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      Taylor Swift, SZA, Billie Eilish: Who Will Have a Big Grammys?

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      Taylor Swift and SZA could make history at the 66th annual awards on Sunday night, where young women dominate the nominations, and revered older artists will take the stage.The 66th annual Grammy Awards on Sunday are poised to be a celebration of a dominant year for women in pop music, with female stars like SZA, Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish facing off in the major categories.SZA, whose “SOS” was a critical and chart smash, leads with nine nominations; the pop and R&B singer and songwriter Victoria Monét has seven; and Swift, Rodrigo, Eilish, Miley Cyrus and the indie-rock trio boygenius have six apiece. Swift and SZA each have the potential for landmark wins.For an award show that in the past has been criticized for its treatment of female stars, its lineup alone is being interpreted as a sign of progress. But the show this year is taking place in the shadow of lawsuits against two former Grammy leaders, accusing each of sexual assault. Neil Portnow, a former Recording Academy president, has denied the allegations against him; Michael Greene, his predecessor, has not commented.Never bet on the Grammys’ being too predictable. Industry politics, vote-splitting and a shifting membership have the potential, as always, to scramble outcomes, despite expectations about who may win or lose.Whoever wins, the night will have a roster of performers that mixes young and old, fresh faces and classics, including SZA, Eilish, Rodrigo, Joni Mitchell, Luke Combs, Dua Lipa, Travis Scott, Burna Boy, Billy Joel and U2. The host, for a fourth straight year, is the comedian Trevor Noah.Here is a look at some of the night’s major story lines.Will Taylor Swift Make History?Swift was a gale-force power in pop culture last year, and she has the potential to make a major mark at the Grammys.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?  More

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      Melinda Wilson, Wife of Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, Dies at 77

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      Ms. Wilson’s relationship with her husband, a co-founder of the Beach Boys, was portrayed in the 2014 film “Love & Mercy.”Melinda Wilson, who rescued her future husband, the Beach Boys co-founder Brian Wilson, from psychological ruin when they were dating in the 1980s, died on Tuesday. She was 77.Mr. Wilson confirmed her death on Instagram, saying that they had been married for 28 years. No cause of death was given.Jean Sievers, Mr. Wilson’s manager, said that Ms. Wilson had died suddenly at her home in Beverly Hills, Calif. She added that the couple has five adopted children — Dakota Rose, Daria Rose, Dash, Dylan and Delanie Rae — who all survive her and carry Mr. Wilson’s surname.The couple’s relationship was portrayed in the 2014 biopic “Love & Mercy.” The film shows Ms. Wilson (Elizabeth Banks) meeting Mr. Wilson, played by both John Cusack and Paul Dano, in a Cadillac showroom in Los Angeles where she was working as a saleswoman.After the film was released, Ms. Banks said in an interview with ABC News that she had met Ms. Wilson while preparing for the role.“She said to me, ‘Music is his first love,’” Ms. Banks told ABC. “‘Nothing can replace it. It’s his being, it’s his essence, it’s his everything. So I’m settling for second, but it’s a pretty good — it’s a pretty good second.’”The film shows Ms. Wilson helping her then boyfriend navigate a bout of mental illness in the 1980s. That effort, and their courtship, is complicated by the presence of Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti), a psychologist who had helped Mr. Wilson fight off depression and substance abuse to stage a professional comeback.Mr. Landy, whose team of professional minders at one point lived with Mr. Wilson 24 hours a day, insinuated himself into the musician’s life to the point where the therapist was at one point acting as his Mr. Wilson’s business partner, record producer and occasional songwriting partner.In 1992, a lawsuit by Mr. Wilson’s family resulted in a court order that barred Mr. Landy from contacting Mr. Wilson. Mr. Landy died in 2006.John Cusack as Brian Wilson and Elizabeth Banks as Melinda Ledbetter in the 2014 film “Love & Mercy.”François DuhamelMelinda Kae Ledbetter was born on Oct. 3, 1946, in Pueblo, Colo. She grew up in Whittier, Calif., and went to college there before becoming a model, Ms. Sievers said.She also worked as a producer on several films related to her husband’s music, including “Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road” (2021) and “Pet Sounds Live at Royce Hall” (2006). The latter title refers to “Pet Sounds,” a landmark 1966 Beach Boys album.When the couple saw the film “Love & Mercy” for the first time, Ms. Wilson told ABC News, she did not know how tough the experience would be.“I think I was more nervous than him when I took him to see it, and after, I said, ‘So what did you think?’” she said. “And he goes, ‘Oh, it was really a lot worse in real life.’” More

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      Was 1968 the Grammys’ Best Year Ever?

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      Before the 2024 awards on Sunday, revisit a ceremony where the Recording Academy got it right, honoring the Beatles, Bobbie Gentry, Aretha Franklin and more.In 1968 the Beatles won their first and only album of the year Grammy for “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” PA Images, via Getty ImagesDear listeners,The 66th annual Grammy Awards take place on Sunday, and this year’s lineup of performers is pretty exceptional. I mean, Joni Mitchell is performing! For the first time ever at the Grammys! I could really just stop there, but Billy Joel, Billie Eilish, SZA, U2, Olivia Rodrigo, Burna Boy, Luke Combs, Dua Lipa, Travis Scott and more are scheduled to grace the stage. Will Joel and Eilish take this opportunity to start a supergroup called the Billies? Will SZA and U2 start an all-caps collaborative side project called SUZA2? Will Travis Scott meet Joni Mitchell, and if so, what will they talk about? The possibilities of this year’s ceremony are endless, and a little weird.To kick off Grammy week, I thought it would be fun to take a look back at another exceptional-if-slightly-odd year in Grammy history: the 10th annual ceremony, which took place on Feb. 29, 1968 and honored the music of 1967.The Grammys, infamously, do not always get it right. Sometimes their slights are laughably egregious (like when Metallica lost the 1989 award for best hard rock/heavy metal recording to … Jethro Tull); other times, they play things annoyingly safe (see: Beyoncé’s last three losses for album of the year). But just as a broken clock is right twice a day, sometimes justice actually is served at the Grammys. And 1968 was one of those years.Consider that album of the year went to a release that pushed the format forward into the future, and one that’s still often (and rightly) mentioned in lists of the greatest albums of all time. Some incredibly worthy artists won their first-ever Grammys that year: Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin and Tammy Wynette. Many of the songs and artists awarded have — gasp — actually stood the test of time.Today’s playlist is culled entirely from the winners of the 10th annual Grammys. Feed your meter, inflate that beautiful balloon and prepare to hop in a time machine ready to take you up, up and away.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?  More

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      5 Places to Visit in Tucson, Arizona, With Singer Linda Ronstadt

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      In the course of becoming a Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner and the subject of a forthcoming biopic set to star Selena Gomez, Linda Ronstadt has packed theaters around the globe. But her favorite sits on a one-way side street in Tucson, Ariz.Ms. Ronstadt in Tucson in September 2022. She still makes occasional trips to the city, where she was born and raised.Cassidy Araiza for The New York TimesWith a courtyard draped in vines and string lights and a main stage the size of “a good little opera house,” the 1927 Temple of Music and Art is “just magic,” said Ms. Ronstadt. Before the onset of progressive supranuclear palsy — a Parkinson’s-like disorder that ended her singing career in 2009 — she could fill the auditorium with her unamplified voice (little surprise to anyone who’s ever heard her belt out “Blue Bayou” or “Long Long Time,” for the legions who may have just discovered her on “The Last of Us”). She also loves the theater’s proscenium: a stage-framing arch that instantly focuses the eye — “like that fireplace,” she explained, gesturing toward a wall near the sofa where we chatted in her cozy San Francisco living room.At 77, Ms. Ronstadt now lives in the Bay Area, close to her kids, but the Sonoran Desert borderlands where she was born and raised will always be home. And despite the changes she sees when she returns every six months or so, plenty of familiar local pleasures remain, for starters: bubbling-hot cheese crisps at El Minuto Cafe, ice-chilled shrimp cocktail at Hotel Congress, giant saguaros at every turn and live entertainment of all kinds at the Fox Tucson Theater, where her father — a businessman with a renowned baritone — used to perform as Gil Ronstadt and His Star-Spangled Megaphone.The Ronstadts have been part of the Tucson music scene since her grandfather arrived from Mexico in 1882 and helped found the Club Filarmónico Tucsonense civic band. And perhaps no place highlights the family’s cultural legacy like the former Tucson Music Hall, rechristened the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall in May 2022. The naming ceremony took place during a mariachi spectacular that featured Jesús “Chuy” Guzmán, who’d recorded with Ms. Ronstadt on the 1987 “Canciones de Mi Padre” — still the best-selling non-English album in U.S. history. This ode to the borderland classics she’d grown up on was remastered and rereleased last fall, and there may be no better soundtrack for exploring her hometown.Here are five of her favorite places to visit in Tucson:1. Barrio BreadMs. Ronstadt always stops at the artisanal bakery Barrio Bread on her way from the airport when she visits.Cassidy Araiza for The New York TimesWe 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?  More

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      If It Isn’t Perfect, Is It Still K-Pop?

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      Musical acts like Balming Tiger are challenging the idea that K-pop is nothing but polished, perfectly synchronized boy bands and girl groups.What comes to mind when you hear the word “K-pop”? Is it the global boy band phenomenon BTS, wearing studded jackets and dancing in perfect sync? Or the girl group Blackpink, performing at Coachella in trendy fashions and perfectly curled hair?How about an “independent music collective” of casually dressed people, crowded around a mixing board in a one-room studio, across the street from a Seoul restaurant specializing in fried chicken?“Give me some more bass,” said Omega Sapien, a vocalist with electric-green hair and grills, swaying his hips and grunting to the beat. The studio was cluttered with art, vinyl records, dumbbells and other odds and ends. Another singer lay prone nearby, nursing a bad hangover.For Balming Tiger, this is daily life as an alternative K-pop band. Their music, a fusion of diverse genres from electro to hip-hop, is funky and edgy. Their look, unkempt and grungy, is far from the professional styling of the groups that most of the world associates with K-pop.“Even if we wanted to be like idols, we can’t,” said Chanhee, far left, a vocalist with Balming Tiger. Other members are, from left, Mudd the Student, Unsinkable, BJ Wnjn, Omega Sapien and Sogumm. Woohae Cho for The New York TimesBut they claim that label, too. K-pop is any music that comes out of South Korea, according to Omega Sapien. “Everything in that realm is K-pop,” he 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?  More

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      ‘The Greatest Night in Pop’ Review: They Were the World

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      This documentary shows the highlights of the recording session for the charity song “We Are the World,” which assembled a who’s who of pop celebrities.In late 1984 the singer and activist Harry Belafonte was both impressed and perturbed by “Do They Know It’s Christmas?,” a British charity single featuring a cast of pop stars. The proceeds from the project went to Ethiopian famine relief. Belafonte complained to the music manager Ken Kragen, “We have white folks saving Black folks and we don’t have Black folks saving Black folks.”Such was the spur for the 1985 song “We Are the World.” The creative nucleus was Black: its writers, Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson; Stevie Wonder (who didn’t get a writing credit but, as relayed in the film, was invaluable to the whole creative process); and the producer-arranger Quincy Jones. How the project turned into a one-night-only superstar fest — “If a bomb lands on this place,” a droll Paul Simon quipped while surveying the room, “John Denver’s back on top” — is chronicled in “The Greatest Night in Pop,” directed by Bao Nguyen.While the making of the song was partially detailed in its long-form video, there’s plenty of new, engaging, and sometimes eyebrow-raising anecdotal material here. Wonder’s impromptu notion of singing a phrase in Swahili (which was squelched when it was pointed out that Swahili isn’t spoken in Ethiopia) compelled the country star Waylon Jennings to walk out of the session. A nervous Cyndi Lauper was almost dissuaded from participating by her (unnamed) then-boyfriend, who thought the record would flop. And a few interviewees relay that Al Jarreau was tipsy throughout.Bob Dylan did not sit for a present-day interview, but Bruce Springsteen did. One of the handful of rock stars who’d also make an excellent rock critic, he’s a vivid docent and apologist for the song: “Steve Perry can sing! He’s got that great voice. Up in that Sam Cooke territory.” As the assembled room pays tribute to Belafonte, a salty joke improvised in song by Stevie Wonder is worth the price of a Netflix subscription.The Greatest Night in PopNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Radiohead Spinoff the Smile Gets Wonderfully Stranger

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      A spinoff of Radiohead, the trio of Jonny Greenwood, Tom Skinner and Thom Yorke pushes further from the solid ground of pop on its second studio LP, “Wall of Eyes.”“Don’t think you know me,” Thom Yorke intones near the end of the Smile’s second studio album, “Wall of Eyes.” He adds, “Don’t think that I am everything you say.” With its new LP, the Smile makes itself increasingly elusive. It’s now a band intent on destabilizing structures and dissolving expectations.The Smile is still unmistakably a Radiohead spinoff. It’s the trio of Yorke and Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead, with the British jazz drummer Tom Skinner. Yorke’s tormented voice has stayed upfront, and the songwriting leans into Radiohead’s dissonances, odd meters and fully enveloping aura of anxiety.The Smile’s 2022 debut album, “A Light for Attracting Attention,” and its live recordings introduced what was mostly a stripped-down, cerebrally twisted funk band — akin to Yorke’s 2012 project Atoms for Peace, which had Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers on bass. But on “Wall of Eyes,” the Smile questions and undermines its grooves. The band often lets them emerge only gradually, then deflates them or obscures them in complexly hazy productions.In the Smile’s new songs, solid ground — verbal or musical — is rare and precarious. The priority is atmosphere, not legibility. Yorke’s lyrics are fragmentary and bleak, full of apocalyptic tidings. “Soon you’ll be there/in all that fire and ice,” he croons in “Teleharmonic,” over chords that keep sliding out from under him. The album’s most coherent narrative, “Bending Hectic,” is the last words of a driver steering along the hairpin turns of an Italian mountain road, then “letting go of the wheel.” The track is an eight-minute exercise in suspended time, meditating on two slowly alternating chords before plunging into a cacophony of hard-rock guitars.Greenwood has long had a sideline scoring film soundtracks — among them “There Will Be Blood,” “Phantom Thread” and “The Power of the Dog” — and the Smile’s new songs allow themselves to be as amorphous and open-ended as film music. They’re not about hooks or choruses. Melodies recur while arrangements change radically around them; songs suddenly leap into entirely new territory.“Read the Room” begins with prickly guitar arpeggios and a sputtering beat, veers into a pretty bridge that doesn’t stay that way and spends its final two minutes seething over an entirely different riff. “Under Our Pillows,” which may be a reproach of social media — “You give yourself freely/Nowadays everyone’s for sharing,” Yorke chides — starts with crisp cross-rhythms: hopscotching guitar picking and a contrapuntal bass line over Skinner’s stop-start drumming. But the momentum shifts, the odd meter turns into a motoric 4/4 and then recedes into un-metered, breathy spaces. For a full minute, the track is nervous but ambient. Throughout the album, the Smile’s music feels molten and improvisatory, though it’s clearly premeditated.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?  More

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      21 Savage Holds Off Green Day for a Second Week at No. 1

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      The rapper’s latest, “American Dream,” easily outstreamed the veteran pop-punk band’s 14th studio album, “Saviors.”21 Savage, the London-born Atlanta rapper, easily fended off a challenge from Green Day to hold at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart for a second week.“American Dream,” 21 Savage’s latest album, featuring guest spots by Doja Cat, Travis Scott, Lil Durk, Young Thug and others, remains atop the Billboard 200 chart with the equivalent of 78,000 sales in the United States — down 40 percent from its debut — including 103 million streams, according to the tracking service Luminate. “American Dream” is the first new title to reach No. 1 on the chart in 2024, after holdovers by Taylor Swift and Morgan Wallen.Green Day’s “Saviors,” the veteran pop-punk stars’ 14th studio LP, opens at No. 4 with the equivalent of 49,000 sales; the majority of that, 39,000, came from traditional album sales, while songs from “Saviors” also garnered about 12 million streams. Green Day’s first appearance on the Billboard album chart was almost exactly 30 years ago: “Dookie,” the band’s breakthrough classic, made its chart debut in February 1994, at No. 127, and eventually rose to No. 2.Also this week, Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” is in second place, Drake’s “For All the Dogs” is No. 3 and Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season” is No. 5. More