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      Taylor Swift Bests K-Pop Band to Stay No. 1 for Seventh Week

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      Swift’s ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ held off Ateez’s ‘Golden Hour: Part.1.’ The singer-songwriter Shaboozey opened at No. 5.Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” is the No. 1 album once again, leading the Billboard 200 chart for a seventh straight time.Since it came out in April with historic numbers — breaking records for streaming and vinyl sales, and posting the biggest opening week of Swift’s career — “Tortured Poets” has been unstoppable, even as its performance has gradually cooled. In recent weeks it has held off challenges from Billie Eilish and Dua Lipa, and this week it blocks the latest from the K-pop boy band Ateez.In its latest week out, “Tortured Poets” had the equivalent of 148,000 sales in the United States, including 157 million streams and 27,000 copies sold as a complete package, according to the tracking service Luminate. Since its release, the album has had the equivalent of about 4.3 million sales and just shy of 2.5 billion streams in the United States alone.Of the 14 albums that Swift has sent to No. 1 in her career — going back to “Fearless,” her second LP, back in 2008 — “Tortured Poets” has now had the longest consecutive stretch at the top, exceeding “Folklore,” which in 2020 spent its first six weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s flagship LP chart. (Several of Swift’s albums, including “Folklore,” have had more turns at No. 1 overall, but not in a row.)Also this week, Ateez’s “Golden Hour: Part.1,” a six-track “mini-album,” opens in second place with 131,000 equivalent sales, largely from its popularity on CD and vinyl. “Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going” by Shaboozey, a singer-songwriter who was featured on Beyoncé’s latest album, “Cowboy Carter,” opens at No. 5 with the equivalent of 50,000.Eilish’s “Hit Me Hard and Soft” falls to No. 3 after spending its first two weeks in second place, and Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” is No. 4 in its 67th week on the chart. More

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      in Movies

      Maya Hawke Doesn’t Want to Let the Vibe Die

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      She just finished playing Flannery O’Connor and released a new album. Next up: “Inside Out 2” and a new season of “Stranger Things.”The actress and singer-songwriter Maya Hawke is on a self-awareness kick.Lately, she has been mindful of how she communicates, making an effort to be sincere and open. Career wise, she said, she’s been striving to foster collaboration and “no-bad-ideas energy.”Hawke, 25, plays Flannery O’Connor in “Wildcat,” a film released last month that is co-written and directed by her father, Ethan Hawke. In 2023, she acted alongside her mother Uma Thurman in the cinematic caper “The Kill Room.”Hawke has also been checking in with herself, making body scans part of her bedtime ritual. “It’s like a meditation thing where you tense all the different muscles in your body individually and try to let out your feelings,” she said during a video interview.Stress abatement is crucial as she focuses on back-to-back projects. She’s filming the final season of “Stranger Things” in Atlanta, her third album, “Chaos Angel,” dropped on May 31, and Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” — she voices a new character, Anxiety — opens June 14.Hawke got introspective as she talked about being “a little bit of a hypochondriac,” her habit of losing things and her love of a loose fit. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1Voice MemosI’m a person who’s pretty constantly creative. That doesn’t mean all of the things I create are good. They’re mostly bad. But I try to keep track of them because I never know the difference in the moment. I always try to take voice memos of little melodies that I’ll come up with or an idea for a scene I’m writing or something I think my character should say that came to me randomly.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      My Starting Five Songs From Boston and Dallas

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      Catch the N.B.A. Finals spirit with Erykah Badu, Pixies, Kelly Clarkson and more.Erykah Badu, repping for DallasErik Carter for The New York TimesDear listeners,Last night marked the start of the 2023-2024 N.B.A. Finals, a best-of-seven matchup between the Boston Celtics and the Dallas Mavericks. As a long-suffering and perpetually annoying fan of the Philadelphia 76ers, I do not really have a horse in this race*, but I also have an excess of energy I would normally reserve for rooting for one of these two teams. I have decided to put that energy to productive use by making a playlist of music by artists from both Boston and Dallas.Consider these musicians my starting five from each city. Both Boston and Dallas have rich and varied musical histories, as you’ll hear in this playlist’s blend of rock, pop, country, R&B, blues and hip-hop. It features bona fide superstars (the Texan Kelly Clarkson; the Dorchesterite Donna Summer) and influential legends (Dallas’s own Stevie Ray Vaughan; the Beantown art-rockers the Pixies). Sure, there are some omissions, but these are just my personal starting fives — and given how many times the ABC broadcast played “Sweet Emotion” when throwing to commercial last night, you’ve probably already hit your Aerosmith quota for the week.Game 1 was quite anticlimactic, with Boston blowing out Dallas 107-89, so hopefully the human Golden Retriever that is Luka Dončić will be able to galvanize his Mavericks into giving us a more competitive series. And if not, well, there’s always this playlist.She knows the highest stakes,Lindsay*Beyond an inborn and semi-irrational distaste for all Boston sports teams, of course.Listen along while you read.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Plant and Krauss Cover a Led Zeppelin Classic, and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Soccer Mommy, Tems, Floating Points and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, ‘When the Levee Breaks’No one is more entitled to cover Led Zeppelin than its singer, Robert Plant. His close-harmony duo with the singer and fiddler Alison Krauss excels at making songs sound far older than they are, and even in 1971, “When the Levee Breaks” harked back to a vintage blues by Memphis Minnie. This live recording is stark, resonant and rumbling, with a fiddle solo by Stuart Duncan that looks toward both Ireland and Morocco and a cranked-up guitar stomp that builds toward — alas! — a frustrating fade-out. JON PARELESCarly Pearce, ‘Truck on Fire’The spoiler is in the title of “Truck on Fire,” a swinging country revenge song from Carly Pearce’s new album, “Hummingbird.” Her voice seethes as she recalls “the way that you laughed it off when I was catching on/Said it was in my head,” and there’s a dark glee (and a product placement) while she watches the “flames rolling off of your Goodyear tires.” PARELESSabrina Carpenter, ‘Please Please Please’We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What’s the Best Way to Honor Sophie in Song?

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      Recent tracks from Charli XCX, A.G. Cook, Caroline Polachek and St. Vincent capture the producer’s philosophy and humanity, but not necessarily her signature sound.When the producer Sophie died at 34 in 2021 after an accidental fall, it felt like a singular loss, as well as the end of a nascent era in electronic music. The innovative Scottish artist, who worked with Charli XCX, Vince Staples and Madonna, was a linchpin of the U.K.’s experimental scene in the 2010s and advocated for a radical reframing of the way creators and listeners think about music. “The language of electronic music shouldn’t still be referencing obsolete instruments like kick drum or clap. No one’s kicking or clapping,” she said in 2014. “It makes more sense in my mind to discard those ideas of polyphony and traditional roles of instrumentation.”Sophie provided a new vernacular, as well as great inspiration, for a generation of acolytes, but her own body of work was relatively small and she rarely spoke to the press, making it hard to imagine where one of pop futurism’s leading lights may have gone next. While many artists, such as the avant-garde pop duo 100 gecs and the German experimental musician Lyra Pramuk, have drawn clear inspiration from Sophie, few have captured the perilous, cutting-edge newness of her work, which reinterpreted pop music codes in disorienting, physical, textural ways.On “Lemonade,” an early calling card, she seemed to craft melody out of the sounds of popping bubbles and hissing gas canisters; “Faceshopping” turns ideas of constructed digital identity into what sounds like a construction site, whirring with the sounds of tearing metal and heavy machinery. Sophie felt that music should be a tactile, unpredictable experience — she memorably said a song should feel like a roller-coaster ride, ending with the listener buying a key ring — but a lot of attempts to reference the “Sophie sound,” like Kim Petras’s 2023 track “Brrr,” reduce the producer’s philosophy to an aesthetic of bulbous bass and scraping synths while still fitting conventional pop forms.“So I,” a song from Charli XCX’s new album, “Brat,” pays tribute to her longtime collaborator Sophie, who died in 2021.Bianca De Marchi/EPA, via ShutterstockFour recent songs by Charli XCX, A.G. Cook, Caroline Polachek and St. Vincent seem to suggest that the best way to pay tribute to a modern titan is not to emulate her at all, but to reinterpret strands of her DNA in hope of alluding to a bigger picture. These tracks reckon with Sophie’s legacy in emotional, rather than technical, ways, acknowledging the humanity within a figure who is often remembered in flattening, counterintuitively rigid portraits.The most trenchant of these songs is “So I,” the wounded core of Charli’s volatile, clubby new record, “Brat.” Over shuddering laser-beam synths — a nod to her past work with Sophie on records like “Vroom Vroom” and “Number 1 Angel” — Charli sings about regretting putting distance between herself and Sophie, whose talent awed her, while she was alive. The song is nakedly vulnerable, almost power ballad-esque in the way it builds, resembling one of Sophie’s best-known tracks: “It’s OK to Cry,” the song with which she came out as transgender and revealed her face to the public for the first time. Charli makes the link explicit on the track’s chorus: “I know you always said ‘It’s OK to cry’/So I know I can cry.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jennifer Lopez and Black Keys Tour Cancellations Raise Questions for Industry

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      High-profile cancellations from Jennifer Lopez and the Black Keys have armchair analysts talking. But industry insiders say live music is still thriving.For the concert business, 2023 was a champagne-popping year. The worst of the pandemic comfortably in the rearview, shows big and small were selling out, with mega-tours by Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Drake and Bruce Springsteen pushing the industry to record ticket sales.This year, as with much of the economy, success on the road seems more fragile. A string of high-profile cancellations, and slow sales for some major events, have raised questions about an overcrowded market and whether ticket prices have simply gotten too expensive.Most conspicuously, Jennifer Lopez and the Black Keys have canceled entire arena tours. In the case of the Black Keys — a standby of rock radio and a popular touring draw for nearly two decades — the fallout has been severe enough that the band dismissed its two managers, the industry giant Irving Azoff and Steve Moir, those men confirmed through a representative.At Coachella, usually so buzzy that it sells out well before any performers are announced, tickets for the second of the California festival’s two weekends were still available by the time it opened in April.Those issues have stoked headlines about a concert business that may be in trouble. But the reality, many insiders say, is more complex, with no simple explanation for problems on a range of tours, and a business that may be leveling out after a couple of extraordinary years when fans rushed to shows after Covid-19 shutdowns.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      ‘The Spark’: How Irish Kids Created the Song of Summer

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      Think you can stop what they do? I doubt it.It started with the beat, Heidi White said.On a March day at The Kabin Studio, an arts nonprofit in Cork, Ireland, Heidi, 11, and a group of other children were trying to write a rap with the help of Garry McCarthy, who is a music producer and Kabin Studio’s creative director. It was part of a weekly songwriting program.“It’s a safe space for young people in the community to come create music, hang out and just to make bangers,” Mr. McCarthy said.On this day, the group was trying to write an anthem for Cruinniú na nÓg, a government-sponsored day in Ireland devoted to children’s creativity, scheduled for June 15. Everyone was feeling a little shy and the ideas weren’t exactly flowing, Heidi said.“Then Garry had put on a drum-and-bass beat, and suddenly it was like a switch flipped and everyone started getting involved,” she said. “It was like magic.”That infectious beat has also captivated viewers around the world. The group’s song, “The Spark,” has become a sensation on social media, hailed by some on TikTok as an early contender for song of the summer. (This isn’t the first time a tune made for social media has been praised as such. See here: A 2023 earworm about margaritas.)What could have easily sounded grating to adult ears — think Kidz Bop — is instead unrelentingly catchy. The song’s accompanying music video, which culminates in all of the kids rapping, loudly, in unison on the top deck of a bus, is utterly charming.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Luther Vandross, Pop Perfectionist, Didn’t Want You to Hear These Albums

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      Early records reveal that his sumptuous voice and longing lyrics were there from the start. Out of print since 1977, “This Close to You” will be available Friday.Nile Rodgers’s very first professional recording session, in the late 1970s, got off to a bumpy start. He wasn’t the only guitarist booked to work with Luther, a group fronted by Luther Vandross, but Rodgers was the youngest, making him an easy target when Paul Riser, the Motown veteran arranging the session, noted something he didn’t like.“He heard some things that were not correct on the chart,” Rodgers said, and “assumed it was me.” After an expletive-peppered exchange, Vandross stepped in and smoothed out the discord. From then on, Rodgers and Vandross were good friends and collaborators. (Rodgers said Vandross taught him everything he knows about “gang vocals,” the thrilling, unison shout-singing that made zesty singles like Chic’s “Everybody Dance” become enduring dance-floor staples.)The session yielded “This Close to You,” a long out-of-print album originally released in 1977, which will hit streaming services on Friday. Vandross’s short-lived group also cut the self-titled “Luther” (1976), which was rereleased in April. Both albums, made for Cotillion Records, are receiving new attention ahead of the 20th anniversary of his death.“Luther” includes the only known recording by Vandross of “Everybody Rejoice,” his composition for “The Wiz,” which returned to Broadway this year. JaQuel Knight, the choreographer of the revival, singled out the climactic number as one of the few songs that has a life of its own outside the context of the musical.“Besides ‘Ease on Down the Road,’ it’s probably the biggest song in the production,” he said, before singing some of the triumphant hook. A documentary about Vandross’s life premiered earlier this year at Sundance and will be released in 2025.But Vandross, an eight-time Grammy winner who worked his entire career to resolve the tensions between celebrity and privacy, between a desire for crossover pop success and a sublime ability for orchestrating in the background, may have preferred that the records never again saw the light of day.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More