Pop and Rock Music

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Bruce Springsteen on ‘Tracks II,’ His Box of Seven ‘Lost Albums’

      by

      “The past always weighs heavy on me,” Bruce Springsteen said on an April afternoon, sitting in the anteroom attached to Thrill Hill, his home studio in New Jersey, where he can make music at any time. “Our pasts have a lot to do with shaping who we are now and the things we’re pursuing. So that is a theme that constantly recurs to me, and I’m always rewriting it, trying to get it right.”Next Friday, Springsteen will unveil a huge, almost entirely unknown trove of songs from his past on “Tracks II: The Lost Albums.” They reveal musical paths — mostly pensive, occasionally rowdy — that he briefly explored but chose to set aside. Unlike his 1998 collection “Tracks,” a set of demos, alternate versions and unreleased songs dating back to the 1970s, “Tracks II,” with 83 songs, 74 of them previously unreleased in any form, is organized as seven distinct albums.Springsteen grew up in the era of vinyl LPs, not playlists that can be shuffled. For him an album is “a cohesive group of songs, basically, that end up being greater than the sum of their parts,” he said. “They resonate off of one another, creating altered meanings and meanings in reflection with the other songs.”A record, he added, “is exactly what it says it is. It is a record of who you are and where you were at that moment in your life. These were actual albums that were of a piece, of a moment, of a genre — that fell together, often while working on other albums.”As he’s been preparing this extensive look back, the 75-year-old musician, well aware of his longtime role as a symbol of America, has also been confronting the political present.The seven unreleased LPs of “Tracks II: The Lost Albums” sat in Springsteen’s vault until now because he sensed the timing was not right.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

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Justin Bieber Is ‘Standing on Business’ in Paparazzi Video

      by

      A video of the singer’s heated discussion about privacy with a group of photographers has been widely shared, sometimes without the full context of the situation.Justin Bieber is making headlines again.In videos circulating across social media and news outlets, Mr. Bieber is shown having what appears to be a heated exchange with a photographer last Thursday outside Soho House in Malibu, Calif.In the days since, fans have been speculating about his well-being and whether his social media posts, many of which could be read as fairly aggressive, have been a reaction to the incident.So what happened outside Soho House?The most widely shared section of the lengthy video shows Mr. Bieber, in a blue hooded sweatshirt, holding a flashlight next to his face, asking the photographer, “It’s not clocking to you that I’m standing on business, is it?”The phrase “standing on business,” which can mean taking responsibility, but can also mean not backing down, is part of a larger conversation the singer has with what appears to be a group of paparazzi. Over the course of the discussion, he repeatedly expresses concern about how clips of the interaction could be misrepresented.“You’re provoking me — you’re going to take this video out of context like you always do,” Mr. Bieber says, somewhat muffled by the voices of paparazzi assuring him they will not.After that exchange, which is kept at a fairly even tone, the interaction becomes more heated. Mr. Bieber, growing increasingly frustrated, fires off numerous expletives and repeatedly asks the paparazzi why they are “trying to provoke” him.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 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      A Trip Through Trip-Hop’s Past and Future

      by

      Listen to songs from Portishead and Cibo Matto, plus inheritors like Fcukers and a.s.o.Beth Gibbons of Portishead onstage in 2008.Oliver Hartung for The New York TimesDear listeners,Over the past couple of years, it’s started to feel like every out-of-favor electronic music style from the 1990s is returning at once. PinkPantheress is singing pop songs over drum-and-bass beats. Oklou uses trance synths. Hyperpop has made “uncool” taste a creative virtue. (On the less-out-of-favor, more-commercially-successful end of things, there’s Beyoncé and Charli XCX’s love for “Show Me Love.”)Signs have been building that trip-hop, a genre that reached popularity in the mid-90s by mixing atmospheric hip-hop beats with moody pop vocals, was next up for a resurgence. In one sense, it’s a sound that never fully went away — step into any swanky hotel bar over the past few decades — but it was seen as a creative dead end. “Today, trip-hop is the most toothless of beats-based styles,” the critic Jody Rosen wrote in a 2003 article in The New York Times about Massive Attack, one of the genre’s standard-bearers. “It’s easy listening for hipsters in space-age sneakers.”Well, lace up my space-age sneakers, because this music is sounding good again. Confirmation that I wasn’t imagining things hit my inbox via a recent edition of the always perceptive Herb Sundays music newsletter, which found ample evidence that trip-hop is in the zeitgeist, like Logic1000’s new, low-B.P.M. mix for the long-running DJ-Kicks series. (They referred to the sound as “downtempo,” one of a few related labels, but let’s not get lost in the subgenre soup and just vibe, OK?)Here are six classics from trip-hop’s initial wave and four tracks from current artists who are picking up the torch.A woman in the moon is singing to the earth,DaveListen 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

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      Paul Simon at the Beacon Theater: Quiet, Intricate, Masterly

      by

      Subtlety reigned as the musician played his post-farewell tour in New York, which included a full performance of his 33-minute LP, “Seven Psalms.”Paul Simon, 83, has simply changed his mind about a farewell to touring that he announced in 2018, with a valedictory arena tour that ended with a park concert in Queens. He had more to say and sing.He’s back on the road with a relatively intimate, scaled-down postscript: his A Quiet Celebration tour. It’s booked into theaters selected for their acoustics, and it’s made possible by an advanced monitoring system that helps him cope with his recent severe hearing loss.Simon played to a reverently attentive audience on Monday night at his hometown sanctuary, the Beacon Theater. When the refurbished, regilded venue reopened in 2009, Simon was its first performer. And on Monday, he stepped onstage smiling broadly and announced, “I love playing in this room.”Simon has been making poetic, tuneful pop hits — songs that found mass audiences with lapidary craftsmanship and terse, enigmatic insights — since the 1960s. He had less commercial success with larger formats: his 1980 movie about a songwriter, “One-Trick Pony,” and his 1998 musical, “The Capeman.” But he has still been thinking bigger than individual songs.After performing the entirety of his album “Seven Psalms,” Simon returned with a set of hits and deeper cuts.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesIn 2023, Simon released “Seven Psalms,” a continuous 33-minute suite of songs about the brevity, fragility and preciousness of life — “Two billion heartbeats and out / Or does it all begin again?” — and the unknowability of God. “The Lord is a meal for the poorest of the poor,” he sang, but also, “The Lord is the ocean rising / The Lord is a terrible swift sword.”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

    • 163 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Arthur Hamilton, Who Wrote the Enduring ‘Cry Me a River,’ Dies at 98

      by

      A hit for Julie London in 1955, it was later recorded by — among many others — Ella Fitzgerald, Barbra Streisand and Michael Bublé, who praised it for its “darkness.”Arthur Hamilton, a composer best known for the enduring torch song “Cry Me a River,” which has been recorded by hundreds of artists, died on May 20 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 98.His death was announced this month by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and the Society of Composers & LyricistsMr. Hamilton’s long career included an Oscar nomination for best original song. But his most famous composition by far was “Cry Me a River.”It was one of the three songs he wrote for the 1955 film “Pete Kelly’s Blues,” which starred Jack Webb as a jazz musician fighting mobsters in Prohibition-era Kansas City, Mo. At the time, Mr. Webb was also playing his most famous role, Sergeant Joe Friday, on the television series “Dragnet” (1951-59).Peggy Lee, who played an alcoholic performer in the film, sang Mr. Hamilton’s “Sing a Rainbow” and “He Needs Me.” Ella Fitzgerald, who was also in the film, sang “Cry Me a River,” but her rendition was cut by Mr. Webb, who was also the director and producer.“Arthur said to me that the irony was that when Ella recorded it” — years later, for her 1961 album “Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie!” — “he thought she made one of the greatest recordings of it ever,” Michael Feinstein, the singer and pianist, said in an interview. “But Jack felt she didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to do it justice.”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 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      The Musical Mysteries Brian Wilson Left Behind

      by

      The Beach Boys mastermind has been the subject of pop scholarship and major boxed sets, but some corners of his oeuvre remain unreleased.Though Brian Wilson was one of pop’s most studied artists, he largely remained an enigma. The Beach Boys leader, whose death at 82 was announced this week, made music for the masses with an artisan’s eye for detail. While his biography was well known, questions about what drove him to the top of the charts — and ultimately deep into darkness — could never definitively be answered.Since the start of the CD era, Wilson’s legacy has been burnished by a series of deep-dive archival efforts, including the 1993 “Good Vibrations” boxed set, the revelatory “Pet Sounds Sessions” collection from 1996, a series of early 2000s reissues focused on the band’s Brother label years, and ultimately the holy grail: the release of his abandoned mid-60s masterwork, “Smile,” in 2011.“Everything Brian created is worth hearing and it all has a kind of historical value in terms of understanding his life,” said David Leaf, the Beach Boys historian who published “Smile: The Rise, Fall & Resurrection of Brian Wilson” this spring.In more recent years, that effort has continued with sets focused on the Beach Boys’ overlooked and often deceptively strange 1970s work. “These projects continue to come out with all this new and unheard material,” said the author Peter Ames Carlin, who wrote a 2006 biography of Wilson, “Catch a Wave.” “It’s a testament to just how creative and prolific Brian was — despite the many ups and downs of his life.”Even with the consistent release of music from the vaults, there are fascinating corners of Wilson’s oeuvre that have yet to see the light of day. Here’s a rundown.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 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Wayne Lewis, Singer With the R&B Mainstay Atlantic Starr, Dies at 68

      by

      The group reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1987 with the ballad “Always” and went on to leave a lasting impression on modern-day artists.Wayne Lewis, the dapper vocalist and keyboardist who was a founder of the group Atlantic Starr, a fixture of the 1980s rhythm and blues scene, died on June 5 in Queens. He was 68.His brother Jonathan Lewis confirmed the death but did not specify a cause. He said that Wayne Lewis collapsed while running on a treadmill at a gym and was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.A suave performer with piercing eyes and a rollicking sense of humor, Mr. Lewis served as one of the singers and songwriters of Atlantic Starr, whose ballad “Always” topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1987 and whose other hits included “Secret Lovers” and “Circles.” The band was nominated for three Soul Train Awards and an American Music Award.Writing with his brothers Jonathan and David, Mr. Lewis translated the universal emotions of love, lust and heartbreak into evocative verses backed by lush arrangements. His performances of the sentimental soul ballad “Send for Me,” released in 1980, became a calling card.Fluent in the sartorial language of showbiz, Mr. Lewis meticulously color-coordinated the group’s outfits, Jonathan Lewis said. His own suits — flashy, textured and patterned — were often showstoppers.Reviewing a concert for The Washington Post in 1982, Mike Joyce noted the “pop sheen romanticism” at the heart of Atlantic Starr’s music. As Wayne and David Lewis took center stage, he observed, they brought with them “a heartthrob appeal akin to the Jacksons’.”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

    • 75 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Remembering Sly Stone and Brian Wilson

      by

      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeThis week, pop music lost a pair of world builders: Sly Stone, who created visionary psychedelic rock, soul and pop that helped integrate popular music and captured harsh social realities under the guise of big-tent cheer; and Brian Wilson, the macher of the Beach Boys, whose ear for elevated harmony helped create some of the defining sounds of the 1960s. Both men were 82.Wilson and Stone excelled in a moment in which the country was shaking off the staidness of the 1950s. Wilson’s work with the Beach Boys initially took on themes of American freedom before evolving into a more complex outfit on “Pet Sounds.” After that album, Wilson descended into mental instability, and remained largely out of view for decades. Stone had his commercial peak in the early 1970s with up-tempo funk numbers riven deep with social meaning. But he, too, lost his grip on his career, and was heard from only intermittently in subsequent years.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Stone’s improvisational genius, how he channeled his social moment through music, and what it took to turn the life stories of Stone and Wilson into books and film.Guests:Ben Greenman, a longtime journalist who collaborated with Stone on “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin): A Memoir” and Wilson on “I Am Brian Wilson”Joseph Patel, a producer of the documentary “Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius)”Vernon Reid, a rock musician who was the founder of Living Colour and a co-founder of the Black Rock CoalitionConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica.Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. More