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Every year is probably an interesting one for an artist as restless and inquisitive as David Byrne, but I’m willing to bet that 2023 was especially so. In September, a newly restored edition of “Stop Making Sense,” the landmark 1984 concert film by Byrne’s former band, Talking Heads, returned to theaters to much (richly deserved) […] More
Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicThe albums that made The New York Times pop music critics’ year-end lists cover a wide range of music: hip-hop, industrial rock, amapiano, country, pop-punk, R&B, corridos tumbados. Hyper-polished and spare; chaotic and highly composed.There was some overlap — enthusiasm for the second albums from artists as diverse as Olivia Rodrigo, SZA and 100 gecs. But what’s more fascinating are the points of divergence, the albums that spoke loudly to one critic while passing the others by.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the multiplicity of great styles of albums released this year (as well as EPs, which are having a renaissance in the streaming era), and how much longer artists will continue to make albums their signature statements.Guests:Jon Pareles, The New York Times’s chief pop music criticLindsay Zoladz, a pop music critic for The New York Times who also writes The Amplifier newsletterConnect 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. More
A playlist of 124 songs from our three critics’ lists to experience however you wish.Olivia Rodrigo was one of only a handful of artists our three critics could agree on!Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesDear listeners,In the spirit of holiday excess and end-of-the-year summation, we’re about to make Amplifier history. Because today’s newsletter features — can I get a drumroll? And maybe an effect on my voice that makes me sound like one of those announcers at a monster truck rally? — our longest playlist everrrrr.It’s 124 songs. Eight hours and 15 minutes of music! That’s longer than watching “Killers of the Flower Moon” twice in a row! (Do not recommend, that sounds emotionally exhausting.)For the past few weeks, Jon Pareles, Jon Caramanica and I have been putting together our lists of the best songs and albums of the year. As usual, we’ve agreed on some things — the pop-punk princess Olivia Rodrigo’s punchy “Guts” and the rock absurdists 100 gecs’ outrageous “10,000 gecs” were the only two albums that appeared on all three of our lists — and diverged on a lot of things. For example, my esteemed colleague Caramanica believes that the second best song of the year is “World Class Sinner/I’m a Freak,” the vacant-eyed comeback hit from Jocelyn, a fictitious pop star from the doomed HBO series “The Idol.” To quote Adam Sandler in “Uncut Gems,” I disagree.But that variety — even those diverging opinions — is precisely what makes today’s playlist so fun. There’s truly something here for everybody, whether it’s the kaleidoscopic sound of the K-pop It Girls NewJeans, the incendiary folk of Allison Russell, the xx singer Romy’s emotionally charged dance music, the British rapper Central Cee’s smooth cadences, the Nigerian star Asake’s optimistic Afrobeats, Bailey Zimmerman’s arena-sized country, the vivid, prickly indie-rock of Speedy Ortiz … I could go on and on (and on), but I’ll let the music speak for itself.I won’t be providing commentary on each song, because there are 124 of them, but luckily we’ve already written about all of this music on our lists of best albums and best songs. (Non-Spotify listeners can find YouTube links there, too; and remember, Spotify offers an ad-sponsored tier, so you can always listen there for free, too.)There are two ways to experience this enormous playlist. You can just press play and go through it in order, getting a sense of each critic’s individual tastes and sensibilities. Or — and I think this is the best way — you can put it on shuffle and allow yourself to be surprised. I won’t promise you’ll like everything you hear; in fact, I guarantee there will be at least a few songs on here that will make you wonder if the New York Times pop music critics should get our ears examined. But that’s part of the fun of year-end lists, too. If we all agreed on everything (like, say, Jocelyn), there wouldn’t be any point in making them!What I will guarantee is that if you make it through this entire playlist, you will feel caught up on the music released in 2023. And, who knows, you just may discover your favorite song of the year.Listen along on Spotify.Drag racing through the canyon, singing “Boys Don’t Cry,”LindsayBonus TracksIs this music not new enough for you? We’ve got even more recently released tracks on today’s Playlist. Listen to new music from Adrianne Lenker, Nicki Minaj, Idles and more, here.Also, these lists focused on pop — in the widest sense of the word — but if you’re looking for even more variety, check out Giovanni Russonello’s list of the year’s best jazz albums. More
Hear tracks by Tems, Idles, Adrianne Lenker and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage, and The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Nicki Minaj featuring Drake, ‘Needle’Thirteen years ago, on her debut studio album “Pink Friday,” Nicki Minaj recruited her Young Money labelmate and fellow rising star Drake for the galvanizing hit “Moment 4 Life.” They join forces once again on “Needle,” a noticeably more laid-back and atmospheric track from Minaj’s long-teased “Pink Friday 2,” which demonstrates how both of these rappers — and the sound of rap music itself — have changed in the intervening years. Drake calls back to the island cadences of his “Views” era, lilting a somewhat strained metaphor: “You’re like a needle, life’s a haystack.” Minaj raps as if on cruise control, characteristically dexterous (“Poppin’ out like a cork/duckin’ ’em like Björk”) if zoologically confused; Nicki, it was a swan dress! LINDSAY ZOLADZTems, ‘Not an Angel’Afrobeats turns inward in the Nigerian songwriter Tems’s “Not an Angel” — an emphatic good-riddance song with lines like, “I was alone when I was with you,” “All you did was give me nothing” and “Right now it’s going nowhere but the graveyard.” Programmed percussion and a moody guitar lick carry her rising resentment and self-realization: “I’m not an angel — I’m just a girl that knows the truth,” she sings, moving into sync with the beat as she pulls away from her ex. JON PARELESWishy, ‘Spinning’Can a band be classified as shoegaze if its head is in the clouds? Such is the delightful paradox posed by Wishy, a promising new group from Indiana releasing its debut EP “Paradise” next Friday. Echoing the spirit of millennial dream-pop acts like the Pains of Being Pure at Heart and A Sunny Day in Glasgow, Wishy’s latest single “Spinning” layers textured guitar, a driving breakbeat and Nina Pitchkites’s airy vocals to create a sumptuous sound. “Spinning around on the kitchen floor,” she sings. “I don’t know what I’m dancing for.” Prepare to do the same. ZOLADZIdles, ‘Grace’The British band Idles generally play sinewy, irascible post-punk songs, but every so often the singer Joe Talbot confesses to vulnerability, as he does in “Grace.” It’s a secular prayer: “No God, no king/I said love is the thing,” Talbot sings. He both longs for and offers refuge and compassion; behind him, the band gnashes and clatters and eventually erupts, but his determined humility lingers. PARELESElephant Gym featuring Yile Lin, ‘Happy Prince’Elephant Gym, a bass-guitar-drums trio from Taiwan, plays a nimble, jazzy kind of math-rock, paced by the hopscotching bass lines of KT Chang and the guitar counterpoint of her brother Tell Chang. “Happy Prince” is loosely based on a children’s story by Oscar Wilde. With bright-eyed guest vocals by Yile Lin, from the band Freckles, “Happy Prince” breezes along, shifting meters and taking chromatic turns; every so often, it explodes. PARELESNnamdi, ‘Going Crazy’A snippet of children singing “We’re all going crazy” led the Chicago pop experimentalist Nnamdi to come up with “Going Crazy.” It appears at assorted speeds, over assorted chords and drum-machine beats, as he croons in falsetto about how “I been up working harder every night” and “I just want to have a little fun” — a workaholic’s jovial complaints. PARELESUsher and H.E.R., ‘Risk It All’It hardly gets more old-school than “Risk It All,” a duet from Usher and H.E.R. — from the soundtrack to “The Color Purple” — that’s happy to risk vocal close-ups: call-and-response, tag-teaming, overlapping, sharing. Little more than piano chords accompany the duo, who sound like they were singing to each other in real time throughout the song, though they couldn’t resist overdubbing some extra harmony vocals. Even so, there’s an unadorned, intimate physicality to the romantic sentiments. PARELESAdrianne Lenker, ‘Ruined’This sparse, movingly fragile song from the Big Thief frontwoman Adrianne Lenker is a dispatch from the most devastating kind of obsession: “Can’t get enough of you,” Lenker sings in a warbled falsetto. “You come around, I’m ruined.” Accompanied by just a haunting piano and eerie, echoing effects, Lenker’s plain-spoken vulnerability becomes, by the end of the song, a kind of strength. ZOLADZEliza McLamb, ‘16’Eliza McLamb, a songwriter who’s also a podcaster, revisits a period of severe teenage trauma — her mother’s mental illness, her own self-destructive compulsions — in “16”; it’s from her album due in January, “Going Through It.” Deep, sustained synthesizer tones accompany her breathy voice, offering the stability — or numbness — she longs for. PARELESKaren Vogt, ‘We Coalesce’Layers of wordless, echoey vocal loops, with hints of modal melody, are the makings of “We Coalesce,” one of the eerie, undulating pieces Karen Vogt recorded while mourning her cat. PARELESVijay Iyer Trio, ‘Prelude: Orison’If Vijay Iyer’s music was big for you this year, it was probably thanks to “Love in Exile,” the much-beloved album he released with Arooj Aftab and Shahzad Ismaily. Though cool-blooded and almost ambient, that LP was swept by an undercurrent of disquiet — a feeling the pianist embraces even further in his other working trio, with the bassist Linda Oh and the drummer Tyshawn Sorey. Their 2021 debut, “Uneasy,” was an itchy and stimulating affair inspired, as Iyer said ahead of its release, by the awareness “that this thing Americans love to call freedom is not what it appears to be.” Well, wait. Is there some paradox lurking here? How is instrumental music that sounds so elevated and indirect supposed to upend our most basic assumptions? To which another question might provide the response: Processing the news these days, have you felt angry, frustrated or helpless? If that resonates, this trio’s music would like to help you make some sense of that sensation — and maybe even sidestep it, pushing toward some kind of confrontation. (“Uneasy” includes “Combat Breathing,” a rhythmic call-to-action inspired by Black Lives Matter organizers.) The new, tempo-slurring “Prelude: Orison,” is languid, diaphanous, harmonically canted. Whenever it briefly resolves, it starts the cycle over again. It’s as if this band wants to both seduce you and discomfit you, stripping you of everything but the ability to think and see for yourself. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO More
He wrote “Mull of Kintyre” with Paul McCartney and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with the Moody Blues.Denny Laine, a singer, songwriter and guitarist who co-founded two of the biggest British rock bands of the 1960s and ’70s, the Moody Blues and Wings, before embarking on a long solo career, died in Naples, Fla., on Tuesday — 50 years to the day after Wings released its most successful album, “Band on the Run,” in the U.S. He was 79.His wife, Elizabeth Mele-Hines, said the cause of death, at a hospital, was interstitial lung disease.Mr. Laine was part of the efflorescence of British rock music in the early 1960s, when many young musicians were still soaking up the influence of American blues. Performers like Eric Clapton, Spencer Davis and the Beatles became not just friends with Mr. Laine but also frequent collaborators with him.A native of Birmingham, England, he moved to London after his first band, Denny Laine and the Diplomats, broke up. In 1964, he joined four other Birmingham-area transplants, Graeme Edge, Mike Pinder, Ray Thomas and Clint Warwick, to form the M&B 5, a rhythm-and-blues band named after a Birmingham brewery. They soon changed their name to the Moody Blues.Mr. Laine was with the band for only two albums, but in 1964 he sang lead on its first No. 1 hit, “Go Now!” The success of that song, a cover of an R&B song recorded that same year by Bessie Banks, won the Moody Blues slots on a series of high-profile tours, opening for acts like Chuck Berry and the Beatles.Mr. Laine, right, with his fellow members of the Moody Blues in an undated photo. From left were Ray Thomas, Clint Warwick, Graeme Edge and Mike Pinder.Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesMr. Laine left the Moody Blues in 1966 over artistic differences and spent the next five years working on solo projects and with, among other bands, the short-lived jazz-rock ensemble Ginger Baker’s Air Force. It was while singing and playing guitar with that band that he caught the attention of Paul McCartney.By 1971, Mr. McCartney was more than a year out of the Beatles and looking to form a new band. One day, from his rural home west of Glasgow, he cold-called Mr. Laine.“He said, ‘Do you want to do something? Get on a plane, we’re in Scotland,’” Mr. Laine recalled in an interview with The Boston Globe in 2019. The two added Mr. McCartney’s wife, Linda McCartney, and the three — with a rotating cast of other bandmates — became Wings.Though Wings is often remembered as a McCartney vehicle — at times it went by the name Paul McCartney and Wings — Mr. Laine was an equal member.He appeared on all seven of the group’s studio albums, sang lead and played lead guitar on several prominent tracks and wrote or co-wrote a number of the band’s songs, including “Mull of Kintyre,” which reached No. 1 on the British charts and sold more than two million copies. (He also claimed to have had a hand in writing another No. 1 Wings hit, “Band on the Run,” although Paul and Linda McCartney are the only credited writers.)Mr. Laine received four Grammy nominations with Wings and won two: best pop vocal performance by a duo, group or chorus in 1975, for “Band on the Run,” and best rock instrumental performance in 1980, for “Rockestra Theme.”“Me and him had this kind of feel together musically,” Mr. Laine said about working with Mr. McCartney in an interview with Guitar World this year. “We slotted in well together. We could read each other, and that came from growing up on the same musical influences. Paul’s got a good sense of rhythm, and he doesn’t overplay, which I like.”Mr. Laine was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2018 as a founding member of the Moody Blues. In what many critics and fans consider one of the bigger snubs in the Hall of Fame’s history, Wings has yet to follow.Mr. Laine in 1972, a year after Paul McCartney cold-called him asking him to join a new band, Wings.Michael Putland/Getty ImagesBrian Frederick Hines was born on Oct. 29, 1944, in Birmingham. His parents, Herbert and Eva (Basset) Hines, worked in factories.Denny was a childhood nickname, and he later added the surname Laine as a nod to one of his sister’s favorite singers, Frankie Laine.He grew up listening to the so-called Gypsy jazz of musicians like Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli, as well as to Spanish guitar — a love he explored in between his time with the Moody Blues and Wings, when he lived in Spain and studied flamenco.After returning to Britain, he formed two bands, the Electric String Band and Balls, both of which fizzled — though the first, which featured a string section and lush orchestration, would greatly influence a similarly named band, the Electric Light Orchestra.He counted the McCartneys among his closest friends, but he left Wings in 1981 after Mr. McCartney was arrested in Japan for marijuana possession. Mr. Laine’s departure ended the band and put a strain on their relationship, though he later played on several of Mr. McCartney’s solo projects.Mr. Laine performing this March at the City Winery in Manhattan. He continued to record and tour regularly in the four decades after Wings split up.Al Pereira/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty ImagesMr. Laine married Joanne Patrie in 1978; they divorced in 1981. He married Rosha Kasravi in 2003; they later separated and divorced in 2021. He married Elizabeth Mele this year. Along with her, his survivors include two children from his first marriage, Heidi and Laine Hines; three other children, Damian James, Ainsley Adams and Lucy Grant; his sister, Doreen; and several grandchildren.Even while he was with Wings, Mr. Laine kept up a spirited solo career, releasing two albums in the 1970s: “Ahh … Laine” (1973) and “Holly Days” (1977), a tribute to Buddy Holly.He continued to work and tour regularly in the four decades after the band split up, playing a mix of his own compositions and material from the Moody Blues and Wings. Often he would perform what he called “Songs and Stories,” a combination of music and tales from his rock life.“I can’t live without live work,” he told Guitar World. “There’s no substitute for playing live and getting the feeling of connecting with an audience.” More
Overlooked at its release, the Killers’ signature hit has become one of the most inescapable rock songs of its time.The Killers released “Mr. Brightside” 20 years ago and hardly anybody cared.The dominant hits of the day were hip-shakers and party bangers whose titles doubled as bodily imperatives: “Shake Ya Tailfeather,” “Get Low,” “Stand Up” — odes to the delirious, thrilling movements that keep the party going. “Mr. Brightside” is … not that.It’s an intense, dramatic song about the shattering experience of getting cheated on by someone you love. The lead single off the Las Vegas band’s debut studio album, “Hot Fuss,” consists of exactly one verse, pre-chorus and chorus, which simply repeat; the singer Brandon Flowers’s voice is the sardonic wail of a jilted lover who is physically ill at the thought of his girlfriend being with someone else (“Now they’re going to bed, and my stomach is sick”), and pretends that he is totally OK (“Comin’ out of my cage, and I’ve been doing just fine”) when he is obviously an absolute wreck (“I just can’t look, it’s killing meeeee”).Yet in the intervening decades, “Mr. Brightside” — which eventually reached the Billboard Hot 100 over a year after its initial release, peaking at No. 10 in June 2005 — has become something more than a hit. It has grown into an all-purpose, inescapable rallying cry: a karaoke staple, a football tradition, a party playlist must-have, a meme. It’s a straight shot of nostalgia that, having survived that awkward interval when a song feels dated and falls out of favor, now belongs to a pantheon of modern classics that are both extremely of their time and transcend it.If boomers gave the masses “Don’t Stop Believin’,” millennials can claim “Mr. Brightside” as the generation’s official entry into that canon: a song that gets everybody at the bar shout-singing along.The track is the centerpiece of the Killers’ oeuvre and the star of their new greatest hits album, “Rebel Diamonds,” which is full of hits with lyrics that are basically tattooed onto the hippocampuses of even the most casual fans — “All These Things That I’ve Done” (“I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier”), the synthy-sad “Smile Like You Mean It” and gender-bendy “Somebody Told Me” (“you had a boyfriend who looked like a girlfriend that I had…”). But none of those singles comes close to matching the ongoing ubiquity of “Mr. Brightside.”“We’ve never not played that song live, because it’s stood the test of time and I’m proud of it,” Flowers told Spin in 2015. “I never get bored of singing it.” (A representative for Flowers said he was unable to speak for this article because he was in the studio.)“You drop this on a Friday night at midnight and the whole club just goes bananas,” said William Reed, a D.J. and founder of Club Decades, a dance party at Boardner’s in Hollywood. “Literally everybody in there is dancing and singing and dancing on top of the platforms and shouting with their eyes closed and screaming. It’s beautiful.”Though it was first released in 2003, “Mr. Brightside” didn’t reach the Billboard Hot 100 until June 2005.Frank Mullen/WireImage, via Getty ImagesTony Twillie, entertainment director of the New Orleans Bourbon Street karaoke hot spot the Cat’s Meow, called it “one of our most popular songs.” He can cite its code for the D.J. — R203 — off the top of his head. “Everyone knows that code.”Unlike “Don’t Stop Believin’,” “Mr. Brightside” is almost comically easy to sing — or at least, it is a song that can withstand being sung very badly.Josh Fontenot, a bartender and former karaoke host at Louie’s Pub in Chicago, always pitches “Mr. Brightside” when rookies need a recommendation. “You can put the song on and not sing it and people will be excited that the song is on,” he said. “The room will sing it for you.”If you have been to Nashville recently and felt like you heard this song everywhere, you’re probably right: Jer Gregg who oversees entertainment for TC Restaurant Group venues that cater to country music purists and bachelorette parties alike, estimates that “Mr. Brightside” is getting played “somewhere around 300 times a week” at the company’s various locations.Why does the track slip so seamlessly into so many different settings? Genre-wise, it’s fluid: The Killers are a rock band, but their energy is a little bit glam, a little bit dance pop, a little bit emo. “Mr. Brightside” covers a cornucopia of emotional bases, too. You can sing it when you’re ecstatic, on a celebratory night out; you can sing it when you’re miserable, on a “forget about that ex” night out. There’s even a football angle.At a 2017 University of Michigan game against its rival Michigan State, in the midst of a torrential downpour, the song came over the loudspeakers at the end of the third quarter and everybody in the sold-out stands (capacity: 109,901) kept singing a cappella after the D.J. cut the music. Belting “Mr. Brightside” has been a third-quarter ritual ever since. You can even buy “Mr. Brightside” Michigan-themed merch.“It’s a weird song to have be a college football anthem,” acknowledged Alejandro Zúñiga, a Michigan alum who covers his alma mater for 24/7 Sports. “The subject of the song is not related to sports, and it’s not a fight song,” he added. “But it just had so much momentum that it became what it is.”“MR. BRIGHTSIDE” IS what the chart analyst and “Hit Parade” podcast host Chris Molanphy calls “a second-chance hit”: a song that fizzled and nearly flopped until something in the culture jolted it back to life. (Like Lizzo’s “Truth Hurts” from 2017, which didn’t really catch on until 2019, when it was released as a radio single after getting a bump from TikTok and Netflix.) “Sometimes certain songs need to marinate before they find their moment,” Molanphy said in an interview.If artists hoping for a smash in 2020 are praying their song blows up on TikTok, in the early 2000s, the ultimate signal-boost for an indie band was getting on the soundtrack for the soapy teen drama “The O.C.” The Killers did one better: They appeared on a second-season episode of the show, performing a three-song set at the Bait Shop which included, of course, “Mr. Brightside.” Two months later, “Mr. Brightside” debuted on the Billboard charts.The following year, when Nancy Meyers needed a specific song for her house-swap rom-com “The Holiday,” she felt like “Mr. Brightside” had been written with her movie in mind. In the scene, Cameron Diaz’s Amanda, drunk and alone — having fled to England after catching her boyfriend in bed with someone else — pops “Hot Fuss” into a CD player. With a glass of red wine in one hand and her other fist pumping the air, she drunkenly shouts along to the chorus.“I knew I liked the song,” Meyers said in an interview. “The lyrics worked for the scene. What’s that line about? ‘Choking on your alibis.’ I don’t know if they wrote it from a woman’s point of view, but it fit what I needed.”“It’s strangely upbeat, for an angry song,” she added, noting that the track has aged well: “Cheating on people, that’s not going out of style.”CHANCES ARE YOU’VE heard “Mr. Brightside” at a wedding — maybe you played it at your wedding. According to DJ Intelligence, one of the top software platforms D.J.s use to let their clients build event playlists, “Mr. Brightside” is the third most-requested song, behind only Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” and Abba’s “Dancing Queen.”Evan Reitmeyer, owner of the D.C.-area D.J. company MyDeejay, said “Mr. Brightside” is on more than half the playlists of his upcoming weddings — and its numbers have only been growing: “I would say in the last five to seven years especially, it’s just become a perennial hit that’s getting requested at every wedding.”Despite its not-very-matrimonial theme, “Nobody seems to care about the lyrics,” he said. “They just care about how it feels. And I don’t mind; it kills on the dance floor so I’m going to keep playing it.”For brides and grooms in their 30s, “Mr. Brightside” would have been a bop of their formative years — a time when late nights were spent chugging Four Loko, sweating through skintight American Apparel disco pants and making out with the wrong person (or knowing that, actually, you were the wrong person).“I think it’s one of those songs, like ‘Don’t Stop Believin’,’ that people belatedly realize: ‘It’s an anthem. Why don’t we play this at every party we’ll ever have?’” Molanphy said. “And now you can’t escape it.”But does Journey, a band that also got a boost when its song featured prominently on TV, think that “Mr. Brightside” is the new “Don’t Stop Believin’”?“Sure, it is!” said Jonathan Cain, the band’s keyboardist and rhythm guitarist. He remembered liking it right away. “It was quirky and catchy. It bounced. When I heard it, it was kind of like the first time you heard Talking Heads. Very similar to David Byrne,” he said in an interview. “And what an opening line!” he added. “That immediately captures everybody’s imagination. It’s original. It’s got teeth. It’s got all that poignant sarcasm to it.”While the two songs have very different emotional trajectories — “Don’t Stop Believin’” begins in loneliness and ends in a call for faith, while “Mr. Brightside” tracks the narrator’s spiral from coupledom into exile — both, Cain said, are about “the idea that stuff is going to come at you in life and you’re going to have to be able to walk through it, no matter what.”For Kyle Tekiela, whose band Starry Eyes does some Killers cover gigs, “Mr. Brightside” is always the closer. “When it finally happens, everyone goes out of control and screams it. It’s like a religious experience,” he said. “‘Mr. Brightside’ comes on and it’s like: OK, all our energy is spent, and now it’s time to go. Call the Uber.” More
The magazine chose the pop star over finalists that included the Hollywood strikers, Barbie and King Charles III. Time magazine on Wednesday named Taylor Swift as its person of the year. “Picking one person who represents the eight billion people on the planet is no easy task. We picked a choice that represents joy. Someone who’s bringing light to the world,” said Sam Jacobs, the magazine’s editor in chief, on NBC’s “Today” program on Wednesday morning. “She was like weather, she was everywhere.”Swift beat out eight other finalists who were announced on “Today” this week, including King Charles III and Barbie. “Swift’s accomplishments as an artist — culturally, critically, and commercially — are so legion that to recount them seems almost beside the point,” the magazine wrote.Swift grabbed many headlines in 2023, in part spurred by her immensely popular Eras Tour that proved too much for Ticketmaster to handle, the release of the rerecording of her 2014 album “1989” that broke sales records and her relationship with the Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. Swift has also become the subject of academic and (even more) journalistic interest: Harvard University will offer a “Taylor Swift and Her World” class, and Gannett, the largest newspaper chain in the United States, appointed a special reporter to cover nothing but Swift.Time awards the title to “the individual, group, or concept that has had the most influence on the world throughout the previous 12 months.” Launched as a marketing gimmick in the 1920s, the award has continued to drive fanfare as weekly print magazines struggle to remain relevant.Swift beat out eight other finalists to receive the honor.Inez and Vinoodh for Time, via, via ReutersThe past few yearsLast year, when Russia invaded Ukraine, the magazine awarded the distinction to Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, and the “spirit of Ukraine.” The magazine named Elon Musk person of the year in 2021. “With a flick of his finger, the stock market soars or swoons,” the magazine wrote at the time. In 2020, Joseph R. Biden and Kamala Harris — then the president-elect and vice president-elect — were on the cover, and in 2019 it was the climate activist Greta Thunberg.In 2018, the title went to Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and other journalists. The previous year, the title went to “the silence breakers,” women who stepped forward to accuse powerful men of sexual harassment and assault. And in 2016 it was President-elect Donald J. Trump, whom the magazine called the “president of the divided states of America.”Historical choicesThe persons of the year have not always been without controversy. In 1938 Time chose Adolf Hitler, and the magazine gave the dubious honor to Josef Stalin twice, in 1939 and in 1942.In 1972, the magazine chose the “improbable partnership” of President Richard M. Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger.Other times, the magazine chose regular citizens. In 1969, Time gave the distinction to “The Middle Americans,” celebrating them for continuing to pray in public schools in defiance of the United States Supreme Court.Nearly 40 years later, the magazine plastered a mirror on the cover of the magazine and named “You” its person of the year for 2006. And in other instances, it wasn’t a person at all. In 1982, there was a “machine of the year”: the computer.Victor Mather More
Seventy-one tracks that asked big questions, found new kinship between genres and helped us see the good in Ken.Jon Pareles | Jon Caramanica | Lindsay ZoladzJon ParelesFumbling Toward EcstasyThe album may be imperiled; people have been saying so for decades, even though the form has resisted extinction. Meanwhile, songs flourish, whether or not they’re destined for albums, and are ever more flexible. Some maintain the pop conventions of verse-chorus-verse; others distill themselves down to TikTok-ready hooks or sprawl across digital time frames. Here are 30 of my favorite songs from 2023 — less a ranking than a playlist, a tribute to creative abundance.1. Allison Russell, ‘Eve Was Black’The tune could be a toe-tapping Appalachian hoedown. But the title’s blunt, irrefutable statement carries Allison Russell toward harsh thoughts about racism, slavery, exploitation, lynching and sin — and then to an unexpected coda.2. Peter Gabriel, ‘Road to Joy (Bright-Side Mix)’Like many Peter Gabriel songs, this one has a scenario. The narrator is waking from a coma into an overload of sensory experiences, getting “back in the world”; the music is a funk carnival that keeps adding euphoric layers.3. 100 gecs, ‘Dumbest Girl Alive’No band walks Spinal Tap’s “fine line between clever and stupid” like the duo 100 gecs. “Dumbest Girl Alive” has a primal stomp for a beat, an up-and-down guitar riff that whimsically hops around instruments, and filtered hyperpop vocals with 21st-century lines like “put emojis on my grave” — just the thing for an utterly knowing, utterly meta bash.4. Sampha, ‘Suspended’Sampha’s “Lahai” was brighter and more expansive than his previous LPs.Ayesha Kazim for The New York TimesSampha gathers ideas from R&B, classical Minimalism, twitchy hyperpop and more around the androgynous melancholy of his voice. He conjures a rapturous infatuation and the need it leaves behind in “Suspended,” three minutes of vertigo from his album “Lahai.”5. The Rolling Stones featuring Lady Gaga and Stevie Wonder, ‘Sweet Sounds of Heaven’The peak of the Rolling Stones’ resurgent album “Hackney Diamonds” is an all-star concoction that sounds like a raw studio jam. Mick Jagger extols the glories of music and the song climbs to a big, gospelly finish, with Jagger and Lady Gaga goading each other to belt more. When it winds up, they catch their breath but they don’t want to quit — and the song builds even higher.6. Yahritza y Su Esencia and Grupo Frontera, ‘Frágil’Two Mexican American groups — from Washington state and Texas — unite for “Frágil,” a cumbia complaint about a heartless partner. While the men in Grupo Frontera sound mildly apologetic, Yahritza Martinez sings as if her heart might burst at any moment.7. Baby Rose, ‘Stop the Bleeding’With her low, tremulous, gripping voice, Baby Rose sings about love as self-sabotage, trying to break free while an orchestra underlines her despair.8. Shakira, ‘BZRP Music Sessions #53’In one of Shakira’s canny 2023 collaborations — others were with Karol G and the regional Mexican band Fuerza Regida — she enlisted the hitmaking Argentine electro producer Bizarrap to take revenge on her ex, with pointed wordplay and an airborne hook denouncing “guys like you.”9. Killer Mike featuring Future, André 3000 and Eryn Allen Kane, ‘Scientists & Engineers’In a track that roves from electro to guitar ballad to bursts of gospel, Killer Mike convenes fellow Atlanta rappers — the prolific Future and the elusive André 3000 — to address art, ambition, luxury, tenacity and paying dues, culminating in a marathon verse from Killer Mike himself.10. Brittany Howard, ‘What Now’Choppy, distorted, splintered hard funk pulses around Brittany Howard as she sorts through all the conflicting impulses of a breakup: taking blame and lashing out, feeling regret and relief, wanting to stay and knowing she needs to go.11. Jorja Smith, ‘Try Me’Jorja Smith used vocal nuance instead of volume to stir things up on her second studio album.Jose Sena Goulao/EPA, via ShutterstockA wounded, defensive Jorja Smith confronts someone who had put her down, in a track that evolves from pinging, percussive defiance to orchestral contemplation.12. Caroline Polachek, ‘Dang’One percussive syllable — “dang” — inspires an entire brittle production apparatus around Caroline Polachek’s deadpan voice. She sings about irreversible events, like shipwrecks and spilled milk, amid plinks, clangs, crashes, swooping strings and sampled screams, nonchalant amid the non sequiturs.13. aespa, ‘Better Things’Cowbells, handclaps and piano chords drive “Better Things,” a K-pop kiss-off with ingeniously cascading vocal harmonies and absolutely no regrets.14. Janelle Monáe featuring Doechii, ‘Phenomenal’Janelle Monáe’s 2023 album, “The Age of Pleasure,” exults in carnality while segueing through R&B, jazz and Caribbean styles. “Phenomenal” is a raunchy acclamation of lust and self-love, rapped and sung over springy, changeable Latin jazz grooves.15. Noname, ‘Namesake’Noname reels off brisk, matter-of-fact rhymes over a jazzy bass line as she strives to reconcile her personal comfort with all the world’s problems. She worries about complacency, complicity and hypocrisy; she doesn’t spare herself.16. Irreversible Entanglements, ‘Root Branch’Irreversible Entanglements is a fiercely riffing jazz band fronted by the low-voiced spoken-word poet Moor Mother. “We can be free — let’s fly,” she intones over the six-beat vamp of “Root Branch,” demanding something basic and essential.17. Jaimie Branch, ‘Take Over the World’The trumpeter and bandleader Jaimie Branch sets up a pummeling beat behind an environmental battle chant in “Take Over the World,” veers into a swirl of psychedelia, then whoops it up even harder.18. Dolly Parton, ‘World on Fire’Dolly Parton, of all people, delivers a full-fledged power ballad and stadium stomp to consider the dire state of the world. She counsels love, healing and kindness, but at the end she’s still wondering: “Whatcha gonna do when it all burns down?”19. Kylie Minogue, ‘Padam Padam’Kylie Minogue’s “Padam Padam” had a moment — during Pride celebrations and beyond — in 2023.Maggie Shannon for The New York TimesFor Kylie Minogue, “Padam Padam” is the sound of a heartbeat during a mutual flirtation at a club. The beat — a TikTok favorite — is a cheerful club thump, and a hint of Bollywood perks up the melody for three minutes of computerized bliss20. L’Rain, ‘I Killed Your Dog’L’Rain — the songwriter and performer Taja Cheek — ponders vengeful, destructive impulses in a near-lullaby that wanders through a chromatic chord progression, building ambivalence into the harmonies.21. Jamila Woods featuring duendita, ‘Tiny Garden’Jamila Woods sings about love as an accumulation of small connections and growing trust, a work in progress: “It’s not butterflies or fireworks.” The arc of the music, from isolated percussion and keyboards to multilayered, gospel-tinged vocals, radiates optimism.22. Olivia Dean featuring Leon Bridges, ‘The Hardest Part’With vintage soul chords and modern electronic subtleties, the English songwriter Olivia Dean and her American duet partner, Leon Bridges, sing about growing apart and moving on, grappling with second thoughts.23. Nkosazana Daughter, Master KG and Lowsheen featuring Murumba, ‘Ring Ring Ring’In an amapiano track full of echoey, lonely spaces, the South African singer Nkosazana Daughter and guests lament the uncertainty and sorrow of an unanswered phone call.24. Margo Price, ‘Lydia’Margo Price turned her lens outward to characters other than herself on her album “Strays.”Sara Messinger for The New York TimesIn this unblinking character study, a woman named Lydia, with “an ex-husband and a midlife crisis,” smokes a cigarette outside a clinic, thinking back through a life of hard luck and rough decisions and trying to decide whether to end her pregnancy. Margo Price sets the story to simple guitar chords and an understated string arrangement, pondering the choices.25. Mitski, ‘Bug Like an Angel’A squashed bug on the bottom of a cocktail glass leads Mitski to fragmentary epiphanies about addiction, trust and sex, with a choir bursting in to affirm each cryptic insight.26. Margaret Glaspy, ‘Memories’Over a waltz of simple guitar chords, Margaret Glaspy blurts out unvarnished grief in a torn voice, bereft yet struggling to go on.27. The Smile, ‘Bending Hectic’A guitar meditation melts into an ecstatic death wish during the eight minutes of “Bending Hectic.” Thom Yorke sings about driving along a curvy Italian mountain road with a sheer drop, and “letting go of the wheel”; Jonny Greenwood’s string arrangement envisions the plunge, and then electric guitars careen to a finish.28. Lankum, ‘Go Dig My Grave’The Irish band Lankum connects the fatalistic, death-haunted side of Celtic tradition to something like black metal in this nine-minute dirge about dying for love. It’s an inexorable crescendo from a solo a cappella vocal to a tolling, clanging drone topped by a howling fiddle, haunted and bleak.29. Caroline Rose, ‘Love/Lover/Friend’In a flurry of plucked and orchestral strings, Caroline Rose affirms her love by ruling out other possibilities, then basks in wordless choral ecstasy.30. André 3000, ‘That Night in Hawaii When I Turned Into a Panther and Started Making These Low Register Purring Tones That I Couldn’t Control … Sh¥t Was Wild’In a 10-minute instrumental for muffled drums, percussion and prowling parallel flute lines, André 3000 maintains an aura of calm vigilance, contemplative but still on edge.Jon CaramanicaAnything GoesIt was a year in which the best pop music truly made it up as it went along. Off-the-cuff collaborations? Sure. Songs by fictional characters? Why not. A guy filmed singing in a field by a West Virginia public radio outlet? Absolutely. Microscene classics that clock in at 75 seconds and might be forgotten tomorrow? Always. (In the interest of avoiding redundancy, I’ve only included songs that aren’t on albums that made my best of the year list.)1. Central Cee & Dave, ‘Sprinter’This British rap tag team is about improbable wealth, bounteous opportunities, living so fast that what’s slipping by is almost as good as what you manage to grab hold of. As celebrations go, this is a controlled, pensive one — a relaxed ramble for the moments when the money’s so new, it sparkles.2. Jocelyn (Lily-Rose Depp), ‘World Class Sinner/I’m a Freak’A paean to emotional vacancy sung with emotional vacancy from a television show rife with emotional vacancy ends up … positively glistening. A cause for surrender.3. Oliver Anthony Music, ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’A great song, sure. More than that, though, a sense of great exasperation. The quick and strong embrace of this song suggests an ocean of frustration that pop music leaves largely untapped and unvoiced, and a grass-roots resistance that it has almost no hope of replicating.4. Mustafa, ‘Name of God’Few artists conjure a richness of sorrow the way the Canadian folk singer Mustafa does. Here, his singing is beautiful and a little distant, as if flinching ever so slightly from a pain that will never be anything but raw.5. PinkPantheress featuring Ice Spice, ‘Boy’s a Liar Pt. 2’PinkPantheress took her songs from her bedroom to bigger stages after a viral hit.Adama Jalloh for The New York TimesA glimpse at how pop might — should? — sound in the coming few years. Two stars of the internet of 12 to 24 months ago who found themselves at the vanguards of their respective scenes come together for a collaboration in which neither has to concede an inch.6. Jelly Roll with Lainey Wilson, ‘Save Me’What makes Jelly Roll so effective is the way the intensity of his howl only amplifies the potency of his scars. It’s perhaps most pointed on this duet with Lainey Wilson, whose crisp and clear tone initially seems like an antidote, but is quickly revealed as equally bruised.7. That Mexican OT featuring Paul Wall and Drodi, ‘Johnny Dang’An effortless blend of Texas rap generations, fusing the tongue-twisting with the slow-rolling.8. Cody Johnson, ‘The Painter’When someone is effusive, it might not mean as much when they gush. But when a stoic drops his guard, it can feel seismic.9. Ken (Ryan Gosling), ‘I’m Just Ken’When this stridently sad song from the “Barbie” movie hits its apogee, it’s channeling Dashboard Confessional, Meat Loaf, the Phantom (of the Opera) and maybe even Scott Stapp. Slash plays guitar, salting the melodrama hard.10. Gunna, ‘Fukumean’The Atlanta rapper Gunna quickly returned to work after accepting a plea deal in a wide-sweeping ongoing case.Craig Barritt/Getty Images For GunnaA year ago, Gunna accepted a plea deal that untethered him from the RICO trial that has ensnared his mentor, Young Thug. Relatively quickly, he returned to his familiar slippery garble with a hit so ubiquitous it felt like a memory of how things once were.11. YoungBoy Never Broke Again, ‘Dirty Thug’The best of another slew of lonely anthems from the most important and least publicly visible hip-hop star of the past few years.12. Kylie Minogue, ‘Padam Padam’A cool blast of not-quite-exuberance, this club-pop anthem is a continuation of Kylie Minogue’s sometime-diva legacy, a relentless queer anthem, a cheeky flirtation and a thump that just won’t quit.13. Doja Cat, ‘Agora Hills’It has been 11 and a half years since Kitty Pryde released “Okay Cupid,” plenty of time for a re-embrace.14. Chino Pacas, ‘El Gordo Trae el Mando’A meaty, beatifically meandering boast by one of the rising stars of corridos tumbados.15. Lil Uzi Vert, ‘Just Wanna Rock’Grandfathered in from late 2022, this song broke TikTok, broke dancing, broke the Grammys and maybe even broke hip-hop.And 10 More:Corpse, “Disdain”Miley Cyrus, “Used to be Young”Emilia, “GTA.mp3”evvls, “Belikeme?”Jack Harlow, “Lovin on Me”Sam Hunt, “Walmart”Byron Messia, “Talibans”Militarie Gun, “Very High”Nettspend, “Shine N Peace”Odetari, “Good Loyal Thots”Lindsay ZoladzBeautiful DisastersSo many of my favorite tracks of the year flipped scripts, turned tables and reimagined weaknesses as strengths. By no means a complete list of the songs I enjoyed the past 12 months, these are 20 I couldn’t stop listening to — most of them reminders of music’s ability to turn mess into meaning, anxiety into energy and heartache into a great song.1. Olivia Rodrigo, ‘Vampire’Olivia Rodrigo confronts a new class of villain on “Vampire,” the incisive first single that heralded her second album, “Guts,” but she also proves she has learned new ways to slay. “Vampire” is wrenching and formally restless, at first masquerading as a piano ballad, only to ramp up into a miniature rock opera complete with a showstopping high note worthy of a tragic heroine. But don’t cry for Rodrigo — she doesn’t need protection. Her words, her observations and her stylistic flair all have plenty of bite.2. PinkPantheress featuring Ice Spice, ‘Boy’s a Liar Pt. 2’In a previous millennium, two of pop’s main young girlies joined forces to each assert that “The Boy Is Mine,” but PinkPantheress (b. 2001) and Ice Spice (b. 2000) were not alive when that song was released. On their bubbly and utterly infectious collaboration, they sidestep any hint of rivalry and turn against the guy, deciding he’s not worth the drama. “What’s the point of crying?” they shrug blithely. “It was never even love.”3. Lana Del Rey, ‘A&W’The year’s best song about telling an ex-boyfriend’s mom that her son is a disaster (runner-up: Rodrigo’s “Get Him Back!”), the sprawling, portentous seven-minute “A&W” is an unfiltered look into Lana Del Rey’s stream of consciousness: misremembered movie titles, sexually frank admissions, inside jokes about Californian geography (“I say I live in Rosemead, really, I’m at the Ramada”) and all manner of other oddly juxtaposed American flotsam. “Maybe,” she reasons with a weary sigh, arriving at some self-knowledge, “I’m just kinda like this.”4. boygenius, ‘Not Strong Enough’Everyone’s favorite musical besties — Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus — riff on pop clichés and gender roles in this highlight from their breakout year, succinctly summing up their individual songwriting personalities and demonstrating the magic that happens when they combine their powers.5. Romy, ‘Enjoy Your Life’Romy Madley Croft was the final member of the xx to release a solo album.Charlotte Hadden for The New York TimesThe xx’s Romy Madley Croft finds a solution for anxiety and self-doubt on this thumping, compassionate club banger: What if she looked at her life through the eyes of a benevolent mother? A luminous sample from the synth pioneer Beverly Glenn-Copeland — “my mother says to me, enjoy your life” — guides the way.6. Mitski, ‘My Love Mine All Mine’TikTok’s reluctant darling Mitski has released her share of songs that sound destined for pop crossover — last year’s sleek, synthy “Laurel Hell” was full of them — but, unexpectedly, she became a fixture on this year’s Hot 100 for the first time ever with this slow, moony ballad that sounds unlike anything else on the charts. Oblique, poetic and sumptuously sung, it’s a welcome moment of Zen.7. Zach Bryan featuring Kacey Musgraves, ‘I Remember Everything’An old-fashioned he-said/she-said country duet cut through with a chill of bleak finality. Zach Bryan and Kacey Musgraves are both at their emotive best on this bruised-hearted crossover hit.8. Doja Cat, ‘Agora Hills’An arsenic-laced confection that shows off Doja Cat’s multiple personalities — a romantic and an ironist, an angel and a devil, a singer fluent in dreamy hooks and a rapper with razor-sharp teeth.9. Jess Williamson, ‘Hunter’The indie singer-songwriter Jess Williamson chronicles both the promise and fatigue of looking for love in this bittersweet, poetically rendered reflection, her twangy voice brimming with a weary hope.10. Olivia Rodrigo, ‘Bad Idea, Right?’Olivia Rodrigo sings about mistakes in serious and humorous ways on her second album, “Guts.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesWith the possession of a driver’s license comes the ability to drive to an ex’s house in the middle of the night for an ill-advised hookup. That’s the trade-off. At least such circumstances gave us one of Rodrigo’s spunkiest, funniest and most irresistible singles yet.11. Palehound, ‘Independence Day’El Kempner has a keen eye for tragicomic detail on this ramshackle rocker about regret, denial and long-simmering incompatibility that results in a July 4 breakup. “I’m living life like writing my first draft,” they sing. Aren’t we all.12. Water From Your Eyes, ‘Barley’All year I have been describing this zany, looping song from the Brooklyn art-rockers Water From Your Eyes as “what it would sound like if Sonic Youth had made an appearance on ‘Sesame Street,’” and I’m not going to stop now.13. Noname, ‘Namesake’The Chicago rapper Noname says the quiet part loud — and oh so dexterously — on this refreshingly honest track, an incisive examination of pop-cultural ethics unafraid to name names, including (in addition to Beyoncé, Rihanna and Kendrick Lamar) her own.14. Wednesday, ‘Chosen to Deserve’In her cracked wail, the Southern rock band Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman — “the girl that you’ve chosen to deserve” — paints an achingly vivid portrait of suburban boredom and young adult malaise, finding just the right surface details to express something deep: “I was out late, sneaking into the neighborhood pool,” she sings. “Then I woke up early and taught at the Sunday school.”15. Mandy, Indiana, ‘Pinking Shears’Comment dit-on “hypnotic, endlessly loopable industrial banger”?16. Jenn Champion, ‘Jessica’There’s no right or wrong way to grieve, Jenn Champion reminds us on this icy, arresting piano ballad, as she rages against a friend’s overdose in lacerating detail.17. Jamila Woods featuring duendita, ‘Tiny Garden’Jamila Woods’s album “Water Made Us” achieves the musician’s greatest synthesis yet between her voices as a poet and as a songwriter.Bennett Raglin/Getty Images For Slow FactoryA warm, wise ode to incremental progress and tiny, beautiful things from R&B’s resident poet laureate.18. Yo La Tengo, ‘Fallout’Still knitting aural autumn sweaters, after all these years.19. Sufjan Stevens, ‘So You Are Tired’What state is he on now? Alaska? Disrepair? Grace? Regardless, this song is a quiet doozy that watches a long-term love unravel in slow motion like a spool of ribbon underwater.20. Drake featuring Sexyy Red and SZA, ‘Rich Baby Daddy’Exhibit Z that Drake is at his best not when he tsk-tsks grown women, but when he risks being outshone by inviting them on the track. More
