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      ‘You Can Never Look Back’: How ’70s Rockers Rebooted for the ’80s

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      The year 1984 was a watershed in pop music. The stars who’d made it big the previous decade had to embrace new instruments and MTV or risk being left behind.Don Henley was stuck.It was the fall of 1983, and the former Eagles star was cruising down the 405 freeway in Los Angeles, listening to a working tape of a tune for his second solo album. While struggling for words to one section, he glanced to the left lane and saw a gold Cadillac Seville with a curious decoration: a Grateful Dead decal.That image went right into the song, “The Boys of Summer,” a synthesizer-bathed memoir of lost love that Henley delivered with the kind of cutting, resonant zinger that was the signature of all his best Eagles lyrics:Out on the road todayI saw a Deadhead sticker on a CadillacA little voice inside my head said“Don’t look back, you can never look back”“It was an odd juxtaposition, to see a Deadhead sticker on a car that is associated with conservatism,” Henley recalled in a recent interview. “To me, it was a symbol of changing times.”The music had changed too. Henley was far from alone as an A-list 1970s rocker who had arrived in the ’80s to find a music scene transformed in sound and vision, now driven by pop singles and buzzing with electronics. The hallmarks of mainstream ’70s rock — long guitar solos, bushy sideburns — were out. Synthesizers, drum machines and stylized, eye-popping music videos were in.In most tellings of pop music history, the 1980s were primarily the springboard for a fresh crop of stars like Madonna, Prince and Duran Duran, who embraced and defined the flashy artifice of the MTV age. But the new era also had a powerful impact on the generation that preceded it. For rock’s older guard, even those like Henley, who had scaled the heights of fame, the emergence of a new order in pop was a kind of evolutionary event, and its implicit challenge was clear: Adapt or be left behind.“The ’80s ushered in a whole new paradigm,” Henley said. “We all sort of had to get with the program. Some people got with the program, and some didn’t.”Don Henley came up in Eagles, but realized he had to shift his sound for his second solo album.Richard E. Aaron/Redferns, via Getty Images More

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      Best Albums of 2024: Charli XCX, Mk.gee, MJ Lenderman and More

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      Charli XCX, Mk.gee and MJ Lenderman top our pop music critics’ lists this year.Jon Pareles | Jon Caramanica | Lindsay ZoladzJon ParelesConcepts, Craftsmanship, Sensuality and Tidings of ApocalypseThe agendas for 21st-century musicians keep getting more complicated. They can try to out-game streaming and social media algorithms, stoking the celebrity-industrial complex or steadfastly ignoring it. They can lean into idiosyncratic artistic instincts and intuitions. They can channel the zeitgeist or defy it. Of course, listeners have choices as well. For me, there was no definitive musical statement for 2024, no obvious pathbreaker. But there were plenty of purposeful, heartfelt, exacting and inspired individual statements. I gave the top slot to a project that strove mightily to unite a glossy sonic (and online) presence with surprising confessions. But song for song, the rest of the list can easily stand alongside it. And if there’s more than a little apocalyptic gloom in these choices, well, that’s 2024.1. Charli XCX, ‘Brat’ and ‘Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat’The year’s conceptual coup belonged to Charli XCX. “Brat,” the album she released in June, used dance-floor beats, blippy synthetic hooks and meme-ready graphics as she assessed just where she stood as a pop striver in her 30s, more than a decade into her career: pushing, partying, wondering whether to set it all aside to have a baby. Somehow, “Brat” landed as a full-fledged hit — and by September, Charli XCX had rewritten all the tracks and added star collaborators, dispensing hooks while trying to keep a level head about success. Amid all the hyperpop gloss and online chatter, she still sounded honest.2. Brittany Howard, ‘What Now’Brittany Howard’s second solo album tackles the contours of a relationship that is fizzling out.Ariel Fisher for The New York TimesBrittany Howard lays out the ragged emotions of a crumbling relationship on “What Now”: numbness, mourning, second-guessing, guilt and furtive glimmers of relief. While the tracks are rooted in soul, rock, R&B, funk and disco, they turn familiar styles inside-out with targeted distortion and surreal, displaced mixes. The songs capture all the disorientation that comes with a life-changing decision.3. Vampire Weekend, ‘Only God Was Above Us’Vampire Weekend’s once-meticulous musical universe gets punctured by noise on “Only God Was Above Us.” Its fifth album grapples with how what used to be called indie-rock can face a new pop landscape, and how determined innovators can keep pushing themselves. The answers include history lessons, quasi-sequitur lyrics and constantly morphing studio arrangements — a running, enlightening battle between strict song structure and an unruly world.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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      The Ultimate Yacht Rock Playlist

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      Gain a deeper appreciation of music from Michael McDonald, Toto and Christopher Cross.Michael McDonald appearing on “Soul Train” in 1982.Soul Train/Getty, via Courtesy HBODear listeners,Over the weekend, I watched an entertaining new documentary — or, as it’s billed, a “dockumentary” — about the genre of music that’s retroactively come to be known as “yacht rock.”You might be familiar with the term, which encapsulates a disparate scene of mostly California-based musicians who brought jazz, soul and R&B influences to mainstream pop and soft rock in the late 1970s: Think Kenny Loggins, Toto, Christopher Cross and just about any song with backing or lead vocals by Michael McDonald. What you might not realize is that the term “yacht rock” was coined not by music critics or even the musicians themselves, but by a ragtag group of comedians who lovingly parodied some of those musicians in a beloved web series that premiered in 2005.“Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary,” currently streaming on Max, features interviews with J.D. Ryznar, a creator of the web series, as well as Loggins, Cross, McDonald and a host of the other artists who defined the genre’s sound — even if it wasn’t considered a genre at the time. “To us it was just the next logical step in making pop music,” Loggins says in the film. Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen had the documentary’s strongest rejection of the term: At the mere mention of “yacht rock,” he hangs up on the film’s director Garrett Price — though not before suggesting a course of action unprintable in this family newsletter.Regardless of what you call it, (“smooth music,” “the West Coast sound” and “progressive R&B pop” are all offered), Price’s documentary makes the case that this was indeed a unified scene, driven by overlapping influences, shared personnel and playfully competitive studio one-upsmanship. Like the web series that preceded it, the new documentary ultimately offers a deeper appreciation of this sometimes-maligned music, which is worth a considered reappraisal.Today’s playlist is one such opportunity. It features some of the aforementioned yacht rock luminaries alongside a few of the younger artists they influenced, like De La Soul, Warren G and Thundercat. Listening on a decent pair of speakers or headphones is a must; donning a captain’s hat is entirely optional.No wise man has the power,LindsayWe 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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      Chris Brown’s Concerts Draw Protest in South Africa

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      Women’s rights activists have petitioned for the singer to be denied a visa for two shows in South Africa, where gender-based violence is high.After Chris Brown announced that he would be performing in Johannesburg, tickets for the city’s 94,000-capacity FNB Stadium sold out in under two hours. A second show was swiftly added.Nearly as quickly came a protest against Brown, who has faced allegations of violence and harassment of women including his guilty plea on charges that he assaulted Rihanna, his then-girlfriend, in 2009. Women for Change, a South African nonprofit, started a petition to block Brown’s performances on Dec. 14 and 15. The organization presented the petition, which received over 50,000 signatures, to the country’s Departments of Home Affairs and of Sports, Arts and Culture, asking that Brown be denied a visa.The singer’s planned return has particular resonance in South Africa, where women are killed at a rate five times higher than the global average, with 60.1 percent of those murders committed by an intimate partner, according to a study by the South African Medical Research Council. “We aim to send a clear message that South Africa will not celebrate individuals with a history of violence against women,” Sabrina Walter, the founder of Women for Change, said in an interview.Brown and his representatives have not addressed the protest, but in October, as the group spread the #MuteChrisBrown hashtag on social media, the singer seemed to troll the organization by writing, “Can’t wait to come,” under one of its Instagram posts. Walter said the reply triggered a wave of online harassment from Brown’s followers, including death threats against her and her team. It was not the first time Brown used his fame to rally against detractors. He has challenged other celebrities who refer to allegations made against him, and in February used Instagram to accuse the NBA of bowing to sponsor pressure to disinvite him from participating in an event related to its All-Star game. In 2019, Brown was released without charges after being accused of aggravated rape in France. He then sold T-shirts that read “This Bitch Lyin’” online.In the years since his 2009 arrest, Brown has been accused a number of times of violence against women, including throwing a rock through his mother’s car window in 2013 and punching a woman at a Las Vegas nightclub in 2016. In 2017, his ex-girlfriend Karrueche Tran obtained a temporary restraining order, citing harassment, physical violence, intimidation and death threats during and after their on-again-off-again relationship, which lasted from 2011 to 2015. In 2022, a judge dismissed a lawsuit that accused Brown of drugging and raping a woman on a yacht owned by Sean Combs.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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      Bob Bryar, Former Drummer for My Chemical Romance, Dies at 44

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      He joined that pop-punk band in 2004 and played on its most successful album, “The Black Parade.”Bob Bryar, the former drummer for the rock band My Chemical Romance, which drew a large following with catchy hooks and a dark, misfit energy, has died. He was 44.Mr. Bryar’s death was confirmed by a spokesman for the band, who did not provide any additional details.Mr. Bryar joined My Chemical Romance in 2004. The band, led by the brothers Gerard and Mikey Way, had just released the record “Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge,” which went platinum and helped build a following among fans of emo and pop punk.Mr. Bryar was perhaps best known for his drumming on the group’s 2006 landmark concept album, “The Black Parade,” which combined punk, glam and Broadway. It became the band’s most popular album.Mr. Bryar was born in Chicago on Dec. 30, 1979. He said in a 2008 video that he learned to play drums on a toy drum set, fell in love with the instrument and began playing in high school bands and at clubs around Chicago.He went on to study sound engineering at the University of Florida and later worked as a sound engineer for several bands. While working for the rock band the Used, Mr. Bryar met the members of My Chemical Romance.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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      Peggy Caserta, Who Wrote a Tell-All About Janis Joplin, Dies at 84

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      Her Haight-Ashbury clothing store was ground zero for the counterculture. But she was best known for a tawdry book — which she later disavowed — published after Ms. Joplin’s death.Peggy Caserta, whose funky Haight-Ashbury clothing boutique was a magnet for young bohemians and musicians, and who exploited her relationship with Janis Joplin in a much-panned 1973 memoir that she later disavowed, died on Nov. 21 at her home in Tillamook, Ore. She was 84.Her partner and only immediate survivor, Jackie Mendelson, confirmed the death but did not specify a cause.The Louisiana-born Ms. Caserta was 23 and working at a Delta Air Lines office in San Francisco when she decided to open a clothing store for her cohort, the lesbians in her neighborhood. She found an empty storefront on Haight Street, near the corner of Ashbury, which she rented for $87.50 a month.At first Ms. Caserta sold jeans, sweatshirts and double-breasted denim blazers that her mother made. Then she added Levi’s pants, which a friend turned into flares by inserting a triangle of denim into the side seams. When the friend couldn’t keep up with the orders, Ms. Caserta persuaded Levi Strauss & Company to make them.She named the place Mnasidika (pronounced na-SID-ek-ah), after a character in a poem by Sappho. “It’s a Greek girls’ name,” Ms. Caserta told The San Francisco Examiner in 1965, for an article about the “new bohemians” colonizing the Haight-Ashbury district.Ms. Caserta was 23 when she opened a clothing store, Mnasidika, in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco.via Wyatt MackenzieWe 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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      Andy Paley, Whose Imprint Was All Over Pop Music, Dies at 73

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      Musician, singer, songwriter, producer and more, he collaborated with Madonna and a raft of other artists and helped resuscitate the career of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson.Andy Paley, a music producer, composer and rock ’n’ roll chameleon who worked with artists as varied as Madonna, Jerry Lee Lewis and Jonathan Richman, and who helped resuscitate the career of the Beach Boys mastermind Brian Wilson after his much-chronicled emotional flameout, died on Nov. 20 in Colchester, Vt. He was 73.The death, at a hospice facility, was caused by cancer, his wife, Heather Crist Paley, said.A curator of the spirit of classic 1960s pop, Mr. Paley played many roles over an ever-evolving career. He got his start in the late 1960s as the frontman for a Boston-area power pop outfit called the Sidewinders, which briefly included the future FM radio staple Billy Squier on guitar and opened for groups like Aerosmith.Later that decade, he banded with his younger brother, Jonathan, to form a highly regarded, if short-lived, pop duo, the Paley Brothers. With their winsome looks and mops of blond hair, they appeared in the pages of teen bibles like 16 Magazine and Tiger Beat and toured with the pop confection Shaun Cassidy.A skilled multi-instrumentalist, Mr. Paley often went on the road with his close friend Mr. Richman and filled in on keyboards on Patti Smith’s 1976 tour of Europe.During the 1980s, he began to produce for Seymour Stein, the visionary label chief of Sire Records. Influenced by studio wizards like Phil Spector, Mr. Paley produced songs for numerous performers, including Debbie Harry, K.D. Lang, NRBQ, Little Richard and Brenda Lee.From left, Darlene Love, Phil Spector, Joey Ramone, Mr. Paley and Jonathan Paley in 1978. Even as an intimate of musical luminaries, Mr. Paley maintained the wide-eyed wonder of a fan throughout his career.Bob MerlisWe 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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      Lauren Mayberry of Chvrches Is Making a Statement on Her Own

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      Lauren Mayberry was in the bunk of her band’s tour bus in the winter of 2021, rolling between Denver and Boulder, Colo., when she started wondering how old Gwen Stefani was when she released her first solo record.“I had an overly romantic notion of being in a band, this kind of ‘Goonies’ mentality,” Mayberry said, referring to her role since 2011 as frontwoman for the Glaswegian synth-pop trio Chvrches. “I was very conscious of not wanting to be perceived as disloyal.”Despite her hesitation to step out on her own, “If the only reason you’re not doing something is because of how it might make other people feel,” she continued, “you’re going to people-please yourself to death.”In the end, she took the plunge: Mayberry’s solo debut, “Vicious Creature,” due Dec. 6, is a fresh start that allows the singer and songwriter, 37, to approach her career from a different aesthetic and more empowering angle. Mayberry was only 23 when she joined Chvrches, years younger than her bandmates, the multi-instrumentalists Iain Cook and Martin Doherty. Over four albums, Cook and Doherty supplied a dizzying architecture of synth soundscapes that she filled with broody lyrics and her clarion vocals. The band inspired word-of-mouth buzz from the beginning — a little more than a year after anonymously releasing their first song, Chvrches were opening for Depeche Mode. But Mayberry worried her purpose was at times decorative.“I remember feeling really out of my depth and lonely,” she said.Mayberry onstage in 2023. She will soon be preparing for a “Vicious Creature” tour that kicks off in early 2025, although she has already been playing songs from the album live for more than a year.Jc Olivera/Getty ImagesSeated at her kitchen table in the cozy Los Angeles bungalow she shares with her musician boyfriend, Sam Stewart (son of the Eurythmics co-founder Dave), Mayberry quickly moved a scented candle before it burned the tail of their cat, Cactus. She admitted she would invoke the production term “quantizing” during early interviews without knowing its meaning, and flashed a droll smile when asked what distinguishes her solo songs from the Chvrches catalog. “Less synths,” she replied.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