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      M.I.A. Takes Aim at Fame, and 7 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Nicki Minaj, Gayle, Yeah Yeah Yeahs 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.M.I.A., ‘Popular’It’s a little hard to tell if M.I.A. is skewering the self-involvement of social media culture on “Popular” or if she’s vying for a TikTok hit herself — but hey, who says you can’t have it both ways? “Love me like I love me, love me,” she intones, as the skittish but thoroughly hypnotic beat (from the producers Boaz van de Beats and Diplo) lulls the listener into nodding along. The accompanying video is a wild, creepy trip into the uncanny valley, as M.I.A. confronts and ultimately destroys her A.I. alter ego, the appropriately named “M.A.I.” LINDSAY ZOLADZGayle, ‘Indieedgycool’A concept song about the resurgence of anti-pop posturing rendered with the dryness of 1990s alt-rock delivered by a singer whose breakout came via a record label-initiated TikTok. It’s a catchy eye roll that’s an ouroboros of TikTok-addled hype-cycle collapse, meshing microtrend and backlash all together into one. JON CARAMANICAWillow, ‘Hover Like a Goddess’“Hover Like a Goddess,” from the upcoming album “,” is further proof that Willow has finally found her lane in the space where bouncy pop-punk and anguished emo-rock converge. “I’ll never be fine if you won’t be mine,” she sings with pent-up intensity amid a number of other lusty confessions (“Just meet me under the covers/Baby, I wish”), before the song suddenly transforms into a dreamy reverie. That bliss is fleeting, though, and by the next verse Willow is just as quickly jarred back into her endearingly anxious reality. ZOLADZYeah Yeah Yeahs, ‘Burning’Yeah Yeah Yeahs unexpectedly interpolate Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons’ 1967 version of “Beggin’” for their fiery new single “Burning,” from their upcoming album “Cool It Down,” expanding the original’s feeling of romantic desperation into a more vast and ominous conflagration. Nick Zinner’s guitar riff snakes through the song like a lit fuse as Karen O croons devilish come-ons like, “Lay your red hand on me as I go.” The whole thing’s a little bit retro, and a little bit neo-apocalyptic. ZOLADZNicki Minaj, ‘Super Freaky Girl’As the title would suggest, this is simply a series of intense, gum-snapping Nicki Minaj raps over Rick James’s “Super Freak,” a combination so obvious and winningly bubbly that it’s shocking it didn’t already exist. CARAMANICAIce Spice, “Munch (Feelin’ U)”Few things have better mouth feel than a fresh piece of slang. The way the lips, teeth and tongue contort to form a word as the neural pathways connect that word to a new concept — it’s invigorating. So it goes with “Munch (Feelin’ U)” by the Bronx drill rapper Ice Spice, who in the past week received a boost following an embrace by Drake. In a frenzied genre, she’s a calm rapper, which is part of what makes this song so frosty — the beat is skittish and portentous, but Ice Spice sounds at peace. She’s rhyming quickly, but also calmly and slightly dismissively, probably because of the subject matter. That would be a man who might be useful in some ways, but is easily dismissed — someone who’s on call, but barely needed. He’s good at one thing, and when that’s done, not much else — he’s a munch. Get used to saying it. CARAMANICARex Orange County, ‘Threat’A tender take on self-doubt by the goofily warm British singer Rex Orange County. “I don’t wanna keep you in a boring life/I can pick up when you’re calling/Keep it real with you always,” he sings, wondering if he’s worthy of the object of his affection. It’s all delivered over a guitar figure that suggests the early Vampire Weekend revival is just around the corner. CARAMANICAAri Lennox, ‘Hoodie’Hoodies have never sounded sexier than they do on Ari Lennox’s slinky new homage to loungewear and whatever’s going on “underneath your North Face.” The track from the R&B singer’s forthcoming album “Age/Sex/Location,” which comes out on Sept. 9, has a few playful lines (“spread it like some queso”) but Lennox’s powerhouse vocal performance imbues the whole thing with a mature, pulsing sensuality. ZOLADZ More

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      Bill Pitman, Revered Studio Guitarist, Is Dead at 102

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      As a versatile member of the loose association of musicians known as the Wrecking Crew, he was heard on many of the biggest pop and rock hits of the 1960s and ’70s.Bill Pitman, a guitarist who accompanied Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Barbra Streisand and others from the late 1950s to the ’70s, and who for decades was heard on the soundtracks of countless Hollywood films and television shows, died on Thursday night at his home in La Quinta, Calif. He was 102.His wife, Janet Pitman, said he died after four weeks at a rehabilitation center in Palm Springs, where he was treated for a fractured spine suffered in a fall, and the past week at home under hospice care.Virtually anonymous outside the music world but revered within it, Mr. Pitman was a member of what came to be called the Wrecking Crew — a loosely organized corps of peerless Los Angeles freelancers who were in constant demand by record producers to back up headline performers. As an ensemble, they turned routine recording sessions and live performances into extraordinary musical moments.Examples abound: Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night” (1966). Presley’s “Blue Hawaii” (1961). Streisand’s “The Way We Were” (1973). The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” (1963). The Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” (1966). On “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” from the Paul Newman-Robert Redford hit movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (1969), Mr. Pitman played ukulele.In a career of nearly 40 years, Mr. Pitman played countless gigs for studios and record labels that dominated the pop charts but rarely credited the performers behind the stars. The Wrecking Crew did almost everything — television and film scores; pop, rock and jazz arrangements; even cartoon soundtracks. Whether recorded in a studio or on location, everything was performed with precision and pizazz.“These were crack session players who moved effortlessly through many different styles: pop, jazz, rockabilly, but primarily the two-minute-thirty-second world of hit records that America listened to all through the sixties and seventies,” Allegro magazine reminisced in 2011. “If it was a hit and recorded in L.A., the Wrecking Crew cut the tracks.”Jumping from studio to studio — often playing four or five sessions a day — members of the crew accompanied the Beach Boys, Sonny and Cher, the Monkees, the Mamas and the Papas, Simon and Garfunkel, Ricky Nelson, Jan and Dean, Johnny Rivers, the Byrds, Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett, the Everly Brothers, Peggy Lee and scads more — nearly every prominent performer of the era.The pace was relentless, Mr. Pitman recalled in Denny Tedesco’s 2008 documentary, “The Wrecking Crew.”“You leave the house at 7 in the morning, and you’re at Universal at 9 till noon,” he said. “Now you’re at Capitol Records at 1. You just got time to get there, then you got a jingle at 4, then we’re on a date with somebody at 8, then the Beach Boys at midnight, and you do that five days a week.”Mr. Pitman was heard on the soundtracks of some 200 films, including Robert Altman’s Korean War black comedy “M*A*S*H” (1970), Amy Heckerling’s comedy “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” (1982), Emile Ardolino’s romantic musical drama “Dirty Dancing” (1987) and Martin Scorsese’s gangster fable “Goodfellas” (1990).On television, Mr. Pitman’s Danelectro bass guitar was heard for years on “The Wild Wild West.” He also worked on “I Love Lucy,” “Bonanza,” “The Deputy,” “Ironside,” “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In,” “The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour,” “The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour” and many other shows. He was credited with composing music for early episodes of the original “Star Trek” series.While generally indifferent toward rock, colleagues said, Mr. Pitman played it well, sometimes expressing surprise at the success of his work in that genre. He was far more enthusiastic about jazz, especially the work of composers and arrangers like Marty Paich, Dave Grusin and Johnny Mandel.Mr. Pitman, who grew up in New York City and had music tutors from the time he was 6 years old, came home from World War II and headed west determined to make a living in music. He attended the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music, learned arranging and composing, and essentially taught himself the skills of a master guitarist.In 1951, at a club where Peggy Lee was singing, he met the guitar virtuoso Laurindo Almeida, who was quitting Ms. Lee’s band. After an audition, Mr. Pitman was hired to take Mr. Almeida’s place, and his career was launched.In 1954 he joined the singer Rusty Draper’s daily radio show. Three years later, he sat in for the guitarist Tony Rizzi at a recording date for Capitol Records. It was his big break.Word soon got around about the comer who could improvise with the best. Mr. Pitman got to know the session guitarists Howard Roberts, Jack Marshall, Al Hendrickson, Bob Bain and Bobby Gibbons, and he was soon one of them.Mr. Bill Pitman and a fellow studio musician, the bassist Carol Kaye, in a scene from the documentary “The Wrecking Crew” (2008).Magnolia PicturesHis fellow studio musicians included the drummer Hal Blaine, the guitarists Tommy Tedesco and Glen Campbell (before he had a hit-making singing career), the bassists Carol Kaye and Joe Osborn, and the keyboardists Don Randi and Leon Russell (who also went on to a successful solo singing career). They coalesced around Phil Spector, the producer known for his “wall of sound” approach, who regularly employed them.While not publicly recognized in its era, this ensemble is viewed with reverence today by music historians and insiders. Mr. Blaine, who died in 2019, claimed that he named the Wrecking Crew. But Ms. Kaye insisted that he did not start using the name until years after its musicians stopped working together in the ’70s. In any case, there was no disagreement about Mr. Pitman’s contributions.In his book “Conversations With Great Jazz and Studio Guitarists” (2009), Jim Carlton called Mr. Pitman a mainstay of the crew. “Perhaps no one personifies the unsung studio player like Bill Pitman does,” he wrote. “Few guitarists have logged more recording sessions, and fewer still have enjoyed being such a legitimate part of America’s soundtrack.”William Keith Pitman was born in Belleville, N.J., on Feb. 12, 1920, the only child of Keith and Irma (Kunze) Pitman. His father was a staff bassist for NBC Radio and a busy freelance player in New York; his mother was a Broadway dancer. The family moved to Manhattan when Bill was 6, and he attended the Professional Children’s School.Mr. Pitman in 2012. He performed in Las Vegas and on film soundtracks well until the 1980s, and continued to play guitar at home after that.Jan PittmanWhen he was 13, his parents split up. His mother joined a firm that made theater costumes. His father gave him guitar lessons, and young Bill played 50-cent gigs with musicians who would later become famous, like the trumpeter Shorty Rogers and the drummer Shelly Manne. But his schoolwork at Haaren High School in Manhattan suffered, and he dropped out. He joined the Army Air Corps in 1942, became a radio operator and flew many supply missions over the Himalayas from India to China during World War II.In 1947, he married Mildred Hurty. They had three children and were divorced in the late 1960s. In the ’70s he married and divorced Debbie Yajacovic twice. In 1985 he married Janet Valentine and adopted her daughter, Rosemary.Besides his wife, he is survived by his son, Dale; his daughters, Donna Simpson, Jean Langdon and Rosemary Pitman; four grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.Mr. Pitman quit session work in 1973 and went on the road, performing in concert with Burt Bacharach, Anthony Newley, Vikki Carr and others for several years. In the late ’70s he moved to Las Vegas, where he joined the music staff of the MGM Grand Hotel, playing for headliners well into the ’80s. He also continued to play on film soundtracks until he retired in 1989.Mr. Pitman performed professionally only once in retirement — at a memorial concert in 2001 in Pasadena, Calif., for an old friend, Julius Wechter, leader of the Baja Marimba Band. Mr. Wechter, who died in 1999, had Tourette’s syndrome and was a spokesman for people with the disorder.Mr. Pitman continued writing arrangements, and at 99 he was still playing music — and golf.“He plays the guitar at home just about every day,” his wife said in an interview for this obituary in 2019. “I am a bass player. We play only jazz. No rock ’n’ roll.” As for golf, she said, “He can still beat me.” More

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      A Renaissance in American Hardcore Music

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherAmerican hardcore music is experiencing a creative burst at the moment, owing to bands including Gulch, Scowl, Drug Church, Drain, Mindforce and End It. The scene has its own network of YouTube channels, podcasts and websites that catalog it. And last month’s Sound and Fury Festival in Los Angeles was a powerful statement of purpose.There have been some recent precedents for this current moment — the ongoing crossover success and musical evolution of the Baltimore band Turnstile; the way the California act Trash Talk made inroads into hip-hop, skating and streetwear communities. But these have been moments in which outsiders took a gander at hardcore. Right now, the center itself is growing and thriving.On this week’s episode, a survey of contemporary hardcore bands, a look at the genre’s purposely porous boundaries, and a discussion of the hardcore scene as music, ethic and feeling.Guests:Tom Breihan, senior editor at StereogumChris Ryan, editorial director of The Ringer and co-host of The Watch podcastConnect 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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      Sylvan Esso’s New Album of Electro-pop Challenges All Expectations

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      The duo’s fourth LP, “No Rules Sandy,” revels in constantly shifting sounds that are “surreal but free.”The electronic vertigo revs up immediately and rarely lets up on “No Rules Sandy,” the fourth studio album by Sylvan Esso. “How can I be moved when everything is moving,” Amelia Meath calmly muses in the opening track, “Moving,” over a hissing, scurrying beat, octave-swooping blips and stereo-panning whooshes that keep things spinning. It’s a whirlwind start to an album that celebrates renewed, unconstrained motion: lighthearted on the surface, purposeful at its core.Sylvan Esso — the duo of Meath and her husband, Nick Sanborn — has created its own niche of electro-pop: transparent yet intricate, airy but serious, fond of pop structures yet eager to bend them. The duo skillfully deploys the hardware and software of electronic dance music, even as it eludes genres and warps standard patterns. The technology makes repetition all too easy, but Sylvan Esso has better ideas.“No Rules Sandy” is a pendulum-swing sequel to “Free Love,” the subdued, wistful album that arrived in September 2020, when pandemic stasis and isolation were sinking in. “Free Love” contemplated, from a distance, the shared pleasures that were once taken for granted, with songs that longed to be, as one put it, “Shaking out the numb.”In Sylvan Esso’s new songs, pleasure is back within reach. “Sunburn” celebrates overindulgence — too much sun, too many sweets — with a track punctuated by the happy sample of a bicycle bell. “Didn’t Care” revels in an unexpected romance with a euphoric blend of Afro-pop guitars, Balkan choral harmonies and bubbly synthesizers.Sylan Esso hasn’t stayed isolated during the pandemic. Back in March 2021, it gathered fellow musicians around its North Carolina home base and completely reworked the electronic tracks from “Free Love” for a hand-played, full-band livestream set, titled “With Love” — a reminder of concert camaraderie. In September, the duo returned to touring. Still, “No Rules Sandy” sounds like Sylvan Esso had ample time to fool around in the studio.There’s a spirit of try-anything, knob-twirling whimsy throughout the new album, a determination that any parameter can change at any time. The album’s watchwords are the refrain of “Your Reality,” a track that meshes syncopated, ambiguous synthesizer chords and a sighing string quartet: “Surreal but free — it’s your reality.”Typical electronic pop and dance music offer reassurance through predictability: an obvious and reliable beat on the bottom, crisp verse-chorus-verse delineations for songs, or measured four-bar buildups leading to anticipated payoffs in dance tracks. Sylvan Esso challenges all those expectations. Throughout “No Rules Sandy,” beats appear, fracture and suddenly vanish and return; vocals are intimate and naturalistic one moment, glitchy or multitracked or pitch-shifted the next.In “Echo Party,” Meath sings about “a lot of people dancing downtown,” with hi-hats and piano chords that hint at disco and house music. But the track craftily refuses to settle into a club groove. The sliding bass line slows down to trip things up (or out); later, the beat drops away completely, leaving Meath on a looped a cappella syllable: “by, by, by.”The tweaks keep coming. “Look at Me” takes on the attention economy — “All I want is to be seen,” Meath sings — with production suggesting a constantly pinging internet; the rhythm is defined almost entirely from above by pecking, tapping, booping, clicking offbeats. “Cloud Walker” flickers in and out of a sense of 4/4 and 3/4, subdivided by the fibrillating cymbals of breakbeats, while Meath’s voice is overdubbed into chords as she sings about fear and acceptance: “learning disaster/relax in style.” As that line suggests, “No Rules Sandy” is upbeat but not oblivious. “Everybody’s hearing along with me/the alarm the alarm the alarm,” Meath sings in “Alarm,” near the end of the album. For all the fun Sylvan Esso was clearly having in the studio, the music also reflects just how unstable the 2020s feel. All the whizzing, zinging, twinkling, morphing sounds promise there are ways to cope with what’s coming at us.The album’s final track switches up once more. “Coming Back to You” is a simple, folky ballad, strummed on acoustic guitar (though Sylvan Esso can’t resist adding some filtered vocal harmonies). It promises a homecoming, a connection, a refuge: “I am the root, I am the leaf/I am the big tree you grew beneath,” Meath sings. After all the motion, the song offers a place to rest.Sylvan Esso“No Rules Sandy”(Loma Vista) More

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      The Gloriously Weird B-52’s Say Farewell to the Road

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      Forty-three years after their first album, the band that brought the world “Rock Lobster” and “Love Shack” is starting a tour for the last time.When the B-52’s played “Rock Lobster” on “Saturday Night Live” in January 1980, a few months after releasing their debut album, it was a lightning-strike moment for a generation of young misfits and oddballs.The band’s uninhibited dancing, statuesque wigs and absurdist lyrics embraced the ecstatic, and its kinetically rhythmic guitar, precise drumming and bursts of Farfisa organ ensured a good time. Many of their campy, catchy songs celebrated people who seemed to be happily dislocated or disconnected from known dimensions (“Planet Claire,” “Private Idaho”). Several of the band’s members were queer and all five considered themselves “freaks.” Over a period of decades, as they grew from a cult band to one with Top 40 hits — most notably “Love Shack” in 1989 — they discovered how many others identified the same way.“This eccentric, downright lovable quintet,” John Rockwell of The New York Times wrote in 1978, “provides about the most amusing, danceable experience in town.” The B-52’s sustained that vigor through seven studio albums and an EP, as well as the 1985 death of Ricky Wilson, one of rock’s most inventive guitarists. Their spirit can be heard in the work of a wide range of artists who followed, including Deee-Lite, Le Tigre, LCD Soundsystem and Dua Lipa.Culture made by and for misfits and oddballs is now a billion-dollar industry, but it wasn’t when the B-52’s played their first gig in 1977, in their Athens, Ga., hometown. Maybe that’s why, 45 years after they first played for a small number of friends, they’ve announced a farewell tour, which starts Aug. 20 in Vancouver and wraps with a three-night stand in Atlanta in November. It took a while, but the weirdos have won.In late July, the singers Fred Schneider, 70; Kate Pierson, 74; and Cindy Wilson, 65, gathered in a SoHo hotel suite for an 80-minute free-for-all punctuated by raucous laughter, as well as somber reflections. Schneider dispensed deadpan punch lines, Pierson spoke with hippie beneficence and Wilson talked movingly about the death of her brother, Ricky. Keith Strickland, 68, a drummer and guitarist who stopped touring with the band in 2012, added his thoughts in a phone interview later.“I call this our Cher-well tour,” Pierson said, a reference to the singer Cher, who has staged one “farewell” tour after another. “Never say never,” she added and shrugged.To her right, Schneider looked aghast and resolutely whispered a single word: “Never.”These are edited excerpts from the conversations.From left: The B-52’s, with Ricky Wilson on guitar and Strickland on drums in the early 1980s. Wilson died in 1985.Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty ImagesWhy did the band decide to quit touring?PIERSON We’re not quitting — we’re just moving on to the new phase of our lives, which is a documentary. We’ve worked hard on uncovering archival material, like Super 8 footage and photographs.SCHNEIDER We’ll still do shows, but no more touring. I love being onstage, but I got tired of people with cellphones not paying attention and blocking everyone behind them.PIERSON All in all, the digital thing was good for us. Having videos on YouTube exposed us to a new audience of young people. On “Rock Lobster,” they go nuts, freak-flag flying, crazy dancing, tearing off their clothes.SCHNEIDER I don’t know if I want them to tear off their clothes. Maybe just the younger ones.PIERSON The old ones too! Let’s see it all.If I told you in 1977, right before you played your first show, that in 45 years you’d be doing a farewell tour, would you have believed me?WILSON I know. That’s insane.STRICKLAND A band was just something to do, because in Athens, there was nothing else to do.SCHNEIDER It was a hobby. We’d jammed once or twice. We didn’t even have the money to buy guitar strings.PIERSON The miracle, to me, is that no one ever said, “Let’s start a band.” We just hung out with a group of friends who were —The Journey to Mainstream Success of the B-52’sNew wave’s most unapologetic loons conquered fans with their unusual mix of the avant-garde, fashion and party-friendly pop.Their Early Days: “What distinguishes the B-52’s is the sheer, driving danceability of the music,” The Times wrote of the band in 1978.‘The B-52’s’: Their debut album helped bring punk to the suburban kids. Here is a close look at the nine songs in it.‘Cosmic Thing’: With their seventh album and its hit single “Love Shack,” the group finally moved beyond cult status.Return of the Rock Lobsters: With “Funplex,” the band’s first studio release in 16 years, the B-52’s experimented with new sounds. One thing didn’t change: their trademark wigs.SCHNEIDER Freaks!PIERSON We’d go to a local disco, dress up and drive everyone else off the dance floors, flailing around and just being punks. People would clear away from us.SCHNEIDER After our first show, friends started asking us to play at their house. Finally, we played at Max’s Kansas City in New York. I guess anyone can play on a Monday night in December. [Laughter] We got $17.PIERSON Danny Beard, who put out our first 45, came to New York with us. He said, “Did you ask if they want us back?” So we ran upstairs and asked the booker, Deer France. She said, “Hell yeah.”SCHNEIDER Because we were like nothing they’d ever seen.PIERSON In the beginning, we were terrified. We looked fierce because we were so scared. We were each responsible for setting up onstage. I did the patch cords between the guitars and amps.SCHNEIDER I plugged everything in. [Laughter]PIERSON Fred would stand there and say, “Where’s the outlet?” until someone came and helped him.Soon after you started, a bunch of other great bands came out of Athens: R.E.M., Pylon, Love Tractor. Was it the cheap rents that allowed lots of Bohemians to flourish, as they did in New York?PIERSON Living in Athens was free and easy. We had jobs, sort of. I lived out in the country and had goats.SCHNEIDER I was meal delivery coordinator for the Council on Aging. You could rent an apartment in Athens for $60 a month. I think Kate paid $15 a month.PIERSON I was a paste-up artist on the local newspaper, and Cindy worked at the Whirly Q luncheonette counter. We started getting written up in all the magazines — New York Rocker, Interview — and we couldn’t afford to buy the magazines. We’d buy one copy and share it.At what point did you start to think, “Maybe this band is more than just a hobby”?PIERSON I knew something was happening when we played Hurrah in New York [in March 1979]. Ricky looked out the window and said, “Why is there such a long line outside?” They said, “That line is for y’all’s show.” What?What was so different about you?SCHNEIDER Everyone in New York was standing against the wall in their leather jackets, smoking cigarettes. We were a blast of color. No one would dance. We wanted to entertain people, and we kept it positive and fun.PIERSON People thought Cindy and I might be drag queens.SCHNEIDER When we played Max’s, someone yelled, “Is this a queen band?” I misheard, and I said, “Yes, we’re a clean band.” I guess nobody wore wigs in New York.PIERSON They thought we were from England, because they couldn’t imagine a band coming from Athens. But this was happening all over the country, in little towns. “Let’s start a band,” even if — well, we could play our instruments. People have a misconception that we couldn’t. I played keyboard and bass, and played guitar on two songs.SCHNEIDER I played keyboard bass on two songs. But I didn’t know which keys I was supposed to hit, so they put black tape on the keys. [Laughter]When most people start out singing, they imitate someone. I don’t think you guys did.WILSON I was trying to be Patti Smith.SCHNEIDER I wish I could sound like Wilson Pickett. But mostly, I was reciting. I talk-sang.PIERSON None of us were self-conscious.WILSON Because we were doing it for fun. It was kind of half-joking.PIERSON And Cindy and I just locked into our harmonies. We never said, “Oh, let’s try this interval.”STRICKLAND Cindy’s voice can be beautiful, but it has a primal quality at the same time. I used to tell Ricky she reminds me of John Lennon.“Everyone in New York was standing against the wall in their leather jackets, smoking cigarettes,” Schneider said. “We were a blast of color.”Peter Noble/Redferns, via Getty ImagesRicky told Keith he had AIDS, and asked him not to tell anyone else. Cindy, did you have any anger toward Keith for not telling you?WILSON Not at all. Both Keith and Ricky were in this horrible hell, you know? Ricky and I were living together, and he was away a lot. I thought, oh, he’s sick of living with his sister.STRICKLAND Hearing that breaks my heart.WILSON A hideous thing happened a day or two before Ricky passed. I got a phone call from a nurse in his doctor’s office. She was smacking gum, and said, “Did you know you’re living with a man that has AIDS?” It was the first time someone had said those words to me.STRICKLAND It was very difficult. I kept telling him, “You’ve got to tell Cindy.” He was a very private person, and I don’t think he knew how to deal with it. He’d gone into a coma in the hospital, and Cindy confronted me. I knew I couldn’t hide it anymore.WILSON After he died, I had a nervous breakdown. Keith moved up to Woodstock and became a hermit.STRICKLAND Ricky was my best friend — we were like brothers. I thought the band was finished, but writing music was a way to console myself. I wrote on the guitar, and I imagined Ricky sitting across from me. One of the first pieces I wrote became “Deadbeat Club,” and there are two guitar parts; I played the chords, and in my head, I imagined Ricky playing the other part.PIERSON I lived in a house across the pond from Keith, and I’d canoe over to his house. He played me a couple of things, and then we all got together. We said, this is for us, for our healing, and this is for Ricky. It was kind of miraculous that we came back together.The first album you did after Ricky died, “Cosmic Thing,” had your first hit singles, “Love Shack,” “Roam” and “Deadbeat Club.” Why was that the breakthrough album?PIERSON When we wrote “Cosmic,” it turned out to be an autobiographical album.WILSON But how could it not, you know? And we didn’t write the album to be a hit.PIERSON Yeah, and the songs just came together in a sort of story. It came really directly from the collective heart of the band. And it just poured out, all this stuff about the innocence we had in Athens.SCHNEIDER We had to beg radio stations to play “Love Shack” because it was unlike anything. Once it went to No. 1 on college and alternative radio, that’s when mainstream radio picked it up. And once that happened, it’s like, oh, my God.You also used two of the best producers around, Don Was and Nile Rodgers. How did you pick them?PIERSON We interviewed Todd Rundgren, who said, “I have a mandate. I’m going to tell you what to do, and you’re going to do what I say.” He didn’t say it in that way, but he used the word “mandate,” and we were like, no. [Laughter]SCHNEIDER We go on man dates, but we don’t put up with one.PIERSON A friend’s mother, who’s a psychic and doesn’t know anything about music, went through the list of producers and said, “The spirit guides love Nile Rodgers and Don Was too.” She had no idea who they were.Why has the band recorded only one studio album in the last 30 years?SCHNEIDER We wanted to wait until people finally stopped buying albums and CDs. [Laughter]STRICKLAND The way we write is complex and time-consuming, because it’s so collaborative. And it would get contentious at times — you edit out a part and someone says, “That’s my favorite part.” We’ve never been a band that just pumps it out.Do you think the B-52’s contributed a lot to what people call the queering of American culture?PIERSON We queered it. We done queered it.SCHNEIDER Unintentionally, to a degree. A lot of people said seeing us on “Saturday Night Live,” they felt comfortable with themselves, finally, even though they might live in some Podunk town where tolerance is, forget it. We hear those stories all the time. Back then, it was a stigma to even say you were gay, so I would say, “I’m a try-sexual. I’ll try anything.”PIERSON We not only had a gay sensibility, we also embodied it. We look different, our songs are different, so people identified us from the beginning as different.SCHNEIDER Everybody’s invited to our party. We always made that one of our premises. Bring your mom. Bring grandma.Bonus Track: Keith Strickland on Ricky Wilson“When Ricky played guitar, he sounded like two people,” Cindy Wilson said. Guitar World named Wilson, who often removed one and sometimes two strings from his guitar, one of its 25 All-Time Weirdest Guitarists. In a phone call, Keith Strickland, the B-52’s drummer who took over guitar duties after Wilson died, explained Ricky’s unique style. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.STRICKLAND Ricky and I met in high school at 16 and bonded over music. He was writing songs on guitar, very much influenced by Donovan. He was quite skilled in fingerpicking, which he learned by watching the show “Folk Guitar With Laura Weber” on PBS. The first time all five of the B-52’s jammed, I played guitar and Ricky played congas. But he was a better guitarist and I was a better drummer, so we switched.On some songs, like “Rock Lobster” and “Private Idaho,” Ricky played alternating parts. He’d play the rhythm on his lower strings, and a counterpoint lead line on the higher strings. It sounds like two guitars. For me, that’s the genius of Ricky’s playing. And he used real heavy-gauge strings, because he kept breaking the thinner ones and we didn’t have guitar techs to change them. [Laughs]He removed the G string from his guitar, which eliminates some of the midrange frequencies, and he played with only five strings. That happened by accident. When I played the guitar, if I broke a string, I wouldn’t change it — I’d just retune the other strings to an open tuning. I liked how it sounded.One day, Ricky was annoyed because I hadn’t changed a broken string on the guitar. I said, “You should play it like that.” He scoffed it off. But the next time I went to his house, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, playing and laughing. He said, “I’ve just written the most stupid guitar riff you’ve ever heard.” And it was the “Rock Lobster” riff, played on five strings in an open tuning.He and I were aware of open tunings because we were both big fans of Joni Mitchell, who used them a lot. People always say, “Really? You like Joni?” because our music is nothing like hers. Some of the chords she used were so beautiful, and they sound unresolved. Open tunings offer different color palettes or voicings that might be physically impossible to play in standard tuning.After Ricky died, it seemed impossible to me to find someone else that could play in open tuning. So I said, “I’ll be the guitarist.” It was pragmatic, but I also knew that if we brought somebody else in, I’d hover over them and say, “You’re not doing that right.” [Laughs] I had to learn Ricky’s parts, but I never wanted to imitate him, because I knew I couldn’t. It was a good 10 years before I was comfortable playing guitar onstage. The whole Cosmic Thing Tour, I was hanging by a thread.Around 1983, Ricky bought one of the first Macintosh home computers, and he loved it. When I’m writing music at my computer now, using Logic Pro software, I always say, “Gosh, Ricky would’ve loved this.” I often think about Ricky. More

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      Prentiss, 15 and Feeling Deeply

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      The dream-pop singer and songwriter from Jackson, Miss., tries out a range of sounds and speaks from the heart on his upcoming debut album, “Crescent.”In his music videos, several of which have lately become tastemaker manna, Prentiss looks more like a kid brother than a rock-star rebel. Many show him out in nature wearing hippie-ish hand-me-downs and singing sweetly heartbroken lyrics that sometimes come from poems he writes on his phone. “I try not to overthink it,” he said on a recent video call from his Jackson, Miss., home just after his daily workout, his hair a bounteous bushel of curls. “My purest emotion comes from my first thought.”It has been just two years since Prentiss started posting songs and videos online, but already the 15-year-old pop singer has over 50,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, half a million views on YouTube and a record deal. He has gotten a shout-out from Justin Bieber and made music with the Kid Laroi, the Australian singer-rapper, who gave him advice about navigating the music business as a teenager. He also made it onto the lineup of Lollapalooza, his first festival.And now Prentiss — his full name is Prentiss Furr — is recording his first album, “Crescent,” which is full of thoughtful, personal songs. Prentiss said that when he first started making music at age 11, “I didn’t know what my feelings were. I’m getting more grasp on what I’m feeling now.” On “Where It Hurts,” a song about self-doubt from “Crescent,” he sings with sadness, “I’m trying to be a different version of me/because every version of you wants to see me leave.”While finishing his debut album, Prentiss is taking high school classes online and experimenting with new sounds.Victor Llorente for The New York TimesHe grew up listening to a wide range of music — Kesha, Justin Bieber, Pearl Jam, Taylor Swift, Zac Brown Band — and one of his biggest inspirations is Yung Lean, the rapper from Sweden. On “Crescent,” which will be released later this year, he’s trying out several different sounds in songs that have flashes of club music, pop-punk and hyperpop.“Where I’m from, there’s not a certain culture or a certain genre,” he said of his Jackson hometown. He figures he’d end up looking like a “weirdo” no matter what musical path he followed. “If I was worried about pushing a certain sound or image or hanging out with a certain type of musician,” he said, “I wouldn’t have built my own career.”One thing he isn’t afraid of embracing is imperfection. “Certain notes being off-key, a little offbeat, not making exact sense but you can make the picture in your head — the best artists are the ones who intentionally throw that curveball,” he said of trying to develop his own idiosyncrasies. “However long it takes — two, three, four, five years — the twist will be my own,” he added, “and I want it to be hard to replicate.”While finishing the album, Prentiss is taking high school classes online, teaching himself music theory, working with a vocal coach and experimenting with new sounds. He even has his eyes on a role model for his adulthood: the super-producer and guru Rick Rubin, known for his bucolic, blissful lifestyle.“At some point I’m just going to quit this all,” Prentiss said, “and have some random crib with like four different hammocks, seven different pigs, all in the middle of nowhere.”A version of this story originally ran in The New York Times for Kids, a special print section that appears in the paper on the last Sunday of every month. The next issue is on newsstands Aug. 28. More

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      Olivia Newton-John, Pop Singer and ‘Grease’ Star, Dies at 73

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      She amassed No. 1 hits, chart-topping albums and four records that sold more than two million copies each. More than anything else, she was likable, even beloved.Olivia Newton-John, who sang some of the biggest hits of the 1970s and ’80s while recasting her image as the virginal girl next door into a spandex-clad vixen — a transformation reflected in miniature by her starring role in “Grease,” one of the most popular movie musicals of its era — died on Monday at her ranch in Southern California. She was 73.The death was announced by her husband, John Easterling, who did not give a specific cause in his statement, though he cited the breast cancer diagnosis she had lived with since 1992. In 2017, she announced that the cancer had returned and spread. For years she was a prominent advocate for cancer research, starting a foundation in her name to support it and opening a research and wellness center in metropolitan Melbourne, Australia. English-born, she grew up in Australia.Ms. Newton-John amassed No. 1 hits, chart-topping albums and four records that sold more than two million copies each. More than anything else, she was likable, even beloved.Ms. Newton-John and John Travolta in a scene from “Grease.” It became one of the highest grossing movie musicals ever, besting even “The Sound of Music.”Paramount/Library of Congress, via Associated PressIn the earlier phase of her career, Ms. Newton-John beguiled listeners with a high, supple, vibrato-warmed voice that paired amiably with the kind of swooning middle-of-the-road pop that, in the mid-1970s, often passed for country music.Her performance on the charts made that blurring clear. She scored seven Top 10 hits on Billboard’s country chart, two of which became back-to-back overall No. 1 hits in 1974 and ’75. First came “I Honestly Love You,” an earnest declaration co-written by Peter Allen and Jeff Barry, followed by “Have You Never Been Mellow,” a feather of a song written by the producer of many of her biggest albums, John Farrar.“I Honestly Love You” also won two of the singer’s four Grammys, for record of the year and best female pop vocal performance.The combination of Ms. Newton-John’s consistently benign music — she was never a favorite of critics — and comely but squeaky-clean image caused many writers to compare her to earlier blond ingénues like Doris Day and Sandra Dee. “Innocent, I’m not,” Ms. Newton-John told Rolling Stone in 1978. “People still seem to see me as the girl next door. Doris Day had four husbands,” she said, yet she was still viewed as “the virgin.”An entry into movies in 1978 aimed to put the singer’s chaste image behind her, starting with “Grease.” Her character, Sandy, transformed from a pigtailed square smitten with John Travolta’s bad-boy Danny to a gum-smacking bad girl. “Grease” became one of the highest grossing movie musicals ever, besting even “The Sound of Music.” Its soundtrack was the second best-selling album of the year, beaten only by the soundtrack for “Saturday Night Fever,” which also starred Mr. Travolta.The “Grease” soundtrack spawned two No. 1 hits, including the manically lusty “You’re the One That I Want,” sung by the co-stars. The doo-wop romp “Summer Nights,” which they also sang, reached No. 5. (The other No. 1 single from the “Grease” soundtrack was the title song, sung by Frankie Valli.) A ballad Ms. Newton-John sang alone, “Hopelessly Devoted to You,” earned the film’s lone Oscar nomination, for best song.Applying the evolution of her “Grease” character to her singing career, Ms. Newton-John titled her next album “Totally Hot,” and presented herself on the cover in shoulder-to-toe leather. The album, released at the end of 1978, went platinum, yielding the rock-oriented “A Little More Love” with the line, “Where did my innocence go?”Ms. Newton-John in an undated photo. In the 1980s she sought to shed her innocent image, emerging with “Physical,” which spent 10 weeks at No. 1 in Billboard’s rankings.The album featured Ms. Newton-John singing in a somewhat more forceful voice. Though her sales dipped as the 1970s turned into the ’80s, by early in the decade she began the most commercially potent period in her career, peaking with the single “Physical,” which spent 10 weeks on Billboard’s top perch. Later, the magazine declared it to be the biggest song of the 1980s.Olivia Newton-John was born on Sept. 26, 1948, in Cambridge, England, the youngest of three children of Brinley and Irene (Born) Newton-John. Her mother was the daughter of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Born. Her Welsh-born father had been an MI5 intelligence officer during World War II and afterward served as headmaster at Cambridgeshire High School for Boys. When Ms. Newton-John was 6, her family immigrated to Melbourne, Australia, where her father worked as a college professor and administrator. At 14, she formed her first group, Sol Four, with three girls from school. Her beauty and confidence soon earned her solo performances on local radio and TV shows under the name “Lovely Livvy.” On “The Go!! Show” she met the singer Pat Carroll, with whom she would form a duet, as well as her eventual producer, Mr. Farrar, who later married Ms. Carroll.Ms. Newton-John won a local TV talent contest whose prize was a trip to Britain. While tarrying there, she recorded her first single, “’Til You Say You’ll Be Mine,” which Decca Records released in 1966.After Ms. Carroll moved to London, she and Ms. Newton-John formed the duet Pat and Olivia, which toured Europe. When Ms. Carroll’s visa expired, forcing her to go back to Australia, Ms. Newton-John stayed in London to work solo.In 1970, she was asked to join a crudely manufactured group named Toomorrow, formed by the American producer Don Kirshner in an attempt to repeat his earlier success with the Monkees. Following his grand design, the group starred in a science-fiction film written for them and recorded its soundtrack. Both projects tanked.Ms. Newton-John tried to expand her acting career with the 1980 musical “Xanadu,” here in a scene with the actor Michael Beck. Its soundtrack went double platinum.Universal/Kobal, via Shutterstock“It was terrible, and I was terrible in it,” she later told The New York Times.Her debut solo album, “If Not for You,” was released in 1971, its title track a cover of a Bob Dylan song.After some duds in the United States, Ms. Newton-John released the album “Let Me Be There” (1973), which led to a Grammy win for best female country vocal performance.Two key changes in pop music boosted her career that decade: the rise of “soft rock” in reaction to the harder genres of the late 1960s, and the mainstreaming — some would say the neutering — of country music, also epitomized by stars like John Denver and Anne Murray.The latter trend became an issue in 1974, after Ms. Newton-John was chosen female vocalist of the year by the Country Music Association over more traditional stars like Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton. Protests led to the formation of the fleeting Association of Country Entertainers. Yet, after Ms. Newton-John recorded her “Don’t Stop Believin’,” album in Nashville in 1976, the friction eased.The second phase of her career, which began with “Grease,” found further success through a duet with Andy Gibb, “I Can’t Help It,” followed by an attempt to expand her acting career with the 1980 musical film “Xanadu,” with Gene Kelly. While the movie floundered, its soundtrack went double-platinum, boasting hits like “Magic” (which commanded Billboard’s No. 1 spot for four weeks) and the title song, recorded with the Electric Light Orchestra.A campy Broadway show based on the film opened in 2007 to some success.Ms. Newton-John performing in Chile in 2017, the year she said her cancer had returned and had metastasized.Mario Ruiz/EPA, via ShutterstockMs. Newton-John’s smash “Physical” also yielded the first video album to hit the market, with clips for all the album’s tracks. “Olivia Physical” won the Grammy in 1982 for video of the year.She was paired again with Mr. Travolta in the 1983 movie “Two of a Kind,” an attempt to repeat the success of “Grease.” But the film disappointed even as its soundtrack proved popular, especially the song “Twist of Fate.”Ms. Newton-John was named an officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1979.By the mid-80s, her career had cooled. For several years she cut back on work to care for her daughter, Chloe Rose, whom she had with her husband at the time, the actor Matt Lattanzi. They had met on the set of “Xanadu” and married in 1984; they divorced in 1995.That same year, she met Patrick McDermott, a cameraman whom she dated, on and off, for the next nine years. In 2005, Mr. McDermott disappeared while fishing off the California coast. Three years later, a U.S. Coast Guard investigation said that the evidence suggested that Mr. McDermott had been lost at sea.In 2008, Ms. Newton-John married Mr. Easterling, the founder of the Amazon Herb Company.In addition to her husband, she is survived by her daughter, Chloe Rose Lattanzi; her sister, Sarah Newton-John; and her brother, Toby.After learning she had breast cancer in 1992, Ms. Newton-John became an ardent advocate for research into the disease. Her Olivia Newton-John Foundation Fund is dedicated to researching plant-based treatments for cancer, and she opened a cancer research and wellness facility under her name at Austin Hospital, outside Melbourne.Despite her own treatments, she continued to release albums and tour but failed to make headway on the charts. And she continued to act in movies and on television.In May 2017, she disclosed that her cancer had returned and that it had metastasized to her lower back. She published a memoir, “Don’t Stop Believin,’” in 2018.To the end Ms. Newton-John firmly believed in her audience-friendly approach to music. “It annoys me when people think because it’s commercial, it’s bad,” she told Rolling Stone. “It’s completely opposite. If people like it, that’s what it’s supposed to be.” More

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      Judith Durham, Singer of ‘Georgy Girl’ and Other Hits, Dies at 79

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      A classically trained soprano, she became a chart-topping pop star in the 1960s with the folk-based Australian quartet the Seekers.Judith Durham, the lead vocalist of the 1960s Australian folk-pop band the Seekers, whose shimmering soprano voice and wholesome image propelled singles like “Georgy Girl” and “I’ll Never Find Another You” to the top of the pop charts, died on Friday in Melbourne. She was 79.Her death, in a hospital, was caused by bronchiectasis, a lung disease that she had battled since childhood, according to a post from Universal Music Australia and the Musicoast record label on the Seekers’ Facebook page.A sunny folk-influenced quartet whose fresh-faced image and effervescent pop songs stood in marked contrast to the libidinal frenzy of 1960s rock, the Seekers sold an estimated 50 million singles and albums worldwide. They became the first Australian pop group to achieve global success, paving the way for other acts based in Australia, like the Bee Gees and Olivia Newton-John.“Judith Durham gave voice to a new strand of our identity and helped blaze a trail for a new generation of Aussie artists,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wrote on Twitter.Ms. Durham was a classically trained vocalist whose work was admired by other singers. Elton John, whose song “Skyline Pigeon” Ms. Durham recorded in 1971, once said that she possessed “the purest voice in popular music.”Lynn Redgrave and Alan Bates in a scene from the hit 1966 movie “Georgy Girl,” for which Ms. Durham sang the theme song.Columbia Pictures, via PhotofestJudith Mavis Cock was born on July 3, 1943, in Essendon, Australia, to William Cock, an aviator in World War II, and Hazel (Durham) Cock. “My mother apparently said I could sing nursery rhymes in perfect tune when I was 2,” Ms. Durham once said in a television interview.She was working as a secretary at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency in Melbourne when an account executive, Athol Guy, invited her to sit in with his folk group, which also included Keith Potger and Bruce Woodley, and which had just lost its singer.The group released its first album, “Introducing the Seekers,” in 1963, but did not strike it big until the next year, when it took a gig on an ocean liner and ended up staying in England indefinitely.It was a portentous time to arrive on the British music scene: Bands like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Kinks were performing to screaming teenage fans as they rolled toward global stardom.The Seekers were a far cry from the rock ‘n’ roll sweeping London. Ms. Durham belted out toe-tapping ditties wearing ankle-length evening gowns and a perky smile, backed by three clean-cut male bandmates in suits.“The pop charts was probably the furthest thing from any of our minds,” she said in a 2001 television interview. “You just didn’t try to do that with a folk-based quartet. Everybody was more poppy, and had the long hair and the electric instruments.”Fueled by Ms. Durham’s vocals, however, the group caught the eye of Tom Springfield — Dusty Springfield’s songwriting brother — who offered them one of his songs, “I’ll Never Find Another You,” to record.Released in 1964, it went on to hit No. 1 on the British charts and No. 4 in the United States. The hits kept coming in 1965, with “A World of Our Own” (No. 3 in Britain) and “The Carnival Is Over” (No. 1).On her 70th birthday in 2013, Ms. Durham received kisses from her Seekers bandmates Mr. Potger, left, and Mr. Guy. David Crosling/EPA, via Shutterstock“Georgy Girl,” the title song from the hit 1966 feature film starring Lynn Redgrave in the title role, was an even bigger smash. Written by Mr. Springfield and Jim Dale, it was nominated for an Academy Award and hit No. 2 on the Billboard singles chart in the United States.But Ms. Durham felt the pressure of fame and was increasingly insecure about her weight, which she tried to disguise by making her own dresses. She began to shrink from the spotlight.“It was this never feeling good enough to be given the amazing opportunities we were given,” she said in a 2018 Australian television interview. “The boys were amazing, they all looked gorgeous, and so musically talented and everything. And so for me, I thought, ‘Well, they don’t really need me.’”Fans were crestfallen when she left the group in 1968. (A later version of the group, the New Seekers, would have a hit in 1973 with “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.”) But Ms. Durham remained in the public eye, particularly in Australia, where she recorded solo albums, starred in television specials and performed with her husband, the pianist Ron Edgeworth, whom she married in 1969. He died in 1994 of motor neuron disease, a rare neurological disorder.Survivors include a sister, the singer Beverley Sheehan.Ms. Durham reunited with the Seekers off and on in the ’90s and again in 2013, for the group’s 50th anniversary. That tour was interrupted when Ms. Durham suffered a brain hemorrhage.In honor of her 75th birthday in 2018, Ms. Durham released her first album in six years, a compilation of previously unreleased tracks called “So Much More.”In a 2016 interview on Australian television, she admitted that fame had come to seem a burden at times when she was younger.“At one stage I really thought that I probably wasn’t going to keep singing,” she said. But, she added: “I’m glad that I’ve lived a long time. That’s helped me therefore lose the sense of burden, and see it as an honor and a privilege that people have kept me in their lives.” More