager quit.“He emailed us afterwards and said, ‘I can’t do this anymore,’” Orzabal said. “He said we were a heritage act and that was it, and there was no point in putting out any album.” (Gersh, who is now the president of global touring and talent at AEG Presents, declined to comment.)“Us being a heritage act was never going to work because we need new material to keep us excited,” Smith said. “Trying to find that new material was the hard part.”Rob Verhorst/Redferns, via Getty ImagesIn purely business terms, it’s hard for a veteran act to justify spending time and budget writing, recording and releasing new songs when the money is in touring, merch, and getting your old hits in films, TV shows, commercials or even TikToks.“Going into an album now is nothing like it used to be,” said the Doobies’ Johnston. “You don’t get the payback you used to. So, where it used to be, you’d do an album and tour to support the album, it’s now the other way around.”For veteran artists, live shows are less likely to drive significant sales or streams of new music than they are to boost the artist’s back catalog. Tears for Fears lived through that while promoting “Everybody Loves a Happy Ending,” which was frustrating, but as Smith noted, “It’s still our income.” The band’s past commercial success provides the luxury to make decisions solely on artistic merit. “The hardest thing with managers for us is them wrapping their heads around the fact that we don’t care that much if we’re hugely successful,” he added.Eventually, what cleared the path to a new album was returning to making music the way they had when they first met as teenagers. In early 2020, Orzabal and Smith got together and, with a pair of acoustic guitars, hashed out “No Small Thing,” the dramatic, swirling folk-rock epic that opens the new album.“It was just the two of us, prepandemic, no team of songwriters, no interfering record company, no manager, no animosity,” Orzabal said. They revisited material from the earlier sessions, eventually reworking a handful of those songs for “The Tipping Point,” which will be released by Concord Records, an independent label.“The best thing that happened to us,” Smith said, “was to be left alone.” More

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      Foo Fighters Made a Horror Film. Because Why Not?

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      Dave Grohl shares how the band went from filming funny music videos to making “Studio 666,” due Feb. 25, and discusses a coming album.In the three decades that Dave Grohl has been a rock star, he has recorded with the likes of Stevie Nicks and Paul McCartney, directed documentaries, performed for presidents and been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, twice.But this month presents a first: On Feb. 25, Foo Fighters are releasing “Studio 666,” a horror-comedy directed by BJ McDonnell (“Hatchet III”) and starring, well, Foo Fighters.Why?“For fun,” Grohl said in a recent video interview. As he explained, “It was never our intention to enter the Hollywood game with this big horror film. It just happened.”In the film, which also features Whitney Cummings, Will Forte and Jeff Garlin, the band moves into a mansion, where Grohl himself once actually lived, to work on their 10th album. But songwriting proves challenging. Hoping to dig himself out of a creative rut, Grohl wanders around the house and discovers a secret that infuses him with creativity — and blood lust.The movie has been in the works since 2019, with production paused because of the coronavirus pandemic. It’s unlikely to rack up awards — “We’re not ordering tuxes for the Oscars,” Grohl said — but it does offer nuggets of hard rock and gore.Chatting from his home studio in Los Angeles over a cup of coffee, Grohl discussed the making of the film, his thoughts on rock ‘n’ roll and a new album. These are edited excerpts from the interview.Why did you decide to make a movie?Three years ago, a friend went to a meeting with a film studio, and our name came up. They said, “We’ve always wanted to make a horror with Foo Fighters.” He texts me, and I said, “That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard,” and thought nothing of it.We were writing music for our last record. Usually when we make a record, I’ll go into my home studio or a demo studio by myself and just write melodies and instrumentals. So I started looking for houses to rent where I could build a temporary studio. At the same time, my landlord from 10 years ago emailed me and said, “Do you want to buy some property?” I said, no, but if I could rent it, that would be great.I started writing and was sending demos to our producer, and he’s like, “This sounds great. Let’s record there.” So I started thinking, we could make a horror film in this creepy, old house. I came up with this concept, presented it to the band, and they just laughed. It snowballed from there. We never imagined we were going to make a feature.Clockwise from front left, Foo Fighters bandmates Nate Mendel, Pat Smear, Rami Jaffee, Chris Shiflett, Grohl and Taylor Hawkins in “Studio 666.”Open Road FilmsAre you a horror fan?I’m no aficionado. Although I did grow up loving a lot of the classics. I remember reading the “Amityville Horror” book in 1979 and then going to see the movie. And I grew up outside of Washington, D.C., where they filmed “The Exorcist.” I was obsessed with the house and those steps. That’s where all the punk rockers would hang out in the ’80s. We would sit at the bottom of those steps and drink beer.Foo Fighters: A Rock InstitutionFor 25 years, Dave Grohl and his bandmates have ruled rock, and they’re still finding new ways to grow. Latest Album: For “Medicine at Midnight,” the Foo Fighters experimented with dance and funk rhythms — a subtle but distinct pivot. ‘Studio 666’: In the horror-comedy they star in, the Foos try to record some new music, when evil takes over Mr. Grohl. Grohl’s Memoir: How does a musician become a best-selling author? For the band’s frontman, the evolution started in an unlikely place. Drum Battle: Here is what happened when the Foo Fighters leader struck up a competitive friendship with a 10-year-old prodigy.“Studio 666” is also a band movie, which there don’t seem to be that many of out there. Why do you think that is?I don’t know. I grew up watching rock ‘n’ roll movies. “Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park.” The Ramones in “Rock ’n’ Roll High School.” It used to be something that went hand-in-hand with an ensemble cast.I think the band has to not only be willing to do it, but be capable of making fun of themselves. We’ve been doing that for 26 years, so this is just a long-form version of us poking fun at being a rock band.We’ve talked about a sequel and how [“Studio 666”] can be handed from band to band. Would Coldplay do a horror movie? Would Wu Tang? That would be amazing.Grohl grew up watching movies like “Rock ’n’ Roll High School,” with the Ramones and P.J. Soles.  Shout! Factory and New Horizons PicturesYou wrote in your memoir that you once lived in a house that you believed was haunted. Did you have that in mind while making the movie?I don’t think it crossed over into this idea. But that house was definitely haunted. Before then, I never had any fascination with paranormal activity. After then, I do believe this type of thing can happen. But I also remember thinking, so I shared a house with a ghost. Is it going to kill me? No. Do the lights go on every once in a while and you hear footsteps? Yeah. I’ve had worse roommates.Like most groups, Foo Fighters have had tensions in the past. Did that inspire the plot?No, it didn’t. But the screenwriter came to hang out with us while we were recording [“Medicine at Midnight,” the band’s 10th album,] to get a feel for the dynamic. She just overplayed it.Like any band, we’re like a family. It’s a relationship that teeters on disaster in every creative situation, because there’s vulnerability and insecurity. It’s not easy staying a band for 26 years. Of all that we’ve been through, I don’t think anyone would want to kill another member. We love each other too much.The movie makes fun of rock in general, but it also pokes fun at you: you can’t write new songs; Lionel Richie yells at you. Was that fun?There are so many clichés in this movie. It’s part “The Amityville Horror.” It’s part “The Shining.” It’s part “The Evil Dead.” On the musical side, there’s the controlling lead singer that’s torturing the band, the struggle of writer’s block.The funniest cliché, I think, is the clapping in the living room. Whenever an engineer or producer walks into a room before you record, they always clap to listen to the acoustics. I’m here to say it’s [expletive]. That makes no difference.Whitney Cummings, with Jaffee, is among the guest stars. Open Road FilmsDo you have a favorite scene?I did like the round table scene with Jeff Garlin. Doing improv take after take, you felt like you were in “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”There have been allegations that Jeff Garlin behaved inappropriately on the set of “The Goldbergs.” What was it like working with him?Jeff’s really into music. So most of our interaction off-camera was just talking about the bands we love. I didn’t know about any of that stuff. We just sat around talking about Wilco all day.There’s a scene where your manager says that rock hasn’t been relevant for a long time and it needs an infusion. Do you think that’s true? If so, what could revitalize it?I believe it’s partially true. I don’t think rock needs more Satan, but I do think it needs another youth-driven revolution. My oldest [daughter] is almost 16. I watch her discover music and write songs, and this is where [the action is].I think that the next rock revolution will look nothing like the one that we’ve seen before. And I’m not entirely sure what that is. But it’s coming. There’s so much to appreciate. I find a new favorite artist once a week, so it’s not like the well’s run dry.In 2021 alone, you released two albums, a documentary, a documentary series, a memoir, a few singles and you went on tour. What drives you to do so much?Coffee. [Smiles.]No — I just appreciate all the opportunity I have. I appreciate the people that help facilitate these ridiculous ideas, and I surround myself with people that have the same energy. And I hate vacations. I’m just restless. I feel this strange sense of guilt when I do nothing. I’m like a shark. If I stop swimming, I’ll die.You know what I’m doing now? I’m making the lost album by the band Dream Widow, from [the movie], like the “Blair Witch” tapes.Is the main song from the movie going to be on it?It is. It’s this crazy opus instrumental. I grew up listening to metal, so I started taking from my favorite bands as influences. For a metal record, it’s really good.So you’ve gone from covering the Bee Gees to metal.Listen, what do you get the guy that has everything?Right. Is there anything else coming?Yeah … you’ll see. More

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      Gary Brooker, Singer for Procol Harum, Dies at 76

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      The pianist and singer composed the band’s music for five decades, including the hit “A Whiter Shade of Pale.”Gary Brooker, the singer and pianist of the early progressive rock group Procol Harum, who co-wrote songs including “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” the improbable but overpowering hit during the 1967 Summer of Love, died on Saturday at his home in Surrey, England. He was 76.Mr. Brooker had been receiving treatment for cancer, the band said in a statement confirming his death.With his grainy, weathered-sounding voice and a piano style steeped in gospel, classical music, blues and the British music hall, Mr. Brooker led Procol Harum in songs that mixed pomp and whimsy, orchestral grandeur and rock drive. Mr. Brooker composed nearly all of Procol Harum’s music; Keith Reid, who did not perform with the band, provided lyrics that invoked literary and historical allusions and spun tall tales, sometimes at the same time.Although “A Whiter Shade of Pale” was both its first and biggest hit, and the band steadfastly avoided showmanship, Procol Harum sustained a five-decade career. It recorded and toured steadily until 1977, and it regrouped sporadically in lineups led by Mr. Brooker to continue making albums until 2017. Mr. Brooker, the band’s statement said, “was notable for his individuality, integrity, and occasionally stubborn eccentricity. His mordant wit, and appetite for the ridiculous, made him a priceless raconteur (and his surreal inter-song banter made a fascinating contrast with the gravitas of Procol Harum’s performances).”“A Whiter Shade of Pale” drew on Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Air on a G String” for its chord progression; Matthew Fisher’s organ opened with a stately melody and Mr. Brooker sang a countermelody, somberly offering the surreal paradoxes of Mr. Reid’s lyrics. In 2009, Mr. Fisher successfully sued to receive a shared credit for composing the song.Procol Harum’s combination of classical influences, elaborately poetic lyrics and extended compositions made it a progenitor of progressive rock, but Mr. Brooker habitually shrugged off that category. “Prog — it was not invented when we started,” he told Goldmine magazine in 2021. “We always try to be progressive in what we do. So, we made our first album and then we tried to move on, to progress.”Mr. Brooker performing at the O2 Arena in London in 2020. Procul Harum performed for five decades.Gareth Cattermole/Getty ImagesGary Brooker was born on May 29, 1945, in London. His father, Harry Brooker, was a musician; Gary learned piano, cornet, trombone, guitar and banjo while growing up. Harry Brooker died when Gary was 11 and his mother, Violet May Brooker, found work on a factory assembly line.Mr. Brooker dropped out of college to work as a musician, and at the end of the 1950s he began playing in the Paramounts, which largely performed American R&B songs. By the time the Paramounts broke up in 1966, they had shared bills with the Rolling Stones and the Beatles; later, Mr. Brooker would play studio sessions and concerts with the former Beatles.Mr. Brooker started a new band, which included Mr. Fisher, to play the songs that he had begun writing with Mr. Reid: the Pinewoods, which were soon renamed Procol Harum, fractured Latin for “beyond these things.” The new band’s combination of piano and organ was uncommon in British rock, though American gospel groups used it, as did the rock group the Band. Mr. Brooker described his initial idea for the band as “a bit of classical, a bit of Bob Dylan, a bit of Ray Charles.”Procol Harum’s first recording session, working with studio musicians, yielded “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” When it became a hit, the guitarist Robin Trower and the drummer B.J. Wilson, who had been in the Paramounts, joined Procol Harum to record its self-titled 1967 debut album. Its structural ambitions expanded on its 1968 album, “Shine On Brightly,” which included the five-part, 18-minute suite “In Held ’Twas in I.”Mr. Brooker married Françoise Riedo in 1968. She survives him.The title track of Procol Harum’s 1969 album “A Salty Dog” featured a dramatic orchestral arrangement by Mr. Brooker, and Procol Harum soon began performing with orchestras. Its 1971 album, “Live in Concert with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra,” brought it an American hit with an expansive remake of “Conquistador,” from Procol Harum’s debut album. By then, both Mr. Fisher and Mr. Trower had left Procol Harum and Mr. Brooker was the band’s clear leader. Its 1973 album, “Grand Hotel,” reveled in orchestration; its 1974 “Exotic Birds and Fruit” emphatically rejected it. The songwriters Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller produced “Procol’s Ninth” in 1975.In 1977, Mr. Brooker decided that “For the time being, Procol Harum had nothing more to say.” He joined Eric Clapton’s band in the late 1970s, touring and recording, and he made solo albums. Mr. Brooker’s 1985 album, “Echoes in the Night,” was produced by Mr. Fisher and included contributions from Mr. Reid and Mr. Wilson.Mr. Brooker, left, with Jack Bruce of Cream, Peter Frampton and Simon Kirke of Bad Company. They were honored at RockWalk in Los Angeles in 1997.Fred Prouser/ReutersMr. Brooker restarted Procol Harum in 1990 with Mr. Fisher, Mr. Trower and Mr. Reid to record “The Prodigal Stranger.” During the long gaps between Procol Harum’s studio albums — the band released “The Well’s on Fire” in 2003 and “Novum” in 2017, for which Pete Brown replaced Mr. Reid as the lyricist — Mr. Brooker toured with Procol Harum, performed with Ringo Starr’s All-Starr Band and Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings, and organized charity concerts that brought him recognition as a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 2013. In 2021, Procol Harum released “Missing Persons” and “War Is Not Healthy,” a final pair of reflective Brooker-Reid songs.Mr. Brooker soberly assessed his band in 2021.“We don’t do a lot of grooves, but we do a good bit of rock,” Mr. Brooker told Goldmine. “Down in the core, though, there’s the music where I’m trying to reach the people and to make them feel something that’s right. And I don’t mean they’re going to jump up and down and want to dance. Fine if they’re going to. But I mean, if I saw a tear roll down their face that would be a good reaction — to reach people in their emotions, in the inside somewhere, not just on the surface.” More