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      A Deep Dive Into Olivia Rodrigo’s Triumphant ‘Guts’

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      Hear songs from her new LP in conversation with ones from the past.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesDear listeners,In May 2021, Olivia Rodrigo, then 18 years old, released her debut album, “Sour.” Earlier that year, the singer-songwriter had become an overnight sensation with her heart-tugging, piano-driven ballad “Drivers License,” but “Sour” proved that there was so much more to her than that: She could also pull off dreamy alt-rock (“Deja Vu”), spiky pop-punk (“Good 4 U”) and sharp social commentary (“Jealousy, Jealousy”). In a review I wrote at the time, I noted that “Rodrigo’s songs have lived-in details to spare, as though she had all this time been assembling a detailed dossier on the emotional minutiae of the teenage experience.”“Sour” felt as if it were signaling the sudden arrival of a major talent — and those are often the trickiest albums to follow up. As the Amplifier’s very own editor, Caryn Ganz, wrote in a recent profile of Rodrigo, “crafting the follow-up to a smash debut is music’s most daunting crucible, and Rodrigo felt the pressure to make a diamond.”Rodrigo’s sophomore album, “Guts,” is finally out today, and I am here to report some good news: It’s a diamond.Listening to “Guts” for the first time reminded me of when I initially heard Lorde’s great 2017 sophomore album, “Melodrama.” The albums don’t sound much alike — Rodrigo gravitates more toward rock aesthetics — but both feel like thrilling fulfillments of potential, two distinct artists staying true to what made them special while expanding the scope of their perspectives and ambitions. Both musicians are former teen phenoms who returned to the spotlight at age 20. And both, I can now say, made awesome second albums.Something particular I appreciate about Rodrigo’s music is the way it pulls from a lot of genres that have historically been male-dominated — pop-punk, emo, angsty alt-rock — and enlivens them with the vivid perspective of an idiosyncratic young woman. I cannot overstate how much I needed a voice like hers when I was a teenager, listening to rock music that blamed The Girl for everything, and that sometimes even indulged in violent revenge fantasies about her, always figuring her as the object and never the subject. I felt like I was supposed to be a specific sort of girl, the kind Rodrigo sketches and then obliterates on the opening track of “Guts,” when she sings in an exaggerated lilt, “I’m all right with the movies that make jokes ’bout senseless cruelty, that’s for sure.” Then she kicks the distortion pedal and says, so cathartically, the hell with that. She’s going to be herself — witty, a little awkward, convincingly weird — and write herself into the story.On both of her albums, Rodrigo mashes up genres and influences in a way that feels genuinely fresh. Which is why it was so disappointing when two of her stated idols, Taylor Swift and Paramore, suddenly received writing credits on two of the biggest hits from “Sour” after they were released. I prefer to think of it the way Elvis Costello did, when he responded to a tweet suggesting that the chord progression of Rodrigo’s song “Brutal” sounds similar to Costello’s 1978 hit with the Attractions, “Pump It Up.” “This is fine by me,” Costello wrote. “It’s how rock and roll works. You take the broken pieces of another thrill and make it a brand new toy. That’s what I did.” (He hashtagged the post with the titles of the Bob Dylan and Chuck Berry songs that had, in turn, inspired “Pump It Up.”)In that spirit, today’s playlist is a celebration of the many musical influences I hear on “Guts,” putting them in conversation with some of the album’s tracks to create new connections and pathways of inspiration. I limited myself to including only songs released before Rodrigo was alive, which was not difficult, as she was born in [deep sigh] 2003. Good 4 her.This is the rare playlist that features both Billy Joel and Bikini Kill; a track from Carole King’s 1971 album “Tapestry” and one off Saves the Day’s 2001 album “Stay What You Are.” Like the best of us, Olivia Rodrigo contains multitudes. And, of course, guts.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Olivia Rodrigo: “All-American Bitch”In the tradition of “Brutal,” which kicked off Rodrigo’s “Sour,” the propulsive “Guts” opener plays around with dynamics and stylistic contrasts to convey the impossible tension of being a young American girl. (She stumbled across the title phrase while reading Joan Didion’s essay collection “The White Album” — a young American girl rite of passage.) As the song progresses, it becomes clear that the eponymous perfect specimen of femininity is actually stifling fiction: “I don’t get angry when I’m pissed, I’m the eternal optimist,” an angsty Rodrigo shouts atop boisterously crunchy guitars, suggesting otherwise. (Listen on YouTube)2. Veruca Salt: “Volcano Girls”When I saw Rodrigo live last April at Radio City Music Hall, she played a cover that somehow felt both out-of-left-field and obvious: Veruca Salt’s 1994 alt-rock hit “Seether.” I hear a lot of Veruca Salt on “Guts,” particularly in Rodrigo’s penchant for caking buoyant pop melodies in grungy guitar distortion. “Seether” may have been the clearer choice, but I slightly prefer this even higher-octane single from the band’s 1996 album “Eight Arms to Hold You.” (Listen on YouTube)3. Olivia Rodrigo: “Bad Idea Right?”This spunky, self-deprecating second single from “Guts” has been stuck in my head approximately 80 percent of the time since it was released last month. And you know what? I’m OK with that. (Listen on YouTube)4. Toni Basil: “Mickey”Fun fact: When the choreographer, actress and occasional pop star Toni Basil released the video for her 1981 hit “Mickey,” she was in her late 30s. In a recent interview, Rodrigo, who is much closer in age to an actual high school cheerleader, named “Mickey” as a song she wishes she’d written herself. She definitely makes those cheerleader-chant vocals her own on “Bad Idea Right?” (Listen on YouTube)5. Olivia Rodrigo: “Vampire”There’s a precise moment in this song — the leadoff single from “Guts,” and her third No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 — that sets Rodrigo apart from her bedroom-pop peers: that wrenching, elegantly escalating melodic climb in the chorus when she sings about “the way you sold me for parts as you sunk your teeth into me.” Restraint is key, but Rodrigo also knows exactly when, and how, to let it rip. (Listen on YouTube)6. Billy Joel: “You May Be Right”On the “Sour” single “Deja Vu,” Rodrigo shouted out the piano man himself, while mocking an ex’s predictable taste: “I bet that she knows Billy Joel ’cause you played her ‘Uptown Girl.’” Last summer, she joined Joel onstage at Madison Square Garden to play “Deja Vu” (“I couldn’t have written this next song without you,” she told him) and, of course, “Uptown Girl.” But there’s a subtler link to Joel in the verbose, musical-theater-like cadences of Rodrigo’s writing, too, that I hear on some of her piano-driven songs. (Listen on YouTube)7. Olivia Rodrigo: “Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl”This deliriously catchy ode to social anxiety might be my favorite song on the record? But “Guts” has enough highlights that I’m sure that will change a few times, too. (Listen on YouTube)8. That Dog.: “Never Say Never”Another sweetly sour, underappreciated ’90s jam that I believe Rodrigo should cover on her next tour. (Listen on YouTube)9. Olivia Rodrigo: “Logical”Though “Guts” is full of upbeat pop-rock songs, this highlight proves Rodrigo can still pull off a heart-stopping piano ballad with the best of them. “If rain don’t pour and the sun don’t shine,” she sings with a lump in her throat, “then changing you is possible/No, love is never logical.” (Listen on YouTube)10. Carole King: “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?”Speaking of ballads written by and about teenagers, Carole King — a Rodrigo fan who said in a recent Vogue interview that Rodrigo “begins by speaking for herself, but she speaks, in the end, for so many young women” — composed the music to this wistful 1960 Shirelles hit when she was a little younger than Rodrigo is now. She recorded it herself a decade later, for her classic album “Tapestry,” and brought a new maturity to words written by her ex-husband Gerry Goffin, proving, as Rodrigo often does, that songs about young love can have hidden wisdom and unexpected depths. (Listen on YouTube)11. Olivia Rodrigo: “Get Him Back!”Rodrigo finds out why lust rhymes with disgust on this playful, infectious and dryly hilarious singalong. “Do I love him, do I hate him? I guess it’s up and down,” Rodrigo deadpans, before choosing a double entendre that allows her to have it both ways: “If I had to choose, I would say right now, I want to get him back!” (Listen on YouTube)12. Saves the Day: “At Your Funeral”The icky, squirmy do-I-love-them-or-wish-they-were-dead quality of “Get Him Back!” is reminiscent of the early aughts emo exemplified by bands like Saves the Day, Taking Back Sunday and As Tall As Lions, the group that the songwriter and producer Daniel Nigro fronted before coming Rodrigo’s chief collaborator. Not all of these songs have aged particularly well, but I believe that “At Your Funeral” still very much goes. (Listen on YouTube)13. Olivia Rodrigo: “Love Is Embarrassing”Or is this my favorite song on “Guts”? It’s got some new wave, a little bit of riot grrrl and a whole lot of Rodrigo’s effervescent personality. (Listen on YouTube)14. Bikini Kill: “Reject All American”I hear some major Kathleen Hanna ’tude at the end of “Love Is Embarrassing.” (Hanna, in turn, confessed in Ganz’s profile to “sobbing in my car” the first time she heard Rodrigo’s “Drivers License.” Game recognize game.) (Listen on YouTube)15. Olivia Rodrigo, “Teenage Dream”Let’s let Rodrigo have the last word with this poignant closing track. “They all say that it gets better,” she sings atop a gradually building piano arrangement, laying her insecurities bare. “It get better, but what if I don’t?” I appreciate the way she lets the question hang in the air, even as the preceding album has proved that she does. (Listen on YouTube)Searching “how to start a conversation” on a website,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“A Deep Dive Into Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘Guts’” track listTrack 1: Olivia Rodrigo, “All-American Bitch”Track 2: Veruca Salt, “Volcano Girls”Track 3: Olivia Rodrigo, “Bad Idea Right?”Track 4: Toni Basil, “Mickey”Track 5: Olivia Rodrigo, “Vampire”Track 6: Billy Joel, “You May Be Right”Track 7: Olivia Rodrigo, “Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl”Track 8: That Dog., “Never Say Never”Track 9: Olivia Rodrigo, “Logical”Track 10: Carole King, “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?”Track 11: Olivia Rodrigo, “Get Him Back!”Track 12: Saves the Day, “At Your Funeral”Track 13: Olivia Rodrigo, “Love Is Embarrassing”Track 14: Bikini Kill, “Reject All American”Track 15: Olivia Rodrigo, “Teenage Dream”Bonus tracksYou don’t just have to take my word for it: Jon Caramanica named “Guts” a Critic’s Pick. Read his take on the album here.Plus, in this week’s new music Playlist, the Rolling Stones are back! Listen to their new single “Angry,” along with fresh tracks from Ashley McBryde, Allison Russell and more, here. More

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      Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘Guts’ Review: She’s Seen the World Now, and She’s Livid

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      On her second album, “Guts,” which flaunts rock brashness and singer-songwriter intimacy, the sudden pop star is showing just how fraught life is at the top.One of the fundamental conditions — or is it goals? — of pop stardom is hiding the work. You may see Beyoncé sweat, or note how Taylor Swift’s real-life travails inform her artistic choices, but the music created by the most famous performers in pop rarely refers back to the costs, literal and emotional, of making it.But what if you want to show the work?That’s the novel approach of Olivia Rodrigo, a modern and somewhat signature pop star. At the beginning of 2021, she released “Drivers License,” her first single outside the Disney ecosystem she was creatively raised in, and experienced the kind of supernova ascent that’s impossible to anticipate or recreate. Her jolting debut album, “Sour,” released a few months later, showed her to be a spiky, vivid writer and singer, but one who hadn’t quite seen the world.Two years later, on her poignantly fraught, spiritually and sonically agitated follow-up album “Guts,” Rodrigo has seen too much. “Guts” is an almost real-time reckoning with the maelstrom of new celebrity, the choices it forces upon you and the compromises you make along the way. As on “Sour,” Rodrigo, who is 20 now, toggles between bratty rock gestures and piano-driven melancholy. But regardless of musical mode, her emotional position is consistent throughout these dozen songs about betrayal, regret and self-flagellation.“I used to think I was smart/But you made me look so naïve,” she howls on the lead single “Vampire” — she’s referring to a toxic ex, but she may as well be singing about the spotlight itself. Or as she puts it on “Making the Bed,” “I got the things I wanted/It’s just not what I imagined.”Rodrigo is a songwriter of rather astonishing purity — even in her most stylized lyrics, she never wanders far from the unformed gut-kick of a feeling. Sometimes on this album, she triples down. “I loved you truly/Gotta laugh at the stupidity,” she chuckles on “Vampire.” “I look so stupid thinking/Two plus two equals five/and I’m the love of your life,” she croons on “Logical.” “My God, how could I be so stupid,” she sighs on “Love Is Embarrassing.”Don’t mistake Rodrigo’s weakness for weakness, though. Her self-doubt is a powerful animating force. Throughout this album, she kiln-fires her anxieties into lyrics that cut deep. “Pretty Isn’t Pretty” is about the existential struggle of self-love, particularly under an unrelenting public eye. The impudent “Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl” captures the essence of outsider awkwardness.The dreamy — and perhaps “Folklore”-esque — “Lacy” is about being robbed of your illusions: “I despise my rotten mind/and how much it worships you,” Rodrigo sings. From a young star who’s had what appears to be frosty relations with Swift, an idol who was retroactively granted songwriting credit on Rodrigo’s first album, it reads like the bruise from a door slammed shut in her face.Several other songs are about being on the wrong side of a manipulative relationship. “Logical” and “The Grudge” tackle it via self-serious angst. But Rodrigo has more spark when she’s playfully ambivalent about how, or if, to break free. “Bad Idea Right?,” driven by throbbing bass and drizzled with layered, saccharine chanting, is about how holding on can be more fun than letting go. And “Get Him Back!” is a revenge fantasy — “I wanna meet his mom/Just to tell her her son sucks” — that’s maybe, just maybe, leaning in to double entendre.The real casualties documented in these songs are the relationships Rodrigo has, or had, with her actual friends. On “Get Him Back!” she imagines their disappointment as she sends a note to that risible ex. On “Love Is Embarrassing” she recounts telling them breathlessly about her new obsession, only to have him let her down immediately thereafter. It’s not that her old life is sitting in judgment of her new one, but rather that she’s lost touch with the anchors that grounded her, and she’s floating into a grotesque unknown. “Getting drunk at a club with my fair-weather friends,” she laments on “Making the Bed.”All of those songs are, in one way or another, about the perils of being wide-eyed. But Rodrigo is also beginning to harden her shell. On “All-American Bitch,” which opens the album, she details the impossible standard for young women in the public eye: “I’m grateful all the time/I’m sexy and I’m kind/I’m pretty when I cry.”And she sings with breezy confidence about physical intimacy in a way more akin to hyperstylized dance floor-focused pop stars who use sexuality as performance. On “Logical,” she replays how an ex belittled her: “Said I was too young, I was too soft/Can’t take a joke, can’t get you off.” The moody “Making the Bed,” uses the titular phrase as a recurring motif of restoration, or perhaps of papering over misspent nights with fresh sheets.Rodrigo writes her own lyrics, and “Guts” is produced by Daniel Nigro, who was also her creative partner on “Sour.” That small circle frees her from the committee-tested gleam of most mainstream pop. Her sudden success means she has not (yet?) needed to subject herself to the homogenization of the Max Martins of the world — she has succeeded by rendering her intimacies on a grand stage. That’s part of why “Guts” leans heavily into rock — pop-punk (“All-American Bitch,” “Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl”), a little new wave (“Love Is Embarrassing”), theatrical folk (“Lacy”) — which gives her songs thickness and a little bit of rowdiness, too. But some of this album’s most punk moments, as it were, come when Rodrigo unleashes holy hell while Nigro simply plays the piano.On her debut album, Rodrigo made semi-subtle nods to earlier female pop stars — there can still sometimes be the sense that she is constructing her songs of pre-existing parts, whether from Swift or Alanis Morissette or Avril Lavigne or Veruca Salt. The winks come in the song titles — “Love Is Embarrassing” nods to Sky Ferreira, a parallel-universe meta-pop star of a decade ago who also trafficked in seen-it-all realness. And then there’s the album closer, “Teenage Dream,” which invokes Katy Perry, the archetypically glossy 21st century pop princess.Perry’s “Teenage Dream” is a naïve cupcake, an exhortation to live, laugh, love. Rodrigo’s is a morbid piano plaint about the falsity beneath all that. The dream is a mirage, and Rodrigo is pulling back the curtain on it: “I fear that they already got all the best parts of me/And I’m sorry that I couldn’t always be your teenage dream.”Here, and in the most potent moments on “Guts,” Rodrigo’s music pulses with the verve of someone who’s been buttoned tight beginning to come loose. Unraveling is messy business, but it is also freedom.Olivia Rodrigo“Guts”(Geffen) More

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      Lynn Lynn’s Journey From Rocker to Dissecting Myanmar’s Coup in Film

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      Lynn Lynn was a musical idol when he volunteered in 2015 to protect the life of Myanmar’s new civilian leader. Forced to flee after 2021’s coup, he has reinvented himself as a film director.Long before he became an award-winning filmmaker, Lynn Lynn was already a star.His voice was ubiquitous on the radio, belting out rock songs, and he played sold-out shows in stadiums across the country. Everywhere he went, fans hounded him for selfies and autographs.But all that fame was confined to Myanmar, a country he had to flee after a February 2021 military coup.It wasn’t only his lyrics about the suffering of people under military rule that had made him a target of the country’s generals. He was also close to the country’s now-imprisoned civilian leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, having once served as her bodyguard.Now living in the Thai city of Mae Sot, bordering Myanmar, the 39-year-old rocker has taken on a new identity: refugee.Despite the drastic changes in his circumstances, he has not given up on art, but he has changed his focus: to film.His first short movie, “The Beginning,” whose main characters are a fictional group of people from Myanmar, focuses on the importance of good will in building a democratic nation. Five months later, he followed with “The Way,” which captures the trauma and despair of a family suffering from a nation’s conflict; despite the dark themes, the movie is a musical — the first by a director from Myanmar.Both films have won multiple honors at international film festivals, with “The Way” also earning multiple accolades for its soundtrack.“I want to give the message that the military junta can oppress an artist physically, but the spirit and art cannot be oppressed,” Mr. Lynn Lynn said, speaking from his spartan music studio, a bedroom in a rented house in Mae Sot.Mr. Lynn Lynn walking behind Daw Aung San Suu Kyi when he was one of the bodyguards of Myanmar’s civilian leader.Lauren DeCicca/Getty ImagesMr. Lynn Lynn’s life story has been shaped by his country’s convulsive recent history, shifting from dictatorship to democracy to the present-day resistance.The youngest of four boys, he was born in the city of Mandalay to a railway worker father and a mother who stayed at home.When he was 5, he saw close at hand the brutality of the army whose leaders ruled the nation: soldiers pulling passengers from a boat and commanding everyone — regardless of age — to kneel. That scene of dominance and humiliation, he says, has stayed with him throughout his adult life.As a 9-year-old, he taught himself how to play guitar. After high school, he moved to Yangon, the capital at the time, where he cycled through a series of jobs, including bus conductor and security guard, while trying to start a musical career.His big break came in 2001, after he walked into a recording studio to drop off his demo tape and was soon hired to compose songs for some of Myanmar’s most famous singers. He established a reputation for composing original songs, a rarity in a country where nearly all the songs were copied from abroad.In 2007, he marched daily with the country’s monks during the Saffron Revolution protests. He read over and over again “Freedom From Fear,” a book of essays by Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, at the time the leader of the country’s opposition, who was under house arrest.He learned how to navigate the country’s censors. Out of every five songs submitted, he was instructed to change the lyrics of three. Sometimes, he submitted different lyrics and then later swapped back in the original words, without anyone seeming to notice.“He is a rebel,” said his wife, Chit Thu Wai, a well-known actress and singer.Mr. Lynn Lynn with his wife, Chit Thu Wai, a well-known actress, in his music studio in Mae Sot.Lauren DeCicca for The New York TimesIn 2008, Mr. Lynn Lynn released “Think,” an album with love songs that he had written initially for other singers. It was an instant hit and catapulted him to stardom.In 2011, the military initiated a range of sweeping political changes, including releasing Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, who convened a gathering of the country’s artists at her house.There, Mr. Lynn Lynn told the Nobel Peace Prize winner he would be willing to do anything for her. He became one of her bodyguards during the 2012 by-election and the 2015 general election.After she won in 2015, becoming the country’s civilian leader, Mr. Lynn Lynn returned to music. Able to sing openly about the generals, he released an album called “The Fourth Revolution.”Then, in February 2021, two months after Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi won the 2020 election in a landslide, the military detained her and announced it had taken power in a coup.The junta charged dozens of actors and musicians, including Mr. Lynn Lynn and his wife, with “incitement.” After months in hiding, the family decided reluctantly to leave Myanmar.Mr. Lynn Lynn went first in August 2021, trekking across a jungle and then swimming to Mae Sot. Ms. Chit Thu Wai and their twin daughters, now 6, followed a week later.Mae Sot, the Thai border city where Mr. Lynn Lynn fled with his family.Lauren DeCicca for The New York TimesMr. Lynn Lynn had never wanted to make movies in Myanmar. While he dabbled in script writing and supported independent filmmakers through a production company he owned with his wife, he considered most of the movies made in Myanmar to be too lowbrow to much interest him.He says he turned to film in part to “challenge” his artistic peers back home, many of whom allow the generals to use them for propaganda.Myanmar’s Directorate of Public Relations and Psychological Warfare has always exploited actors and actresses, using them in films to portray soldiers as honorable heroes. In return for staying silent, these celebrities enjoy perks, like being paid to attend galas such as the Myanmar Academy Awards.Mr. Lynn Lynn says he has noticed that the timing of these celebrity events often coincides with reports about more military atrocities. Nearly every week brings horrific news: 100 dead in an airstrike. Bombs dropped at an outdoor concert. Eleven children killed at a school.Midway through an interview in Mae Sot, Mr. Lynn Lynn lifted up his T-shirt to reveal his back. In neat, cursive script, there were 700 tattooed names and ages of some of those killed in the coup’s aftermath.Aung Myint, 32. Tun Win Han, 25. Khin Myo Chit, 7.“There are so many more to come,” Ms. Chit Thu Wai said.Mr. Lynn Lynn’s back is tattooed with the names and ages of 700 of those killed after the coup.Lauren DeCicca for The New York TimesMr. Lynn Lynn says he looks at the names in the mirror to “compel a sense of urgency upon my consciousness.” The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a rights group, said more than 4,000 people had been killed in Myanmar since the coup.Mr. Lynn Lynn knew that shooting movies in Mae Sot, so close to Myanmar, was dangerous. Seventeen of 20 cast members of “The Way” stood accused of “incitement,” and they feared Myanmar military’s spies were everywhere, raising concerns they could be abducted or killed. In the movie, members of the central family sing about their suffering from conflict and their quest for peace and justice. Myanmar is never explicitly mentioned because, Mr. Lynn Lynn says, he wants the story to be universal.Two weeks before the shoot, he was still not sure how he would pull it off without the sophisticated equipment typically needed to make a film. He decided to borrow a friend’s iPhone 13 Pro to use as the camera. For the music, he gave himself a crash course in sound mixing.Mr. Lynn Lynn with a wooden ship that was used as a prop in his film “The Way.”Lauren DeCicca for The New York TimesMr. Lynn Lynn’s cast members had never acted before, but some had backgrounds similar to the stories that he wanted to depict. His directorial advice was to read the script and “feel it in your heart,” recalled Aung Lun, one of the actors, who had left his 5-year-old son and wife behind in Myanmar when he fled in 2021.Mr. Aung Lun’s character in “The Way” leaves his baby daughter at a school as soldiers set fire to their village. Years later, his character confesses that secret to his family.During that scene, Mr. Aung Lun cried so hard the crew had to pause the shoot for an hour.As Mr. Lynn Lynn waits to hear whether he and his family can be resettled in the United States, he has more film projects in the works, including a satire set in Myanmar before the coup.Wherever he finds himself, he intends to keep making films.“I want to use a language understood by the entire universe,” he said. ”I want to show that even while we are on the run, our art will continue to live powerfully.” More

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      Bruce Springsteen Postpones Shows for Treatment of Peptic Ulcer Disease Symptoms

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      The 73-year-old singer’s medical advisers made the decision to postpone the shows, according to the announcement.Bruce Springsteen announced on Wednesday evening that he would postpone performances scheduled with the E Street Band for the rest of September, as he is treated for symptoms of peptic ulcer disease. The 73-year-old singer had been scheduled to perform Thursday in Syracuse, N.Y., and seven more times at various venues in the Northeast and in Ohio over the rest of the month. “We’re heartbroken to have to postpone these shows,” he said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. The post continued: “We’ll be back to pick up these shows and then some. Thank you for your understanding.” Springsteen’s medical advisers made the decision to postpone the shows, according to the announcement. The new slate of postponed concerts comes weeks after Springsteen postponed two August shows because of an illness. Those shows were postponed until next year, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. Peptic ulcer disease causes sores to develop on the lining of the stomach and can cause stomach pain, heartburn, bloating and nausea, according to the Mayo Clinic. Springsteen and the E Street Band had just capped a string of three shows at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, his home state. More

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      Gary Wright, Who Had a ’70s Hit With ‘Dream Weaver,’ Dies at 80

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      He was a pioneer in using synthesizers, and his friendship with George Harrison led to a spiritual awakening that also influenced another hit, “Love Is Alive.”Gary Wright, a spiritually minded singer-songwriter who helped modernize the sound of pop music with his pioneering use of synthesizers while crafting infectious and seemingly inescapable hits of the 1970s like “Dream Weaver” and “Love Is Alive,” died on Monday at his home in Palos Verdes Estates, Calif. He was 80.The cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia, his son Justin said.The New Jersey-bred Mr. Wright rose to prominence in the late 1960s after relocating to London and helping to form the bluesy British progressive rock band Spooky Tooth.He soon befriended George Harrison, with whom he would collaborate frequently over the years, including playing keyboards on that former Beatle’s magnum opus triple album, “All Things Must Pass,” released in 1970.Their long friendship would have a lasting impact on both Mr. Wright’s life and his music. Mr. Harrison introduced him to Eastern mysticism, giving him a copy of “Autobiography of a Yogi,” by Paramahansa Yogananda, who helped popularize yoga and meditation in the United States, and Mr. Harrison traveled with him to India.Mr. Wright with George Harrison performing on “The Dick Cavett Show” in 1971. The two collaborated frequently over the years.ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content, via Getty Images“That was his life path after that,” Justin Wright said in a phone interview. “Deep down inside of him, he was searching for something, and this was the answer for him.”His spiritual awakening helped spawn “Dream Weaver,” a track from his 1975 album, “The Dream Weaver,” which hit No. 7 on the Billboard album chart and rocketed him to fame. The song was inspired by the yogi’s poem “God, God, God,” which includes the line “My mind weaves dreams.”Mr. Wright begins the song with the lyrics “I’ve just closed my eyes again/Climbed aboard the dream weaver train/Driver take away my worries of today/And leave tomorrow behind.”The “Dream Weaver” single, swept along by a wave of lush electronica that bordered on the interstellar, soared to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1976. The song became a soft-rock touchstone, appearing in such movies as “Wayne’s World” (1992) and “The People vs. Larry Flynt” (1996), as well as on a 2010 episode (called “Dream On”) of the musical comedy-drama television series “Glee.”It was not the only smash hit from that album. That July “Love Is Alive,” like “Dream Weaver,” rose to No. 2 conjuring the languid sexuality of the waterbed era. Mr. Wright performed at stadium shows on the same bill as heavyweights like Peter Frampton and Yes, standing out among the guitar gods with his strap-on keyboard, known as a keytar.While his biggest hits became emblematic sounds of the 1970s, Mr. Wright had taken an unconventional musical approach on the album “The Dream Weaver”: He relied almost entirely on keyboard instruments, including a Minimoog synthesizer, as opposed to guitars, foreshadowing the synth-pop boom of the early ’80s.Mr. Wright playing his strap-on keyboard known as a keytar during a performance in 2001. Richard E. Aaron/Redferns, via Getty Images“The theme of having only keyboards, drums, voices — and no guitars — came accidentally,” Mr. Wright said in a 2010 interview with Musoscribe, a music website. When he went back and listened to the demos he had recorded, he said, “I thought, ‘Wow. This sounds good. It doesn’t really need guitars.’”Gary Malcolm Wright was born on April 26, 1943, in Cresskill, in northeast New Jersey. He was the middle of three children of Lou Wright, a structural engineer, and Anne (Belvedere) Wright.His mother helped instill in him an interest in music and acting, driving him to piano lessons and eventually to auditions. Their efforts paid off when he made an appearance on the seminal science fiction TV series “Captain Video and His Video Rangers” and later won a role in the 1954 Broadway musical “Fanny,” starring Florence Henderson.“I originally came into the play as an understudy to the main role, and then I picked up the main child role,” Mr. Wright said in a 2014 interview with Smashing Interviews magazine. “I was only 11 and 12 during those years. It was an amazing experience to act and sing every night before sold-out audiences and sing with a full orchestral band.”Within a few years, he abandoned the stage and screen “to be a normal kind of person in school, playing sports and Little League baseball and that kind of thing,” he told Smashing Interviews. While attending Tenafly High School, he played in various rock groups, including a duo called Gary and Billy with his school friend Bill Markle. Their single “Working After School” was played on the TV show “American Bandstand.”After high school, Mr. Wright attended William & Mary in Virginia for a year before transferring to New York University, where he switched his focus to medicine. After graduating in 1965, he briefly enrolled in medical school before moving to Berlin to study psychology.Losing interest in a life in clinical practice, he went back to music, helping to form a band that built a following in Europe; at one point it opened for the rock group Traffic in Oslo. There he caught the attention of Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records. Mr. Blackwell summoned him to England to join a band called Art, which evolved into Spooky Tooth.Mr. Wright, center, played the organ and sang with the progressive rock group Spooky Tooth in the 1960s. He was flanked by the lead guitarist Luther James Grosvener, left, and the singer and pianist Mike Harrison. Seated were the bassist Greg Ridley, left, and the drummer Mike Kellie. Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix, via Getty ImagesSpooky Tooth temporarily disbanded in 1970, and a year later Mr. Wright released his first solo album, “Footprint.” That album featured Mr. Harrison on guitar on the track “Two Faced Man,” which the two performed with Mr. Wright’s band Wonderwheel on “The Dick Cavett Show” in 1971.In addition to his son Justin, Mr. Wright is survived by his wife, Rose (Anthony) Wright; another son, Dorian; a sister, Lorna Lee; and two grandchildren. His marriages to Christina Uppstrom, the mother of his sons, and Dori Accordino ended in divorce.Along with his work with Mr. Harrison, Mr. Wright was a session keyboardist for Harry Nilsson, B.B. King and Jerry Lee Lewis, and he continued to record solo albums.In the Musoscribe interview, he discussed his 2010 release, “Connected,” and the album’s hook-laden opening track, “Satisfied,” in terms that could have applied to “Dream Weaver.”“The word ‘hook’ means drawing people into something,” he said. “When I write songs, I always try to make them that way — catchy — so that people will remember them. They’ll be more embedded in people’s consciousness.” More

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      The Rolling Stones Unveil a New Album, ‘Hackney Diamonds’

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      Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood provided details about their first record of new material in 18 years, which will be released on Oct. 20.When the Rolling Stones released “Beggars Banquet” in 1968, the band had an unusual way of grabbing attention: a surprise food fight.At the end of a feast with journalists in a posh London hotel, Mick Jagger celebrated the record, which includes “Sympathy for the Devil” and “Street Fighting Man,” by smashing a cream pie into the face of the guitarist Brian Jones. The event quickly descended from there, with band members and guests throwing food at one another, leaving faces drenched in cream.On Wednesday, Jagger, 80, Keith Richards, 79, and Ronnie Wood, 76 — the band’s three current members — promoted their new album, “Hackney Diamonds,” in somewhat more sedate fashion: with a livestream on YouTube hosted by Jimmy Fallon.Named after old British slang for the shards of glass that are left after a break-in, “Hackney Diamonds” will be released on Oct. 20.Richards, wearing a hat and shades, said that playing live is a “holy grail,” but that recording albums is “where the guys can get together and pass around ideas without any interference.”“When it works, it’s great,” he said.Jagger, wearing a patterned jacket, said he didn’t “want to be bigheaded, but we wouldn’t have put this album out if we hadn’t really liked it.” He then added that he hoped the group’s fans would love it too. “I’ll drink to that,” Wood said, raising a glass.After the 20-minute event ended, the band premiered the video for the album’s first single, “Angry,” featuring Sydney Sweeney. Jagger earlier said that the album had many tracks themed around anger and disgust.The lunchtime event was held at the Hackney Empire, an old theater in the trendy Hackney district of London. Fallon, sitting in front of a broken-up version of the band’s lips logo and near three smashed chandeliers, interviewed the group before an audience of journalists and invited guests, although questions were not allowed from the floor.The anticipated 12-track “Hackney Diamonds” is the group’s first album of original material since the release of “A Bigger Bang” in 2005, and its first since the drummer Charlie Watts died in 2021. Two of the tracks were recorded in 2019 with Watts, Jagger said, including “Live by the Sword,” which he described as “retro.”Richards said the band was obviously different without Watts. “He’s No. 4, he’s missing, he’s up there. Of course he’s missed incredibly.” He said that Watts had recommended the band’s new drummer, Steve Jordan, and that moving on “would have been a lot harder without Charlie’s blessing.”Jagger joked about the long delay before this album, saying that the band — known for its extensive tours — had been a bit “lazy,” and that the group needed a deadline. They forced themselves to hit the studio in December, he said. “We cut 23 tracks very quickly and finished them off in January, and mixed them in February.”Fans of the Stones, which formed in 1962 and went on to become one of rock’s most enduring acts, have been awaiting a new album since “Blue & Lonesome” in 2016, which featured a dozen blues covers. Jagger told The Los Angeles Times in October 2021 that “Hackney Diamonds” would have been finished long ago if not for the coronavirus pandemic.Last month, the Stones teased the album via an advertisement for a fake glass repair company, called Hackney Diamonds, that appeared in a London newspaper. The ad’s text referred to several of the band’s well-known songs: “Our friendly team promises you satisfaction. When you say gimme shelter we’ll fix your shattered windows.”In the interview with Fallon, the band said other album titles it considered were “Hit and Run” and “Smash and Grab.”Philip Norman, who wrote “The Stones,” a major biography of the group, said in an interview that the release event was far from the band’s raucous 1960s and ’70s image but still managed to give its members an air of being “tearaways” by being held in London’s trendiest district. That was “typical Stones’s fakery,” Norman said, because the band had no previous association with Hackney.Although the Stones have said “Hackney Diamonds” marks a “new era,” Norman said he was anticipating a classic Stones sound. “This is the Stones we know and some of us have loved for the past six decades,” he said.The livestream generated interest online (at points 53,000 people watched live), but there was less hype on Hackney’s streets on Wednesday. Before the unannounced event, a few dozen fans waited outside the theater to catch a glimpse of the band walking the red carpet.Sam Poullain, 42, a marketing director, said that two months after he watched a school play on the Empire’s stage, he was back to see “the original rock ’n’ roll band.”The enthusiasm was not unanimous. As the huddle to see the band grew, three schoolgirls walking past asked what was happening. Told it was the Rolling Stones, Anya Morrison, 16, said, “I’ve heard of them, I think.” Then she got on a bus home. 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      How Pop Stars Turned NPR’s ‘Tiny Desk’ Into Authenticity Theater

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      The concerts have become an incongruous draw for pop stars with something to prove.What does anyone stand to gain from a string quartet accompanying Post Malone? At one of the megastar’s typical performances, you might find Austin Post standing alone on a vast stage, shirtless, mimicking the postures you might see at a rapper’s show, warbling his melodic pop with its intermittent hip-hop gestures. Recently, though, the singer sat down on the set of NPR’s Tiny Desk concert series — in an unassuming, tchotchke-filled corner of a Washington office — to perform a handful of his songs with a larger ensemble: 12 musicians, including four backup vocalists and four string players, rearranging his hits to highlight multipart harmonies and the twinkle of acoustic instruments. Why?Gradually, over its 15 years of existence, the Tiny Desk series has come to host some of the biggest names in music — artists like Taylor Swift, Alicia Keys and Harry Styles. That’s something of a coup, given its roots. In its early days, Tiny Desk programming was geared toward exactly the kinds of performers you might expect to find playing an intimate set in a mundane corner of an office, with no stage or lights or flashy videography: folk acts, singer-songwriters, crooning indie-rockers. The series has always introduced listeners to new musicians, and it still hosts performances in an impressive array of genres. But its biggest gets, back in the late aughts, were acts like The Swell Season or Tallest Man on Earth — musicians practiced at addressing small, hushed rooms with acoustic instruments. The Tiny Desk series became a prime venue for artists seeking an authenticity baptism. Then T-Pain changed everything. By the time the Tallahassee star performed a Tiny Desk concert, in 2014, his use of Autotune as a musical signature had led plenty of casual listeners to assume the pitch-correcting tool was hiding a weak voice. Even fellow artists complained that he was polluting the industry. (He was depressed for years, he has said, after Usher told him that he had “killed music.”) T-Pain used his Tiny Desk performance to demolish the idea that he lacked talent, sitting beside a single electric-piano player and singing, beautifully, with no digital adornment. The video of his set went viral, not least among those only just learning that his use of Autotune was artistic flair, not a crutch; it remains one of the most watched of the hundreds of sessions Tiny Desk has produced.The Tiny Desk series became a prime venue for artists seeking an authenticity baptism. The series built its audience organically, getting bigger bookings and finding frequent viral successes. If you’re looking to discover young folk, rock or jazz acts, or to rediscover sidelined innovators, its nonpop shows remain a valuable and thoughtfully programmed resource. But for pop artists, it has become a tool with a very specific utility: demonstrating in-the-room chops. It inherits this role from a long line of similar series — chief among them MTV’s “Unplugged,” a pioneer in the field of forcing musicians to spend a set signaling their allegiance to the values of ensemble performance. You don’t have to perform with acoustic instruments on Tiny Desk, but musicians often choose to. (Post Malone, for instance, used the string quartet to replace all the charming synth bleeps and bloops of his recordings; it’s a common Tiny Desk move to render digital production flourishes acoustically.) The audio and video are engineered in-house at NPR, an act of submission that’s rare in a world where stars seek to control every part of their image. And the old air of coffeehouse intimacy has, for big acts, been oddly abandoned, replaced by a new kind of excess geared to the constraints of the format. Post Malone’s Tiny Desk ensemble rivaled the number of musicians on his nationwide arena tour.A Tiny Desk appearance doesn’t just underline musical skill: There’s also star quality. Listeners already knew that Usher, for instance, could sing. But he could still capitalize on T-Pain’s precedent. Last year he used a Tiny Desk set to remind people that he is a charismatic performer even without the benefit of lavish stage production — an effective advertisement for the second leg of his Las Vegas residency shows. The purpose of a Tiny Desk appearance in a pop marketing campaign is now to assert the artist’s performing prowess, an opportunity that has been seized on by artists like Lizzo and Anderson .Paak, whose chops are key parts of their stardom.Often the goal of presenting songs in this format doesn’t feel financial or artistic or even purely a matter of marketing; sometimes it feels almost ideological. Post Malone doesn’t exactly need the exposure Tiny Desk offers. He surely has the resources to stage his own acoustic performance videos. But Tiny Desk offers the perfect venue to present himself as a genre-transcending renegade. The performance that results feels less like a musical idea and more like a statement about his persona — an argument that he’s not “just” a hip-hop artist, that his hit song “I Fall Apart” can be both a stadium banger and cello-adorned chamber music.There are perils in this hybridity. Stripped of the artificial charm he can summon in a recording studio or the collective exhilaration he can rely on in an arena, the Tiny Desk version of Post Malone reveals his songs a little too clearly for what they are. The packaging insists that he’s able to transcend genre, but his blithe transit through rap, pop and ballads shows no commitment to any of these forms beyond ensuring their availability to him. Their meanings are hollowed out; their signifiers are piled up into a thing without a center. The whole set sounds like no one thought much about making it good — only about making the point that Post Malone could do it. Post isn’t the only artist whose Tiny Desk performance revealed a certain shallowness. Take the British producer and electronic musician Fred Again. It’s hard to imagine many of his forebears in dance music capitulating to the notion that “authentic” live performance is the way to justify their work. But Fred Gibson aimed his music at a Tiny Desk funnel, performing alone at a piano amid a nest of samplers and synthesizers. His anthems for crying on the dance floor felt, without the dance floor, like a saccharine, exhausting solicitation of approval — more interested in asserting that Gibson is a composer and a performer than in doing justice to the genre he’s currently dominating. With every year, more and more of pop music moves over into the disembodied world of digital sound production, pushing further into the synthetic, the abstract — sounds that are neither rooted in nor trying to imitate anything in the real world. At the same time, audiences seem to hunger for a certain type of authenticity theater, and artists hunger to perform it. It grows steadily more tempting for musicians to hedge their eccentricities and creative excursions into studio sounds with lavish office-corner performances — sets that are growing steadily more incongruous and strange. The Tiny Desk is where pop stars can go to reconcile all the exquisite contradictions of being a performing musician in 2023. For some, a better option is to leave them be.Opening illustration: Source photographs from NPRAdlan Jackson is a writer from Kingston, Jamaica, who covers music in New York. He runs the Critical Party Studies blog. More

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      Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Speed Round, Part 2

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThe first leg of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour has come to a close, with the pop superstar having performed in stadiums across North America for several million people.A few of those people are friends of Popcast. This week and next, we’ll speak with a few of them about their experiences at the show.On this week’s Popcast, conversations about Swift’s relationship to the broader hierarchy of celebrity, the tour date as destination event, how fans dressed up for the show, and ways in which Swift is extremely deliberate in the manner that she deploys sexuality.Guests:Caryn Ganz, The New York Times’s pop music editorVrinda Jagota, a freelance writer for Pitchfork and othersJosh Duboff, a freelance writer for Vanity Fair and othersConnect 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