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      What Exactly Is Jennifer Lopez’s “This Is Me … Now: A Love Story?”

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      Yes, Ben Affleck is in it, as are many of J. Lo’s famous friends. Here’s what to know about “This Is Me … Now: A Love Story.”At one point during “This is Me … Now: A Love Story,” a character observes that watching Jennifer Lopez’s love life is like bingeing “Vanderpump Rules” — eventually you stop judging the people you’re seeing and start judging yourself. But in the case of this self-financed multimedia project, you might also question what exactly it is that you have watched. Is it a movie, a collection of music videos, a simple vanity project? Is it a therapy session, or a new genre entirely — the therapy musical? Lopez, who co-wrote and produced this 65-minute spectacle, which is now available on Amazon Prime Video, tries to keep you guessing. You might have a few questions. We have some answers.Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck embrace, mostly, at the premier of “This Is Me … Now.”Mario Anzuoni/ReutersHow much of Ben Affleck is in there?Ben Affleck flits in and out of this like a little-seen hummingbird.He bookends the story as a lost love, a character called the Biker, but he’s a barely glimpsed mystery. Could that be his jawline? Is that his chest? It’s definitely his voice we hear telling a sleeping Lopez, “You know how much I love you?” Going incognito to play cable-news pundit Rex Stone, Affleck dons a bad blonde wig, a prosthetic nose and a Trumpian spray tan. He also adopts a folksy accent that recalls Gary Busey, and a delivery that’s part Tucker Carlson and part Keith Olbermann (a man Affleck once memorably mocked on “Saturday Night Live”). But instead of ranting about politics, ol’ Rexy is concerned with the state of love and connection in the world — a topic of great interest to Lopez’s character, who is simply called the Artist. He’s the anchor of her love, but she’s barely tuning in.It might have served the project better to have less of Affleck on the screen and more of him on the page. After all, this is the guy who co-wrote “Good Will Hunting” — one of the best of all therapy movies. Did the real-life Affleck try to encourage his wife to open up, the way Robin Williams’s therapist, Sean, wanted his patient to do? Did he urge her to think a little more deeply about love and vulnerability? It’s hard to guess from his mid-credits monologue.Can we play Name That Ex?Yes, we can.Marriage might be a sacred union that should only be entered into with the utmost care, as Jane Fonda’s character told Lopez’s in “Monster-in-Law,” but that didn’t stop either Fonda in that film or Lopez in real life from giving it a try four times.In the past, Lopez has used her position as a movie producer to comment on her own marital history. In 2002’s “Marry Me,” for instance, she played an artist who had been married three times. In this new project, she has a whirlwind rom-com sequence, set to the song “Can’t Get Enough,” in which she cycles through three weddings with three interchangeable husbands (played by Tony Bellissimo, Derek Hough and Trevor Jackson). Could this game of musical grooms be a commentary on her past marriages to Ojani Noa (1997-1998), Cris Judd (2001-2003) and Marc Anthony (2004-2014)?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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      Brian Wilson’s Family Seeks Conservatorship for a Beach Boys Founder

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      Mr. Wilson, whose musical genius powered the Beach Boys, has dementia, according to his publicist. His wife, Melinda, died last month.The family of Brian Wilson, the musical architect whose genius helped power the Beach Boys, is seeking to place him under a conservatorship following the death of his wife, Melinda, last month.According to documents filed in Los Angeles Superior Court earlier this week by lawyers representing the potential conservators, Mr. Wilson, 81, has “a major neurocognitive disorder,” and “is unable to properly provide for his own personal needs for physical health.” Melinda Wilson had previously provided care for her husband, but following her death on Jan. 30, the appointment of a conservator has become necessary, according to the petition filed on Wednesday.In a statement. the family said that LeeAnn Hard, Mr. Wilson’s business manager, and Jean Sievers, his publicist and manager, would serve as co-conservators.“This decision was made to ensure that there will be no extreme changes to the household and Brian and the children living at home will be taken care of and remain in the home where they are cared for,” the statement said.In an email to The New York Times, Ms. Sievers said Mr. Wilson has been “diagnosed with dementia.” She said that as a co-conservator, she would “ensure that all of Brian’s daily living needs are satisfied and he continues to lead an active life.”A hearing on the petition has been scheduled for April 30.Mr. Wilson, a revered founder of the Beach Boys, is widely credited as a musical visionary who channeled an idealized notion of California into a chart-topping sound.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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      Beyoncé Rolls Into Her Country Era, and 10 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Vampire Weekend, Pearl Jam, Saya Gray 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 sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Beyoncé, ‘16 Carriages’In a flex of genre-spanning musicianship that’s also a workaholic’s lament, Beyoncé announces her next realm to conquer — country, one of her birthrights as a Texan — while she recalls her past and doubles down on her ambition, singing, “Ain’t got time to waste, I got art to make.” The music is an arena-country crescendo, from acoustic-guitar strum to full-band impact topped by pedal-steel guitar, along with gospel-organ underpinnings and country quavers in Beyoncé’s vocal lines. At a moment when country music is being pushed to acknowledge Black roots and current Black musicians, Beyoncé is not only claiming an expanded demographic base. She’s also using her celebrity clout to force some doors open. JON PARELESVampire Weekend, ‘Capricorn’Vampire Weekend channels a generation’s exhaustion, disillusionment and overload in “Capricorn,” a stubbornly slow ballad about being “too old for dying young” and “sifting through centuries for moments of your own” from “Only God Was Above Us,” a new album due April 5. The music layers stately chamber-pop with heaving, squealing noise, then eases toward folky resignation. PARELESWaxahatchee, ‘Bored’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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      7 Stellar Songs for a Saturn Return

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      Inspired by Kacey Musgraves’s latest single, hear tracks by No Doubt, Stevie Wonder, R.E.M. and more.Gwen Stefani.Kevin Lamarque/ReutersDear listeners,“My Saturn has returned,” the 35-year-old singer-songwriter Kacey Musgraves announces at the beginning of her stirring new single “Deeper Well,” the title track from her upcoming fifth album. “When I turned 27, everything started to change.”I know what she means. While I’m not much of an astrology person, I am something of an expert on the Saturn Return, the time when the ringed planet approaches the spot it was located when a person was born. It’s generally thought to be a moment of tumultuous upheaval and, eventually, of great personal transformation. Since Saturn’s orbit around the sun takes about 29-and-a-half years and stays in a particular sign for two-and-a -half years, the first return begins around one’s 27th birthday.It was music that first taught me about this concept: specifically No Doubt’s searching 2000 album “Return of Saturn,” which I listened to obsessively when it first came out. Gwen Stefani had written much of the material while she was going through her own Saturn Return, uncharacteristically depressed and questioning her place in the world. At 13, this sounded quite profound and adult to me.When I began mine years later, I researched the concept extensively and wrote an essay trying to understand why the idea has been so resonant for so many people. Is the Saturn Return just a fancy astrological name for the existential anxiety of turning 30? I’ll leave that for you to answer. But I tend to think that any framework that provokes self-reflection and a consideration of ourselves as part of a larger whole can’t be all bad. Plus, over the years, it’s inspired some pretty great music.Today’s playlist is a short compilation of songs either directly or indirectly inspired by this astrological event. It includes the aforementioned Musgraves and No Doubt, but also R.E.M., Hayley Williams and Stevie Wonder. It does contain a few notable omissions from this very specific musical canon, but I personally — forgive me — am not a fan of Katy Perry’s saturnine ballad “By the Grace of God,” and I also felt that an eight-and-a-half-minute Tool song would disrupt the flow of this particular playlist, even if it does feature Maynard James Keenan growling, “Saturn comes back around again to show you everything.” You are of course welcome to listen to those songs on your own time.I did, however, want to highlight a lesser discussed aspect of the Saturn Return: It does indeed keep coming back around, so you can expect a second one in your late 50s and, if you’re lucky, a third in your mid-80s — which means we’re in for a doozy of a Kacey Musgraves album in approximately 2074.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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      How Paul McCartney’s Lost Bass Guitar Was Found Five Decades Later

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      The Höfner violin bass that accompanied the Beatles to fame went missing more than 50 years ago. Two journalists and a Höfner expert were determined to find it.No one seemed to know what had happened to one of the most important bass guitars in music history, though in the decades since it went missing there had been some dramatic rumors.Was the Höfner violin bass, which had accompanied Paul McCartney and the Beatles to worldwide fame, tucked away in a private collection? Had it been secretly shipped to a wealthy fan in Japan?It turned out the bass was passing time in a more unassuming locale: the loft of a family home in East Sussex, England. The family reported the guitar in late September, after a couple of journalists and a guitar expert started a new campaign looking for it in 2023, more than 50 years after it was last seen.The guitar, which has been authenticated by its manufacturer, has been returned to Mr. McCartney, according to a statement posted on his website on Thursday. “Paul is incredibly grateful to all those involved,” it said.It was the denouement to an enduring mystery that had gripped Beatles fans, including one group who pooled their skills to help find it.‘It started Beatlemania’The Höfner 500/1 guitar is a precious part of Beatles lore. It can be heard on recordings of hit songs including “Love Me Do,” “She Loves You” and “Twist and Shout.”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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      ‘Wham!’ Documentary Had an Unusual Choice for a Director

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      The director Chris Smith was not a fan of the ’80s pop band when he decided to take on the project about George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley.Two young Londoners — one of Greek Cypriot origin, the other of Egyptian descent — set up a pop band in the 1980s that goes on to sell more than 30 million records. They break up several years later, at the pinnacle of their fame, when the two hit the ripe old age of 23.That, in a nutshell, is the story of Wham!, the British pop duo, and its two stars, George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley. It’s a story that the director Chris Smith tells in a Netflix documentary, which is nominated in Sunday’s EE British Academy Film Awards, known as the BAFTAs.Other contenders in the documentary category include “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie,” about the actor’s battle with Parkinson’s disease; and “American Symphony,” a year in the life of the musician Jon Batiste.Smith previously directed the Emmy-nominated 2019 documentary “Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened,” about a fraudulent music festival that landed its organizer in jail.Two years earlier, he directed “Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond,” on the making of the 1999 movie “Man on the Moon,” in which Jim Carrey played the entertainer Andy Kaufman.Smith said that he was approached to shoot “Wham!” by its producers. There is no narrator: The tale is told using documentary footage of the duo during their career, paired with audio excerpts from interviews with the two pop stars themselves, which are voiced over — Michael died in 2016 at 53.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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      Beyoncé Fan’s Radio Request Reignites Country Music Debate

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      A fan asked his Oklahoma radio station to play a new Beyoncé song. The request was rejected, spurring hundreds of calls and emails about the exclusion of Black musicians from the genre.In Oklahoma, a small country music station that refused a listener’s request to play a new song by Beyoncé was forced to change its tune after an uproar from fans who say that Black artists are too often excluded from the genre.On Tuesday morning, Justin McGowan requested that the D.J.s at KYKC, a country music radio station in Ada, play “Texas Hold ’Em,” one of two new songs Beyoncé released as announced in a Super Bowl commercial on Sunday.Beyoncé, who grew up in Houston, sings about hoedowns, and the twangy song also features a fellow Black Grammy winner, Rhiannon Giddens, on banjo and viola.The station manager, Roger Harris, emailed Mr. McGowan back with a concise rejection: “We do not play Beyoncé at KYKC as we are a country music station.” In sending the email, Mr. Harris unwittingly ignited a new flame in a long-simmering debate over how Black artists fit into a genre that has Black music at its roots.In the Super Bowl ad, Beyoncé joked that her new release would “break the internet.” She wasn’t kidding.Mr. McGowan put a screenshot of the rejection on social media, tagging a Beyoncé fan group in a post that drew 3.4 million views on X and sparked conversations on Reddit and TikTok.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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      How ‘The Greatest Night in Pop’ Got the ’80s Right

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      The Netflix documentary revels in nostalgia. But the heart of the film spotlights the relationships between the pop superstars who recorded “We Are the World.”The title of Netflix’s new documentary “The Greatest Night in Pop,” which chronicles the recording of “We Are the World,” is a little mystifying. Pop music needs a big audience, but what happened inside A&M Studios in Los Angeles, in the vampire hours between 10 p.m. on Jan. 28, 1985, and 8 a.m. the next day, was seen by only 60 to 70 people in attendance, from Michael Jackson to a small film crew. The song that resulted in this frantic, logistically improbable session is stirring but callow, with a gospel-style chord progression that gives false weight to the platitudinous lyrics.Prince, who declined repeated entreaties to join the ensemble, sat it out because he thought the song was “horrible,” according to the guitarist Wendy Melvoin. It sold over 20 million copies, with some fans reportedly buying multiples less out of enthusiasm for the music, it seems, than a desire to donate money toward feeding Ethiopians, who were in the midst of a famine that reportedly killed as many as 700,000 people. The song won four Grammys, including song of the year, but almost 40 years later, it has all but vanished from view.But now, “We Are the World” and the private machinations that went into writing and recording it are up for reconsideration, thanks to the documentary, which was viewed 11.9 million times in its first week of release last month, topping Netflix’s list of English-language films. “The Greatest Night in Pop” earns its swaggering title in two ways. Until someone invents a time machine, it’s the greatest way to see what the mid-1980s were about, thanks to a parade of stylistic and technological hallmarks, and even anachronisms: big hair, cassette tapes, primary colors, satin baseball jackets, leather pants, leotards, fur coats, perms, walkie talkies, even a Rolodex. (Cassettes, unlike perms, have made a comeback.)It’s also a wonderful illustration of the old maxim that show business is about relationships. The “We Are the World” session brought together most of the singers who made 1984 “pop music’s greatest year,” as many have called it, and benefited from an unrepeatable set of variables. The chain of action that preceded that night was, the film shows, all about calling friends, calling in favors and cannily casting the song with a broad demographic appeal. Here’s a look at how a few accomplished musicians and one relentless manager organized a gala event in only four weeks.Harry Belafonte and Ken KragenThe actor and activist Harry Belafonte, left, approached Ken Kragen, the artist manager, with an idea for a benefit concert.Reed Saxon/Associated PressHarry Belafonte, the singer, actor and civil rights activist, wanted to draw attention to the famine in Africa, and he approached Ken Kragen, one of the industry’s most high-powered artist managers. Belafonte had seen how much money the Irish singer Bob Geldof was raising for famine relief with the “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” single, and proposed a benefit concert. Kragen had a different idea: “I said, ‘Harry, let’s just take the idea Bob already gave us. Let’s do it, but let’s get the greatest stars in America to do it,’” he recalls in one of the documentary’s archival interviews. (Kragen died in 2021.)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