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      Taylor Hawkins, Foo Fighters’ Drummer, Dies at 50

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      Hard-hitting and charismatic, he was direct about his hopes for the group’s future, even after two decades. “I want to be the biggest band in the world,” he said.Taylor Hawkins, the hard-hitting, charismatic drummer for Foo Fighters, the enduring Rock & Roll Hall of Fame band that has won 12 Grammys and released seven platinum albums, has died at 50.A statement posted to the band’s social media late Friday and sent by its representative confirmed the death. According to the attorney general’s office of Colombia, Mr. Hawkins had been staying in a hotel in northern Bogotá, where the band had been scheduled to play a show Friday night. The office said that preliminary tests showed Mr. Hawkins had several substances in his system, including opioids, marijuana and benzodiazepines; the cause of death was still under investigation.pic.twitter.com/ffPHhUKRT4— Foo Fighters (@foofighters) March 26, 2022
      Recognizable for his flailing limbs, surfer’s good looks and wide, childlike grin, Mr. Hawkins became a member of the band led by Dave Grohl for its third album, “There Is Nothing Left to Lose,” released in 1999, and played on the group’s subsequent seven albums. He drew on two distinct styles: the fundamentals of Roger Taylor from Queen and the intricacy of Stewart Copeland from the Police. He added the muscle of punk and metal, the precision of drum machines and a gift for explosive momentum.Foo Fighters’ most recent album, “Medicine at Midnight,” arrived last year as the group was celebrating its 25th anniversary, and in an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Hawkins was direct about his hopes for its future. “I want to be the biggest band in the world,” he said.Mr. Hawkins was born in Fort Worth on Feb. 17, 1972, and raised in Southern California. He started to play drums at age 10, and said that his mother gave him the confidence to dream big: “When I first got drums, she was the one who would watch me play. She was a big supporter and told me I’d make it,” he said in an interview last year.Attending a Queen show in 1982 confirmed that music was his passion. “After that concert, I don’t think I slept for three days,” he said in a 2021 interview with the metal magazine Kerrang. “It changed everything, and I was never the same because of it. It was the beginning of my obsession with rock ’n’ roll, and I knew that I wanted to be in a huge rock band.”After Mr. Hawkins played in a local California band called Sylvia and backing the Canadian rock vocalist Sass Jordan, his first mainstream break came in 1995, when he joined Alanis Morissette’s band as she toured behind her blockbuster album “Jagged Little Pill.” (He appeared in the video for her breakout hit “You Oughta Know,” flipping his blond mane behind the drum kit.)Foo Fighters in performance in New York last year.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesMr. Grohl, then still primarily known for his role as the drummer for Nirvana, recalled meeting Mr. Hawkins backstage at a radio station concert in the 1990s and feeling an immediate kinship.“I was like, ‘Wow, you’re either my twin or my spirit animal or my best friend,’” Mr. Grohl said in an interview last year. “When it was time to look for a drummer, I kind of wished that he would do it, but I didn’t imagine he would leave Alanis Morissette, because at the time she was the biggest artist in the world.”But when Mr. Grohl called him later looking for a drummer, he recalled, Mr. Hawkins said, “I’m your guy.”“I think it had more to do with our personal relationship than anything musical,” he added. “To be honest, it still does. Our musical relationship — the foundation of that is our friendship, and that’s why when we jump up onstage and play, we’re so connected, because we’re like best friends.”Mr. Grohl, Foo Fighters’ lead singer and one of its songwriters and guitarists, had played drums on the band’s first album in 1995, and he took over again for its second, “The Colour and the Shape,” when a replacement failed to stick. In joining the band, Mr. Hawkins was charged with assuming the seat of one of contemporary rock’s most distinct, powerful and beloved drummers. His colorful flair and good humor helped him carve out his own place in the band, and he adapted to Mr. Grohl’s creative process: “He writes in rhythms, not only in melodies but in rhythms, so I have to meet him there,” Mr. Hawkins said.Recorded in a Virginia basement, far from the prying eyes of a record label, “There Is Nothing Left to Lose” went on to win the band’s first Grammy, for best rock album.Foo Fighters were scheduled to perform at this year’s Grammys, to be held on April 3. “Medicine at Midnight” is nominated for three awards, including best rock performance (for the song “Making a Fire”), best rock song (“Waiting on a War”) and best rock album.Foo Fighters were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame last year, recognized for their “rock authenticity with infectious hooks, in-your-face guitar riffs, monster drums and boundless energy.” At the induction ceremony, Mr. Hawkins told Mr. Grohl, “Thank you for letting me be in your band.”Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters spoke when the group was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland in October. Paul McCartney, who gave the induction speech, was behind Mr. Grohl, and Mr. Hawklns was next to Mr. McCartney.David Richard/Associated PressOn songs like “Times Like These,” the 2003 hit that has become an anthem of perseverance and renewal, Mr. Hawkins is a hard-driving force, punctuating the verses with rat-a-tat fills. On “Best of You,” another fist-pumping, heartstring-tugging signature song, his snare pounds provide the chorus’s steadily building drama. And on “Rope,” a single from the band’s 2011 album, “Wasting Light,” Mr. Hawkins’s precisely syncopated work on the verses gives way to eruptions of fills.In addition to his drumming, Mr. Hawkins went on to contribute as a songwriter to Foo Fighters albums, even singing lead vocals on occasion. Beginning in 2006, he released three albums with a side project, the cheekily named Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders. He also played in a cover band called Chevy Metal and a prog-rock band called the Birds of Satan. Last year he teamed with the guitarist Dave Navarro and the bassist Chris Chaney to form a band called NHC; the group’s debut EP, “Intakes & Outtakes,” was released in February.On recent Foo Fighters tours, Mr. Hawkins would swap places with Mr. Grohl to sing a cover of Queen’s 1981 hit with David Bowie, “Under Pressure,” or Queen’s “Somebody to Love,” emerging from behind the kit in his signature shorts to pay homage to the act that set him on his path. He’d also take the spotlight for drum solos that stretched several minutes, smiling as he became a whirl of limbs atop his riser, smashing his cymbals and bashing a timpani.Although he has been referred to as “a sideman with a frontman’s flair,” Mr. Hawkins admitted over the years to feeling some self-doubt about filling Mr. Grohl’s seat behind the drum kit. “A lot of my insecurities — which led to a lot of my drug use — had to do with me not feeling like I was good enough to be in this band, to play drums with Dave,” he told Spin in 2002.In 2001, he overdosed in London and was briefly comatose. “Everyone has their own path, and I took it too far,” Mr. Hawkins told Kerrang, adding that he once believed the “myth of live hard and fast, die young.”He added, “I’m not here to preach about not doing drugs, because I loved doing drugs, but I just got out of control for a while and it almost got me.”In a 2018 conversation with the online radio station Beats 1, Mr. Hawkins said, “There’s no happy ending with hard drugs.” But he declined to explain how he stayed sober: “I don’t really discuss how I live my life in that regard. I have my system that works for me.”Mr. Hawkins is survived by his wife, Alison, whom he married in 2005, and their three children, Oliver, Annabelle and Everleigh.Jon Pareles More

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      Soccer Mommy Stretches Her Sound, and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Phife Dawg, Omar Apollo, Zola Jesus 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.Soccer Mommy, ‘Shotgun’Sophie Allison, who records as Soccer Mommy, continues to stretch beyond the sparse indie-rock of her early songs. “Shotgun” previews an album due in June — “Sometimes, Forever” — that is produced by Oneohtrix Point Never (Daniel Lopatin), an auteur of big, blurry implications. “Shotgun” is a promise of devotion to someone who might be troubled. It places Allison’s breathy, dazed vocals above a hefty beat and a low, twangy riff; as the chorus vows “Whenever you want me I’ll be around,” new layers of echoey guitars and sudden drum blasts loom, suggesting that her path isn’t entirely clear. JON PARELESMaren Morris, ‘Humble Quest’“Humble Quest,” the title track of the new album by Maren Morris, carefully balances humility and a growing determination: “I was so nice till I woke up/I was polite till I spoke up,” she sings. The verses are dogged and subdued, with steady drums and descending piano chords; the chorus leaps upward, insisting, “Damn I do my best/Not gonna hold my breath.” But the song tapers off at the end, returning to the piano chords; the quest continues. PARELESKurt Vile, ‘Mount Airy Hill (Way Gone)’As usual, Philadelphia’s Kurt Vile is an ambling, amiable presence on “Mount Airy Hill (Way Gone),” a gently psychedelic ditty in no particular hurry to get to where it’s going. “Standing on top of Mount Airy Hill … thinkin’ ’bout … flying,” he begins, sounding like a cross between Bill Callahan and John Prine, the kindred spirit he collaborated with on the 2020 EP “Speed, Sound, Lonely KV.” Beginning with that release, Vile has begun to embrace more directly the country inflections of his music and vocal delivery, and here they add to the song’s eccentric charm. “I’ve been around, but now I’m gone,” he vamps, letting that last word fly loose in an airy falsetto before adding a winking line that doubles as the title of his forthcoming album: “Watch my moves.” LINDSAY ZOLADZFlock of Dimes, ‘It Just Goes On’Under her solo moniker Flock of Dimes, Jenn Wasner tends to make knotty, intricate indie-rock, enlivened by unexpected chord changes and unusual time signatures. She’s described the hypnotic “It Just Goes On,” though, as “perhaps one of the most simple and direct songs I’ve ever made,” and the understated arrangement allows her dreamy vocals to shine. The first track on a B-side companion piece to her excellent 2021 album “Head of Roses,” “It Just Goes On” is a slow-motion reverie centered around a murky guitar riff that hangs, like Wasner’s evocative lyrics, in a state of suspended possibility: “If it never started, it doesn’t have to end, it just goes on.” ZOLADZJane Weaver, ‘Oblique Fantasy’The English songwriter, singer and guitarist Jane Weaver reaches back to the clockwork Minimalism of 1970s kraut-rock in “Oblique Fantasy,” a patiently evolving assemblage of guitar and synthesizer lines — picked, strummed, fluttering, blipping, peaking into feedback — over an unswerving, motoric beat, as she lives up to her promise: “I will get under your skin.” PARELESKilo Kish featuring Miguel, ‘Death Fantasy’The avant-pop singer Kilo Kish has a pipe dream: the demise and undoing of all frameworks, definitions and limits that might constrain her. On “Death Fantasy,” from her new album “American Gurl,” Kish raps in a breathless staccato about her ambition: “I have a death fantasy/Death of my aesthetics, this falsing fiction carved in my way,” she chants. On Instagram, Kish referred to the song as a “manifesto” and a “declaration of freedom.” But with lurching drums, neon-drenched synths, Miguel’s sky-high, looping vocalizations and a jarring flatline, “Death Fantasy” is less anthemic — it’s more a trance-like spell, conjured to convince you of the promise of starting anew. ISABELIA HERRERAPhife Dawg, ‘Forever’Well-earned 1990s nostalgia and grown-up regrets fill Phife Dawg’s “Forever,” the title track from a new album, released six years after his death, that blends his last raps with tribute verses from guests. Phife Dawg had reunited with A Tribe Called Quest, but he died before their final album together was released in 2016. In “Forever,” he rhymes through the group’s history as “four brothers with a mic and a dream.” A plush soul string section, a lurching beat and old-school turntable scratching accompany him as he recalls the group’s ascent. Suddenly he silences the track and, a cappella, he admits, “Lack of communication killed my tribe/Bad vibes.” But bygones are bygones, he declares: “Despite trials, tribe-ulations, no doubt we were built to survive.” PARELESOmar Apollo, ‘Tamagotchi’The 24-year-old singer Omar Apollo has a knack for jagged, irreverent pop songs. On “Tamagotchi,” he conscripts the Neptunes to mastermind his latest vision: there’s Pharrell’s signature four-count start, a muted Spanish guitar loop coiling under bilingual bars about Apollo’s ascendant celebrity. But the best part of “Tamagotchi” is that Apollo doesn’t take himself too seriously: “I’m making bread (Bread)/Sound like Pavarotti,” he snickers at one point. By the honey-soaked R&B bridge, you’ll be drenched in his charisma. HERRERAFrya, ‘Changes’Frya, from Zimbabwe, has clearly listened to Adele: where she applies vibrato, her approach to syncopation and sustain, and where she makes her voice build and break. But she has a songwriter’s gift: how to turn words and sounds into an emotional connection. “Say my name please in that tone again,” she begs in “Changes,” as it climbs from piano ballad to orchestral plea, perfectly strategized and emotionally telling. PARELESSon Lux and Moses Sumney, ‘Fence’The magnificently eerie “Fences,” from the soundtrack to the metaverse movie “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” deals in falsetto reassurances and gaping abysses. Over sustained electronic tones, tolling bass notes and orchestral swells, Moses Sumney sings an apologetic, waltzing refrain — “Only meant to give you my all/never meant to build you a wall” — that multiplies its vocal harmonies but sounds ever more bereft. PARELESZola Jesus, ‘Lost’“Everyone I know is lost,” Nika Roza Danilova, who records as Zola Jesus, wails on the doomy, kinetic new single from her forthcoming album, “Arkhon.” The track begins with a decidedly post-apocalyptic vibe: earthy, guttural rumbles, synthesizers that toll like air-raid sirens, and a percussive series of sharp breaths, spliced together to create the song’s beat. But Danilova’s powerful vocal soon provides a stirring counterpoint and a defiant sign of life, like a signal flare shot up through an icy landscape. ZOLADZMarvin Sewell, ‘A Hero’s Journey’The guitarist Marvin Sewell, who’s usually heard injecting soul and scruff into other people’s bands, takes a moment to ruminate alone on “A Hero’s Journey.” He plays the acoustic guitar with a shivering slide, returning frequently to a mournful motif on the higher strings. Though understated, the track is a standout on “Black Lives,” a two-disc compilation of new music performed by a wide stylistic range of contemporary jazz artists. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOMark Turner, ‘Waste Land’At first, the occasional clatter from Jonathan Pinson’s drums seems like the main source of agitation on an otherwise low-key track: The interplay between Mark Turner’s tenor saxophone and Jason Palmer’s trumpet — both of them doused in reverb, played with crystal clarity and zero hurry — is almost placid. But there is a worried tension in the space between their horns, one that doesn’t get totally exposed until near the end. Finally, we’re left without resolution, as the band rises toward a landing that never fully comes. RUSSONELLO More

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      Aldous Harding’s Gloriously Peculiar World of Songs

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      On her fourth album, “Warm Chris,” the New Zealand singer and songwriter delivers unpredictable but enchanting vocals and enigmatic lyrics that revel in simplicity.If you are unfamiliar with the weird and wonderful world of the New Zealand folk musician Aldous Harding, the mesmerizing music video for her 2019 single “The Barrel” is probably the place to start.The song is breezy and light — gently strummed acoustic guitar chords, a buoyant piano riff — but as the video proceeds, a disarming sense of the uncanny creeps in. Something is ever so slightly off. Harding wears a billowing blouse with a pilgrim collar and a stovepipe-shaped straw hat, stiffly shimmying her shoulders and making a series of awkwardly expressive faces. It’s not quite obvious at first, but you could swear that with each cut her hat seems to be getting … taller? Then it’s definitely taller, comically so — but right when it becomes bizarre enough to laugh out loud, there’s a sudden cut to Harding wearing a spooky demon mask that takes your breath away. At any point, you might be tempted to ask, why? But that would be the wrong question. In Aldous Harding’s droll, dreamlike work, there’s not a lot of because, just a lot of glorious, deadpan is.Harding is generally reluctant to explain what her songs are “about” and gravitates toward prismatic and evocative lyrics that welcome multiple interpretations. Still, in the middle of her enchanting fourth album, “Warm Chris,” out Friday, she stumbles upon a refrain that sounds, in some sense, like a mantra for her whole joyfully immersive oeuvre: “Passion must play, or passion won’t stay,” she sings on the jaunty, piano-driven “Passion Babe,” in a high, staccato voice that makes her sound like a wise child.Even Harding’s more gloomy-sounding early records, like the sparse and gothic “Party” from 2017, were enlivened by moments of absurdist humor, like incongruous backing vocals that emerged out of nowhere on song titles like “What If Birds Aren’t Singing They’re Screaming.” Since her breakout 2019 album “Designer,” though, Harding’s music has been drifting ever closer to weightlessness. “Warm Chris,” a collection of fractured, airy pop songs and her third album produced by the PJ Harvey collaborator John Parish, continues this progression. It is her nimblest album yet, though it has not sacrificed her signature, surrealist undertow.Harding’s voice is chameleonic, and the way it changes in tone and timbre from song to song is one of her music’s disorienting pleasures. “People say to me, ‘Why don’t you use your real voice?’” she said in a recent Pitchfork interview. “But what people don’t understand is that I don’t know what my normal voice is anymore.” On paper, Harding could be classified as just another “female folk singer/songwriter,” but her music and videos have a spaciousness that makes that descriptor seem unbearably limiting. In her writing process, which she has described as a kind of channeling of various characters’ monologues, she added, “taking identity too seriously is really detrimental to my music.”And so her vocal delivery throughout “Warm Chris” is anything but predictable: On one song, the plangent, plinking “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain,” Harding sings with the reedy keen of “After the Gold Rush” era Neil Young, while on the very next, “Staring at the Henry Moore,” she’s a lilting chanteuse in the style of Vashti Bunyan. The typical Harding song is not a legible narrative so much as a tableau vivant, with strange, unknowable characters posed in the middle of a scene that is fully realized if never entirely explained.Much of this effect comes from Harding’s lyrics, which are succinct, enigmatic and potent. That wasn’t always the case: On her 2014 self-titled debut album, she used often archaic words and knotty diction, as if she were straining to sound serious and poetic. But her writing has greatly improved as she’s come to understand the power of simple, modern words arranged in unexpected ways. “Oh, the dirty of it,” she intones in a gruff voice at the beginning of the “Warm Chris” highlight “Tick Tock” — a line that is somehow both inscrutable and precisely vivid.The excellent single “Fever,” a spiky, stutter-stepping mid-tempo number, contains some of her most stirring lyricism yet. Though too vague and imagistic to be reduced to a linear narrative, the song still loosely, and poignantly, suggests how difficult it can be to make a long-term partnership work: “I still stare at you in the dark,” Harding sings in a low croon, “looking for that thrill in the nothing.”It’s quite a tightrope act to make music this legitimately odd without falling into excessive whimsy, and, every so often, Harding’s legs wobble. (“Of all the ways to eat a cake,” she sings on “Passion Babe,” “this one surely takes the knife.”) But at its core, like David Byrne in his big suit or David Bowie playing harlequin, Harding’s is a grounded eccentricity, rooted in the traditions of avant-garde theater and folk music while still retaining a welcoming sense of play. As with all of Harding’s best work, “Warm Chris” is an offbeat, infectious and ultimately liberating invitation to stop making sense.Aldous Harding“Warm Chris”(4AD) More

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      ‘Olivia Rodrigo: Driving Home 2 U’ Review: Songs on Overdrive

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      The singer-songwriter is in a reflective state in the director Stacey Lee’s film, which documents a trip from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles.Olivia Rodrigo, the pop sensation whose global megahit “Driver’s License” put her career in the fast lane in 2021, is, naturally, driving a car in the first film about her life.She makes the same trip — Salt Lake City to Los Angeles — in the director Stacey Lee’s film on Disney+ as she did to record her wildly popular debut album, “Sour.” It’s a trek that puts Rodrigo in a reflective state, and Lee’s mood-infused film is tailored to appeal to the vintage taste of a Gen Z crowd that loves the grainiest of photo filters. Her subject’s ruminations feel overstated when paired with a retro-chic visual palette, so there are looks of intense longing that would make “Folklore”-era Taylor Swift proud.But the more Lee shows Rodrigo gazing into the distance, whether alone in a hotel room or atop a hill, the more it feels like a director’s cue rather than an organic moment that the camera just happened to catch. In the scenes where Rodrigo is openly sharing parts of her life that led to creating “Sour,” authenticity seems to come more easily.As a performance piece, “Driving Home 2 U” is an exhilarating and intimate showcase for Rodrigo, as commentary about her album’s tracks spills seamlessly, in musical-theater fashion, into “Sour” tunes. Songs are newly arranged and presented in some breathtakingly scenic spots. It’s a film that at least succeeds in making you feel that it really is about the journey, not the destination.Olivia Rodrigo: Driving Home 2 U (a Sour Film)Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 17 minutes. Watch on Disney+. More

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      The Many Worlds of Rosalía

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherThe Spanish flamenco prodigy turned multigenre pop innovator Rosalía has just released her third album, “Motomami.” Crucially, it’s her first full-length since the breakthrough she experienced with her 2018 album “El Mal Querer,” which elevated her from local renown to global attention.In the years since, Rosalía has collaborated widely — Travis Scott, Ozuna, Billie Eilish, J Balvin — and leaned into the sounds of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. Her success has, for some, underscored how much latitude is afforded white performers working with nonwhite styles and sounds. But also it has marked Rosalía as one of the most sonically ambitious and creative performers in contemporary pop.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Rosalía’s unlikely pop stardom, her avant-garde approach to style blending and the cultural politics of laying claim to a multitude of traditions.Guest:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterConnect 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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      How Charli XCX, Caroline Polachek and Christine and the Queens Navigate Pop

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      As she was preparing to release “Crash,” the glossiest album of her career as a solo pop artist, Charli XCX was in the doldrums. In December, the British singer and songwriter landed a high-stakes “Saturday Night Live” performance that would feature two of her friends and collaborators, Caroline Polachek and Christine and the Queens.After a labyrinth of planning, rehearsal and boomerang travel, the whole thing was scrapped hours before air because of the Omicron surge. Navigating this disruption and other big questions about what might come next, Charli XCX spun out. “I actually felt really, really low in January,” she said, “and really sad, and was crying a lot and questioning a lot of things.”Eventually, the fog lifted; her public bravado kicked in. “My album is so good,” she tweeted last week. “It’s just true, I can’t help it.” “Crash,” which arrived on Friday, is the fifth and final LP released under the major label contract that Charli XCX, 29, signed as a 16-year-old. After she broke through in 2014 with the single “Boom Clap,” and earned a reputation as a hooky, hit-making writer for other artists, she grew more experimental, veering into hyperpop with Sophie and A.G. Cook, like her 2017 mixtape “Pop 2.” But she never lost her taste for collaborating.“She’s the queen of features,” said Polachek, a longtime friend. She and Christine and the Queens, the French artist Hélöise Letissier, who goes by Chris, are, indeed, featured on “New Shapes,” a synthy single from “Crash,” in which each wrote a verse about relationships — a subject they have long discussed in DMs and on podcasts. “I think we all fall in love quite differently,” Charli said.The relationship songs on “Crash” could double as a narrative about Charli XCX’s up-and-down time in the music industry, she added. She wanted the album to be her last, most packaged push for pop stardom — just to see if she could do it. “For me, there’s always been this eternal question of, like, could I be the biggest artist in the world,” she said, “or am I not made for it? Am I too weird, too left, too opinionated, too unlikable, too different looking, whatever, whatever, whatever?”Charli XCX got a rescheduled shot on “S.N.L.” this month, albeit without her pals. Now she’s wondering what the next phase of her career could be. “Who will I become? What will I look like? What will I wear? What will it sound like?” she said.Transformation and evolution were recurring topics when Charli XCX, Polachek and Chris got together in December, to discuss recording and performing together across continents. They each approach music from different lanes, as Polachek, formerly of the Brooklyn indie band Chairlift, put it: Charli on the social media-fueled pop front (she started on Myspace); Chris, who has lately been holed up in Los Angeles at work on a new Christine and the Queens album, arriving with a headier theatrical and performance background. “I love making music on my own, but I really find I come alive more when I share a space with them,” Charli said.In joint interviews and separately, they spoke about their careers and friendships, and why they work well as collaborators. “We’re feelers, you know,” Polachek said. These are edited excerpts from the conversations.“I roll my eyes when people point to female pop vocalists as an example of change in music,” Polachek said.Jingyu Lin for The New York TimesHow They MetPOLACHEK Charli and I met 12 years ago in Australia. I was playing double-decker synths, singing from behind the band — I wasn’t even really the lead singer of that band. And Charli was wearing platform sneakers that were like a foot high, with rainbow stripes, and she was just singing over an iPod and stomping onstage. The paradigms were so different. She was like, Caroline, I want you to produce music for me. At the time I’d never produced music for anyone, let alone myself.CHARLI XCX I remember watching Chairlift perform and Caroline’s vocals being incredible, and I think I was just really in awe of her. And I still am. I felt intimidated by her coolness, not that she was an intimidating person. She was really kind. I was maybe 18, and still traveling back and forth on trips from my parents’ house.POLACHEK I did a mega-story Instagram post when Chris put out the “Girlfriend” video, I was just blown away by it, and I think you responded to that story and said, “I’m a fan” and I was like, “I’m a fan.” We had a pen pal relationship for about a year and a half, and quite a deep one, before we actually met. Just on Instagram DM. We were talking about love and pain.CHRIS I can go deep with you in conversation, and I appreciate that in our friendship.“The truth is, I’m allowed to be whoever I want, because the reason I’m an interesting artist is because I evolve and change,” Charli XCX said.Jingyu Lin for The New York TimesOn Gender in the Music IndustryCHARLI XCX Now, and for the past however many years, I’ve loved co-writing. I see it as a real skill to be able to hone multiple people’s ideas into one sensical thing. But what I did experience [from outsiders] was a sense of disbelief that I could possibly write a song. Maybe that’s a lack of education in the minutiae of the music industry and the different roles — the songwriter; the producer; the artist who sometimes doubles as both. I think there’s still a narrative of people being like, oh, did Olivia Rodrigo really write that song? Or did Taylor Swift?Like, it seems that there needs to be this question around women’s validity and whether they’re worth their space, whereas it just doesn’t really seem to be a question for men.POLACHEK I roll my eyes when people point to female pop vocalists as an example of change in music. No. Women’s faces and women’s voices have been prominent since the beginning of pop music. It’s who has their hand on the dial. That’s what’s changing.CHARLI XCX There are more ways to be an artist because there are more platforms — there’s TikTok, there’s SoundCloud. There’s being that girl in your bedroom, releasing songs and organically building a fan base via your own memes. Those things are all true, but unfortunately, and maybe call me a pessimist, I do feel like there are still boxes that women are supposed to fit in.And there are definitely moments that break that mold — Billie Eilish becoming the biggest artist in the world. A great artist creates an amazing world for people to access. I feel like people sometimes are not willing to accept that women artists evolve. Billie did a performance using Auto-Tune, and the world imploded. And it’s like, that’s an artistic choice.I’m the weird girl on the fringes who made “Pop 2” and people loved me for that, and I’m eternally grateful for that support. That helped me sustain a career that, post-2014 to 2015, wasn’t very commercially successful. I found a new lease on life playing closer to the underground, more avant-garde sounds. Maybe this is just the Twitter discourse, which I probably need to get my head out of, but sometimes it feels like I’m being told, no, you’re not allowed to be anyone other than that. And really, the truth is, I’m allowed to be whoever I want, because the reason I’m an interesting artist is because I evolve and change.CHRIS I’m off social, stopped in July. My mental health is better. My connection to the present is better. I think social sometimes — when it’s hyper-filtered and it needs to be punchy, catchy, immediately digestible — it’s encouraging something that I’m not always understanding myself, as an artist. Sometimes I want to take more time to express an idea.My journey with gender has always been tumultuous. It’s raging right now, as I’m just exploring what is beyond this. A way to express it could be switching between they and she. I kind of want to tear down that system that made us label genders in such a strict way. I remember talking about being pansexual in France in 2014 — it was a conversation that few opened up, and I was advised in, like, offices to maybe tone it down. I’m really trying to address it the right way now, and I’ve been sometimes pressured to give an answer. But I think the answer is to be flickery, fluid, escaping.I don’t want to rush that conversation, and I might never answer again. But in my work I’m finding ways to make that journey joyful. I believe the real gestures are artistic, because the real discussion on queerness is also a discussion about the society we live in, about capitalism, about social justice. It’s not just about me every morning wondering, am I masculine or feminine? It’s all-encompassing.“My journey with gender has always been tumultuous,” Chris said. “It’s raging right now, as I’m just exploring what is beyond this.”Jingyu Lin for The New York TimesOn What They Value in Each Other as ArtistsPOLACHEK Chris has a sense of velocity and total commitment. Most people when they’re in rehearsal mode, they do things at 50 percent energy because you don’t want to wear yourself out, you’re just doing it for your brain. Chris is at like 100 percent, 150 percent, every single time, and just raises the level of commitment and energy flow for everyone around.CHRIS I’ve been a fan of Caroline forever. I like how artistic everything is, how intentional everything is. There is an elegance, it’s demanding, but also super melodic.CHARLI XCX I think Caroline sees the potential for pop music to be anything that she can mold. She can create and make it sound or look or do anything that she wants, because she has all the skill set to do that.With Caroline and Chris sometimes, honestly, I’m just envious of their music. When I heard “Girlfriend,” I was like, God, I want to work with [Christine’s collaborator] Dâm-Funk. And I did and I was like, I don’t have this magical connection with this person, even though he’s amazing. Like, I wish Chris was here to figure this out for me.CHRIS Charli, I relate very deeply to you writing the song. I can tell that you’re making music with what you experienced and the feeling you go through. There is something very earnest about your writing.CHARLI XCX Well, you were sort of my therapist for a while. You give good advice.Especially over the past couple of years, I’ve been able to turn to both of them for a lot of personal things outside of music, and also, personal things that connect to music. Sometimes I think it’s hard, being an artist, to vocalize that you’re having a hard time, because obviously, we’re so lucky to be able sustain ourselves from the things that we create. But also, everyone has struggles. It’s nice to speak with others who are in the same kind of situation as you, to confide in them about things that they get. I’m really, really grateful for that. More

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      Lil Durk and Ghost Shake Up the Billboard Chart

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      After an eight-week run at the top for the “Encanto” soundtrack, new albums from the rapper and the Swedish metal band take over.After eight straight weeks leading the Billboard album chart — and nine at the top overall — the “Encanto” soundtrack has finally been bumped from No. 1 by new releases from the Chicago-born rapper Lil Durk and the costumed Swedish metal band Ghost.Lil Durk, a mainstay of the Chicago rap scene who has relocated to the Atlanta area, and lately reached a new audience through a crossover with the country star Morgan Wallen, tops the chart with his album “7220.” It had the equivalent of 120,500 sales in the United States in its opening week, including nearly 165 million streams. Those numbers are tallied by Luminate, the new name for MRC Data, the tracking service that is owned by Billboard’s parent company.It is Lil Durk’s second time at No. 1, after “The Voice of the Heroes,” a joint album with Lil Baby, last June.At No. 2 is “Impera” by Ghost, whose members perform in elaborate satanic regalia. The lead singer, Tobias Forge, appears in black robes and skeletal makeup as a demonic antipope called Papa Emeritus IV — his influences include black metal and Andrew Lloyd Webber — backed up by a crew of Nameless Ghouls. (Forge’s identity became widely known only after four former Nameless Ghouls sued him for back pay in 2017; the case was later dismissed.) “Impera,” Ghost’s fifth studio album, had the equivalent of 70,000 sales, mostly from copies sold as complete albums, in formats like CDs and vinyl LPs.“Encanto” falls to No. 3, and Wallen’s “Dangerous” is No. 4. The British singer Rex Orange County opens at No. 5 with “Who Cares?” More

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      Arcade Fire Ignites a Fresh Era, and 11 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Normani, Brad Mehldau, Valerie June 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.Arcade Fire, ‘The Lightning I, II’Rarely does critical consensus pivot as quickly and sharply as it did for Arcade Fire, a band that began the 2010s snagging a surprise album of the year Grammy for its beloved, towering double album “The Suburbs,” and ended the decade caricatured as out-of-touch scolds when its 2017 technology critique “Everything Now” left just about everybody cold. The overwhelming return-to-form narrative that has greeted its first new music in five years, from an album due May 6, though, suggests that many were simply waiting for the group to once again make songs that sound like “The Lightning I” and “II.” “I won’t quit on you, don’t quit on me,” Win Butler sings through gritted teeth on the first part of the song, which moves at the tempo of someone running against the wind. Then, all at once, the track kicks into a rapturous gallop and becomes the kind of urgent, clenched-fist anthem the band was once known for: “Waiting on the lightning, waiting on the lightning, what will the light bring?” Butler sings, burning once again with an earnest, fiery hope. Somebody kept the car running after all. LINDSAY ZOLADZOumou Sangaré, ‘Wassulu Don’Oumou Sangaré has carried a women’s song tradition from Mali’s Wassoulou region to a worldwide audience. Her first new song since 2017, from an album due in April, is the Malian fusion of “Wassulu Don”: the quavering vocal lines and call-and-response of Wassoulou songs propelled by the modal, six-beat electric guitar picking — echoing Ali Farka Toure — that has been called “desert blues,” topped by an openly bluesy slide guitar. The song, it turns out in translation, praises regional economic development “thanks to colossal investments”: a prosaic text for a euphoric piece of music. JON PARELESNormani, ‘Fair’Her debut full-length is so long awaited, to some people the phrase “new Normani album” has come to mean roughly what “Chinese Democracy” used to, or — heaven help us —“#R9” still does. But the arrival of Normani’s new single “Fair” is promising on two counts: It indicates that 2022 really could be the year she puts out that mythical album; and it’s much better than “Wild Side,” the sultry but ultimately snoozy Cardi B duet from 2021. Mining the liquefied sounds of Y2K-era TLC or Aaliyah, “Fair” is an anguished ballad with a deep, menacing undertow. “Is it fair that you moved on?” Normani asks, “’cause I swear that I haven’t.” All the while, the moody track throbs with a sputtering but persistent heartbeat. ZOLADZInside the World of RosalíaIn just a few years, the Spanish singer from Catalonia has grown into one of the most worshiped, scrutinized and counted on young artists in the world.Reinventing Flamenco: Rosalía first burst onto the scene with her take on tradition, earning worldwide acclaim and introducing new generations to the genre.New Album: With “Motomami,” the singer adds irony and humor to her thematic arsenal, while turning up the sex and swagger.The Making of a Star: Before racking up magazine covers and millions of views with her YouTube videos, Rosalía spent years training in one of the world’s oldest musical art forms.Diary of a Song: For her hit “Con Altura,” the singer and her collaborators entered the studio with the express mission of paying tribute to old-school reggaeton.Residente featuring Ibeyi, ‘This Is Not America’Setting aside his intramural reggaeton beef with J Balvin, the Puerto Rican rapper Residente returns to major sociopolitical statements with the furious “This Is Not America,” which is rapped in Spanish but purposefully titled in English. It’s a darker sequel to the hemisphere-spanning “Latinoamérica” by Residente’s former group, Calle 13: a far-reaching indictment of repression, corruption and abuse across North, Central and South America. Driven by deep Afro-Caribbean drumming and choir harmonies, it insists, “America is not just the U.S.A.,” with a video that recapitulates brutal human-rights abuses in nation after nation. PARELESBrad Mehldau, ‘Cogs in Cogs, Pt. I: Dance’A three-part suite, “Cogs in Cogs” sits at the center of Brad Mehldau’s new album, “Jacob’s Ladder,” which collects 12 complex, hard-toggling tracks: an attempt to use the tools of prog-rock — his first musical love — to explore how a worldly life might have both shaken and strengthened his Christian faith. Mehldau, who continues to build out from his fixed identity as one of the country’s top jazz pianists, plays almost every instrument on Part 1 of “Cogs in Cogs”: piano, Rhodes, harmonium, mixed percussion and more. He sings some, too. Underpinned by the syncopated rhythm and woven harmonic progression that he outlines at the start, the track works as a patient immersion, providing some balance to the heady overload of so much of this album. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLODonae’o featuring Terri Walker, ‘Good Mood’Everyone in this dystopian moment wants something better. Here’s a song for whenever, eventually, the situation might feel right: a stripped-down bit of electronic funk topped by gritty human voices, placed in a digital grid but hoping there’s a warm, real, physical space beyond it. PARELESSyd and Lucky Daye, ‘Cybah’On the brink of a new romance, Syd — Sydney Loren Bennett, the songwriter and producer who emerged from Odd Future — airs her misgivings in “Cybah,” whispering a question to a prospective partner: “Could you break a heart?” Lucky Daye responds with conditions of his own: “Promise me you’ll always keep my heart in a safe place.” The hesitancy is built directly into the track, three slowly descending chords atop a bass line that sometimes falls away into complete silence, keeping the next step uncertain. PARELESValerie June, ‘Use Me’Valerie June’s “Use Me” isn’t the 1972 Bill Withers song. It offers a more kindly, less exploited version of the same generously loving sentiment: “I’ll let you use me when the world is doing you wrong,” she promises. It’s a soul waltz that gathers a circusy momentum from an oom-pah-pah beat, slightly delayed snare-drum rolls and jovial horns that sound like they wandered into a bar and decided to stick around. PARELESRosalía, ‘Hentai’A delicate, demure piano arrangement serves as a sonic red herring for the raunchiest song Rosalía has released to date. On the surface, “Hentai” is achingly gorgeous, as sparse and intimate as anything the pop-flamenco queen has ever done. “So, so, so good,” she croons ecstatically on the chorus, starry-eyed and accompanied by nothing more than a few plinking notes — the sound of a multifaceted artist revealing yet another side of herself. ZOLADZEthan Gruska and Bon Iver, ‘So Unimportant’Two meticulously disorienting songwriters and producers — Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) and Ethan Gruska (Phoebe Bridgers’s producer) — collaborated remotely on “So Unimportant.” It’s a waltz that mingles an argument and an apology, with Gruska eventually deciding, “It’s so unimportant what started the fight.” What could have been a folksy, homey waltz is layered with hazy sonic phantoms — echoes, altered voices, electronic tones, a hovering string arrangement — that hint at the emotional complexities of everyday frictions. PARELESDanilo Pérez, ‘Fronteras (Borders) Suite: Al-Musafir Blues’As the founder of the Berklee Global Jazz Institute in Boston, the celebrated Panamanian pianist Danilo Pérez has a utopian goal, framed by his own experience of jazz: He sees the music as a tool for international solidarity, and a pathway toward some kind of global sonic language. Pérez’s Global Messengers are a transnational band that has grown out of his work at Berklee, and that seeks to put some evidence behind the ideas. “Al-Musafir Blues” comes as part of the “Fronteras (Borders) Suite,” which contemplates the pain of forced migration. “Al-Musafir Blues” is an 11-minute epic unto itself, starting with a plodding, lovely pattern from the Palestinian cellist Naseem Alatrash that melds slowly into a full-band arrangement; by the end, Pérez’s scampering piano is guiding the conversation. RUSSONELLO More