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      Celine Dion Can Only Be Herself

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      The singer’s over-the-top sincerity and expressiveness were once seen as irredeemably uncool. In the new documentary “I Am: Celine Dion,” they have become her superpowers.“I always envy people who smoke and drink and party and don’t sleep,” Celine Dion tells her physical therapist with an exaggerated sigh, midway through the new documentary “I Am: Celine Dion.” “Me, I have water and I sleep 12 hours.”This monastic constraint has long been a core part of the Celine Dion legend. A professional singer since 12, she spent decades meticulously caring for her voice as though it were an endangered hothouse flower, committing to long stretches of vocal rest, complicated warm-up rituals and a lifestyle of exacting discipline — all so she could leap octaves and belt soaring notes with gobsmacking precision.In a cruel twist of fate, though, even the ceaseless care Dion devoted to her voice could not preserve it. In 2022, she revealed in an emotional Instagram post that she has stiff person syndrome, a rare and incurable neurological disorder that causes painful muscle spasms and affects roughly one in a million people. After watching “I Am: Celine Dion,” a remarkably candid portrait directed by Irene Taylor on Amazon Prime Video, it is difficult to imagine a disease that would be more personally devastating to Dion, whose entire career has been one long exercise in control, sacrificing all for the ecstatic release of live performance.Since her emergence as a Québécois child star with a precociously huge voice, something about Dion’s essential nature has remained constant, impervious to both changing trends and scathing critique. Whether power ballads were in fashion or not — and by and large, they were not — she sang them with the conviction of someone who’d never even heard the word “restraint.” “At her best,” wrote Elisabeth Vincentelli in a Times review of Dion’s most recent New York performance in February 2020, “Dion projects a sense of bigness — besides fairly simple graphics, the background videos in her show often showed cosmic images, as if they were the only thing measuring up on the Dion scale.” This bombastic approach gained her a worldwide fan base and a requisite backlash that she may have finally outpaced.In 2007, the music critic Carl Wilson used Dion’s 1999 blockbuster album “Let’s Talk About Love” as the inspiration for an insightful, ultimately sympathetic book-length examination of musical taste, the assumption being that (at least 17 years ago) Dion’s name was a symbol for all things gauche, sincere and uncool. (The book’s subtitle? “A Journey to the End of Taste.”) “Schmaltz rots faster than other ingredients in the musical pantry,” Wilson wrote, “which may be why we doubt the possibility of a Celine Dion revival in 2027.”Dion allows cameras to follow her as she struggles with stiff person syndrome in a new film.Amazon StudiosWe 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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      Mary Timony Is an Indie-Rock Hero. Her Other Gig? Mentor.

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      The songwriter and guitarist has long been a staple of the Washington, D.C., scene. Teaching guitar to young students helped her realize she has even more to offer.In the dining room of her cozy home in Washington, D.C., Mary Timony retrieved her lute from an instrument case that, she joked, “looks like a cat coffin.” Timony, 53, has been on a learning kick recently. “Literally all I’m working on is this,” she said, demonstrating how the so-called thumb-under fingerpicking method strays from traditional guitar technique.Timony is well known as a guitarist and frontwoman: In the 1990s she headed up the bands Autoclave and Helium, then released solo records before joining Wild Flag, an indie-rock supergroup. Ex Hex, her classic rock and power-pop trio known for catchy songs and rafter-reaching guitar solos, has released two albums since 2014; her latest solo LP, “Untame the Tiger,” written and recorded in the midst of a breakup as she cared for her dying parents, arrived earlier this year.But to many young people of D.C., Timony is highly regarded as something else: a mentor to the next generations of women pursuing their passion for indie rock.From left: Timony, Rebecca Cole and Carrie Brownstein of Wild Flag onstage in 2011.Chad Batka for The New York TimesFor more than two decades, Timony has instructed students how to play licks from classic rock songs (among other things) in the guitar- and amp-filled basement of her 1920s home on a tree-lined street, where a framed portrait of a young Joe Walsh watches on. Early pupils remember the experience fondly.“She was super supportive and made me feel excited about playing guitar,” Anna Wilson, 24, said. “She put me in my first band when I was 10.” She now plays guitar and pedal steel in Timony’s touring band.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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      ‘Shifty Shellshock,’ Crazy Town’s Lead Singer, Dies at 49

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      He was the frontman for the rap-rock band Crazy Town, which was most known for the hit song “Butterfly.”Shifty Shellshock, the lead singer of the late-1990s rap-rock band Crazy Town known for the hit song “Butterfly,” whose legal name was Seth Binzer, died at his home in Los Angeles on Monday. He was 49.The Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner confirmed his death, the cause of which was still being investigated.Crazy Town rose to prominence after the band released its debut album, “The Gift of Game,” in 1999. In 2001, the record reached No. 9 on the Billboard album chart ranking the most popular albums, in large part because of the success of “Butterfly.” The song, which Rolling Stone magazine described as “a sweetly floating ballad that’s atypical for these hard-rocking B-boys,” gained wide acclaim, holding the top spot on Billboard’s Hot 100 ranking for two weeks.Mr. Binzer was open about his struggles with substance abuse. He appeared on two seasons of the VH1 series “Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew” in 2008 and also on the spinoff series “Sober House” from 2009 to 2010.Seth Binzer was born on Aug. 23, 1974, in Los Angeles to Rollin Binzer, who designed album art and directed films for rock bands, and Leslie Brooks, who was a model and script proofreader. He was raised in Southern California and spent part of his childhood in Marblehead, Mass.He was a creative child but also had a wild streak that got him into trouble, according to his mother, and sister, Aubrey Binzer. When he was about 10, he would break dance on the pier in Marblehead for tourists, Ms. Brooks said.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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      ‘I Am: Celine Dion’ Review: You Saw the Best in Me

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      Dion’s voice made her a star. A new documentary on Amazon Prime Video brings her back to Earth, showing her intimate struggles with stiff person syndrome.Illness shows no regard for even the most revered figures in pop music.In “I Am: Celine Dion,” a documentary about the global songstress on Amazon Prime Video, it quickly becomes clear that Dion can’t even move her body, let alone deliver a soaring ballad with the full force that, from her teenage years on, roused millions. The film, by the director Irene Taylor, records the singer’s agonizing reality as she battles the rare neurological condition called stiff person syndrome.In an Instagram post in December 2022, Dion tearfully revealed her diagnosis to her fans, but the documentary had already been in production by then. Taylor opens the film with relaxed scenes of Dion at her home in Las Vegas with her children and staff. Then the part that’s painful to watch: The singer is heard moaning as she has a seizure on the floor. Learning early on that she had always wanted to sing “all my life” intensifies the tragedy of watching Dion, now 56, struggle to continue to live that dream. Dion’s voice made her a star; this film is keen on making her a person.But there is nothing subtle in Taylor’s montages, such as a high-energy past performance cut with the subdued domestic energy on display while Dion is vacuuming her couch. One shot pans to her eerily empty living room, a severe departure from playing packed stadiums. Even the score aches. All this palpable sadness is, perhaps, why Taylor interjects clips of Dion in better times.I understand the inclination to not define Dion by her diagnosis. But Dion’s spontaneously expressive personality already shines through her pain in raw footage that feels more connected to her healing journey, like when her physical therapist nags her about a cream she hasn’t been applying to her feet. “Give me a break,” she says with playful exasperation.She then sings “Gimme a Break,” the Kit Kat commercial jingle. While that welcome touch of humor pulls you into this intimately told story — what’s more Celine than an impromptu vocal? — inconsequential clips take you out of it: her impersonation of Sia on a late-night talk show; a part of her “Ashes” video that lets the Deadpool cameo go on for too long; her career-defining ballad “My Heart Will Go On” but, mystifyingly, the “Carpool Karaoke” version with James Corden.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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      Mavis Staples Is an American Institution. She’s Not Done Singing Yet.

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      After more than seven decades onstage, the gospel and soul great decided last year that it was time to retire. Then she realized she still had work to do.On a rainy April day in Chicago, Mavis Staples sat in the restaurant of the towering downtown Chicago building where she’s lived for the past four years. For two hours, she talked about the Civil Rights movement and faith. And finally, she mentioned her old flame Bob Dylan.The singer-songwriter first proposed to Staples after a kiss at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival; she hid from him during a show at the Apollo decades later, fearing he’d ask again. They’ve remained friends, even taking daily strolls during a 2016 tour together. She’d heard rumors he would soon retire, finally wrapping his fabled Never Ending Tour. Staples knew he would hate it.“Oh, Bobby: He gotta keep on singing,” Staples said. “I could handle it more than him. I will call him and say, ‘Don’t retire, Bobby. You don’t know what you’re doing.’”Staples speaks from experience: Late in the summer of 2023, soon after turning 84, she told her manager she was done. She’d been on the road for 76 years, ever since her father, Roebuck Staples, known as Pops, assembled a family band when she was 8. The Staple Singers became a gospel fulcrum of the Civil Rights movement and, later, a force for bending genres — mixing funk, rock and soul inside their spiritual mission, an all-American alchemy. The band’s mightiest singer and sole survivor since the death of her sister Yvonne in 2018 and brother, Pervis, in 2021, Mavis remained in high demand, a historical treasure commanding a thunderous contralto.“Being an American and not believing in royalty, meeting her was the closest I’d ever felt,” said Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, who marveled at her while watching “The Last Waltz” decades before he produced a string of her poignant albums. “I felt the same way when I met Johnny Cash, like meeting a dollar bill or bald eagle.”A seemingly indomitable extrovert, Staples had deeply resented being homebound during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. So she returned to the road with gusto, playing more than 50 shows last summer. But in July, she missed the end of a moving walkway in Germany and fell on her face. Was this, she wondered, the life she wanted? She’d previously mentioned retirement, but now she insisted.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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      Taylor Swift Notches a Ninth Week at No. 1 With New CD Versions

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      The singer’s latest album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” now has the second-most weeks at No. 1 of any Swift album.The spring of Taylor Swift has become the summer of Taylor Swift as the singer’s latest album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” holds for a ninth straight week at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart.The 31-track LP, released on April 19, has continued to rack up sales and streams — thanks in part to special edition “versions” with bonus tracks — earning another 126,000 sales units, including 121 million streams and 33,000 copies sold as a full package, according to the tracking service Luminate.Album sales were up 42 percent with a boost from two new CD variations, sold exclusively by Swift’s web store, that each featured a different acoustic bonus song, Billboard reported; the CDs were available for a limited period of time in early June but shipped to customers last week, counting toward the latest chart totals.“The Tortured Poets Department” now has the second-most weeks at No. 1 of any Swift album, behind “1989” and “Fearless,” each of which spent 11 nonconsecutive weeks atop the Billboard 200.Also this week, Billie Eilish’s “Hit Me Hard and Soft” holds at No. 2 in its fifth week out, with 84,000 units; the rapper and singer Don Toliver’s “Hardstone Psycho,” which features Travis Scott and Future, debuts at No. 3 with 76,500 units; Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” is No. 4 with 73,000 units; and the underground rap duo Suicideboys’s “New World Depression” is No. 5 with 66,000 units. More

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      Charli XCX’s ‘Brat’ Breakthrough

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicThe iconoclastic pop star Charli XCX has long flirted with mainstream success — helping write Icona Pop’s omnipresent 2012 hit “I Love It,” appearing on the hook of Iggy Azalea’s smash “Fancy” and in 2014 scoring a Top 10 hit of her own with “Boom Clap” — but largely exists as a self-proclaimed “cult classic,” a denizen of the club underground known for a string of innovative but niche records. Charli’s brash, strobe-lit sixth album, “Brat,” is in some ways her most daring release yet, but — improbably — it’s also her most commercially successful, debuting at No. 3 in the United States and earning her highest opening-week sales in her native United Kingdom.Why is “Brat” such a breakthrough? Some of its success has to do with the raw honesty of its lyrics, which find Charli musing on her innermost insecurities — at least when she isn’t playing the “365 party girl.” But to many listeners growing tired with certain trends in contemporary pop music (faux relatability, therapy-speak, demo-dumps disguised as deluxe editions), “Brat” provides a welcome and unapologetic alternative.On this week’s Popcast, guest hosted by the Times pop music critic Lindsay Zoladz, a conversation about “Brat,” placed in the context of Charli’s eccentric career and the wider pop landscape.Guests:Shaad D’Souza, a freelance writer for The New York Times, New York magazine, the Guardian and othersMeaghan Garvey, a writer from Chicago who runs the newsletter Scary Cool Sad GoodbyeConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      Jeremy Tepper, Alt-Country Impressario, Dies at 60

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      As a journalist, singer, label owner and radio producer, he fostered a community of musicians on the outskirts of Americana.Jeremy Tepper, who over a long and varied career as a journalist, singer, label owner and radio producer championed the anarchic, high-energy music that straddled the lines separating country, rock, punk and plain old Americana, died on June 14 in Queens. He was 60.His wife, the musician Laura Cantrell, said the cause of death, at Elmhurst Hospital, was a heart attack.Born in upstate New York and educated in Manhattan, Mr. Tepper was perhaps an unlikely apostle for a style of music variously called alt- or outlaw country, but which he preferred to call “rig rock” — the sort of sounds favored by long-haul truck drivers. Far from the big hats and ostrich-skin boots of Nashville’s Lower Broadway, it is the music one might hear coming from honky-tonks, jukeboxes, truck stops and big-rig radios, the corners of Americana that Mr. Tepper celebrated with unironic joy.“It is taking all that truck-driving music — streamlined, guitar-based country rock — and dragging it onto the modern interstate,” he told Newsday in 1990.Mr. Tepper was rig-rock’s greatest fan and biggest booster. He wrote about it for publications like Pulse and The Journal of Country Music, and for his own magazine, Street Beat, which was dedicated to jukeboxes and the music one found in them. 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