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      Alan Sparhawk of Low Lost His Other Half. He’s Learning to Sing Again.

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      Alan Sparhawk did not think his new song was any good. It was early 2017, and he was working on “Double Negative,” the 12th album by his longtime band, Low. The record would become a late-career breakthrough, the intimate harmonies between Sparhawk and his wife, Mimi Parker, supplanted from their slow, soft acoustic settings into beds of brittle noise.But at that moment, Sparhawk was still wrestling with “Always Trying to Work It Out,” an elliptical portrait of a faltering friendship. He played it for Parker, whom he forever called “Mim.” When, unbidden, she began singing, he knew he had a keeper.“That was as much approval as I ever needed. That was the way she communicated,” Sparhawk said during a phone interview, pausing often to cry. “When Mim would sing, that was all I needed to know.”“I’m going to wrestle with the universe and generate art, because that’s what I do,” Alan Sparhawk said. On his new album, he processes his voice through an effects pedal.Erinn Springer for The New York TimesSparhawk no longer has that filter or confidant. Parker died in November 2022, two years after learning she had ovarian cancer on Christmas Eve. Across three decades, Sparhawk, Parker and a succession of bassists built Low into one of indie-rock’s most mesmerizing acts, their voices moving in tandem like the blowing wind or a flickering candle. Self-diagnosed with autism and borderline personality disorder, Sparhawk also depended upon Parker as an emotional anchor, the person who could help him understand his frustrations simply by listening.He is now trying to find his voice and language anew, to find ways to move forward in life and music without the person who guided so much of his past. Made with a drum machine and minimal guitar, his first record since her death — “White Roses, My God,” out Friday — routes his oaken baritone through an effects pedal, rendering him alternately robotic and animalistic. His second, due next year, is a collaboration with the bluegrass band Trampled by Turtles, fellow Minnesotans that Low took on early tours.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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      Billy Edd Wheeler, Songwriter Who Celebrated Rural Life, Dies at 91

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      His plain-spoken songs were recorded by Elvis Presley, Kenny Rogers and many others. The duo of Johnny Cash and June Carter made his “Jackson” a huge country hit.Billy Edd Wheeler, an Appalachian folk singer who wrote vividly about rural life and culture in songs like “Jackson,” a barn-burning duet that was a hit in 1967 for June Carter and Johnny Cash as well as for Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood, died on Monday at his home in Swannanoa, N.C., east of Asheville. He was 91.His death was announced on social media by his daughter, Lucy Wheeler.Plain-spoken and colloquial, Mr. Wheeler’s songs have been recorded by some 200 artists, among them Neil Young, Hank Snow, Elvis Presley, and Florence & the Machine. “Jackson” — a series of spirited exchanges between a quarrelsome husband and wife — opens with one of the most evocative couplets in popular music: “We got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout/We’ve been talkin’ about Jackson, ever since the fire went out.”From there the husband boasts about the carousing he plans to do in Jackson, as his wife scoffs at his hollow braggadocio. “Go on down to Jackson,” she goads him on, emboldened by the song’s neo-rockabilly backbeat. “Go ahead and wreck your health/Go play your hand, you big-talkin’ man, make a big fool of yourself.”Written with the producer and lyricist Jerry Leiber, with whom Mr. Wheeler had apprenticed as a songwriter at the Brill Building in New York, “Jackson” was a Top 10 country hit for Ms. Carter and Mr. Cash and a Top 20 pop hit for Ms. Sinatra and Mr. Hazlewood. The Carter-Cash version won a Grammy Award in 1968 for best country-and-western performance by a duo, trio or group.The 1967 album “Carryin’ On With Johnny Cash & June Carter” included Mr. Wheeler’s song “Jackson,” which would reach the country Top 10 as a single and win a Grammy.ColumbiaMr. Wheeler’s original pass at the song, though, was anything but auspicious. In fact, when Mr. Leiber first heard it, he advised Mr. Wheeler to jettison most of what he had written and to use the line “We got married in a fever” in the song’s opening and closing choruses.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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      Bad Bunny Commemorates a Hurricane, and 11 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Jane’s Addiction, Bon Iver, Yola 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 sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Bad Bunny, ‘Una Velita’On the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Maria, which left lasting damage to Puerto Rico, Bad Bunny has released the mournful, resentful, adamant “Una Velita” (“Little Candle”). “It’s going to happen again,” he warns in Spanish. “Here comes the storm, who’s going to save us?” Faraway guitars, deep Afro-Caribbean drumming and a choir back him as he recalls the insufficient government response to Maria: “Five thousand were left to die, and we’ll never forget that.” Before the next storm, he calls for God’s protection and for self-reliance: “It’s up to the people to save the people.”Jane’s Addiction, ‘True Love’The reunited original lineup of Jane’s Addiction has just canceled its tour and announced a band hiatus after an onstage fistfight midway through a Boston concert. But that hasn’t precluded the release of “True Love,” the second single from the reconvened band. It’s an unironic, even romantic tribute to “basking in the glory of true love,” free of anyone else’s judgments. The minor-key, relatively subdued arrangement — reverb-laden guitar, mallets on drums — only underlines the song’s sense of commitment, even if the band has fractured again.Bon Iver, ‘Speyside’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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      How Sophie’s Posthumous (and Final) Album Was Completed

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      “Sophie,” a new LP by the visionary hyperpop producer, traces an arc from introspection to pop pleasures to thoughts of eternity. It will be her final release.In the early hours of Jan. 30, 2021, the visionary hyperpop producer Sophie was living in an apartment in Athens. To get a better view of the full moon, she climbed up a balcony, but slipped and fell. She was 34, and her death brought an outpouring of appreciation for the ways her sonic vocabulary — pointed, wriggly, blippy synthesizer tones and ultra-succinct hooks — had moved so quickly from pop’s experimental fringe to the mainstream.In Athens — and before that in Los Angeles and London — Sophie had been working on the successor to her 2018 album, “Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides” and its 2019 remix LP. The new album was so close to completion that Sophie had chosen the full track list. Three years later, Benny Long, her brother and studio manager, has finished it, striving to honor Sophie’s artistic intentions. It will simply be titled “Sophie.”“There was, at the start, a lot of self-doubt. Can I? Is this going to be possible without her?,” Long said in a video interview from Los Angeles. “But I thought, really, it comes down to, would she want this album to come out or would she not? And she definitely would.”Sophie left behind many more tracks in progress, some of which are likely to emerge as singles or EPs, or appear on other performers’ albums. But as a guardian of Sophie’s catalog, Long has decided that “this is the last Sophie album,” he said. “This is an album that we had worked on for years. We discussed everything about it — the themes, the track list. So to do another album and put it out as a solo album, it would just feel all wrong.”“Sophie,” out Sept. 27, is the artist and producer’s most collaborative album. It includes vocals from the songwriters and singers Kim Petras, Bibi Bourelly, Hannah Diamond, Cecile Believe, Jozzy, Big Sister and Liz, as well as the duo BC Kingdom (who have recorded with Solange Knowles). There’s even a spoken-word appearance by the D.J. and producer Nina Kraviz.Completing the album became a family project for Benny and his sister Emily Long. She studied music law to work with Sophie, and she passed the bar exam two weeks before her sibling’s death. Once Benny resolved to finish Sophie’s album, Emily joined him in making decisions. “Every single day we talk about Sophie and what she loved and the things that would make her happy,” Emily said via a video call from Los Angeles. “We all know why we’re here. We’re all here for her.”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 Enduring Simplicity of Galaxie 500

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      The pioneering 1980s dream-pop band has now unveiled its entire studio catalog, mistakes and all.Dean Wareham has a Google Alert set for his first full-time band, Galaxie 500, named after a friend’s vintage Ford. With Wareham as its guitarist and lead singer, the band lasted a little over three years — from 1987 to early 1991 — and made just three albums for an indie label that went bankrupt.Galaxie 500’s biggest headlining gigs were appearances for only club-sized audiences. Its music never reached the American album charts. And Wareham and the other two band members, the bassist and singer Naomi Yang and the drummer Damon Krukowski — who are married — haven’t spoken or been in the same room since 1991, when Wareham quit the band on the verge of a tour of Japan. (They deal with Galaxie 500 business via email.)But decades later, Google Alerts for Galaxie 500 keep arriving.“Sometimes it’s a car for sale, but a lot of times it’s a review,” Wareham said in a video interview from his home studio in Los Angeles. “And yeah, every week there’s a review of something that thinks it sounds like Galaxie 500. There’s a lot of that. But they don’t, really.”This Friday, the final remnants of Galaxie 500’s brief but luminous studio recording career will be released as “Uncollected Noise New York, ’88-’90.” The new album adds eight previously unreleased songs to a group of non-album tracks that were included in 1996 as part of a Galaxie 500 boxed set, then reissued separately in 2004 as the album “Uncollected.”“When we made these records, if you had told me that 30 years later, 35 years later, people would still be excited about them, I would be most surprised,” Wareham said.The added tracks reveal how rigorously Galaxie 500 judged its music, even from the beginning. “I think we were good editors. I still think these were the right tracks to reject,” Krukowski said by video from his and Yang’s home in Cambridge, Mass. “I don’t think it’s hidden gems. It’s more like telling the story in a different way. It’s a narrative thing, which I think is why we were all OK with it.”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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      JD Souther, Who Wrote Hits for the Eagles, Dies at 78

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      JD Souther, who crafted many of the biggest hits to come out of the Southern California country-rock scene of the 1970s, including for the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor, and who later played a wizened music industry veteran — in other words, a version of himself — on the hit television show “Nashville,” died on Tuesday at his home in Sandia Park, N.M., in the hills east of Albuquerque. He was 78.His death was announced on his website. A cause was not provided.Beginning in the late 1960s, Mr. Souther was part of a coterie of musicians around Los Angeles who found themselves circling the same sort of peaceful, easy, country-inflected rock sound. They played at the same venues — among them the Troubadour, the famous West Hollywood nightclub — and lived and partied in the same canyons in the Hollywood Hills.Mr. Souther played with or wrote for most of them. Though he was brought up on jazz and classical music, he easily mastered the country-rock vernacular on songs like “Faithless Love” and “White Rhythm and Blues,” for Ms. Ronstadt; “The Heart of the Matter,” which he wrote with Don Henley; and “Her Town Too,” a collaboration with Mr. Taylor that they sang as a duet.He also played a central role in the formation of the Eagles, encouraging Ms. Ronstadt, his girlfriend at the time, to hire his friend Glenn Frey as part of her backup band. After Mr. Henley joined, he and Mr. Frey decided to form their own group, along with two other members of Ms. Ronstadt’s ensemble, Bernie Leadon and Randy Meisner.Mr. Souther, third from left, onstage with the Eagles in San Diego in 1979. With him are, from left, Joe Vitale, Timothy B. Schmit, Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Joe Walsh and Don Felder.George Rose/Getty ImagesMr. Souther was almost the fifth Eagle: He joined the quartet for an afternoon tryout at the Troubadour, but he decided that the band was already perfect, and that he’d rather write for 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

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      Why Was Sean Combs Arrested? Read the Full Indictment.

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      commit at least two acts of racketeering activity in the conduct of the affairs of the Combs
      Enterprise.
      Notice of Special Sentencing Factor
      15. From at least in or about 2009, up to and including in or about 2018, in the Southern
      District of New York and elsewhere, as part of his agreement to conduct and participate in the
      conduct of the affairs of the Combs Enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity, SEAN
      COMBS, a/k/a “Puff Daddy,” a/k/a “P. Diddy,” a/k/a “Diddy,” a/k/a “PD,” a/k/a “Love,” the
      defendant, agreed to, in and affecting interstate and foreign commerce, knowingly recruit, entice,
      harbor, transport, provide, obtain, advertise, maintain, patronize, and solicit by any means a person,
      knowing and in reckless disregard of the fact that means of force, threats of force, fraud, and
      coercion, as described in Title 18, United States Code, Section 1591(e)(2), and any
      combination
      of such means, would be used to cause the person to engage in a commercial sex act, in violation
      of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1591(a)(1) and (b)(1).
      (Title 18, United States Code, Section 1962(d).)
      COUNT TWO
      (Sex Trafficking by Force, Fraud, or Coercion)
      (Victim-1)
      The Grand Jury further charges:
      16.
      From at least in or about 2009, up to and including in or about 2018, in the Southern
      District of New York and elsewhere, SEAN COMBS, a/k/a “Puff Daddy,” a/k/a “P. Diddy,” a/k/a
      “Diddy,” a/k/a “PD,” a/k/a “Love,” the defendant, in and affecting interstate and foreign
      commerce, knowingly recruited, enticed, harbored, transported, provided, obtained, advertised,
      maintained, patronized, and solicited by any means a person, knowing and in reckless disregard of
      the fact that means of force, threats of force, fraud, and coercion, as described in Title 18, United
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      A Shocking Country Song Is Dominating TikTok. Is Girly Girl for Real?

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      TikTok’s latest musical obsession is a country song. But not the kind that first comes to mind.Miles removed from the weather-beaten earnestness of Zach Bryan, or Bailey Zimmerman’s heart-on-sleeve crooning, the viral “10 Drunk Cigarettes” is plasticky, poppy, alien and seemingly A.I.-assisted. Its lyrics advocate for a carefree, resolutely American way of life, although they replace Nashville standards like beers and Bibles with cigarettes and copious amounts of cocaine, and find humor (and plenty of shock value) in their clash of saccharine femininity and unbridled nihilism. The result is like the cult comedy “Strangers With Candy” or the early web series “The Most Popular Girls in School” for the short-form video generation.“10 Drunk Cigarettes” is by Girly Girl Productions: a mysterious trio supposedly based in St. Louis that seem to have a preternatural ability to turn ironic, startlingly contemporary internet humor into music. Most Girly Girl songs follow a brutally effective structure: an intro verse about how empowered women are, followed by a chorus about using that power to do something horrifyingly self-destructive, in a tone that vaguely echoes the “God forbid women have hobbies” meme.Not every Girly Girl song is indebted to country, but its most ingratiating ones, like “Notes App Girls!” and “Coked Up Friend Adventure!” feel rooted in the genre. “10 Drunk Cigarettes,” which has gained the most traction on TikTok and streaming, combines the smiley feminized empowerment of RaeLynn’s “Bra Off” — which likens a breakup to “takin’ my bra off” — with the boozy escapism of Chase Rice and Florida Georgia Line’s “Drinkin’ Beer. Talkin’ God. Amen.”“10 Drunk Cigarettes” is not dissimilar from that collaboration in structure and arrangement. It’s built around a rhythmic acoustic guitar line and surges to an anthemic chorus structured as a list. But it’s not the kind of song that will be getting played on country radio anytime soon. TikTok is filled with videos of people reacting, mouths agape, to its chorus: “I can name 10 things us girls need before we ever need a man/One new vape/Two lines of coke/Free drinks from the bar/Four more lines of coke” — and so on.The very first line of “Demure,” Girly Girl’s debut album, makes a statement: “Haters mad ’cause my music is A.I./Wish I cared, but I’m way too high.” While many vocals on the album are wobbly and lo-fi in a way that recalls the fake songs by Drake and the Weeknd that proliferated last year, it’s unclear how much of Girly Girl’s songs are A.I.-generated; it’s unlikely that tracks like these could be made without a high level of human involvement. (The company did not respond to a request for comment.)Girly Girl’s songs tap into a vein of humor that’s firmly of-the-moment. Their glib jokes about vaping, drinking, drug taking and trauma — and, specifically, how those things relate to, or form an essential part of, “girlhood” — are the kinds of jokes going viral on X, formerly Twitter, every day. “Demure” was released last month, and even its title (which refers to a TikTok trend about being “very demure, very mindful” that blew up and faded away within the last few weeks) points to a desire for immediate relevance at the expense of longevity.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