Pop and Rock Music

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      Au tribunal, Britney Spears demande la levée de sa tutelle.

      by

      Lors d’une déclaration publique exceptionnelle au tribunal de Los Angeles, la chanteuse a prononcé un discours passionné sur la tutelle qui contrôle sa vie et demandé qu’elle soit levée.La vie et les finances de Britney Spears sont sous tutelle depuis 2008. Mercredi, au tribunal, elle a déclaré vouloir mettre fin à cet état de fait.Mario Anzuoni/ReutersThe New York Times traduit en français une sélection de ses meilleurs articles. Retrouvez-les ici.Britney Spears a déclaré mercredi à une juge de Los Angeles qu’elle a été droguée, obligée de travailler contre son gré et empêchée de retirer son dispositif de contraception au cours des 13 dernières années, et a plaidé auprès du tribunal qu’il mette fin au contrôle légal de sa vie par son père.“J’étais dans le déni. J’étais en état de choc. Je suis traumatisée”, a dit Britney Spears, 39 ans, dans une déclaration émouvante de 23 minutes diffusée par téléphone dans la salle d’audience et, comme elle l’a demandé, au public. “Je veux juste qu’on me rende ma vie”.C’était la première fois que le monde entendait Britney Spears évoquer en détail ses difficultés avec la tutelle accordée en 2008 à son père, James P. Spears, qui, inquiet pour la santé mentale et potentielle toxicomanie de sa fille, avait demandé au tribunal à exercer une autorité légale sur sa fille adulte.Britney Spears a plaidé pour que la tutelle prenne fin sans qu’elle “ait à être évaluée”. “Je ne devrais pas être sous tutelle alors que je suis capable de travailler. Les lois doivent changer”, a-t-elle insisté. “Je considère vraiment cette tutelle abusive. Je n’ai pas le sentiment de pouvoir pleinement vivre ma vie.”Le conflit qui oppose l’une des plus grandes pop stars mondiale à son père est une longue saga qui a vu naître le mouvement mondial ‘Free Britney’ parmi ses fans et d’autres célébrités.À l’extérieur de la salle d’audience, une foule d’environ 120 sympathisants venus soutenir la chanteuse s’est tue pour écouter sa voix sur leurs téléphones.Ce rebondissement est intervenu après qu’en avril l’avocat commis d’office de Britney Spears, Samuel D. Ingham III, a déposé une requête, à sa demande, afin qu’elle soit autorisée — en procédure accélérée — à s’adresser directement à la juge. D’après des documents judiciaires confidentiels obtenus récemment par le New York Times, Mme Spears avait soulevé dès 2014 des problèmes relatifs au rôle de son père dans la tutelle, et avait demandé sa levée à plusieurs reprises, bien que M. Ingham n’ait pas demandé à le faire.“Ce que j’ai vécu me fait honte et me déprime, et c’est la principale raison pour laquelle je n’en parlais pas ouvertement “, a indiqué Britney Spears. “Je pensais que personne ne me croirait.” Elle a ajouté qu’elle ne savait pas qu’elle pouvait demander la fin de la tutelle. “Je suis navrée de mon ignorance”, a-t-elle dit, “mais je ne le savais pas”.La chanteuse s’exprimait à partir de notes préparées à l’avance, parlant si vite et de façon si passionnée que la juge a dû plusieurs fois lui demander de ralentir pour les besoins de son greffier.“Je vous dis la vérité là, OK ?” a-t-elle dit . “Je ne suis pas heureuse. Je n’arrive pas à dormir. Je suis tellement en colère, c’est du délire.”Les fans de Britney Spears devant le palais de justice de Los Angeles mercredi en prévision de l’audience de la star.Allison Zaucha for The New York TimesLa chanteuse vit en Californie sous une double tutelle — couvrant à la fois sa personne et sa fortune — depuis 2008, date à laquelle son père, inquiet de sa santé mentale et de son éventuelle toxicomanie, avait saisi le tribunal pour obtenir l’autorité sur sa fille.M. Spears, 68 ans, supervise actuellement la fortune de près de 60 millions de dollars de Britney Spears, aux côtés d’une société de gestion de patrimoine professionnelle qu’elle a sollicitée; depuis 2019, un administrateur professionnel agréé prend en charge les soins personnels de Britney Spears sur une base temporaire toujours en cours.D’après des représentants de M. Spears et de la tutelle, il était nécessaire de protéger Britney Spears, et elle pouvait demander la fin de la tutelle quand elle le souhaitait.Mais la star a dit qu’elle s’est sentie contrainte de s’adresser de nouveau à la juge chargée de l’affaire, Brenda Penny, après avoir récemment pris position contre sa mise sous tutelle lors d’une audience à huis clos en mai 2019. “Je ne pense pas avoir été entendue à quelque niveau que ce soit la dernière fois que je suis venue au tribunal”, a-t-elle lancé avant de résumer ses précédentes remarques, affirmant notamment qu’elle avait été forcée en 2019 de partir en tournée, de subir des évaluations psychiatriques et de prendre des médicaments. “Ceux qui m’ont fait ça, on ne devrait pas les laisser partir si facilement”, a-t-elle asséné.Elle a raconté qu’après avoir donné son avis pendant des répétitions en vue d’une résidence à Las Vegas, annulée par la suite, on l’a contrainte à subir des évaluations médicales et une cure de désintoxication. Quand elle s’est opposée à un bout de chorégraphie, “c’était comme si j’avais posé une énorme bombe quelque part”, a-t-elle décrit, ajoutant: “Je ne suis pas là pour être l’esclave de qui que ce soit. Je peux dire non à un pas de danse”.“J’ai besoin de votre aide”, a-t-elle déclaré à la juge. “Je ne veux pas qu’on m’asseye dans une pièce pendant des heures par jour comme ils l’ont fait. Ils n’ont fait qu’empirer les choses pour moi.”Plusieurs fois, Britney Spears a fait remarquer qu’elle était en mesure de “faire vivre tant de personnes et de rémunérer tant de personnes”, alors qu’elle ne contrôlait pas ses propres finances. “Je suis excellente dans ce que je fais”, a-t-elle affirmé. “Et je permets à ces gens d’avoir le contrôle sur ce que je fais, Madame, et ça suffit. Ça n’a aucun sens.”Cela fait plusieurs années que les fans et les commentateurs s’interrogent sur le fait que Britney Spears réponde encore aux critères d’une mise sous tutelle, celle-ci étant typiquement un dernier recours pour des personnes qui ne peuvent pas s’occuper d’elles-mêmes, y compris celles souffrant de handicaps graves ou de démence. Jusqu’à récemment, la chanteuse a continué à se produire et à rapporter des millions de dollars dans le cadre de cet accord.Robbyn de la Fuente et ses enfants attendent l’audition de Britney Spears devant le tribunal de Los Angeles mercredi.Allison Zaucha for The New York TimesMercredi, à l’extérieur du tribunal du centre-ville de Los Angeles, des dizaines de fervents partisans de la chanteuse ralliés sous la bannière #FreeBritney s’étaient rassemblés devant un fond rose fluo pour chanter et prononcer des discours dénonçant l’injustice de sa situation. Certains fans disaient avoir fait le voyage depuis Las Vegas et Détroit. Les représentants des médias étant encore plus nombreux, la foule avait gonflé jusqu’à occuper tout un pâté de maisons.Des participants plus âgés s’étaient également joints aux fans de la chanteuse, voyant dans le cas Britney Spears l’occasion d’attirer l’attention sur un système de tutelle en mal de réforme. “Quand on a entendu parler de ce groupe de jeunes animés d’une conscience sociale, on y a vu une opportunité d’éduquer les Américains”, explique Susan Cobianchi, 61 ans, qui a rejoint le contingent #FreeBritney au début de l’année, après le décès de sa mère dont la tutelle les avait tenus éloignées dans ses derniers jours.En 2016, Britney Spears a fait savoir à un enquêteur judiciaire chargé de son dossier qu’elle souhaitait que la tutelle prenne fin le plus rapidement possible, selon les documents signalés par le New York Times. “Elle a précisé qu’elle avait le sentiment que la mise sous tutelle était devenue un outil d’oppression et de contrôle à son encontre”, a écrit l’enquêteur. “Elle ‘en a marre qu’on profite d’elle’ et elle dit que c’est elle qui travaille et gagne son argent mais qu’elle paie tous ceux qui l’entourent”.À l’époque, l’enquêteur, qui est chargé de fournir des évaluations régulières au juge, a conclu que la mise sous tutelle restait dans le meilleur intérêt de la star en raison de la complexité de ses finances, de sa vulnérabilité aux influences néfastes et de ses problèmes de drogue “intermittents”. Mais le rapport préconisait également “un passage vers l’indépendance et la fin à terme de la mise sous tutelle”.Mercredi, la chanteuse a invoqué l’autorité de son père, le qualifiant de “celui qui approuve tout cela”, et a décrit comment lui et son équipe de direction l’ont intimidée et punie. “Ils méritent d’être en prison”, a-t-elle déclaré. Elle a également mentionné vouloir poursuivre sa famille en justice.Après ces remarques, Vivian Lee Thoreen, une des avocates de M. Spears, a demandé une suspension d’audience puis lu une courte déclaration au nom de son client : “Il est désolé de voir sa fille souffrir et éprouver tant de douleur”, a-t-elle lu. “M. Spears aime sa fille, et elle lui manque beaucoup”.Réunis devant le tribunal, Junior Olivas et d’autres fans de Britney Spears réagissent aux déclarations de la star au sujet de sa mise sous tutelle.Allison Zaucha for The New York TimesM. Ingham, qui a indiqué au début de l’audience qu’il ignorait ce que Mme Spears allait dire, semblait tout aussi stupéfait. Il a dit qu’il servait au gré de la cour, et qu’il se retirerait comme représentant de Britney Spears si on le lui demandait.“Étant donné qu’elle a fait les remarques qu’elle a pu faire en public aujourd’hui, elle estime qu’il serait souhaitable que les audiences se tiennent à huis-clos à l’avenir”, a déclaré M. Ingham. Une autre audience avait déjà été programmée pour le mois de juillet, mais la suite exacte des événements n’est pas encore claire.Si le parcours juridique à venir de la chanteuse risque d’être compliqué, les souhaits qu’elle a exprimés sont plus simples. Elle voudrait pouvoir se faire coiffer et se faire faire les ongles librement, a-t-elle dit, et pouvoir rendre visite à des amis qui vivent à “huit minutes de chez elle”.Elle préfère mettre sa foi en Dieu, a-t-elle dit, mais elle n’est pas opposée à un traitement à condition qu’il reste confidentiel. “Je sais que j’ai besoin d’un peu de thérapie”, a-t-elle admis avec un petit rire.Mais la mise sous tutelle “me fait beaucoup plus de mal que de bien”, a-t-elle ajouté. “Je mérite d’avoir une vie.”Mme Spears a raconté qu’on l’avait même empêchée d’aller chez le médecin faire retirer son stérilet, sa méthode de contraception : “Cette soi-disant équipe ne me laisse pas aller chez le médecin pour le retirer parce qu’ils ne veulent pas que j’aie d’enfants”, s’est-elle emportée.“Je veux pouvoir me marier et avoir un bébé”, a plaidé la chanteuse. “On m’a dit que là, mise sous tutelle, je ne suis pas en mesure de me marier et d’avoir un bébé”.Un peu plus tôt, Mme Spears avait déclaré qu’elle était “finie”. “Tout ce que je veux, c’est disposer de mon argent, que tout cela se termine et que je puisse faire un tour avec mon petit ami dans sa voiture”, a-t-elle déclaré, agrémentant son souhait d’un gros mot.Caryn Ganz et Liz Day ont contribué au reportage depuis New York. Lauren Herstik et Samantha Stark y ont contribué depuis Los Angeles.Regarder “Framing Britney Spears” (en anglais)Notre documentaire sur Britney Spears et sa bataille judiciaire avec son père pour le contrôle de sa fortune est gratuit sur notre site pour les abonnés du New York Times aux États-Unis. Regardez-le maintenant.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 Shares169 Views

      in Music

      Mariah Carey Urges Britney Spears to 'Stay Strong' on Twitter

      by

      As Britney Spears made an anguished speech in court about the control exerted over her life for years, fans, observers and fellow pop stars responded with shock to the details that trickled out from the hearing in Los Angeles, sending messages of support and solidarity.In the hearing, Ms. Spears said she believed that the conservatorship — a legal arrangement that controls her personal life and finances — was “abusive” and that she had not been able to live a full life. Midway through Wednesday’s hearing, after Ms. Spears had finished her prepared testimony, the singer Mariah Carey urged her to “stay strong.”We love you Britney!!! Stay strong ❤️❤️❤️— Mariah Carey (@MariahCarey) June 23, 2021
      Devoted fans on social media who have long suspected that Ms. Spears was not happy with the arrangement commended Ms. Spears for speaking up and reacted with disgust to parts of her account.Ms. Spears also received supportive words on social media from the singers Brandy, Tinashe and Liz Phair, who wrote that declaring a woman “mad” to gain control of her assets was the “oldest trick in the playbook of the patriarchy.” The singer Halsey wrote on Twitter that she admired Ms. Spears’s courage in speaking up and hoped that she would be freed from the “abusive system.” More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Moshing in the Rain: The Tenuous Return of the British Music Festival

      by

      Spending three days camping at a muddy music festival is a British tradition. But event operators fear that few will go ahead this summer, despite a trial last weekend.DONNINGTON PARK, England — At 5 p.m. on Friday, a metal band called Death Blooms walked onstage in a field here and launched into a pummeling track to open Download Festival, Britain’s first large-scale music festival to take place since the Covid-19 pandemic began.A second later, several hundred rain-soaked fans — including two men dressed as bananas — began careering into one another in front of the stage, arms and legs flailing, smiling ecstatically as they formed Britain’s first legal mosh pit in 15 months.After 10 minutes, Jim Ellison, one of the bananas, rushed out of the tent to catch his breath. “It’s so good to be back to normality,” said Ellison, 19. He acknowledged that most wouldn’t define normalcy as “a man in a banana costume moshing,” before cutting the interview short as Death Blooms started playing a song called “Life is Pain.”“I’m really sorry,” Ellison said, excusing himself, “but I love this tune.” He ran straight back into the pit.When the metal band Death Blooms opened Download, a mosh pit quickly formed in front of the stage.Joe Giddens/Press Association, via Associated PressSince the 1970s, music festivals have been a key part of the British summer: events where teenagers get a first taste of parent-free vacations, music fans find community and people generally get very muddy and carefree. But there is widespread concern that few events will go ahead this year despite nearly half of Britain’s population having been fully vaccinated against Covid-19. And organizers say they risk going bankrupt.Last week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that social distancing measures would continue in England until at least July 19 — almost a month after all restrictions were planned to be lifted. Within days, several major festivals were canceled for the second year in a row, with organizers saying they couldn’t afford to pay suppliers if there was no guarantee that the events would occur.“There seems to be a whole body of evidence saying, ‘You can do outside events safely,’ but for some reason the government won’t let us,” Chris Smith, the director of WOMAD, a world music festival, said in a telephone interview. His event was scheduled for July 22, and Smith was hoping that the government would provide support so the event could go ahead.British festivals range from world-renowned events like Glastonbury — which turns a farm in southwestern England into a temporary city for one week each year — to scrappier productions like Tribfest, an event for cover bands.In 2019, almost 1,000 were held, attracting 5.2 million attendees, according to the Association of Independent Festivals, a trade body. That year, festivals generated 1.7 billion pounds, $2.3 billion, for Britain’s economy.Download was initially canceled in March. This weekend’s hastily arranged special edition was able to go ahead only because it is part of a government trial to see whether and how cultural life can return safely. Previous pilot events — two 3,000-person club nights and a 5,000-capacity rock concert in Liverpool — led to eight cases of potential coronavirus transmission, according to one of the scientists involved, Iain Buchan.Arriving on the first day of Download for a typically rainy and carefree British festival. Joe Giddens/Press Association, via Associated PressDownload 2021 had a significantly reduced capacity: The three-day metal, punk and hard rock festival usually sees over 110,000 hard-rock fans camp in Donnington Park — a set of fields next to a racetrack in Leicestershire, England — to watch bands like Slipknot and Slayer. But for the government trial, only 10,000 fans were allowed, and the lineup featured only British acts to avoid the risks of international travel and quarantines.Attendees had to take a coronavirus test before going in, and agreed to also do one five days after the festival so that scientists could see whether the event caused the spread of coronavirus. But once inside in the grounds, masks weren’t required, while headbanging, moshing and drunken conversations at the camp site were prevalent.Melvin Benn, the director of Festival Republic, Download’s organizer, said he wasn’t concerned about a coronavirus outbreak at the site given the testing system. “I probably need to be more worried about trench foot,” he said while sheltering from a downpour.Attendees also weren’t worried about catching Covid. Harry Jackson, 26, a theater technician, said that the only anxiety he’d had around the festival was doing the pre-event test. “I sat there staring at it for half an hour going, ‘Please be negative, please be negative, I don’t want to miss this,’” he said. “I consider Download my home,” he added. “It’s my family.”The organizers of Britain’s other festivals say they can only be sure that their events will go ahead this summer if the government creates an insurance initiative to guarantee their costs if the country delays its reopening again. Austria and Germany have adopted such programs, but the British government has not, despite pressure from politicians.Last month, the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, a cross-party group of lawmakers, said in a report on festivals that there would be a hole in the “lives of music lovers and makers alike” this summer as a “direct result of the government’s refusal to back insurance for the sector.”At least one festival has found a creative solution. Last month, Brainchild — a three-day event for up-and-coming musicians and theater makers that is planned for the beginning of August — asked its 2,500 attendees to agree to be refunded only half their ticket price if the event were canceled so the organizers could start paying acts and equipment suppliers.Only 106 people declined to lose the £60, Marina Blake, the festival’s creative director, said in a telephone interview. “It was extraordinary,” she said. “It shows people are so desperate to have something to look forward to,” she added, noting that such an initiative was probably not viable for large events.Ben Barlow, the frontman for Neck Deep, said during the band’s set that he was glad to be able to perform again.Katja Ogrin/Getty ImagesAt Download, the relief to be back at a festival was palpable. During the pop-punk act Neck Deep’s set, the singer Ben Barlow said, “This is our first gig in two years, and I never want to wait that long again.”“If we’re the lab rats, let’s give them a good experiment,” he added, encouraging the heaving crowd to mosh. Barlow looked close to tears several times during the set.On Saturday morning, the scene at Donnington Park was typical for a British music festival. Music fans wandered around bleary-eyed, and two interviewees said they’d decided to skip the on-site showers and instead freshen up with a combination of wet wipes and hand sanitizer.At 11:30 a.m. James Carroll, 23, stood by a stage, waiting for the day’s music to start. He was hurting a bit from moshing the day before, he said, but it was nothing that a few cans of beer couldn’t sort out. “Day two, straight back on it,” he said.Soon, a band called Lotus Eater took to the stage, its singer screaming into a microphone as his band created a cacophony behind him.Immediately, the mosh pit began again. There were no men in banana costumes this time, but soon there was someone dressed as a Tyrannosaurus rex. More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Lucy Dacus Takes Confessional Songwriting to a New Level

      by

      For her third solo album, “Home Video,” the singer used her childhood journals as source material.In November of 2018, while on tour with the group boygenius, the singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus began performing a recently written song, “Thumbs,” partly at the urging of Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker, her bandmates in that project. Dacus had already drawn on her own life for the wry and charged songs on her first two solo albums, “No Burden” (2016) and “Historian” (2018), but “Thumbs” — a confessional song about a violent impulse felt toward a close friend’s abusive father — with its blunt reminder that a survivor owes an oppressor exactly nothing, resonated particularly deeply with her fans. “I’ve probably received more messages about that song than anything else I’ve written,” Dacus told me recently. On her solo tour in 2019, she occasionally closed her sets with “Thumbs,” prefacing each performance with a request that no one record it.Lyrically the song often feels like a short story — the father and daughter’s tense meeting at a bar after years of estrangement, as witnessed by a protective friend (“I would kill him / if you let me … I don’t know how you keep smiling,” the narrator sings); the way they “feel him watching / walk a mile in the wrong direction.” But like all the songs on “Home Video,” Dacus’s third album, out on June 25 from Matador, the source material came directly and almost entirely from the journals she’s kept faithfully from the age of 7. The album’s 11 songs, together a forthright exploration of coming of age, deep friendships and young queer love amid a Bible camp backdrop, volley between grief and humor and darkness. They are her most intimate and deliberately personal work to date.For her third solo album, “Home Video,” the 26-year-old Dacus mined her own life, consulting the journals she’s kept since she was 7.Candace Karch“It was intentional that I talk plainly on this album about things that actually happened because I hadn’t done that yet,” the artist says on an early May afternoon while on her front porch in Philadelphia. Dacus, who’s trying to wean herself off a habit of wearing all black, has on a dark blue sweater and bright red pants that match her shade of lipstick. We’re having tea and leftover birthday cake — cardamom, pistachio, olive — that a friend made for Dacus’s 26th birthday a couple days ago. The party occasioned the first reunion of newly vaccinated friends, which Dacus says felt “slightly skittish, but really fun.” On Instagram, she posted a photo of the aftermath, a table covered in so many Pollock-like swirls it was impossible to decipher what had occurred there. “I woke up this morning and deep-cleaned the table,” Dacus says, looking down at it a little ruefully. “We had a crab bake. I really hope it doesn’t smell.”Dacus moved to Philadelphia — a city that had slowly grown on her while she was on tour — from her hometown of Richmond, Va., and after recording “Home Video” in Nashville, at the end of 2019. Heading into 2020, she felt oddly hopeful. When Dacus and her band did a three-night residency at the Philadelphia club Johnny Brenda’s, the audiences erupted in chants afterward for Bernie Sanders. She played her last show in March, in Florida. The release of “Home Video,” which Matador had slated for as early as fall 2020, was pushed back; a slowed-down, remote version of production continued throughout the pandemic.In May of last year, two months into lockdown and recovering from back surgery, Dacus dreamed she was running around a house with her best friends and, as one does during a pandemic, promptly went on Zillow, where a fresh listing for a rambling, early-20th-century rowhouse appeared on her screen. She rounded up six roommates, packed up her sizable library and moved in last summer. As we talk, various housemates drift past us and the dogwood tree in the front yard, wheeling out the recycling, returning from rock climbing. Recently, Dacus signed papers to buy the house, where she’ll continue to live communally. “I think I need one week every four months completely to myself, but other than that I want to be around people,” she says. “I struggle with depersonalization, so it’s nice to have a hustle and bustle around me.”In 2017 and 2018, when she began writing songs for “Home Video,” Dacus occasionally allowed herself to consult particular entries in her old journals, to check a detail for accuracy, and stumbled into a memoirist’s classic quandary. Dacus tends to lean on her emotional memory, layered with hindsight and grown-up knowledge, over what her childhood self was willing to put on the page. “Almost reliably the perspective is true and the entry is not and I’m pissed about that because I would really like to know what I thought in the moment,” she says. “Who’s to know which one I should trust more?” Otherwise, for a long time she says she stuck to another writerly instinct, to not reread the entries: “If I was too close to the event, it wouldn’t hit as an actual story.”Early in lockdown, though, Dacus sat down and began to type up her journals, starting from the beginning grade school years and stopping at age 16, when she hit around 100,000 words. When she looked back at the writing of her teen years, certain omissions stood out. “I really was just hovering around the fact that I was not straight,” she says. “A lot of the songs, like ‘Triple Dog Dare,’ are about that.” “Triple Dog Dare,” which, more precisely, is about queer love forbidden by the church, closes the album with astonishing and dark undertones, intentionally referencing an idea from “A Little Life” (2015) by Hanya Yanagihara (also T’s editor in chief). “There’s a section in the middle of the novel where a parent is talking about losing a child and expresses the surprising relief that nothing worse can happen now,” Dacus says. “That idea really stuck with me.”At 26, Dacus is thoughtful and forthright when describing her sexual identity. “Gay is the overarching word, queer is the better overarching word and more specifically bisexual or pansexual,” she says. “I have no allegiance. I think gender is a joke.”DACUS WAS ADOPTED as an infant and grew up on the rural-suburban edges of Richmond, amid the kind of teenage wasteland territories of her songs — overpasses, cornfields, goat farms. “It was a little isolated but I was also around a bunch of people my age going through the same angsty time, so it was kind of a pressure cooker for weirdness,” she says. From her father, a graphic designer, she acquired a belated love of Bruce Springsteen that translated into her fantastically rocked-out rendition of “Dancing in the Dark” — a song Dacus says has been covered so many times it’s attained the status of a hymn — on her EP “2019” (2019). She credits her mother, a pianist who worked in musical theater, with turning her on to Prince and David Bowie. But as a kid, she admits, she mostly listened to Top 40 songs with her friends, musicians like the Shins that she’d discover from “Gilmore Girls” and church music. She wouldn’t buy her first guitar, a $100 Ibanez she found on Craigslist, until she was 19.Handwritten lyrics to “Partners in Crime,” a song on Dacus’s new album. The words and melody come first, she says. “I’ll go on a walk and sing to myself and go home and pick up the guitar and figure out chords.”Candace KarchIt was around this time that she came out to her then boyfriend and to her family. “I think they were cool with it, but they were not asking questions, not really following up,” she says of her parents. “It was more about me making sure they knew it than a piece of information that brought us together. I’m grateful there wasn’t a fight. It was more like, OK, next topic. Maybe one day. Maybe they’ll read this and ring me up about it.”Dacus was raised in what she characterizes as a fairly progressive church, but she also attended her friends’ churches, places that are referenced in her song “Christine” (“We’re coming home / from a sermon saying / how bent on evil we are”): “There was one church I’d go to a lot where they separated you by gender and they talked to you a lot about sex,” she says. “Like, the purpose of this church was to make sure kids did not have sex.”Talking to her parents about leaving the church was a conversation of coming-out-level difficulty that Dacus reserved for a drive. As she sings in “Brando,” “That’s only something you would say in the car.” “They’re both still Christian and I think they know that I’m not done with whatever journey I’m on and I think that brings them peace of mind,” she says.She sings about the confusion of religious feeling on “VBS,” a song whose title is an acronym for Vacation Bible School. The Dacus of this song, in her early teens, smokes nutmeg in her camp boyfriend’s bunk bed and tries not to laugh at his bad poetry. “He was my first boyfriend and he was a stoner who loved Slayer and we danced in a field with all these people to Christian rock and I thought, this is literally God that’s making me feel so good, when it was probably just endorphins and hormones,” she says.Concerts, Dacus says, fill a void that church once did. “For me, there’s no greater joy than hearing people sing together,” she says. On “Please Stay” and the stunning “Going Going Gone” (which was recorded in a single take), Baker and Bridgers join Dacus, the group reprising its boygenius harmonizing. In the days before my visit, the trio was commended on Twitter by the Chicks for their cover of “Cowboy Take Me Away.” They were also name-checked in an episode of “Mare of Easttown” when Mare’s daughter, Siobhan (Angourie Rice), is asked on a date to a boygenius show by a college radio DJ (Madeline Weinstein).“We were talking about it in our group chat and Julien said something like, ‘Welcome to the gay cultural zeitgeist,’ ” Dacus says. “For our band to basically be an indicator of gayness in a TV show is so funny — and also we only did one tour, so like, did this scene happen in November 2018?” The improbability factor puts boygenius in the pop cultural realm of Sonic Youth appearing on “Gilmore Girls,” the Pixies on “Beverly Hills 90210.” While there are no reunion plans on the horizon, Dacus, Baker and Bridgers message almost daily. “We started doing tarot together,” Dacus says. “Julien didn’t have a deck until recently, Phoebe has a really ornate one and I have the classic Rider deck. I love it. It’s like having a shared lexicon, having a ritual.”Dacus is eager to begin touring again this fall. She keeps a spreadsheet of song requests fans have made in specific cities. She’s excited to play the songs on “Home Video,” even though she hasn’t been able to listen to the entire album herself in a long time. To put out something so honest and vulnerable feels “scary, but good,” she says. It was her first grade teacher who gave her a blank composition book, her first journal — with the reminder that the writing she produced in it would be for Dacus’s eyes only, a pact she’s only now broken in adulthood. “It’s not that I had secrets to protect, but I wanted secrets,” she says. “So I had to find a way to create them.” More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Foo Fighters Bring Rock Back to Madison Square Garden

      by

      Over the weekend, Foo Fighters played Madison Square Garden, the first full-capacity concert in a New York arena since March of 2020.The house lights inside Madison Square Garden went down Sunday night, and the thousands of fans, packed like sardines in their seats, stood as if on cue. As they roared their approval, bouncing in place on the balls of their feet, the ground began to tremble. Cellphone flash lights illuminated the darkness.The sound of a keyboard echoed through the rafters. Dave Grohl, the Foo Fighters’ frontman, appeared on the stage.“It’s times like these, you learn to live again,” Grohl sang.The lyrics had seldom felt so on point.After many difficult months of illness, death, hardship and pain, and shifting limits on how many people could gather, especially indoors, arena rock returned to New York City just over a year after the city was the center of the outbreak. It was the Garden’s first concert in more than 460 days, and it drew a full-capacity crowd that was asked to show proof of vaccination to enter. Inside, people grooved, tightly packed, with few masks visible.Jaclyn Mitgang, left, and Heather Morris, at the Garden’s first concert since the pandemic. “This is a book end to what we have gone through for a year and a half,” Morris said.Nathan Bajar for The New York Times“This is a book end to what we have gone through for a year and a half,” said Heather Morris, 47, of Chicago. “We’ve survived it. We’re going forward.”The return of concerts to the garden comes at an in-between moment when it comes to the pandemic in the United States. As more and more Americans have become vaccinated against the coronavirus, deaths from Covid have fallen off considerably. But only about two-thirds of adults in the United States have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine, and there are still parts of the country where vaccinations lag.But after a year of being stuck inside, people have been eager to restart their hobbies and routines and to connect with one another again. Last week, both New York and California, where more than 70 percent of adults have received at least one dose of the vaccine, lifted virtually all coronavirus restrictions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said fully vaccinated people can resume activities without wearing a mask. The rapidly shifting rules allowed the Foo Fighters concert to go forward.Fans were asked to show proof of vaccination to enter the arena.Nathan Bajar for The New York TimesOn Sunday, a concert attendee would have had to squint to see signs of the pandemic persisting. In many ways, the evening felt like prepandemic times.In a sea of thousands, only a few patrons here or there wore face coverings. Thousands of vaccinated people, their faces bare, belted out the lyrics to well-known songs, sending aerosols flying through the air. No one seemed concerned.Fans were packed together. A sudden arm gesture could send a beer flying. Strangers hugged and high-fived. They bumped into each other in the busy concourse. They punched the air, swung their hair and danced, twisting and swaying at their seats in a state of high-decibel music-induced bliss.It was “just epic,” said Rachael Cain, 51, who was among the first people to arrive at the Garden on Sunday afternoon.But there were subtle reminders of the pandemic everywhere. Hand sanitizer pumps were clamped to the walls, and wipes could be found near any napkin dispenser. Ticketing was digital and concession buying appeared mostly cashless.At the entrances, staff members checked people’s vaccine cards with varying levels of scrutiny. Some asked for identification to match with proof of inoculation, in a slow-moving process. Other checkers simply waved people through as they flashed their passes while walking by. A small anti-vaccine protest on the sidewalk outside drew little attention.Several patrons said that the vaccine requirement helped them feel safe about returning to such a big indoor gathering.“I was expecting it to be a little longer before I came to a concert again,” said Nick Snow, 29, who was among the few fans who wore a mask while inside the arena. “The precautions with the vaccinated only, they help.”Grohl himself took care to acknowledge from the stage the unique milestone he and his band were participating in. At various points during the roughly three-hour show, he asked the crowd rhetorically if they had missed music, and mused about how good it felt to be around thousands of people while playing rock songs. The band sang “My Hero” as a tribute to those who had made the concert possible. And in a surprise cameo to celebrate the occasion, the band brought out the comedian Dave Chappelle to sing a cover of Radiohead’s “Creep.”Dave Chappelle made a surprise appearance, singing Radiohead’s “Creep.”Kevin Mazur/Getty Images“Welcome back, New York City!” Chappelle yelled as he exited the stage.The show represented the return of some old, familiar comforts that music lovers may not soon take for granted again. There was call and response; people gesturing wildly to no one in particular; fans screaming the lyrics to songs only to realize their voices were drowned out by the music; and an entire floor section jumping up and down as one wave.“I would get vaccinated 10 times over just to see a live show like this with people,” said Rich Casey, 53, of Massachusetts.Having reached the ground floor of the venue and the echoey plaza that leads to the street, Foo Fighters fans seeking one last communal experience for the night sent up a chant, reveling again in one of the band’s most well-known songs, “Best of You.”OhhhhhhOhhhhhh.Ohhhhhh.Ohhhhhh.Then they erupted in one final cheer and walked out into the New York night. More

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      H.E.R.’s Soulful Suspicions, and 11 More New Songs

      by

      Hear tracks by Yves Tumor, Brittney Spencer, Tyler, the Creator 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.H.E.R., ‘Cheat Code’H.E.R. (Gabriella Sarmiento Wilson) has a rich grasp of soul and R&B history backed by her old-school musicianship as a singer, guitarist and keyboardist. There are 21 songs on her new album “Back of My Mind,” but most of them cling to a narrow palette: ballad tempos, two-chord vamps, constricted melody lines. “Cheat Code” is still a ballad, but a little more expansive. Its narrator is coming to grips with a partner’s infidelity — “What you’ve been doing’s probably something I ain’t cool with” — and warning, “You need to get your story straight.” The arrangement blossoms from acoustic guitar to quiet-storm studio band, with wind chimes and horns, only to thin out again, leaving her with just backup voices and a few piano notes, alone again with all her misgivings. JON PARELESBrittney Spencer, ‘Sober & Skinny’An insightful take on the way some relationships become sites of push and pull, one promise traded for another, one letdown making room for the next. “Sober & Skinny” is lonesome and doleful (some light melodic borrowing from Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” notwithstanding), the story of two people bound by their habits, and to each other, and how that can be the same thing: “I empty the fridge, you empty the bottle/we’re stacking up a mountain of hard pills we’ll have to swallow.” JON CARAMANICAAldous Harding, ‘Old Peel’The music is methodical and transparent: steady-ticking percussion, grumbling piano chords, spindly high guitar interjections, a melody line that barely budges. But Aldous Harding’s intent and attitude stay cheerfully, stubbornly, intriguingly opaque. “Old peel, no deal/I won’t speak if you call me baby,” she sings, utterly deadpan, enjoying the standoff. PARELESYves Tumor, ‘Jackie’Yves Tumor, the ineffable and audacious experimentalist, once again brandishes a reverence for Prince on “Jackie,” another venture into magisterial rock that clings to devastating grandeur. Tumor, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, assumes the role of a tortured ringleader, shepherding listeners into their surreal world of sexual and musical provocation. It’s almost easy to miss the song’s reality: a lament for the end of the relationship, in which Tumor’s anguish makes it difficult to eat and sleep. “These days have been tragic,” they wail, yearning for the possibility of a return of their body’s biological rhythms, and a promise that they will one day be whole again. ISABELIA HERRERATyler, the Creator, ‘Lumberjack’A return to croaky bragging for Tyler, the Creator, over a beat that heavily samples “2 Cups of Blood,” from the Gothically gloomy debut album by the Gravediggaz. Tyler’s boasts take the gleaming aesthete excess Pharrell once celebrated and gives it a tart edge: “Rolls-Royce pull up, Black boy hop out”; “Salad-colored emerald on finger, the size of croutons”; a credit card that “really can’t max out.” It’s a posture he’s earned:That’s my nuance, used to be the weirdoUsed to laugh at me, listen to me with their ears closedUsed to treat me like that boy Malcolm in the MiddleNow I’m zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zeroCARAMANICAStiff Pap featuring BCUC, ‘Riders on the Storm’Stiff Pap is an electronic duo from Johannesburg: the producer Jakinda and the rapper and singer Ayema Probllem. For “Riders on the Storm,” they’re joined by the Soweto band BCUC (Bantu Continua Uhuru Consciousness), adding gritty voices and salvos of percussion to both deepen and destabilize a track that’s already skewed and wily. Amid buzzing, hopscotching keyboard lines and fitful drumming, the song addresses, among other things, perpetual striving and social-media anxiety, doubled down by music that keeps shifting underfoot. PARELESChucky73, ‘Diri’A false start, a tiptoeing piano hook, a video featuring a golf course invasion: with “Diri,” the Bronx rapper Chucky73 has assembled an easy home run. The chubby-cheeked, beaming Lothario dazzles here, his slap-happy persona only amplified by his self-assured, nimble baritone and punch lines about the spoils of his success: “En do’ año’ me hice rico/El dinero me tiene bonito.” “In two years, I got rich,” he says. “The money’s got me looking cute.” HERRERAYoung Devyn, ‘Like This’Elsewhere on her debut EP, “Baby Goat,” Young Devyn leans into her Trinidadian roots and her past as a soca singer, and also toys with Brooklyn drill music. But on “Like This,” she’s just rapping — pointedly, nimbly, eye-rollingly: “I don’t even speak to my pops /How the hell would you think I would speak to my exes?” CARAMANICACochemea, ‘Mimbreños’Cochemea Gastelum, the saxophonist for the Dap-Kings soul and funk band, claims his heritage for “Baca Sewa Vol II,” his coming solo album. “Mimbreños” is named after his ancestors from the Mimbres Valley in New Mexico. It’s a call-and-response, his saxophone tune answered by vocal la-las, carried by calm, six-beat percussion. Then a marimba, hitting offbeats, supplies a vamp for Cochemea’s saxophone improvisations, abetted by biting electronic timbres. It’s untraditional, yet it feels deeply rooted. PARELESLeon Bridges, ‘Why Don’t You Touch Me’Leon Bridges, the Texas-based singer whose voice harks back to Sam Cooke, probes his unhappiness as a lover’s desire wanes in “Why Don’t You Touch Me.” A patient beat and lean electric-guitar chords accompany him as he questions, apologizes, complains and begs. “Don’t leave me out here unfulfilled/’Cause we’re slowly getting disconnected,” he reproaches, desperately longing to get physical. PARELESHarold Land, ‘Happily Dancing/Deep Harmonies Falling’“Westward Bound!”, a collection of never-before-released concert recordings from the early-to-mid-1960s at Seattle’s Penthouse club, offers a chance to revisit the overlooked career of Harold Land. A coolly expressive tenor saxophonist, Land left his mark in bands led by Max Roach and Clifford Brown and by the vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, but his own career as a bandleader never rose fully above the fray. In ways, “Happily Dancing/Deep Harmonies Falling,” a Land original, is quintessential hard-bop: the waltz-time swing feel, caught between elegance and heft; the cooperation between Land and the trumpeter Carmell Jones; the commingling of hard blues playing and balladic lyricism. But what sets this recording apart is Land, and his way of articulating each note with just enough restraint and sly timing to pull you in close. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOBen Goldberg, ‘Everything Happens to Be.’The clarinetist Ben Goldberg arranged “Everything Happens to Be.,” the title track from his rewarding new album (its name riffs on a jazz standard), in such a way that everyone in his quintet has a load-bearing role to play. The guitarist Mary Halvorson, the bassist Michael Formanek and the saxophonist Ellery Eskelin all carry different melodic parts, as the drummer Tomas Fujiwara employs a light touch to push things ahead, mirroring Formanek’s cadence without bearing down on him. RUSSONELLO More

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      Sparks, a Musical Curiosity With a Big Following for Half a Century

      by

      Edward Wright knows Sparks and you will too, once you see his documentary about this singular cultural phenomenon.Sparks, the musical entity invented and fronted by Ron and Russell Mael, is sometimes rock, sometimes pop, sometimes art song, always idiosyncratic. They’re a cult band with an ever-renewing cult and a career that spans 50 years. “The Sparks Brothers,” an energetic documentary directed by Edgar Wright, explains their appeal in part by emphasizing how it cannot be explained.Sparks’s image is one of contrasts. In the 1970s, the lead singer Russell’s slim physique, bouncy hair and matinee-idol face made him prime rock star “snack” material. Hunched over a keyboard was Ron, the songwriting brother, spindly and pale, whose mustache has been described as uncomfortably poised between Charlie Chaplin’s and Hitler’s. Then there’s what came out of Russell’s mouth — an arch falsetto that might cause a dog to wince, singing ditties about Albert Einstein and breast milk (not in the same song), over precision-tooled guitar riffs and baroque song structures that evoked both Bach and a calliope.“I thought they didn’t really exist,” the musician Nick Heyward says, recounting his surprise when he saw them on the street. “The Sparks Brothers” humanizes the two, who, despite their Euro-vibe were raised in California. Russell was a high-school quarterback, even. Their adored father, an artist, instilled a love of both film and music in the boys. He died when Ron was 11 and Russell 8.Wright, the virtuoso director of “Shaun of the Dead” and “Baby Driver,” among others, and an ace soundtrack assembler, is uniquely suited to make this tribute. Both director and band revel in formal play. Their eccentricity doesn’t entirely shut out earnestness.About sex, the brothers keep relatively mum, although when the subject of Russell’s short-lived romance with his musical collaborator Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Go’s comes up, there’s a bit of mutual humble-bragging by the still-friendly exes. As for drugs, they kept away. Rock ’n’ roll motivated them initially, but it’s something they now have an arm’s-length relationship with, in part because in its purest form it is not entirely hospitable to Sparks’s particular brand of irony.Does the movie slather on the contemporary celebrity love a little too thickly? Maybe. But even the contributions from arguable wild cards — Jason Schwartzman, Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino, Neil Gaiman — are pertinent.The Sparks BrothersRated R, inexplicably. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Music

      They Won Eurovision. Can They Conquer the World?

      by

      ROME — When the rock group Maneskin won this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, it was little known outside Italy. Then the competition catapulted the band in front of 180 million viewers, and propelled its winning song “Zitti e Buoni,” or “Shut Up and Behave,” into Spotify’s global Top 10, a first for an Italian band.As of Wednesday, the song had been streamed on Spotify more than 100 million times. With nearly 18 million listeners in the last month, Maneskin was performing better on the streaming service in the same period than Foo Fighters or Kings of Leon.Eurovision acts typically disappear from the spotlight as soon as the competition wraps, yet Maneskin’s members are hoping to build upon their existing fame here and newly won international interest to become a rare long-term Eurovision success story.A post-curtain controversy that dogged the group last month has only increased the band’s notoriety. On the night of the Eurovision victory, rumors spread on social media after a clip from the broadcast went viral, showing the lead singer, Damiano David, hunched over a table backstage. At a news conference later that evening, a Swedish journalist asked if David had been sniffing cocaine on live TV, and the singer denied any wrongdoing.David took a drug test, which came back negative. The European Broadcasting Union issued a statement saying that “no drug use took place” and that it “considered the matter closed.”From left, David, is the band’s lead singer, Raggi plays guitar and De Angelis is on bass. Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York TimesSo it’s been quite a world-stage debut for a foursome whose combined ages add up to just 83. (David is 22; Victoria De Angelis, the bassist, is 21; and the guitarist Thomas Raggi and the drummer Ethan Torchio are 20.)“For us,” De Angelis said in a recent interview, “music is passion, fun, something that lets us blow off steam” — no surprise to anyone who has seen Maneskin perform live. The band is a high-octane powerhouse of onstage charisma and youthful energy.One Italian music critic compared Maneskin — which means moonlight in Danish and is pronounced “moan-EH-skin” — to the Energizer Bunny. That may in part explain why “Zitti e Buoni” has transcended what could have been an insurmountable linguistic barrier (though there is already a cover version in Finnish).The song celebrates individuality and marching to the beat of one’s drum, or guitar riff. The refrain repeats: “We’re out of our minds, but we’re different from them.”For Eurovision, Maneskin channelled glam rock in laminated laced-up leather flares, studded leather jackets and gold-speckled poet’s sleeves. Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York TimesWith its carefully curated, stylish androgynous nonchalance — accessorized with high heels, black nail polish and smoky eyes — Maneskin breaks down gender barriers and champions self-expression.The band was formed in 2015. David, De Angelis and Raggi knew each other from middle school in Rome. Torchio, whose family lives just outside the city, joined the group after responding to an ad in a Facebook group called “Musicians Wanted (Rome).”There weren’t many venues here for fledgling rock bands, so they busked on the street, played in high schools and in restaurants “where you were expected to bring your own paying public,” David recalled. Small-time battle of the band competitions “ensured that at least we’d be playing front of an audience,” he added.“These are the kinds of dynamics that toughen you up,” said Torchio.The band didn’t win the “X-Factor” final in 2017, but the show offered a springboard for other successes.Romano Nunziato/NurPhoto, via Getty ImagesAfter a couple of years of struggling to find gigs, the band went on the 2017 Italian edition of the talent show “The X Factor.”Anna Curia, 24, said “it was love at first sight” when she saw the group’s audition song on the program; a few weeks later, she founded the group’s official fan club. “From the first, they had a distinct style and sound,” she said. Other fan clubs soon followed follow. There’s even one, called Mammeskin, for women of a certain age.The “X Factor” stint also grabbed the attention of Veronica Etro, of the fashion brand Etro. “They had something,” said Etro, who is the brand’s creative director for the women’s collections. “I was very bewitched.”The fashion house reached out to the group and began dressing its members for album covers and videos. The collaboration evolved into providing the outfits for Eurovision, where the group’s studded laminated red leather looks made you “think Jimi Hendrix-meets-‘Velvet Goldmine,’” wrote Vanessa Friedman in The New York Times.“What I love is the way that they mix clothes for women and men,” said Etro in a telephone interview. “There is something very revolutionary about them, the way they don’t have any fear and they have fun with clothes.”Manuel Agnelli, who was one of the “X Factor” judges in 2017, took Maneskin under his wing. At first, its members weren’t musically mature, he said, “but I saw in them characteristics that can’t be taught, it’s something you’re born with, it’s personality.”“For us,” said De Angelis, far left, “music is passion, fun, something that lets us blow off steam.”Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times“Their image is a big part of who they are, their sexuality, their charisma, their bodies. It’s part of rock, it’s part of performance,” said Agnelli.Maneskin didn’t win “The X Factor,” coming second to Lorenzo Licitra, a tenor whose style is more in sync with the Italian penchant for big melodic ballads. Yet the program proved to be a springboard to greater things.“They are a television phenomenon,” said Andrea Andrei, a journalist with the Rome daily newspaper Il Messaggero. “Without ‘The X Factor’ and the machine behind it that churns out products ready for mainstream success, Maneskin would have struggled for a lot longer, like other rock bands have.”The real surprise, for many Italian commentators, was Maneskin’s win last March at the Sanremo Festival of Italian Song, the national event that finds Italy’s Eurovision act. Until a few years ago, Sanremo had mostly attracted Italians whose musical heyday predated Woodstock, but recent editions have reached out to younger audiences by involving the winners of talent shows like “The X-Factor.”“Nothing could be further from rock than Sanremo,” said Massimo Cotto, an Italian music journalist and radio D.J.So there, too, Maneskin broke ground. “Italy has never had an idyllic relationship with rock music, it never became mainstream,” said Andrei. “Maneskin’s win was unexpected, because they are a real rock band.”Torchio’s look of androgynous nonchalance is typical of the band’s style.Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York TimesDuring the interview, David soundly rejected the accusations that he was caught on camera using drugs at Eurovision, complaining that the speculation had overshadowed their win.The allegations were both infantile and underhanded, he said. And they came to nothing, because drug tests came up negative. “We know we are clean. We have nothing to hide,” he said.Allegations aside, there have been some changes since the Eurovision win.Merchandise associated with the band’s most recent album sold out in minutes. It lent its music to a Pepsi commercial. And earlier this month, the band parted ways with Marta Donà, its manager since 2017. Some newspapers here wondered whether an Italian management agency had begun to feel too tight for Maneskin’s international aspirations, and the name of Simon Cowell, the mastermind behind “The X-Factor,” came up as a possible successor. The group has not announced who will replace Donà.Agnelli, the Italian “X-Factor” judge, offered the quartet some advice for building on its current momentum: Tour as much as possible, get experience under their belts and continue to be themselves.“It’s their greatest strength,” he said. More