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      The Emotional and Financial Business of Taylor Swift’s ‘All Too Well’

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherThe cornerstone of Taylor Swift’s new rerecording of her 2012 album “Red” is the extended 10-minute “All Too Well.” Its original version is one of Swift’s great heartbreak anthems; the new one doubles down on the grim details of a love gone sour. She performed the extended cut on “Saturday Night Live” the day after its release, in front of the short film she directed to accompany it.The creative success of this song offers an artistic bonus to what has essentially been a business decision: faithfully rerecording her old albums to devalue the master recordings of the original versions and own the new ones herself. Swift understands how to craft compelling public-facing narratives even while grappling with behind-the-scenes dramas.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Swift’s rerecorded albums, the unruly fervor of the new “All Too Well” and whether one can ever fully truly channel the past when saddled with the knowledge of the present.Guests:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterCaryn Ganz, The New York Times’s pop music editorLindsay Zoladz, who writes about pop music for The New York Times and othersConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      Philip Margo of the Tokens, Who Sang of a Snoozing Lion, Dies at 79

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      His baritone contributed to the 1961 hit “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” which became one of the most recognizable American pop songs ever.Philip Margo, a member of the close-harmony group the Tokens, which earned enduring pop-music fame with the No. 1 hit “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” in 1961, died on Saturday in a hospital in Los Angeles. He was 79.The cause was a stroke, his family said.Mr. Margo had a varied career, performing with the Tokens and its offshoots, producing records and writing for television. But nothing had a bigger impact than the recording he was part of when he was 19: “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” became one of the most recognizable songs in American music, instantly identifiable from Jay Siegel’s opening falsetto. Mr. Margo sang baritone.The song had its origins in South Africa, where Solomon Linda and the Original Evening Birds recorded a simple tune they called “Mbube” — Zulu for “the lion” — containing the now-familiar melody. In the early 1950s the American folk group the Weavers, whose members included Pete Seeger, began performing it but rendered the word of the title as “wim-o-weh.” The Kingston Trio and others picked up on that version.In 1961 the Tokens were looking for a follow-up to their first record, “Tonight I Fell in Love,” and Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore, producers at RCA Records, brought in the lyricist George Weiss, who added the English lyrics that begin “In the jungle, the mighty jungle.”Philip Margo and some of the others in the group didn’t have a lot of confidence in the resulting recording.“We were embarrassed by it and tried to convince Hugo and Luigi not to release it,” he said in an interview quoted in “The Billboard Book of Number 1 Hits” by Fred Bronson. “They said it would be a big record and it was going out.”They were right. It hit No. 1 on the Billboard chart in December 1961, remained there for three weeks and became a cultural touchstone. A whole new generation was introduced to it in 1994 when a version turned up in the Disney movie “The Lion King.”“Now that it’s current, we’re current,” Mr. Margo said at the time. “I am thrilled.”Philip Frederick Margo was born on April 1, 1942, in Brooklyn to Leon and Ruth (Becker) Margo. He grew up in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn. In 1959 he returned there from a summer job playing piano in the Catskills and, with his younger brother, began trying doo-wop harmonizing with Mr. Siegel and Hank Medress, seeing what they could do with songs like “A Teenager in Love,” a hit at the time for Dion and the Belmonts.“We sounded so good we started writing songs ourselves,” Mr. Margo told The Spokesman-Review of Spokane, Wash., in 1992. One song they came up with was “Tonight I Fell in Love,” which they recorded and brought to the small Warwick label, whose owner, Marty Kraft, said they needed a name.“We wanted to call ourselves Those Guys, but that was unheard-of in 1960,” Mr. Margo said in the Billboard book interview. “It had to be ‘The Somethings.’”So they took the name from an earlier group Mr. Medress had been in, becoming the Tokens.The Tokens released a number of other singles over the years, including “I Hear Trumpets Blow” (1966), and a string of albums. Collectively the group also produced records for others, including the Chiffons and the Happenings.Mr. Margo continued to perform with his brother, who died in 2017, and with Mr. Medress, who died in 2007. He settled in Beverly Hills and was a fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers. During the 1998 baseball season his version of the Tokens (Mr. Siegel has his own) performed the national anthem in every major league ballpark, and is said to have been the first pop group to have accomplished that feat.In the 1980s and 1990s Mr. Margo wrote and produced television movies and wrote episodes of shows including the sitcom “Benson.” He also managed the career of that show’s star, Robert Guillaume, for a time.Mr. Margo is survived by his wife, Abbie S. Margo, whom he married in 1966; two sons, Noah Margo and Joshua Ginsberg-Margo; a daughter, Neely S. Irwin; a sister, Maxine Margo Rubin; and eight grandchildren.The Margo brothers appeared on “CBS This Morning” in 1994, promoting a recently released album called “Oldies Are Now.” Paula Zahn, one of the show’s hosts, asked them about “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” including a question — “How many ways can you butcher a-wim-o-weh?” — that they needed no prompting to answer.“Wingle-whop, wingle-whetta, wing-away,” said Phil.“Wing-o-wack,” said Mitch.“Wing-o-wack,” agreed Phil.To which Mitch added, “And then some that we can’t repeat.” More

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      Adele, Music’s Comet, Returns With ‘30.’ How Bright Will It Burn?

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      The British powerhouse’s new album will arrive in a vastly changed music business. But she’s proven to be the exception to almost every rule throughout her 13-year career.The last time Adele released new music, six years ago, it became the type of hit many in the music industry thought was no longer possible. Her third album, “25,” sold nearly 3.4 million copies in a single week in the United States, smashing records at a time when CD sales were cratering and streaming had not yet proved itself to be the business’s savior.Her newest release, “30,” which arrives on Friday, is all but assured to be another blockbuster, though just how big is anybody’s guess.Adele’s label, Columbia, is keeping mum about commercial projections. But the buzz in the business is that the album’s “equivalent sales” figure — a new metric that reconciles old-fashioned album purchases with song-by-song clicks on streaming services — will easily exceed one million in its first week out, and could go far higher.No album has done so since Taylor Swift’s “Reputation,” four years ago. In fact, since “25” came out in late 2015, only four other titles (three by Swift, plus Drake’s “Views”) have had more than half a million full-album sales in a single week. Yet reports in music trade publications — neither confirmed nor denied by Sony Music, Columbia’s corporate parent — suggest that up to 500,000 copies of “30” on vinyl alone may be ready to go.A wave of extremely high-profile promotion means that Adele’s audience has been fully primed. On Sunday, CBS aired “Adele One Night Only,” a prime-time concert special, interspersed with interview segments by Oprah Winfrey, which drew 10.3 million viewers — just shy of the total for this year’s Academy Awards. A few weeks ago, Vogue published simultaneous cover stories in its American and British editions.“Her core fan base is incredibly wide-ranging,” said Hannah Karp, the editorial director of Billboard magazine. “They still buy albums, still listen to terrestrial radio. That makes it easier to cut through the noise of the ever-growing amount of new music on streaming services.”Adele, a 33-year-old North Londoner who has settled in an exclusive enclave in Los Angeles — where she is sometimes spotted courtside at basketball games with her boyfriend, the sports agent Rich Paul — is that rarest of music unicorns: One who not only lands headline-grabbing hits, but does so after years of inactivity, even near silence, contradicting every unwritten rule of pop-star career management, which these days involves a steady stream of songs and near-constant social media activity.“She defies gravity,” said Tom Poleman, the chief programming officer of iHeartMedia, the country’s largest radio chain. “No other artist can release a new album after five, six years and have this kind of success.”Part of the appeal of Adele’s music may lie in its consistency. “Easy on Me,” her latest single, is textbook Adele, with just piano, bass and a faint bass-drum heartbeat supporting her vocal fireworks. Like “Hello” before it — and “Someone Like You” before that — it is a classic torch ballad largely removed from the trends of contemporary pop production, yet it easily landed in heavy rotation on pop radio alongside upbeat, electronic hits like the Kid Laroi’s “Stay” and Dua Lipa’s “Levitating.”Adele previewed her new album on Sunday with “Adele One Night Only,” a prime-time concert special interspersed with interview segments by Oprah Winfrey,Getty Images“Easy on Me” has held at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart for the last four weeks.On her CBS special, Adele sang outside the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, surrounded by a celebrity audience that included Lizzo, Leonardo DiCaprio and Drake, with postcard-perfect sunset views of the Hollywood Hills. Yet the special seemed to make her relatable even as it rendered her a musical deity.“She’s as real, as down-to-earth, as we all believe she is,” Winfrey said, introducing the performance.In her interview segments, Adele wore a striking white pantsuit and spoke with disarming candor about her divorce, her late father’s alcoholism and her experience losing more than 100 pounds through a vigorous training regimen. At points, her lines could scarcely have been written better by a magazine editor, as when she said that this is the first time she has “loved myself and been open to loving and being loved by someone else.”Those paradoxical qualities — supreme glamour, salt-of-the-earth approachability — are key to Adele’s connection to her fans, even after years out of the spotlight.“People see her as an old friend,” Karp said. “The way she banters with an audience between songs, in a very conversational way — that only increases her appeal, especially in this world of Instagram, where people are so careful with the image they project.”Since “25,” Adele has become a streaming star. Like Swift, she was a notable holdout when the format was newer, keeping her full LP off streaming services for months to help maximize sales. Since then, Swift — whose protest was more rooted in her discomfort with some services’ free tiers — has released six studio albums, gradually honing her approach to both streaming and sales (hello, merch bundles and vinyl pre-orders).Adele, on the other hand, is diving headfirst into a vastly changed music business. Streaming now accounts for about 84 percent of recorded music’s domestic sales revenue, and while vinyl and deluxe CD packages can help push a new album to No. 1, online clicks are usually vital to its success in the long run.So far, Adele seems to have a strong position. “Easy on Me” has been streamed 134 million times in the United States since its release a month ago, according to MRC Data, Billboard’s tracking arm.After “25,” Adele’s songs drew 700 million to 800 million streams in the United States each year, even with no new material, according to MRC. Chartmetric, a company that tracks streaming and social media data, found that the playlisting of Adele’s songs, while growing for years, shot up dramatically as anticipation for “30” grew this year. “Easy on Me” is on almost 300,000 Spotify playlists, reaching nearly 360 million followers there, according to Chartmetric.That success spreads to nearly every part of the music industry — brick-and-mortar retailers, streaming services and radio stations.“She’s the Christmas present you look forward to,” said Poleman, of iHeartMedia, “except Christmas only comes every five to six years.” More

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      Maureen Cleave, Pop Journalist and Beatles Confidante, Dies at 87

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      Ms. Cleave’s interview with John Lennon, in which he said the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus,” drew worldwide attention.Maureen Cleave, a British journalist who was one of the first music writers to introduce readers to the Beatles, and who recorded John Lennon’s famous observation that the band was “more popular than Jesus,” died on Nov. 6 at her home in Aldeburgh, England. She was 87.Her daughter Dora Nichols confirmed her death. She did not give a cause but said Ms. Cleave had Alzheimer’s disease.When Ms. Cleave began writing the column “Disc Date” for The London Evening Standard in 1961, serious writing about pop music was in its infancy. She helped raise its profile, in columns that featured conversations with luminaries including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and the Rolling Stones. She became a marquee byline; in 1976, The Standard called her “the writer who gets people to talk about themselves in the way no other writer can match.”But she was best known for her regular reporting on the Beatles, with whom she had a warm relationship, and whom she described affectionately in the newspaper’s pages. Her piece headlined “The Year of the Beatles,” published in The Standard in 1963, was one of the first major newspaper articles about the band.“Their behavior ranges from the preposterous, farcical and impossible to the kindly, thoughtful and polite,” Ms. Cleave wrote. “You are outraged, diverted and charmed. You are never, ever bored.”Her biggest moment stemmed from an interview with Lennon published in March 1966, in which she delved into his thoughts on organized religion. “Christianity will go,” he said. “It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I know I’m right and will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now. I don’t know which will go first — rock ’n’ roll or Christianity.”Readers, and the rest of the British press, paid little notice. But in July, a month before the Beatles began a tour of the United States, the American magazine Datebook reprinted the interview and provoked a frenzy.Lennon’s remark, which came to be widely known as a claim that the Beatles were “bigger than Jesus,” prompted demonstrations and drew the ire of many American Christians. Lennon was accused of blasphemy — as, by extension, was Ms. Cleave.A Baptist pastor in Cleveland threatened excommunication for members of his parish who attended a Beatles concert. The Ku Klux Klan protested Lennon’s remarks. The Vatican issued a statement condemning the comparison.Lennon apologized — albeit reluctantly — at a news conference during the American tour, under pressure from the band’s manager, Brian Epstein.Paul McCartney said in the multimedia release “The Beatles Anthology” that Ms. Cleave was one of the band’s go-to journalists. “Maureen was interesting and easy to talk to,” he said. Lennon, he added, “made the unfortunate mistake of talking very freely because Maureen was someone we knew very well, to whom we would just talk straight from the shoulder.”Lennon’s line made it into The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.The 1966 American tour, fraught with protests and the lingering fear of violence, was the Beatles’ last.Maureen Diana Cleave was born on Oct. 20, 1934, in India, which was part of the British Empire at the time.Her father, Maj. John Cleave, was a British officer stationed in India. Her mother, Isabella Mary Fraser Browne, was a homemaker. She had two sisters.Ms. Cleave attended high school in her mother’s native Ireland after the family returned there.After graduating from St. Anne’s College at Oxford in 1957, Ms. Cleave found a job at The Evening Standard as a secretary.An avid fan of pop music, she pitched a column on the subject to the paper’s editors. That idea became “Disc Date.” She traveled to Liverpool in 1963 to see the Beatles in person.She married Francis Nichols, an Oxford classmate, in 1966, and they later moved to his ancestral home at Lawford Hall in Essex. He died in 2015. Her survivors include their daughters, Dora and Sadie Nichols; their son, Bertie Nichols; and three grandchildren.After the Beatles broke up in 1970, Ms. Cleave continued covering the music scene for The Evening Standard. In a series of articles in the 1970s under the rubric “Maureen Cleave’s Guide to the Young,” she explained the hippie movement to Standard readers and explored the Hells Angels, among other topics.Ms. Cleave was diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome, after collapsing on a London Underground platform in 1992. She documented her experience with the ailment in The Standard the next year. “The medical profession lagged behind in M.E. awareness,” she wrote; “because there is no test, ergo it doesn’t exist.”“Apart from having it, I knew little about it myself,” she added. She saw homeopathic doctors as well as traditional practitioners in an effort to manage her condition.Among the other topics she explored was women’s fitness. She also wrote profiles of painters, writers and philanthropists.But she also continued publishing reflections on her time with the Beatles. In 2005, she wrote a piece for The Daily Telegraph tied to what would have been John Lennon’s 65th birthday.“Charisma rarely survives the aging process,” she wrote, “but, killed in the prime of life, Lennon remains a very powerful absence.” More

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      Remembering the Velvet Underground Through the Mirror of Film

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherIn its day, the Velvet Underground verged on the inscrutable, a band that tempered pop curiosity with avant-garde abrasion. Managed for a time by Andy Warhol, it wasn’t particularly successful by commercial measures, but the group — which included Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison and Moe Tucker — provided an early counternarrative to the peace and love centrist counterculture of the 1960s, and proved to be profoundly influential.The band is remembered in “The Velvet Underground,” a new documentary directed by Todd Haynes, who has made unconventional music films for the last two decades. This movie is a deep dive on the New York demimonde that birthed the band, and also a reflection on the cinema and art of the day.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about how the Velvet Underground was experienced in its time, how the band’s musical aesthetic matches with the film’s visual aesthetic and the state of contemporary music documentaries.Guests:Jon Pareles, The New York Times’s chief pop music criticA.O. Scott, The New York Times’s co-chief film criticConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      Terence Wilson, Key Part of Reggae Band UB40, Dies at 64

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      As Astro with a popular racially diverse British group, he added rap vocals to hits like “Red Red Wine.” As Terence Wilson, a.k.a. Astro, told the story, he and his reggae band, UB40, didn’t even know whose song they were covering when they decided to record what became perhaps their biggest hit. They’d been smitten by a ska version of the song “Red Red Wine,” which was recorded by Tony Tribe in 1969.The seven-inch vinyl carried the credit “N. Diamond,” Mr. Wilson said, and he and his bandmates assumed that it referred to a Jamaican artist named Negus Diamond.“You could’ve knocked us out with a feather when we found out it was actually Neil Diamond,” he told Billboard in 2018.The song was included on UB40’s 1983 album of covers, “Labour of Love,” and a pared-down version released as a single became a modest hit. Then, five years later, the longer version became an even bigger hit. Ali Campbell is the main vocalist on both, but the longer version includes Mr. Wilson’s distinctive toasting, or rapped vocals, which begin, “Red red wine, you make me feel so fine; you keep me rocking all of the time.”How popular did that rendition become? So popular that Mr. Diamond took to performing the song — which he’d originally rendered as a glum ballad — with a catchy reggae beat and including a toasting section in which he imitated Mr. Wilson’s cadence. “Red red wine you make me feel so fine, hear it on the radio all of the time,” Mr. Diamond sang in Buffalo in 1989. “I don’t care if the words are all wrong; I don’t care ’cause they’re playing my song!”Mr. Wilson died on Nov. 6, Mr. Campbell announced on social media. He was 64. No cause of death was given, and the posts did not say where he died.Mr. Wilson joined Mr. Campbell and six others in UB40 in 1978 in Birmingham, England. None had extensive music backgrounds, but they developed their own sound and style; Mr. Wilson was the toaster, trumpeter and percussionist.The eight were a racially diverse group, unusual for the reggae genre, most of whose stars were Black; Mr. Wilson was one of two Black members. But they were united by one thing when they came together: All were unemployed. The group’s name came from a bit of government paperwork, Unemployment Benefit Form 40.Soon UB40 was famous and touring the world. Interviewed in 2005 by The Dominion Post of New Zealand on the occasion of the release of the group’s 23rd album, Mr. Wilson put his change in fortunes simply: “It is like winning the lottery every week.”Terence Wilson was born on June 24, 1957, in Birmingham. His nickname came long before he thought of being in a reggae group.“As a kid I used to run round with four or five other kids wearing these Doc Martin boots,” he told The Dominion Post, “and the actual model name was Astronauts.”Mr. Wilson was an out-of-work cook when he joined the band, which had already begun rehearsing, in 1978. He and the others bucked the trend of the moment — punk — and instead tried making the music they listened to and loved.“We knew we had something fresh that hadn’t been heard before,” Mr. Campbell told The Honolulu Star-Advertiser in 2019.Starting out by playing clubs, the band by 1980 was opening for the Pretenders on tour, raising its profile considerably, especially in Britain. Chrissie Hynde, the Pretenders’ vocalist, had heard the band and become a champion; in 1985 she was a guest on another of the group’s best-known songs, a cover of Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe.”Much of the group’s popularity rested on covers — among its other biggest hits was its version of a song made famous by Elvis Presley, “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” released in 1993. But the band also recorded original material, much of it with a political edge. An early signature song, in 1981, was called “One in Ten,” the title referring to unemployment statistics.Mr. Campbell split from the original group in 2008 in a dispute over management. Mickey Virtue, the keyboardist, joined him soon after, and Mr. Wilson joined them in 2013; they continued to perform as UB40 Featuring Ali, Astro and Mickey. (Another group continued on as UB40.) Mr. Virtue left the splinter group in 2018, but Mr. Wilson and Mr. Campbell continued to perform and record.Information on Mr. Wilson’s survivors was not immediately available.Although the original UB40 lineup eventually fractured, Mr. Wilson said his musical goals remained constant.“We’re still on our same mission, which is to popularize reggae music around the world,” he told The Dayton Daily News in 2017, when he and Mr. Campbell brought their version of UB40 to the Rose Music Center in Huber Heights, Ohio. “We’re all pleased the genre is now an international language everybody understands.“It’s played around the world, and not everybody has English as their first language,” he continued. “They don’t necessarily understand what’s being said, but everybody understands a good bass line and a drum beat. I think a bass line can say more than 1,000 words ever could.” More

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      Summer Walker Beats Abba’s First Album in Decades to No. 1

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      The Atlanta R&B singer’s “Still Over It” becomes her first LP to top the Billboard 200, with the equivalent of 166,000 sales in the United States.When Abba, whose classic songs like “Dancing Queen” and “Take a Chance on Me” are the epitome of Europop ear candy, announced in September that it would be returning this fall with its first studio album in 40 years, it was assumed that the new release would be an immediate blockbuster.The album, “Voyage,” came out on Nov. 5, and it has indeed reached higher on Billboard’s chart than any previous Abba release — but it did not quite go to No. 1.“Voyage” opens at No. 2 with solid album sales but low streaming numbers, edged out by the latest from Summer Walker, a 25-year-old R&B singer from Atlanta.Walker’s “Still Over It” becomes her first No. 1 album, with the equivalent of 166,000 sales in the United States, according to MRC Data, Billboard’s tracking arm. Fans mostly consumed “Still Over It,” Walker’s second album, on streaming services. It had 201 million clicks online and sold 12,000 copies as a complete package.Abba’s “Voyage” had the equivalent of 82,000 sales; of those, 78,000 were attributed to copies sold as a complete package, including 42,000 CDs and 17,500 vinyl LPs. (It was available in eight vinyl configurations, including two picture discs and five color variants, in addition to standard black.) Songs from “Voyage” were streamed 4.9 million times — or about as many clicks as Walker got in four hours during her debut week.“Voyage” is also the title of Abba’s virtual comeback concert, in which computer-generated “Abbatars” of its four members will perform with a live band in a custom-built venue in London, starting in May.“What interested us was the idea that we could send them out while we can be at home cooking or walking the dog,” Benny Andersson, one of the group’s members, told The New York Times in a recent interview.Despite the enduring popularity of Abba’s singles, its original albums were only moderate chart hits in the United States. According to Billboard, the group’s highest-charting title before “Voyage” was “Abba: The Album,” which went to No. 14 in 1978. (Two Abba-related soundtracks did better: “Mamma Mia!” went to No. 1 in 2008, and “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again!” landed at No. 3 a decade later.)Ed Sheeran’s “=,” last week’s top seller, falls to No. 4, while Drake’s “Certified Lover Boy” is No. 3 and Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” is No. 5. More

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      Judge Rules to End Britney Spears's Conservatorship

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      The pop star had called the arrangement, which governed her life for nearly 14 years, exploitative. A judge ruled it was “no longer required.”Nearly 14 years after a Los Angeles court deemed the pop sensation Britney Spears unable to care for herself, stripping the singer of control in nearly every aspect of her life, a judge ruled on Friday to end the conservatorship that Ms. Spears said had long traumatized and exploited her.“The conservatorship of the person and estate of Britney Jean Spears is no longer required,” Judge Brenda Penny said, making her ruling less than half an hour into the brief hearing. “The conservatorship is hereby terminated.”The judge added that further psychological assessments of Ms. Spears were unnecessary, because the conservatorship was technically voluntary. But Judge Penny said that the current conservator of the singer’s estate would continue working to settle ongoing financial concerns related to the case.James P. Spears, Ms. Spears’s father, who is known as Jamie, first petitioned the court for authority over his adult daughter’s life and finances in early 2008, citing her very public mental health struggles and possible substance abuse amid a child custody battle. What began as a temporary conservatorship was made permanent by the end of the year.Since then, the conservatorship has governed both the big business of Britney Spears and the day-to-day reality of the woman at its center, covering her medical care and personal life while putting her back to work as a lucrative performer in Las Vegas and beyond.Once called a “hybrid business model” by the former estate conservator who worked alongside Ms. Spears’s father for years, the setup entered into professional contracts on behalf of the pop star; vetted her friends, visitors and boyfriends; dictated her travel; and logged her every purchase down to a drink from Starbucks.Hundreds of #FreeBritney supporters cheered and danced outside Los Angeles Superior Court.Chris Pizzello/Associated PressIt also drew questions from Ms. Spears’s increasingly invested fans and outside observers, who asked why an active global celebrity and working musician was in an arrangement typically reserved for people who cannot feed, clothe or shelter themselves.Ms. Spears, in her first extended public comments on the conservatorship at a court hearing this summer, said its authority went too far, claiming that those in charge forced her to take medication, work against her will and use a birth control device. She called for them to be investigated and jailed, pointing to Mr. Spears, 69, as “the one who approved all of it.”“I shouldn’t be in a conservatorship if I can work. The laws need to change,” Ms. Spears, 39, said at the time, explaining that her previous silence had been the result of embarrassment and fear. “I truly believe this conservatorship is abusive. I don’t feel like I can live a full life.”The singer was not present in court on Friday. But ahead of the hearing, she was seen in a video posted to Instagram by her fiancé, Sam Asghari, wearing a T-shirt that read #FREEBRITNEY above the phrase “It’s a human rights movement,” while her song “Work Bitch” played in the background.A large number of Ms. Spears’s fans decried the conservatorship, and worked to rally public opinion to her side. Chloe Pang for The New York TimesA lawyer for Ms. Spears, Mathew S. Rosengart, repeated some of the singer’s recent comments about the conservatorship in court on Friday at her behest, he said.“I just want my life back,” Mr. Rosengart told the judge, quoting Ms. Spears.Ms. Spears responded to the ruling on social media Friday evening. “Good God I love my fans so much it’s crazy,” she wrote, adding some emojis. “I think I’m gonna cry the rest of the day !!!! Best day ever … praise the Lord … can I get an Amen.”Any notion that Ms. Spears was content to be in the conservatorship — her father and his representatives had routinely called it both necessary and voluntary — crumbled on June 23 when she spoke about it extensively in public for the first time.After requesting to address the judge directly, Ms. Spears made a shocking, emotional call into court, speaking for more than 20 minutes. And while the great majority of the hearings in the case had happened behind closed doors, with Ms. Spears appearing rarely and speaking only in private when she did, the June hearing was streamed live online because of Covid-19 protocols. Ms. Spears insisted that her remarks be heard by all who were tuning in.Already, Ms. Spears had begun seeking substantial changes to the conservatorship, starting in 2019, when she also announced “an indefinite work hiatus.” But the singer was at first required to use the same court-appointed lawyer she had since 2008, when she was found at the outset of the case to be mentally incapable of hiring her own counsel.Behind the scenes, Ms. Spears had routinely bristled at the strictures of the arrangement, according to reporting and confidential documents obtained by The New York Times. Having objected to her father’s role from the start because of his turbulent and intermittent presence in her life since childhood, she continued to question Mr. Spears’s fitness as conservator, citing his drinking and calling him “obsessed” with controlling her.But little would change for years.In 2016, Ms. Spears told a court investigator that the arrangement was oppressive and that she was “sick of being taken advantage of,” according to the investigator’s account of the conversation. Still, the investigator’s report concluded that the conservatorship remained in Ms. Spears’s best interest based on her complex finances, susceptibility to undue influence and “intermittent” drug issues, even as it called for “a pathway to independence” and eventually, termination.In 2019, Ms. Spears told the court that she had felt forced into a stay at a mental health facility and that she was made to perform while sick, according to a transcript of the closed-door hearing. She said later that she did not feel like she had been heard.In her comments at the June hearing, Ms. Spears said she did not know that she could file to end the arrangement altogether. Her lawyer, Samuel D. Ingham III, soon resigned, as did a wealth management firm that was set to take over as the co-conservator of the estate. Outside the conservatorship, the singer’s longtime manager, Larry Rudolph, also stepped down. Judge Penny allowed Ms. Spears to select a new lawyer the next month..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Mr. Rosengart, a former federal prosecutor who has worked extensively in Hollywood, took over the case, calling for an extensive re-examination of the entire arrangement and pushing for Mr. Spears’s immediate suspension as estate conservator; that was granted in September. Ms. Spears had said previously that she was afraid of her estranged father, even as he remained the steward of her nearly $60 million fortune, and would not return to performing with him in charge.In an abrupt about-face in September, ahead of his own suspension, Mr. Spears moved to end the conservatorship entirely. Mr. Rosengart argued that the turnaround was designed so that Mr. Spears, who earned a salary as conservator and commissions from his daughter’s career, could avoid legal discovery and being deposed under oath about his earnings and financial management of her estate.Mathew Rosengart said that “what’s next for Britney — and this is the first time that this could be said for about a decade — is up to one person: Britney” after a judge in Los Angeles ended her conservatorship.Mike Blake/ReutersMr. Rosengart has sought to investigate Mr. Spears’s dealings with the estate’s former business manager, Tri Star Sports & Entertainment Group, along with a security firm that monitored the singer, including secretly capturing audio recordings from her bedroom and accessing material from her phone, according to a documentary on the subject by The Times.Mr. Spears’s new legal team, hired after his removal, has said he stands by his record as conservator and “supports, indeed encourages, a full and transparent examination.”Lawyers for Tri Star denied in court filings that the company’s employees had any control over Ms. Spears’s security protocols, including hidden electronic surveillance, and said that its financial dealings with the estate were approved by the court before the firm’s resignation from the conservatorship last year.But even as the battle continues in court — with subsequent hearings scheduled to address the outstanding financial issues and investigations tied to the conservatorship — both sides came to agree that the arrangement should end.In addition to Ms. Spears and her father, the singer’s personal conservator, Jodi Montgomery, also consented, according to court filings, and worked with Mr. Rosengart on a “termination care plan” that was filed with the court under seal. (Ms. Montgomery took over those duties from Mr. Spears on an ongoing temporary basis in September 2019, when he resigned citing health issues.)Still, Mr. Rosengart said in court on Friday that Ms. Spears wanted a financial and personal “safety net” even after the conservatorship was terminated.John Zabel, the certified public accountant who took over the estate in September, would retain “limited administrative powers,” the lawyer said, including the ability to execute estate planning and transfer outside assets into an existing trust for Ms. Spears. Ms. Montgomery, too, would be there for Ms. Spears if she needed help, her lawyer, Lauriann Wright, said.The parties, Mr. Rosengart said, had “engaged in an orderly transfer of power.”Ms. Spears had insisted that the arrangement end without her having to undergo further psychological assessments, which judges typically rely on when considering whether to restore independence to someone under a conservatorship.“I don’t think I owe anyone to be evaluated,” Ms. Spears told the court in June. Mr. Spears later agreed in his own court filings, and Judge Penny ultimately concurred.But several experts said they had expected the judge to require a mental health evaluation, and that it was highly unusual for her to end the conservatorship without one.“Based upon the information on the public record, and the history of alleged mental health issues, I am shocked that the conservatorship was terminated without a current mental health evaluation,” said Victoria J. Haneman, a trusts and estates law professor at Creighton University. “I had no doubt that a clear path to termination would be agreed upon, but I did not think in a million years that it would all end today.”In this case, the singer’s extensive résumé as a conservatee seemed to be enough.One of the best-selling artists of all time, Ms. Spears released four of her nine studio albums while under the conservatorship, including, most recently, “Glory” in 2016. She appeared on television, serving as a judge on “The X Factor” in 2012, and even toured internationally, though most of her performances were part of a strictly controlled Las Vegas residency.Beginning in 2013, “Britney: Piece of Me” ran for four years at the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino, grossing a reported $138 million across nearly 250 shows. A follow-up Vegas show, “Britney: Domination,” was canceled in 2019.The millions Ms. Spears amassed in her career will continue to be pored over in minute detail as the many lawyers and other professionals who have been involved in the conservatorship proceedings seek approval by the court to be paid.Up to this point, all expenses incurred in the case — including the legal fees of those fighting against Ms. Spears’s wishes — have been billed to the singer’s estate. Mr. Rosengart has made a formal objection to a request for fees by former lawyers for Mr. Spears, calling the totals — some related to “media matters” in defense of the conservatorship — “outrageous and exorbitant.”Others seeking payment include Mr. Rosengart; Mr. Ingham, Ms. Spears’s former court-appointed lawyer; another firm he brought on board for litigation assistance; Ms. Montgomery and her lawyers; and lawyers for Lynne Spears, the singer’s mother and an “interested party” in the conservatorship since 2019. Additional hearings in the case are scheduled for Dec. 8 and Jan. 19.Outside the courthouse, amid cheering fans, Mr. Rosengart said that Ms. Spears’s conservatorship had shined a light on potential abuses in the wider system. “If this happened to Britney, it can happen to anybody,” he said.When asked whether Ms. Spears would ever perform again, the lawyer added that, for the first time in years, “it’s up to her.”Joe Coscarelli reported from New York, and Julia Jacobs from Los Angeles. Lauren Herstik, Douglas Morino and Graham Bowley contributed reporting. More