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    Grammy Awards Postponed as Covid-19 Rages in Los Angeles

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyGrammy Awards Postponed as Covid-19 Rages in Los AngelesThe delay comes less than four weeks before the ceremony was to be held, on Jan. 31. The event will now be held on March 14.Beyoncé is the most-nominated artist for the 63rd annual Grammy Awards, which will no longer take place in January.Credit…Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBen Sisario and Jan. 5, 2021The 63rd annual Grammy Awards, set to be presented this month, have been delayed over concerns about Covid-19, which has been spreading rapidly in the Los Angeles area.The show will now be held on March 14, according to a statement from Grammy organizers, although few other details were available about where, and how, the event would go on.“The deteriorating Covid situation in Los Angeles, with hospital services being overwhelmed, I.C.U.s having reached capacity, and new guidance from state and local governments have all led us to conclude that postponing our show was the right thing to do,” said the statement, which was signed by executives at the Recording Academy, which presents the Grammys, and CBS, its longtime broadcast partner.“Nothing is more important,” it added, “than the health and safety of those in our music community and the hundreds of people who work tirelessly on producing the show.”The delay comes less than four weeks before the ceremony was to be held, on Jan. 31, and as unions and entertainment industry groups have called to suspend in-person television and film production in Los Angeles, citing the surging virus and overwhelmed hospitals. Several late-night shows have moved back to remote formats.The pandemic has kept this year’s Grammys under a cloud of uncertainty for months. In an interview in November, when nominations were announced, Harvey Mason Jr., the chairman and interim chief executive of the academy, said that an event was planned for a small audience in Los Angeles, but that many other details were still being worked out. Trevor Noah, from “The Daily Show,” was to be the host.Even the news of the postponement on Tuesday left the music industry confused. After Rolling Stone reported that the ceremony had been postponed, neither the academy nor CBS made any official public statement for hours. An email to academy members — and the Grammys’ official website — both said that the new date was March 21. That was quickly rescinded, although the incorrect date continued to bounce around social media and was picked up by some news outlets.Beyoncé has the most nominations for the ceremony, with nine in eight categories. Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa and the rapper Roddy Ricch are among the other major contenders for awards. In classic Grammys fashion, controversy — or at least loud complaints — have swarmed around this year’s nominations, as stars like the Weeknd and the country singer Luke Combs, who had some of the biggest hits of the period, were left off the ballot.Despite offstage griping, the Grammys remain one of the most high-profile moments in the year in pop music, with stars relishing the TV exposure and record executives schmoozing during glittery industry gatherings. Even if muted by the pandemic, the Grammys had been expected to represent a major media moment for the music world.This year was set to mark a new era for the Grammys. Ken Ehrlich, its producer for four decades, stepped down after last year’s ceremony. The new show is to be produced by Ben Winston, who has worked with James Corden. In an interview with Variety last month, Winston said he was “looking to do something quite exciting with independent venues” around this year’s Grammys.The telecast is also a major tent-pole event for CBS, though the show’s ratings have been sagging. Last year 18.7 million people watched the Grammys live on television, a 12-year low.Other major awards shows have attempted a variety of approaches during various stages of the pandemic, with mixed results. The BET Awards, held in June; the MTV Video Music Awards, in August; the Billboard Music Awards, in October; and the Latin Grammys, in November, were televised without audiences, and artists appeared remotely from soundstages to perform and accept awards.The Country Music Association Awards held an in-person ceremony in Nashville in November, with a live audience consisting mostly of the show’s performers, who were socially distanced but largely unmasked. A month after the awards, the singer Charley Pride, 86, died of complications from Covid-19, although where he was exposed remains unknown.In other industries, the pandemic forced the Emmy Awards to stage a largely virtual event in September. The Tony Awards announced in August that the show would go ahead, online, at an unspecified date, after initially postponing its June date.The Oscars were postponed two months from their original Feb. 28 date to April 25, with the format of the ceremony not yet determined. A week after that delay was announced, the Golden Globes then said that it would hold its ceremony, typically scheduled for January, in-person — as usual, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. — on Feb. 28 instead.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Gerry Marsden, a Hitmaker With the Pacemakers, Dies at 78

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyGerry Marsden, a Hitmaker With the Pacemakers, Dies at 78For a time in the early ’60s, with songs like“Ferry Cross the Mersey,” “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” the Pacemakers rivaled the Beatles.Gerry Marsden, aloft, in a publicity photo with the other members of Gerry and Pacemakers in 1964. They  had the distinction of scoring a No. 1 hit in the U.K. before the Beatles did.Credit…Press Association, via Associated PressJan. 4, 2021Updated 6:49 p.m. ETGerry Marsden, whose band Gerry and the Pacemakers proved to be formidable rivals to the Beatles in the early Liverpool rock scene of the 1960s, scoring smash hits like “Ferry Cross the Mersey,” “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” died on Sunday in the Liverpool area. He was 78.His death, at Arrowe Park Hospital in the Merseyside metropolitan area, was confirmed by his family in a statement. British news outlets said the cause was a heart infection.Gerry and the Pacemakers were the second band signed by the Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein, but they earned a No. 1 single on the official United Kingdom singles chart before the Beatles ever did, accomplishing that feat in 1963 with their debut single, “How Do You Do It.” It beat the Beatles’ maiden chart-topper, “From Me to You,” by three weeks.The Pacemakers’ next two singles, “I Like It” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” followed suit, making them the first act to summit the U.K. singles chart with their first three releases. They held that record for two decades, until another Liverpool band, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, matched it.The Pacemakers didn’t write their first burst of hits; the first two were by Mitch Murray, while the band plucked the valiant ballad “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “Carousel.” (The Beatles recorded an earlier version of the effervescent “How Do You Do It” at the behest of their producer George Martin, but they weren’t pleased with the song, so it wasn’t released at the time. It didn’t surface until three decades later on the Beatles’ “Anthology 1” collection.)Mr. Marsden’s talent as a songwriter emerged in 1964, first as co-writer, with his bandmates, of “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying,” then as the sole writer of “Ferry Cross the Mersey,” named for the waterway that flows by Liverpool.The melodies in those songs had a grandeur that exuded both melancholy and rapture, enhanced by Mr. Marsden’s billowing voice. While he could nail the bouncy flair of the band’s lighter singles and mirror it with his brisk rhythm guitar work, his soaring range gave him the chops to turn songs like “You’ll Never Walk Alone” into anthems. His group’s version of “Walk Alone” became the signature song of the Liverpool Football Club and was later adopted by sports teams around the world.The Pacemakers took off more slowly in the United States. Their first trifecta of U.K. hits missed the American charts before “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying” soared to No. 4 in Billboard magazine and “Ferry Cross the Mersey” got to No. 6. The group had two other U.S. scores, a rereleased “I Like It” and “I’ll Be There,” which each made Billboard’s Top 20 in 1964.After his death, Paul McCartney wrote on Twitter: “Gerry was a mate from our early days in Liverpool. He and his group were our biggest rivals on the local scene. His unforgettable performances of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ and ‘Ferry Cross the Mersey’ remain in many people’s hearts as reminders of a joyful time in British music.”Mr. Marsden in 1964. The Pacemakers’ melodies had a grandeur that exuded both melancholy and rapture, enhanced by Mr. Marsden’s billowing voice.Credit…Keystone/Getty ImagesGerard Marsden was born on Sept. 24, 1942, in the Toxteth section of Liverpool to Fredrick and Mary (McAlindin) Marsden. His father was a railway clerk who played the ukulele, The Guardian once wrote. His parents encouraged both Gerry and his older brother, Fred, to play instruments. Gerry chose guitar; Fred, the drums.The brothers’ first band, Gerry Marsden and the Mars Bars, played skiffle music, a British precursor to rock ’n’ roll. After the Mars company objected to the band’s appropriating the name of their signature chocolate candy, they became Gerry and the Pacemakers, rounded out by Les Chadwick on bass and Les Maguire on piano.The quartet honed their skills in the same clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg, Germany, that nurtured the Beatles. “In 1959, we started playing rock ’n’ roll to the Germans,” Mr. Marsden told the New Zealand television show “The Beat Goes On” in 2009. “We used to play from 7 in the evening until 2 in the morning, with a 15-minute break every hour. It was a great apprenticeship in music.”Mr. Epstein met the group at the record store he ran, NEMS Music. After seeing them play, he signed them and secured a deal with Columbia Records. To Mr. Marsden’s delight, Mr. Martin produced their early recordings. “We had only heard our voices on crummy tape recorders before,” he told the website the Beatles Bible. “We couldn’t believe we sounded so good.”The group’s string of British No. 1’s nearly amounted to four, but their single “I’m the One,” penned by Mr. Marsden, missed the top slot by one position, just behind “Needles and Pins,” by another Liverpudlian band, the Searchers. In 1965, the group played themselves in a movie musical comedy, “Ferry Cross the Mersey,” but it wasn’t popular and drew unflattering comparisons to the Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night” from a year earlier.“It is mildly funny,” The New York Times wrote. “But we’ve seen it all before.”The group had their final American Top 40 score in September 1966 with “Girl on a Swing.” One month later, they disbanded. Mr. Marsden afterward worked as a solo performer before reforming the Pacemakers in 1974, without chart success.Mr. Marsden sang before a soccer match at Anfield Stadium in Liverpool in 2010. His group’s version of “Walk Alone” became the signature song of the Liverpool Football Club.Credit…Michael Regan/Getty ImagesIn the 1980s, Mr. Marsden reclaimed the No. 1 position twice in the U.K. with re-recordings of his ’60s hits for charitable causes. Following a fire in 1985 at the Bradford Football Stadium in Yorkshire that killed 56 people, he formed a group called the Crowd to cut a new version of “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”Four years later, following a fatal human crush during a football match at Hillsborough Stadium in South Yorkshire, he joined with Paul McCartney, Holly Johnson of Frankie Goes to Hollywood and other artists to rerecord “Ferry Cross the Mersey,” to benefit families of the victims. Mr. Marsden continued to tour the oldies circuit until retiring in November 2018.He married Pauline Behan in 1965, and she survives him, along with their daughters Yvette and Victoria. His brother, Fred, died of cancer in 2006.Even into his later years, the famously humble Mr. Marsden remained surprised by his band’s international success.“I used to believe you had to be something special to have a hit record,” he said on “The Beat Goes On.” “We were just kids from Liverpool.”He recalled that even when his band’s debut single, “How Did You Do It,” took off, his mother wouldn’t let it go to his head: “When I told my mom that the song was going to be No. 1, she said: ‘That’s great. Now finish your fish and chips.’”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Love Music to Surprise You? Jon Caramanica Recommends TikTok Dives

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyQUESTIONS FROM THE BOSSLove Music to Surprise You? Jon Caramanica Recommends TikTok DivesThe Times’s Culture editor has questions. Our critic has answers.The songs on Fiona Apple’s 2020 album “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” succeed by connecting to the artist’s resentments as well as her creative impulses.Credit…Gary Miller/Getty ImagesJan. 1, 2021, 10:00 a.m. ETAs the editor of the Culture department at The New York Times, Gilbert Cruz relies on critics, reporters and editors in every field of the arts for their expertise. Now we’re bringing his personal questions — and our writers’ answers — to you. Currently on his mind: how to open himself up to new music, and tangle with the beast known as TikTok, which he posed to Jon Caramanica, a pop music critic.Gilbert asks: We’re approaching the tail-end of one of my favorite times of year — Top 10 list time! The holidays have passed, but I’m still catching up on stuff. I love reading ours, I love reading those from other publications. It really allows me to feel both superior (“Yeah, I saw that”) and inferior (“Damn, I didn’t even hear about that”) at the same time. Last year, after seeing your No. 1 album, I distinctly recall asking myself, “What is 100 gecs?” putting on the song “Money Machine” while my 5-year old was in the room and immediately regretting it. This is one of the reasons I appreciate you.This year, I played it so safe as a music listener. In March, it felt as if I would have time to explore so much of the new — and instead I just played my favorite albums over and over again. Did I do it wrong? Can your year-end list (and Jon Pareles’s and Lindsay Zoladz’s) redeem me and those like me?Jon answers: First off, please enumerate all of the other reasons you appreciate me. If we have any space left, I’ll …I’m really glad that I hit my target demographic, which is to say your child, which is to say someone who remains open to all of the wacky, unexpected possibilities of music. I’d guess that by the time we are, I dunno, 13, we already begin to understand music as something that defines us socially, and about which we can become tribal. That is, of course, a shame. I wish child’s ears for everyone.Look, you’ll find great, revelatory things on my album and song lists — for your little one, try Rina Sawayama and Flo Milli — but I’m not sure there’s much on there that will snap me or you or anyone else out of [madly waves hands around] all of this. Fiona Apple probably came closest for me — it was nice to hear someone with such a direct line to both their resentments and their creative impulses.I think the artists who suffered this year — critically, at least — were those who stayed the course. In a different year, say, Gunna might have gotten more critical attention. But his 2020 album wasn’t much different than his 2019 album, and I found that I didn’t have much to say about him that I hadn’t already said. In a year where it sometimes felt onerous just to extract the energy to even absorb a work of art, albums like that felt easy to nod at and move past.Gilbert asks: It’s a big part of your job to constantly experience the new — but is there older stuff that you find yourself returning to for comfort?Jon answers: I do think that discomfort is my beat, to a certain extent. I generally find myself allergic to familiar pleasures. That said, for the last couple of years, few things have been more calming than the music of the Griselda Records crew, from Buffalo, which is grounded in the 1990s New York rap that makes up around 85 percent of my DNA. The way the syllables have sturdy corners, but there’s still a liquidity between them — it’s as reassuring as my mother’s voice.Also, I know it might sound odd to say that I found comfort in TikTok, the centerless, directionless app that grabs you by the neck and clings tight for as long as you’ll let it, but I found its relentless, crossed-up rhythms soothing. There are endless rabbit holes to fall down, myriad subcultures to peek in on, countless around-the-way superstars who have finally found their dream milieu.Gilbert asks: Yeah, I heard you say something similar on a recent episode of Popcast where you talked about how you “struggled this year to listen to albums” and wondered about the “utility of the album.” Do you think that’s a function of quarantine, or is it just an extension of the playlist-ification of music? Honestly, almost every new song I discovered this year I discovered through some Spotify playlist. (No free ads.)Jon answers: As awful as it sounds, an album is simply a data dump now. That doesn’t mean that some artists won’t continue to aim to be auteurs of the form — say, Taylor Swift or Adele — but the minute albums hit streaming services, they are sliced and diced and the songs are relegated to playlist slots, and everything after that is a crap shoot. The truth is that albums worked as a medium only because everyone was a captive. When you look back at your favorite older albums now, I’m sure you see the weak spots that you’d happily have programmed out if you had the technology then. Now you do. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next generation of pop stars finds ways to never release an “album” again — they’ll just drip music out, one automated-brain-chip-download at a time.Gilbert asks: OK, I have to come back to something, though. It’s embarrassing.Here it is — I’m just not on TikTok much. (Insert grimace emoji.) I know I should be because it’s a major part of the culture, but there are only so many ways I can direct my time. This Robert Caro book isn’t going to finish itself, Jon! What are some of the best things you’ve seen there this year?Jon answers: It’s cool, man — you get paid to run the department, and I get paid to do … this.#FrogTikTok. Teens talking about reading political theory, both as means to revolution and to flirtation. @funkbeezly’s taxonomy of boyfriends. The debunking of Noah Beck’s Yale soccer scholarship. The House Nobody Asked For. Jordan Scott. (Sorry.) (Someone help him with his merch, though.) The joy in the comments when Charli D’Amelio finally danced to ppcocaine’s “3 Musketeers.” High fashion satirist guys who’ll soon be in need of chiropractors. Jeremy O. Harris’s “WAP” dance at Pompeii. @cyberexboyfriend. The very long, very specific memory of @nfbroleelove. “Who’s the drunkest?” Dances to Phoebe Bridgers and Soccer Mommy. @karchill and his Mentos. The many flavors of Pop Smoke and Lil Tjay’s “Mood Swings.” Kids in Zoom classrooms telling their teachers how much they appreciate them. Jasmine Orlando. “Where? Bunny? Surplus? Labor? Value?” And of course, Larry Scott, who always had a “nice” ready when I needed one.Gilbert asks: What’s the longest you’ve ever spent scrolling through TikTok?Jon answers: Ummmmmmm … three hours? So, not nearly long enough.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Phyllis McGuire, Last of a Singing Sisters Act, Dies at 89

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPhyllis McGuire, Last of a Singing Sisters Act, Dies at 89Starting in the ’50s, the McGuire Sisters were one of America’s most popular vocal groups, their three-part harmonies a balm to audiences rattled by rock ’n’ roll.The McGuire Sisters in 1953 — from left, Christine, Phyllis and Dorothy. They became staples of television variety shows. Credit…Associated PressDec. 31, 2020Updated 4:58 p.m. ETPhyllis McGuire, the lead singer and last surviving member of the McGuire Sisters, who bewitched teenage America in the 1950s with chart-topping renditions of “Sincerely” and “Sugartime” in a sweet, innocent harmony that went with car fins, charm bracelets and duck-tail haircuts, died on Tuesday at her home in Las Vegas. She was 89.The Palm Eastern Mortuary in Las Vegas confirmed the death but did not specify a cause. Ms. McGuire, with her older sisters Christine and Dorothy, shot to success overnight after winning the televised “Arthur Godfrey Talent Scouts” contest in 1952. Over the next 15 years, they were one of the nation’s most popular vocal groups, singing on the television variety shows of Ed Sullivan, Milton Berle, Andy Williams and Red Skelton, on nightclub circuits across the country and on records that sold millions.The sisters epitomized a 1950s sensibility that held up a standard of unreal perfection, wearing identical coifs, dresses and smiles, moving with synchronized precision and blending voices in wholesome songs for simpler times. Their music, like that of Perry Como, Patti Page and other stars who appealed to white, middle-class audiences, contrasted starkly with the rock ’n’ roll craze that was taking the world by storm in the mid-to-late ’50s.In 1965, as the trio’s popularity began to fade, Phyllis McGuire’s image as the honey-blonde girl next door was shattered by published reports linking her romantically with Sam Giancana, a Chicago mobster with reputed ties to the Kennedy administration and a Central Intelligence Agency plot to enlist the Mafia in what proved to be unsuccessful attempts to assassinate the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.Ms. McGuire with the Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana at a nightclub in 1962. Their relationship shattered her girl-next-door image. Credit…Associated PressMr. Giancana and Ms. McGuire, who had been followed by federal agents for several years, appeared before a grand jury in Chicago. He refused to answer questions and was jailed for contempt. She testified that she had met him in Las Vegas in 1961, traveled with him to Europe, the Caribbean and elsewhere and accepted his gifts in a continuing relationship. She was aware that he was a reputed gangster, she said, but insisted that she knew nothing of his underworld activities.“It makes me look terrible,” she told reporters afterward. “It would be different if I were on my own, but I’m not a single — I’m part of a trio. My sisters and my parents — they’re brokenhearted about this.”The McGuire Sisters retired from public appearances in 1968, Christine and Dorothy to raise families, Phyllis to continue as a soloist. She appeared regularly in Las Vegas, where she lived for the rest of her life in a mansion with a swan moat and a replica of the Eiffel Tower rising through the roof.After serving a year for contempt, Mr. Giancana was released, and he fled to Mexico, where he lived in exile until arrested by the Mexican authorities in 1974. Deported to the United States, he agreed to testify in a prosecution of organized crime in Chicago but was killed by an unknown assailant at his home in 1975.Ms. McGuire remained unapologetic about her relationship with Mr. Giancana. “Sam was the greatest teacher I ever could have had,” she told Dominick Dunne of Vanity Fair in 1989. “He was so wise about so many things. Sam is always depicted as unattractive. He wasn’t. He was a very nice-looking man. He wasn’t flashy. He didn’t drive a pink Cadillac, like they used to say.”In 1985, the sisters reunited for a comeback and performed for almost two decades at casinos and clubs in Las Vegas, Atlantic City and elsewhere. They sang their own hits, 1950s pop hits and Broadway show tunes, and Phyllis did impersonations of Peggy Lee, Judy Garland, Pearl Bailey and Ethel Merman.“They take me back to the olden times, the beautiful times,” Barbara Pattison, a fan in Toronto, told People magazine as the comeback began. “They are not loud and they are not distant. They bring back the beauty in music.”Ms. McGuire in a celebratory mood in 1995 at her home in Las Vegas. She sang regularly at clubs and casinos in the city. Credit…Lennox McLendon/Associated PressPhyllis McGuire was born in Middletown, Ohio, on Feb. 14, 1931, the youngest of three daughters of Asa and Lillie (Fultz) McGuire. Her mother was a minister of the First Church of God in Miamisburg, Ohio., and her father was a steelworker. The sisters began singing in church when Phyllis was 4. They performed at weddings and other services, then at veterans’ hospitals and military bases.Phyllis’s 1952 marriage to Neal Van Ells, a broadcaster, ended in divorce in 1956. They had no children. Dorothy McGuire died in 2012, and Christine died in 2019. She is survived by nieces and nephews. Her longtime companion, Mike Davis, an oil and gas magnate, died in 2016.While making Las Vegas her home, for years she kept a Park Avenue apartment and then a townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.After winning “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts,” the sisters were regulars on Mr. Godfrey’s morning radio and television shows for six years. They made the covers of Life and Look magazines and signed with Coral Records, a Decca subsidiary. Their first Top 10 hit was “Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight” in 1954. “Sincerely” (1955) and “Sugartime” (1958) were No. 1 hits; they and “Picnic” (1956) each sold over a million copies.The McGuire Sisters were one of the many white groups that covered 1950s R&B hits, many by Black artists, in what critics called blander versions though better-selling ones. They also sang for Presidents Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and for Queen Elizabeth II.In 1995, an HBO movie, “Sugartime,” focused on the Giancana-McGuire affair, with John Turturro as the mobster and Mary-Louise Parker as Phyllis. The sisters gave their last big performance on a 2004 PBS special, “Magic Moments: The Best of ’50s Pop.” They were inducted into the National Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 1994, the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2001 and the Hit Parade Hall of Fame in 2009.Long past the customary retirement years for a singer, Ms. McGuire remained passionate about her career.“I don’t fear living, and I don’t fear dying,” she told Vanity Fair in 1989. “You only live once, and I’m going to live it to the fullest, until away I go. And I’m going to continue singing as long as somebody wants me.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    11 Things Our Critics Are Looking Forward to in 2021

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story11 Things Our Critics Are Looking Forward to in 2021Nicolas Cage hosts the history of swearing. Lorde writes a book and Julie Mehretu takes over the Whitney. This new year has to be better, right?Credit…María MedemDec. 31, 2020, 9:00 a.m. ETAs a new year begins, our critics highlight the TV, movies, music, art and streaming dance and theater they anticipate before summer.Jason ZinomanSwearing With Nicolas CageNicolas Cage hosts “History of Swear Words,” a new Netflix series.Credit…NetflixSure, the new Netflix series “History of Swear Words,” which premieres Jan. 5, features a cast of comics like Sarah Silverman, Joel Kim Booster and Nikki Glaser working as talking heads, breaking down the meaning, impact and poetry of six major bad words, which mostly cannot be published here. An exception is “Damn,” which, you learn from this show, used to be much more taboo than it is today. And there are also some very smart academics who will explain such history, some of it hard fact sprinkled in with a few questionable legends. Etymology really can be riveting stuff. But let’s face it: The main reason to be excited about this show is the prospect of its host, Nicolas Cage, hammily shouting curses over and over again. I have seen the screeners and it lives up to expectations.Jon ParelesJulien Baker Scales UpHow does a songwriter hold on to honest vulnerability as her audience grows? It’s a question Julien Baker began to wrestle with when she released her first solo album, “Sprained Ankle.” She sang about trauma, addiction, self-doubt, self-invention and a quest for faith, with quietly riveting passion in bare-bones arrangements. And she quickly found listeners to hang on her every word. Through her second album, “Turn Out the Lights,” and her collaborative songs in the group boygenius (with Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus) she used better studios and drew on richer sounds but still projected intimacy. Her third album, “Little Oblivions,” is due Feb. 26. With it she scales her music up to larger spaces, backed by a full rock band with ringing guitars and forceful drums. But she doesn’t hide behind them; she’s still ruthless and unsparing, particularly about herself.Maya PhillipsThe Scarlet Witch Gets Her DueElizabeth Olsen, left, stars as Wanda Maximoff in the new Disney+ series “WandaVision,” which also features Paul Bettany as Vision.Credit…Disney PlusWhen I heard the Scarlet Witch, also known as Wanda Maximoff, was joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I was hyped. Sometimes known as a daughter of Magneto (yes, we’ve got an X-Men crossover here), the powerful mutant had the ability to alter reality. So imagine my disappointment when Wanda was elbowed off to the side, shown shooting red blasts from her hands but not much else. Wanda, they did you wrong.But I’m not just thrilled about “WandaVision” finally giving this female hero her due. The new series, which stars Elizabeth Olsen and arrives on Disney+ on Jan. 15, grants the Scarlet Witch her own universe to manipulate, and uses it as a way to toy with a fresh tone and aesthetic for the MCU. Offbeat and capricious, and a perversion of classic sitcom series, “WandaVision” seems like it will give its superheroine the space to power up and unravel in ways that she couldn’t in the overstuffed “Avengers” films. Olsen seems up to the task, and Kathryn Hahn, Paul Bettany and Randall Park are also there to provide extra comedy and pathos.Jason FaragoA Retrospective for Julie Mehretu“Retopistics: A Renegade Excavation,” a painting by Julie Mehretu, from 2001, which will appear in a midcareer retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art.Credit…Julie MehretuThis midcareer retrospective of Julie Mehretu and her grand, roiling abstractions drew raves when it opened last year at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and it belatedly arrives on March 25 in the artist’s hometown, at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Mehretu came to prominence 20 years ago with dense, mural-scaled paintings whose sweeping lines suggested flight paths or architectural renderings; later, she turned to freer, more fluid mark-making that places abstract painting in the realms of migration and war, capital and climate.Her most recent work, made during the first lockdown and seen in a thundering show at Marian Goodman Gallery, is less readily legible, more digitally conversant, and more confident than ever. To fully perceive her jostling layers of silk-screened grids, sprayed veils and calligraphic strokes of black and red requires all one’s concentration; come early, look hard.Jesse GreenBlack Royalty Negotiates PowerA scene from “Duchess! Duchess! Duchess!,” a filmed play starring Sydney Charles, left, and Celeste M. Cooper, presented by Steppenwolf Theater.Credit…Lowell ThomasEnough with “The Crown.” Television may have cornered the market on stories about the nobility, but it was theater that traditionally got into the heads of heads of state and tried to understand what they were thinking.That tradition gets a timely update in February, when Steppenwolf Theater presents “Duchess! Duchess! Duchess!” — a filmed play by Vivian J.O. Barnes, directed by Weyni Mengesha. Inspired and/or appalled by the experiences of Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle, Barnes imagines a dialogue in which a Black duchess helps acculturate a Black duchess-to-be to her new position. Together, they explore what it means to join an institution that acts as if they should feel honored to be admitted, even as it eats them alive.That the institution in question involves not just royalty but racism, if the two are different, broadens the story. How Black women negotiate power in traditionally white arenas, and at what cost, is something that resonates far beyond Balmoral.Mike HaleAn Alien Impersonates a DoctorThe title character of the Syfy series “Resident Alien,” which premieres on Jan. 27, does not have a green card, but he does have green skin, or at least a green-and-purple exoskeleton. He’s been sent to earth to exterminate us; there’s a delay, and in the meantime he has to impersonate a small-town Colorado doctor and learn, with exceeding awkwardness, how to act like a human being. This snowbound scary-monster comedy won’t make any Top 10 lists but it looks like a hoot, and it’s tailor-made for the eccentric comic talents of Alan Tudyk (“Doom Patrol,” “Arrested Development”), who never seems comfortable in whatever skin he’s in.Salamishah TilletDeath of a Black PantherDaniel Kaluuya, rear, and Lakeith Stanfield star in “Judas and the Black Messiah,” a film about a deadly raid on the Black Panther Party in Chicago.Credit…Glen Wilson/Warner Bros., via Associated PressOn Dec. 4, 1969, 14 Chicago police officers, with a search warrant for guns and explosives, raided an apartment where members of the Black Panther Party were staying. When they left, the party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were dead. Congressman Bobby Rush, who was then a deputy minister of the party, testified that Hampton, 21, was asleep in his bed when police officers shot him, a version of events investigated in “The Murder of Fred Hampton,” a 1971 documentary. Now there is a feature film about the raid. “Judas and the Black Messiah” tells the story of Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya), and William O’Neal (Lakeith Stanfield), an FBI informant who was part of Hampton’s security team, reuniting the two stars from “Get Out.” Directed by Shaka King (“Newlyweeds”), the movie is expected to be released in early 2021.Margaret LyonsA Drama Jumps Through Time“David Makes Man” is one of the most beautiful dramas of the last several years, and its structural daring added new facets to the coming-of-age genre. David (Akili McDowell) was in middle school in Season 1, but in the upcoming second season (currently slated for early summer on OWN) he’s in his 30s and facing adult challenges. That kind of time jump — and creative leap — would be intriguing on its own, but the way the show captured the warring thoughts within one’s adolescent psychology makes me even more excited to see how it depicts the turmoils of maturity.Gia KourlasDance and the Natural WorldMembers of the Martha Graham Dance Company in Graham’s “Dark Meadow Suite.”Credit…Brigid PierceSince the pandemic began, the robust digital programming at the Martha Graham Dance Company has stood out for its multifaceted approach of exploring the works of its groundbreaking modern choreographer. It helps, of course, to have Graham’s works to excavate in the first place. (And access to a healthy archive.)As most dance companies continue to maintain their distance from the stage, the Graham group — now in its 95th season — opens the year with digital programming organized by theme. The January spotlight is on nature and the elements, both in Graham’s dances and in recent works. How is the natural world used metaphorically?On Jan. 9, “Martha Matinee,” hosted by the artistic director, Janet Eilber, looks at Graham’s mysterious, ritualistic “Dark Meadow” (1946) with vintage footage of Graham herself along with the company’s recent “Dark Meadow Suite.” And on Jan. 19, the company unveils “New @ Graham,” featuring a closer look at “Canticle for Innocent Comedians” (1952), Graham’s unabashed celebration of nature, with an emphasis on the moon and the stars.Jason FaragoThe Frick’s Modernist Pop-UpA view of the former Met Breuer on Madison Avenue; the museum will be taken over by the Frick for a modernist pop-up called Frick Madison.Credit…Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesIn this market you’re better off subletting! When the Frick Collection finally won approval to renovate and expand its Fifth Avenue mansion, it started hunting for temporary digs — and got a lucky break when the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced it would vacate its rental of Marcel Breuer’s Brutalist citadel three years early. Henry Clay Frick’s will bars loans from the core collection, so the Frick’s modernist pop-up, called Frick Madison, will offer the first, and probably only, new backdrop for Bellini’s mysterious “St. Francis in the Desert,” Rembrandt’s brisk “Polish Rider,” or Holbein’s dueling portraits of Thomas Cromwell and Thomas More (a must-see face-off for “Wolf Hall” fans).But the modern architecture is only part of the adaptation; the Frick is a house museum, and the Breuer sublet allows curators a unique chance to scramble and reconstitute the collection outside a residential framework. The real UFOs at Frick Madison, expected in the first quarter of 2021, may therefore be the decorative arts: all those gilded clocks, all that Meissen porcelain, relocated from plutocratic salons into cubes of concrete.Lindsay ZoladzLorde Writes About AntarcticaFew new years have arrived with such weighty expectations as 2021, so to prevent disappointment let us calibrate our hopes: What I know is that in 2021 the New Zealand pop-poet Lorde has promised to put out, at the very least, a book of photographs from her recent trip to Antarctica. Titled “Going South,” it features writing by Lorde (who describes her trip as “this great white palette cleanser, a sort of celestial foyer I had to move through in order to start making the next thing”) and photographs by Harriet Were, and net proceeds from its sale will go toward a climate research scholarship fund. Cool. I love it. Of course, my true object of anticipation is Lorde’s third album, the long-awaited follow-up to her spectacularly intimate 2017 release, “Melodrama,” but after a year like 2020, I’m not going to rush her. Actually, you know what? I am. Lorde, Ella, Ms. Yelich-O’Connor: Please release your epic concept album about glaciers and spiritual rebirth at the South Pole in 2021. After a year in the Antarctic climate of the soul that was 2020, this is what we all deserve.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    5 Things to Do This New Year’s Weekend

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyweekend roundup5 Things to Do This New Year’s WeekendOur critics and writers have selected noteworthy cultural events to experience virtually.Dec. 31, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETDanceMaking the Old NewKenneth Shirley of Indigenous Enterprise in a scene from a short film that is streaming on the Joyce Theater’s website until Sunday.Credit…Danny UpshawSince September, the Joyce Theater has been offering a free virtual fall season that is as good as some of its best in-person ones. The secret has been surprise and an avoidance of the usual suspects. If that is a little less true of the latest batch of videos — available through Sunday at joyce.org/joycestream — the variety still provides plenty of spice.The connecting theme might be “tradition reimagined.” Indigenous Enterprise captures the beauty of Native American dances in urban settings. Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo revives parts of the 19th-century ballet “Paquita” with an all-male cast. Streb Extreme Action does daredevil stunts with huge machines; it’s like a carnival side show performed by cool astronauts.Vanessa Sanchez and the group La Mezcla, from San Francisco, mix modern tap and zapateado to celebrate the women of the Zoot Suit Riots of the 1940s. And Rennie Harris Puremovement shows once again how hip-hop can convey both can’t-take-your-eyes-off-it flash and hard-to-watch grief.BRIAN SEIBERTKidsBon Voyage to BoredomA scene from “Journey Around My Bedroom,” an interactive production that will livestream on Zoom through Jan. 10.Credit…New Ohio TheaterA room can be a refuge, but without an easy exit, it can also feel like a jail. For the Frenchman Xavier de Maistre, it was both: While under house arrest in 1790, he wrote “Voyage Around My Room,” a tribute to the creativity his imprisonment unleashed.Now de Maistre’s work has inspired New Ohio Theater for Young Minds’ first virtual presentation, “Journey Around My Bedroom.” Written by Dianne Nora and directed by Jaclyn Biskup, with songs by Hyeyoung Kim, this whimsical 35-minute play emulates Victorian toy theater, in which puppeteers manipulated cutouts on a tiny stage. (Myra G Reavis did the inventive design, assisted by Ana Maria Aburto.) Traveling in a failing dirigible, de Maistre visits Xavi, a contemporary girl who discovers that her own room offers hidden adventure.The production, which livestreams on Zoom Fridays to Sundays through Jan. 10, includes audience participation and a post-show discussion. Children can also follow the journey, though less interactively, in an on-demand video Jan. 11-Feb. 11. Tickets to gain access to these performances are pay-what-you-wish and available at newohiotheatre.org.LAUREL GRAEBERArtTime to Ponder Time ItselfClodion’s “The Dance of Time: Three Nymphs Supporting a Clock” will be the topic of discussion on Friday during the Frick Collection’s “Cocktails With a Curator.”Credit…Claude Michel and JeanBaptiste Lepaute; via Frick Collection; Michael BodycombWhen the Frick Collection introduced its virtual series, “Cocktails With a Curator,” its deputy director and Peter Jay Sharp chief curator, Xavier F. Salomon, described the program as a way to show how the museum’s pieces are “relevant to issues we’re facing today.” That’s especially true for the artwork featured in the next episode: “The Dance of Time: Three Nymphs Supporting a Clock,” by the 18th-century sculptor Clodion with the clockmaker Jean-Baptiste Lepaute. Looking back on 2020, the passage of time has never felt so complicated.There’s also nothing simple about “The Dance of Time.” The three terra-cotta nymphs holding up a globe-encased clock are either witnessing the passage of time or represent it themselves. To find out more, make a metropolitan (or the mocktail alternative, a ginger ale hot toddy; both recipes are on the Frick’s website), and tune in to the museum’s YouTube channel on Friday at 5 p.m. Eastern time to hear Salomon discuss the timelessness of this unique timepiece.MELISSA SMITHPop & RockSummerStage Is Just a Screen AwaySoccer Mommy and her band performed for SummerStage Anywhere in November. The show is available to watch on YouTube.Credit…via City Parks FoundationWhile its recently renovated stage in Central Park sat idle this past season, SummerStage — the nonprofit organization that typically floods the five boroughs with live outdoor music — sprouted roots in virtual space. Its season of free online programming, SummerStage Anywhere, is now complete, but is archived on their YouTube channel for latecomers to enjoy.Offerings are wide-ranging, crossing disciplines, genres and generations. Soccer Mommy, an indie-rock darling, performed her first and, so far, only full-band show in support of her latest album, “Color Theory.” ASAP Ferg joined Fab 5 Freddy, one of hip-hop’s elder statesmen, for a conversation about creativity in the face of racial injustice. Gloria Gaynor and her band revisited hits from her disco heyday (including, of course, “I Will Survive,” a song that has special resonance these days). For those of us yearning for a time when we can once again spread our blankets and take in the sounds at Rumsey Playfield, this series provides a nice stopgap.OLIVIA HORNClassical MusicCatch Up With ‘Density 2036’Claire Chase recently released four full-length CDs for her ongoing “Density 2036” project.Credit…Karen ChesterPreviously, listeners curious about “Density 2036” — the ambitious, 23-year commissioning project that the flutist Claire Chase started in 2013 — have needed to stake out her concerts. (While Chase recorded her interpretations of a couple of the earliest works at the beginning of the project, studio renditions seemed to have taken a back seat to live dates in recent years.)Now four new full-length CDs, released by Corbett vs. Dempsey Records, allow a global audience to catch up with the first half-decade of Chase’s initiative. (They’re also available digitally on Bandcamp.) Highlights abound in each set, thanks to a range of composers that includes Marcos Balter, George Lewis and Pauline Oliveros. And one particularly striking stretch on “Part IV” features a version of Tyshawn Sorey’s “Bertha’s Lair” (with the composer heard on percussion alongside Chase). That fancifully vigorous piece is directly followed by a distinct yet similarly percussive work: “Five Empty Chambers” by Vijay Iyer.SETH COLTER WALLSAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Tony Rice, Bluegrass Innovator With a Guitar Pick, Dies at 69

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTony Rice, Bluegrass Innovator With a Guitar Pick, Dies at 69The nimble king of flatpicking had enormous influence on a host of prominent musicians. And he could sing, too, until he could no longer.Tony Rice in about 2000. “I don’t know if a person can make anything more beautiful” than his guitar playing, the singer-songwriter Jason Isbell said.Credit…Stephen A. Ide/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty ImagesDec. 28, 2020Updated 6:26 p.m. ETTony Rice, an immensely influential singer and guitarist in bluegrass and in the new acoustic music circles that grew up around it, died on Saturday at his home in Reidsville, N.C. He was 69.The International Bluegrass Music Association confirmed his death. No cause was specified.“Tony Rice was the king of the flatpicked flattop guitar,” the singer-songwriter Jason Isbell said on Twitter. “His influence cannot possibly be overstated.”Mr. Isbell was referring to what is commonly known as flatpicking, a technique that involves striking a guitar’s strings with a pick or plectrum instead of with the fingers. Inspired by the forceful fretwork of the pioneering bluegrass bandleader Jimmy Martin, Mr. Rice’s flatpicking was singularly nimble and expressive.“I don’t know if a person can make anything more beautiful,” Mr. Isbell went on to say in his tweet, describing Mr. Rice’s fluid, percussive playing, in which feeling, whether expressed harmonically or melodically, took precedence over flash.Mr. Rice left his mark on a host of prominent musicians, including his fellow newgrass innovators Mark O’Connor and Béla Fleck, acoustic music inheritors like Chris Thile and Alison Krauss, and his flat-picking disciples Bryan Sutton and Josh Williams.“There’s no way it can ever go back to what it was before him,” Ms. Krauss said of bluegrass in an interview with The New York Times Magazine for a profile of Mr. Rice in 2014. She was barely a teenager when Mr. Rice first invited her onstage to play with him.Starting in the 1970s with his work with the group J.D. Crowe and the New South, Mr. Rice built bridges that spanned traditional bluegrass, ’60s folk songs, jazz improvisation, classical music and singer-songwriter pop.He was a catalyst for the newgrass movement, in which bands broke with bluegrass tradition by drawing on pop and rock sources for inspiration, employing a more improvisational approach to performing and incorporating previously untapped instrumentation like electric guitar and drums.The bluegrass association named him instrumental performer of the year six times, and in 1983 he received a Grammy Award for best country instrumental performance for “Fireball,” a track recorded with J.D. Crowe and the New South.Not only a virtuoso guitarist, Mr. Rice was also a gifted singer and master of phrasing. His rich, supple baritone was as equally at home singing lead in three-part bluegrass harmony arrangements as it was adapting the troubadour ballads of Gordon Lightfoot under the newgrass banner.But his performing career was abruptly cut short beginning in 1994, when he learned he had muscle tension dysphonia, a severe vocal disorder that robbed him of the ability to sing in public and compromised his speaking voice. He would not sing onstage or address an audience again until 2013, when the bluegrass association inducted him into the International Bluegrass Hall of Fame.Not long after that diagnosis, Mr. Rice learned that he also had lateral epicondylitis, commonly known as tennis elbow, which made it too painful for him to play the guitar in public anymore as well.A 1975 album by the band J.D. Crowe and the New South, with Mr. Rice on guitar, modernized bluegrass in ways that shaped the music into the 21st century. From left, J.D. Crowe, Ricky Scaggs, Bob Slone and Mr. Rice. David Anthony Rice was born on June 8, 1951, in Danville, Va., one of four boys of Herbert Hoover Rice and Dorothy (Poindexter) Rice, who was known as Louise. His father was a welder and an amateur musician, his mother a millworker and a homemaker. It was her idea to call her son Tony, after her favorite actor, Tony Curtis. Everyone in the Rice household played or sang bluegrass music.After the family moved to the Los Angeles area in the mid-1950s, Mr. Rice’s father formed a bluegrass band called the Golden State Boys. The group, which recorded several singles, included two of his mother’s brothers as well as a young Del McCoury at one point, before he became a bluegrass master in his own right. The band inspired Mr. Rice and his brothers to form a bluegrass outfit of their own, the Haphazards.The Haphazards sometimes shared local bills with the Kentucky Colonels, a band whose dazzling guitarist, Clarence White — a future member of the rock band the Byrds — had a profound influence on Mr. Rice’s early development as a musician.(Mr. White was killed by a drunken driver while loading equipment after a show in 1973. Afterward, Mr. Rice tracked down Mr. White’s 1935 Martin D-28 herringbone guitar, which he purchased from its new owner in 1975 for $550. Restoring the guitar, he started performing with it, affectionately calling it the “Antique.”)The Rice family moved from California to Florida in 1965 and then to various cities in the Southeast, where Mr. Rice’s father pursued one welding opportunity after another.He also drank, creating a tumultuous home life that forced Mr. Rice to move out when he was 17. Tony Rice struggled with alcohol himself but, by his account, had been sober since 2001.Dropping out of high school, Mr. Rice bounced among relatives’ homes before moving to Louisville in 1970 to join the Bluegrass Alliance. The band’s members, including the mandolinist Sam Bush, went on to form much of the founding nucleus of the progressive bluegrass band New Grass Revival.Mr. Rice joined J.D. Crowe and the New South in 1971. Three years later, Mr. Skaggs signed on as well, replacing Mr. Rice’s brother Larry in the group. The dobro player Jerry Douglas also become a member of the New South at this time. In 1975, the band released an album titled simply “J.D. Crowe and the New South” (but commonly known by its first track, “Old Home Place”), which modernized bluegrass in ways that shaped the music into the 21st century.Mr. Rice, Mr. Douglas and Mr. Skaggs left the group in August 1975. Mr. Rice then moved to San Francisco and helped found the David Grisman Quartet, a trailblazing ensemble featuring bluegrass instrumentation that fused classical and jazz sensibilities to create what Mr. Grisman called “dawg music.”“The music laid out in front of me was like nothing I’d ever seen,” Mr. Rice told The Times Magazine in 2014. “At first I thought I couldn’t learn it. The only thing that saved me was that I always loved the sound of acoustic, small-group, modern jazz.”After four years with Mr. Grisman, Mr. Rice established his own group, the Tony Rice Unit, which was acclaimed for its experimental, jazz-steeped approach to bluegrass as heard on albums like “Manzanita” (1979) and “Mar West” (1980).Mr. Rice also recorded more mainstream and traditional material for numerous other projects, including a six-volume series of albums that paid tribute to the formative bluegrass of the 1950s.“Skaggs & Rice” (1980), another history-conscious album, featured Mr. Skaggs and Mr. Rice singing seamless, soulful harmonies in homage to the brother duos prevalent in the pre-bluegrass era.Mr. Rice performing in 2009 with his band the Tony Rice Unit at the Bonnaroo music festival in Tennessee. Credit…Jason Merritt/FilmMagic, via Getty ImagesMost of Mr. Rice’s releases after 1994, the year he got his vocal disorder diagnosis, were instrumental projects or collaborations, like “The Pizza Tapes,” a studio album with Mr. Grisman and Jerry Garcia of Grateful Dead fame; Mr. Rice contributed acoustic guitar.His survivors include his wife of 30 years, Pamela Hodges Rice, and his brothers Ron and Wyatt. His brother Larry died in 2006.Mr. Rice cut a dashing figure onstage, complete with finely tailored suits and a dignified bearing, as if to gainsay the lack of respect bluegrass has sometimes received outside the South, owing to its hardscrabble rural beginnings.Mr. Rice was as conscious of these cultural dynamics as he was of the limitless possibilities he saw in bluegrass music.“Maybe the reason I dress like I do goes back to the day where, if you went out on the street, unless you had some sort of ditch-digging job to do, you made an effort to not look like a slob,” he told his biographers, Tim Stafford and Caroline Wright, for “Still Inside: The Tony Rice Story” (2010).“Back in the heyday of Miles Davis’s most famous bands, you wouldn’t have seen Miles without a tailored suit on,” he went on. “My musical heroes wear suits.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    New Year's Eve Playlist From Around the World

    @media (pointer: coarse) { .at-home-nav__outerContainer { overflow-x: scroll; -webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch; } } .at-home-nav__outerContainer { position: relative; display: flex; align-items: center; /* Fixes IE */ overflow-x: auto; box-shadow: -6px 0 white, 6px 0 white, 1px 3px 6px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.15); padding: 10px 1.25em 10px; transition: all 250ms; margin-bottom: 20px; -ms-overflow-style: none; /* IE 10+ */ […] More