Pop and Rock Music

Subterms

    More stories

    • 50 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      Lydia Lunch’s Infinite Rebellion

      by

      “Good luck figuring me out,” the 62-year-old artist said. A new documentary called “The War Is Never Over” does its best.For nearly two hours on a recent afternoon, Lydia Lunch sat in her bright Brooklyn apartment and spoke with bracing speed, and at an alarming volume, about rape, murder, incest, genocide, racism, sadism, torture and — for a thunderous encore — the apocalypse. Because she has spent more than four decades broadcasting her belief that such brutal subjects lie at the heart of the human experience, critics have often cast her as a nihilist.“It’s the problems that are nihilistic, not me,” said Lunch, 62. “I’m the most positive person I know. To me, pleasure and joy are the ultimate rebellion. For some reason, few people seem to know that.”“The War Is Never Over,” a new documentary about the artist opening Friday, will offer more people the chance to get a fairer sense of Lunch’s life and work. Directed by her longtime ally Beth B, the movie provides enough context and nuance to counter a common view that Lunch’s output hits just one note: a deeply discordant one.Not that her oeuvre has made such broader assessments easy. From the start of Lunch’s career with the beyond-abrasive no-wave band Teenage Jesus and the Jerks through her psycho-ambient and jazz-noir recordings, spoken word pieces, essay collections, film performances and visual art works, subjects like chaos and ruin have obsessed her.By contrast, hanging out with Lunch is a delight. She’s a doting host, offering a well-appointed cheese plate while regularly checking on a guest’s hydration and comfort. Her home is decorated to look like a tasteful bordello, with overstuffed red-and-black furniture that mirrors the color scheme of the dress she wore. While the subject matters covered in our interview toggled reliably between cruelty and catastrophe, her delivery of many lines along the way had the timing of a skilled comedian, suggesting that a finer description of what she does might be stand-up tragedy.“With a comedian, the audience waits for the punchline,” she said. “In my work, the audience waits for me to punch them in the face.”“I am not, nor have I ever been, a musician,” Lunch said. “I’m a conceptualist.”K Fox/Kino LorberYet, as the film makes clear, a sincere heart beats behind even Lunch’s most gob-smacking declarations. She traces the source of both her righteousness and her rage to two formative events during her childhood in Rochester, N.Y. Though she was just 5 and 8 years old when that city experienced the racial uprisings of 1964 and 1967, they had a life-changing effect on her.“We were one of only two white families living in a Black neighborhood, so this was happening right outside my front door,” she said. “I had a reckoning that something was not right with the world. Consciousness came into me in that moment.”At the same time, something was very wrong within her own family. Lunch said that her father, a door-to-door salesman and grifter, sexually abused her, and her parents fought constantly and bitterly. At 16, she ran away to New York, making her way to the downtown clubs she had read about in rock magazines, where she saw the shock-tactic bands Suicide and Mars. “They were so extreme and so perverse,” Lunch said with awe. “They directed what I was to do.”She hoped that would take the form of spoken word pieces but, at the time, music provided a far more welcoming audience. “I am not, nor have I ever been, a musician,” she said. “I’m a conceptualist. To me, a chord is something I put around somebody’s neck if I want to throw them out the window.”Still, the sonic assault she devised altered the musical landscape. With Teenage Jesus, she subverted the common purpose of rhythm — to create a groove that moves the music forward — to instead favor a static series of hellacious thuds. The result made the music feel less performed than inflicted. To achieve her trademark beat she said, “I had to imprison the drummer to make him play his instrument like a monkey would.”To up the ante, she made sure the guitar she used was only tuned once a month, “so it would develop these harmonics that made it automatic art,” she explained. “Amazing guitar players could not play my parts.”Her next group, 8 Eyed Spy, mixed West Coast surf music with groundbreaking punk-jazz, but she broke the band up because “we were becoming too popular. My ideal audience would be reduced to one,” she said. “Because that would be the right one.”At 16, Lunch ran away to New York, making her way to the downtown clubs she had read about in rock magazines and joining her own bands.David Corio/Redferns, via Getty ImagesIn 1980, her debut solo album, “Queen of Siam,” created the audio equivalent of an early John Waters film, displaying an equal genius for sleaze. Still, music couldn’t contain the scope of her verbiage, so she began to publish books and to stress spoken word pieces that centered on her main theme: the universality of trauma. An early piece, “Daddy Dearest,” detailed the extremes of the physical and sexual abuse she experienced from her father. But part of what made such works stand so far out was that, instead of cowering from the violence, she used it as fuel, recognizing the power she had over those who desired her and, then, relishing the chance to use it against them.“I was never having suicidal dreams,” she says in the film. “I was having homicidal dreams.”In a parallel way, Lunch co-opted the role of the sexual predator, both in the brutalism of her work and in a period of ferocious promiscuity in her personal life which she now views as a point of pride.“Lydia totally turned the tables,” Beth B said in an interview. “She figured out the power that comes from owning your sexuality as well as your trauma. It can empower you to create new fantasies for yourself that free the female psyche and challenge the societal norms put on women.”Lunch said her ability to pull this off psychologically hinged on her “understanding that the abuse didn’t start in my house and that mine was not the worst.”“Abuse is endemic,” she said. “It goes back to the cave. I’m talking blood trauma. Every nationality has had war, violence, murder. It’s just that some of us are more astute at decoding it.”She considers it key, as well, that she forgave her father years ago. (He died in the early ’90s). “When I told him that my rage came from him, he said ‘I know,”’ Lunch said. “You never get that. They always deny.”Her processing was aided by the fact that “there are certain emotions I just don’t experience,” she added. “I have never experienced shame or humiliation. I have never felt guilt.”“Because of the aggression in my work, people tend to miss the poetry,” Lunch said.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesLunch’s bulletproof persona has given many the impression that she’s devoid of vulnerability. But, she countered, “is it not vulnerable to reveal as much as I have of my life? Just because I’m not crying when I’m telling the story doesn’t mean it’s not there,” she said.In a similar way, Lunch believes that “because of the aggression in my work, people tend to miss the poetry,” and that many people take her words too literally. “I might be speaking in triple tongue,” she said. “I might be speaking sarcastically. I might mean exactly what I say, or I might mean the opposite.”Not that such misconceptions have a chance of stopping her feverish output. During the pandemic, Lunch recorded two albums and she will begin playing shows again with her band Retrovirus, which cherry-picks pieces from throughout her career, in New York next month. She has been hosting a podcast with her Retrovirus bandmate Tim Dahl since 2019, “The Lydian Spin,” which allows her to push beyond the metaphors in her writing and the hyperbole of her sound to speak more plainly.She is also directing her own documentary about the relationship between artists and what she believes to be their common psychological issues, titled “Artists – Depression/Anxiety/Rage.” Creating so broad a legacy of work has been central to Lunch’s mission to drive home her multi-dimensionality.“I am as male as I am female,” she declared. “I am as submissive as I am dominant. And I am as sublime as I am ridiculous. Good luck figuring me out.” More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘Sour’ Returns to No. 1, Four Weeks Later

      by

      The Disney star’s debut album circles back to the top of the Billboard 200 with the equivalent of 105,000 sales in the United States.Three weeks ago, a vinyl bonanza from Taylor Swift blocked Olivia Rodrigo from enjoying a second run at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart, but now the teenage newcomer is back on top.“Sour,” the debut album by Rodrigo, the 18-year-old pop phenomenon and Disney actress, returns to No. 1 with the equivalent of 105,000 sales in the United States, according to MRC Data, Billboard’s tracking arm. Five weeks into its release, “Sour” has now notched two weeks at the top of the album chart, and two songs from it, “Drivers License” and “Good 4 U,” have topped the Hot 100 singles chart.On the latest Hot 100, BTS’s “Butter” rules for a fifth straight week.Also on this week’s album chart, “Hall of Fame,” the latest from the Chicago rapper Polo G, drops one spot to No. 2. “The Voice of the Heroes,” a joint album by the rappers Lil Baby and Lil Durk that led the chart two weeks ago, is in third place. Migos’s “Culture III” is No. 4, and Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” is No. 5 in its 24th week out.Opening at sixth place is H.E.R.’s “Back of My Mind.” Although it is her first official studio album, “Back of My Mind” follows five EPs and two compilations by H.E.R., the singer-songwriter Gabriella Wilson. She has also already won four Grammy Awards, including song of the year (“I Can’t Breathe”), and an Oscar, for best original song (“Fight for You,” from “Judas and the Black Messiah”). More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      Jon Hassell, Trumpeter and ‘Fourth World’ Composer, Dies at 84

      by

      Blending modern technology with traditional instruments, Mr. Hassell created a genre he described as “coffee-colored classical music of the future.”Jon Hassell, a composer and trumpeter who blended modern technology with ancient instruments and traditions to create what he called Fourth World music, died on Saturday. He was 84.His death was announced in a statement from his family released by his record label, Ndeya. It did not specify where he died or the immediate cause.Mr. Hassell’s music floated outside the genre boundaries of classical music, electronica, ambient music or jazz. He described Fourth World as “a unified primitive/futuristic sound combining features of world ethnic styles with advanced electronic techniques” and, elsewhere, as “coffee-colored classical music of the future.”His music could be contemplative and atmospheric, darkly suspenseful or abstractly funky. On the 20 albums Mr. Hassell made as a leader, his trumpet usually had an eerily disembodied sound, one that was processed through electronics and enfolded in shadowy reverberations, sometimes using harmonizers to multiply each note in parallel lines.He played vocalistic phrases that invoked the bluesy intimacy of Miles Davis along with the Indian classical music that Mr. Hassell studied with the raga singer Pandit Pran Nath. Around his trumpet, as foreground and background coalesced, there might be drone tones, global percussion, wind or string ensembles, washes of synthesizer, samples, distorted guitar, voices and more.He delved into calm and aggression, reflection and propulsion, serenity and suspense. His polymorphous, layered, ambiguous yet sensual music helped shape decades of electronic experimentation from acts like Oneohtrix Point Never, Arca and Matmos.In a tribute in The Guardian in 2007, the musician and producer Brian Eno wrote, “He looks at the world in all its momentary and evanescent moods with respect, and this shows in his music. He sees dignity and beauty in all forms of the dance of life.”Through the years, Mr. Hassell collaborated repeatedly with Mr. Eno and the American musician Ry Cooder. He also recorded with musicians from Africa, Brazil, India and Europe; composed a piece (“Pano da Costa”) for the Kronos Quartet; and played recording sessions with Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel, k.d. lang, Baaba Maal, David Sylvian, Tears for Fears, Bono and others.In a 1997 interview with the online magazine Perfect Sound Forever, Mr. Hassell said he wanted to create “music for above and below the waist simultaneously.” He added that Fourth World music was “about heart and head as the same thing. It’s about being transported to some place which is made up of both real and virtual geography.”Mr. Hassell was born on March 22, 1937, in Memphis. He picked up the instrument his father had played in college, a cornet, and studied music and played in big bands as a teenager. He attended the Eastman School of Music, exploring modern classical composition and earning a master’s degree. To avoid being drafted, he joined the Army band in Washington, D.C.Fascinated by the emerging field of electronic music, he made tape collages and won a grant to study with the avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen for two years in Cologne, Germany. His classmates included musicians who would go on to start the German band Can; he took LSD with them.He received a fellowship at the Center for Creative and Performing Arts at SUNY Buffalo. There, he composed music on one of the early Moog synthesizers. He also met the composer Terry Riley, who first recorded his Minimalist landmark “In C” in 1968 with musicians at SUNY Buffalo, including Mr. Hassell.Mr. Hassell performed in concerts with Mr. Riley and in the drone group Theatre of Eternal Music, which was led by another pioneering Minimalist, La Monte Young. Like them, Mr. Hassell became a student of Mr. Nath, the Indian singer whose subtleties of pitch and inflection would profoundly influence Mr. Hassell’s music; he applied raga singing to his trumpet playing.“It’s about making a beautiful shape in air. I call it calligraphy in sound,” he said in a 2009 interview with All About Jazz.Mr. Hassell’s musical direction was already clear on his 1977 debut album, “Vernal Equinox.” His electronically altered trumpet is joined by African mbira (thumb piano), Indian tabla drums, maracas, tropical bird calls, electronic drones, ocean waves and crickets.“This record fascinated me,” Mr. Eno wrote in 2007. “It was a dreamy, strange, meditative music that was inflected by Indian, African and South American music, but also seemed located in the lineage of tonal Minimalism. It was a music I felt I’d been waiting for.”In New York City, where in the late 1970s art-rock, punk, pop and jazz shared a creative flux, Mr. Eno sought out Mr. Hassell, and they collaborated on “Fourth World Vol. 1: Possible Musics” (1980). As the marketing category “world music” arose, its sounds and ideas strongly influenced musicians like Talking Heads and Peter Gabriel. Mr. Eno was also producing Talking Heads, and Mr. Hassell’s ghostly trumpet is prominent in “Houses in Motion” on Talking Heads’ 1980 album, “Remain in Light.”Mr. Hassell helped conceptualize the 1981 Byrne-Eno album “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts,” which merged found recordings with studio rhythm tracks and introduced a broad audience to ideas of sonic and cultural collage. But Mr. Hassell later said that he could not afford the airfare to join the recording sessions, and he told Billboard magazine that he considered the results “too poppy.”Writing in 1982 for the science-fiction magazine Heavy Metal, Mr. Hassell championed both preserving and extending local traditions, in order “to understand which music made sorrows bearable and expressed the mystery of creation before the entry date of the first transistor radio into the village.”Through the decades, Mr. Hassell continued to record, experiment and recombine far-flung musical elements.He collaborated with the African percussionists and singers of Farafina, from Burkina Faso, for “Flash of the Spirit” in 1988. He wrote theater music for “Sulla Strada,” an Italian stage adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road.” He recorded with Mr. Cooder and Indian musicians — Ronu Majumdar on bansuri, a wooden flute, and Abhijit Banerjee on tabla drums — on the 2000 album “Hollow Bamboo.” In 2005 he began touring internationally with a group called Maarifa Street, which he named after a street in Iran; “maarifa” means knowledge or wisdom.Mr. Hassell learned evolving technology and made it speak for him, incorporating samples and complex signal processing. He also held on to the physicality of breath and lips on the trumpet.Information on survivors was not immediately available.Mr. Hassell conceived his two final albums, “Listening to Pictures (Pentimento Volume One)” (2018) and “Seeing Through Sound (Pentimento Volume Two)” (2020), as “pentimento,” a visual-arts term for the reappearance of images an artist had painted over.He described his approach to the music as “seeing it in terms of a painting with layers and touch-ups and start-overs with new layers that get erased in places that let the underlying pattern come to the top and be seen (or heard).”He had also been working on a book titled “The North and South of You,” he said in a 2018 interview with Billboard.“It’s the analysis of our current situation in terms of our overemphasis on the north of us, the rational and technological, instead of the south of us,” he said. “North is logic, south is the samba — and how much more of each would you rather have when the time comes to depart the planet?” More

    • 75 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      Hiatus Kaiyote’s Life-Affirming, Genre-Defying Cosmic Soul

      by

      In the six years between the Australian band’s albums, its singer and guitarist, Naomi Saalfield, was treated for breast cancer, and recovered.The Australian band Hiatus Kaiyote emerged in 2013 with an amorphous sound that pulled in rock, funk and soul, and caught the ear of Questlove, Erykah Badu and Q-Tip. Drake was listening, too: In 2017, he sampled a song from the band’s second LP for his playlist “More Life.” The group’s singer and guitarist, Naomi Saalfield, known as Nai Palm, appeared on his follow-up album, “Scorpion.” A few months later, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.“Ultimately, I became obsessed with the concept of impermanence,” Saalfield, 32, said on a video call, speaking from an almost pitch-black room in her home in Fitzroy, a suburb of Melbourne. “Time is an illusion that you have forever, but no one knows how much time they have. And when you have a massive life scare, it really puts that in perspective.”The band — which includes the bassist Paul Bender, the keyboardist Simon Mavin and the drummer Perrin Moss — incorporated that urgency into “Mood Valiant,” its first album in six years, which came out on Friday. Through bright textures and sunlit Brazilian rhythms, it scores a trek from darkness to light, providing the soundtrack of what turned into a very personal journey.The band’s bassist, Paul Bender.Rafael RochaAnd its keyboardist, Simon Mavin.Si Jay GouldBefore Hiatus Kaiyote earned praise from some of neo-soul and hip-hop’s big names, it was a local group in Melbourne developing its hybrid sound organically. The band formed more than a decade ago, after Bender saw Saalfield playing a pink guitar in a small club and handed her a business card. She never called him, but a year later, they bumped into each other and began working on new music together. Moss and Mavin soon joined them, and the quartet started playing esoteric music with odd time signatures and complex rhythmic structures.“There was no normality to the way we were approaching this music,” Mavin, 38, said. “And it kind of opened my eyes to a whole new creative channel.”Hiatus Kaiyote’s debut, “Tawk Tomahawk,” arrived in 2013, and its 2015 follow-up, “Choose Your Weapon,” with its barrage of psych-funk blowouts and moody space-outs, landed as part of the moment that brought D’Angelo’s “Black Messiah,” Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp a Butterfly” and Kamasi Washington’s “The Epic.”“It was such a multitude of things,” Bender said of the group’s second album, which is packed with directional shifts. “I think that’s why the title fit. It’s like, ‘What do you want to choose today? What kind of vibe are you in?’”The band had completed instrumentals for “Mood Valiant” when Saalfield learned she had breast cancer — the disease that killed her mother — and she returned to Australia for an emergency mastectomy. When she recovered and returned to the studio, she came back with a renewed perspective on her personal and professional lives.“Ultimately, when I got sick, I was like, ‘What do you want from life? Who are you and what do you want to leave behind?’” Saalfield said. “It was actually a really powerful place to record from. I know what it is I am meant to do with my life and I’m going to do it as long as I’m here. And it kind of lit a fire under my butt.”“There’s always a spiritual element to our music,” said the band’s drummer, Perrin Moss.Si Jay GouldIt also inspired her to embrace the spiritual, already a part of the band’s alchemy. On a trip to Rio de Janeiro to record with the noted Brazilian composer Arthur Verocai, who contributed string and horn arrangements for the tropicalia-infused “Get Sun,” Saalfield stayed in the Amazon rainforest for 10 days, and took part in the kambo ritual of wiping frog poison onto her skin to remove the toxins in her body. She also recorded voice memos and used the clips for interludes on the album. The opening cut, “Flight of the Tiger Lily,” features two elders from the Varinawa people teaching her how to say the names of birds; “Hush Rattle” samples local women singing in their native language.“There’s always a spiritual element to our music,” Moss, 35, said. “In Hiatus, the more we’re in touch with our spiritual side, and more of a conduit for ideas, the better.”With its warped strings, dusty drums and introspective lyrics that embrace life, “Mood Valiant” has the feel of a ’70s Brazilian psych album. It’s being released by Brainfeeder, a label started in 2008 by the experimental producer Flying Lotus as a home for alternative soul, hip-hop and electronica.Saalfield said she hopes the LP will touch people when they need it most. “Everybody experiences suffering,” she said. “Everybody experiences joy, no matter how privileged you are or if you have nothing. The beautiful thing is that music is universal. If you can reach people in their darkest hour and comfort them, that’s what it’s for. And that’s what music does for me. It saved me in my darkest hour.” More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Ed Sheeran’s Glossy Late-Night Pop, and 12 More New Songs

      by

      Hear tracks by Willow, Helado Negro, Low 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.Ed Sheeran, ‘Bad Habits’In the video for his new single “Bad Habits,” Ed Sheeran boldly declares, “We live in a society.” Though I could have lived my life contentedly without ever seeing the British musician dressed as a glittery, high-flying hybrid of the Joker, Edward Cullen and Elton John, the track itself is a reminder of Sheeran’s knack for sleek songcraft. “My bad habits lead to late nights, sitting alone,” he sings over the kind of brooding chords and insistent, minimalist beat that suggests that pop music will continue to exist in the shadow of the Weeknd’s “After Hours” for at least another trip around the sun. “Bad Habits” doesn’t quite have the fangs that its video incongruously promises, but it’s a well-executed, safe-bet pop song squarely in Sheeran’s comfort zone, which is to say that it already sounds like a smash. LINDSAY ZOLADZWillow, ‘Lipstick’Willow Smith’s swerve into rock continues, abetted by the drums of Travis Barker from Blink-182. Their first collaboration, “Transparent Soul,” was straightforwardly vengeful pop-punk that proved she could belt. “Lipstick” is more idiosyncratic, with angular vocal lines overlapping stop-start guitar blasts of thick, jazzy chords. The sentiments are more complicated, too, juggling confusion, pain and euphoria; it’s cranked up loud, but it’s full of second thoughts. JON PARELESColleen Green, ‘I Wanna Be a Dog’The Los Angeles indie musician Colleen Green has a history of playfully talking back to her punk elders: The title of her first album riffed on that of an iconic Descendents record and featured a song called “I Wanna Be Degraded”; in 2019, she released a gloriously lo-fi cover album of Blink-182’s “Dude Ranch.” So judging by its name, the first single from her forthcoming album “Cool” would seem to be a provocative sneer in the direction of a certain Stooges classic. Except it’s not, really: “I Wanna Be a Dog” is instead a catchy, funny and straightforwardly earnest song about … how nice it would be to be a dog. In a voice that balances self-deprecation with wry humor, Green figures she’s already halfway there: “Each year aging more quickly, but I always still feel so naïve/And I get so bored when no one’s playing with me.” ZOLADZWye Oak, ‘Its Way With Me’Jenn Wasner has released an extraordinary album this year, “Head of Roses,” in her solo guise as Flock of Dimes. Back in Wye Oak, her longtime duo with Andy Stack, she continues to merge intricate music with openhearted emotion. In the gorgeous “Its Way With Me,” a rippling seven-beat guitar line circles throughout the song, as horns and strings waft in and out and Wasner sings, with aching determination, about accepting what life might bring yet staying true to herself. PARELESWet Leg, ‘Chaise Longue’“Chaise Longue” is the semi-absurdist and deliriously catchy debut single from Wet Leg, an intriguing new duo from the Isle of Wight. In their sound and in the self-directed video for this song, Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers are agents of controlled, charismatic chaos. “Chaise Longue” struts a fine line between deadpan restraint and zany freakout, faux-naivety and winking knowingness (“I went to school and I got the big D … I got the big D”). They’re one of those new bands whose sound and aesthetic seem to have arrived fully formed, promising exciting if totally unpredictable things to come. ZOLADZHelado Negro, ‘Gemini and Leo’The music of Helado Negro (Roberto Carlos Lange) has always had a bit of an interstellar quality to it: soft, sci-fi hymns that harness the medicinal possibilities of sound and melody. For “Gemini and Leo,” the new single from his forthcoming album “Far In,” the Brooklyn artist fully ascends into a world of galactic disco. Glossy synths and a syncopated bass line shimmer into a prismatic dance-floor strut. “We can move in slow motion. We can take our time in cosmic balance,” Lange hums. It’s a reminder to embrace tenderness and affection — in love, but also in our relationship to a world still coming to terms with a year of grief. ISABELIA HERRERAHyzah, ‘Dan Mi (Pass Me the Lighter)’Hyzah, a 19-year-old Nigerian rapper and singer, has followed through on a 49-second street-side freestyle that got hundreds of thousands of views after a signal boost from Drake, who must have appreciated both its melodic hook and its sprint into double-time rapping. “Dan Mi” turns the freestyle into a full-length song. As Hyzah sings about trouble, flirtation and ganja, he fills out the song’s modal melody above a peppery Afrobeats track, produced by Ogk n’ Steaks, that sends percussion, voices and synthesized horns ricocheting across the beat in a rush of cross-rhythms. PARELESLow, ‘Days Like These’The new Low song is almost unbearably stirring, a meditation on hope and decay that sounds like a pop-gospel track run through William Basinski’s “Disintegration Loops.” If “Double Negative” from 2018 proved that these indie lifers were still finding uncharted frontiers in their spacious sound nearly three decades into their band’s existence, this first taste of their forthcoming album “Hey What” shows once again that they’re not finished discovering exhilaratingly new ways to sound exactly like themselves. ZOLADZJazmine Sullivan, ‘Tragic’“Tragic” picks up the thread Jazmine Sullivan started on her excellent 2021 album “Heaux Tales,” a record as multi-vocal and casually chatty as a particularly active group chat. “Why do you be looking for me to do all the work?” Sullivan sings here in a weary voice, addressing the less-giving half of a lopsided relationship. But the chorus finds her asserting her own solution, in the form of a tuneful and infectious mantra: “Reclaim, reclaim, reclaiming my time.” ZOLADZJim Lauderdale, ‘Memory’A final collaboration between Robert Hunter, the Grateful Dead’s lyricist who died in 2019, and Jim Lauderdale, who also wrote many songs with him, is, fittingly, an Americana elegy: “You’re with me wherever I go, deep down inside my soul.” The music is twangy and somber, a march floated by pedal steel guitar, and many lines begin with a grainy, fervent hope: “Long live …” PARELESMabe Fratti, ‘Nadie Sabe’Mabe Fratti is a composer, cellist and singer from Guatemala who now lives in Mexico, and “Nadie Sabe” (“Nobody Knows”) is from her new album “Será que Ahora Podremos Entendernos?”: “Will we be able to understand each other now?” Fratti works with layers of repeating cello motifs, plucked and bowed; with layers of guileless vocals, verbal and wordless; and with keyboards that spotlight or float against her Minimalist structures. There are echoes of songwriters like Arthur Russell and Juana Molina. In “Nadie Sabe,” she sings about the moon, about presence and disorientation, about dark dreams and shifting realities; the pulse of the music carries her through them all. PARELESMarc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog, ‘Maple Leaf Rage’On parts of “Hope,” the guitarist Marc Ribot’s new album with his trio Ceramic Dog, the band works like a hyperactive jukebox, stuffing its original tunes with rock ’n’ roll references, reggae guitar, half-rapped lyrics that hark back to the Beats and occasional jam-band grooves. The second half of the album is quieter and less peripatetic. The band might be at its most concise on the album’s longest track, “Maple Leaf Rage,” a Ribot tune that has been in its book for years. For the first half of these 13 minutes and 30 seconds, the trio plays as if at a secret meeting, the drummer Ches Smith using brushes and the bassist Shahzad Ismaily playing in unforced, staccato chords. Then a beat kicks in, Ribot trades in his reverb for a heavy dose of distortion and the band starts marching. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOEli Keszler, ‘The Accident’Eli Kezler, who has provided ultraprecise percussion for Oneohtrix Point Never, is also a composer on his own. His new solo album, “Icons,” is filled with instrumental pieces that are suspended between nervous energy and what might be post-apocalyptic calm. “The Accident” wraps brisk quasi-breakbeats in thoroughly ambiguous electric-piano chords and slow-motion whooshes, hurtling ahead toward unknown consequences. PARELES More

    • 63 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Britney Spears Conservatorship Testimony, Annotated

      by

      In a 23-minute speech, the singer said she desperately wants to end her conservatorship, calling it an abusive system in which she was drugged and forced to work against her will.In February 2008, a California judge placed Britney Spears in a conservatorship, a legal arrangement that granted oversight of her personal life and finances to her once-estranged father, James P. Spears, amid concerns around her mental health and potential substance abuse. In court on Wednesday, Ms. Spears addressed the judge and the public in an emotional 23-minute statement detailing what she described as mistreatment under the conservatorship, and emphatically asked for it to end.Here is a transcript of her full speech, with annotations.They’ve done a good job at exploiting my life and the way that they’ve done my life, so I feel like it should be an open court hearing and they should listen and hear what I have to say.Ms. Spears had previously stayed largely silent on the conservatorship in public. But from the start of her statement on Wednesday, it was clear that she was ready to change the narrative about her life under its control.OK, well, I just got a new phone, so bear with me. OK, so I have this written down, I have a lot to say, so bear with me. Basically, a lot has happened since two years ago, the last time — I wrote all this down — the last time I was in court. I will be honest with you, I haven’t been back to court in a long time because I don’t think I was heard on any level when I came to court the last time. I brought four sheets of paper in my hands and wrote in length what I had been through the last four months before I came there. The people who did that to me should not be able to walk away so easily. I’ll recap: I was on tour in 2018 I was forced to do. My management said if I don’t do this tour, I’ll have to —JUDGE BRENDA PENNY: Ms. Spears, Ms. Spears? I hate to interrupt you, but my court reporter is taking down what you’re saying, and so you have to speak a little more slowly —The last time Ms. Spears addressed the court was at a closed-door hearing in 2019. She told the court that she had felt forced by the conservatorship into a stay at a mental health facility and to perform against her will.Oh, of course, yes. OK, I apologize, great. The people who did this to me should not get away and to be able to walk away so easily. To recap: I was on tour in 2018. I was forced to do. My management said if I don’t do this tour, I will have to find an attorney, and, by contract, my own management could sue me if I didn’t follow through with the tour. He handed me a sheet of paper as I got off the stage in Vegas and said I had to sign it. It was very threatening and scary and, with the conservatorship, I couldn’t even get my own attorney. So, out of fear, I went ahead and I did the tour.When I came off that tour, a new show in Las Vegas was supposed to take place. I started rehearsing early, but it was hard because I’d been doing Vegas for four years and I needed a break in between. But no, I was told, “This is the timeline, and this is how it’s going to go.” I rehearsed four days a week, half of the time in the studio and half of the other time in a Westlake studio. I was basically directing most of the show — with my whereabouts, where I preferred to rehearse — and actually did most of the choreography, meaning I taught my dancers my new choreography myself. I take everything I do very seriously; there’s tons of video with me at rehearsals. I wasn’t good; I was great. I led a room of 16 new dancers in rehearsals.Fans gathered outside of a Los Angeles courthouse to support the pop star.Etienne Laurent/EPA, via ShutterstockThe new Las Vegas show was supposed to begin in February 2019. But a month before the opening, Ms. Spears canceled, and announced an “indefinite work hiatus.” Her statement at the time said that her father, known as Jamie, had “almost died” after suffering a ruptured colon.It’s funny to hear my managers’ side of the story. They all said I wasn’t participating in rehearsals and I never agreed to take my medication, which, my medication is only taken in the mornings, never at rehearsal. They don’t even see me, so why are they even claiming that? When I said no to one dance move into rehearsals, it was as if I planted a huge bomb somewhere. And I said no, I don’t want to do it this way.After that, my management and my dancers and my assistant of the new people that were supposed to do the new show all went into a room, shut the door and didn’t come out for at least 45 minutes. Ma’am, I’m not here to be anyone’s slave. I can say no to a dance move. I was told by my at-the-time therapist — Dr. Benson, who died — that my manager called him in that moment and told him that I wasn’t cooperating or following the guidelines in rehearsals. And he also said I wasn’t taking my medication, which is so dumb because I’ve had the same lady every morning for the past eight years give me my same medication, and I’m nowhere near these stupid people. It made no sense at all.There was a week period where they were nice to me and I told them, I don’t want to do the — no wait — they were nice to me, they said if I don’t want to do the new Vegas show, I don’t have to because I was getting really nervous. I said I can wait — it was like they told me I could wait. It was like lifting literally 200 pounds off of me when they said I don’t have to do the show anymore, because it was really, really hard on myself and it was too much. I couldn’t take it anymore.In January 2019, Ms. Spears tweeted that pulling out of the residency “breaks my heart” but that “it’s important to always put your family first.” In court, she revealed that trouble arose behind the scenes when she had a disagreement over a dance move, and believes she was punished as a result of speaking up.So I remember telling my assistant, but “you know what, I feel weird if I say no, I feel like they’re going to come back and be mean to me or punish me or something.” Three days later, after I said no to Vegas, my therapist sat me down in a room and said that he had a million phone calls about how I was not cooperating in rehearsals, and I haven’t been taking my medication. All this was false.He immediately, the next day, put me on lithium, out of nowhere. He took me off my normal meds I’ve been on for five years, and lithium is a very, very strong and completely different medication compared to what I was used to. You can go mentally impaired if you take too much, if you stay on it longer than five months. But he put me on that, and I felt drunk. I really couldn’t even take up for myself. I couldn’t even have a conversation with my mom or dad really about anything. I told them I was scared and my doctor had me on — six different nurses with this new medication come to my home, stay with me to monitor me on this new medication, which I never wanted to be on to begin with. There were six different nurses in my home and they wouldn’t let me get in my car to go anywhere for a month.Not only did my family not do a goddamn thing, my dad was all for it. Anything that happened to me had to be approved by my dad, and my dad only. He acted like he didn’t know, but I was told I had to be tested over the Christmas holidays before they sent me away when my kids went home to Louisiana. He was the one who approved all of it. My whole family did nothing.Ms. Spears asserted that the disagreement in rehearsals led to her being medicated against her will. The public has long speculated about the singer’s mental health, but a diagnosis that led to the conservatorship has not been disclosed. Lithium is a mood stabilizer that is used to treat mood cycling, which is a symptom of bipolar disorder. Ms. Spears made clear that lithium was not her regularly prescribed medication.Over the two-week holiday, a lady came into my home for four hours a day, sat me down and did a psych test on me. It took forever. But I was told I had to. Then, after I got a phone call from my dad saying, after I did the psych test with this lady, basically saying I’d failed the test or whatever. “I’m sorry, Britney, you have to listen to your doctors. They’re planning to send you to a small home in Beverly Hills to do a small rehab program that we’re going to make up for you. You’re going to pay $60,000 a month for this.”I cried on the phone for an hour and he loved every minute of it. The control he had over someone as powerful as me — he loved the control, to hurt his own daughter, one hundred, thousand percent. He loved it. I packed my bags and went to that place. I worked seven days a week, no days off, which in California the only similar thing to this is called sex trafficking, making anyone work, work against their will, taking all their possessions away — credit card, cash, phone, passport card — and placing them in a home where they work with the people who live with them. They all lived in the house with me — the nurses, the 24-7 security. There was one chef that came there and cooked for me daily, during the weekdays. They watched me change every day — naked — morning, noon, and night. My body — I had no privacy door for my room, I gave eight gals of blood a week.If I didn’t do any of my meetings and work from eight to six at night, which is 10 hours a day, seven days a week, no days off, I wouldn’t be able to see my kids or my boyfriend. I never had a say in my schedule; they always told me I had to do this. And ma’am, I will tell you, sitting in a chair 10 hours a day, seven days a week, it ain’t fun. And especially when you can’t walk out the front door.And that’s why I’m telling you this again two years later. After I’ve lied and told the whole world “I’m OK, and I’m happy.” It’s a lie. I thought I just maybe I said that enough maybe I might become happy. Because I’ve been in denial. I’ve been in shock. I am traumatized. You know, fake it till you make it. But now I’m telling you the truth, OK? I’m not happy. I can’t sleep. I’m so angry it’s insane, and I’m depressed. I cry every day.Ms. Spears’s speech was the first time that the world had heard the singer address in detail her struggles with the conservatorship granted to her father, James P. Spears, in 2008.Gabriel Bouys/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFor years, Ms. Spears’s Instagram account has been her primary means of sharing her life with the public. It portrays her as joyful and carefree via videos of her dancing in her home, spending time with her boyfriend and posing at the beach. In court, she revealed the turmoil behind the veneer.And the reason I’m telling you this is because I don’t think how the state of California can have all this written in the court documents from the time I showed up and do absolutely nothing — just hire, with my money, another person, and keep my dad on board. Ma’am, my dad, and anyone involved in this conservatorship and my management, who played a huge role in punishing me when I said no — ma’am, they should be in jail. Their cruel tactics working for Miley Cyrus — she smokes on joints onstage at the VMAs — nothing is ever done to this generation for doing wrong things.But my precious body, who was worked for my dad for the past [expletive] 13 years, trying to be so good and pretty, so perfect when he works me so hard, when I do everything I’m told and the state of California allowed — my ignorant father — to take his own daughter, who only has a role with me, if I work with him, they set back the whole course and allowed him to do that to me? That’s giving these people I’ve worked for way too much control. They also threatened me and said if I don’t go, then I have to go to court and it will be more embarrassing me if the judge publicly makes go the evidence we’ve had, you have to go.I was advised for my image, I need to go ahead and just go and get it over with. They said that to me. I don’t even drink alcohol — I should drink alcohol considering what they put my heart through. Also the Bridges facility they sent me to — none of the kids — I was doing this program for four months, so the last two months I went to a Bridges facility — none of the kids there did the program. They never showed up for any of them. You didn’t have to do anything if you didn’t want to. How come they always made me go? How come I was always threatened by my dad and anybody that participated in this conservatorship — if I don’t do this, what they tell me to enslave me to do, they’re going to punish me.Ms. Spears sought to draw a contrast between the way other young pop stars are viewed after acting out in public and her own life under the conservatorship. Several times, she said her conservators should be punished or sued for the ways they exerted control over her.The last time I spoke to you by just keeping the conservatorship going and also keeping my dad in the loop made me feel like I was dead. Like I didn’t matter, like nothing had been done to me, like you thought I was lying or something. I’m telling you again because I’m not lying. I want to feel heard, and I’m telling you this again so maybe you can understand the depth and the degree and the damage that they did to me back then.I want changes, and I want changes going forward. I deserve changes. I was told I have to sit down and be evaluated, again, if I want to end the conservatorship. Ma’am, I didn’t know I could petition the conservatorship to be ended. I’m sorry for my ignorance, but I honestly didn’t know that. But honestly, I don’t think I owe anyone to be evaluated. I’ve done more than enough. I don’t feel like I should even be in a room with anyone to offend me by trying to question my capacity of intelligence, whether I need to be in this stupid conservatorship or not. I’ve done more than enough.Vivian Lee Thoreen, a lawyer for Mr. Spears, said in a statement earlier this year that if Ms. Spears wants to end her conservatorship, she should simply petition to do so: “She has always had this right but in 13 years has never exercised it.” In court, Ms. Spears said she never knew that was an option.I don’t owe these people anything. Especially me, the one that has roofed and fed tons of people on tour, on the road. It’s embarrassing and demoralizing what I’ve been through, and that’s the main reason I’ve never said it openly. And mainly, I didn’t want to say it openly, because I honestly don’t think anyone would believe me. To be honest with you, the Paris Hilton story on what they did to her, to that school? I didn’t believe any of it — I’m sorry, I’m an outsider and I’ll just be honest, I didn’t believe it.And maybe I’m wrong and that’s why I didn’t want to say any of this to anybody, to the public, because I thought people would make fun of me or laugh at me and say, “She’s lying, she’s got everything; she’s Britney Spears.” I’m not lying. I just want my life back and it’s been 13 years and it’s enough.It’s been a long time since I’ve owned my money, and it’s my wish and my dream for all of this to end, without being tested. Again, it makes no sense whatsoever for the state of California to sit back and literally watch me, with their own two eyes, make a living for so many people, and pay so many people, trucks and buses on tour, on the road with me, and be told I’m not good enough. But I’m great at what I do. And I allow these people to control what I do, ma’am, and it’s enough. It makes no sense at all.Mr. Spears manages his daughter’s $60 million fortune alongside a corporate fiduciary, Bessemer Trust. Even as the singer has raised concerns about her father remaining her conservator, she has paid for his legal representation, including media strategy for defending her conservatorship.Now, going forward, I’m not willing to meet or see anyone — I’ve met with enough people against my will. I’m done. All I want is to own my money, for this to end, and my boyfriend to drive me in his [expletive] car.And I would honestly like to sue my family, to be totally honest with you. I also would like to be able to share my story with the world, and what they did to me, instead of it being a hush-hush secret to benefit all of them. I want to be able to be heard on what they did to me by making me keep this in for so long is not good for my heart. I’ve been so angry and I cry every day. It concerns me I’m told I’m not allowed to expose the people who did this to me.For my sanity, I need you, judge, to approve me to do an interview where I can be heard on what they did to me. And actually, I have the right to use my voice and take up for myself. My attorney says I can’t, it’s not good, I can’t let the public know anything they did to me, and by not saying anything, is saying it’s OK. I don’t know what I said here. It’s not OK — actually, I don’t want to interview. I’d much rather just have an open call to you for the press to hear, which I didn’t know today we were doing, so thank you. Instead of having an interview, honestly, I need that to get it off my heart, the anger and all of it.In 2020, Ms. Spears’s court-appointed lawyer, Samuel D. Ingham III, filed court papers saying that the singer “is vehemently opposed to this effort by her father to keep her legal struggle hidden away in the closet as a family secret.” In court on Wednesday, Ms. Spears said she didn’t want to grant an interview, but she wanted the world to hear her story.It’s not fair they’re telling me lies about me openly. Even my family, they do interviews to anyone they want on news stations. My own family doing interviews, and talking about the situation and making me feel so stupid, and I can’t say one thing. And my own people say I can’t say anything.It’s been two years. I want a recorded call to you — actually, we’re doing this now, which I didn’t know that were doing this, and to the public knows what they did to me. I told my — I know my lawyer, Sam [Ingham], has been very scared for me to go forward because he’s saying if I speak up, I’m being overworked in that facility, of that rehab place, the rehab place will sue me. He told me I should keep it to myself, really. I would personally like to — actually, I know I’ve had, grown with a personal relationship with Sam, my lawyer. I’ve been talking to him, like, three times a week now, we’ve kind of built a relationship, but I haven’t really had the opportunity by my own self to actually handpick my own lawyer by myself, and I would like to be able to do that.At the time the conservatorship was imposed, a judge deemed Ms. Spears incapable of hiring her own counsel and appointed Mr. Ingham. After Ms. Spears’s speech, Mr. Ingham told the judge that he would be willing to step aside if that was the court’s decision.I would like to also — the main reason why I’m here is because I want to end the conservatorship without having to be evaluated. I’ve done a lot of research, ma’am, and there is a lot of judges who do end conservatorships for people without them having to be evaluated all the time. The only times they don’t is if a concerned family member says, “Something’s wrong with this person,” and consider otherwise.And considering my family has lived off my conservatorship for 13 years, I won’t be surprised if one of them has something to say, go forward, and say, “We don’t think this should end, we have to help her.” Especially if I get my fair turn in exposing what they did to me.Also I want to speak to you about, at the moment, my obligations, which, I personally don’t think at the very moment I owe anybody anything. I have three meetings a week I have to attend no matter what. I just don’t like feeling like I work for the people whom I pay. I don’t like being told I have to, no matter what, even if I’m sick, Jodi [Montgomery] the conservator says I have to see my coach Ken even when I’m sick. I would like to do one meeting a week with a therapist. I’ve never before, even before they sent me to that place, had two therapy sessions, a therapy session, and one therapy session with — I have a doctor and then a therapy person. What I’ve been forced to do illegal in my life. I shouldn’t be told I have to be available three times a week to these people I don’t know.I’m talking to you today because I feel again, yes, even Jodi is starting to kind of take it too far with me. They have me going to therapy twice a week and a psychiatrist. I’ve never in the past had — wait, they have me going, yeah, twice a week, and Dr. [unclear] — so that’s three times a week. I’ve never in the past had to see a therapist more than once a week. It takes too much out of me going to this man I don’t know, number one.The Jodi Ms. Spears referenced is Jodi Montgomery, a licensed professional conservator who stepped into the role of managing the singer’s personal life after her father stepped back from the role in 2019. Last year, Mr. Ingham said that Ms. Spears preferred to keep Ms. Montgomery as her personal conservator, saying that she was “strongly opposed” to her father returning to that role.I’m scared of people, I don’t trust people with what I’ve been through. And the clever setup of being in Westlake, one of the most exposed places in Westlake, which today, yesterday, paparazzi showed me coming out of a place literally crying in therapy. It’s embarrassing and it’s demoralizing. I deserve privacy when I go. I deserve privacy when I go and have therapy either at my home, like I’ve done for eight years. They’ve always come to my home. Or when Dr. Benson — the guy, the man that died — I went to a place similar to what I went to in Westlake, which was very exposed and really bad. OK, so wait, where was I? It was identical to Dr. Benson, who died, the one who illegally, yes, 100 percent abused me by the treatment he gave me, too. And I’ll be totally honest with you I was —JUDGE BRENDA PENNY: Ms. Spears, excuse me for interrupting you, but my reporter says if you could just slow down a little bit, because she’s trying to make sure she gets everything that you’re saying.OK, cool. And to be totally honest with you, when he passed away, I got on my knees and thanked God. In other words, my team is pushing it with me again. I have trapped phobias being in small rooms because of the trauma. Locking me up for four months in that place. It’s not OK for them to send me — sorry, I’m going fast — to that small room like that twice a week with another new therapist I pay that I never even approved. I don’t like it. I don’t want to do that. And I haven’t done anything wrong to deserve this treatment.Ms. Spears spoke of Dr. Timothy Benson, a psychiatrist who died in 2019 at age 47. His death came amid increasing scrutiny over the arrangement of Ms. Spears’s conservatorship.It’s not OK to force me to do anything I don’t want to do. By law, Jodi and this so-called team should — honestly, I should be able to sue them for threatening me and saying if I don’t go and do these meetings twice a week, we can’t let you have your money and go to Maui on your vacations. You have to do what you’re told for this program and then you will be able to go. But it was very clever — they picked one of the most exposed places in Westlake, knowing I have the hot topic of the conservatorship that over five paparazzis are going to show up and get me crying coming out of that place. I begged them to make sure that they did this at my home so I would have privacy. I deserve privacy.The whole conservatorship from the beginning was — the conservatorship from the beginning, once you see someone, whoever it is, in the conservatorship, making money, making them money and myself money and working — that whole statement right there, the conservatorship should end. There should be no — I shouldn’t be in a conservatorship if I can work and provide money and work for myself and pay other people. It makes no sense. The laws need to change. What state allows people to own another person’s money and account and threaten them in saying, “You can’t spend your money unless we do what we want you to do.” And I’m paying them.“I’ve been in denial. I’ve been in shock. I am traumatized,” Ms. Spears said.Martin Bureau/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMore than a decade after the paparazzi’s constant presence contributed to Ms. Spears’s public struggles, the singer made clear they are still an unwanted presence in her life. In February, after the release of “Framing Britney Spears,” a documentary by The New York Times, the public reassessed the media’s treatment of Ms. Spears when she was at her lowest point.Ma’am, I’ve worked since I was 17 years old, you have to understand how thin that is for me — every morning, I get up to know I can’t go on somewhere unless I meet people I don’t know every week in an office identical to the one where the therapist was very abusive to me. I truly believe this conservatorship is abusive. And we can sit here all day and say, oh, conservatorships are here to help people. But ma’am, there is 1,000 conservatorships that are abusive as well.I don’t feel like I can live a full life, I don’t owe them to go see a man I don’t know and share him my problems. I don’t even believe in therapy; I always think you take it to God. I want to end the conservatorship without being evaluated. In the meantime, I want this therapist once a week, he can either come to my home — no, I just want him to come to my home, I’m not willing to go to Westlake and be embarrassed by all these paparazzi, these scummy paparazzi laughing at my face while I’m crying coming out and taking my pictures as all these white, nice dinners where people drinking wine at restaurants, watching these places. They set me up by sending me to the most exposed places, and I told them I didn’t want to go there because I knew paparazzi would show up there.They only gave me two options for therapists. And I’m not sure how you make your decisions, ma’am, but this is the only chance for me to talk to you for a while. I need your help, so if you can just kind of let me know where your head is. I don’t really honestly know what to say but my requests are just to end the conservatorship without being evaluated. I want to petition basically to end the conservatorship, but I want to, I want it to be, petition to end it, but I don’t want to be evaluated and be sat in a room with people four hours a day like they did me before. And they made it even worse for me after that happened.Based off her own experience with a conservatorship, which she views as unfair, Ms. Spears asserted that the larger issue of guardianship requires further inquiry. Conservatorships are typically reserved for those who are old, ill or infirm — people who are deemed unable to take care of themselves or susceptible to outside influence or manipulation. Ms. Spears isn’t the only one who is questioning the system: California state legislators have introduced bills that would seek to firm up the legal rights of people under conservatorships; the legislation is still being considered.I just — I’m honestly new at this. And I’m doing research on all these things. I do know common sense and the method that things can end — for people, it has ended without them being evaluated. So I just want you to take that in consideration. I’ve also done research, wait — it also took a year, during Covid, to get me any self-care methods, during Covid. She said there were no services available. She’s lying, ma’am. My mom went to the spa twice in Louisiana during Covid. For a year, I didn’t have my nails done — no hairstyling and no massages, no acupuncture. Nothing for a year. I saw the maids in my home each week with their nails done different each time. She made me feel like my dad does, very similar, her behavior and my dad, but just a different dynamic.Team wants me to work and stay home instead of having longer vacations. They are used to me sort of doing a weekly routine for them, and I’m over it. I don’t feel like I owe them anything at this point. They need to be reminded they actually work for me. They tricked me by sending me to the — OK, I repeated myself there.Also, I was supposed to be able to — I have a friend that I used to do AA meetings with. I did AA for two years. I did three meetings a week. I’ve met a bunch of women there. And I’m not able to see my friends that live eight minutes away from me, which I find extremely strange.I feel like they’re making me feel like I live in a rehab program. This is my home. I’d like for my boyfriend to be able to drive me in his car. And I want to meet with a therapist once a week, not twice a week, and I want him to come to my home. Because I actually know I do need a little therapy.Throughout her speech, Ms. Spears described her desire to exercise control over her daily life. She said she wants to see her friends, get her nails and hair done, receive therapy at her home and ride in her boyfriend’s car. Earlier this week, The New York Times reported that Ms. Spears was forbidden by her father from making cosmetic changes to her home, like restaining her kitchen cabinets.I would like to progressively move forward, and I want to have the real deal. I want to be able to get married and have a baby. I was told right now in the conservatorship, I’m not able to get married or have a baby. I have a ID [IUD] inside of myself right now so I don’t get pregnant. I wanted to take the ID [IUD] out so I could start trying to have another baby. But this so-called team won’t let me go to the doctor to take it out because they don’t want me to have children, any more children. So basically, this conservatorship is doing me way more harm than good.One of Ms. Spears’s most shocking revelations came at the end of her speech, when she said that those managing her conservatorship wouldn’t allow her to have her birth control device removed so that she could try to have more children. Alexis McGill Johnson, president and chief executive of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, called it “reproductive coercion.”I deserve to have a life. I’ve worked my whole life. I deserve to have a two- to three-year break and just, you know, do what I want to do. But I do feel like there is a crutch here. And I feel open and I’m OK to talk to you today about it. But I wish I could stay with you on the phone forever, because when I get off the phone with you, all of a sudden I hear all these no’s — no, no, no. And then all of a sudden I get I feel ganged up on and I feel bullied and I feel left out and alone. And I’m tired of feeling alone. I deserve to have the same rights as anybody does by having a child, a family, any of those things, and more so.And that’s all I wanted to say to you. And thank you so much for letting me speak to you today.After Ms. Spears spoke, there was a brief recess, then Ms. Thoreen read a brief statement on behalf of Mr. Spears: “He is sorry to see his daughter suffering and in so much pain. Mr. Spears loves his daughter, and he misses her very much.”Watch ‘Framing Britney Spears’Our documentary about Britney Spears and her court battle with her father over control of her fortune is free on our site for New York Times subscribers in the United States. Watch it now.Watch The New York Times documentary about Britney Spears and her court battle with her father over control of her career and her fortune. The full video is streaming on Hulu and free on our site for Times subscribers in the United States.Ting-Li Wang/The New York Times More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      Britney Spears Speaks Out in Court, Asks to End Conservatorship

      by

      In a rare public appearance in court, the singer gave an impassioned speech about her treatment under the conservatorship that controls her life, telling the judge she would like it to end.Britney Spears told a Los Angeles judge on Wednesday that she has been drugged, compelled to work against her will and prevented from removing her birth control device over the past 13 years as she pleaded with the court to end her father’s legal control of her life.“I’ve been in denial. I’ve been in shock. I am traumatized,” Ms. Spears, 39, said in an emotional 23-minute address by phone that was broadcast in the courtroom and, as she insisted, to the public. “I just want my life back.”It was the first time that the world had heard Ms. Spears address in detail her struggles with the conservatorship granted to her father, James P. Spears, in 2008, when concerns about her mental health and potential substance abuse led him to petition the court for legal authority over his adult daughter.Ms. Spears called for the arrangement to end without her “having to be evaluated.” “I shouldn’t be in a conservatorship if I can work. The laws need to change,” she added. “I truly believe this conservatorship is abusive. I don’t feel like I can live a full life.”The struggle between one of the world’s biggest pop stars and her father has become a long-running saga that has spawned a “Free Britney” movement around the world among her fans and fellow celebrities.Outside the courtroom, Ms. Spears’s voice silenced a crowd of roughly 120 supporters who had rallied on her behalf but paused to listen to her words on their phones.The striking development came after Ms. Spears’s court-appointed lawyer, Samuel D. Ingham III, asked at her request in April that she be allowed — on an expedited basis — to address the judge directly. Confidential court records obtained recently by The New York Times revealed that Ms. Spears had raised issues with her father’s role in the conservatorship as early as 2014, and had repeatedly asked about terminating it altogether, though Mr. Ingham had not filed to do so.“It’s embarrassing and demoralizing what I’ve been through, and that’s the main reason I didn’t say it openly,” Ms. Spears said. “I didn’t think anybody would believe me.” Ms. Spears said she had been previously unaware that she could petition to end the arrangement. “I’m sorry for my ignorance,” she said, “but I didn’t know that.”Working off prepared remarks, the singer spoke so quickly and so passionately that the judge was forced more than once to ask her to slow down for the sake of the court stenographer.“Now I’m telling you the truth, OK?” Ms. Spears said. “I’m not happy. I can’t sleep. I’m so angry it’s insane.”Fans gathered outside the courthouse in Los Angeles on Wednesday in anticipation of Spears’s hearing.Allison Zaucha for The New York TimesThe singer has lived under a two-pronged conservatorship in California — covering her person and her estate — since 2008, when concerns about her mental health and potential substance abuse led Mr. Spears to petition the court for authority over his daughter.Mr. Spears, 68, currently oversees Ms. Spears’s nearly $60 million fortune, alongside a professional wealth management firm she requested; a licensed professional conservator took over Ms. Spears’s personal care on an ongoing temporary basis in 2019.Representatives for Mr. Spears and the conservatorship have said that it was necessary to protect Ms. Spears, and that she could move to end the conservatorship whenever she wanted.But Ms. Spears said that she felt compelled to again address the judge in the case, Brenda Penny, after most recently speaking out against the conservatorship in a closed-door hearing in May 2019. “I don’t think I was heard on any level when I came to court the last time,” Ms. Spears said before recapping her previous remarks, including the claim that she had been forced to tour, undergo psychiatric evaluations and take medication in 2019. “The people who did that to me should not be able to walk away so easily,” she said.She described being pushed into involuntary medical evaluations and rehab after she spoke up for herself in rehearsal for an upcoming Las Vegas residency that was later canceled. When she objected to a piece of choreography, “it was as if I planted a huge bomb somewhere,” Ms. Spears said. “I’m not here to be anyone’s slave. I can say no to a dance move.”“I need your help,” she told the judge. “I don’t want to be sat in a room for hours a day like they did to me before. They made it even worse for me.”Multiple times, Ms. Spears drew attention to the fact that she was able to “make a living for so many people and pay so many people,” while not controlling her own money. “I’m great at what I do,” she said. “And I allow these people to control what I do, ma’am, and it’s enough. It makes no sense at all.”For years, fans and observers had questioned how Ms. Spears has continued to qualify for a conservatorship, sometimes known as a guardianship, which is typically a last resort for people who cannot care for themselves, including those with serious disabilities or dementia. Until recently, the singer had continued to perform and bring in millions of dollars under the arrangement.Robbyn de la Fuente sits with her children outside the courthouse in Los Angeles on Wednesday in anticipation of Spears’s hearing. Allison Zaucha for The New York TimesOutside the courthouse in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday, dozens of Ms. Spears’s passionate supporters, who rally under the banner of #FreeBritney, gathered in front of a neon pink step-and-repeat background to chant and give speeches about the unfairness of her predicament. Fans said they had traveled from Las Vegas and Detroit to attend. With an even larger media presence, the crowd grew to take up a full city block.Also joining the singer’s faithful were older participants who saw Ms. Spears’s case as bringing attention to a conservatorship system in need of reform. “When we heard about this group of socially conscious young people, we saw a chance to educate Americans,” said Susan Cobianchi, 61, who connected with the #FreeBritney contingent earlier this year, after her mother died while under a conservatorship that she said kept them apart in her final days.In 2016, Ms. Spears told a court investigator assigned to her case that she wanted the conservatorship to end as soon as possible, according to the records reported by The Times. “She articulated she feels the conservatorship has become an oppressive and controlling tool against her,” the investigator wrote. “She is ‘sick of being taken advantage of’ and she said she is the one working and earning her money but everyone around her is on her payroll.”At the time, the investigator, who is responsible for periodic evaluations that are provided to the judge, concluded that the conservatorship remained in Ms. Spears’s best interest because of her complex finances, susceptibility to undue influence and “intermittent” drug issues. But the report also called for “a pathway to independence and the eventual termination of the conservatorship.”On Wednesday, Ms. Spears invoked her father’s authority, calling him “the one who approved all of it,” and recounted being intimidated and punished by him and her management team. “They should be in jail,” she said. She also mentioned wanting to sue her family.After requesting a recess following Ms. Spears’s remarks, Vivian Lee Thoreen, a lawyer for Mr. Spears, read a brief statement on behalf of her client: “He is sorry to see his daughter suffering and in so much pain,” she said. “Mr. Spears loves his daughter, and he misses her very much.”Junior Olivas gathers with other supporters to listen to Ms. Spears address the conservatorship granted to her father outside the courthouse on Wednesday.Allison Zaucha for The New York TimesMr. Ingham, who said as the hearing began that he was unaware of what Ms. Spears would say, also seemed stunned. He said he served at the pleasure of the court, and would step aside as Ms. Spears’s representative if asked.“Since she has made the remarks that she was able to make on the public record today, she believes that it would be advisable for proceedings to be sealed going forward,” Mr. Ingham said. Another hearing had been previously scheduled for July, but the exact next steps remained unclear.While Ms. Spears’s legal path forward may be complicated, her stated desires were simpler. She wanted to be able to get her hair and nails done freely, she said, and to visit with friends who lived “eight minutes away.”Although she said she preferred to put her faith in God, Ms. Spears noted that she was not opposed to treatment if it remained private. “I actually do know I need a little therapy,” she said with a laugh.But the conservatorship was “doing me way more harm than good,” she said. “I deserve to have a life.”Ms. Spears said that she had even been prevented from going to the doctor to remove her IUD method of birth control: “This so-called team won’t let me go to the doctor to take it out because they don’t want me to have children,” she said.“I want to be able to get married and have a baby,” the singer added. “I was told right now in the conservatorship I am not able to get married and have a baby.”Earlier, Ms. Spears had declared herself “done.” “All I want is to own my money, for this to end and my boyfriend to drive me in his car,” she said, adding an expletive.Caryn Ganz and Liz Day contributed reporting from New York. Lauren Herstik and Samantha Stark contributed reporting from Los Angeles.Watch ‘Framing Britney Spears’Our documentary about Britney Spears and her court battle with her father over control of her fortune is free on our site for New York Times subscribers in the United States. Watch it now.Watch The New York Times documentary about Britney Spears and her court battle with her father over control of her career and her fortune. The full video is streaming on Hulu and free on our site for Times subscribers in the United States.Ting-Li Wang/The New York Times More

    • 75 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Britney Spears, in Her Own Words

      by

      Britney Spears, in Her Own WordsMaya SalamReporting on Pop CultureFrederic J. Brown/AFP — Getty ImagesOn Wednesday, Britney Spears made a rare public statement in court, pleading for the conservatorship that controls her life to end. “I have the right to use my voice and take up for myself,” said Spears, 39.Here’s what else she told the judge → More