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      Usher’s Biggest Songs and Career Highlights: A Super Bowl Guide

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      The singer will perform at halftime of the N.F.L.’s championship game in Las Vegas on the heels of his popular career-spanning residency and the release of a new album.Usher’s “My Way” residency, which began in 2021 in Las Vegas (the town where Frank Sinatra himself once gallivanted), had the R&B singer courting celebrities and viral social media moments for 100 consecutive sold-out shows. The staging was energetic, replete with roller skates and stripper poles.But spectacle wasn’t the only draw. Usher, 45, used the retrospective to showcase the hallmarks of his 30-year music career: pristine vocals, polished but effortless dance moves and heart-melting charm in the tradition of his idols Sammy Davis Jr. and Ben Vereen, his godfather. It’s appropriate, then, that on Feb. 11 the eight-time Grammy winner will perform the halftime show at Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas, days after he’s slated to release his ninth studio album “Coming Home,” which he called a “love letter to the legacy of my career.” Here are the eras that have defined Usher’s career.1988-1994New Jack Swing BeginningsAfter starting out in his church choir, Usher began singing professionally at age 10 with an R&B group in his hometown, Chattanooga, Tenn. A solo performance on “Star Search” in 1991 landed him an audition with the LaFace Records co-founder L.A. Reid, who signed him to the label based in Atlanta. Usher moved there at age 12 and worked under the tutelage of producer Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs, who had developed Jodeci and Mary J. Blige. More

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      Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce Timeline

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      All the Times That People Have Hyperventilated About Taylor and TravisThe planet’s biggest pop star met America’s biggest sport, and heads collectively exploded. Here are the moments people got happy, sad, angry or annoyed.Emmanuel Morgan and Way back in July, Travis Kelce, the Kansas City Chiefs’ star tight end, publicly offered himself as a potential suitor for Taylor Swift, whose Eras Tour had catapulted her beyond her already stratospheric fame.Few could have imagined that on the eve of the Super Bowl, we’d all be here.During the six months between Travis’s metaphorical Hail Mary and Sunday’s very real sports contest, most of America — and much of the world — has been horse-collared into their romance. There is a relentless, inescapable and, sometimes fatiguing quality to this Swift-Kelce monocultural vortex. Boy met girl, football fans met Swifties and each new development became a cause for hyperventilation.Now, as kickoff approaches, we look back at some of the key meetings and the extreme emotions those meetings have engendered.♥ ♥ ♥Sept. 24 and Oct. 1Taylor meets footballTaylor Swift at Arrowhead Stadium for the first of many games this season. Jason Hanna/Getty ImagesSurprise! Taylor shows up at Arrowhead Stadium for a Chiefs Game. Yay for Travis! Taylor and Travis leave together after the game in a “Getaway Car.” A “seemingly Ranch” frenzy ensues.Taylor shows up again in New Jersey the following week for Sunday Night Football. She brings her friends and meets the parents.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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      in Music

      Mojo Nixon, Who Mixed Roots and Punk Rock, Dies at 66

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      A self-styled voice of “the doomed, the damned, the weird,” he was known for satirical songs including “Elvis Is Everywhere” and “Destroy All Lawyers.”Mojo Nixon, the psychobilly musician and radio host who gained cult status for his rabble rousing and celebrity spoofs like the 1987 hit “Elvis Is Everywhere”, died on Wednesday aboard a country music cruise that he was co-hosting. He was 66.His death was confirmed by Matt Eskey, the director of a 2020 documentary film about Mr. Nixon. He said that Mr. Nixon had a “cardiac event” while he was asleep as the Outlaw Country Cruise was docked in San Juan, Puerto Rico.A statement posted by the film’s official Facebook page said that Mr. Nixon had died “after a blazing show, a raging night, closing the bar, taking no prisoners.”Mr. Nixon was best known for his celebrity spoofs, like “Don Henley Must Die” and “Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant With My Two-Headed Love Child,” and for satirical tirades like “I Hate Banks” and “Destroy All Lawyers.”“All of it was performed in maximum overdrive on a bed of rockabilly, blues, and R&B, which earned Nixon some friends in the roots rock community but had enough punk attitude — in its own bizarre way — to make him a college radio staple during his heyday,” the All Music Guide wrote.“I’m a rabble-rouser who does humorous social commentary within a rock-and-roll setting,” he told The New York Times in 1990. In another interview with the paper, he described himself as a voice of “the doomed, the damned, the weird.”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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      Should Taylor Swift’s ‘Tortured Poets Department’ Have an Apostrophe?

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      Grammarians wonder: Should there be an apostrophe in “The Tortured Poets Department”?When Taylor Swift announced at the Grammys that the title of her new album would be “The Tortured Poets Department,” what was your reaction?Maybe it was: “My gosh! Her first new album in more than a year. I can’t wait!”Maybe it was: “Ho-hum. I’d rather listen to Shostakovich/Metallica/Baby Shark.”Or, just possibly, it could have been:“Shouldn’t there be an apostrophe in that title?”Yes, plenty of people, upon hearing the biggest music announcement of the year, started thinking about diacritical marks and then talking about them on social media.“I ruined this album release for my students by making it a lesson on apostrophe usage,” wrote Erin Weinberg, an instructor in the department of English, theater, film and media at the University of Manitoba, on X. (Others opined via Reddit, TikTok and elsewhere.)If you do insist on adding an apostrophe, there are two potential places. It could be before the “S”: The Tortured Poet’s Department. That means the department belongs to just one poet.“Is it a department just for a single tortured poet, where they can sit alone and write tortured poetry?” Weinberg asked.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Radio Station’s Call Letters Announce Its Purpose: KGAY

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      KGAY in Palm Springs is geared toward Gen X and older gay men who enjoy Rihanna but still worship Donna Summer.Fog clouded the San Jacinto Mountains recently as Brad Fuhr approached the headquarters of KGAY, a radio station in an undistinguished Palm Springs, California, strip mall. Fuhr, the station’s chief executive, was tuned to KGAY in his all-electric Volvo, and the morning’s soundtrack included “Bad of the Heart,” George Lamond’s 1990 freestyle cri de coeur about getting dumped, and “Lucky Star,” Madonna’s 1983 dance hit of bouncy adoration.KGAY’s call letters aren’t a fluke but a savvy marketing tool. While there are streaming stations devoted to gay audiences (like iHeart’s Pride Radio and Gaydio out of Britain) and gay-themed talk shows and dance formats have thrived on commercial and nonprofit radio for decades, KGAY is still one of a kind. It’s the only terrestrial radio station in America geared toward L.G.B.T.Q. listeners and their allies, where gay personalities broadcast in person, “WKRP in Cincinnati”-style, at least part time. (There’s WGAY, a “party station” in the Florida Keys, but it doesn’t market itself as gay.)KGAY covers the Coachella Valley with its FM signal at 106.5 and is simulcast with KGAY AM 1270; it can be streamed globally at KGAYPalmSprings.com. Its two full-time D.J.s are Chris Shebel, the old-school, no-nonsense program director and weekday afternoon personality, and the wisecracking John Taylor, who covers mornings. Three other D.J.s — Eric Ornelas, Galaxy and ModGirl — provide the station with homemade mix shows that play around the clock.Born on Dec. 25, 2018, KGAY replaced KVGH, an oldies station, with a playlist that rotates over 900 pop songs, disco anthems and dance remixes from the ’70s through the latest releases.“It’s an entertaining, mass-appeal radio station first,” said Fuhr, 65.Shebel at work as a D.J. at KGAY.Michelle Groskopf for The New York TimesKGAY serves primarily the clubby slice of the queer music pie. There’s no Barbra or Bikini Kill, no American songbook showstoppers or lesbian breakup ballads. There’s no rap or country, although it does play Lil Nas X and dance versions of songs by Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette and other country divas.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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      Israel Chooses a Eurovision Act as Boycott Campaigns Swirl

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      Eden Golan will represent the country in May, in a contest that looks set to be overshadowed by the war in Gaza.The singing contest’s glitzy lights and glittering dresses were supposed to be a respite after another depressing, hostage-filled news day on Israeli TV.Yet a somber mood hung over the finale of “Rising Star,” the show that selects Israel’s representative for the Eurovision Song Contest, as it pitted four young pop singers against one another on Tuesday night.This year’s winner, Eden Golan, 20, dedicated her performance of “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” by Aerosmith to the more than 100 Israeli hostages still held in Gaza. “We won’t truly be OK until everyone returns home,” she said.As the victor, Golan will travel to Malmo, Sweden, in May to represent her country in Eurovision, a high-camp spectacle watched by tens of millions and decided, in part, by a public vote. It is not an obvious proxy for war. But as the civilian death toll in Gaza has mounted, there have been growing calls for Israel to be banned from this year’s event.Several prominent, artist-led campaigns argue that recent decisions to exclude Russia and Belarus set a precedent, and that Israel should be banned for human-rights violations. Eurovision officials reject those comparisons, but when Golan performs in Malmo, it seems certain that many voters will be thinking about more than just her singing.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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      in Theater

      The Vocal Coach Who Keeps Broadway (and Patti LuPone) in Tune

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      “She saved my career,” Patti LuPone said of this indispensable vocal therapist and coach whose clients include Madonna and Billy Porter.For 41 years, Joan Lader has rented a slender studio apartment just west of Union Square in Manhattan. Through its door, a narrow entryway leads to a doll-size bathroom and an efficiency kitchen. In the main space, where a visitor might expect to find a bed, Lader has arranged the instruments of her trade — a piano, a keyboard, balance balls, straws, a box of tissues, a skeleton in a jaunty hat.Lader has never advertised, never solicited clients. But for two generations of Broadway stars, as well as dozens of opera singers and pop and rock luminaries, she remains an indispensable vocal therapist and vocal coach. She even received a Tony Award in 2016 for excellence in theater.And while proper breathing is fundamental to her practice, she has scarcely paused for breath since that award. She continues to work seven hours each day, seven days a week. (“I wish she would take a break,” Patti LuPone, a longtime student, told me.) For Lader, 77, the work is her calling, a synthesis of artistry, science and according to her clients and fans, something akin to magic.“I’ve called her a witch in front of people, many times,” the music director Rob Fisher said. “I’ve never seen anybody else do the hocus-pocus that she sometimes does.”The composer Tom Kitt can nearly always tell when a singer has been working with Lader. “They have opened up in the beautiful way,” he said. “They are empowered, and they feel confident.”I met Lader on a wintry afternoon last month. She had struggled to find time to see me, but a cancellation had opened a narrow window in her schedule. She showed me into her space, noting the eight-inch soundproofing along the wall that borders the apartment next door. “Cats” paid for that, she said.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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      2024 Grammys, Dissected: Taylor, Miley, SZA, Tracy, Joni and More

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicAt Sunday’s Grammy Awards, Taylor Swift won album of the year for “Midnights” and, for good measure, announced a new album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” due in April. Other big winners included Victoria Monét, Phoebe Bridgers (and boygenius), Killer Mike, Miley Cyrus and Billie Eilish.The show featured several moving live performances from elders: Tracy Chapman duetting with Luke Combs on “Fast Car,” a striking Joni Mitchell singalong and a closing stomper from Billy Joel.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation on whether this was the year the Grammys got it correct, whether there was a gap between what the awards indicated and what the speeches were saying, and the grounded joy of seeing worthy stars brought back into the spotlight properly.Guests:Caryn Ganz, The New York Times’s pop music editorJon Pareles, The New York Times’s chief pop music criticLindsay Zoladz, a New York Times pop music criticConnect 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