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      How Ozempic Turned a 1970s Hit Into an Inescapable Jingle

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      The diabetes drug has become a phenomenon, and “Oh, oh, oh, Ozempic!” — a takeoff of the Pilot song “Magic” — has played a big part in its story.In February 2023, David Paton, guitar case in hand, strode across the most famous pedestrian walkway in rock history and into London’s Abbey Road Studios.Paton was no stranger to the rooms where the Beatles changed the course of popular music: His 1970s pop-rock band Pilot recorded two albums there. In his second life, as an in-demand studio and touring musician for the likes of Kate Bush and Elton John, he clocked numerous sessions with the prog-rock outfit the Alan Parsons Project, whose namesake produced Pilot’s signature hit, “Magic.” He even spent some time there with his boyhood hero, Paul McCartney, singing backup vocals on Wings’ “Mull of Kintyre.”Paton had come to London to record a new version of “Magic.” “It was a great thrill to be back at Abbey Road, singing my song,” he said in a recent video interview from his home studio in Edinburgh, an array of guitars displayed behind him. The track’s stair-step chorus — “Oh, oh, oh/it’s MAAA-gic” — could test Paton’s vocal range even back in 1974, and again a year later, when the song became a worldwide hit, peaking at No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100.“It’s just about the enjoyment of life,” he said. “About waking up in the morning, you know? I was 22 when I wrote it.” Now he was 73, and unsure if he could still reach those high notes. But Paton took his place in front of the Abbey Road microphone and confidently sang that indelible hook, only with the word “magic” swapped out for something less ephemeral and more pharmaceutical: “Oh, oh, oh, Ozempic.”As television viewers are all too aware, that altered chorus from “Magic” serves as the advertising jingle for the Type 2 diabetes medication Ozempic. Since the product arrived in 2018, the bowdlerized version of “Magic” — first rerecorded by work-for-hire musicians, and then re-rerecorded by Paton at Abbey Road — has taken its place alongside such classics of the form as Subway’s “Five Dollar Foot Long” and McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It” as marvels of marketing ingenuity.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Magnetic Fields Wrote ‘69 Love Songs.’ Here’s 11 of the Best.

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      A primer on the indie-rock band’s triple album, now celebrating its 25th anniversary.Marcelo KrasilcicDear listeners,I hope everyone who was in the path of Monday’s eclipse enjoyed the view! I confess I didn’t acquire eclipse glasses in time and couldn’t see anything too spectacular from where I was in Brooklyn, but at least Friday’s Amplifier playlist gave me a soundtrack for imagining some awe-inspiring grandeur.Today’s playlist is something a little different, and more earthbound: a tribute to the Magnetic Fields, the long-running indie band that is currently on a tour commemorating the 25th anniversary of “69 Love Songs,” its landmark 1999 triple album, which I happen to adore very much.“69 Love Songs” is exactly what it says on the tin: nearly three consecutive hours of amorous-themed tunes, all written by the group’s mastermind Stephin Merritt. The album is a staggering showcase of his range as a songwriter, covering just about every genre imaginable and thoroughly chronicling the good (“The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side”), the bad (“No One Will Ever Love You”) and the ugly (“The Cactus Where Your Heart Should Be”) sides of love.The tour is currently in the middle of an eight-night run at Manhattan’s Town Hall, where the band’s original members are playing the album in its entirety for the first time in over two decades. (Because a 69-song set is daunting, they are splitting the album up over two consecutive nights.)For today’s playlist, I attempted something that I found very, very difficult: choosing my 10 favorite tracks off “69 Love Songs.” In classic Amplifier fashion, though, I found the task impossible and allowed myself one extra song. I can already hear some of you shouting at your screens — “What, no ‘I Don’t Want to Get Over You’? And no ‘Reno Dakota’?!” — but these are just my personal picks. One of the most enjoyable parts of dissecting this dense album is comparing notes with other fans; everyone seems to have their own quirky and somewhat inexplicable preferences. (I almost put “Kiss Me Like You Mean It” on this list, for example.)May this playlist serve as a less intimidating introduction to the album, if you’re unfamiliar with it, or a tantalizing refresher if you are. No playlist can duplicate the musical roller-coaster ride that is listening to “69 Love Songs” in full — an experience I would recommend to any music fan. By design, and to paraphrase one of its greatest tracks, some of it is just transcendental, some of it is delightfully dumb.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Is She Sure?’ How the Breeders Joined Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts Tour.

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      The ’90s alt-rock icons hit the Madison Square Garden stage for the first time Friday night, after the 21-year-old pop star invited them to join her on the road.Olivia Rodrigo remembers her life in two parts: before she heard the Breeders’ “Cannonball,” and after, she told the crowd at Madison Square Garden on Friday night, when her Guts World Tour arrived in New York.And that is how the ’90s alt-rock idols came to play the New York arena for the first time last week, 31 years after that song from their platinum 1993 album, “Last Splash,” charted on Billboard’s Hot 100.Rodrigo’s camp initially approached the Breeders in September about opening some dates on the tour supporting her second album, “Guts.” “My first reaction was, Wow, that seems kind of odd,” the band’s bassist, Josephine Wiggs, said in an interview. “But after I’d thought about it for a while, I thought, ‘That’s actually really genius.’”Kim Deal, the singer-guitarist who leads the band with her twin sister, Kelley, said she was surprised when they got the invite. “I’d heard ‘Drivers License,’ and I liked that a lot,” she said, referring to Rodrigo’s breakout 2021 smash.Kelley wondered if it might be a mistake. “I thought, ‘Is she sure? Do they really mean us?’”The Breeders onstage at Madison Square Garden on Saturday. The band’s performance the night before was their first-ever on the arena’s stage together.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesBut Rodrigo made her enthusiasm clear when the shows were confirmed, reaching out personally to share her excitement. “She texted each one of us individually,” Kelley recalled.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Solar Eclipse Soundtrack

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      Songs from TV on the Radio, Brian Eno, Julianna Barwick and others than could well accompany the celestial event on Monday.TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe.Chad Batka for The New York TimesDear listeners,As you have probably heard, on Monday most people in the United States will be able to witness a solar eclipse that will plunge an ordinary afternoon into otherworldly darkness. Such events require planning. Where are you going to watch the eclipse? Who are you going to watch it with? And, most crucially for Amplifier purposes, what will you listen to during it?Today’s playlist aims to get you in the mood for this rare cosmic event. It features atmospheric ambient music from Brian Eno and Julianna Barwick as well as ethereal jazz from Alice Coltrane and Amaro Freitas. I also included a few songs that refer to moons and darkness, from Cat Stevens and Will Oldham, a.k.a. Bonnie “Prince” Billy, though I stopped just short of adding Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” because I have at least some restraint.As far as solar eclipses go, this one is relatively long: Along the totality line, the moon will block out the sun for about four minutes and 28 seconds. A few songs on this playlist run for approximately that duration, so if you press play on, say, Eno’s “An Ending (Ascent)” as soon as the eclipse begins, it can soundtrack the entire experience. If you want to take in the moment in reverent silence, though, I fully support that; this playlist will be here when the eclipse is over, if you want to extend the astronomical vibe. And if you want to spend your eclipse listening to “Total Eclipse of the Heart”? Well, that’s your decision, not mine.I do love the feeling of human interconnectedness that occurs during an eclipse, though. There’s something powerful about knowing that millions of people in all sorts of locations will be stopping what they’re doing and perhaps reflecting on the fact that, for all our differences, we’re all living under the same sky. Who knows? Maybe some of us will even be listening to the same music.I’m being followed by a moonshadow,LindsayListen along while you read.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Chappell Roan’s Eye-Roll Kiss-Off, and 11 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Prince, Young Miko, the Black Keys and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Chappell Roan, ‘Good Luck, Babe!’The rising pop star Chappell Roan sends an ex-lover off with an eye roll on the wrenching “Good Luck, Babe!,” a synth-driven tune that allows the dynamic vocalist to do her best Kate Bush. The subject of the song is noncommittal and perhaps in denial of her sexuality: Roan imagines her former flame kissing “a hundred boys in bars” and eventually becoming a man’s dissatisfied wife in the aftermath of their affair. But ultimately, Roan chooses herself, singing with all her heart, “I just wanna love someone who calls me baby.” LINDSAY ZOLADZPrince, ‘United States of Division’“Everybody stop fighting/everybody make love,” Prince urged in “United States of Division,” a song previously released only as a British single B-side in 2004, alongside Prince’s album “Musicology.” It’s six minutes of deep-bottomed polytonal funk — topped with synthesizer jabs and horn lines, goaded by a hard-rock guitar riff — that veers between disenchanted verses and a conditionally optimistic chorus. Prince was hoping for the best but seeing stubborn obstacles, pondering tribalism, inequality and faith all at once and wondering, “Why must I sing ‘God Bless America’ and not the rest of the world?” JON PARELESCharli XCX, ‘B2b’We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      John Sinclair, 82, Dies; Counterculture Activist Who Led a ‘Guitar Army’

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      His imprisonment for a minor marijuana offense became a cause célèbre. He was released after John Lennon and Yoko Ono sang about him at a protest rally.John Sinclair, a counterculture activist whose nearly 10-year prison sentence for sharing joints with an undercover police officer was cut short after John Lennon and Yoko Ono sang about his plight at a protest rally, died on Tuesday in Detroit. He was 82.His publicist, Matt Lee, said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was congestive heart failure.As the leader of the White Panther Party in the late 1960s, Mr. Sinclair spoke of assembling a “guitar army” to wage “total assault” on racists, capitalism and the criminalization of marijuana. “We are a whole new people with a whole new vision of the world,” he wrote in his book “Guitar Army” (1972), “a vision which is diametrically opposed to the blind greed and control which have driven our immediate predecessors in Euro-Amerika to try to gobble up the whole planet and turn it into one big supermarket.”He also managed the incendiary Detroit rock band the MC5. Their lyrics — “I’m sick and tired of paying these dues/And I’m finally getting hip to the American ruse” — were a kind of ballad for the cause.Mr. Sinclair, right, with members of the MC5, the rock group he managed, and friends in 1967.Leni Sinclair/Michael Ochs, Archive, via Getty ImagesMr. Sinclair’s command of this “raggedy horde of holy barbarians,” as he described them in his book, was upended in 1969 when Judge Robert J. Colombo of Detroit Recorder’s Court sentenced him to nine and a half to 10 years in prison for giving two joints to an undercover police officer.During the hearing, Mr. Sinclair argued that he had been framed.“Everyone who is taking part in this is guilty of violating the United States Constitution and violating my rights and everyone else that’s concerned,” he said. He added, “There is nothing just about this, there is nothing just about these courts, nothing just about these vultures over here.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lizzo Says She Is Not Leaving Music Industry After ‘I Quit’ Post

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      Lizzo clarified that she was not quitting music after writing on Instagram last week that she was “starting to feel like the world doesn’t want me in it.”Lizzo, the Grammy Award-winning singer, clarified on Tuesday that she was not quitting the music industry, days after her social media post saying “I QUIT” led some fans to speculate that she was ending her music career.In a video posted on social media, Lizzo said she was not leaving the music business and instead was quitting “giving any negative energy attention.”“What I’m not going to quit is the joy of my life, which is making music, which is connecting to people, cause I know I’m not alone,” she said in the video. “In no way shape or form am I the only person who is experiencing that negative voice that seems to be louder than the positive.”She continued: “If I can just give one person the inspiration or motivation to stand up for themselves, and say they quit letting negative people win, negative comments win, then I’ve done even more than I could’ve hoped for.”Speculation that Lizzo was leaving the industry arose after she posted a message on Instagram on March 30 that ended with the words: “I QUIT.”“I’m getting tired of putting up with being dragged by everyone in my life and on the internet,” she wrote in the initial post. “All I want is to make music and make people happy and help the world be a little better than how I found it. But I’m starting to feel like the world doesn’t want me in it.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why Beyoncé Sends Flowers to Celebrities Like Jack White and Nicki Minaj

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      In recent weeks, Beyoncé has sent elaborate all-white arrangements to musicians including Jack White, K. Michelle and Nicki Minaj.The expression “to give someone their flowers” means to praise a person and show them care.Beyoncé has taken that literally.The pop superstar recently sent elaborate all-white floral arrangements, along with personalized notes — some handwritten — to artists she admires, or who she says have inspired her work, including Jack White, SZA and K. Michelle.As the artists have shared photos of the bouquets on social media, Beyoncé’s fans have shared their excitement and expressed their jealousy as they parsed the list of recipients for clues about what her next musical project might be.Beyoncé has been known to send surprise, and often monochromatic, floral arrangements for years, but the recent activity has drawn outsize attention since the release last week of “Cowboy Carter,” Act II in an expected trilogy of genre-bending albums.This week, Jack White, the singer-guitarist and former White Stripes frontman, shared a picture on Instagram of an arrangement that Beyoncé had sent him. Attached was a handwritten note: “Jack, I hope you are well. I just wanted you to know how much you inspired me on this record. Sending you my love, Beyoncé.”He offered her praise in response. “Much love and respect to you Madam,” he wrote, adding, “Nobody sings like you.” (Fans were quick to speculate that Act III might be a rock album, and hoped Mr. White would be part of it.)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