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      Japanese Breakfast’s Shimmering Sadness, and 8 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Marianne Faithfull, the Waterboys featuring Fiona Apple, Debby Friday and more.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.Japanese Breakfast, ‘Here Is Someone’Plucked string tones from all directions create a magical, shimmering cascade around Michelle Zauner’s voice in “Here Is Someone” from the new album by Japanese Breakfast, “For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women).” The lyrics hint at tensions and anxieties, but the track radiates anticipation: “Life is sad, but here is someone,” Zauner concludes. Jon ParelesMarianne Faithfull, ‘Burning Moonlight’Marianne Faithfull, who died in January at 78, kept recording almost to the end. She brought every bit of her scratchy, ravaged, tenacious voice to “Burning Moonlight,” a song she co-wrote that holds one of her last manifestoes: “Burning moonlight to survive / Walking in fire is my life.” Acoustic guitars and tambourine connect the music to the 1960s, when she got her start; her singing holds all the decades of experience that followed. Jon ParelesThe Waterboys featuring Fiona Apple, ‘Letter From an Unknown Girlfriend’“Letter From an Unknown Girlfriend” is from the Waterboys album due April 4, “Life, Death and Dennis Hopper,” and was written by Mike Scott. But it is sung and played by Fiona Apple, alone at the piano, delivering a remembrance of an abusive boyfriend: “I used to say no man would ever strike me,” it begins, “And no man ever did ’til I met you.” She admits to the charm of the “satyr running wild in you,” but her voice rises to a bitter, primal rasp as she recalls the worst. It’s a stark, harrowing performance.Jon ParelesTamino featuring Mitski, ‘Sanctuary’Diffidence turns into resolve in the course of “Sanctuary,” a waltzing duet from “Every Dawn’s a Mountain,” the new album by the Belgian songwriter Tamino-Amir Moharam Fouad. In separate verses, Tamino and Mitski sound fragile, contemplating uncertainty and loss; “I reside in the ruins of the sanctuary,” Mitski sings. But when they connect — asking “Is it late where you are?” — and harmonize, an orchestra rises behind them to offer hope. Jon ParelesMorgan Wallen, ‘I’m a Little Crazy’“I’m a little crazy, but the world’s insane,” the disturbed narrator of Morgan Wallen’s new single contends. His character is a drug dealer who keeps a loaded gun nearby. He’s sustaining himself “on antidepressants and lukewarm beers” and yelling at his TV, “but the news don’t change.” Over steadfast acoustic guitar picking and lightly brushed drums, Wallen sings with chilling, sociopathic calm. Jon ParelesWe 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 Power of ‘Two’: An Anniversary Playlist

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      Celebrate two years of this newsletter with songs by Dolly Parton, Stacey Q, Mitski and more.Dolly PartonCharlie Riedel/Associated PressDear listeners,Surprise: There’s a birthday party in your inbox! Today we’re celebrating two years of The Amplifier, with — what else? — a themed playlist.On March 21, 2023, I sent out the first installment of this newsletter, introducing myself with 11 songs that explain my musical perspective and asking readers to submit some of their own favorite tracks. In the time since, I’ve sent out nearly 200 playlists, shared thousands of songs and received countless submissions when I’ve asked Amplifier readers to generate their own soundtracks. The community we’ve created together is vibrant and reciprocal: I may have discovered as much new music through your recommendations as you have through mine.Today’s playlist honors the Amplifier’s second birthday with eight tracks that feature the word “two” in the title. In keeping with The New York Times style guide, I stuck with songs that spell out the word “two,” so my apologies to Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” and Beyoncé’s “II Hands II Heaven,” among plenty of other greats that didn’t make the cut. But you will hear classics from the Beatles, Dolly Parton and Bruce Springsteen, as well as more recent and lesser-known tracks from indie singer-songwriters like Mitski and Flock of Dimes.This anniversary is also ushering in a new chapter for this newsletter. Starting next week, I’ll be taking a few months off to finish the manuscript of a book I’ve been working on. I’ll miss making these playlist and corresponding with you all, but I’m incredibly excited to get one step closer to a lifelong goal of publishing my first book. Once I’m back, I’ll update you on my progress — and probably share my writing playlist with you, too.While I’m out, I have a wonderful lineup of guest writers who will be sending out their own newsletters and playlists each Tuesday, and I’m thrilled for you to see (and hear) what they have in store.Thanks to each and every one of you who has read this newsletter, sampled our playlists and reached out to give us feedback. As always, happy listening.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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      Jensen McRae and 10 More Artists to Watch

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      Every week, our critics spotlight notable new songs on the Playlist. Here’s more about 11 artists behind them, selected by the pop music critics Jon Pareles, Jon Caramanica and Lindsay Zoladz; a culture reporter, Joe Coscarelli; and Caryn Ganz, the pop music editor for The New York Times. (Listen on Spotify and Apple Music.)an interview withJensen McRaeJensen McRae writes constantly: journals, poems, fiction, screenplays and, most publicly, songs. “I’ve always wanted to do a million things with regard to writing and telling stories,” she said. “But music was always the first choice.”Born in Santa Monica, Calif., and still based in Los Angeles, McRae, 27, joins a long history of California folk-pop songwriters — the legacy of the Laurel Canyon era — who draw on the diaristic specifics of their lives for songs that listeners take to heart. Her second album, “I Don’t Know How But They Found Me!,” is due April 25, with a tour that starts in May.As a child, “I was usually one of the only Black kids in a class,” McRae recalled in a video interview. “When you’re put into the observer, outsider position early on, it makes it pretty easy to figure out who you really are and what you really want, because conformity isn’t a choice. I started to develop this identity of being a narrator and a collector of details about my life, about other people’s lives.”McRae has old-school inclinations. Her music relies on hand-played, organic instruments and the power of her unadorned voice. Her 2022 debut album, “Are You Happy Now?,” included stark songs like “Wolves,” about sexual predators, accompanied only by her guitar.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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      11 Songs to Keep St. Patrick’s Day Going

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      Extend the holiday with tracks from Sinead O’Connor, the Pogues, Kneecap and more.Sinead O’ConnorPaul Bergen/Redferns, via Getty ImagesDear listeners,This year St. Patrick’s Day was on a Monday, a particularly cursed fate for a holiday associated with merriment. I propose extending the celebration all throughout the week — a feat of endurance that will require the proper soundtrack. Today, I offer you just that.This playlist contains tracks from 11 very different artists from Ireland.* It features some interpretations of traditional Irish tunes from legends like the Pogues (I’ll get to their origins in a moment) and the Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem; a few superstars who put Irish rock on the global map in the 1980s and ’90s (U2 and the Cranberries); and some younger upstarts refreshing Irish sounds for a new generation (the imaginative post-punk group Fontaines D.C. and the raucous rap trio Kneecap, whose 2024 biopic I highly recommend).Whether you’re playing this while sipping a pint of Guinness or trying to conjure that pub atmosphere within the secrecy of your headphones, I hope this playlist keeps you in the St. Patrick’s Day spirit all week (and maybe even all year) long.Lots of fun at Finnegan’s wake,Lindsay*Before you email me about their exclusion, a friendly reminder that the Dropkick Murphys are from Massachusetts. As for Hozier, well … something tells me that there are at least a few other playlists out there where you can hear his music.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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      Jesse Colin Young, Singer Who Urged Us to ‘Get Together,’ Dies at 83

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      As the leader of the Youngbloods, he sang one of the enduring anthems of the peace-and-love era. He went on to have a prolific career as a solo artist.Jesse Colin Young, whose sincere tenor vocals for the Youngbloods graced one of the most loving anthems of the hippie era, “Get Together,” a Top Five hit in 1969, before he went on to pursue a solo career that lasted more than five decades, died on Sunday at his home in Aiken, S.C. He was 83.His death was announced by his publicist, Michael Jensen, who did not specify a cause.Mr. Young didn’t write “Get Together.” It was composed by the folk singer Dino Valenti, later a member of the band Quicksilver Messenger Service, under the pseudonym Chet Powers. But Mr. Young’s voice idealized it, and the chorus he sang — “Come on people now/Smile on your brother/Everybody get together/Try to love one another right now” — became one of the best-known refrains of the 1960s.“The lyrics are just to die for,” Mr. Young told the website The Arts Fuse in 2018. “To this day, it gives me a thrill to play it.”He composed many other key pieces of the Youngbloods’ repertoire during their prime in the late 1960s, including the brooding “Darkness, Darkness,” which reflected the terror he imagined American soldiers were experiencing during the Vietnam War; “Sunlight,” a ravishing ode to passionate love; and “Ride the Wind,” a jazzy paean to freedom.The lyrics to many of Mr. Young’s songs celebrated the gifts nature gives, from the dreamy play of sunlight on skin to the unfettered sweep of wind in the hair.“Love of the natural world is as much a theme in my music as romantic love,” he told the website Music Aficionado in 2016. “I get more out of walking over the ridgetop in Marin and looking out at the national seashore than any drugs I ever did” — a reference to the Northern California county where he lived for much of his career.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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      An ‘In Like a Lion, Out Like a Lamb’ Playlist

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      Prepare for spring with songs from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Lion Babe, Buddy Guy and others.Karen O of the Yeah Yeah YeahsJack Plunkett/Invision, via Associated PressDear listeners,Early March is such a tease, occasionally giving us a fleeting preview of desperately desired springtime — only to snatch it away with yet another dreary, blustery, 30-something-degree day. You know the saying: “In like a lion, out like a lamb.” Since we’ve finally almost reached that fabled calendrical turning point in the middle of the month, I thought I’d put together a playlist that goes in like a lion and out like a lamb.Given their potent and evocative symbolism, there is no shortage of music that references lions or lambs. Lions connote strength, fire and even potential danger; lambs, in keeping with their biblical association, often represent purity, gentleness and self-sacrifice. In today’s selections, you’ll hear these themes explored by artists like Genesis, Neko Case and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, among others.May these songs bring warmer afternoons, longer days and much lighter jackets.Momentum for the sake of momentum,LindsayListen along while you read.1. The Tokens: “The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Wimoweh)”Let’s begin with the most famous version of this oft-covered classic about a lion in peaceful repose. Most elements of what would eventually become “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” were written by the South African musician Solomon Linda, whose 1939 version of the song was titled “Mbube,” the Zulu word for “lion.” Pete Seeger’s folk group the Weavers released an influential version in 1951 (as Seeger, Edward Norton plays it onstage in “A Complete Unknown”), but the doo-wop group the Tokens took the song to new heights of popularity in 1961, with this rendition that featured English-language lyrics by the songwriter George David Weiss.▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTubeWe 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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      Chappell Roan’s Bro-Country Tweak and 9 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Playboi Carti, Haim, Bon Iver, Willie Nelson 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.Chappell Roan, ‘The Giver’Chappell Roan provocatively but persuasively dons country-queen drag on “The Giver,” her first single in nearly a year, which she previewed on a November episode of “Saturday Night Live.” Driven by a boot-stomping beat and heavily embroidered with fiddles and banjos, the track is a vividly rendered throwback to country’s ’90s pop crossover moment — think Shania Twain and the Chicks — though its cheeky lyrics (full of queer innuendo) frame 21st-century bro-country in its cross hairs. “Ain’t no country boy quitter,” Roan winks at a love interest on a rollicking, shout-along chorus that centers female pleasure. “I get the job done.” “The Giver” feels like the beginning of the self-assured second chapter of Roan’s stardom, since her previous smashes were all sleeper hits that crawled up the charts long after their initial release. But here she’s stepping confidently into an expectant spotlight, unbowed by the pressure and ready to fulfill the song’s promise: “Baby, I deliver.” LINDSAY ZOLADZHaim, ‘Relationships’The Haim sisters, who haven’t released an album since 2020, juggle cynicism and connection in a new single, “Relationships.” The backup is steady-chugging midtempo R&B, with cushy piano chords and a firm backbeat; the lyrics pile on the ambivalence. The sisters ask, “Don’t they end up all the same? When there’s no one left to blame?” Seconds later they admit, “I think I’m in love but I can’t stand [expletive] relationships.” Consider it an update of Samuel Johnson’s line about a second marriage: “a triumph of hope over experience.” JON PARELESPlayboy Carti featuring Kendrick Lamar, ‘Good Credit’Playboi Carti has optimized hip-hop for the splintered-attention era of streaming and TikTok. He releases a barrage of one-off singles and features, slinging high-impact sounds and percussive, seconds-long phrases in unpredictable voices. Meanwhile, he’s been working on “I Am Music,” his first full-length album — a 30-track marathon — since “Whole Lotta Red” in 2020. Among the guests is Kendrick Lamar, who shows up on “Good Credit” to anoint “Carti my evil twin.” Lamar raps about his own un-gimmicky integrity and success: “The numbers is nothing, the money is nothing / I really been him, I promise.” Carti’s boasts are more scattershot — women, dangerous associates, drugs — and one is undeniable: “I got too many flows.” PARELESBon Iver featuring Danielle Haim, ‘If Only I Could Wait’Doubts and yearning — and electronics and distortion — threaten to overcome Justin Vernon, who performs as Bon Iver, in “If Only I Could Wait” from his coming album, “Sable, Fable.” He wonders, “Can I incur the weight? / Am I really this afraid now?” in one of his majestically hymn-like melodies — a melody that’s set atop edgy electronic drums and interrupted by stray guitar lines. Danielle Haim arrives with companionship and sympathy: “I know that it’s hard to keep holding, keep holding strong.” But their verses and vocal lines collide. By the time they find harmony, they conclude they’re “best alone,” more bereft than before. PARELESWillie Nelson featuring Rodney Crowell, ‘Oh What a Beautiful World’Willie Nelson’s next album, due April 25, is filled with songs from the catalog of Rodney Crowell, who joins him for a duet on the title track: “Oh What a Beautiful World.” It’s an easygoing, well-traveled reflection on life’s ups and downs — “It’s a walk in the park, or a shot in the dark” — delivered with Nelson’s grizzled, kindly mixture of acceptance and tenacity. PARELESWe 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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      5 Years After Covid Closed the Theaters, Audiences Are Returning

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      Broadway is almost back, and pop music tours and sports events are booming. But Hollywood, museums and other cultural sectors have yet to bounce back.It was five years ago today — March 12, 2020 — that the widening coronavirus pandemic forced Broadway to go dark, museums to shut their doors, concert halls and opera houses to go silent and stadiums and arenas to remain empty.At the time, they hoped to reopen in a month. It took many a year and a half.Since live performances resumed, the recovery has been uneven, but there are signs that audiences are finally coming back. Here’s a snapshot of where things stand:Broadway is 95 percent back.It’s been a slow road back for Broadway, but the industry is finally nearing its prepandemic levels. Attendance so far this season is at about 95 percent of what it was at the same point in the 2018-2019 season, its last full season before the pandemic, when it was setting records.“Oh, Mary!” has been a surprise hit this season, reminding the industry that shows can work without known I.P. or famous stars. “Wicked” is defying gravity thanks to the renewed interest brought by the film adaptation. For the first time since 2018, all 41 Broadway theaters have had shows in them this season. And there are more shows than usual regularly grossing more than $1 million a week.The crowds have returned to Broadway, and to the Times Square area. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut — and this is a big but — profitability is down. That’s because the costs of producing on Broadway keep rising, so even reasonably strong ticket sales are not enough.Beyond Times Square, the picture is decidedly mixed. Touring Broadway shows have been selling quite strongly. But nonprofit theaters, both Off Broadway and in cities across the country, are struggling. Having burned through the government assistance that came at the height of the pandemic, many regional theaters are now reporting budget deficits and are programming fewer shows and attracting smaller audiences than they did previously.— More