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      in Movies

      Beatles Movies Cast Revealed, Including Paul Mescal and Barry Keoghan

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      The director Sam Mendes announced the stars of his four-film series, each told from the perspective of a different Beatle, set to be released in 2028. There has been no shortage of movies about the Beatles. But the director Sam Mendes is embarking on a project that stands apart for its ambition — four films, each from a different band member’s perspective — and now we know who will be playing the Fab Four.The films will star Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Joseph Quinn as George Harrison and Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr, according to Mr. Mendes’s production company.The four films, which will tell the story of one of the world’s most influential and adored bands, will be released together in April 2028, “creating the first bingeable theatrical experience,” the company wrote. In announcing the films last year, Mr. Mendes, the British director best known for films like “American Beauty” (1999) and “Revolutionary Road” (2008), said he was “honored to be telling the story of the greatest rock band of all time, and excited to challenge the notion of what constitutes a trip to the movies.”He announced the cast at the CinemaCon convention in Las Vegas on Monday, according to The Hollywood Reporter. While the Beatles have been big-screen subjects before — including in Danny Boyle’s “Yesterday” (2019) and Sam Taylor-Johnson’s “Nowhere Boy” (2009) — this is the first time that the members of the band and their estates have granted full life story and music rights for a scripted film, according to Sony Pictures.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      A Concept Album About Dennis Hopper? The Waterboys Made One.

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      The latest addition to Mike Scott’s eclectic catalog features Fiona Apple, Bruce Springsteen, Steve Earle and more exploring the life of the actor and director.In 1977, several years before Mike Scott founded the Waterboys, the band he still leads today, he started Jungleland. At the time, he was an 18-year-old obsessed with music and literature, living in Ayr, a seaside town on the west coast of Scotland. Jungleland wasn’t a band — it was a fanzine named after a Bruce Springsteen song in which Scott wrote about the artists that enthralled him, including the Clash, Richard Hell and the Sex Pistols.Scott, 66, has always worn his enthusiasms on his sleeve, and as the singer, songwriter, guitarist and only consistent member of the Waterboys, he has used his songs to broadcast his passions. The band’s first single from 1983, “A Girl Called Johnny,” is a breathless, saxophone-drenched ode to Patti Smith. The Waterboys’ biggest hit, “The Whole of the Moon,” is an exuberant celebration of the power of inspiration itself.“I like to be absorbed in the things that fascinate me,” Scott said during a video call from his home in Dublin. “Then I go all the way.”This is certainly the case with the Waterboys’ new album, “Life, Death and Dennis Hopper,” due Friday. The record follows the arc of Hopper’s life, from growing up in Kansas through the peaks and valleys of his career in Hollywood to his death in 2010. “It’s not a tribute record,” Scott said. “It’s an exploration. It’s not just Dennis’s story. It’s a story of the times.”It’s also the kind of unconventional turn that has become a hallmark of Scott’s career. In the mid-1980s, “The Whole of the Moon” and the album that spawned it, “This Is the Sea,” showcased the Waterboys’ ability to synthesize Scott’s punk-rock influences and literary aspirations on an arena-sized scale, drawing comparisons with bands like U2 and Simple Minds, and kicking off a mini-movement named after a Waterboys song: big music. But rather than build on this success, Scott reinvented the band, decamping to Ireland, immersing himself in Celtic folk music and making an equally compelling but completely different follow-up album, “Fisherman’s Blues,” in 1988.“It’s just my character,” Scott said. “I want to keep finding new things I can do that I couldn’t do last year. That’s my No. 1 aim. I’m like Sherlock Holmes. If he doesn’t have a case to solve, he gets depressed.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 175 Shares139 Views

      in Music

      Time to Get Over Eurovision? ‘Hell No!’ Says Joost Klein, a Disqualified Contestant Says.

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      Joost Klein was thrown out of last year’s contest after being accused of threatening a camerawoman. On a new album, he’s still stuck in that moment.In the run-up to last year’s Eurovision Song Contest final, Joost Klein was amped for victory.Klein, a Dutch pop star, was a favorite to win with “Europapa,” a madcap song in which he raps over a bouncy beat and circling piano riff about a journey through Europe. The track ends in a hyperfast dance break, but the upbeat song also has a melancholy side: Klein wrote it as a tribute to his father, who died when Klein was 12.Then, just hours before the finale, Klein’s chance to honor his father vanished when Eurovision organizers threw the singer out of the contest, saying he had threatened a camerawoman. When Klein learned he was in trouble, he was backstage and dressed up in a comically large blue suit for a rehearsal. He begged to talk to the upset camerawoman, in a desperate bid to change his fate. But his pleas went nowhere: Klein was out.Nearly a year has passed, and the incident doesn’t appear to have hurt Klein’s career. He now has over three million monthly listeners on Spotify, and in February, he released a new album, “Unity,” to rave reviews in the Netherlands. After finishing a string of large European dates, this week he is embarking on his debut U.S. tour, including two shows at Irving Plaza in New York.Still, in a recent interview in London before a show, Klein, 27, was stuck under the cloud of his Eurovision misadventure. “Everyone’s like, ‘Hey, your career grew,’” Klein said. “I don’t care.”“Everyone’s like, ‘Hey, your career grew,’” Klein said. “I don’t care.”Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesThe disqualification still “stings,” he said, and he didn’t expect to get over it soon. Klein said that both his parents died before he was 14, and it took him more than a decade to process their deaths. He feared that shrugging off the Eurovision fiasco could take just as long. His new album features several tracks brooding on the incident.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Johnny Mathis Is Retiring From Touring After Almost 70 Years of Crooning

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      Mr. Mathis, 89, a pioneer of romantic ballads, is leaving the stage because of his age and memory problems, his website said.Johnny Mathis, a pop music singer and one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, said this week that he would perform only four more live concerts before retiring from touring after nearly 70 years.Known for his “velvet voice” on romantic ballads like “It’s Not for Me to Say” and “Wonderful! Wonderful!” Mr. Mathis has been singing standards and soft rock since his teenage years, but he started touring professionally after his debut album was released in 1956.Mr. Mathis, 89, will pick up the microphone for shows in April and May, but his concerts scheduled for the summer and fall have been canceled.“It’s with sincere regret that due to Mr. Mathis’s age and memory issues which have accelerated, we are announcing his retirement from touring and live concerts,” a statement posted on his website said.Mr. Mathis’s final concert is scheduled for May 18 at the Bergen Performing Arts Center in Englewood, N.J. The other concerts are April 10 in Shippensburg, Pa.; April 26 in Shipshewana, Ind.; and May 10 in Santa Rosa, Calif.Some tickets remain available for his final concerts, his website noted, and refunds will be issued for the ones that were canceled.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lucy Dacus on the Art of Frames (and Busting Out of Them)

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      The singer and songwriter chats about the movies (“Paris, Texas”), music (SZA) and books (“Healing Back Pain”) that shape her world as she releases her fourth LP.In the music video for “Ankles,” the first single from Lucy Dacus’s fourth studio album, the singer plays a pleasure-seeking Victorian-era damsel that has escaped from a painting to gallivant around Paris. Her foil is a stern museum guard trying to corral her back into her frame.Dacus came up with the idea as a way to reflect the push and pull between curiosity and restraint in the song. Also, she said, “The song is pretty horny, so it’s not like I was going to recreate what happens.”For Dacus, frames have become a recurring motif. She used one in a video for a song from her second album, “Historian,” when she was a rising indie singer-songwriter. And she poses in one on the album cover for her latest LP, “Forever Is a Feeling.”“Framing is such a huge part of art,” Dacus said. “What are you putting in the confines of the frame? What are you filling in time? What are you putting in front of people?”The shape of “Forever Is a Feeling” emerged when Dacus realized she was writing songs about love. (Then she wrote more of them.) It’s her first solo album since boygenius — the indie-rock supergroup she formed with Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker — grew to an arena-size, Grammy-winning band. (Dacus recently revealed that Baker is the subject of one of those love songs.)In a phone interview before flying to Paris to perform, Dacus shared the cultural essentials that help fill her life. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      New Songs From Mumford & Sons, Maren Morris, Lucy Dacus and More

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      Hear tracks by Mumford & Sons, Mon Laferte, the Swell Season and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Maren Morris, ‘Carry Me Through’Equal parts self-help, Elton John and secular gospel, “Carry On” puts robust piano chords and a choir behind Maren Morris as she works on finding the will to heal herself. She’s taking full responsibility. “Yeah, I got friends around / Plenty of hands held out,” she sings. “But I’m still the one who has to choose to carry me through.” The music gives her ample reinforcement, and by the end she’s vowing, “I’ll get there.”Mumford & Sons, ‘Truth’Mumford & Sons get a strong infusion of Southern rock in “Truth” from the band’s new album, “Rushmere.” Over a bluesy, sinewy riff, Marcus Mumford declares, “I was born to believe the truth is all there is” and insists, “I refuse to offer myself up to men who lie.” The track intensifies — with percussion, guitars, handclaps and choral harmonies — as the singer’s desperation grows: “Don’t leave the liars in the honest places,” he pleads as it ends.Timbaland, ‘Azonto Bounce’Timbaland, the producer whose sounds and techniques transformed 1990s hip-hop, has suprise-released an album, “Timbo Progression,” that visits entirely unexpected territory: West African music, with a vintage sound. Azonto is a dance and music style from Ghana; Timbaland’s version, with its mid-tempo beat and modal horn lines, also hints at Fela Kuti’s 1970s Afrobeat. There’s little information with the album — Timbaland is credited as “programmer” — but the groove is undeniable.Pablo Alboran, ‘Clickbait’The Spanish pop songwriter Pablo Alboran usually deals in romance. But “Clickbait” confronts a different class of relationships: the parasocial ones online. “Many say they know me, but they have no idea who I am,” he complains in Spanish, with an Auto-Tuned edge. In Spanglish, he continues, “Flash flash, mucho clickbait, mucho fake.” It’s a choppy track that jump-cuts between a minor-chorded ballad and pounding drums, then unites them. Alboran sings about people with “poison in their hearts,” and he’s willing to break character to fight back.Tortoise, ‘Oganesson’Since its formation in 1990, the Chicago instrumental band Tortoise has been blending jazz, rock, Minimalism, electronics and improvisation. Its first new track since 2016 is “Oganesson,” named for a synthetic, very short-lived element with atomic number 118. It’s an off-kilter, 7/4 funk tune with a spy-movie ambience: laconic guitar chords, plinks of distorted vibraphone and a hopscotching bass line. Perhaps the stretch of noise at the end represents atomic decay.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Scowl Made Hardcore Purists Angry. Now the Band Is Doubling Down.

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      The punk band fronted by Kat Moss wound its way from a local scene to national attention. Its second album, “Are We All Angels,” unpacks the pain of the journey.Last fall, on the second-floor stage of a cramped tavern called Neck of the Woods in San Francisco, Kat Moss was throwing elbows, shoving men twice her size into a packed circle pit and screaming into a microphone.Moss, the frontwoman for the Bay Area hardcore band Scowl, held her own. In the tight-knit circle of Northern California punks, this sweating, pulsing, tattoo-covered cluster of bodies were her people. Just before midnight, the crowd streamed out of the swampy bar into the cold air, bruised and smiling. In this crowd, stage diving, moshing and the occasional foot to the face all come from a place of love.But as Scowl’s star has risen from a group of underdogs playing house shows across the West Coast to a broader national audience, Moss and her four bandmates have been engaged in a different kind of fight — one with the gatekeepers who believe the band isn’t hardcore enough.The band was blasted on message boards and social media in 2023, accused of “selling out” when it struck a brand deal with a corporate sponsor. (Many hardcore contemporaries have done similar ones.) The group later took heat for putting out what some saw as pop sensibility masquerading as punk. Scenesters chafed when megastars like Post Malone and Hayley Williams of Paramore said they were fans of the group. And some of the most aggressive purists didn’t appreciate Moss’s proclivity for posting beauty tutorials on her personal social media channels. (Her mop of neon lime hair is hard to miss in a crowd.)Scowl isn’t shying away from the conflict. Instead, its members want to push the limits of their sound and what they feel hardcore music can be. With Scowl’s second album, “Are We All Angels” out April 4, the group is moving from the stalwart hardcore label Flatspot Records to Dead Oceans — home to Phoebe Bridgers and Mitski. It has enlisted Will Yip, a producer known for broadening the sound of punk bands. And it has leaned more into a slower, heavier sound with grungy riffs and catchier choruses.Scowl’s members want to push the limits of their sound and what they feel hardcore music can be. Mariano Regidor/Redferns, via Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Herb Greene, Who Photographed the Grateful Dead and Other 1960s Rock Acts, Dies at 82

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      Herb Greene, whose evocative portraits of the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin and others helped define the rock scene that emerged in San Francisco in the mid-1960s, died on March 3 at his home in Maynard, Mass. He was 82.His wife, Ilze Greene, said the cause was pancreatic cancer.Mr. Greene pursued music portraiture in his spare time while working for about a dozen years in the 1960s and ’70s, as a fashion photographer for the Joseph Magnin department store and the men’s wear retailer Cable Car Clothiers.Instead of photographing concerts, which did not interest him, he invited bands and musicians to various studios in San Francisco, including one he had on Front Street, and to his apartment, where some of them stood in front of a dining room wall filled with hieroglyphics drawn by a roommate with knowledge of Egyptology.His pictures of the Dead, a favorite subject, include Jerry Garcia, the band’s leader, in a vest and tie, playing a banjo while seated on a stool, with a wall-sized American flag behind him; Ron McKernan, the Dead’s organist, known as Pigpen, striking a threatening pose in front of Mr. Garcia; and the band on the corner of Haight and Ashbury Streets, in the district known as a center of the hippie counterculture.Mr. Greene’s many pictures of the Grateful Dead, a favorite subject, include a well-known one of Jerry Garcia against a wall-sized American flag.Herb Greene, via Greene familyHe also photographed Ron McKernan, the Dead’s organist, known as Pigpen.Herb Greene, via Greene familyMr. Greene photographed the Grateful Dead (from left, Mr. Garcia, Mr. McKernan, Phil Lesh, Bob Weir and Bill Kreutzmann) on the corner of Haight and Ashbury Streets, in the district known as a center of the counterculture.Herb Greene, via Greene familyWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More