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      ‘We Taylor-gated’: Taylor Swift Fans Descend on a Jets Game

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      Football fans mingled with Swifties, on public transit, in the parking lot and at the game. Everyone was dressed for the occasion.It was a standing-room-only crowd gathered in the aisles of a New Jersey Transit train from New York’s Penn Station to New Jersey at 5 p.m. on Sunday evening.Multiple groups of friends were overheard asking the same question: Was this because of Taylor Swift?By now most Americans are well-versed with the Ms. Swift effect. Wherever she goes, whether it’s to perform or even just eat dinner, fans follow. Once word leaked that she might make an appearance at MetLife Stadium for a football game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the New York Jets to cheer on her rumored new boyfriend, Kansas City’s All-Pro tight end Travis Kelce, it was assumed the crowds would show up en masse. The fact that tickets to the game and Mr. Kelce’s jersey — he sports No. 87 for the Chiefs — showed notable increases in sales (and cost), according to multiple media outlets, only confirmed those suspicions.Ms. Swift did indeed show up at the game and watched it from a private suite with friends Sophie Turner, Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, and Hugh Jackman. People in the stadium who were close enough to see the celebrities spent much of the game gawking and taking photos. (Ms. Swift waved to fans multiple times.)Hana Kim and Courtney Takahashi were unable to secure tickets for the Eras Tour, but they snapped up tickets for Sunday’s Jets game.Elaine Gitles, who is a fan of the Chiefs and Ms. Swift, was ahead of the curve with a Kelce T-shirt she purchased after last season’s Super Bowl.On the train, two Jets fans couldn’t believe their good fortune. “We have four season tickets, and we sold two for $90,” said Michael Callaghan, 30, who lives in Kips Bay. “They were going for $50 before Taylor was going.”“We should get Swift bracelets that say Jets on them,” quipped his friend, Ryan Dwyer, 36, who lives on the Upper West Side.At Secaucus Junction, where travelers from Penn Station have to transfer to get a train to the Meadowlands, strangers were joking with one another about whether they were fans of football or Ms. Swift.Sean Patrick and Tom Wagner wanted to dress up for the occasion. They failed to secure sweatshirts large enough, but made things work with masking tape and a marker.When Elaine Gitles, 26, who works for a software company and lives in the East Village, was showing off her red T-shirt that said “Travis Kelce is Hot,” an older man in a green Jets jersey yelled, “It’s a great Taylor Swift jersey.”Ms. Gitles clarified that she’s a Chiefs fan, and she bought the shirt when her team won the Super Bowl last season. But she’s not mad about being labeled a Swiftie (as Ms. Swift’s fans are nicknamed), since she is one of those as well.“I went to Eras three times,” Ms. Gitles said of Swift’s wildly successful Eras Tour. “It’s the best coincidence of all time that my favorite musical artist is joining the best football team of all time.” (She also shared the lyrics she came up with that Ms. Swift could sing if her relationship to Mr. Kelce falls through: “He played the field like he played me. A travesty.”)To get ready for Halloween, and Sunday’s game, Caye Schnackel had a bedazzled jersey overnighted to her that features Mr. Kelce’s No. 87.While some fans sported replica jerseys for Mr. Kelce, other fans improvised, making their own for Ms. Swift.Other people who stopped to chat in Secaucus were Hana Kim, 24, and Courtney Takahashi, 25, both special education teachers in Westchester. The duo couldn’t afford tickets for Ms. Swift’s concert at the MetLife Stadium in May, so they sat in the parking lot outside the stadium and listened to the whole thing from their cars instead. “We Taylorgated,” said Ms. Takahashi.“We bought football tickets as soon as the news came out,” said Ms. Takahashi. “I don’t even care if we see her. Just being in her presence, breathing the same air, feeling her vibe, that is good enough for me.”Outside the stadium, as some fans were tailgating with grills and coolers of beer, others were brainstorming the best way to get a peek at Ms. Swift.“I’ve been looking at social media, waiting to see if we could see which box she was in and if we could see her,” said Shae Mermis, 33, who lives in Crown Heights and was at the game with her girlfriend and parents.Stella Fee, 44, and her daughter, Zoe Fee, decided they would hang out on the V.I.P. level. “We are season ticket holders in the level below, so we are allowed to go up a floor to where the boxes are,” she said.Fans close enough to see Ms. Swift in the stands worked hard to get her attention, and she waved to at least a few of them.Fans had varying ideas for appropriate game day outfits.As soon as she saw Ms. Swift in Mr. Kelce’s box last week at the Chiefs game in Kansas City, Caye Schnackel, 26, a fashion designer who lives in Brooklyn, decided she and her boyfriend would have to dress as the celebrity couple for Halloween. “I looked at him and said, ‘I am going to be Taylor, and you are going to be Kelce,’ and that was that,” she said.Joseph Kacinski wore a blonde wig and a jersey with Mr. Kelce’s number.Scarlett Reilly brought a sign with Mr. Kelce’s number, 87, and what Ms. Swift says is her lucky number, 13.She found the perfect outfit at Nova Lee Boutique — a bright red jersey with 87 written on it, made entirely of sequins — and had it overnighted so she could get it in time to wear to Sunday’s game in addition to Halloween.“I’m just so obsessed with Travis now,” she said. “I am so jealous of Taylor. I am going to try and win him over today.” (Her boyfriend, Krzysztof Miezgiel, who was next to her, just laughed.)Lexi Gordon dressed to look like Ms. Swift and took selfies with Jets fans.Sean Patrick, 47, went to a T-shirt printing company at a local mall the morning of the game to try and get the saying, “Where’s Taylor?” printed, but he was told it wouldn’t be ready in time. His friend, Tom Wagner, 59, from Manahawkin, N.Y., went to Walmart and bought the largest pink sweatshirt he could find but it still didn’t fit. So they decided to take pink masking tape, write phrases about Taylor Swift on it with a marker, and attach them to football jerseys.The pair spent four hours tailgating in the parking lot, making pulled pork and chicken on four different grills and watching other football games on a television they set up with a portable satellite dish. “We had about 50 people come up to us and ask to take photos,” said Mr. Wagner. “I’ve never had more fun at a Jets game in my life.”“The atmosphere is crazy,” he added. “I’ve never seen a team bring a crowd like this.”T-shirts from Ms. Swift’s “Eras Tour” broke up the traditional football jerseys. More

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      Review: U2 Was in Las Vegas Limbo on Sphere’s Opening Night

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      In the inaugural show at Sphere, a $2.3 billion venue, a band unafraid of pomp and spectacle was sometimes out-pomped and out-spectacled.Perhaps the true gift of Las Vegas is how it renders the extraordinary as mundane. A place where the simulacrum of glamour available to everyone ensures no one gets the real thing. A city responsible for billions of dollars of commerce that has the texture of a Fisher-Price play set. A hub for some of the country’s most beloved performers that blurs the lines between superstar D.J.s, cheeky magicians and bona fide vocal heroes.And so there was Bono on Friday night, onstage, tantalizingly close, freakishly accessible and, in some moments, perhaps just a tad lost. His band, U2, was inaugurating Sphere, a hyperstimulating new performance venue in which the whole exterior is a screen, and essentially the whole interior as well. Friday’s concert was the first of a 25-show residency, titled U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere, that runs through the end of the year.Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, no band played with the aesthetic of grandiosity more than U2, and no band made a philosophy of futurist communication so central to its visual presentation. So the choice of U2 to show off what Sphere was capable of made sense — a messianic band for a messianic venue.For two hours, the group — Bono, the Edge on guitar, Adam Clayton on bass and Bram van den Berg, filling in for Larry Mullen Jr., on drums — wrestled with a venue equally as obsessed with hugeness, pomp and spectacle as U2 is. The setting was lavish, and the gestures were often colossal. And yet for all the vividness of the setting, there was still something not quite complete about this performance, which at times was winningly small, at others winningly huge, and at still others a futile ramble.For this show, U2 leaned heavily on its 1991 album “Achtung Baby,” from the tail end of its commercial high point — an album that found the band, which excelled at earthen anthems, reaching for more ambitious and unexpected sounds. But playing it in full (though not in order) meant peaks and valleys. Meshed in vocal harmony on “Mysterious Ways,” Bono and the Edge sounded vibrant. Bono, who throughout the night performed his signature contortions that recall a person who just received an electric shock, was largely delivering his pleading howls with commitment, at least in the show’s first half. Throughout, Clayton was dutiful and stoic, and van den Berg brought a raw fervor that Mullen doesn’t quite approach.But some of this era’s indelible songs were, here, something less than that: Both the signature ballad “One” and the dreamily tragic “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses” felt tentative and less invested than usual. (The same went for the curiously dry version of “Desire” that appeared later in the show.) And a batch of “Achtung Baby” songs that appeared just after the show’s midpoint, including “So Cruel,” “Acrobat” and “Love Is Blindness,” verged on grim and asphyxiating, rendering the huge room inert.From left, the Edge, Bono, Bram van den Berg (filling in for Larry Mullen Jr.) and Adam Clayton. The venue’s stage itself is strangely vulnerable, and the band at times felt tantalizingly close, our critic writes.Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Live NationThere were a few lovely flourishes where U2 referred to other musicians — sprinkles of “Purple Rain” and “Love Me Tender” at the end of “One”; throaty nods to “My Way” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” late in the night.In truth, the performance peaked at the end, with a majestic run: “Where the Streets Have No Name,” “With or Without You,” “Beautiful Day.” And it was here that the band used the venue to most potent effect. Suddenly, the room was bright, as if a nightclub performance had been yanked out into nature — you could really see the audience, consisting largely of 40- and 50-somethings, including huge smatterings of loyalists in vintage U2 shirts and Vegas bros in tight Dan Flashes get-ups.It was a welcome and thoughtful recalibration of band to room, and audience to band. Just before then, during the new song “Atomic City,” the entire screen was an uncannily clear street view of Las Vegas, with the buildings being slowly dismantled through the course of the song, a clever visual gimmick. (For some parts of the show, the band hardly used the sphere at all, or only to display building-high videos of themselves.)For some parts of the show, the band hardly used the screens at all, or simply displayed building-high videos of themselves.Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Live NationEarlier in the set, U2 had used the screen just as aggressively but to less potent effect, making it plain how daunting a blank slate of this size can be. At one point a long rope — perhaps a nod to a magician’s endless handkerchief — was strung from the floor up to the peak of the dome, where it intersected with a balloon illustration. A young woman came onstage to walk with Bono as he, and then she, held the bottom of the rope. For a time she sat in it like a swing, awkwardly and perhaps not terribly safely. It was confusing and distracting.When the screen was full, it was often cluttered — with Barbara Kruger-esque phrases, during “The Fly,” or with digitally crisp art that could have been cooked up on an A.I. generator like Midjourney. (The illustrated endangered animals that appeared in the sky near the end of the show were an exception.) Sometimes things delved into the realm of discomfort: During “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” the screen filled with Vegas iconography and characters from films based in the city (Elvis Presley, but also Don Cheadle and Nicolas Cage). The collage streamed downward, as if it were falling behind the stage, which in turn made the stage appear as if it were tilting slightly upward, lending the whole affair the air of seasickness.Moments like these underscored that, as much as U2 was playing a concert, it was providing a soundtrack for Sphere’s technological wizardry. And also its technological quirks. The four spotlights behind the stage were mobile. A drone whizzed around, gnat-like, though it was unclear where the footage it was presumably filming was destined for. This isn’t quite a conceptual spectacle like the Zoo TV Tour, the original “Achtung Baby” showcase.Sphere is the brainchild of James Dolan, a broadly reviled New York sports and real estate magnate, who spent $2.3 billion bringing the space to life. It looks prescient, a glimpse of what even ordinary architecture might resemble a few decades hence. The entire outside surface is an LED screen — always on, and always changing (though it repeats). Watching it from the windows of a landing airplane, say, or a taxicab the night before this show, you might have seen it as a pumpkin, or a yellow emoji face, or a moist eye, or an ocean with creatures swimming through it.Impressively detailed and lightly shocking, Sphere registers in intensity if not scale — at 366 feet, it is not even one of the 40 tallest buildings in Las Vegas. But on some level, its power is grounded simply in the novelty of the shape, even in a town that already has a pyramid and a palace and a castle. (Dolan has already indicated plans to build similar structures in other cities.)The entire exterior of Sphere is a video screen, and essentially the entire interior as well.Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesBut inside it is, simply, a concert venue, albeit one with distinct advantages and challenges. In dry stretches, when the space between the band and the huge screen and the crowd was palpable, the result paralleled the airy emptiness of a corporate convention gig. In a stadium show, you can almost obscure a low-enthusiasm performance — here there was nowhere to hide.That’s because, despite the visual ambition the space demands, little of that burden falls on the band itself, which is largely confined to the size of stage one might find in any regional theater across the country (augmented by a Brian Eno-inspired turntable structure, though it wasn’t used terribly effectively). It is a strangely vulnerable and inelegant setup for what is essentially a sinecure gig for a still-craved band.At the end of the night, Bono began cataloging his thanks. “I’ll tell you who’s one hard worker — Jim Dolan,” Bono said. “You’re one mad bastard.” He also thanked Irving and Jeffrey Azoff, Michael Rapino, Guy Oseary, Jimmy Iovine and other executives. Earlier, he’d acknowledged some special guests: Paul McCartney, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg. (Also in the audience, though not acknowledged: Flavor Flav.)It was a folksy way to spotlight the sheer extent of the labor, visible and invisible, that had just been performed. And it also highlighted the tension that remained, even at the end of the night, unresolved: Was this a big show or a small one? Was it selling intimacy or grandeur? Was it extraordinarily mundane, or mundanely extraordinary? More

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      Becky G’s Revenge Fantasy, and 11 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by PinkPantheress, the Rolling Stones featuring Stevie Wonder and Lady Gaga, 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.Becky G featuring Chiquis, ‘Cuidadito’Becky G, an American singer with Mexican roots, has racked up millions of streams with hits in pop styles from across the Americas. On most of her new album, “Esquinas,” she latches onto the rising popularity of regional Mexican music, reviving ballads by Vicente Fernández, the revered Mexican ranchera songwriter, and collaborating with current regional Mexican hitmakers including Peso Pluma, Yahritza y Su Esencia and, on “Cuidadito” (“Be Careful”), the Mexican singer Chiquis. In a bouncy duet, they detail the kind of revenge they’re ready to take on a husband seen with another woman the night before: no breakfast, slashed tires, eviction. Spoiler: It was just a dream, but he’s been warned. JON PARELESDebby Friday, ‘Let U In’The Canadian electronic-pop songwriter Debby Friday, who just won Canada’s Polaris Prize, collaborated with the Australian producer Darcy Baylis on this new single. Over a double-time break beat and calmly pulsing synthesizers, Friday sings about an obsession that keeps her awake, even if the devotion may not be entirely mutual. She wonders, “Is the big heart my only sin?” PARELESPinkPantheress, ‘Mosquito’The latest single from the British pop star PinkPantheress is a sugary confection with a gothic edge. “I just had a dream I was dead, and I only cared ’cause I was taken from you,” she sings in her signature lilt, hopscotching across a skittish beat. Produced with Greg Kurstin, the track retains the dreamy charm of PinkPantheress’s homespun bedroom-pop but adds a glittery sheen. LINDSAY ZOLADZJaja Tresch featuring Coco Argentée and Denis Dino, ‘Nonji Chom’Here’s a burst of sheer jubilation. Jaja Tresch and two fellow Cameroonian singers, Coco Argentée and Denis Dino, trade verses on a track that hurtles along on six-beat rhythms, drawing on bikutsi and other styles original to their country. The lyrics, in the Meta’ language, tell young people to heed their parents and to persevere. As guitars, drums, balafons (marimbas), flutes and whistles all pile into the track, the music soars. PARELESThe Rolling Stones featuring Stevie Wonder and Lady Gaga, “Sweet Sounds of Heaven”The absolute high point of “Hackney Diamonds,” the first album of new Rolling Stones songs since 2005, is “Sweet Sounds of Heaven.” It starts as a loose, gospelly song that just happens to have Stevie Wonder on keyboards; soon, Lady Gaga arrives to trade vocals with — and spur on — Mick Jagger. Horns come in to push the song to a grand finale, but apparently no one wants to let it end, and what sounds like a spontaneous studio jam lifts the song to another peak. Even in this digital era, it feels analog. PARELESH31R, ‘Right Here’H31R — the duo of the Brooklyn rapper maassai and the New Jersey producer JWords — conjures a sound for when lust conquers rationality on “Right Here.” The rap goes, “I know better/but if you wanna take me I could let ya,” over squishy electric piano chords, sporadic bass-drum hits and some tiny thing that’s just rattling and clanking around the mix. The mood is a tossup: eager but nonchalant, defensive but reckless. PARELESFaye Webster, ‘Lifetime’Turbulent love songs are everywhere; serene ones are much rarer. Faye Webster’s “Lifetime” savors a sense of permanence. The tempo is a very relaxed sway, piano and guitar trade little trickling phrases, and a chamber orchestra offers discreet support as Webster sings in a voice of bemused contentment, envisioning a lifelong connection. PARELESOneohtrix Point Never, ‘Again’There’s an eerie beauty in “Again,” the title track from the latest album by the electronic experimentalist Oneohtrix Point Never. The glitchy, wordless composition progresses through cycles of malfunction and decay — melodies seem to break apart, revealing the ghosts in the machines. If HAL 9000’s death scene in “2001: A Space Odyssey” makes you cry, this one’s for you. ZOLADZMatana Roberts, ‘How Prophetic’Reeds and violin explode in star bursts, over and again. A pair of drummers push ahead with a square-shouldered beat that could easily be lifted from a punk record, or from one of Junior Kimbrough’s electric blues. Alongside them, the alto saxophonist, multimedia artist and self-described “sound quilter” Matana Roberts speaks from the perspective of an ancestor (or maybe many), putting words to the critical consciousness that the women of Robert’s line have carried. “How Prophetic” arrives early on “Coin Coin Chapter Five: In the Garden,” the latest in a series of albums exploring Roberts’s ancestry and inheritance, drawing from a mix of archival material, interviews with relatives and the artist’s imagination. At the end of “How Prophetic,” Roberts recites a refrain which recurs across the album: “My name is your name, our name is their name, we are named, we remember, they forget.” GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOThe National, ‘Smoke Detector’The National ends “Laugh Track,” its surprise-release second album of 2023, with “Smoke Detector,” an eight-minute live recording that’s a spiral of desperation. The lyrics work through free associations, promises and pleas — “Why don’t you lay here and listen to distant sirens with me?” — while the band circles obsessively through four chords, falling and rising, with its guitars tangling and seething, gnashing and wailing. “You don’t know how much I love you, do you?” Matt Berninger eventually asks, already knowing the sad answer. PARELESAtka, ‘Lenny’Atka is the singer and songwriter Sarah Neumann, who was born in Germany but is now based in London. In “Lenny,” she sings about trying to save a troubled man she still loves: “I need you, I always will,” she insists. She and her producer, Jung Kim from Gang of Youths, use frantically clattering percussion and an occasional sample of church bells to transform what could have been a basic two-chord rocker into an emotional siege. PARELESDarius Jones, ‘Zubot’It takes over two minutes for any prescribed melody to kick in on “Zubot,” as you can see clearly in the accompanying video, which animates Darius Jones’s written score. But by the time his alto saxophone syncs up with James Meger’s bass, playing a zigzagging, key-jumping melody while cellos and violins scrub and scrape around them, each instrument in the group has found a way to define itself. “Zubot” is the second of four movements in Jones’s new album-length suite, “Fluxkit Vancouver (It’s Suite but Sacred),” connected equally to 12-tone modernism and free jazz and the Southern soul saxophone tradition. RUSSONELLO More

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      Aerosmith Postpones Farewell Tour After Steven Tyler Fractures Larynx

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      The frontman’s vocal injury is worse than initially thought, the band said in a statement, announcing that the shows would be delayed until 2024.Aerosmith has postponed all of the remaining shows on its farewell tour until 2024 because of a vocal injury suffered by its frontman, Steven Tyler, according to a statement made by the rock band on Facebook.Tyler hurt his vocal cords during the band’s Sept. 9 performance at the UBS Arena in New York. His injury is “more serious than initially thought,” the statement said, involving a fractured larynx in addition to vocal cord damage.The band will honor previously purchased tickets for rescheduled dates of the Peace Out tour and refunds will be available for those unable to attend the new dates, the statement said.“I am heartbroken to not be out there with Aerosmith, my brothers and the incredible Black Crowes, rocking with the best fans in the world,” Tyler said in the statement. “I promise we will be back as soon as we can!” More

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      The Legend of Gram Parsons, in 12 Songs

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      A half-century after his death, listen to some of the singer-songwriter’s most soulful signature tunes, and some tributes and covers by artists he inspired.Harvey L. Silver/Corbis via Getty ImagesDear listeners,For quite some time, I’ve been looking for an excuse to write about an artist whose music means a lot to me: the singer-songwriter Gram Parsons.When I realized that the 50th anniversary of his death was this year — Sept. 19, to be exact — I thought it would be as good a time as any. Only I didn’t want to focus on the tragic and morbid details of Parsons’s death, as so many people have done for the past half-century. (Parsons died of a drug overdose at age 26 in a Joshua Tree motel.) I wanted to use the anniversary of his death, maybe a little paradoxically, as an occasion to argue that it should not be the defining element of his legacy. The music should be.My piece about Parsons was published on Thursday, but I wanted to use today’s Amplifier to delve even deeper into his music. That’s right: This newsletter is a Gramplifier. (I had to. I’m sorry.)A native of Winter Haven, Fla. — and born into a family that made its fortune in the citrus industry — Parsons sought to bridge the divide between the counterculture and the country-music establishment. A Southern boy with a rock ’n’ roll heart, he dreamed of a loftily named, utopian sound he liked to call “cosmic American music,” injecting traditional styles with a bit of the unknown. At his best — in his time with groups like the International Submarine Band, the Byrds, and the Flying Burrito Brothers, as well as in his later solo work — Parsons made that vision a reality. Though he didn’t find much commercial success while he was alive, his influence continues to ripple.Today’s playlist contains some of Parsons’s most soulful signature tunes, as well as some tributes and covers by artists he inspired, like Elvis Costello and, of course, his protégée and duet partner, Emmylou Harris, who has been one of the most persistent torchbearers of Parsons’s legacy.Parsons remains a kind of outlaw figure in the cultural imagination, suggesting an alternative to more complacent country rock, and if you’re unacquainted, discovering his catalog feels like dusting off some dazzling hidden gems. So cue up this playlist and get ready for the return of the grievous angel.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. The International Submarine Band: “Luxury Liner”An early Parsons composition included on the International Submarine Band’s 1968 album “Safe at Home,” “Luxury Liner” is at once a rollicking road song and a tuneful confession of lonesomeness in the tradition of Parsons’s idol Hank Williams. Emmylou Harris would later help popularize the song — as she did with much of Parsons’s material — when she covered it as the title track of her 1976 album. (Listen on YouTube)2. The Byrds: “Hickory Wind”Parsons wrote two songs that appeared on “Sweetheart of the Rodeo,” his only album with the Byrds, and one of them, “Hickory Wind,” is among his most enduringly beloved tracks. As the music critic Ben Fong-Torres put it in his 1991 biography of Parsons, named after this very tune, “What made the song so universal was its recognition of one of life’s big questions — Is that all there is? — combined with pleasant evocations of youth and the safety a kid felt being at home among the pines, the oak, and the brush.” (Listen on YouTube)3. The Flying Burrito Brothers: “Hot Burrito #2”The Flying Burrito Brothers — the third band Parsons joined in as many years — melded country music and psychedelic rock seamlessly on their 1969 debut album, “The Gilded Palace of Sin.” “Sneaky” Pete Kleinow was perhaps the band member whose style best demonstrated this fusion: He played pedal steel through a fuzz-box, as though it were an electric guitar. (Listen on YouTube)4. Elvis Costello & the Attractions: “I’m Your Toy”Parsons was a huge inspiration for Elvis Costello’s 1981 country covers album, “Almost Blue,” and on it Costello offered his own renditions of two Parsons songs, including this arresting take on the Flying Burrito Brothers’ goofily titled classic “Hot Burrito #1.” Costello, though, decided to change the song’s name to reference a memorable lyric in the refrain: “I’m your toy, I’m your old boy/But I don’t want no one but you to love me.” (Listen on YouTube)5. The Flying Burrito Brothers: “Sin City”We’re talking Los Angeles here, not Vegas. Perhaps the greatest example of the briefly simpatico songwriting partnership of Parsons and the former Byrd Chris Hillman, this twangy ballad captures the mood of late-60s Southern California burnout in the fiery spirit of the Louvin Brothers. (Listen on YouTube)6. The Flying Burrito Brothers: “Wild Horses”For better and for worse, Parsons spent a lot of time in the late ’60s and early ’70s hanging out with the Rolling Stones, particularly Keith Richards (who admitted to Fong-Torres, “yes, maybe hanging around the Rolling Stones didn’t help him in his attitude towards drugs”). Parsons taught Richards a lot about American country music, though, and many people claim his influence can be heard on “Exile on Main St.” songs like “Sweet Virginia” and “Torn and Frayed.” That exchange could also be reciprocal, though, like when Richards let the Flying Burrito Brothers record his band’s new song “Wild Horses” before the Stones did. (Listen on YouTube)7. Gram Parsons: “Still Feeling Blue”For “GP,” his 1973 debut solo album, Parsons recruited much of his hero Elvis Presley’s red-hot old backing band: the guitarist James Burton, pianist Glen D. Hardin and drummer Ronnie Tutt. They lend an air of experience and polish to Parsons’s own compositions, like the lively country throwback “Still Feeling Blue.” (Listen on YouTube)8. Gram Parsons, “The New Soft Shoe”Ostensibly — if somewhat inscrutably — about the auto pioneer E.L. Cord, “The New Soft Shoe,” another highlight from “GP,” boasts one of the loveliest and most wistful melodies Parsons ever wrote. (Listen on YouTube)9. Gram Parsons, “The Return of the Grievous Angel”At a tour stop in Boston, a young poet named Tom Brown handed Parsons a sheet of vivid lyrics he’d written with Parsons in mind. They became the basis of the laid-back, lived-in “The Return of the Grievous Angel” — destined to become one of Parsons’s signature songs. (Listen on YouTube)10. Emmylou Harris, “Boulder to Birmingham”Emmylou Harris was an unknown folk singer on the Washington, D.C., club circuit when Parsons recruited her to sing backup on his solo records and tour with his band. After his death, she became a solo star in her own right, but she continued to pay tribute to Parsons throughout her career. This wrenching ballad from her major-label debut album, “Pieces of the Sky,” is about her processing the overwhelming grief of Parsons’s loss: “I would walk all the way from Boulder to Birmingham,” she sings in her clarion voice, “if I thought I could see your face.” (Listen on YouTube)11. Gram Parsons: “$1000 Wedding”Here is Parsons at the peak of his powers as a conduit for emotion. Memories of a thwarted wedding and a subsequent bender swirl in an impressionistic recollection, not always told in a linear fashion but emotionally piercing nonetheless. “Supposed to be a funeral,” Parsons sings in a heartbreakingly weary voice. “It’s been a bad, bad day.” (Listen on YouTube)12. Gram Parsons: “In My Hour of Darkness”Each verse in this elegiac song is dedicated to someone in Parsons’s life who had recently passed away: first the actor Brandon deWilde (the young man who “went driving through the night”), then the guitarist Clarence White (“another young man safely strummed his silver-stringed guitar”), and finally the Los Angeles music scene fixture Sid Kaiser (“kind and wise with age”). There’s something haunting about Parsons writing this song so shortly before his own death, and it closes out “Grievous Angel” with both a spiritual warmth and the chill of premonition. (Listen on YouTube)Out with the truckers and the kickers and the cowboy angels,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“The Legend of Gram Parsons” track listTrack 1: The International Submarine Band, “Luxury Liner”Track 2: The Byrds, “Hickory Wind”Track 3: The Flying Burrito Brothers, “Hot Burrito #2”Track 4: Elvis Costello & the Attractions, “I’m Your Toy”Track 5: The Flying Burrito Brothers, “Sin City”Track 6: The Flying Burrito Brothers, “Wild Horses”Track 7: Gram Parsons, “Still Feeling Blue”Track 8: Gram Parsons, “The New Soft Shoe”Track 9: Gram Parsons, “The Return of the Grievous Angel”Track 10. Emmylou Harris, “Boulder to Birmingham”Track 11: Gram Parsons, “$1000 Wedding”Track 12: Gram Parsons, “In My Hour of Darkness”Bonus TracksIn 1999, Emmylou Harris helped put together the richly reverent “Return of the Grievous Angel: A Tribute to Gram Parsons,” which showcased the breadth of the musicians who were influenced by Parsons — including Wilco, Beck and Sheryl Crow — and demonstrated how Parsons’s songs have echoed across generations. The great folk singer-songwriter Gillian Welch’s stirring take on “Hickory Wind” is one of the album’s finest moments, as is Lucinda Williams’s swaggering “Return of the Grievous Angel,” with backing vocals from the one and only David Crosby. More

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      ‘Melissa Etheridge: My Window’ Review: Musings on Life and Music

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      On Broadway, this rock concert spliced with memoir has gained a striking intimacy.In 1979, when Melissa Etheridge was an aspiring rock star getting ready to leave Leavenworth, Kan., for music school in Boston, she got a 12-string guitar. Her father made a macramé strap for it — a sturdy, intricate piece of knot work that was a portable souvenir of his love.“And this is it,” his Grammy Award-winning daughter said during her Broadway show, turning around to give everyone a view of the strap that held up her instrument.It was a charming moment, and in our high-definition, multi-screen world, refreshingly analog: just Etheridge, life-size and in three dimensions, sharing the room with us.Share it she does, superbly, in “Melissa Etheridge: My Window,” which opened Thursday at Circle in the Square Theater, just one block east of where an earlier version of the show ran Off Broadway last fall. On Broadway, this rock concert spliced with memoir has gained a striking intimacy, as if Etheridge had shrunk an arena to fit in the palm of her hand.A stage stretches across one end of the space, floor seats and a center aisle are where the theater’s thrust stage would usually be, and a tiny satellite stage sits behind them. Circle in the Square never struck me as a warm, embracing theater, but Etheridge makes it one, paying graceful, diligent attention to every section of the 726-seat audience, and occasionally coming down off the stage to sing and stroll.Written by Etheridge with her wife, Linda Wallem Etheridge, and directed once again by Amy Tinkham, this musically gorgeous, narratively bumpy show starts with Etheridge’s hit “Like the Way I Do,” ends with “Come to My Window” and fits 15 husky-voiced songs in between, including a trippily comical “Twisted Off to Paradise,” an arrestingly beautiful “Talking to My Angel” and a winking ode to her current gig, “On Broadway.” (Sound design is by Shannon Slaton.)On a set by Bruce Rodgers whose spareness serves the complexity of Olivia Sebesky’s projections, this is a visually slick production, with abundant jewel tones in Abigail Rosen Holmes’s saturated rock-show lighting, and Etheridge looking glamorous in costumes by Andrea Lauer.The show is shorter, more polished and more assured than it was Off Broadway — though Etheridge still seems undefended when she doesn’t have a guitar strapped across her or a piano in front of her. She also doesn’t speak memorized lines but rather tells versions of stories mapped out in the script. It’s a valid approach that sometimes leaves her fumbling for words.Kate Owens plays the small, clowning role of the Roadie, a character whom the audience loves but who I wish would desist from upstaging Etheridge with antics.Etheridge herself is very funny, and she knows how to handle a crowd. Such as when she got to the point in her life story when she fell for a woman who was married to a movie star — “a for real, for real movie star,” she added, for emphasis.“Who?” a voice called out, not that the performance is meant to be interactive.“Look it up,” Etheridge said, shrugging it off.Unlike her recently published memoir “Talking to My Angels,” which opens with a recollection of “a heroic dose of cannabis” that changed her understanding of herself and the universe, “My Window” proceeds chronologically, starting with Etheridge’s birth. (Projections show baby Missy with fabulous hair.) So the talk of what Etheridge calls “plant medicine” comes later.This is a passion of hers, so it belongs in a show about her. But the performance devolves into speechifying every time it comes up, except when it morphs into an enactment of experiencing an altered state — which, despite some vividly kinetic projections, can be as tiresome to watch onstage as it would be off.Surprisingly, the most starkly powerful part of the show Off Broadway — Etheridge recounting the death of her son Beckett, at age 21, in 2020 — works less well on Broadway.I cannot fault Etheridge for her stiffness in that delicate section at the performance I saw, or for reaching for words — like her blunt assessment, “He was difficult” — to convey her memories. But this is where relying on the script’s gentler, more contextual language could assuage what must be a terrible vulnerability.Logistics also undercut that scene. While Etheridge speaks from the large stage and the auditorium is plunged in darkness, a guitar is placed on the satellite stage by a technician who crosses in front of many people. No distraction should break the connection between Etheridge and her audience in that moment.She is, throughout “My Window,” a marvel with that audience.Back when her fame was rising, she told us in Act II, she started playing arenas and stadiums.“Thousands and thousands of people,” she said, “and the funny thing is, the more people there were, the further away y’all got.”On Broadway, they’re near enough again for her to commune with. And so she does.Melissa Etheridge: My WindowThrough Nov. 19 at Circle in the Square Theater, Manhattan; melissaetheridge.com. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. More

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      Enough About Gram Parsons’s Death. It’s Time to Celebrate His Music.

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      The country-rock pioneer died 50 years ago at age 26 with two influential solo albums to his name, leaving a legion of “what if”s behind.More than almost any other musician, the country-rock pioneer Gram Parsons’s legacy is entwined with the story of his tragic death, 50 years ago this month.The details are sad, macabre and sordid enough to have inspired a movie titled “Grand Theft Parsons.” Let’s dispense with them here and be done with it: Parsons, a 26-year-old former member of the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers who dreamed of creating a utopian genre that he called “cosmic American music,” was preparing for the release of his second solo album when he made a trip to his adopted sanctuary of Joshua Tree National Park.On his second day there, Parsons — a prodigious drinker and drug user who once attempted to kick heroin cold turkey while locked in a room with an also-detoxing Keith Richards — overdosed on morphine and could not be revived. His stepfather immediately arranged to have Parsons’s body flown to Louisiana, perhaps so he would stand a better chance of inheriting a chunk of Gram’s family fortune. More

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      ‘Carlos’ Review: Santana’s Soulful Legacy

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      In Rudy Valdez’s poignant but shortsighted documentary, the guitarist’s magic comes alive in performances and childhood recollections.Since his breakthrough at the Fillmore in San Francisco and then a star-making performance at Woodstock in 1969, Carlos Santana’s fusion of improvisational Latin rock and blues has been regarded as transcendent.In the director Rudy Valdez’s poignant but shortsighted documentary, “Carlos,” that same magic comes alive through performance clips from various eras of the Mexican guitarist’s half-century-long career and commentary about his life offstage. Santana’s ethereal mood imbues the movie with a numinous feel — even a childhood anecdote that he shares about his father communicating to birds while playing the violin at sunset is delivered with an affecting cosmic touch.Although Santana, 76, reveals some raw details of his life — his father’s infidelity, experiencing sexual abuse as a child — the portrait, rendered primarily through interviews, leaves a lot out. For fans wondering about the anti-trans comments that he made at a show in July and then apologized for, there’s nothing in the documentary that mentions his political stances. The film presents Santana without critique.Other interviews can feel muted. His sisters, exhibiting hesitant body language, don’t seem like they want to say too much. His bandmate and second wife, Cindy Blackman Santana, is even quieter. Deeper insights from a rock critic or music historian would have enriched the film to fully convey not just what Santana’s legacy is but what it means. Still, this controlled documentary captivates as a soulful personal history, even if it doesn’t exactly transcend.CarlosRated R for coarse language, brief nudity and rock ’n’ roll drug talk. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In theaters. More