Pop and Rock Music

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Ateez Is the Fourth K-Pop Group With a No. 1 Album in 2023

      by

      The eight-member boy band debuts atop the Billboard 200 this week, following Tomorrow X Together, NewJeans and Stray Kids.This week on the music charts, Ateez becomes the latest K-pop act to score the top album with a menu of collectible packages, while Brenda Lee’s 65-year-old chestnut “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” holds as the No. 1 single on her 79th birthday.Ateez, an eight-member boy band from South Korea, notches its first No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart with “The World EP.Fin: Will,” which had the equivalent of 152,000 sales in the United States, according to the tracking service Luminate. The vast majority were for physical copies of the 12-track release, which was available in 33 collectible variations, including 26 on CD and seven on vinyl.Ateez’s album is the fifth one by a K-pop group to top the LP chart this year, after releases by Tomorrow X Together, NewJeans and Stray Kids, which had two titles reach No. 1. In each case, physical copies were key to their success, but Ateez had notably low popularity on streaming services, with just 7.6 million clicks — the least for any No. 1 album this year.Also this week, Taylor Swift’s “1989 (Taylor’s Version),” which topped last week’s chart, falls to No. 2; Drake’s “For All the Dogs” is No. 3; Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” is No. 4; and Michael Bublé’s “Christmas” — a chart hit each holiday season since 2011 — is in fifth place.On the Hot 100 singles chart, Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” holds at No. 1 for a second week, while Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” remains at second place. More

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Music

      David Byrne Isn’t Himself. Or Any Self, Really.

      by

      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

    • 88 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      The Albums That Defined 2023? Let’s Discuss.

      by

      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

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Hear the Best Albums and Songs of 2023

      by

      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

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      Nicki Minaj and Drake Reunite, and 10 More New Songs

      by

      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

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Denny Laine, Founding Member of the Moody Blues and Wings, Dies at 79

      by

      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

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      The Killers’ ‘Mr. Brightside’ at 20: A Generation’s Anthem

      by

      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

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      Taylor Swift Is Time’s Person of the Year

      by

      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