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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

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      Romeo Santos’s Melodramatic Return, and 13 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Jack Harlow, Flock of Dimes, Tame Impala and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Romeo Santos, ‘Sus Huellas’“Sus Huellas,” the first single from Romeo Santos’s forthcoming fifth solo album, “Formula, Vol. 3,” finds him reprising the bleeding-heart theatrics he’s known for, recalling the kind of cortavenas (roughly, “wrist cutting”) torment of bachata classics. This time, the genre’s white-pants-wearing, antics-obsessed lover boy is trying to recover from the despair of a lost love, and the melodrama is in overdrive: “Come, pull out my veins/Because the plasma inside of me has the poison of her love,” he sings. “And take this lighter, I want you to burn my lips/Eliminate the taste of her tongue, which did me harm.” It’s not all tradition though; Santos drops in an EDM interlude that will have uptown clubs losing it. ISABELIA HERRERAJack Harlow, ‘Nail Tech’Last year Jack Harlow went to No. 1 as the guest on Lil Nas X’s “Industry Baby,” and he’s learned something from that experience. “Nail Tech” has echoes of that song’s horns, and Harlow approaches the beat similarly, with imagistic rapping — “You ain’t one of my dogs, why do you hound us?” — and a confidence that makes this song sound like a victory lap. JON CARAMANICAC. Tangana, Omar Montes, Daviles de Novelda and Canelita, ‘La Culpa’The Spanish singer-rapper C. Tangana gets top billing on “La Culpa” (“The Blame”), a song added to the deluxe version of his 2021 Latin Grammy-winning album “El Madrileño.” But except for a brief, vulnerable bridge, he spends most of the song merged in harmony with three other singers who are more robust and closer to flamenco — Omar Montes, Daviles de Novelda and the especially gutsy Canelita — while rock drums and electric guitars join flamenco handclaps to pace the song. While the lyrics profess guilt and regret, they’re delivered with jolly camaraderie, suggesting that male bonding can easily overcome pangs of conscience. JON PARELESTame Impala, ‘The Boat I Row’Kevin Parker, a.k.a. the one-man studio band Tame Impala, took so long to release his 2020 album, “The Slow Rush,” that of course he had outtakes. “The Boat I Row” is from his collection “The Slow Rush B-Sides and Remixes.” It shares the album’s stately, logy, time-warped sound — psychedelically phased drums playing a hip-hop beat, multitracked vocal harmonies suggesting both the Beatles and ELO — and its thoughts about dogged persistence. “Even if it takes a hundred thousand goes/The way’s in front of me ’cause that’s the one I chose,” Parker sings, at once diffident and determined. PARELESFlock of Dimes, ‘Pure Love’Jenn Wasner, who records as Flock of Dimes, ponders unsatisfied desire — material and emotional — in “Pure Love,” recorded with the producer Nick Sanborn from Sylvan Esso: “I keep dreaming of a better moment,” she sings. She’s surrounded by looped voices and instruments, with ricocheting programmed beats that hit like 1980s drums; she sounds like she’ll persist. PARELESAsa, ‘Ocean’The songwriter Asa has forged a long career in Nigeria, singing about adversity and conflict as well as romance. But “Ocean” is pure affection. Asa is about to release her fifth studio album, “V,” and “Ocean” distills the ways Nigerian Afrobeats exalts Minimalism. The percussion is just a few syncopated taps, the bass lines are only two or three notes and Asa’s breathy voice floats with professions of pure devotion: “Boy, you are the ocean,” she coos, and everything about the song promises bliss. PARELESYeat featuring Young Thug, ‘Outsidë’Two generations of surrealists in one liquid pool of syllables. Yeat is still swooning over abstraction, and Young Thug, several years older, has learned how to form word-like shapes while still seeming to melt in real time. CARAMANICASigurd Hole, ‘The Presentation Dance’Like so many, the Norwegian bassist Sigurd Hole — a nimble-fingered player and a composer of sonically expansive, thoughtfully paced music — has been overcome with dismay at the fast-worsening climate crisis. Like too few, in the face of it he’s sought out wisdom and theory from non-industrialized societies. “The Presentation Dance” comes from his newest album, “Roraima,” which he made after reading “The Falling Sky,” a book by the Yanomami shaman and mouthpiece Davi Kopenawa. The rain-like pitter-patter of a marimba interacts with a small corps of strings, playing fluid and intertwined melodies that sometimes fall into a pizzicato repartee with the marimba’s mallets. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOEd Sheeran featuring Bring Me the Horizon, ‘Bad Habits’Last week Ed Sheeran released a new version of his song “The Joker and the Queen,” accompanied by Taylor Swift. Pfft. Predictably pretty. Plain. This is more like it. “Bad Habits” is maybe Sheeran’s most anodyne pop hit, and this version, which is theatrically stomped all over by the British metalcore band Bring Me the Horizon, rescues it, recalling the essential and overlooked “Punk Goes Pop” compilation series. CARAMANICAFrontperson, ‘Parade’Frontperson is the indie-rock duo of Kathryn Calder, from the New Pornographers, and Mark Hamilton, from Woodpigeon. Blooping, calliope-like keyboard arpeggios and layers of nonsense-syllable vocals give “Parade” a blithe, circusy tone as Calder and Hamilton sing about anticipation, connection and disconnection, accepting it all: “Sometimes you’re left/Sometimes you leave.” PARELESAmbar Lucid, ‘Dead Leaves’Ambar Lucid’s music bottles youthful longing. The 21-year-old, whose debut album, “Garden of Lucid,” collected stories about escape and radical self-acceptance, seems to know exactly how to stir the soul. “Should I even bother letting anybody know how I feel?” she wonders on “Dead Leaves.” It’s soft winter balladry that contains all the pain and promise of the change of seasons. HERRERAHurray for the Riff Raff, ‘Jupiter’s Dance’“Jupiter’s Dance” is from the newly released “Life on Earth,” the seventh album Alynda Segarra has made as Hurray for the Riff Raff. The new songs contemplate the natural world and humanity’s toll on it. “Jupiter’s Dance” is a quasi-mystical reassurance — “Celestial children coming through/You never know who you’ll become” — with a glimmering bell tones and an undercurrent of Puerto Rican bomba, a brief benediction. PARELESJavon Jackson featuring Nikki Giovanni, ‘Night Song’The poet Nikki Giovanni selected the repertoire for “The Gospel According to Nikki Giovanni,” a new album by the strapping tenor saxophonist Javon Jackson that explores the lineage of Black American spirituals and hymns. But her voice appears on only one track, and it’s the one that’s not a church melody: “Night Song.” Rather that recite her own poetry, Giovanni sings this ode to unbelonging — a favorite of her old friend Nina Simone — with wistful conviction, picking up where Jackson’s gentle treatment of the melody leaves off. Her voice crinkles up on the high notes but loses none of its gravitas or tenderness as she sings: “Music, by the lonely sung/When you can’t help wondering:/Where do I belong?” RUSSONELLOChris Dingman, ‘Silently Beneath the Waves’For the vibraphonist Chris Dingman, solo playing was becoming central to his practice even before the pandemic hit. Since then, it’s been his primary mode, and he’s increasingly sought to use the big, chiming instrument as a vehicle for transcendence. That pursuit has guided him into a close study of a far tinier instrument: the mbira, a thumb piano with spiritual applications across southern Africa. On “Silently Beneath the Waves” — the opener to a new album of solo performances, “Journeys Vol. 1” — you can hear evidence of that research, as he repeats fetching, hypnotizing patterns that pull you into their force field before gradually giving way to a different shape. RUSSONELLO More

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      Rokia Koné, From Mali, Sings for the World. Especially Women.

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      Her international debut album, “Bamanan,” enlists an Irish producer, Jacknife Lee, for songs infused with African history and feminism.African musicians don’t need outside help. Lately, Nigerian Afrobeats, South African amapiano and other sleek, high-tech, thoroughly danceable styles have reached listeners worldwide without Western mediators. But the proof of a collaboration is in its sound, not its pedigree, and the album “Bamanan” is a transcontinental alliance that finds its own synergy.“Bamanan” pairs Rokia Koné — a songwriter and singer from Mali who was a core member of the West African collective Les Amazones d’Afrique on their 2017 album “Republique Amazone” — with Garret “Jacknife” Lee, an Irish producer who has worked with U2 and Taylor Swift and is now based in California.Koné’s voice rightfully leaps out of every song. Drawing on West African griot style, she sings with gritty insistence, building up to a sandpapery rasp when her melodies hit their peaks. Her Malian band provides percussion, backup vocals and barbed, modal lead guitar parts that hint at traditional African instruments. Lee adds keyboards, guitars and drumbeats, placing the songs in a swirling, spacious digital realm.It’s an equal partnership that’s clearly enacted in the opening song, “Bi Ye Tulonba Ye” (“Today Is a Great Party”), a call for unity and an end to disagreements. At the beginning, Koné’s vocals are an urgent incantation amid reverent, hovering synthesizer tones, with a steady beat that slowly reveals itself. But the song lifts off as her band joins in, surrounding her with rhythmic and melodic crosscurrents of percussion and guitars.“Bamanan” was constructed gradually and remotely; Koné and Lee never met in person while making the album. During the pandemic, sessions that Koné and her band had recorded in 2016 and 2018 — vocals in Paris, instruments in Mali — were sent to Lee after he heard Les Amazones when judging a remix contest. In 2020, Lee added instrumental parts and production to Koné’s sessions, and he collaborated on a new song with Koné, “N’yanyan.”Koné sang the vocals for “N’yanyan” in Mali in August 2020, on the day a coup toppled Mali’s government. Her melody is based on an ancient song; Lee’s production provides simple, sustained electric-piano chords. On a day of political upheaval, Koné thoughtfully counseled taking a long view while reflecting on mortality: “This life is passing/It’s only a moment in time,” she sang in Bambara, the language she uses throughout the album.Lee adds keyboards, guitars and drumbeats to Koné’s music, placing the songs in a swirling digital realm.Jackie RadinskyThe sweep of history and a sense of indignation both course through “Bamanan.” Although she does not come from a hereditary griot family, Koné writes like a griot: a cultural guardian recalling history and speaking as a community conscience. “Bamanan” is named after the Bamana Empire, two centuries when Bambara leaders ruled much of what is now Mali. “Anw Tile (It’s Our Time)” meshes modal guitar curlicues and glimmering synthesizers as Koné and her backup singers chronicle the empire’s leaders and geography: “This time is golden,” women’s voices declare in unison. “Those who missed it, it was a great time.”The album also extends the forthright feminism Koné shared with Les Amazones. “Mayougouba” (“Move, Dance”) joyfully tells women worldwide, “You’re perfect as you are.” The album’s most kinetic song, “Kurunba,” paces its call-and-response vocals with galloping percussion and quick synthesizer ripples, as Koné’s narrator rails at being cast aside by her husband after raising their child: “Now my child is of age/Suddenly the door is shut on me,” she reproaches.Koné also remade a song she brought to Les Amazones: “Mansa Soyari,” which celebrates female role models and insists, “A country isn’t great without women.” With Les Amazones, the song was swaggering, distorted, psychedelic rock; with Lee, it’s lighter, more syncopated and more transparent, invoking the kora (harp-guitar) patterns of griot songs, but also hinting at funk and flaunting some otherworldly digital manipulations. With its deep Bambara foundations, the song is certain of where it comes from; it’s just as certain that its passion will be understood anywhere.Rokia Koné & Jacknife Lee“Bamanan”(Real World) More

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      Beverly Ross, Teenage Songwriter in Rock ’n’ Roll’s Youth, Dies at 87

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      With hits like “Lollipop,” she became a top woman songwriter in the early 1960s, but she quit the business in frustration over the theft of her work.Beverly Ross, who with hits like “Lollipop” became one of the top women songwriters in rock ’n’ roll’s early years, but who ended her career early after a work relationship turned sour, died on Jan. 15 in a hospital in Nashville. She was 87.The cause was dementia, said her nephew, Cliff Stieglitz.While in high school, Ms. Ross would ride the bus from her family’s home in New Jersey to hang around the Brill Building, then the center of New York music publishing. There she managed to strike up conversations with songwriters like Julius Dixon.In 1954, when Ms. Ross was only 19, she collaborated with Mr. Dixon on her breakout song, “Dim, Dim the Lights (I Want Some Atmosphere).” A recording of it by Bill Haley & His Comets reached No. 11 on the Billboard singles chart, just months before the band’s “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around the Clock” became the first rock ’n’ roll song to reach No. 1.Rolling Stone would later describe “Dim, Dim the Lights” as “the first ‘white’ song to cross over to R&B.” It had bluesy electric guitar riffs, a jaunty walking bass and lyrics of come-hither flirtatiousness, even as it maintained an adolescent innocence, inspired by high school crushes and party games like spin the bottle: “I’m full of soda and potato chips/But now I wanna get a taste/Of your sweet lips.”That combination of upbeat rhythms and lightly romantic themes became Ms. Ross’s formula.She and Mr. Dixon scored another hit with “Lollipop,” a song as sweet and compact as the titular candy. A 1958 recording by the Chordettes reached No. 2 and became an enduring pop-culture earworm, with appearances on “The Simpsons” and in a commercial for Dell computers.The Chordettes’ 1958 recording of “Lollipop,” which Ms. Ross wrote with Julius Dixon, reached No. 2 on the Billboard chart and became an enduring pop-culture earworm.Denver Post via Getty ImagesBy the early 1960s Ms. Ross had become, along with Carole King and a few others, one of the top women writers in rock, “one of only a sprinkling of female writers to make it in a vehemently male structure,” Mark Ribowsky wrote in “He’s a Rebel: Phil Spector, Rock and Roll’s Legendary Producer” (2000).In a memoir published in 2013, Ms. Ross explained why she walked away from the music business.Ms. Ross also co-wrote songs recorded by stars like Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison. But in just a few years, her career would abruptly unravel.By Ms. Ross’s telling, in 1960 she struck up a working friendship with a then-obscure aspiring songwriter who stood to benefit from her clout: Phil Spector. The two worked on song ideas, cut a demo tape and confided in each other about troubles in their families. Ms. Ross introduced him to players in the industry.While they were tinkering with a riff together one night, Ms. Ross recalled, Mr. Spector suddenly declared he had business to attend to and ran out the door.Soon, Ms. Ross was shocked to hear the riff, in the hit song “Spanish Harlem” by Ben E. King. Mr. Spector had used it without giving Ms. Ross credit (he and Jerry Leiber were the credited writers) — and he had also begun to ignore her.From then on, she declined to work if it would bring her into the orbit of Mr. Spector, but she was still determined to prove she could write hits and co-wrote several more in the early ’60s, including “Judy’s Turn to Cry,” which as recorded by Lesley Gore reached No. 5.Then she quit, spiraling into what she described to Mr. Ribowsky as “a suicidal depression.”“This strange move I made away from the enormous acceptance and potential I’d worked so diligently to achieve left me hanging in nowheresville,” she wrote in a dishy, score-settling memoir, “I Was the First Woman Phil Spector Killed” (2013), “but I may have saved my sanity by doing it.”Yet Ms. Ross also lived with regret. “I should have just bowed down and realized I’d been asked to write for the ‘royalty of rock ’n’ roll,’” she wrote.Beverly Ross was born on Sept. 5, 1934, in Brooklyn and grew up in Lakewood, N.J. Her father, Aron, worked as a cobbler with his brother in New York City and then as a chicken farmer in Lakewood. Her mother, Rachel (Frank) Ross, worked as a bookkeeper for the shoe business and helped out at the farm.Bev, as she was called, aspired from a young age to a career in music, but she did not know how to get started. She encountered musicians who were performing at a hotel where her sister worked in Lakewood, and she struck a deal with one of them: He would tell her how to break into the industry if she set him up on a date with her sister.All the man had to do, it turned out, was inform Bev of the existence of the Brill Building.Ms. Ross’s burst of songwriting success gave her an income in royalties that she lived on comfortably. She resided for many years in an apartment on the Upper West Side, but later bought a house in Nashville and began writing country music.She is survived by her companion, Ferris Butler, a comedy writer. They married in the mid-1970s and later divorced, but they reconnected and were together for the final years of her life. More