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      Charlie Watts, the Unlikely Soul of the Rolling Stones

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      In a band that defined debauched rock ’n’ roll, he was a quiet, dapper jazz fan. But their unusual chemistry defined the rhythm of the Stones, and of rock.On some superficial level, Charlie Watts had always seemed the oddest Rolling Stone, the one who never quite fit as a member of rock’s most Dionysian force.While his bandmates cultivated an attitude of debauched insouciance, Watts, the band’s drummer since 1963, kept a quiet, even glum, public persona. He avoided the limelight, wore bespoke suits from Savile Row tailors and remained married to the same woman for more than 50 years.Watts even seemed barely interested in rock ’n’ roll itself. He claimed that it had little influence on him, preferring — and long championing — the jazz heritage of Charlie Parker, Buddy Rich and Max Roach. “I never liked Elvis until I met Keith Richards,” Watts told Mojo, a British music magazine, in 1994. “The only rock ’n’ roll player I ever liked when I was young was Fats Domino.”Even the Stones’ celebrated longevity represented less of a life’s mission to Watts than a tedious job punctuated by brief moments of excitement. In the 1989 documentary “25×5: The Continuing Adventures of the Rolling Stones,” he summed up what was then a quarter-century on the clock with one of the world’s greatest rock ’n’ roll bands: “Work five years, and 20 years hanging around.”And yet Watts, who died on Tuesday at 80 as the Stones’ longest-serving member outside of Richards and Mick Jagger, was a vital part of the band’s sound, with a rhythmic approach that was as much a part of the Stones’ musical fingerprint as Richards’s sharp-edged guitar or Jagger’s sneering vocals.“To me, Charlie Watts was the secret essence of the whole thing,” Richards wrote in his 2010 memoir, “Life.”Watts’s backbeat gave early hits like “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” a steady testosterone drive, and later tracks like “Tumbling Dice” and “Beast of Burden” a languid strut.His distinctive drumming style — playing with a minimum of motion, often slightly behind the beat — gave the group’s sound a barely perceptible but inimitable rhythmic drag. Bill Wyman, the Stones’ longtime bassist, described that as a byproduct of the group’s unusual chemistry. While in most rock bands the guitarist follows the lead of the drummer, the Stones flipped that relationship — Richards, the guitarist, led the attack, with Watts (and all others) following along.“It’s probably a matter of personality,” Wyman was quoted as saying in Victor Bockris’s book “Keith Richards: The Biography.” “Keith is a very confident and stubborn player. Immediately you’ve got something like a hundredth-of-a-second delay between the guitar and Charlie’s lovely drumming, and that will change the sound completely. That’s why people find it hard to copy us.”Watts’s technique involved idiosyncratic use of the hi-hat, the sandwiched cymbals that rock drummers usually whomp with metronomic regularity. Watts tended to pull his right hand away on the upbeat, giving his left a clear path to the snare drum — lending the beat a strong but slightly off-kilter momentum.Even Watts was not sure where he picked up that quirk. He may have gotten it from his friend Jim Keltner, one of rock’s most well-traveled studio drummers. But the move became a Watts signature, and musicians marveled at his hi-hat choreography. “It’ll give you a heart arrhythmia if you look at it,” Richards wrote.To Watts, it was just an efficient way to land a hard hit on the snare.“I was never conscious I did it,” he said in a 2018 video interview. “I think the reason I did it is to get the hand out of the way to do a bigger backbeat.”Watts’s technique involved idiosyncratic use of the hi-hat. He tended to pull his right hand away on the upbeat, giving his left a clear path to the snare drum.Jeff Hochberg/Getty ImagesWatts’s musical style could be traced to mid-1950s London, the period just before rock took hold among the postwar generation that would dominate pop music a decade later. As a young man he was infatuated with jazz, often jamming with a bass-playing neighbor, Dave Green. In 1962, after stints in local jazz bands, he joined the guitarist Alexis Korner’s group Blues Incorporated, which was influenced by electric Chicago blues and R&B.“I went into rhythm and blues,” Watts recalled in a 2012 interview in The New Yorker. “When they asked me to play, I didn’t know what it was. I thought it meant Charlie Parker, played slow.”While Watts was in Blues Incorporated, Jagger, Richards and Brian Jones — the other founding guitar player of the Rolling Stones — all passed through, playing with the group. Watts joined the Stones at the start of 1963, and that June the band released its first single, a cover of Chuck Berry’s “Come On.”The Stones quickly took their place as leaders in rock’s British Invasion, the rowdy complement to the Beatles. But Watts never quite matched that profile. On the band’s early tours of the United States, he behaved like a middle-aged tourist, making pilgrimages to jazz clubs.As the lifestyle of the Rolling Stones became more extravagant, Watts grew more solitary and eccentric. He became an expert in Georgian silver; he collected vintage cars but never learned to drive. The journalist Stanley Booth, in his book “The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones,” about the glory and the depravity of the band’s 1969 American tour, described Watts as “the world’s politest man.”From left: Mick Jagger, Watts, Keith Richards, Bill Wyman and Ronnie Wood. While his bandmates cultivated an attitude of debauched insouciance, Watts kept a quiet public persona.Robin Platzer/Getty ImagesAt the same time, Watts often functioned as a kind of ironic mascot for the band. He was a focal point on the covers of “Between the Buttons” (1967) and “Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!” (1970), on which a smiling, leaping Watts posed with a donkey.When members of the Stones relocated to France in 1971 to escape onerous British tax rates, Richards’s rented villa in Villefranche-sur-Mer became the band’s hub of creativity and decadence. Watts and Wyman largely abstained, and as a result were absent for some of the ad hoc recording sessions that resulted in the band’s next album, “Exile on Main St.”“They weren’t very debauched for me,” Watts later said of the sessions. “I mean, I lived with Keith, but I used to sit and play and then I’d go to bed.”While around the Rolling Stones, he was invariably laconic, usually lingering in the background during public appearances. But later in life, as Watts indulged his love for jazz in the long stretches between Stones projects — his groups included Charlie Watts Orchestra and two with Green, the Charlie Watts Quintet and the ABC&D of Boogie Woogie — he opened up, giving occasional interviews.His go-to subjects were his love of jazz and how strange it was to be a member of the Rolling Stones.“I used to play with loads of bands, and the Stones were just another one,” he told The Observer, a British newspaper, in 2000. “I thought they’d last three months, then a year, then three years, then I stopped counting.” More

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      Charlie Watts, Bedrock Drummer for the Rolling Stones, Dies at 80

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      Mr. Watts, who had no taste for the life of a pop idol, was an unflashy but essential presence with the band and brought to it a swinging style.Charlie Watts, whose strong but unflashy drumming powered the Rolling Stones for over 50 years, died on Tuesday in London. He was 80.His death, in a hospital, was announced by his publicist, Bernard Doherty. No other details were immediately provided.The Rolling Stones announced earlier this month that Mr. Watts would not be a part of the band’s forthcoming “No Filter” tour of the United States after he had undergone an unspecified emergency medical procedure, which the band’s representatives said had been successful.Reserved, dignified and dapper, Mr. Watts was never as flamboyant, either onstage or off, as most of his rock-star peers, let alone the Stones’ lead singer, Mick Jagger. He was content to be one of the finest rock drummers of his generation, playing with a jazz-inflected swing that made the band’s titanic success possible. As the Stones guitarist Keith Richards said in his 2010 autobiography, “Life,” “Charlie Watts has always been the bed that I lie on musically.”While some rock drummers chased after volume and bombast, Mr. Watts defined his playing with subtlety, swing and a solid groove.“As much as Mick’s voice and Keith’s guitar, Charlie Watts’s snare sound is the Rolling Stones,” Bruce Springsteen wrote in an introduction to the 1991 edition of the drummer Max Weinberg’s book “The Big Beat.” “When Mick sings, ‘It’s only rock ’n’ roll but I like it,’ Charlie’s in back showing you why!”Charles Robert Watts was born in London on June 2, 1941. His mother, the former Lillian Charlotte Eaves, was a homemaker; his father, Charles Richard Watts, was in the Royal Air Force and, after World War II, became a truck driver for British Railways.Charlie’s first instrument was a banjo, but, baffled by the fingerings required to play it, he removed the neck and converted its body into a snare drum. He discovered jazz when he was 12 and soon became a fan of Miles Davis, Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus.By 1960, Mr. Watts had graduated from the Harrow School of Art and found work as a graphic artist for a London advertising agency. He wrote and illustrated “Ode to a Highflying Bird,” a children’s book about the jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker (although it was not published until 1965). In the evenings, he played drums with a variety of groups.Most of them were jazz combos, but he was also invited to join Alexis Korner’s raucous rhythm-and-blues collective, Blues Incorporated. Mr. Watts declined the invitation because he was leaving England to work as a graphic designer in Scandinavia, but he joined the group when he returned a few months later.The Rolling Stones in 1967. From left: Mr. Watts, Bill Wyman, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Brian Jones.Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis, via Getty ImagesThe newly formed Rolling Stones (then called the Rollin’ Stones) knew they needed a good drummer but could not afford Mr. Watts, who was already drawing a regular salary from his various gigs. “We starved ourselves to pay for him!” Mr. Richards wrote. “Literally. We went shoplifting to get Charlie Watts.”In early 1963, when they could finally guarantee five pounds a week, Mr. Watts joined the band, completing the canonical lineup of Mr. Richards, Mr. Jagger, the guitarist Brian Jones, the bassist Bill Wyman and the pianist Ian Stewart. He moved in with his bandmates and immersed himself in Chicago blues records.In the wake of the Beatles’ success, the Rolling Stones quickly climbed from being an electric-blues specialty act to one of the biggest bands in the British Invasion of the 1960s. While Mr. Richards’s guitar riff defined the band’s most famous single, the 1965 chart-topper “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” Mr. Watts’s drum pattern was just as essential. He was relentless on “Paint It Black” (No. 1 in 1966), supple on “Ruby Tuesday” (No. 1 in 1967) and the master of a funky groove on “Honky Tonk Women” (No. 1 in 1969).The Rolling Stones performing at Madison Square Garden in New York in November 1969.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesMr. Watts was ambivalent about the fame that he achieved as a member of the group that has often been called “the world’s greatest rock ’n’ roll band.” As he said in the 2003 book “According to the Rolling Stones”: “I loved playing with Keith and the band — I still do — but I wasn’t interested in being a pop idol sitting there with girls screaming. It’s not the world I come from. It’s not what I wanted to be, and I still think it’s silly.”As the Stones rolled through the years, Mr. Watts drew on his graphic-arts background to contribute to the design of the band’s stage sets, merchandise and album covers — he even contributed a comic strip to the back cover of their 1967 album “Between the Buttons.” While the Stones cultivated bad-boy images and indulged a collective appetite for debauchery, Mr. Watts mostly eschewed the sex and drugs. He clandestinely married Shirley Ann Shepherd, an art-school student and sculptor, in 1964.Mr. Watts appeared second from right on the cover of the Rolling Stones’ album “Between the Buttons,” released in 1967.He had the cover to himself when the Stones released this concert album in 1970.On tour, he would go back to his hotel room alone; every night, he sketched his lodgings. “I’ve drawn every bed I’ve slept in on tour since 1967,” he told Rolling Stone magazine in 1996. “It’s a fantastic nonbook.”Similarly, while other members of the Stones battled for control of the band, Mr. Watts largely stayed out of the internal politics. As he told The Weekend Australian in 2014, “I’m usually mumbling in the background.”Mr. Jones, who considered himself the leader, was fired from the Stones in 1969 (and found dead in his swimming pool soon after). Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards spent decades at loggerheads, sometimes making albums without being in the studio at the same time. Mr. Watts was happy to work with either, or both.There was one time, however, when Mr. Watts famously chafed at being treated like a hired hand rather than an equal member of the group. In 1984, Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards went out for a night of drinking in Amsterdam. When they returned to their hotel around 5 a.m., Mr. Jagger called Mr. Watts, waking him up, and asked, “Where’s my drummer?” Twenty minutes later, Mr. Watts showed up at Mr. Jagger’s room, coldly furious, but shaved and elegantly dressed in a Savile Row suit and tie.The Rolling Stones on tour in Atlantic City, N.J., in 1989: From left, Ron Wood, Mr. Jagger, Mr. Watts, Mr. Richards and Mr. Wyman.Paul Natkin/Getty Images“Never call me your drummer again,” he told Mr. Jagger, before grabbing him by the lapel and delivering a right hook. Mr. Richards said he narrowly saved Mr. Jagger from falling out a window into an Amsterdam canal.“It’s not something I’m proud of doing, and if I hadn’t been drinking I would never have done it,” Mr. Watts said in 2003. “The bottom line is, don’t annoy me.”At the time, Mr. Watts was in the early stages of a midlife crisis that manifested itself as a two-year bender. Just as the other Stones were settling into moderation in their 40s, he got hooked on amphetamines and heroin, nearly destroying his marriage. After passing out in a recording studio and breaking his ankle when he fell down a staircase, he quit, cold turkey.Mr. Watts and his wife had a daughter, Seraphina, in 1968 and, after spending some time in France as tax exiles, relocated to a farm in southwestern England. There they bred prizewinning Arabian horses, gradually expanding their stud farm to over 250 horses on 700 acres of land. Information on his survivors was not immediately available. Mr. Doherty, the publicist, said Mr. Watts had “passed away peacefully” in the hospital “surrounded by his family.”The Rolling Stones made 30 studio albums, nine of them topping the American charts and 10 topping the British charts. The band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1989 — a ceremony Mr. Watts skipped.Performing with the Rolling Stones in Berlin in 2018. In his later years, Mr. Watts and his wife lived on a farm in southwestern England, where they bred Arabian horses.Hayoung Jeon/EPA, via ShutterstockEventually the Stones settled into a cycle of releasing an album every four years, followed by an extremely lucrative world tour. (They grossed over a half-billion dollars between 2005 and 2007 on their “Bigger Bang” tour.)But Mr. Watts’s true love remained jazz, and he would fill the time between those tours with jazz groups of various sizes — the Charlie Watts Quintet, the Charlie Watts Tentet, the Charlie Watts Orchestra. Soon enough, though, he would be back on the road with the Stones, playing in sold-out arenas and sketching beds in empty hotel rooms.He was not slowed down by old age, or by a bout with throat cancer in 2004. In 2016, the drummer Lars Ulrich of Metallica told Billboard that since he wanted to keep playing into his 70s, he looked to Mr. Watts as his role model. “The only road map is Charlie Watts,” he said.Through it all, Mr. Watts kept on keeping time on a simple four-piece drum kit, anchoring the spectacle of the Rolling Stones.“I’ve always wanted to be a drummer,” he told Rolling Stone in 1996, adding that during arena rock shows, he imagined a more intimate setting. “I’ve always had this illusion of being in the Blue Note or Birdland with Charlie Parker in front of me. It didn’t sound like that, but that was the illusion I had.” More

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      Charlie Watts, de los Rolling Stones, murió a los 80 años

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      Watts no quería ser ídolo pop y nunca fue tan extravagante como la mayoría de sus colegas estrellas, pero con su poderosa y sutil batería marcó el ritmo de una de las grandes bandas de rock.Charlie Watts, cuya batería poderosa pero poco ostentosa marcó el ritmo a los Rolling Stones durante más de 50 años, murió el martes en Londres. Tenía 80 años.Su muerte, en un hospital, fue anunciada por su publicista, Bernard Doherty. No se facilitaron inmediatamente más detalles.Los Rolling Stones anunciaron a principios de este mes que Watts no formaría parte de la próxima gira “No Filter” de la banda por Estados Unidos después de que se sometió a un procedimiento médico de emergencia no especificado, que los representantes de la banda dijeron que había sido exitoso.Reservado, digno y elegante, Watts nunca fue tan extravagante, ni en el escenario ni fuera de él, como la mayoría de sus colegas estrellas del rock, y mucho menos como el cantante principal de los Stones, Mick Jagger; se contentaba con ser uno de los mejores bateristas de rock de su generación, tocando con un swing influenciado por el jazz que hizo posible el éxito titánico de la banda. Como dijo el guitarrista de los Stones, Keith Richards, en su autobiografía de 2010, Vida, “Charlie Watts siempre ha sido la cama en la que me acuesto musicalmente”.Mientras algunos bateristas de rock perseguían el volumen y la ampulosidad, Watts definió su forma de tocar con sutileza, swing y un sólido groove.“Tanto como la voz de Mick y la guitarra de Keith, el sonido de la caja de Charlie Watts es el de los Rolling Stones”, escribió Bruce Springsteen en una introducción a la edición de 1991 del libro del baterista Max Weinberg, The Big Beat. “Cuando Mick canta: ‘It’s only rock ’n’ roll but I like it’ [Es solo rock ‘n’ roll pero me gusta], ¡Charlie está detrás mostrándote por qué!”.Charles Robert Watts nació en Londres el 2 de junio de 1941. Su madre, Lillian Charlotte Eaves, era ama de casa; su padre, Charles Richard Watts, estuvo en la Real Fuerza Aérea y, tras la Segunda Guerra Mundial, se convirtió en conductor de camiones para los Ferrocarriles Británicos.El primer instrumento de Charlie fue un banjo, pero, perplejo por los movimientos de los dedos necesarios para tocarlo, le quitó el cuello y convirtió su cuerpo en una caja clara. Descubrió el jazz a los 12 años y pronto se hizo fan de Miles Davis, Duke Ellington y Charles Mingus.Para 1960, Watts se había graduado en la Harrow School of Art y encontró trabajo como artista gráfico en una agencia de publicidad de Londres. Escribió e ilustró Ode to a Highflying Bird, un libro infantil sobre el saxofonista de jazz Charlie Parker (aunque no fue publicado hasta 1965). Por las noches, tocaba la batería con diversos grupos.La mayoría eran combos de jazz, pero también fue invitado a unirse al estridente colectivo de rhythm-and-blues de Alexis Korner, Blues Incorporated. Watts declinó la invitación porque iba a dejar Inglaterra para trabajar como diseñador gráfico en Escandinavia, pero se unió al grupo cuando regresó unos meses después.Los recién formados Rolling Stones (entonces llamados Rollin’ Stones) sabían que necesitaban un buen baterista, pero no podían darse el lujo de pagarle a Watts, quien ya cobraba un sueldo regular de sus varios conciertos. “¡Nos morimos de hambre para pagarle!”, escribió Richards. “Literalmente. Anduvimos robando en tiendas para conseguir a Charlie Watts”.A principios de 1963, cuando por fin pudieron garantizar cinco libras a la semana, Watts se unió a la banda, completando la alineación canónica de Richards, Jagger, el guitarrista Brian Jones, el bajista Bill Wyman y el pianista Ian Stewart. Se instaló con sus compañeros de banda y se sumergió en los discos de blues de Chicago.Los Rolling Stones en 1967. De izquierda a derecha: Watts, Bill Wyman, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards y Brian Jones.Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis vía Getty ImagesTras el éxito de los Beatles, los Rolling Stones pasaron rápidamente de ser un grupo especializado en blues eléctrico a ser una de las bandas más importantes de la Invasión británica de la década de 1960. Aunque el riff de guitarra de Richards definió el sencillo más famoso de la banda, el éxito de las listas de 1965 “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”, el patrón de batería de Watts fue igual de esencial. Fue implacable en “Paint It, Black” (Número uno en 1966), flexible en “Ruby Tuesday” (Número uno en 1967) y el maestro del groove de cencerro con algo de funk en “Honky Tonk Women” (Número uno en 1969).Los Rolling Stones se presentaron en el escenario del Madison Square Garden de Nueva York en noviembre de 1969.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesWatts era ambivalente respecto a la fama que alcanzó como miembro del grupo que a menudo ha sido llamado “la mejor banda de rock’ n’ roll del mundo”. Como dijo en el libro de 2003 According to the Rolling Stones: “Me encantaba tocar con Keith y la banda —todavía lo hago— pero no me interesaba ser un ídolo del pop sentado allí, con chicas gritando. No es el mundo del que vengo. No es lo que quería ser, y sigo pensando que es tonto”.A lo largo de los años, Watts aprovechó su formación en artes gráficas para contribuir al diseño de las escenografías, la mercadería y las portadas de los álbumes de la banda; incluso aportó una tira cómica a la contraportada de Between the Buttons, álbum de 1967. Mientras los Stones cultivaban su imagen de chicos malos y se entregaban a un apetito colectivo de libertinaje, Watts evitaba el sexo y las drogas. Se casó clandestinamente con Shirley Anne Shepherd, una estudiante de arte y escultora, en 1964.Watts es el segundo desde la derecha en la portada del álbum de los Rolling Stones “Between the Buttons”, lanzado en 1967.Tuvo la portada para él solo cuando los Stones lanzaron este álbum de conciertos en 1970.Durante las giras, volvía solo a su habitación de hotel; cada noche, dibujaba su cuarto. “He dibujado todas las camas en las que he dormido durante las giras desde 1967”, dijo a la revista Rolling Stone en 1996. “Es un no-libro fantástico”.Del mismo modo, mientras otros miembros de los Stones luchaban por el control de la banda, Watts se mantuvo en gran medida al margen de la política interna. Como dijo a The Weekend Australian en 2014, “por lo general estoy murmurando en el fondo”.Jones, quien se consideraba el líder, fue despedido de los Stones en 1969 (y encontrado muerto en su piscina poco después). Jagger y Richards pasaron décadas en malos términos, a veces haciendo álbumes sin estar en el estudio al mismo tiempo. Watts estaba contento de trabajar con cualquiera de los dos, o con ambos.Sin embargo, hubo una ocasión en la que Watts se quejó de que lo trataran como un empleado en lugar de como un miembro del grupo en igualdad de condiciones. En 1984, Jagger y Richards salieron a beber una noche en Ámsterdam. Cuando regresaron a su hotel a eso de las 5 a. m., Jagger llamó a Watts, despertándolo, y le preguntó: “¿Dónde está mi baterista?”. Veinte minutos después, Watts apareció en la habitación de Jagger, fríamente furioso, pero afeitado y elegantemente vestido con un traje de Savile Row y corbata.Los Rolling Stones de gira por Atlantic City en 1989. De izquierda a derecha: Ron Wood, Jagger, Watts, Richards y Wyman.Paul Natkin/Getty Images“Nunca vuelvas a llamarme tu baterista”, le dijo a Jagger, antes de agarrarlo por la solapa y darle un gancho de derecha. Richards dijo que salvó por poco a Jagger de caer por una ventana a un canal de Ámsterdam.“No es algo de lo que esté orgulloso de haber hecho, y si no hubiera estado bebiendo nunca lo habría hecho”, dijo Watts en 2003. “La conclusión es: no me molestes”.En ese momento, Watts estaba en las primeras etapas de una crisis de mediana edad que se manifestó como una juerga de dos años. Justo cuando los otros Stones se estaban asentando en la moderación a sus 40 años, él se hizo adicto a las anfetaminas y la heroína, casi destruyendo su matrimonio. Tras desmayarse en un estudio de grabación y romperse el tobillo al caer por una escalera, lo dejó de golpe.Watts y su mujer tuvieron una hija, Seraphina, en 1968 y, tras pasar un tiempo en Francia como exiliados fiscales, se trasladaron a una granja en el suroeste de Inglaterra. Allí criaron caballos árabes ganadores de premios, ampliando gradualmente su criadero a más de 250 caballos en 280 hectáreas de tierra. No se dispuso inmediatamente de información sobre quienes le sobreviven. Su publicista, Doherty, dijo que Watts había “fallecido en paz” en el hospital, “rodeado de su familia”.Los Rolling Stones grabaron 30 álbumes de estudio, nueve de los cuales ocuparon los primeros puestos en las listas estadounidenses y diez en las británicas. La banda fue incluida en el Salón de la Fama del Rock & Roll en 1989, ceremonia a la que Watts no asistió.Charlie Watts con los Rolling Stones en Berlín en 2018Hayoung Jeon/EPA vía ShutterstockCon el tiempo, los Stones se establecieron en un ciclo de publicar un álbum cada cuatro años, seguido de una gira mundial extremadamente lucrativa. (Recaudaron más de 500 millones de dólares entre 2005 y 2007 con su gira “Bigger Bang”).Pero el verdadero amor de Watts seguía siendo el jazz, y llenaba el tiempo entre esas giras con grupos de jazz de diversos tamaños: el Charlie Watts Quintet, el Charlie Watts Tentet, la Charlie Watts Orchestra. Sin embargo, pronto volvería a la carretera con los Stones, tocando en estadios con las entradas agotadas y dibujando camas en habitaciones de hotel vacías.No lo frenó la vejez, ni un ataque de cáncer de garganta en 2004. En 2016, el baterista Lars Ulrich, de Metallica, le dijo a Billboard que, como quería seguir tocando hasta los 70 años, miraba a Watts como su modelo a seguir. “La única hoja de ruta es Charlie Watts”, dijo.A pesar de todo, Watts siguió manteniendo el tempo en una sencilla batería de cuatro piezas, anclando el espectáculo de los Rolling Stones.“Siempre quise ser baterista”, dijo a Rolling Stone en 1996, y añadió que durante los espectáculos de rock en estadios, imaginaba un ambiente más íntimo. “Siempre he tenido la ilusión de estar en el Blue Note o en Birdland con Charlie Parker delante. No sonaba así, pero esa era la ilusión que tenía”. More

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      Billie Eilish Earns a Third Week at No. 1, Narrowly

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      “Happier Than Ever” beat out Doja Cat’s “Planet Her” on the Billboard album chart by a margin of 1,000 equivalent album sales.After a tight weekly race, Billie Eilish holds at No. 1 on Billboard’s album chart for a third time, just ahead of releases from earlier this year by Doja Cat and Olivia Rodrigo.Eilish’s “Happier Than Ever,” a moderate streaming success that has been a huge hit on vinyl, had 50 million streams and sold 23,000 copies as a complete package in its most recent week, according to MRC Data, Billboard’s tracking arm. Altogether, “Happier Than Ever” was credited with the equivalent of 60,000 sales in the United States, the lowest weekly total for a No. 1 album since Taylor Swift’s “Evermore” notched 56,000 in the winter doldrums at the start of the year.Right behind Eilish, at 59,000 equivalent units — Billboard’s publicly reported numbers are rounded to the nearest thousand — is Doja Cat’s “Planet Her,” a steady seller for the last two months, which jumps three spots to No. 2. It had 78 million streams, the best of any album this week, but was overtaken by Eilish’s album sales, which are weighted more heavily in the formula that determines chart positions. (It takes 1,250 song streams on paid accounts or 3,750 on free, ad-supported ones to count the same as a single album sale.)Rodrigo’s “Sour,” which came out in May and has had a total of four weeks at No. 1, fell one spot to No. 3 in its 13th week out. The Kid Laroi’s “____ Love” held at No. 4, while Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” is in fifth place. Also this week, the country-pop duo Dan + Shay opened at No. 6 with their latest, “Good Things.” More

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      Even Billy Joel Mocked ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire.’ I Loved It.

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      As a 4-year-old, our critic couldn’t get enough of this manic 1989 hit, a crash course in U.S. history. Now the song lives on in parodies and memes.Mark PerniceAs a music critic, I’ve long been fascinated by people’s first favorite songs. Not songs made for children, or the kinds of songs we self-consciously broadcast our allegiance to after we’ve developed the filters of taste, personal identity and critical perspective. I’m talking about those early formative encounters with the vast world of popular culture — the initial, primeval jolt that this song is somehow more special than the rest.Where does that feeling come from? Does something about our first favorite song’s chord progression or production style predict what sort of music we grow up to like best? Are we all eternally doomed to be haunted by our original favorite song, forever chasing the unrepeatable rush of hearing it for the first time?I have perhaps felt a need to intellectualize all of this to avoid coming to terms with an embarrassing truth, which is that my first favorite song — yes, me, a person who grew up to be a professional music critic — is a song hated so vehemently by some people that its own Apple Music catalog description admits that it regularly shows up on “worst song” lists. It certainly seems to be one of the most parodied songs in pop music history. Even its own composer has an ambivalent-at-best relationship to its existence and has repeatedly compared its monotonous melody to a “dentist’s drill” and “a droning mosquito.”I am talking about Billy Joel and his notorious, wildly mystifying 1989 U.S.-history-lesson-on-Adderall “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” which as a 4-year-old I believed to be the greatest song ever recorded.Billy Joel released “We Didn’t Start the Fire” in 1989 and the song reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Over the decades, it has spawned many parodies and memes.Mike Slaughter/Toronto Star, via Getty ImagesWhat kind of 4-year-old loves this song? My vocabulary was still a work in progress, so I couldn’t have understood most, if any, of its hundred-plus cultural references: Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev/Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc. And yet I lived for the thrill of the song’s rousing introduction coming on the car radio — as it did often; “Fire” hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 around the time I turned 3. I loved its weird intensity: I didn’t know what Joel was saying but it all sounded so important! So deep was my love of “We Didn’t Start the Fire” that there is a camcorder video of me singing it into a Playskool karaoke machine, ad-libbing lyrics about my own personal cultural luminaries of the time, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.But that was then. How long has it been since you’ve sat down and really listened to that song? (I had to do it to write this article, so you have to do it to read it — I’m sorry, but those are the rules.) More than three decades later, it provokes several different variations on the philosophical question, “How did this get made?” Also: Is Billy Joel … rapping? Did he just rhyme “Malcolm X” with “British politician sex”? Does he always pronounce “Berlin” with an accent on the first syllable, or is he just stretching it to fit the syntax of the song? What’s up with the urgent, unbridled passion he summons to growl “Trouble in the Sueezzzz”?I can at least offer an answer for the “how did this get made?” part. Joel wrote it during a transitional moment in his life: It was around the time of his 40th birthday and he was feeling a little ruminative. One day, when he was working on what would become his 1989 album “Storm Front,” a young Sean Lennon stopped by the studio with another friend his age. They were bemoaning what a strange and overwhelming time they were growing up in: foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz. Joel suggested that he’d also come of age during an exhausting moment in history: birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again. But, in Joel’s telling, Lennon’s friend countered, “You were a kid in the ’50s. And everybody knows that nothing happened in the ’50s.”“Didn’t you hear of the Korean War or the Suez Canal Crisis?” Joel protested. (Again with the Suez.) As soon as these youngsters left, he began writing down bite-sized headlines from his youth, if only to prove his point. Eventually he realized he was writing a song.“The chain of news events and personalities came easily — mostly they just spilled out of my memory as fast as I could scribble them down,” Joel told his biographer Fred Schruers. (He also told Billboard magazine in 2009 that he was pretty sure it was the first and last time in his career that he wrote a song’s lyrics before its melody: “I think it shows, because it’s terrible musically.”)And yet, for a song so indelibly time-stamped and frozen in the year of its completion, “We Didn’t Start the Fire” has had a remarkably long afterlife. In the almost 32 years since its release, it has spawned countless parodies, from the niche (a friend recently told me that her former colleagues once performed a company-specific rendition they’d written for an office party) to the mainstream (a 2019 “Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” bit in which the stars of “Avengers: Endgame” attempted to summarize the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe). “The Office” and “Parks and Recreation” both featured “Fire” riffs. And this year, a history-based podcast named after the song debuted; hosts Katie Puckrik and Tom Fordyce devote an entire episode to each of the topics Joel mentions in the song. (Suffice to say, they’re going to be at it for a while.)There have also been the pandemic-era memes. “Today was like if ‘we didn’t start the fire’ was a day,” the TV writer Matt Warburton tweeted on March 12, 2020, and shortly after a therapist named Brittany Barkholtz went viral when she took him up on this challenge: “Schools close, Tom Hanks, trouble in the big banks, no vaccine, quarantine, no more toilet paper seen.” Plenty of sequels followed, tailored to the most surreal headlines of the day.When I listen to the song now, I can’t say I believe it to be objectively good — but there is something enjoyable about the over-the-top absurdity of it. (It is certainly one of my go-to karaoke standards.) More than anything, though, I am amazed that all the way back in 1989 Joel somehow managed to predict the precise, decontextualized mania that I feel when I’ve spent too long on the internet. At any given moment, I can log onto Twitter and experience a sequence of flat, oddly juxtaposed phrases being shouted at me with the intensity of a man growling “Trouble in the Sueezzzz.”But I also find the prescience of this three-decades-old song a little comforting. It can be easy to feel that we are currently living through the nadir of human history — and hey, maybe we are! But Joel also wrote this song to capture a certain kind of generational déjà vu that has existed since the dawn of civilization. As he reflected to his biographer: “Oh man, we all thought that too, when we were young: My God, what kind of world have we inherited?”Maybe “Buddy Holly, Ben-Hur, space monkey, mafia” is not the most poetic line that the Piano Man has ever penned. But it’s often hard for songwriters to predict just which of their creations will strike an enduring chord, let alone understand why. In a similar sense, you don’t necessarily get to choose which songs you fall in love with, especially when you’re young and impressionable, which is why pop music is one of the great cultural equalizers. I now spend most of my days trying to put into words exactly why I like certain songs, so “We Didn’t Start the Fire” makes me nostalgic for a simpler time when I enjoyed things in a way that defied further explanation. I heard the song and was blown away. What else do I have to say? More

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      What’s on TV This Week: Lorde on Late Night and ‘American Horror Story’

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      The musician Lorde has a residency on CBS’s “Late Late Show With James Corden.” And a new season of “American Horror Story” begins on FX.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Aug. 23-29. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE LATE LATE SHOW WITH JAMES CORDEN 12:37 a.m. (Tuesday morning) on CBS. The musician Lorde released a new album, “Solar Power,” Aug. 20. This week, she’ll have a four-night residency on James Corden’s late-night show. Monday night’s broadcast will pair her with the actor Jason Momoa, who will appear as a guest to promote a new Netflix action movie, “Sweet Girl,” which also came out last week.THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG (2013) 5 p.m. on AMC. In November, Disney is slated to debut Peter Jackson’s latest project, “The Beatles: Get Back,” a documentary about the making of the Beatles’s final album. The project was originally intended to be a feature-length movie that would have been released in theaters, but it was recently announced that the film would be expanded into a three-part TV series. That Jackson decided to go long is no surprise: The combined running time of his “Lord of the Rings” trilogy of the early 2000s was over 9 hours, and his follow-up trilogy, “The Hobbit,” clocked in at just under 8 hours. If you’re looking to pass some (or more than some) time on Monday, AMC is showing the whole “Hobbit” trilogy in order, beginning with “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” (2012) at 1 p.m. and ending with “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies” (2014) at 8:45 p.m. All three movies follow Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), the hero of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1937 children’s novel of the same name, whose adventures here reach a level of maximalism that rivals that of a child’s imagination.TuesdayFIRST REFORMED (2018) 4:15 p.m. on Showtime 2. The screenwriter and director Paul Schrader is set to return to theaters next month with his newest movie, “The Card Counter,” a drama about a troubled gambler. Schrader was last in theaters in 2018, when he released “First Reformed,” a drama about a troubled Protestant minister. That pastor is Rev. Ernst Toller, played by Ethan Hawke, who oversees a small church in upstate New York. His story intersects with that of a young woman named Mary (Amanda Seyfried). The movie touches on issues of faith, money and climate disaster, and is, A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The New York Times, “an epiphany.”WednesdayAMERICAN HORROR STORY: DOUBLE FEATURE 10 p.m. on FX. This long running horror anthology series from the “Glee” creators Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk had a year off in 2020 because of the pandemic, but it will make up for that this year with its new season, “Double Feature,” which will tell two parallel stories. One is about a family that goes on a winter retreat by the sea; the other shows horrific events in drier environs.CMT GIANTS: CHARLEY PRIDE 9 p.m. on CMT. The singer Charley Pride, who broke ground as country music’s first Black superstar, died from complications of Covid-19 in December. He was 86. This 90-minute special will honor Pride’s career and the impact that he had on country music. It brings together performances from other country stars — including Darius Rucker and Reba McEntire — and archival interviews with Pride himself.ThursdayFRENCH EXIT (2020) 9 p.m. on Starz. Michelle Pfeiffer plays an over-the-top New York socialite who was recently widowed in this comedy-drama, adapted from Patrick deWitt’s 2018 novel of the same name. After learning that her once-considerable bank account has dried up, Pfeiffer’s character, Frances, moves to Paris to live at a friend’s cramped apartment with her son, Malcolm (Lucas Hedges). The movie is “hampered by clockwork quirkiness and disaffected dialogue,” Jeannette Catsoulis wrote in her review for The Times. But, she added, “Pfeiffer is flat-out fabulous here, at once chilly and poignant.”FridayAnthony Mackie, center left, and Bryan Cranston, center right, in “All the Way.”Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/HBOALL THE WAY (2016) 4:35 p.m. on HBO. Bryan Cranston won a Tony Award for his performance as President Lyndon B. Johnson in the stage version of the Robert Schenkkan play “All the Way.” This television adaptation, which also includes performances from Bradley Whitford, Anthony Mackie and Frank Langella, hews to the play; it, too, follows Johnson’s first year in office. In his review for The Times, Neil Genzlinger wrote that, while “nothing beats witnessing this kind of larger-than-life portrayal onstage,” Cranston’s performance in the TV adaptation is still powerful. “In his hands,” Genzlinger wrote, “this accidental president comes across as an amazing bundle of contradictions, someone who seems at once too vulgar for the job and just right for it.”SaturdayTHE DIRTY DOZEN (1967) 5:15 p.m. on TCM. When this Robert Aldrich war movie debuted in 1967, The Times’s Bosley Crowther called it a “studied indulgence of sadism that is morbid and disgusting beyond words.” Nevertheless — or, perhaps, accordingly — it was a hit at the box office. The story, based on the novel of the same name by E.M. Nathanson, follows a group of criminals who are given an extraordinarily dangerous mission during World War II, and are promised pardons if they succeed. The ensemble cast includes Charles Bronson, Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine and Donald Sutherland.SundayThe World Trade Center, as seen in “9/11: One Day in America.”Carol M. Highsmith/Library of Congress9/11: ONE DAY IN AMERICA 9 P.M. on National Geographic. Leading up to the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, this six-part, seven-hour documentary series revisits the events of that day and their immediate aftermath. It includes interviews with firefighters, emergency medical workers and others who experienced the wreckage firsthand. More

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      Don Everly, Older Brother in Groundbreaking Rock Duo, Dies at 84

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      The Everly Brothers, Don and Phil, were the most successful rock act to emerge from Nashville in the 1950s, rivaling Elvis Presley for radio airplay. NASHVILLE — Don Everly, the elder of the two Everly Brothers, the groundbreaking duo whose fusion of Appalachian harmonies and a tighter, cleaner version of big-beat rock ’n’ roll made them harbingers of both folk-rock and country-rock, died on Saturday at his home here. He was 84. His death was confirmed by his family, which did not provide the cause. The most successful rock ’n’ roll act to emerge from Nashville in the 1950s, Mr. Everly and his brother, Phil, who died in 2014, once rivaled Elvis Presley and Pat Boone for airplay, placing an average of one single in the pop Top 10 every four months from 1957 to 1961.On the strength of ardent two-minute teenage dramas like “Wake Up Little Susie” and “Cathy’s Clown,” the duo all but single-handedly redefined what, stylistically and thematically, qualified as commercially viable music for the Nashville of their day. In the process they influenced generations of hitmakers, from British Invasion bands like the Beatles and the Hollies to the folk-rock duo Simon and Garfunkel and the Southern California country-rock band the Eagles.In 1975 Linda Ronstadt had a Top 10 pop single with a declamatory version of the Everlys’ 1960 hit “When Will I Be Loved.” Alternative-country forebears like Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris were likewise among the scores of popular musicians inspired by the duo’s enthralling mix of country and rhythm and blues.Paul Simon, in an email interview with The Times the morning after Phil Everly’s death, wrote: “Phil and Don were the most beautiful sounding duo I ever heard. Both voices pristine and soulful. The Everlys were there at the crossroads of country and R&B. They witnessed and were part of the birth of rock ‘n’ roll.”“Bye Bye Love,” with its tight harmonies, bluesy overtones and twanging rockabilly guitar, epitomized the brothers’ crossover approach, spending four weeks at No. 2 on the Billboard pop chart in 1957. It also reached the top spot on the country chart and the fifth spot on the R&B chart.Art Garfunkel and Don Everly performed in Hyde Park, London, in 2004. Mr. Everly recorded several solo albums.Jo Hale/Getty ImagesAs with many of their early recordings, including the No. 1 pop hits “Bird Dog” and “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” “Bye Bye Love” was written by the husband-and-wife team of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant and featured backing from Nashville’s finest session musicians.Both brothers played acoustic guitar, with Don being regarded as a rhythmic innovator, but it was their intimate vocal blend that gave their records a distinctive and enduring quality. Don, who had the lower of the two voices, typically sang lead, with Phil singing a slightly higher but uncommonly close harmony part.“It’s almost like we could read each other’s minds when we sang,” Mr. Everly told The Los Angeles Times shortly after his brother’s death.The warmth of their vocals notwithstanding, the brothers’ relationship grew increasingly fraught as their career progressed. Their radio hits became scarcer as the ’60s wore on, and both men struggled with addiction. Don was hospitalized after taking an overdose of sleeping pills while the pair were on tour in Europe in 1962.A decade later, after nearly 20 years on the road together, their longstanding tensions came to a head. Phil smashed his guitar and stormed offstage during a performance at Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, Calif., in 1973, leaving Don to finish the set and announce the duo’s breakup.“The Everly Brothers died 10 years ago,” he told the audience, marking the end of an era.Isaac Donald Everly was born on Feb. 1, 1937, in Brownie, Ky., not quite two years before his brother. Their mother, Margaret, and their father, Ike, a former coal miner, performed country music throughout the South and the Midwest before moving the family to Shenandoah, Iowa, in 1944. Shortly after their arrival there, “Little Donnie” and “Baby Boy Phil,” then ages 8 and 6, made their professional debut on a local radio station, KMA.The family went on to perform on radio in Indiana and Tennessee before settling in Nashville in 1955, when the Everly brothers, now in their teens, were hired as songwriters by the publishing company Acuff-Rose. Two years later Wesley Rose of Acuff-Rose would help them secure a recording contract with Cadence Records, an independent label in New York, with which they had their initial success as artists.Phil and Don Everly at the 10th annual Everly Brothers Homecoming concert in Central City, Ky., in 1997. The brothers had a fraught relationship and the act broke up in 1973, but they later reunited.Suzanne Feliciano/Messenger-Inquirer, via Associated PressDon’s first break as a writer came with “Thou Shalt Not Steal,” a Top 20 country hit for Kitty Wells in 1954, as well as with songs recorded by Anita Carter and Justin Tubb. He also wrote, among other Everly Brothers hits, “(’Til) I Kissed You,” which reached the pop Top 10 in 1959, and “So Sad (To Watch Good Love Go Bad),” which did the same the next year. “Cathy’s Clown,” which he wrote with Phil, spent five weeks at the top of the pop chart in 1960.That record was the pair’s first hit for Warner Bros., which signed them after they left Cadence over a dispute about royalty payments in 1960. They moved from Nashville to Southern California the next year.Their subsequent lack of success in the United States — they continued to do well in England — could be attributed to any of a number of factors: the brothers’ simultaneous enlistment in the Marine Corps Reserve in 1961; their lack of access to material from the Bryants after their split with Cadence and Acuff-Rose; the meteoric rise of the Beatles, even though their harmonies on breakthrough hits like “Please Please Me” were modeled directly on those of the Everlys.They nevertheless continued to tour and record, releasing a series of influential albums for Warner Bros., notably “Roots,” a concept album that reckoned with the duo’s legacy and caught them up with the country-rock movement to which they gave shape.Don also released a self-titled album on the Ode label in 1970 and made two more solo albums, “Sunset Towers” on Ode and “Brother Juke Box” on Hickory, after the Everlys split up.In 1983 he and his brother reunited for a concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London, a show that was filmed for a documentary. The next year they recorded “EB84,” a studio album produced by the Welsh singer-guitarist Dave Edmunds. That project included the minor hit “On the Wings of a Nightingale,” written for the Everlys by Paul McCartney.The duo released two more studio albums before the end of the decade. They were inducted as members of the inaugural class of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1986.They also received a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement in 1997 and were enshrined in the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2001.In 2003 they toured with Simon and Garfunkel, and in 2010 they appeared on an album by Don’s son, Edan Everly.In addition to his son, survivors include his wife, Adela Garza; three daughters, Venetia, Stacy and Erin; his mother, Margaret Everly, and six grandchildren.In an interview with The Los Angeles Times in 2014, Mr. Everly acknowledged his decades of conflict with his brother but recalled their intimate musical communion with pride.“When Phil and I hit that one spot where I call it ‘The Everly Brothers,’” he said, “I don’t know where it is, ’cause it’s not me and it’s not him; it’s the two of us together.” More

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      Lorde cumplió con su tarea. Ahora vive

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      Fue un fenómeno adolescente por el gran éxito de ‘Royals’ y un álbum que fue aclamado por la crítica. Pero ahora, con 24 años, la música neozelandesa no persigue la fama masiva. Sigue la ruta del sol.Lorde grabó ‘Solar Power’, su tercer álbum, después de tomarse una pausa en la que simplemente se enfocó en vivir.Justin J Wee para The New York TimesPuede ser tentador, tras pasar mucho tiempo con Lorde, preguntarse qué le pasa.Es decir, ¿dónde esconde exactamente los puntos negativos, los defectos, las partes poco favorecedoras de cualquier personalidad que se asoman de manera incómoda, especialmente después de vivir una trayectoria tan extraña como la suya? Nadie que haya sido famosa y agasajada desde los 16 años, podría estar tan bien adaptada. ¿O sí?Ni siquiera se trata de que la cantante y compositora cuyo nombre de pila es Ella Yelich-O’Connor, ahora de 24 años, se presente como alguien especialmente perfecta, segura de sí misma o inmune a las críticas. No es que no tenga dudas, inseguridades, ataques de vanidad, impaciencia o que vea cosas en su celular sin pensar demasiado.Pero Lorde —la humana y la artista— suele ir un paso adelante, de forma intuitiva y emocional, tras haber pensado en su realidad desde la mayoría de los ángulos: cómo le pareció algo, cómo podría expresarlo, cómo será recibido y cómo podría procesar la forma en que fue interpretada. Ese es un conjunto de habilidades que muchas personas que llegan al estrellato como ella —una adolescente brillante de un pueblo pequeño con un éxito arrollador— pueden fingir bastante bien. Pero pocos lo hacen de forma tan convincente.“Sé lo suficiente como para saber que las personas en mi posición son símbolos y arquetipos y que el lugar donde nos encontramos con la gente, en el contexto de la cultura y la actualidad, está fuera de nuestro control, así que intento no preocuparme demasiado”, comentó Lorde recientemente, con la consideración y el zen que la caracterizan, antes del lanzamiento de su tercer álbum.“Es una posición muy divertida”, reconoció. “Es absurdo”.Pero es ese sentido de la perspectiva y la autoconciencia lo que ha hecho que Lorde siga adelante en una industria a menudo implacable. De hecho, grabó un álbum entero sobre la búsqueda del equilibrio.Solar Power, que saldrá a la venta el 20 de agosto, es lo que ocurre cuando una estrella del pop burla al sistema, se desvía de sus extrañas exigencias, deja de intentar hacer éxitos y decide susurrar a sus seguidores más devotos cómo lo logró. Para Lorde, el truco fue tener una vida —una vida real— lejos de todo lo demás. Y también tirar su celular al mar. (Un terapeuta tampoco le vino mal).Tras el reinado de “Royals”, su primer sencillo —que estuvo nueve semanas en el puesto número uno y ganó dos premios Grammy— y su debut con el álbum Pure Heroine de 2013, que fue disco de platino en tres oportunidades debido a sus ventas, Lorde tardó cuatro años en lanzar otro material. En comparación, Melodrama, su segundo disco que fue lanzado en 2017, palideció a nivel comercial pero reajustó las expectativas desmesuradas. Además, la estableció como un fenómeno convertido en autora, lo que le valió buenas críticas y otra nominación a los premios Grammy, esta vez en la categoría de álbum del año. Después, reservó cuatro años para dedicarse a ella.En el camino, Lorde se convirtió en un modelo para la industria, una suerte de cantautora diferente y precoz que construye mundos y abrió caminos para una generación que incluye a Halsey, Billie Eilish y Olivia Rodrigo. Pero Lorde no se quedó a mirar lo que pasaba.“Volví a vivir mi vida”, dijo sobre su pausa reciente, identificándose como “una flor de invernadero, una persona delicada y una introvertida empedernida”, agotada tras más de un año de promoción y gira del álbum Melodrama. “Es difícil que la gente lo entienda”.“Últimamente lo que más me preguntan es: ‘¿Qué has estado haciendo?’”, añadió. “Yo digo: ‘Oh, no, no, no: esto es un descanso de mi vida’. Vuelvo y hago estas cosas porque creo en el álbum”.Lorde juró que no volvería a alcanzar las alturas de su gran éxito, “Royals”. “¿Te imaginas?”, dijo. “No me hago ilusiones. Aquello fue un momento excepcional en la vida”.Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic, via Getty ImagesIncluso ahora, con las obligaciones generadas por Solar Power, Lorde programó unas vacaciones de una semana en la playa con amigos, y aprovechó una entrevista programada como una ocasión para realizar varias tareas, caminando para comprar una bolsa llena de buen queso para el viaje.Sin embargo, durante la mayor parte de los últimos cuatro años Lorde ha vivido como Ella entre la vegetación y el esplendor de los muelles donde creció, en Auckland, Nueva Zelanda, y sus alrededores, trabajando para descubrir sus límites.Una amiga de las amigas que conoció en ese lugar, Francesca Hopkins, dijo: “Todo ese asunto de Lorde no se menciona ni se ha comentado realmente. Probablemente pueda contar con una mano la cantidad de veces que se ha pronunciado la palabra ‘Lorde’”.La cantante también comenzó el proceso de abordar su adicción a internet, inspirada en libros como Pilgrim at Tinker Creek de Annie Dillard y Cómo no hacer nada de Jenny Odell.“Veía que mi tiempo de pantalla llegaba como a 11 horas y sabía que era solo por mirar el Daily Mail”, dijo Lorde. “Recuerdo que me senté en la cama y me di cuenta de que podía llegar al final de mi vida y haber hecho esto todos los días. Y depende de mí elegir, ahora mismo. Así que simplemente elegí”.Al final hizo falta más que eso: el teléfono de Lorde, configurado en escala de grises, ahora no tiene navegador de Internet; no puede entrar en sus aplicaciones de redes sociales (otros manejan las contraseñas); y un amigo codificador incluso hizo que YouTube fuera inaccesible en su computadora portátil. “No he hecho un disco de Jack Antonoff”, dijo la cantante. “He hecho un disco de Lorde y él me ha ayudado a hacerlo y me ha delegado muchas tareas de producción y los arreglos”.Justin J Wee for para New York TimesEn cambio cocinó, horneó, paseó al perro, nadó, cultivó el jardín —en otras palabras, se relajó— mientras esperaba a ver “si ocurría algo más sobre lo que valiera la pena escribir”. Pero resultó que ya lo había hecho, especialmente cuando se entretejía con su existencia actual.En “The Path”, la deslumbrante canción con que inicia Solar Power y que escribió como una especie de declaración de tesis para el álbum, Lorde se describe como “criada en la hierba alta”, pero también como una “adolescente millonaria que tiene pesadillas en las que aparecen las luces de las cámaras”. “Si buscas una salvadora, esa no soy yo”, advierte. No obstante ofrece una alternativa embriagadora: el sol.“Estoy consciente de cómo me mira la gente”, dice Lorde. “Puedo sentir la enorme cantidad de amor y devoción que las personas sienten por mí —y por la gente que está en mi posición— y enseguida quise decir: ‘Yo no soy la que merece tu devoción. Básicamente, soy como tú’”.Y agregó: “Mis chicos —mi comunidad— esperan trascendencia espiritual de mi parte, de estas obras. ‘¡Necesito que Lorde vuelva y me diga cómo sentirme, que me diga cómo procesar este periodo de mi vida!’. Y yo, lo que pienso es: ‘No sé si puedo ayudarte con eso. Pero lo que sí sé es que, si todos miramos hacia arriba, ¡eso nos ayudará mucho!’”.Jugando con el papel de estrella del pop como mesías, abrazó el personaje de líder de la secta en la canción, haciendo proselitismo sobre el mundo natural.Pero Lorde también sabe que estos consejos proceden de un lugar privilegiado, ya que coinciden con algunos de los principios más obvios de la cultura moderna del bienestar (que también critica en el álbum): salir a la calle. Pasar tiempo con la familia. Apagar el teléfono. Salir con los amigos.Lo que evita que Solar Power resulte didáctico o excesivamente simplificado son las letras en las que satiriza sus propias experiencias, basándose en detalles chismosos y rebajando las ideas demasiado elevadas con humor, como cuando interrumpe un frágil tratado sobre el envejecimiento con la frase: “Tal vez solo estoy… drogada en el salón de uñas”.‘Melodrama’ consagró a Lorde como un fenómeno musical que logró la transición para convertirse en cantautora.Chad Batka para The New York TimesLa artista, que antes cantaba con desprecio y desde la distancia sobre la cultura de las celebridades, ahora señala su “baúl lleno de ropa de Simone y Céline” y el tiempo que ha pasado en hoteles, en la Gala del Met, en los Grammy y en aviones. “Tengo cientos de vestidos, tengo cuadros enmarcados”, canta en “The Man With the Axe”. “Y una garganta que se llena de pánico cada día de festival/ que se deshace en honor a la princesa de Noruega”.Sin embargo, alejarse de todo eso, aclara Lorde, simplemente se siente mejor. “Adiós a todas las botellas, a todos los modelos, adiós a los niños que hacen fila para comprar los nuevos productos de Supreme”, añade en “California”, cerrando el ciclo de vuelta a su ethos de Pure Heroine.Lorde sabía que necesitaba un sonido soberbiamente fuera de lo común que se ajustara a su tema y a su sentido de la desconexión. Encontró la estética “twinkly” para Solar Power combinando influencias de los años 60 y 70, como los Mamas and the Papas y los Bee Gees, con artistas de su juventud, a menudo denostados, que representaban lo que ella llamaba “optimismo playero de fin de siglo”: All Saints, S Club 7, Natalie Imbruglia, Nelly Furtado.Alguna vez fiel a la electrónica y alérgica a las guitarras, Lorde solo emplea una caja de ritmos 808 en todo el álbum, en una sección que pretende ser un retroceso autorreferencial. “Definitivamente no hay un exitazo”, declaró sobre sus perspectivas comerciales con una carcajada. “Es lógico que no sea un exitazo, porque ni siquiera sé realmente qué son los exitazos ahora”.Juró no volver a alcanzar las alturas de “Royals”. “Es una causa perdida”, comentó. “¿Te imaginas? No me hago ilusiones. Aquello fue un momento excepcional en la vida”.Sin embargo, ha encontrado un aliado en la experimentación y el agnosticismo sobre Billboard en el productor y compositor Jack Antonoff, con quien también escribió y produjo Melodrama.“Grabas tu primer álbum con una alegría increíble porque no existe nada”, explicó Antonoff. Pero recordó la inminente presión que precedió a la segunda grabación de Lorde, por lo que tuvieron que aislarse para evitar el bullicio, lo que dio lugar a la intimidad que se percibe en Melodrama.Solar Power, dijo, surgió de una renovada sensación de libertad. “El tercer álbum es un gran lugar para hacerlo, para despertar y decir: ‘Realmente amo este trabajo y tengo mucha suerte de estar aquí’. Simplemente vuelves a conectarte con lo que haces. Hubo mucho de eso”.Lorde estuvo de acuerdo. “Sentí que podía relajarme y presumir un poco”, concluyó.“Últimamente la pregunta que más me hacen es: ‘¿Qué has estado haciendo?’”, dijo Lorde. “Yo digo: ‘Oh, no, no, no: esto es un descanso de mi vida’. Vuelvo y hago estas cosas porque creo en el álbum”.Justin J Wee para The New York TimesSin embargo, es en el contexto de Antonoff donde Lorde expresó lo más parecido a la angustia que pudo experimentar. En concreto, se mostró en desacuerdo con un creciente contingente de fans y críticos que meten en el mismo saco el extenso trabajo del productor con otras artistas pop femeninas —Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey y Clairo, entre ellas—, reduciendo a Lorde a una yegua más en lo que ella denomina, con algo de filo y más humor, “el establo de Jack”.“No he hecho un disco de Jack Antonoff”, dijo la cantante. “He hecho un disco de Lorde y él me ha ayudado a hacerlo y me ha delegado muchas tareas de producción y los arreglos. Jack estaría de acuerdo con esto. Darle esa cantidad de crédito es francamente insultante”. Ella calificó la narración —que también ha incluido especulaciones sobre la vida romántica y sexual de la pareja— de “retro” y “sexista”.“Sé que hay ciertas señas de identidad de lo que hace Jack y algunas de esas cosas me encantan y otras no me gustan. Y las saco a golpes del trabajo que hacemos juntos”, añadió. “Lo digo con mucho amor y cariño, pero me siento como si estuviéramos arreglando una casa juntos y él dijera: ‘¡Mira esta servilleta que he diseñado en forma de dos cisnes! ¡Mira este conjunto de cestas tejidas!’. Y yo le digo: ‘Genial, una por habitación’”.En un ensayo reciente para una actuación en un programa de televisión nocturno, Lorde estaba claramente al mando y atenta a los detalles. Al llegar, Antonoff advirtió que su forma de tocar la guitarra sería “bastante floja”.“¿Qué tan floja?”, respondió Lorde. Más tarde, hizo una pausa al cantar para escuchar con más atención el arreglo. “Lo único que haría sería clavarte un poco más en la grabación”, ofreció Lorde, con la franqueza que otorga una sociedad experimentada.“¡Pero bonito!”, añadió.“Nadie que esté en un trabajo como este tiene una relación como la que tengo con Jack”, dijo Lorde después. “Él es como un compañero para mí. Tenemos una relación. No es una relación romántica, pero llevamos siete años en ella, y es algo realmente único, así que no recrimino que la gente no pueda entenderlo”.Trató de mantener la misma mentalidad para el lanzamiento de Solar Power, dijo, volviendo a la idea de que estaba “muy, muy reconciliada y a gusto con cosas como la percepción del público. Simplemente, hoy en día no me perturba”.“Casi valoro que la gente no lo entienda al principio”, dijo sobre el álbum. “Me deprime un poco cuando sale un álbum y lo reviso muy rápido y miro Genius y leo todas las letras en tres minutos y me doy cuenta de que sé exactamente lo que es y no va a crecer”.“Creo que todavía estoy dando algo que es realmente digerible”, añadió Lorde con una sonrisa de satisfacción, “pero me gusta confundir. Me gusta ser eso para la gente”.Joe Coscarelli es reportero cultural especializado en música pop. Su trabajo busca revelar las maneras en las que se descubren, crean y comercializan las canciones de éxito y los nuevos artistas. Antes trabajó en la revista New York y The Village Voice. @joecoscarelli More