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      Doja Cat Goes Horror Rap on ‘Demons,’ and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Peter Gabriel, Lauren Mayberry, Oneohtrix Point Never 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.Doja Cat, ‘Demons’A brash, blown-speaker quality animates “Demons,” the latest single from Doja Cat’s upcoming album, “Scarlet.” “How my demons look now that my pockets full?” she shouts with a defiant rasp, before switching to a lighter and more viciously humorous register on the verses. (“Who are you, and what are those? You are gross!”) “Demons” also features a horror movie-inspired video, which stars Christina Ricci and features a very creepy Doja slithering around like a red-eyed monster. Other pop stars merely tune out their haters; Doja exorcises them. LINDSAY ZOLADZNicki Minaj, ‘Last Time I Saw You’Nicki Minaj doesn’t usually admit to any regrets or second thoughts. But she does in “Last Time I Saw You,” a song that seesaws between guitar-flecked ballad and rueful rapping. “I wish I remembered to say I’d do anything for you/Maybe I pushed you away because I thought that I’d bore you,” she sings, confessing that she was the one in the wrong. JON PARELESTeezo Touchdown featuring Janelle Monáe, ‘You Thought’Misjudgments pile up in “You Thought,” which transforms from percussive, triplet-driven rock to ballad with brisk hip-hop wordplay. Teezo Touchdown moves between rapping and singing; Monáe is melodic, singing, “I thought we were better.” The song details a breakup from both sides: missed opportunities, misunderstandings, unfulfilled needs, all compressed into pop. PARELESBlankfor.ms, Jason Moran and Marcus Gilmore, ‘Eighth Pose’Tyler Gilmore — the New York-based composer and musician known as Blankfor.ms — makes music using degraded tape loops, analog synthesizers and an old spinet piano. He was approached recently by the producer Sun Chung about doing an album with jazz improvisers, and his first call was to the pianist and composer Jason Moran, his former teacher at the New England Conservatory. His second was to the drummer Marcus Gilmore. Those two are among the finest improvisers alive: It is an impressive team for a first foray. On “Refract,” their new album, the trio works across medium and style, with composed elements and prepared loops by Blankfor.ms sparking improvisations from his collaborators. “Eighth Pose” turns on a twitchy, coiled synth phrase, like a keyed-up Aphex Twin track; Moran picks it up on the piano, toying with it, while Gilmore adds a nervy drumbeat, passed through compressed effects. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOKenya Grace, ‘Strangers’Speedy breakbeats equate with dating jitters in “Strangers,” Kenya Grace’s whispery complaint about how 21st-century romance too often ends in ghosting. She’s the singer, songwriter and producer on the track. “One random night when everything changes/you won’t reply and we’ll go back to strangers.” Synthesizers hum as the percussion races ahead, while she sings about feeling like “Everyone’s disposable.” PARELESJeff Rosenstock, ‘Will U Still U’The Long Island-born punk lifer Jeff Rosenstock tests the limits of love on “Will U Still U,” the jet-propelled opening track off his new album “Hellmode.” “Will you still love me” after I’ve messed up, he asks (with an expletive) in a catchy, incongruously cheery melody, before unleashing a rapid-fire rundown of his relationship worries. In the song’s cathartic finale he’s joined by a chorus of voices shouting that refrain at the top of their lungs and fist-pumping in anxious solidarity. ZOLADZOneohtrix Point Never, ‘A Barely Lit Path’Oneohtrix Point Never is the composer and mastermind Daniel Lopatin, who has been the Weeknd’s producer and created the nervy soundtrack for “Uncut Gems,” along with making his own albums. “A Barely Lit Path” begins as a reverent, electronics-edged dirge with processed vocals imagining “a barely lit path from your house to mine.” Then it goes through a multiverse of wordless transformations: pulsing synthesizers, a stately quasi-Baroque string orchestra, a choir accompanied by synthesizer arpeggios and a gradual, virtual decrescendo. Absolutely anything can happen as long as it’s in the same key. PARELESPeter Gabriel, ‘Love Can Heal (Bright-Side Mix)’An expansive sound design — with bell-toned ostinatos, throaty cellos and multidirectional echoes — underlines Peter Gabriel’s troubled but determined optimism in “Love Can Heal,” a new track from his gradually accruing album “I/O.” His vocal sets aside his usual grizzled hoarseness for a modest tenor; a choir joins him, yet the song stays fragile. PARELESJason Hawk Harris, ‘Jordan and the Nile’There’s an Appalachian feeling to the melody of Jason Hawk Harris’s rootsy incantation “Jordan and the Nile,” a leisurely, mystical song about rivers and generations. An organ and a string section provide droning chords as he sings about determined optimism informed by biblical imagery: “I’m feeling heavy but I see the light/A world is dark but my abyss is bright,” he promises. PARELESLauren Mayberry, ‘Are You Awake?’The debut solo single from Lauren Mayberry — the lead singer of the Scottish electro-pop group Chvrches — is a sparse, plaintive piano ballad written with Tobias Jesso Jr., chronicling nocturnal anxieties and open-ended questions. “Are you awake? I feel a sadness in my skin,” Mayberry sings, her voice melancholy but chiming with the faintest hint of hope that her message will be answered. ZOLADZMaria BC, ‘Amber’ and ‘Watcher’Glimmering electronics, tolling guitars and hovering vocal harmonies gather in “Amber” and “Watcher,” two segued songs that meditate on closeness: “Your scent is on me now/Your senses draw me out,” Maria BC sings. “There is no place to hide and no wrong.” It’s blissfully enveloping and humbly awe-struck. PARELESKris Davis, ‘Dolores’ (Take 1)“Dolores” is easily one of the most infectious melodies Wayne Shorter wrote during his stint as musical director for the Miles Davis Quintet. But it’s not one of the (many) Shorter tunes you’re likely to hear called at a jam session or covered at a straight-ahead gig. Maybe there is something intimidating about the balled up, stop-and-start melody; the centerlessness of its structure; or how perfectly the quintet plays it on the classic 1966 recording. Well, none of this scares the pianist and composer Kris Davis. Strong-but-bendable rhythm, splintered melodic lines and rough-and-tumble interplay are par for the course for (this) Davis, especially with her Diatom Ribbons project. On a new album, recorded live at the Village Vanguard with a five-member version of that ensemble, the group takes its time getting to the theme: The bassist Trevor Dunn makes some references to it, the drummer Terri Lyne Carrington establishes a heavy groove, and finally Julian Lage’s guitar comes together with Davis’s piano to grapple with the melody. When Lage departs from it on his solo, he travels far — and the band comes with him. RUSSONELLO More

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      Taylor Swift Eras Tour Concert Film Coming to Movie Theaters

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      A theatrical version of the billion-dollar tour — a cultural juggernaut that just ended its North American leg — opens Oct. 13.Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, the billion-dollar juggernaut that has dominated the cultural calendar this year, may be on a break before picking up internationally, but its momentum will only rest so long: The show is coming to movie theaters this fall.“Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” concert film will be released in the United States, Canada and Mexico on Oct. 13, Swift announced on social media Thursday, with U.S. AMC Theaters promising at least four showtimes per day from Thursday to Sunday upon opening.“The Eras Tour has been the most meaningful, electric experience of my life so far and I’m overjoyed to tell you that it’ll be coming to the big screen soon,” Swift said. “Eras attire, friendship bracelets, singing and dancing encouraged.”Anticipating the white-hot demand that has followed the tour since its announcement, crashing ticketing systems around the world, AMC promised in a news release that it had “bolstered its ticket server capacity to handle traffic at more than 5 times the current record for the most ever tickets sold in an hour.” (The company added, however, that it was “also aware that no ticketing system in history seems to have been able to accommodate the soaring demand from Taylor Swift fans when tickets are first placed on sale.”)Tickets are on sale now. Prices start at $19.89 for adults and $13.13 for children, substantially less than what fans paid for the tour itself — especially on the robust secondary market — as the concert industry adjusts to sometimes prohibitively high costs for its biggest events.Swift, 33, wrapped this year’s North American dates with four shows in Mexico last week. Her downtime, though, will be brief. In addition to the movie version of the concert, the singer will release “1989 (Taylor’s Version),” the fourth of rerecorded original albums, two weeks later, on Oct. 27. By November, the Eras Tour will pick up in Argentina before traveling around the world in 2024, with dates — including nine additional U.S. shows — continuing into November 2024.“1989 (Taylor’s Version),” the new edition of her 2014 pop blockbuster, marks Swift’s seventh release in barely three years, a period of artistic productivity that has fueled pent-up, post-pandemic demand for the singer’s live show. Jon Caramanica, a critic for The New York Times, said in a review of the first concert in March that the Eras Tour put on display “how many pivots Swift has undertaken in her career, and how the accompanying risks can have wildly different consequences.”The trade publication Pollstar has estimated that the singer sold about $14 million in tickets for each show so far. By the end of next year, the 146 stadium dates could reach $1.4 billion or more in sales. More

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      Ray Hildebrand, the ‘Paul’ of Hitmakers Paul and Paula, Dies at 82

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      He wrote a romantic song for his friend’s girlfriend, Paula, and recorded it as a duet with Jill Jackson. It became a No. 1 hit.Ray Hildebrand, whose recording with a friend, Jill Jackson, of a love song he wrote in college, “Hey Paula,” became a No. 1 hit in 1963 and brought them instant fame as Paul and Paula, died on Aug. 18 at his home in Overland Park, Kan. He was 82.His son-in-law, Larry Sterling, said the cause was dementia.“Hey Paula” was a sweet, romantic ballad about a couple close to marrying. Mr. Hildebrand had written it at the request of a friend whose girlfriend was named Paula, but the emotion behind it was for Judy Hendricks, a former girlfriend with whom Mr. Hildebrand wanted to reunite.The song is a musical conversation started by Mr. Hildebrand, who sings in, part:Hey, hey, Paula.I want to marry you.Hey, hey, Paula.No one else could ever do.When Ms. Jackson answers, she sings:Hey, Paul.I’ve been waiting for you.Hey, hey, hey Paul.I want to marry you too.The popularity of “Hey Paula” evolved slowly and then exploded. It began as a song that Mr. Hildebrand and Ms. Jackson sang on a 15-minute radio show she had in Brownwood, Texas, where they were both attending Howard Payne College (now University). The show’s disc jockey told them that listeners loved the song, and suggested they record it.At a studio in Fort Worth, they cut a 45-r.p.m. record, and the song, released on the small Le Cam label, became a regional hit. Recognizing the song’s potential, Mercury Records soon bought their contract and the recording and reissued it on its Philips label.“They changed our names,” Mr. Hildebrand told Link, the Howard Payne magazine, in 2012. “We called the song ‘Paul and Paula’ by Jill and Ray, and they called it ‘Hey Paula’ by Paul and Paula, which is better marketing.”Released in late 1962, “Hey Paula” topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the second week of February 1963, displacing “Walk Right In” by the Rooftop Singers. It stayed in the No. 1 spot for three weeks. Paul and Paula’s next single, “Young Lovers,” peaked at No. 6 at the end of that April.They were on tour in England in the spring, when “Hey Paula” rose to No. 8 on the Melody Maker chart and they met the Beatles in a BBC television studio.In June they sang “First Quarrel” on Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand,” and they later joined Mr. Clark’s three-week musical caravan as part of a roster that also included Gene Pitney, Lou Christie, Bob B. Soxx & The Blue Jeans, the Crystals and Ruby and the Romantics.But when the Clark tour reached Cincinnati at the end of July, Mr. Hildebrand realized that he had had enough of the road. At the end of a show, he told Ms. Jackson that he was quitting the tour. He felt he was no longer in control of his life.“So at 5 o’clock in the morning in Cincinnati, I wrote Dick Clark a note and slipped it under his door,” he said at an event held two years ago by the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, a sports ministry, to which he devoted much of his life. “I said, ‘I’m so sorry.’”For the rest of the tour, Mr. Hildebrand said in an interview with the website Classic Bands, Mr. Clark filled in for him on “Hey Paula.”Once he was off the tour, Mr. Hildebrand started dating Miss Hendricks again. They married in early 1964 and stayed together until her death in 1999.Jill Jackson, who is now Jill Landon, said she supported Mr. Hildebrand’s decision to leave the Clark caravan. “It was the right thing for him to do,” she said by phone.She and Mr. Hildebrand released three albums in 1963. They continued to perform together occasionally for a while and, until recently, reunited at oldies shows and other events.Mr. Hildebrand and Ms. Jackson in 1985. Though their days as hitmakers ended in 1963, they continued to reunite for oldies shows and other events. Ron Wolfson/MediaPunch , via AlamyRaymond Glenn Hildebrand was born on Nov. 21, 1940, in Joshua, Texas. His father, Walter, was a school principal; his mother, Alma (Wood) Hildebrand, was a teacher. After attending Navarro Junior College in Corsicana, Texas, he transferred to Howard Payne College on a basketball scholarship.In the summer of 1962, he got a job at the college’s swimming pool and, to save money on housing, lived in the gymnasium. In the quiet of the gym, he started writing songs.He was asked by a teammate to write a song about his girlfriend, Paula. Another teammate listened to an early version of the song, which was told entirely by Paul, and suggested a change.“He said, ‘You ought to let the girl sing back to the guy,’” Mr. Hildebrand recalled in the Link magazine interview. At first, he said, he thought the suggestion was ridiculous, but then he agreed to do it, turning the song into a conversation.After receiving his bachelor’s degree in English in 1964, Mr. Hildebrand started a new career as a contemporary Christian singer and songwriter. He recorded albums under his own name and, starting in the 1980s, with a partner, Paul Land, in an act that mixed music with comedy.From 1967 to 1981, he was program director of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at the organization’s national office in Kansas City, Mo. It was mostly a musical job, writing songs with pop melodies and performing them at conferences and summer camps for young athletes. He continued to perform at Fellowship events for many years.“He brought a great deal of fun and laughter to the stage,” Wayne Atcheson, a former assistant director of the organization, said in a phone interview. “You never knew what he would say to get a belly laugh.”Mr. Hildebrand was inducted into the Fellowship’s Hall of Champions in 2003.He also worked as a television producer and a real estate appraiser.He is survived by his daughter, Heidi Sterling; his son, Michael; seven grandchildren; four great-grandchildren; and a brother, Steve.Looking back at “Hey Paula” many years later, Mr. Hildebrand said he understood its appeal.“I think one of the things ‘Hey Paula’ had was, it was like a couple dating over the air,” he said in the Classic Bands interview. “They were singing back and forth to each other. You had your Steve and Eydies, but it was not in the teenage pizza-and-peanut-butter songs.”He added: “It was marketable. It was cute.” More

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      Rammstein Singer Till Lindemann Is Cleared of Sexual Assault Allegations

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      Berlin’s public prosecutor’s office dropped its investigation, citing a lack of evidence for allegations that Mr. Lindemann had drugged young women in order to have sex with them.Berlin’s public prosecutor’s office on Tuesday said it had dropped its sexual assault investigation into Till Lindemann, the frontman for the rock band Rammstein, citing a lack of evidence.The investigation began in June after several women said that Mr. Lindemann had plied young people with alcohol and drugs before, during and after concerts in order to have sex with them. Lawyers for Mr. Lindemann denied those claims in a statement and threatened legal action against those making the claims and news outlets reporting on them.“I thank all those who have waited impartially for the end of the investigation,” Mr. Lindemann, 60, posted to Instagram on Tuesday.When the German news media reported on the allegations of impropriety against the leader of one of the country’s most successful modern music groups, commercial partners ended their ties with Mr. Lindemann. Universal, which distributes Rammstein’s music, said it would stop any promotional activities. And politicians condemned the described behavior.“We need more awareness about abuse of power and sexualized violence, and not only in the music industry, but in the whole cultural industry,” Claudia Roth, Germany’s culture minister, told Der Spiegel, a newsweekly, adding, “The times of foul machismo combined with abuse of power up to sexualized violence should really and definitely be over.”According to the prosecutor’s office, however, it was impossible to substantiate the reports against Mr. Lindemann because so many accusations were made anonymously. Kaya Loska, a prominent influencer who had described her experience backstage during a concert in 2022, was interviewed by prosecutors. But they said she was of little help because she did not witness any crimes being committed.“It was therefore not possible to sufficiently substantiate any allegations of the crimes, nor was it possible to gain an impression of the credibility of the alleged injured parties and the believability of their statements during questioning,” Sebastian Büchner, who speaks for the public prosecutor’s office, wrote in a statement.Shelby Lynn, a former fan of the band, helped make the allegations public when she posted on social media about her experience at a concert in Vilnius in May, during which she believed she was drugged. Ms. Lynn took her complaint to the Lithuanian police, but they declined to investigate. More

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      Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Speed Round, Part 1

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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 the consonances between the Eras Tour and Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour, the way Swift does (and does not) deploy dance as part of her arsenal and the thrills of seeing Swift perform for the first time.Guests:Wesley Morris, a critic at large for The New York TimesBrian Seibert, who writes about dance for The New York Times and othersYasi Salek, host of the Bandsplain podcastConnect 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

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      A Summer of Live Music, From Stadiums to Clubs

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      Hear songs from Beyoncé, Alvvays, Mdou Moctar and more.Beyoncé, a master of ballads and addition.The New York TimesDear listeners,I sincerely hope I am not the first person to break this news to you, but it’s true: Summer is almost over.Let us not mourn what is lost, though. Let us celebrate the summer that was. And what it was, for me at least, was a time to go to a lot of concerts. Most of them outdoors!While the post-lockdown summer concert has made its gradual, necessary return over the past two years, this season it felt back in full bloom. The news was, of course, dominated by a few extremely high-profile ones (Taylor Swift’s cultural juggernaut Eras Tour; Beyoncé’s first solo outing in seven years, the Renaissance World Tour) but there were plenty of simpler (and cheaper) pleasures to be had, too. I caught some incredible free shows over the past few months in New York City parks, from the likes of Mdou Moctar and John Cale. And in a smaller club environment, I was introduced to the up-and-coming singer-songwriter Blondshell.Today’s playlist is a kind of sonic scrapbook of my summer of shows. I’d encourage you to make your own, too; even as this season fades out (sob), it’s a great way to hold onto its most tuneful memories.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Alvvays: “Easy on Your Own?”Let’s start with the most recent one: Last Wednesday, I caught an excellent double bill in Prospect Park, as a part of BRIC Arts Media’s annual Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival. The Canadian dream-pop band Alvvays played first; its last album, “Blue Rev,” was one of my favorites of 2022, and I especially love this fuzzed out, gently melancholic second track. (Listen on YouTube)2. Alex G: “Gretel”And here’s the other half of that double bill, the Philadelphia indie musician Alex G, who also released one of my favorite albums of last year, the strange and poignant “God Save the Animals.” Alex’s live shows are always a bit louder and more raucous than his records would lead you to believe; I have actually seen mosh pits break out when he plays this seemingly subdued standout from his great 2019 album, “House of Sugar.” (Listen on YouTube)3. Taylor Swift: “The Archer”I have been known to refer to this one as “The Sagittarius National Anthem.” The more I think about Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour — and there are plenty of opportunities to do so; it’s still all anybody wants to talk about — the more I think my favorite stretch of the concert was the first one, when she finally got to play some songs from her 2019 album “Lover.” Here she is at her most minimalist, and her most antiheroic, as she punctures her own good-girl image on “The Archer”: “I see right through me, I see right through me.” (Listen on YouTube)4. Tanya Tucker: “Delta Dawn”When I traveled to the Gorge in Washington earlier this summer to catch Brandi Carlile’s Echoes Through the Canyon festival — and, you know, a certain very, very special headliner — I was lucky enough to catch an early evening set by the country icon Tanya Tucker. My second favorite part of the show was when she played “Delta Dawn,” which she recorded at age 13, and every single person there sang along at the top of their lungs. My first favorite part was when Tucker uncorked a bottle of her signature tequila and passed it around the front row. (Listen on YouTube)5. Amanda Shires & Bobbie Nelson: “Always on My Mind”The headliners that final night of Echoes Through the Canyon were the Highwomen, a country supergroup that features Carlile, Maren Morris, Natalie Hemby and the fiery fiddle player and singer-songwriter Amanda Shires. Each Highwoman played a solo cover during the set, and Shires wowed me with a poignant rendition of “Always on My Mind,” which she dedicated to Bobbie Nelson. Luckily, you didn’t just have to be there: The studio recording of the song, on which Nelson played piano shortly before she died last year, is gorgeous, and quite close to the version Shires played live. (Listen on YouTube)6. John Cale: “Heartbreak Hotel”Another brilliant show in Prospect Park: Earlier this month, 81-year-old John Cale treated Brooklyn to a spellbinding concert on one of the most temperate evenings of the whole summer. His set pulled from decades of his own material, but one of the most memorable moments was when he played an eerily deconstructed reimagining of “Heartbreak Hotel,” similar to this version that appeared on his 1992 live album “Fragments of a Rainy Season.” (Listen on YouTube)7. Blondshell: “Dangerous”I already knew, from listening to her 2023 self-titled debut as Blondshell, that Sabrina Teitelbaum was a sharp songwriter with a distinct take on the dark side of young adulthood and an easy way with minor-key melodies. What I didn’t realize until I saw her live this summer, though, is that she can really sing. She belted out “Blondshell” highlights like “Salad” and “Sepsis” (two great titles for songs), but the finely calibrated pathos she brought to the haunting “Dangerous” lingered with me long after the show. (Listen on YouTube)8. Mdou Moctar: “Tarhatazed”Mdou Moctar, the Tuareg guitar wizard whose last few albums have gained him much-deserved recognition in the West, leads what I believe to be one of the best rock bands in the world right now. I’ve seen them live a few times, and they’ve never sounded tighter than they did at the free — what a bargain! — show they played in July at Central Park’s SummerStage Festival. The new material was amazing and has me very excited for whatever the group decides to release next, but in the meantime, here’s an epic jam from the band’s 2019 album “Ilana the Creator.” (Listen on YouTube)9. Beyoncé: “1+1”As I pointed out in my review of the North American opening of her dazzling Renaissance World Tour, Beyoncé began a show that honors the vast history of dance music with, unexpectedly, a mini-set of slow, piano-driven torch songs. I confess I was getting a little impatient with the Queen — didn’t we come to dance?! — until she played a transcendent “1+1,” one of her greatest ballads. Then I had no choice but to bow down. (Listen on YouTube)I’ve got a hundred thrown-out speeches I almost said to you,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“A Summer of Live Music” track listTrack 1: Alvvays, “Easy on Your Own?”Track 2: Alex G, “Gretel”Track 3: Taylor Swift, “The Archer”Track 4: Tanya Tucker, “Delta Dawn”Track 5: Amanda Shires & Bobbie Nelson, “Always on My Mind”Track 6: John Cale, “Heartbreak Hotel”Track 7: Blondshell, “Dangerous”Track 8: Mdou Moctar, “Tarhatazed”Track 9: Beyoncé, “1+1”Bonus tracksI purposely left off the summer concerts to which I’d already devoted entire playlists, but in case you missed those, the Cure and the Pretenders were both amazing.Also, my beleaguered New York Mets are still giving me little to cheer about, but I continue to be amused by the special walk-up songs they choose for “Women’s Day” (which was March 8 everywhere else in the world but, for some reason, was Aug. 26 at Citi Field). Each player changed his walk-up song to one by a female artist, and for the second year in a row, Daniel Vogelbach’s pick was the one to beat. This year he chose Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles,” and last year, he went with Kelis’s “Milkshake.” Daniel Vogelbach, I salute you. More

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      Florence Welch Says She Had Emergency Surgery

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      Florence Welch, the front woman of the band, apologized to fans for canceling her recent shows after undergoing what she said was lifesaving surgery.Florence Welch, the front woman of the English indie rock band Florence + the Machine, announced on Instagram that she had undergone emergency surgery, which is why she had canceled some of her recent shows.“I had to have emergency surgery for reasons I don’t really feel strong enough to go into yet, but it saved my life,” Welch wrote.“I’m so sorry that I had to cancel the last couple of shows,” she added.The singer said she plans to return to the stage for the Meo Kalorama festival in Lisbon, Portugal, where she is slated to perform on Sept. 1, and close out her Dance Fever tour in Malaga, Spain, on Sept. 2.The Dance Fever Tour was initially postponed in November, when an X-ray revealed that she had been dancing on a broken foot, Welch said on Instagram at the time.“It is not in my nature to postpone a show, and certainly not a U.K. tour, but I’m in pain and as dancers know, dancing on an injury is not a good idea,” she wrote in November.In her most recent Instagram post, she assured fans that her feet were fine but said that upon her return to the stage she might not be jumping around as much, adding, “you can do that for me.”“Suffice to say I wish the songs were less accurate in their predictions,” she wrote. “But creativity is a way of coping, mythology is a way of making sense. And the dark fairy tale of Dance Fever, with all its strange prophecies, will provide me with much-needed strength and catharsis right now.”The band is most known for its hit “Dog Days Are Over,” which peaked at 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2010, and “Shake it Out,” which peaked at 72 in 2012. More

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      A Strokes Tribute Band Is Part of a Fresh Wave of Latino Fandom

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      The members of the Strokes tribute band Juicebox, like the crowds they draw, are predominantly Latino.On a Friday night, at the center of the Santa Fe Springs Swap Meet, a large stage at this open-air California market stood in front of an expanse of picnic tables and food vendors.The swap meet, at the border of Los Angeles and Orange Counties, usually hosts tribute bands that pay homage to Rock & Roll Hall of Fame-enshrined acts like Metallica or Mexican American icons like Jenni Rivera. But that evening in March, Juicebox, Southern California’s leading Strokes tribute band, had gathered an enthusiastic, multigenerational audience ready to celebrate the group that has come to symbolize stylish downtown New York City rock in the early 2000s. There were leather jackets everywhere.Deep into the show, when the group played “50/50,” a forgotten track from the Strokes’ 2013 full-length “Comedown Machine,” a mosh pit started, earning the crowd a warning from the venue. As Juicebox left the stage after performing 47 singles, album cuts and B-sides over three sets, chants began, calling out for one more: “¡Otra! ¡Otra! ¡Otra!”The members of Juicebox, like the crowds they draw, are predominantly Latino, though the band’s founder and drummer, Jason Wise, is a 38-year-old self-described “Jewish dude” from Queens. He moved to Los Angeles in 2010 and fell in with a group of mostly Latino musicians he met through Craigslist who loved early 2000s rock bands as much as he did. Six years ago, Wise started Juicebox, which now features the lead vocalist Edgar Rene Espino, the guitarists George Campos and Renzon Sanchez and the bassist Tony Perez (who recently took over for John Leal). It usually plays twice a month, booking gigs across Southern California.Wise discovered the Strokes when he was in his midteens and they’ve been his favorite band ever since. “They are a big part of who I am as an individual and to be able to be part of spreading the fandom and the love of the Strokes to other people is something that I’m not tired of doing,” he said. “If I wasn’t in this band, I would go to these shows.”Juicebox, from left: George Campos, John Leal, Edgar Rene Espino, Jason Wise and Renzon Sanchez. Wise started the band six years ago.Saul Barrerala for The New York TimesThe Strokes themselves remain a major act in Latin America, which has a long tradition of supporting rock music. When the band performs “Reptilia” for festival crowds, it’s greeted with stadium-size fútbol chants.It’s not surprising that a place like Los Angeles County — where 49.1 percent of respondents (or more than 4.9 million people) in the 2021 census identified as Hispanic/Latino — is home to a large number of Latino Strokes fans.But Jeanette Diaz, a journalist and publicist from Los Angeles, believes that the pull of the Strokes is especially strong among the first-generation American children of immigrants, who can have complicated feelings about their identities and which culture they belong to. The band “could just do what they wanted to do and it was accepted, and a lot of people try to find that,” Diaz said. “It’s this idea of fitting in on your own terms, which a lot of Latin kids craved, maybe subconsciously.”Some members of Juicebox say they feel a closeness with the Strokes that comes partly from representation. (The drummer Fabrizio Moretti was born in Brazil, and the guitarist Albert Hammond Jr.’s mother is from Argentina.) “I see pictures of Fab and I’m like, I play soccer with that guy, he looks like someone I know,” said Sanchez, the Juicebox guitarist whose own background is half Lebanese and half El Salvadoran. “And a guy like Albert, who has big curly hair, that’s my brother. I can see myself in the Strokes.”Fans at a Juicebox show in late May.Saul Barrerala for The New York TimesThe most obvious antecedent to this fandom is the one for the Smiths, the maudlin but melodious Manchester band that broke up in 1987 but continues to enjoy a passionate following among Mexican Americans today. This relationship has been covered in articles, documentaries and books for over 20 years, and it too has inspired tribute bands, including the long-running Sweet & Tender Hooligans, fronted by Jose Maldonado, who is often called “the Mexican Morrissey.”José G. Anguiano, an associate professor of Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies at California State University, Los Angeles, said he has seen similar phenomena in the region’s goth, metal and rockabilly worlds. “As people have moved away or they’ve aged out of certain subcultures or music scenes, it does seem like in Los Angeles, Latinos have moved in to take the reins,” he said. “What’s really cool is they’re taking the reins, not just in terms of being fans, but also fronting these tribute bands and producing their own music. They’re fully participating in every sense in these subcultures.”In 2022, the rising El Monte, Calif., band the Red Pears covered the Strokes’ “Automatic Stop” for Unquiet Live’s YouTube channel. In the video, their guitarist and vocalist, Henry Vargas, introduced the song as being by “Los Estrokes.” The Red Pears never thought it was strange that they knew so many Latino people who were into the Strokes because they all came to the group through Latino friends. But it was each band member’s individual love of the Strokes that helped bring them together and shape their sound.“In our city there was a lot of punk, ska and metal bands,” Vargas said in an interview. “We were the only ones that were branching out, trying out different stuff.”Before joining Juicebox in 2022, Espino, the band’s lead singer, was in a different Strokes tribute band for six years, but he’s never seen the real deal play live. He said he’s always been a bigger fan of the Arctic Monkeys, whose frontman, Alex Turner, famously started an album with the lyrics, “I just wanted to be one of the Strokes.”“I’m living his life right now,” Espino quipped.Sanchez, 26, is the Juicebox member most interested in re-creation. In a skinny tie or a polo shirt, he plays a white Fender Stratocaster at nearly chest-level, just like Hammond Jr. His mind was blown open by the Strokes when he was 14, after two brothers he used to be in a band with introduced him to the song “The Modern Age.”But an even younger cohort has recently embraced the Strokes through the Rick Rubin-produced album “The New Abnormal,” from 2020, which spawned a TikTok hit in “The Adults Are Talking.”“I didn’t know how they’re doing it, where they sound like they’re not trying, but they’re really trying,” Miguel Ponce, a D.J. and promoter, said of the Strokes.Saul Barrerala for The New York TimesOn a Friday night in late May, a crowd packed Knucklehead, a dive-y bar on an unglamorous block in Hollywood. Juicebox was on the bill alongside an Arctic Monkeys tribute band called Polar Primates for Room on Fire, a club night dedicated to early 2000s indie and alternative music. The Strokes’ time playing tiny New York City venues like the Mercury Lounge looms large in their history, but in reality, it lasted for barely a blip. Juicebox shows like this one let fans who were born too late or on the opposite coast reimagine themselves in that moment.During a phone interview a few days earlier, Room on Fire’s D.J. and promoter, Miguel Ponce, 29, explained that he learned about the Strokes from a friend on his high school baseball team, but it took a little time before he truly got it. “I heard the song ‘Ize of the World’ and I don’t know what it was, but all of a sudden it hit like a spark, dude,” he said. “I didn’t know how they’re doing it, where they sound like they’re not trying, but they’re really trying.”Ponce started Room on Fire in March 2022, but the early installments didn’t draw much of a crowd. After he had Juicebox play for the first time this past January, the party began to take off. “I started seeing the true potential of what I can do,” he said.Before the pandemic, Ponce used to book shows with local acts in Downtown Los Angeles. He already knew how much of an influence the Strokes had. “Most of the indie bands, they would dress like Julian Casablancas,” he said. “There’s no shame in that.” More