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      Ani DiFranco Documentary Shows Her First Time Writing a Song With Another Artist

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      The film “1-800-ON-HER-OWN” follows the fiercely independent artist as she tries a career first: writing a song with another artist.Ani DiFranco’s approach to her music career has always had a stripped-down, D.I.Y. vibe. In fact, Dana Flor’s new documentary about the singer, “1-800-ON-HER-OWN” (in theaters) draws its name from the phone number for DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records, the label she founded in 1990 so she wouldn’t have to work with a major company. It was an unusual thing for anyone to do back then, but especially for a 20-year-old female artist whose songs lay somewhere between folk and punk. That’s just her style.The documentary mimics that handmade aesthetic, sometimes accidentally. The major arc follows DiFranco, now in her 50s and a mother of two, as she tries out collaboration as she never has before. Arriving as a guest of honor at a songwriting retreat held by Justin Vernon (a.k.a. the frontman of the band Bon Iver), she confesses that she’s never written a song with anyone else in her entire career. Yes, DiFranco has often worked with others — she toured with a band, and the label was run by a team — but her solo songwriting and a more recent solo tour have sometimes felt lonely.DiFranco talks throughout the film about her career and her memories, often while sitting in a car. But while the film starts out conventionally, seeming as if it will focus, as she puts it, on finding “some other way to be home more and still be an artist,” it soon pivots. When the pandemic strikes, being home more is not a choice — it’s just life.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Nino Tempo, Who Topped the Charts With ‘Deep Purple,’ Dies at 90

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      He was a busy session saxophonist, but he is probably best known for the Grammy-winning pop hit that he sang in 1963 as half of a duo act with his sister, April Stevens.Nino Tempo, an accomplished tenor saxophonist whose harmonious foray into pop singing with his sister, April Stevens, produced a chart-topping, Grammy-winning version of “Deep Purple” in 1963, died on April 10 at his home in West Hollywood, Calif. He was 90.The death was confirmed on Tuesday by his friend Jim Chaffin.Mr. Tempo’s career traced an early arc of pop music, from big-band jazz to the rise of rock and funk, before boomeranging back to jazz in the 1990s. As a child he sang with Benny Goodman’s orchestra; he later played saxophone on records by Bobby Darin and Frank Sinatra; and he released a funk album, with a studio band called Nino Tempo & 5th Ave. Sax, during the genre’s ascent in the 1970s.But to many aficionados of 1960s pop music, what rings out in memory is his harmonizing with his sister on “Deep Purple,” a jazz standard originally written for piano by Peter DeRose, with lyrics later added by Mitchell Parish.“Deep Purple” was recorded in 14 minutes and originally considered “unreleasable” by Atlantic Records executives, Mr. Tempo recalled. It was released in September 1963 and reached No. 1 two months later.Atco, via Vinyls/AlamyThe song, given a laid-back arrangement by Mr. Tempo and played by a studio ensemble that included Glen Campbell on guitar, was recorded in just 14 minutes at the end of a session produced by Ahmet Ertegun, a founder of Atlantic Records, who had signed Mr. Tempo and Ms. Stevens to his Atco Records imprint.In one part of “Deep Purple,” Ms. Stevens speaks the refrain and Mr. Tempo sings it back in falsetto:“When the deep purple falls over sleepy garden walls/And the stars begin to twinkle in the night/In the mist of a memory, you wander back to me/Breathing my name with a sigh.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gloria Gaynor Hit Hard Times After ‘I Will Survive.’ Now She’s Back.

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      The disco queen was in the doldrums before she decided to take control of her life and career. Now, at 81, she’s reaping the rewards.Seated on a piano bench in her bright, contemporary home in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Gloria Gaynor was talking over plans for her next concert.For years, she said, she stood alone onstage, singing over prerecorded audio tracks. No more. At the upcoming show, Ms. Gaynor, 81, would be performing with a 10-piece ensemble that included a horn section and a trio of background singers — a level of professionalism she insists on in her contract.“Gloria Gaynor is a luxury item,” she said. “Either you can afford her or you can’t.”It has taken Ms. Gaynor a lifetime to deliver such a diva line. The singer who became the embodiment of standing up for yourself — thanks to her signature anthem, “I Will Survive” — said she struggled for years with low self-esteem. As a result, she ended up adrift.Since making the decision to take charge of her life and career, she has finally become a match for the self-assured vocalist heard on so many recordings, including her latest single, “Fida Known,” a song that harks back to disco’s golden years while sounding very much of the moment.“I feel like a butterfly coming out of a cocoon,” Ms. Gaynor said.Born Gloria Fowles, she was raised in a large family in Newark. She didn’t know her father, a nightclub singer. Her mother, whom everybody called Queenie May, was a big-hearted, blunt-speaking woman with a beautiful voice. At age twelve, Ms. Gaynor was molested by one of her mother’s boyfriends, she has said in interviews. She kept the abuse a secret for decades, including from the readers of her 1995 memoir, “Soul Survivor.”When Ms. Gaynor was a teenager, her mother recognized that she had real talent when she heard her singing the jazz standard “Lullaby of the Leaves.” Queenie May gave her daughter plenty of encouragement back when she was working a string of day jobs while singing in clubs at night, but she didn’t live to see her grand success. She died of lung cancer in 1970, when Ms. Gaynor was 27 and still struggling to make a name for herself.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Hype at Coachella This Year? Billboards.

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      By most accounts, the 130-mile drive from Los Angeles to the first weekend of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival last week was hot, congested and generally unpleasant.But there has been at least one bright spot for the 200,000 or so dehydrated, impatient and aggrieved fans who make the trek for one or both of the three-day events each year: clever billboards.Artists have advertised their sets on the giant placards that dot the route into Indio, Calif., for years. But the 2025 event reached critical mass, in terms of quantity and creativity.“This year was an absolute explosion,” said Morgan Rose, a director of client partnerships at Wilkins Media, who has been doling out highly coveted space on the boards since last fall. “Eleven months out of the year they are completely worthless,” he added.But not this one.Those who bother to look out the windows while slogging down the 10 East may see a billboard for Charli XCX that features her signature shade of green and wonder, “Why did she cross out ‘Brat?’” Or one for Tyla, who is all wet, asking “Got water?” Or one informing all comers in all-caps, “It’s Pronounced Djo.”“Not particularly helpful,” Djo’s manager, Nick Stern, conceded. (The artist in question is the actor Joe Keery, who put out his third album this month.) “But it does lead people to ask and go look.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

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      Tim Mohr, DJ and German Translator Who Ghostwrote Paul Stanley’s Memoir, Dies at 55

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      An American who had lived abroad, he sought out books by up-and-coming German writers, while ghostwriting memoirs for rock stars like Paul Stanley.Tim Mohr, an American who worked as a disc jockey and freelance writer in Berlin in the 1990s, diving deep into the city’s fervent post-Communist underground, before using his experiences to turn out sensitive, award-winning English translations of works by up-and-coming German writers, died on March 31 at his home in Brooklyn. He was 55.His wife, Erin Clarke, said the cause was pancreatic cancer.Mr. Mohr arrived in Germany in 1992 with a yearlong grant to teach English. He did not speak a word of German, so the program sent him to Berlin, a melting pot of cultures where English was often the second language.He stayed for six years. By day, he worked as a journalist for local English-language magazines, including the Berlin edition of Time Out; at night, he was a D.J. in the city’s ever-expanding club scene.He later remarked that his time spent traveling among Berlin’s many underground subcultures gave him a thorough education in a form of street German that set him up to work as a translator.One of his first major translation projects, in 2008, was “Feuchtgebiete” (“Wetlands”), a sexually explicit coming-of-age novel by Charlotte Roche packed with raunchy, idiomatic slang that only someone with Mr. Mohr’s background could render in English.“I read the book for the eventual U.S. publisher when they were considering buying the rights,” he told The Financial Times in 2012. “And I said to the editor, ‘You know, you’ll be hard pressed to find an academic translator who is as familiar with terminology related to anal sex as a former Berlin club D.J. is.’”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What’s So Funny About These Albums?

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      Comedians have always wanted to be pop and rock stars — or at least, enough of them have gotten comfortable with a guitar and a drum track to make it seem so. It’s a long and eclectic tradition, including Steve Martin, Weird Al, Bo Burnham, Rachel Bloom, Donald Glover, Randy Rainbow and John Early.Now there’s a new crop of albums from entertainers across the comic spectrum. Some of them regularly use music as part of their act, like Cat Cohen, whose repertoire is all cabaret style. And some are left-field turns, like the profane opus from the writer and actor Jordan Firstman, or the thoughtful, genuine emo tunes of Mae Martin. Then there’s Kyle Mooney, whose record is either all gags — or none. In comedy, like music, it’s all in how you hit the beat.Jordan FirstmanJordan Firstman’s “Secrets” is a concept album built out of confessions strangers sent to him over social media.Ariel Fisher for The New York TimesThe social media favorite Jordan Firstman didn’t expect to release a record, let alone a concept album based on the private confessions of strangers on the internet. But on “Secrets,” out this month, he lets it rip, in ways that are almost entirely unprintable here. Its party anthem single describes a dude quest to bond over anatomy. (The video, directed by the boundary-pusher Cody Critcheloe, has more than a quarter-million views.)“Secrets” began as a pandemic-era riff, when Firstman, 33, publicly responded to his Instagram DMs. He accumulated tens of thousands of private missives — he requested the most “depraved” but also “Beautiful. Lyrical. And Random” stuff; endless inspiration.A few years later, with a friend — the musician and producer Brad Oberhofer — he began song-ifying them. “I’m like, such a lyric queen,” he said, and the secrets were ready-made titles, misspellings and all, like “I’m I Lesbian,” the album’s Lilith Fair-flavored closer. Capitol Records bought his pitch before he even left its parking lot, he said in a video interview.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 63 Shares189 Views

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      A Tax Day Jam Session

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      File your 1040 to tunes by Destiny’s Child, Dr. John, Big Tymers and more.Destiny’s Child onstage in 2005, giving a withering look to those bills in question.Rahav SegevDear listeners,Lindsay is still out, which means you’ve got me (an editor who focuses on pop culture) on a day where you may need a bit of good fortune: Tax Day.I don’t know what kind of anxiety April 15 provokes in you, but I’ve collected a playlist inspired by a bit of family lore. As the story goes, my newly married dad once griped to my grandfather about how quickly bills ate up a paycheck, down to the last dollar. Gramps’s response: “Be glad you had that dollar.”So in the spirit of celebrating having just enough, I’m sharing my Tax Day jams. Savvy reader, you do not need me to point out all the root-of-all-evil bangers, scrapin’ and scrappin’ classics or TV ad earworms that mention money, money, money. I am also not here to question the tax code. Instead, I’ve assembled a set of songs that bop in the face of financial constraints, because getting down is, for now, still free.I fly in any weather,ElenaListen along while you read.1. Ray Charles: “Busted”Harlan Howard’s lyrics are about as low as low gets (“my bills are all due and the baby needs shoes but I’m busted”) and suit the songwriter’s “three chords and the truth” approach to country classics. But under Ray Charles’s guidance, and with a blaring horn section, this 1963 single gains a “but who cares?” lilt that earned Charles the Grammy for best R&B recording.▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTubeWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      New Songs From Pulp, Bon Iver, Rauw Alejandro and More

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      Listen to tracks by Bon Iver, Valerie June, Rauw Alejandro and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Pulp, ‘Spike Island’“This time I’ll get it right,” Jarvis Cocker vows on “Spike Island” from “More,” the first album since 2001 by Pulp, the 1990s Britpop standard bearers. Due in June, the new album grew out of songwriting spurred by a Pulp reunion tour that started in 2023. The band has reclaimed its old glam-rock swagger, backed by strings, and Cocker is just self-conscious enough: “I exist to do this — shouting and pointing,” he sings. True to Britpop, the song’s chorus (“Spike Island come alive”) is a British rock self-reference, to an annoying D.J.’s exhortations at a 1990 Stone Roses concert. And in an equally self-conscious video, Cocker prompts A.I. to make Pulp’s 1995 album cover photos “come alive,” with hilariously suboptimal results.Stereolab, ‘Aerial Troubles’After 15 years between albums, Stereolab has completed a new one: “Instant Holograms on Metal Film,” due May 23. Its first single, “Aerial Troubles,” has the band sounding like its old self, imperturbably setting out patterns within patterns while the lyrics critique late capitalism. “An unfillable hole / An insatiable state of consumption — systemic,” they sing in call-and-response. “We can’t eat our way out of it.” Synthesizers buzz and drums tick steadily as Stereolab calmly anticipates “the new yet undefined future / That holds the prospect for greater wisdom.”Turnstile, ‘Never Enough’From its beginnings more than a decade ago, Turnstile thoroughly established its hardcore bona fides without ever ruling out melody, allowing its music room to expand. “Never Enough,” which will be the title song of Turnstile’s first album since 2021, sets its succinct lyrics in two very different ways. Its intro and outro use stately, billowing, organ-like chords. But its middle section is a fortress of punk-grunge guitars and barreling drums. It crests into a singalong-friendly refrain — “It’s never enough love” — before the track dissolves back into a rich keyboard haze.Bon Iver featuring Dijon and Flock of Dimes, ‘Day One’A couple struggles against self-doubt and depression and tries to reconcile in “Day One” from “Sable, Fable,” Bon Iver’s cathartic new album. “It got bad enough I thought that I would leave,” Justin Vernon moans. Jenn Wasner (Flock of Dimes) advises, “You may have to toughen up while unlearning that lie.” Together, they sing, “I don’t know who I am without you.” While the chords and tempo come from gospel, the production is fractured and glitchy, questioning its own comforts.Valerie June, ‘Endless Tree’Constant bad news on TV? Pervasive isolation and hopelessness? In “Endless Tree,” from her new album “Owls, Omens and Oracles,” Valerie June recognizes dire times — she’s not naïve — and preaches hope, community spirit and “getting the courage to do something small” anyway. “If you’re on the couch and you’re feeling alone / May you feel moved after hearing this song,” she urges. An increasingly frantic orchestra and chorus join her, revealing some tension behind the positive thinking.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More