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      The Music Lost to Coronavirus, Part 2

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storyPopcastSubscribe:Apple PodcastsGoogle PodcastsThe Music Lost to Coronavirus, Part 2Remembering Fred the Godson, Adam Schlesinger and Cristina.Hosted by Jon Caramanica. Produced by Pedro Rosado.More episodes ofPopcastFebruary 5, 2021The Music Lost to Coronavirus, Part 2January 31, 2021Olivia Rodrigo and ‘Drivers License’ Aren’t Going AnywhereJanuary 19, 2021Inside the Bull Market for Songwriting RightsJanuary 7, 2021How Zev Love X Became MF DoomDecember 23, 20202020 Popcast Listener Mailbag: Taylor, Dua, MGK and MoreDecember 15, 2020Taylor Swift’s ‘Evermore’: Let’s DiscussDecember 9, 2020The Best Albums of 2020? Let’s DiscussNovember 29, 2020Saweetie, City Girls and the Female Rapper RenaissanceNovember 18, 2020Who Will Control Britney Spears’s Future?November 10, 2020Ariana Grande, a Pop Star for the Post-Pop Star AgeOctober 22, 2020  •  More

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      Behind the Scenes at the Super Bowl Halftime Show

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Super Bowl 2021N.F.L.’s Most Challenging YearGame HighlightsThe CommercialsHalftime ShowWhat We LearnedAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBehind the Weeknd’s Halftime Show: Nasal Swabs and Backup PlansPutting on a Super Bowl halftime show is always a mammoth undertaking. The pandemic introduces many more logistical puzzles.The Weeknd is headlining this year’s Super Bowl halftime show, which has had to adapt to the challenges of mounting a live performance during a pandemic.Credit…Isaac Brekken/Getty ImagesFeb. 5, 2021[Follow the Super Bowl live between the Chiefs and Buccaneers.]When the Weeknd headlines the Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday, the stage will be in the stands, not on the field, to simplify the transition from game to performance. In the days leading up to the event, workers have visited a tent outside Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla., to receive nasal swabs for Covid-19 tests. And though a smaller crew is putting on the show this year, the bathroom trailers have been going through three times as much water as usual — because of all that hand-washing.Amid a global pandemic, the gargantuan logistical undertaking that is the halftime show has gotten even more complicated.In a typical year, a massive stage is rolled out in pieces onto the football field, sound and lighting equipment is swiftly set up by hundreds of stagehands working shoulder to shoulder, and fans stream onto the turf to watch the extravaganza. This year, there is a cap on how many people can participate in the production, dense crowds of cheering fans are out of the question. And only about 1,050 people are expected to work to put on the show, a fraction of the work force in most years.The pandemic has halted live performances in much of the country, and many televised spectacles have resorted to pretaped segments to ensure the safety of performers and audiences. The halftime show’s production team, however, was intent on mounting a live performance in the stadium that they hoped would wow television audiences. To fulfill that dream, they would need contingency plans, thousands of KN95 masks and a willingness to break from decades of halftime-show tradition.“It’s going to be a different looking show, but it’s still going to be a live show,” said Jana Fleishman, an executive vice president at Roc Nation, the entertainment company founded by Jay-Z that was tapped by the N.F.L. in 2019 to create performances for marquee games like the Super Bowl. “It’s a whole new way of doing everything.”Last year’s halftime show, starring Jennifer Lopez, above, and Shakira, felt like an exultant, glittery party.Credit…Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesOne of the first logistical puzzles was figuring out how to pick staff members up from the airport and transport them to and from the hotel, said Dave Meyers, the show’s executive in charge of production and the chief operating officer at Diversified Production Services, an event production company based in New Jersey that is working on the halftime show.“Usually you pack everyone into a van, throw the bags into the back, everyone is sitting on each other’s laps,” Meyers said. “That can’t happen.”Instead, they rented more than 300 cars to transport everyone safely.Many of the company’s workers have been in Tampa for weeks, operating out of what they call a “compound” outside of Raymond James Stadium, the home of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The compound includes 50-foot-long office trailers, which used to fit about 20 employees each but now are limited to six. There are socially distant dining tents where people eat prepackaged food, and a signal for which tables have been sanitized: the ones with chairs tilted against them.Outside the perimeter of the event, there is a tent where halftime-show workers have been getting Covid-19 tests. Staff members have been getting tested every 48 hours, but now that game day is close, key employees, including those who are in proximity to the performers, are getting tested every day, Meyers said. Each day, workers fill out a health screening on their smartphones, and if they’re cleared, they get a color-coded wristband, with a new color each day so no one can wear yesterday’s undetected.It is unclear if this year’s show will mimic the high-budget elements of years past, like Katy Perry riding an animatronic lion.Credit…Christopher Polk/Getty ImagesEach time workers enter the stadium or a new area of the grounds, they scan a credential that hangs from around their necks so that in the event that someone tests positive for Covid-19 or needs to go into quarantine, the N.F.L. will know who else was in their vicinity. And there are contingency plans if workers have to quarantine: crucial employees, including Meyers, have understudies who stand ready to take their places.All of those measures are taken so that the Weeknd can step out onstage Sunday for a 12-minute act that aims to rival years past, when the country was not in the midst of a global health crisis.“Our biggest challenge is to make this show look like it’s not affected by Covid,” Meyers said.The challenge was apparent on Thursday at a news conference about the halftime show. When the Weeknd strode to the microphone, he took in the room and noted, “It’s kind of empty.” His words were perhaps a preview of how the stadium might look to people watching from home. (About 25,000 fans will be present — a little more than a third of its capacity — and they will be joined by thousands of cardboard cutouts.)During the 2017 halftime show, Lady Gaga clasped fans’ hands and embraced one of them, but the Weeknd is performing in an age of social distancing.Credit…Dave Clements/Sipa, via Associated PressBut the Weeknd (Abel Tesfaye), a 30-year-old Canadian pop star who has hits including “Can’t Feel My Face” and “Starboy,” is known for his theatrical flair. His work often has a brooding feel, an avant-garde edge, and even some blood and gore (he promised he would keep the halftime show “PG”).This will be the second Super Bowl halftime show produced in part by Jay-Z and Roc Nation, who were recruited by the N.F.L. at a time when performers were refusing to work with the league, in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who began kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial injustice.The N.F.L. and Roc Nation are keeping quiet about the details of the program to build anticipation, so it is unclear whether it will have the usual big-budget effects of halftime shows past, which have featured Jennifer Lopez dancing on a giant revolving pole, Katy Perry riding an animatronic lion and Diana Ross memorably exiting by helicopter.What is clear is that there is unlikely to be anything like the intimate moment Lady Gaga had with a few of her fans during her 2017 performance, when she clasped their hands and embraced one of them before going back onstage for “Bad Romance.” The Weeknd is taking the stage in a much more distanced world.Ken Belson contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Cardi B’s Gleefully Relentless ‘Up,’ and 12 More New Songs

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe PlaylistCardi B’s Gleefully Relentless ‘Up,’ and 12 More New SongsHear tracks by Bomba Estéreo, SG Lewis, Flock of Dimes and others.Cardi B barely offers listeners a chance to catch their breath on her new solo single, “Up.”Credit…YouTubeJon Pareles, Giovanni Russonello and Feb. 5, 2021, 11:48 a.m. ETEvery 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.Cardi B, ‘Up’[embedded content]On “Up,” her first solo single in several years, Cardi B’s preferred method of annihilating the haters is oxygen deprivation — her flow is so relentless that for nearly three minutes she doesn’t offer listeners a single moment to catch their breath. “Big bag bussin’ out the Bentley Bentayga/Man, Balenciaga Bardi back,” she raps with rapturous alliteration, before running that tongue twister back again, in case you didn’t catch it all the first time. “Up” is a homage to the steely Chicago drill sound that Cardi grew up on, and it also finds her reuniting with DJ SwanQo, who worked with her on the hardest-hitting song on “Invasion of Privacy,” “Get Up 10.” (He co-produced “Up” with Yung Dza.) Her tone is a bit more gleeful than the drill influence would suggest, and there are of course some classically comedic Cardi punch lines here, but the ravenous way she digs into this beat is serious business. LINDSAY ZOLADZSG Lewis featuring Nile Rodgers, ‘One More’Choices, chances. SG Lewis sings about the ways an encounter at a party could go: Will it evaporate amid distractions, or will continuing the conversation for just one more song and lead to romance? Either way, it’s a dance party, and the guitar scrubbing away at complex chords over the neo-disco beat belongs to the disco and dance-pop wizard Nile Rodgers. JON PARELESSia and David Guetta, ‘Floating Through Space’How far has the pandemic lowered the bar for triumph over adversity? “You made it another day, made it alive,” Sia sings over David Guetta’s echoey, synthetic adaptations of a Caribbean soca beat. It’s computerized happiness for a worldwide predicament. PARELESMiss Grit, ‘Grow Up To’Miss Grit is the alias of Margaret Sohn, a Michigan-born New York transplant who, like St. Vincent, is equally enamored of both textured guitar distortion and crisp, clean melody. (When Sohn was a student in NYU’s music technology program, she briefly considered a career in making effects pedals.) Miss Grit’s self-produced second EP, “Impostor,” is a confident and searching meditation on that psychological scourge Impostor Syndrome and her outsider status as a Korean-American growing up in the Midwest. But the single “Grow Up To” is more of an abstraction — albeit a hypnotically catchy one. Beneath a vocal with a hazy, deadpan cool that recalls Mary Timony, Sohn retraces the melody line with her guitar, snaking and sparking like a lit fuse. ZOLADZBomba Estéreo featuring Okan and Lido Pimienta, ‘Agua’Folklore, mysticism, nature and electronics converge in “Agua,” the first single from an album due in April by the Colombian group Bomba Estéreo, joined by Toronto-based expatriates: the Colombian singer Lido Pimienta and the Afro-Cuban vocal duo Okan. Voices harmonize to chant the four ancient elements — “Agua, tierra, aire, fuego” (“water, earth, air, fire”) — over traditional-sounding drums, handclaps and bird calls; then the synthesizers appear, blipping and arpeggiating, as Pimienta and Bomba Estéreo’s Li Saumet sing and rap about being inseparable from the natural world. PARELESFlock of Dimes, ‘Two’“Can I be one? Can we be two?” Jenn Wasner asks on her stirring new single “Two.” The song — and its colorful, playfully choreographed video, directed by Lola B. Pierson and Cricket Arrison — is an exploration of the simultaneous needs for individuality and intimacy within a romantic relationship, but it also reflects the multiplicity of Wasner’s musical output. With her collaborator Andy Stack, she’s one-half of the band Wye Oak, while as a solo artist she releases music under the name Flock of Dimes. “Two” is driven by an irregular beat (Wasner recently joked on Twitter about her penchant for “odd time signatures”), as if to mirror the hesitant questioning of its lyrics. Even when she’s being somber or ruminative, Wasner has a touch of gallows humor, as when she muses memorably, “We’re all just wearing bodies like a costume til we die.” ZOLADZAlan Braufman (Angel Bat Dawid remix), ‘Sunrise’A slow, billowing, rafters-raising saxophone melody — distinctly in the spiritualist free-jazz tradition of Albert Ayler — becomes just one element in a digital swarm in this remix of a tune by the saxophonist Alan Braufman, from his 2020 quintet album, “The Fire Still Burns.” With the young multi-instrumentalist and composer Angel Bat Dawid at the controls, the track begins as a saxophone reflected upon itself, bouncing around the walls of an electronic prism; that leads into a steady, clipped, electronic beat, somewhere between deep house and ambient music. A veteran of New York’s jazz loft scene of the 1970s, Braufman only recently resuscitated his public career as a musician. “The Fire Still Burns,” featuring an intergenerational cast of side musicians, was a triumphant claim to artistic vitality, at age 69. This Dawid remix is another indication of what it means to stay engaged decades on, bringing the tradition ahead. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOVic Mensa featuring Wyclef Jean and Chance the Rapper, ‘Shelter’“I’ll be your shelter,” Wyclef Jean promises, sometimes in a sweet falsetto and sometimes with hoarse vehemence, over mournful, syncopated guitar chords. But the track, even with hints of hope at the end, is an elegy, and raps by Vic Mensa and Chance the Rapper matter-of-factly set out how many people aren’t sheltered from disease, poverty and racism: “Hospital workers in scrubs with no PPE/But they got money for riot gear,” Mensa observes. PARELESH.E.R., ‘Fight for You’How’s this for building anticipation: H.E.R.’s new song was nominated for a Golden Globe a day before it was even released! The soulful “Fight for You,” from the soundtrack of the upcoming Black Panther drama “Judas and the Black Messiah,” strikes an appropriate balance between period-pic scene-setting and up-to-date cool, as lyrics like “all the smoke in the air, feel the hate when they stare” draw unfortunate parallels between past and present. ZOLADZJimmy Edgar featuring 24hrs, ‘Notice’The producer Jimmy Edgar has far-flung connections. He has collaborated with producers including Sophie and Hudson Mohawk and rappers like Danny Brown. The Atlanta rapper 24hrs sing-raps assorted phrases in “Notice,” but all the action is in the track: viscous bass tones stopping and starting, little whistling interjections, double-time boings and swoops and tinkles. There’s a slow, determined push forward, but at any given moment, it’s impossible to predict where it will land. PARELESArchie Shepp and Jason Moran, ‘Wise One’You can hear history coursing both ways, future sloshing up against past, as the pianist Jason Moran and the saxophonist Archie Shepp revisit John Coltrane’s “Wise One.” When Moran pulls an arpeggiated rumble into a rhythmic flow, or splashes a fistful of high notes onto the keyboard behind Shepp’s high warbling cry, it’s almost impossible to say whether the younger pianist is guiding his elder down a new path, or following his lead. Shepp became a Coltrane apostle more than half a century ago, and it was Trane who brought Shepp to Impulse! Records, helping him build a reputation as one of the leading jazz innovators of the 1960s. Moran came up decades later, idolizing them both. Shepp and Moran’s album, “Let My People Go,” is out now — only the latest in a long history of memorable piano-sax duet albums by Shepp, including ones with Mal Waldron and Horace Parlan. RUSSONELLOVampire Weekend, ‘40:42’ remade by Goose and Sam GendelEver conceptual, Vampire Weekend called on musician-fans to remake “2021,” a minute-and-a-half ditty about relationships and the passage of time (“Copper goes green, steel beams go rust”) from its 2019 album “Father of the Bride.” There were conditions: Each remake was to last exactly 20 minutes and 21 seconds, to be combined for an EP entitled (do the math) “40:42.” Both acts rose to the occasion. Goose, a methodical jam band from Connecticut, did a live jam, on video, with clear landmarks of Minimalistic stasis, playful crosscurrents and dramatic, attentive buildups. Sam Gendel, a saxophonist who has worked with Ry Cooder, Perfume Genius and Moses Sumney, came up with multiple, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure scenarios: breathy woodwind chorales, abstract modal drones, electronic meditations and loops, cozy fireside acoustic session, raucous jazz finale. Musicians delight in working with limited parameters and leaping beyond them. PARELESAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Hayley Williams, All Alone With Her Memories

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s PickHayley Williams, All Alone With Her MemoriesParamore’s leader has surprise-released her second solo album, “Flowers for Vases/Descansos,” and all the music is hers.On an introspective album recorded entirely by Hayley Williams in her home studio, the Paramore frontwoman explores a more delicate sonic palate.Credit…Tim Barber for The New York TimesFeb. 5, 2021Flowers for Vases/DescansosNYT Critic’s PickThe pandemic has fostered music of solitude and self-reliance. For most of her years as the singer and central songwriter of Paramore, the multimillion-selling, arena-filling punk-pop band she formed as a teenager in 2004, Hayley Williams insisted that she had no interest in making a solo album. But her new, surprise-released “Flowers for Vases/Descansos” is her second solo album in less than a year, and it’s more solo than ever.“Flowers for Vases” was entirely written and performed by Williams and recorded at her home studio. Separation and loneliness suffuse the songs, as Williams contemplates the aftermath of a breakup, surveying memories and what-ifs, regrets and accusations and, especially, the ways attachment can linger. Williams was divorced in 2017, after a nearly decade-long relationship and a year of marriage, from Chad Gilbert, the guitarist in the emo band New Found Glory. “Flowers for Vases/Descansos” suggests she’s still working things through on her own — away from her ex, away from her band.“I’m scared to lose what’s left of you,” she sings in “First Thing to Go,” the album’s opening song, wistfully adding, “I just finish my own sentences the way you used to.” In “Asystole” — the title is a medical term for heart failure — she sings, “I want to forget/But the feeling isn’t something I can let myself let go of.” In “KYRH,” she sets up layers of undulating, Minimalist piano chords and cello tones as she sings “Keep you right here,” contemplating stasis. In “No Use I Just Do” she struggles with longings she’d rather push away. And in “Good Grief,” she sings, “Pretty sure you don’t miss the way I put all my demons on display/To your pretty music.”Williams recorded her first solo album, “Petals for Armor” from 2020, before the pandemic, working with Paramore’s guitarist Taylor York as producer along with other songwriting collaborators and backup musicians. They helped Williams decisively break free of punk-pop, as she toyed with electronics, disco beats, glossy pop, jazzy intricacies and indie-rock introspection. The album relied on her gift for melody and her careful emotional balancing: rage and self-criticism, insecurity and conviction. And while Paramore had allowed itself an occasional ballad, with “Petals for Armor” Williams proved emphatically that she didn’t have to shout.“Flowers for Vases/Descansos” has a narrower, quieter palette, though Williams easily handles guitars, keyboards and drums on her own. As on Taylor Swift’s 2020 quarantine albums, “Folklore” and “Evermore,” many of the songs have a folky acoustic guitar, strummed or picked, at their core. Williams opens some tracks with snippets of lo-fi demo versions, hinting at the many steps between songwriting and recording. The songs on “Flowers for Vases/Descansos” are finely polished: every vocal phrase, guitar tone, piano note and studio effect has been thought through by Williams and her engineer and producer, Daniel James.Williams’s pop-punk skills resurface, only slightly subdued, in “My Limb,” which methodically sets out riffs on guitars and piano while it envisions a breakup as an amputation: “If your part of me is gone now, do I want to survive?,” she wonders.But more often, she starts songs as solo reflections, then tunnels inward. “First Thing to Go,” a slow-strummed acoustic-guitar waltz, gathers hovering voices and a syncopated electric-guitar undertow, the parts wafting in like inescapable memories. “Inordinary” is almost countryish, as an opening declaration — “I don’t want to be your friend or just one of the guys/I am nobody’s” — gives way to autobiographical memories of moving to Tennessee with her mother and meeting her soul mates in the band, as echoes and resonances drift up around her.And in “Just a Lover,” she reconsiders most of her life, from growing up as a music fan to pouring her troubles out for millions of listeners: “I feel my heart crack open, one last chorus.” The track opens with quietly tolling piano chords but builds to a full-band electric stomp, only for Williams to question her own path forward: “No more music for us. Or the masses,” she sings, as full-throated as she is anywhere on the album. “I know exactly what this is/Or whatever it was.”Her deep uncertainty is the album’s final note. But at the same time, the music makes something abundantly clear: Lonely or not, she didn’t need those guys. Hayley Williams“Flowers for Vases/Descansos”(Atlantic)AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Tony Bennett Reveals He Has Alzheimer’s Disease

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTony Bennett Reveals He Has Alzheimer’s Disease“He’s not the old Tony anymore,” his wife, Susan, said. “But when he sings, he’s the old Tony.”The singer Tony Bennett has announced that he has Alzheimer’s disease, writing on Twitter: “Life is a gift — even with Alzheimer’s.”Credit…Evan Agostini/Invision, via Associated PressFeb. 1, 2021Tony Bennett, the 94-year-old singer who has become a beloved interpreter of the American songbook, has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, his wife, Susan, told AARP The Magazine this week.“Life is a gift — even with Alzheimer’s,” the singer tweeted on Monday morning. “Thank you to Susan and my family for their support.”Susan Bennett, and Tony Bennett’s eldest son, Danny, told the magazine that Bennett was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s — a degenerative brain disease that causes memory loss, among other things — in 2016.According to the magazine, Bennett began showing symptoms in 2015. “Even his increasingly rare moments of clarity and awareness reveal the depths of his debility,” the article states. But it said that he had not experienced the disorientation that prompts some patients to wander off, or episodes of terror, rage or depression.Before the coronavirus pandemic, Bennett had continued to perform extensively. But backstage, relatives told the magazine, he could seem “mystified about his whereabouts.”“But the moment he heard the announcer’s voice boom ‘Ladies and gentlemen — Tony Bennett!’ he would transform himself into performance mode, stride out into the spotlight, smiling and acknowledging the audience’s applause,” the piece said.His wife, Susan, would watch nervously, worrying that he would forget a lyric. “I was a nervous frigging wreck,” she told the magazine. “Yet he always delivered!”The early signs came in 2015, she told the magazine, when he began forgetting musicians’ names onstage, and began stashing a list on the piano, she said. But he knew something was wrong and wanted to see a doctor, she said, and he learned he had Alzheimer’s in 2016.Susan Bennett said that he can still recognize family members, but the magazine reported that “mundane objects as familiar as a fork or a set of house keys can be utterly mysterious to him.”Bennett, who has had a seven-decade-long career, scored his first big hit in 1951, “Because of You.” In 1962 he recorded “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” which became his signature song. Long after other crooners had died or faded from the airwaves, Bennett experienced a resurgence in popularity: He won a Grammy for his 1994 album, “Tony Bennett: MTV Unplugged.” Since then, he has recorded duets with a string of notables including James Taylor, Sting and Amy Winehouse.He recorded an album with Lady Gaga in 2014, “Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga: Cheek to Cheek,” which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard’s Top 200 pop and rock chart. According to the AARP article, a follow-up album with Lady Gaga, which was recorded between 2018 and early 2020, will be released this spring.Lady Gaga was aware of Bennett’s condition when they were recording their most recent collaboration, the article said. In documentary footage of the sessions, Bennett rarely speaks, and offers one-word responses like “Thanks” or “Yeah.”But his appetite for all things musical remains robust. According to the magazine, he continues to rehearse a 90-minute set twice a week with his longtime pianist, Lee Musiker — and does so without any of the haltingness that can characterize his speech.More than five million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s, according to the Alzheimer’s Association, including one in 10 people age 65 or older. Symptoms may initially include repeating questions, getting lost in a familiar place or misplacing things, and may eventually progress to hallucinations, angry outbursts, and the inability to recognize family and friends or communicate at all. Alzheimer’s has no cure.Susan Bennett is serving as her husband’s caregiver.“I have my moments and it gets very difficult,” she told the magazine. “It’s no fun arguing with someone who doesn’t understand you.” But she added that they felt more fortunate than many other people living with Alzheimer’s.Bennett’s last public performance was in March at the Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, N.J. Before the coronavirus shut down live performances, he was touring often, singing a 90-minute set without cluing in audiences or critics that anything was amiss.“He’s not the old Tony anymore,” Susan Bennett told the magazine. “But when he sings, he’s the old Tony.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Evan Rachel Wood Accuses Marilyn Manson of Abuse

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyEvan Rachel Wood Accuses Marilyn Manson of Abuse“He started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years,” Ms. Wood, said on Instagram. Hours later Mr. Manson’s label dropped him.The rock musician Marilyn Manson last year. Mr. Manson and the actress Evan Rachel Wood publicly became a couple in 2007, when she was 19 and he was 38.Credit…Randy Shropshire/Getty Images for The Art of ElysiumJenny Gross and Feb. 1, 2021Updated 6:09 p.m. ETThe actor and singer Evan Rachel Wood, who has spoken publicly for years about being a survivor of sexual and physical violence, said on Monday that she had been abused by the rock musician Marilyn Manson.“The name of my abuser is Brian Warner, also known to the world as Marilyn Manson,” Ms. Wood wrote in an Instagram post. “He started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years. I was brainwashed and manipulated into submission. I am done living in fear of retaliation, slander, or blackmail. I am here to expose this dangerous man and call out the many industries that have enabled him, before he ruins any more lives. I stand with the many victims who will no longer be silent.”Ms. Wood, 33, was nominated for a Golden Globe in 2017 for her role in “Westworld” and voiced Queen Iduna in “Frozen 2.” She began acting as a child, receiving her first Golden Globe nomination early in her career for her portrayal of a volatile adolescent in the 2003 drama “Thirteen.”Her relationship with Mr. Manson became public in 2007, when she was 19 and he was 38. The two were briefly engaged.Representatives for Mr. Manson did not respond to several requests for comment on Monday. Last year, Mr. Manson’s representatives issued a statement to Metal Hammer, a music magazine, in response to questions about his relationship with Ms. Wood and her testimony before Congress about being a victim of domestic violence.“Personal testimony is just that, and we think it’s inappropriate to comment on that,” Mr. Manson’s representatives told Metal Hammer. “You then go on to talk about Manson being accused of ‘terrible things’ by unnamed ‘critics’ but offer no guidance on who these critics are and what these things are, so it’s not possible to comment.”Evan Rachel Wood at her home in Los Angeles last year.Credit…Rozette Rago for The New York TimesSeveral other women have also accused Mr. Manson of having abused them. In 2018, the actress Charlyne Yi accused Mr. Manson of harassment in a series of tweets that have since been deleted. In September 2020, Dan Cleary, who said that he had worked as an assistant to Mr. Manson for several years, wrote on Twitter that he had witnessed the singer being abusive.Loma Vista, the label that released Marilyn Manson’s latest recording, said Monday it would stop promoting it and would not work with him in the future.“In light of today’s disturbing allegations by Evan Rachel Wood and other women naming Marilyn Manson as their abuser, Loma Vista will cease to further promote his current album, effective immediately,” it said in a statement posted on Twitter. “Due to these concerning developments, we have also decided not to work with Marilyn Manson on any future projects.”Ms. Wood, who supported a California law that extended the statute of limitations on domestic abuse, testified before the State Senate in 2019 that a man whom she did not identify by name had groomed her when she was 18.“He cut me off from my close friends and family one by one, by exhibiting rage in some form or another when I was in contact with them,” she said in her testimony. “He had bouts of extreme jealousy, which would often result in him wrecking our home, cornering me in a room and threatening me.”She said that she felt terrified for her life, and that he broke her down through starvation and sleep deprivation, and by threatening to kill her. In one instance, he forced her to kneel in their bedroom, tied up her hands and feet, beat her and shocked sensitive parts of her body with a device called a violet wand.When she tried to leave him, he would call her house incessantly, she said.Mr. Manson told Spin magazine in 2009 that he had called Ms. Wood 158 times one day after a breakup. “I have fantasies every day about smashing her skull in with a sledgehammer,” he said.His representatives said last year, in response to questions by Metal Hammer, that Mr. Manson’s comment in Spin was “obviously a theatrical rock star interview promoting a new record.”Mr. Manson described his views on women in a 2015 interview with Dazed, a style magazine.“Girls should always present themselves to you when you come home,” he said. “‘Hi honey, I’m home,’ and she’s wearing lingerie, legs akimbo. ‘Come and get it, honey.’”Ms. Wood told Rolling Stone magazine in 2016 that she had been raped: “By a significant other while we were together. And on a separate occasion, by the owner of a bar.”In recent years, especially after the birth of her son in 2013 and the start of the #MeToo movement, she was galvanized to become an advocate for survivors of domestic abuse, she told The New York Times in a 2018 interview. “If you’re going to be famous, for me it has to mean something, or be used for something, because otherwise it just freaks me out,” she said in the interview.That February, she testified before Congress about what she had endured.“So often we speak of these assaults as no more than a few minutes of awfulness, but the scars last a lifetime,” she said in her testimony, in which she detailed an episode in which she thought she might die at the hands of her abuser. “Not just because my abuser said to me, ‘I could kill you right now.’ But because in that moment, I felt like I left my body. I was too afraid to run, he would find me.”For years afterward, she said, she “struggled with depression, addiction, agoraphobia, night terrors,” and made two suicide attempts; she said she was eventually diagnosed with long-term post-traumatic stress disorder.Before her Congressional hearing about the Survivor’s Bill of Rights, which expanded access to medical care and more for survivors of sexual assault, Ms. Wood said she had hardly uttered the full scope of her trauma to anyone. She had barely processed it herself, she said in the 2018 interview, until she was cast in “Westworld,” the sci-fi drama in which she plays an innocent who slowly awakens to the darkness around her.Ms. Wood has said that she did not report her abuser to authorities because the statute of limitations had long since passed, and that she chose not to name him because she felt she had to come to terms with her own story first. “It took me so long to process everything and to get to a place where I felt even safe enough to speak about the abuse. And it’s scary,” she said in Harper’s Bazaar in 2019.Giving survivors more time was part of her motivation in working on the Phoenix Act, the California bill for which she testified. It passed in 2019, and took effect last year. It lengthens the statute of limitations for domestic abuse felonies to five years, and expands training for officers working on domestic violence cases.In response to Ms. Wood’s allegations on Monday, Susan Rubio, the California state senator who proposed the legislation, and who is herself a survivor of domestic abuse, called for Mr. Manson to be investigated.She said Ms. Wood had been “instrumental” in getting California’s laws changed. “When survivors speak up, they help victims realize they are not alone and empower them to come out of the shadows,” she said. “The more stories we share, the less power we give our abusers.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Sibongile Khumalo, South Africa’s ‘First Lady of Song,’ Dies at 63

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySibongile Khumalo, South Africa’s ‘First Lady of Song,’ Dies at 63Proficient across a range of genres, she had the hall-filling power of an operatic mezzo-soprano and the directness of a pop singer.The South African singer Sibongile Khumalo in performance at the Prospect Park Bandshell in Brooklyn in 2007. Credit…Hiroyuki Ito for The New York TimesFeb. 1, 2021, 3:04 p.m. ETSibongile Khumalo, a virtuoso vocalist whose ease of motion between opera, jazz and South African popular music made her a symbol of the country’s new social order after the end of apartheid, died on Thursday. She was 63.Her family wrote on Instagram that the cause was complications of a stroke, and that she had endured a long illness. The post did not say where she died.Fleet and precise across a wide vocal range but particularly elegant in the upper register, Ms. Khumalo’s voice had the hall-filling power of an operatic mezzo-soprano and the directness of a pop singer. After making her debut as Carmen in a production in Durban, she earned wide acclaim for her roles in South African operas and plays, including “UShaka KaSenzangakhona,” “Princess Magogo KaDinuzulu” and “Gorée,” all of which toured internationally.At home she was equally known for her catchy original compositions and her renditions of South African jazz standards like the straight-ahead anthem “Yakhal’ Inkomo,” written by the saxophonist Winston Ngozi, which became a calling card.When the apartheid government fell and Nelson Mandela became the country’s first democratically elected president in 1994, Ms. Khumalo performed at his inauguration. Mandela famously referred to her as the country’s “first lady of song,” and the title stuck.The next year, when South Africa went to the Rugby World Cup — a moment of national reconciliation later immortalized in the film “Invictus” — Ms. Khumalo was invited to perform both her home country’s national anthem and that of its opponent, New Zealand. It was “the one and only time I’ve ever watched a rugby match, at any level, of any kind,” she told a television interviewer in 2017, laughing.In 1996 Sony released her debut album, “Ancient Evenings,” which included a number of originals and loosely adhered to a vocal-driven South African pop style. Over the next two decades she would release a steady stream of albums, earning four South African Music Awards. For her stage performances, she garnered three Vita Awards.In 2008 she received the Order of Ikhamanga in silver, among the country’s highest honors for contributions to the arts.Sibongile Mngoma was born in Soweto on Sept. 24, 1957, to Grace and Khabi Mngoma. Her mother was a nurse; her father was a scholar and musician who helped found the music department at the University of Zululand.Sibongile began studying at age 8 under a respected local music teacher, Emily Motsieloa, focusing on the violin. She was heavily influenced by the music of local healers and ministers at the nearby church, as well as the Western classical and pop records her parents played around the house.She also inherited her father’s passion for education and went on to earn undergraduate degrees from both Zululand and the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. She later received honorary doctorates from Zululand, Rhodes University and the University of South Africa.She taught at Zululand, but she also sought opportunities to reach children who lacked access to major institutions. She held teaching and administrative positions at the Federated Union of Black Artists Academy in Johannesburg and the Madimba Institute of African Music in Soweto.Ms. Khumalo’s husband, the actor and director Siphiwe Khumalo, died in 2005. The couple had two children, Ayanda and Tshepo Khumalo. A full list of survivors was not immediately available.In 1993, she won the Standard Bank Young Artist Award at the famed Grahamstown National Arts Festival, and her star rose swiftly. She had already begun turning heads with a concert program, titled “The 3 Faces of Sibongile Khumalo,” that showed off her versatility across genres. Those “faces” were jazz, opera and traditional South African music.When Ms. Khumalo was a girl, her father had brought her to see Constance Magogo kaDinuzulu, a Zulu princess and musician known for her prowess as a singer and composer. “My dad made me sit at her feet to listen to her play ugubhu and sing,” Ms. Khumalo wrote in the notes to her self-titled 2005 album, referring to a Zulu stringed instrument. “I thought he was being very unkind to me because all the other children were out in the yard playing.”But decades later, she drew upon the experience when she collaborated with the scholar Mzilikazi Khumalo (no relation) to create “Princess Magogo KaDinuzulu,” billed as the first Zulu opera, centered on the princess’s own compositions. “It must have been destiny,” she said. “In my professional years the music came back and it began to make sense.”When “Princess Magogo KaDinuzulu” traveled to the United States in 2004, Anne Midgette reviewed it for The New York Times, praising Ms. Khumalo’s “talent and versatility.” Ten years after South Africa had achieved democratic rule, Ms. Midgette noted, Ms. Khumalo seemed to represent “a symbol of its new culture.”In a 2019 interview ahead of her performance at the Joy of Jazz Festival in Johannesburg, Ms. Khumalo said that no matter the symbolism, her main commitment was to the singularity of her own voice. “While exposing yourself and opening yourself up to what is out there, it is also important to remain true to yourself, so that even when you allow yourself to be influenced by others, you retain an identity that clearly defines you,” she said.Whatever the subject matter, she added, “it is the truth in what you express, and how you express it, that is paramount.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Olivia Rodrigo and ‘Drivers License’ Aren’t Going Anywhere

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyPopcastSubscribe:Apple PodcastsGoogle PodcastsOlivia Rodrigo and ‘Drivers License’ Aren’t Going AnywhereA conversation about the year’s first genuine pop phenomenon, and the long arc of the Disney machine.Hosted by Jon Caramanica. Produced by Pedro Rosado.More episodes ofPopcastJanuary 31, 2021Olivia Rodrigo and ‘Drivers License’ Aren’t Going AnywhereJanuary 19, 2021Inside the Bull Market for Songwriting RightsJanuary 7, 2021How Zev Love X Became MF DoomDecember 23, 20202020 Popcast Listener Mailbag: Taylor, Dua, MGK and MoreDecember 15, 2020Taylor Swift’s ‘Evermore’: Let’s DiscussDecember 9, 2020The Best Albums of 2020? Let’s DiscussNovember 29, 2020Saweetie, City Girls and the Female Rapper RenaissanceNovember 18, 2020Who Will Control Britney Spears’s Future?November 10, 2020Ariana Grande, a Pop Star for the Post-Pop Star AgeOctober 22, 2020  •  More