Pop and Rock Music

Subterms

    More stories

    • 63 Shares181 Views

      in Music

      A Tax Day Jam Session

      by

      File your 1040 to tunes by Destiny’s Child, Dr. John, Big Tymers and more.Destiny’s Child onstage in 2005, giving a withering look to those bills in question.Rahav SegevDear listeners,Lindsay is still out, which means you’ve got me (an editor who focuses on pop culture) on a day where you may need a bit of good fortune: Tax Day.I don’t know what kind of anxiety April 15 provokes in you, but I’ve collected a playlist inspired by a bit of family lore. As the story goes, my newly married dad once griped to my grandfather about how quickly bills ate up a paycheck, down to the last dollar. Gramps’s response: “Be glad you had that dollar.”So in the spirit of celebrating having just enough, I’m sharing my Tax Day jams. Savvy reader, you do not need me to point out all the root-of-all-evil bangers, scrapin’ and scrappin’ classics or TV ad earworms that mention money, money, money. I am also not here to question the tax code. Instead, I’ve assembled a set of songs that bop in the face of financial constraints, because getting down is, for now, still free.I fly in any weather,ElenaListen along while you read.1. Ray Charles: “Busted”Harlan Howard’s lyrics are about as low as low gets (“my bills are all due and the baby needs shoes but I’m busted”) and suit the songwriter’s “three chords and the truth” approach to country classics. But under Ray Charles’s guidance, and with a blaring horn section, this 1963 single gains a “but who cares?” lilt that earned Charles the Grammy for best R&B recording.▶ 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

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      New Songs From Pulp, Bon Iver, Rauw Alejandro and More

      by

      Listen to tracks by Bon Iver, Valerie June, Rauw Alejandro 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.Pulp, ‘Spike Island’“This time I’ll get it right,” Jarvis Cocker vows on “Spike Island” from “More,” the first album since 2001 by Pulp, the 1990s Britpop standard bearers. Due in June, the new album grew out of songwriting spurred by a Pulp reunion tour that started in 2023. The band has reclaimed its old glam-rock swagger, backed by strings, and Cocker is just self-conscious enough: “I exist to do this — shouting and pointing,” he sings. True to Britpop, the song’s chorus (“Spike Island come alive”) is a British rock self-reference, to an annoying D.J.’s exhortations at a 1990 Stone Roses concert. And in an equally self-conscious video, Cocker prompts A.I. to make Pulp’s 1995 album cover photos “come alive,” with hilariously suboptimal results.Stereolab, ‘Aerial Troubles’After 15 years between albums, Stereolab has completed a new one: “Instant Holograms on Metal Film,” due May 23. Its first single, “Aerial Troubles,” has the band sounding like its old self, imperturbably setting out patterns within patterns while the lyrics critique late capitalism. “An unfillable hole / An insatiable state of consumption — systemic,” they sing in call-and-response. “We can’t eat our way out of it.” Synthesizers buzz and drums tick steadily as Stereolab calmly anticipates “the new yet undefined future / That holds the prospect for greater wisdom.”Turnstile, ‘Never Enough’From its beginnings more than a decade ago, Turnstile thoroughly established its hardcore bona fides without ever ruling out melody, allowing its music room to expand. “Never Enough,” which will be the title song of Turnstile’s first album since 2021, sets its succinct lyrics in two very different ways. Its intro and outro use stately, billowing, organ-like chords. But its middle section is a fortress of punk-grunge guitars and barreling drums. It crests into a singalong-friendly refrain — “It’s never enough love” — before the track dissolves back into a rich keyboard haze.Bon Iver featuring Dijon and Flock of Dimes, ‘Day One’A couple struggles against self-doubt and depression and tries to reconcile in “Day One” from “Sable, Fable,” Bon Iver’s cathartic new album. “It got bad enough I thought that I would leave,” Justin Vernon moans. Jenn Wasner (Flock of Dimes) advises, “You may have to toughen up while unlearning that lie.” Together, they sing, “I don’t know who I am without you.” While the chords and tempo come from gospel, the production is fractured and glitchy, questioning its own comforts.Valerie June, ‘Endless Tree’Constant bad news on TV? Pervasive isolation and hopelessness? In “Endless Tree,” from her new album “Owls, Omens and Oracles,” Valerie June recognizes dire times — she’s not naïve — and preaches hope, community spirit and “getting the courage to do something small” anyway. “If you’re on the couch and you’re feeling alone / May you feel moved after hearing this song,” she urges. An increasingly frantic orchestra and chorus join her, revealing some tension behind the positive thinking.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

    • 150 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      ‘One to One: John & Yoko’ Review: A Year in the Life

      by

      Kevin Macdonald’s immersive documentary follows the couple from their heady first days in New York to their galvanizing concert at Madison Square Garden in 1972.That John Lennon contained multitudes and mysteries was clear to anyone who listened to him when he was in the Beatles and after he discovered himself anew with Yoko Ono, who united with him mind, body and soul. They first met in 1966, kept in touch and finally shared a long night that ended with their making love at dawn. “It was very beautiful,” Lennon later said. They were still together in 1980 when he was fatally shot in New York. He was only 40. In the years since his death, Ono — who turned 92 in February and has retreated from public view — has helped keep him vividly present through her art, music and activism.Lennon and sometimes Ono are exhilaratingly present in “One to One: John & Yoko,” a documentary flooded with music and feeling that revisits a narrow if eventful period in the couple’s life. Directed by Kevin Macdonald and heroically edited by Sam Rice-Edwards (who’s also the co-director), the movie focuses on the early 1970s when Lennon and Ono were living in a modest apartment in the West Village amid clutter, clouds of smoke (cigarette and otherwise) and a hardworking television. “I just like TV,” an offscreen Lennon says in the documentary. “Whatever it is,” he adds, “that’s the image of ourselves that we’re portraying.”The image of Lennon and Ono in “One to One” is of an appealing, loving, creatively — and politically — fired-up couple who have happily lost and found themselves in the ferment of New York. By the time they landed in the city in 1971, Lennon and Ono were married, and the Beatles were no more. (The group made it legal in 1974.) When the couple met in 1966 it had been at one of her gallery shows. There, Lennon climbed a ladder featured in one of Ono’s artworks to read a single word that she had scribbled on the ceiling: “Yes.” Perhaps it was prophetic: They were married to other people, but soon said yes to each other, leading to a lot of ugliness directed at Ono, who was wrongly blamed for the Beatles’ breakup.For “One to One,” Macdonald has drawn from a wealth of engrossing, at times arresting archival material, including footage of Lennon and Ono at home, as well as never-before-released phone calls, for a movie that is as busy and as populated as their lives appeared to be. Allen Ginsberg pops up here, once while reciting best practices for anal hygiene. So do Angela Davis, Phil Spector, George Wallace and Jerry Rubin, who spoke about revolution alongside Lennon and Ono on “The Mike Douglas Show” in an eye-popping 1972 clip. Cinephile alert! The blond guest in that snippet is the filmmaker Barbara Loden, whose “Wanda” opened the year before. Lennon was right: TV was worth watching then.In making the documentary, Macdonald et al. have taken an immersive rather than an instructional approach, one that plunges viewers into a rushing stream of moving and still images, among them home movies, concert footage, news reports and far too many period commercials. There are no original voice-overs or talking-head interviews to help guide the way, and most of the text onscreen is transcripts of the phone calls. There are, less happily and helpfully, far too many shots of a re-creation of their apartment made specifically for the movie. (Ono and Lennon’s son, Sean Ono Lennon, served as the music producer.)The thread that winds throughout “One to One” is the Aug. 30, 1972, concert of the movie’s title that Lennon and Ono coordinated at Madison Square Garden alongside the likes of Stevie Wonder and Roberta Flack. Earlier that year, the television reporter Geraldo Rivera had shocked the viewing public with a harrowing expose of the Willowbrook State School on Staten Island, an institution for people with developmental disabilities where the children’s ward was crowded with grimly neglected boys and girls. Horrified, Lennon and Ono helped organize the event (they performed twice that day) to raise money for the children; it was, as the movie puts it, “the only full-length concert John gave after leaving the Beatles.”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

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Pop Songs, ‘Hamilton’ and Windows 95 Chime Join National Registry

      by

      The recordings, along with works by Tracy Chapman, Elton John and the rock band Chicago, are among the 25 selected for preservation by the Library of Congress.Hits by Celine Dion and Mary J. Blige. The song “Happy Trails” by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. Tracy Chapman’s debut album. The original cast album of the Broadway musical “Hamilton.” The chimes Brian Eno wrote for Microsoft Windows in 1995.These were among the 25 audio works chosen this year to join the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress, which preserves works deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” that are at least 10 years old.More than 2,600 nominations were made by the public this year, with “Chicago Transit Authority,” the 1969 album from the rock band Chicago, topping the list, according to a news release from the Library of Congress.The Elton John album “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” — which features songs like “Bennie and the Jets” and “Candle in the Wind” — and the R&B album “My Life” by Mary J. Blige were among the top 10 of public nominations.The new class of inductees for the National Recoding Registry brings its total number of titles to 675.Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress, said in a statement that the selected works were the sounds of America and that the registry was “our evolving nation’s playlist.”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

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Getting Loud With Sleigh Bells and Beyond

      by

      Hear songs from the duo’s latest album, “Bunky Becky Birthday Boy,” plus predecessors and protégés.Sleigh Bells onstage in 2012.Phil Sears for The New York TimesDear listeners,Jon Pareles here, sitting in while Lindsay is on book leave. This week cranks The Amplifier all the way up — and then further into overload.Sleigh Bells, the duo of Alexis Krauss and Derek Miller, have just released their sixth album, “Bunky Becky Birthday Boy.” Like the rest of their catalog, the new album is a recombinant bash, slamming together selected elements of loud and louder styles — punk, metal, grunge, hip-hop, electro, glam, garage-rock — with the suddenness of digital edits. Along with their sonic impact, Sleigh Bells songs also deal in emotional extremes, jumping between jubilation and sorrow, exhilaration and despair, deep loneliness and shout-along community.With their first singles in 2009, Sleigh Bells presaged the studio-tweaked, genre-hopping, whiz-bang mash-ups of hyperpop — ideas and strategies that, more than a decade later, are often taken for granted. The juxtapositions are startling; they also hold decades of allusions. This playlist mingles Sleigh Bells songs with what might be the band’s influences and protégés — some roots and offshoots, and all pure guesswork.Feel like dynamite,JonListen along while you read.1. Sleigh Bells: “Infinity Guitars”“Infinity Guitars,” from Sleigh Bells’ 2010 debut album, “Treats,” sets out the band’s sound in the rawest lo-fi. Krauss might be singing about toxic masculinity in the terse lyrics she shouts: “Street wars, straight men / Cowboys, Indians.” Everything is pushed into distortion: guitars, vocals, percussion, stereo handclaps. But with some wordless ahs, Krauss also offers just enough melody to hint at playfulness.▶ 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

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Music

      Madonna and Elton John End Their Decades-Old Feud

      by

      They made peace backstage at “Saturday Night Live.” You’d be forgiven for forgetting that their decades-old dispute had remained unresolved.Kendrick Lamar and Drake. Taylor Swift and Kanye West. Liam and Noel Gallagher of Oasis.Elton John and Madonna?In the annals of celebrity feuds, the one between these two music industry titans does not rank particularly high. In fact, you’d be forgiven for forgetting that they had a dispute decades ago that remained unresolved.Until this weekend, that is, when they made up backstage at “Saturday Night Live.” The two effusively announced the reconciliation on social media.“We Finally Buried the Hatchet!!!” Madonna wrote on Monday in a long Instagram post that was accompanied by a photograph of the two musicians with their arms around each other.She described the moment of forgiveness, writing that she had found out that John was scheduled to be the musical guest on “Saturday Night Live” alongside Brandi Carlile, and decided to confront him backstage.“When I met him, the first thing out of his mouth was, ‘Forgive Me’ and the wall between us fell down,” she wrote. Within minutes, she added, they were hugging.“Thank you for forgiving me and my big mouth,” John wrote in the replies of her post, adding, “I’m not proud of what I said.”He posted the same photo on his Instagram story, with the caption “a healing moment.”The tender moment warmed fans’ hearts — and left some saying, “Remind me what this was about again?”The two were vague on the details of their dispute. Madonna said only, “Over the decades it hurt me to know that someone I admired so much shared his dislike of me publicly as an artist.”The acrimony started in the early 2000s, when John made a series of critical comments about Madonna. In 2002, he called “Die Another Day,” her theme song for the James Bond film of the same name, the “worst Bond tune ever.”At the Q Awards, the now defunct British music awards, in 2004, while accepting the classic songwriter award, he questioned Madonna’s nomination for best live act, saying, “Since when has lip-syncing been live?” Madonna’s representative said at the time that she did not lip-sync.In 2012, when the two were competing for best original song at the Golden Globes, John said that Madonna didn’t stand a chance of beating him. After she won, she said she hoped that he would continue speaking to her for the next couple of years.That year, John told an Australian reporter that Madonna’s career was over and called her a “nightmare.”It’s unclear what changed between then and this weekend. But in her post on Monday, Madonna suggested that a musical partnership might be in the works.John told her that he had written a song for her and wanted to collaborate, she said. More

    • 88 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      Is Yoko Ono Finally Getting Her Moment?

      by

      A new biography and film about Yoko Ono offer more opportunities to assess her contributions to culture. Two pop music critics debate if they’re worthy of their subject.LINDSAY ZOLADZ Are we living through a Yokossance? Though the 92-year-old conceptual artist, musician and Beatle widow Yoko Ono has spent much of the past decade far from the public eye dealing with health issues, each year seems to bring a new opportunity to reassess her contributions to culture.In the 2020s alone, there has been a tribute album, a small shelf’s worth of biographies and, just last year, a blockbuster, career-spanning show of her artwork at London’s Tate Modern. (That retrospective, “Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind,” comes to Chicago in October.) All of that followed Peter Jackson’s long-awaited 2021 Beatles documentary “Get Back,” which reignited debates about Ono’s influence on the band she was unfairly accused of “breaking up.”David Sheff, a longtime friend of Ono’s who is best known for writing a memoir about his son’s struggles with addiction, “Beautiful Boy” (Ono gave him permission to title it after a John Lennon song), argues strongly against that assumption in his new biography, “Yoko.” He even takes it a step further, proposing that “it’s possible that the band stayed together longer than they would have because of Yoko,” since she gave Lennon several years of relative groundedness during which the Beatles made “Let It Be” and “Abbey Road.” “During the writing and recording of those albums, John had a foot out the door,” Sheff writes. “If he hadn’t had Yoko, the other foot might have followed sooner than it did.”We get extended glimpses of Ono and Lennon a few years later in “One to One: John & Yoko,” Kevin Macdonald’s forthcoming documentary that focuses on a well-told chapter of their story, their time living in New York City in the early 1970s.“Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind,” on display in Germany last September. The retrospective comes to Chicago in October.Martin Meissner/Associated PressI’m curious, Jon: Did either Sheff’s biography or Macdonald’s film add anything to your understanding of Ono? I’m also thinking of an essay that our colleague Amanda Hess wrote in 2021 about Ono’s transfixing presence in “Get Back.” She said she had observed the slow evolution of Ono from “a cultural villain” into “a kind of folk hero.” Do you think that shift is now fully complete?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

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Clem Burke, Versatile, Hard-Driving Drummer for Blondie, Dies at 70

      by

      He provided both the explosive percussion on hits like “Call Me” and the laid-back rhythm on the reggae-influenced “The Tide Is High.”Clem Burke, whose energetic, versatile drumming provided the beat for the band Blondie as it churned out post-punk, disco and rock hits in the late 1970s and early ’80s — and then again after the band re-formed in 1997 — died on Sunday. He was 70.In a statement, the band said the cause was cancer. It did not say where he died.Though Blondie is best remembered for its charismatic lead singer, Debbie Harry, Mr. Burke’s relentless percussion was just as important to its success as one of the most popular American rock groups of its era.He can be heard tumbling forth with a rapid disco beat in the intro to “Call Me” (1980), only to switch to a tropical lilt on the reggae-inflected “The Tide Is High” (1980).Like other post-punk bands that slid into the New Wave movement — the Cars, Devo — Blondie was known as much for its image as for its substance. The band’s album covers and press photos often featured Ms. Harry, with her angular face and wispy blonde hair, framed by her four male bandmates, usually in black suits and skinny ties.Mr. Burke stood out with his boyish cheeks and vertiginous mop of hair. But he and the band were about more than their sharp looks: In one survey, Rolling Stone ranked him the 61st greatest drummer of all time.Mr. Burke, second from left, on the cover of Blondie’s debut studio album, released in December 1976.Private Stock RecordsWe 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