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      Playboi Carti’s Quiet Christmas Release Is His First No. 1

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe ChartsPlayboi Carti’s Quiet Christmas Release Is His First No. 1The rapper’s “Whole Lotta Red” was largely unreviewed by the music press (though it led to a Twitter hubbub), and was streamed 126 million times in its opening week.The rapper Playboi Carti’s “Whole Lotta Red” had the equivalent of 100,000 albums sold.Credit…Amy Harris/Invision, via Associated PressJan. 4, 2021, 1:06 p.m. ETYou could be forgiven if you didn’t know about “Whole Lotta Red.”The latest album by the Atlanta rapper Playboi Carti came out on Christmas Day, while streaming playlists were practically overheating with seasonal tinsel by Mariah Carey, Brenda Lee and Andy Williams. And “Whole Lotta Red” apparently went unreviewed by the music media.Yet for a streaming star like Playboi Carti, all of that mattered less than the arrival of new content, although some controversy on social media may also have helped. “Whole Lotta Red” became the rapper’s first No. 1 on Billboard’s album chart, with the equivalent of 100,000 sales in the United States, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data. The album, which features appearances by Kanye West, Kid Cudi and Future, was streamed 126 million times in its opening week.“Whole Lotta Red” received some extra attention when the rapper Iggy Azalea complained on Twitter that Playboi Carti had ignored her and their young son, Onyx, on Christmas. In the days following, celebrity-watching social media roiled and Playboi Carti posted videos of him with his son in a studio.Also this week, Taylor Swift’s “Evermore” fell to No. 2 after two turns at the top. The Chicago rapper Lil Durk’s “The Voice” is No. 3, Pop Smoke’s “Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon” is No. 4 in its 26th week out and Ariana Grande’s “Positions” is in fifth place.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      MF Doom, Masked Rapper With Intricate Rhymes, Is Dead at 49

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMF Doom, Masked Rapper With Intricate Rhymes, Is Dead at 49Born Daniel Dumile, MF Doom built a cult following with his wordplay and comic-book style. He died in October, a statement shared by his record label said.MF Doom performing in 2004. The album he released that year, “Madvillainy,” a collaboration with the producer Madlib, was a career breakthrough.Credit…Keith Bedford for The New York TimesDec. 31, 2020Daniel Dumile, the masked rapper who performed as MF Doom and built a lasting underground fan base with his offbeat wordplay and comic-book persona, died on Oct. 31, a statement from his family said on Thursday. He was 49.The rapper’s record label, Rhymesayers, provided the statement, signed by Mr. Dumile’s wife, Jasmine. The label did not give the cause of death or say why it was being announced two months later.Over six solo albums released between 1999 and 2009 and five collaborative LPs (with Madlib and Danger Mouse, among others) between 2004 and 2018, Mr. Dumile honed a style that was intricate and imaginative, calling on both esoteric and lowbrow references as well as cartoonish imagery in lyrics that could be poignantly emotional.Born in London and raised on Long Island, he grew up steeped in early hip-hop. He debuted in 1989 on the 3rd Bass track “The Gas Face” with a standout cameo that helped him get a record deal for his own group, KMD, in which he rapped as Zev Love X.The act included his brother, Dingilizwe, who performed under the name DJ Subroc. Its first album, “Mr. Hood,” arrived in 1991 on the major label Elektra. During the recording of KMD’s second album, “Black Bastards,” Subroc was killed in a car accident, and the label later declined to release the record. Mr. Dumile vanished from the entertainment business but continued to work on music privately while he raised his son.He resurfaced in 1997 with the single “Dead Bent,” his first song under the name Metal Face Doom. (The persona was a nod to the Marvel villain Doctor Doom.) Around the time of the release of the album “Operation: Doomsday” in 1999, which featured a masked character on its cover, Mr. Dumile began hiding his face in public, at first with a stocking mask and later a metal one, which became his signature.In a 2009 interview with The New Yorker, he said the mask had become necessary when he made the leap from the studio to the stage. “I wanted to get onstage and orate, without people thinking about the normal things people think about,” he said. “A visual always brings a first impression. But if there’s going to be a first impression, I might as well use it to control the story. So why not do something like throw a mask on?”Once an underground cult figure, Mr. Dumile found greater fame with albums in the mid-aughts. “Madvillainy,” which arrived in 2004 with the producer Madlib, was a breakthrough.“He delivers long, free-associative verses full of sideways leaps and unexpected twists,” the critic Kelefa Sanneh wrote in reviewing a 2004 concert in The New York Times. “You think you know where he’s heading and what each sentence will mean when it ends. Then it bends.”On “Raid,” a track from “Madvillainy,” he rhymes:Trippin’, to date the Metal Fellow been rippin’ flowsSince New York plates was ghetto yellowWith broke blue writing, this is too excitingFolks leave out the show feelin’ truly enlightenedReleased in the same year, his album “MM .. FOOD” (an anagram of his stage name) included tracks like “Gumbo,” “Kon Queso” and “Kon Karne.” In rapping about the seemingly mundane topic of food with goofiness and wit, he was “showing respect for human life,” he told Spin in 2004.“I’m more like a writer dude rather than a freestyler,” Mr. Dumile told The Chicago Tribune that same year. “I like to design my stuff, and I consider myself an author.”Mr. Dumile rapped under different personas and later became known for sending impostors out onstage to perform for fans; in his trademark metal mask, it was difficult to know the difference. The body doubles often disappointed fans but sparked viral moments online, like when an apparent MF Doom drop-in at a concert turned out to be the comedian Hannibal Buress.In 2017, Mr. Dumile announced on social media that his son, King Malachi Ezekiel Dumile, had died at 14. Information on survivors was not immediately available.Though he never reached mainstream superstardom, Mr. Dumile was widely admired by fellow rappers and producers. He was “your favorite MC’s MC,” wrote Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest on Twitter. In a post on Instagram, El-P wrote: “thank you for keeping it weird and raw always. you inspired us all and always will.”Caryn Ganz contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Love Music to Surprise You? Jon Caramanica Recommends TikTok Dives

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyQUESTIONS FROM THE BOSSLove Music to Surprise You? Jon Caramanica Recommends TikTok DivesThe Times’s Culture editor has questions. Our critic has answers.The songs on Fiona Apple’s 2020 album “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” succeed by connecting to the artist’s resentments as well as her creative impulses.Credit…Gary Miller/Getty ImagesJan. 1, 2021, 10:00 a.m. ETAs the editor of the Culture department at The New York Times, Gilbert Cruz relies on critics, reporters and editors in every field of the arts for their expertise. Now we’re bringing his personal questions — and our writers’ answers — to you. Currently on his mind: how to open himself up to new music, and tangle with the beast known as TikTok, which he posed to Jon Caramanica, a pop music critic.Gilbert asks: We’re approaching the tail-end of one of my favorite times of year — Top 10 list time! The holidays have passed, but I’m still catching up on stuff. I love reading ours, I love reading those from other publications. It really allows me to feel both superior (“Yeah, I saw that”) and inferior (“Damn, I didn’t even hear about that”) at the same time. Last year, after seeing your No. 1 album, I distinctly recall asking myself, “What is 100 gecs?” putting on the song “Money Machine” while my 5-year old was in the room and immediately regretting it. This is one of the reasons I appreciate you.This year, I played it so safe as a music listener. In March, it felt as if I would have time to explore so much of the new — and instead I just played my favorite albums over and over again. Did I do it wrong? Can your year-end list (and Jon Pareles’s and Lindsay Zoladz’s) redeem me and those like me?Jon answers: First off, please enumerate all of the other reasons you appreciate me. If we have any space left, I’ll …I’m really glad that I hit my target demographic, which is to say your child, which is to say someone who remains open to all of the wacky, unexpected possibilities of music. I’d guess that by the time we are, I dunno, 13, we already begin to understand music as something that defines us socially, and about which we can become tribal. That is, of course, a shame. I wish child’s ears for everyone.Look, you’ll find great, revelatory things on my album and song lists — for your little one, try Rina Sawayama and Flo Milli — but I’m not sure there’s much on there that will snap me or you or anyone else out of [madly waves hands around] all of this. Fiona Apple probably came closest for me — it was nice to hear someone with such a direct line to both their resentments and their creative impulses.I think the artists who suffered this year — critically, at least — were those who stayed the course. In a different year, say, Gunna might have gotten more critical attention. But his 2020 album wasn’t much different than his 2019 album, and I found that I didn’t have much to say about him that I hadn’t already said. In a year where it sometimes felt onerous just to extract the energy to even absorb a work of art, albums like that felt easy to nod at and move past.Gilbert asks: It’s a big part of your job to constantly experience the new — but is there older stuff that you find yourself returning to for comfort?Jon answers: I do think that discomfort is my beat, to a certain extent. I generally find myself allergic to familiar pleasures. That said, for the last couple of years, few things have been more calming than the music of the Griselda Records crew, from Buffalo, which is grounded in the 1990s New York rap that makes up around 85 percent of my DNA. The way the syllables have sturdy corners, but there’s still a liquidity between them — it’s as reassuring as my mother’s voice.Also, I know it might sound odd to say that I found comfort in TikTok, the centerless, directionless app that grabs you by the neck and clings tight for as long as you’ll let it, but I found its relentless, crossed-up rhythms soothing. There are endless rabbit holes to fall down, myriad subcultures to peek in on, countless around-the-way superstars who have finally found their dream milieu.Gilbert asks: Yeah, I heard you say something similar on a recent episode of Popcast where you talked about how you “struggled this year to listen to albums” and wondered about the “utility of the album.” Do you think that’s a function of quarantine, or is it just an extension of the playlist-ification of music? Honestly, almost every new song I discovered this year I discovered through some Spotify playlist. (No free ads.)Jon answers: As awful as it sounds, an album is simply a data dump now. That doesn’t mean that some artists won’t continue to aim to be auteurs of the form — say, Taylor Swift or Adele — but the minute albums hit streaming services, they are sliced and diced and the songs are relegated to playlist slots, and everything after that is a crap shoot. The truth is that albums worked as a medium only because everyone was a captive. When you look back at your favorite older albums now, I’m sure you see the weak spots that you’d happily have programmed out if you had the technology then. Now you do. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next generation of pop stars finds ways to never release an “album” again — they’ll just drip music out, one automated-brain-chip-download at a time.Gilbert asks: OK, I have to come back to something, though. It’s embarrassing.Here it is — I’m just not on TikTok much. (Insert grimace emoji.) I know I should be because it’s a major part of the culture, but there are only so many ways I can direct my time. This Robert Caro book isn’t going to finish itself, Jon! What are some of the best things you’ve seen there this year?Jon answers: It’s cool, man — you get paid to run the department, and I get paid to do … this.#FrogTikTok. Teens talking about reading political theory, both as means to revolution and to flirtation. @funkbeezly’s taxonomy of boyfriends. The debunking of Noah Beck’s Yale soccer scholarship. The House Nobody Asked For. Jordan Scott. (Sorry.) (Someone help him with his merch, though.) The joy in the comments when Charli D’Amelio finally danced to ppcocaine’s “3 Musketeers.” High fashion satirist guys who’ll soon be in need of chiropractors. Jeremy O. Harris’s “WAP” dance at Pompeii. @cyberexboyfriend. The very long, very specific memory of @nfbroleelove. “Who’s the drunkest?” Dances to Phoebe Bridgers and Soccer Mommy. @karchill and his Mentos. The many flavors of Pop Smoke and Lil Tjay’s “Mood Swings.” Kids in Zoom classrooms telling their teachers how much they appreciate them. Jasmine Orlando. “Where? Bunny? Surplus? Labor? Value?” And of course, Larry Scott, who always had a “nice” ready when I needed one.Gilbert asks: What’s the longest you’ve ever spent scrolling through TikTok?Jon answers: Ummmmmmm … three hours? So, not nearly long enough.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      John Fletcher, a.k.a. Ecstasy of the Group Whodini, Dies at 56

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyJohn Fletcher, a.k.a. Ecstasy of the Group Whodini, Dies at 56He was, the executive who signed Whodini said, “truly one of the first rap stars” and a sex symbol “when they were very scarce in the early days of rap.”Jalil Hutchins, left, and John Fletcher, a.k.a. Ecstasy, of the foundational hip-hop group Whodini in 1984. “I can’t sing,” Mr. Fletcher once said. “But I heard somebody rap one day and I said to myself, ‘I can do that.’”Credit…Paul Natkin/Getty ImagesDec. 26, 2020, 5:56 p.m. ETJohn Fletcher, who as Ecstasy of the foundational hip-hop group Whodini was the engine for some of the genre’s first pop successes, wearing a flamboyant Zorroesque hat all the while, died on Wednesday. He was 56.Jonnelle Fletcher, his daughter, confirmed the death in a statement but did not specify the cause or say where he died. In the mid-1980s, Whodini — made up initially of Mr. Fletcher and Jalil Hutchins, who were later joined by the D.J. Grandmaster Dee (born Drew Carter) — released a string of essential hits, including “Friends,” “Freaks Come Out at Night” and “One Love.” Whodini presented as street-savvy sophisticates with a pop ear, and Mr. Fletcher was the group’s outsize character and most vivid rapper.“I can’t sing,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1987. “But I heard somebody rap one day and I said to myself, ‘I can do that.’ I rap in pitch. I try to be unique. I have my own style.”John Fletcher was born on June 7, 1964, and grew up in the Wyckoff Gardens projects in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. He first worked with Mr. Hutchins, who was from nearby Gowanus, when Mr. Hutchins was trying to record a theme song for the newly influential radio D.J. Mr. Magic.Mr. Fletcher in performance in 2017. His flat-brimmed leather hats became his signature look.Credit…Leon Bennett/Getty ImagesThat collaboration received significant local attention, and Mr. Fletcher and Mr. Hutchins were soon signed by Jive Records, which named them Whodini. They quickly recorded “Magic’s Wand,” produced by Thomas Dolby, and “The Haunted House of Rock,” a Halloween song.“Ecstasy was truly one of the first rap stars,” Barry Weiss, the executive who signed them, wrote on Instagram. “Not just a brilliant voice and wordsmith but a ladies’ man and sex symbol when they were very scarce in the early days of rap. Whodini helped usher in a female audience to what had been a traditional male art form.”Most of the group’s earliest material was recorded in London when Mr. Fletcher was fresh out of high school. Its 1983 self-titled debut album was produced by Conny Plank, who had also produced the bands Kraftwerk and Neu! Whodini also toured Europe before finding true success back in the United States.“We didn’t go to university and get a college degree, but that was our education, just seeing the world,” Mr. Fletcher said in a 2018 interview with the YouTube channel HipHop40.For its follow-up album, “Escape” (1984), Whodini began working with the producer Larry Smith, who amplified its sound and gave it a bit of appealing scuff. (Mr. Smith was also responsible for Run-DMC’s breakout albums.) “Escape” contained the songs that would become Whodini’s seminal hits, notably “Friends” and “Five Minutes of Funk” (released as flip sides on the same 12-inch single) and “Freaks Come Out at Night.”“Friends,” a skeptical storytelling song about deceit, was a smash in its own right and had a robust afterlife as sample material, most notably on Nas and Lauryn Hill’s “If I Ruled the World (Imagine That).”“Five Minutes of Funk” — which would become even more widely known as the theme music for the long-running hip-hop video show “Video Music Box” — deployed a clever countdown motif woven through the lyrics. “In creating that song,” Mr. Fletcher told HipHop40, “we pictured it blaring from the windows in the projects as we walked through it on a summer’s day.”As hip-hop was beginning to gain global notice, Whodini was consistently near the center of the action. The group was managed by the rising impresario Russell Simmons and appeared on the inaugural Fresh Fest tour, hip-hop’s first arena package.But as Run-DMC was taking hip-hop to edgier territory, Whodini remained committed to smoothness. “We were the rap group that kind of bridged the gap between the bands and the rappers,” Mr. Fletcher told HipHop40, adding that he and Mr. Hutchins were mindful that hip-hop was still struggling to gain acceptance among radio programmers, and wrote songs accordingly: “We wanted to curse, but we couldn’t curse.”Mr. Fletcher was also a key innovator in introducing melody to rapping. “Ecstasy was the lead vocalist on most Whodini songs because anything that we could play he could rap right to it in key,” Mr. Hutchins said in an interview with the hip-hop website The Foundation.“Escape” went platinum, and Whodini’s next two albums, “Back in Black” (1986) and “Open Sesame” (1987), both went gold. On “One Love” (from “Back in Black”), which had streaks of the sound that was to soon coalesce as new jack swing, Mr. Fletcher was reflective, almost somber:The words ‘love’ and ‘like’ both have four lettersBut they’re two different things altogether‘Cause I’ve liked many ladies in my dayBut just like the wind they’ve all blown awayHavelock Nelson and Michael A. Gonzales, in their book “Bring the Noise: A Guide to Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture” (1991), described Whodini as “a beautifully kept building in the middle of Brooklyn’s ghetto heaven, personable characters floating gently through a turbulent sea of hard-core attitude and crush-groove madness.”In no small part that was because of the group’s style. Whodini dressed with flair: leather jackets, sometimes with no shirt; flowing pants or short shorts; loafers. And most crucially, Mr. Fletcher’s flat-brimmed leather hats, which became his signature look, inspired by a wool gaucho he saw in a shop on Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn that he had remade in leather. Before long, he had several.“He had them in red; had them in white; two in black, one with an African headpiece on it,” Mr. Hutchins said in a 2013 interview with the Alabama website AL.com. “He had different ones, but the original one was his favorite.”Whodini was also one of the first hip-hop groups to use dancers in their stage shows. A young Jermaine Dupri got one of his earliest breaks as a dancer for the group. He later repaid the favor, signing Whodini to his label, So So Def, on which it released its final album, “Six,” in 1996. Whodini continued to perform frequently into the 2000s.Information on Mr. Fletcher’s survivors in addition to his daughter was not immediately available.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      How Pop and Jazz Wrapped Up the Past in 16 Boxed Sets

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHow Pop and Jazz Wrapped Up the Past in 16 Boxed SetsReissues and deluxe editions of albums by PJ Harvey, Lil Peep, Charles Mingus and others provide fresh looks at familiar works, and the creative processes that birthed them.Iggy Pop’s “The Bowie Years” revisits the two albums David Bowie produced for the Stooges frontman, “The Idiot” and “Lust for Life,” with a host of extras.Credit…UMeJon Pareles, Jon Caramanica, Giovanni Russonello and Dec. 23, 2020Neneh Cherry, ‘Raw Like Sushi (30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)’(Virgin/UMC; three CDs, $63.89; three LPs, $75.98)Alive with isolated, collagelike layers and exuberant ad-libs (“Now, the tambourine!”), the Swedish pop artist and rapper Neneh Cherry’s cult classic debut album, “Raw Like Sushi,” is a remixer’s dream. This 30th-anniversary set contains a vibrant remastered version of the original LP, along with two entire discs of imaginative remixes: Massive Attack transforms the synth ballad “Manchild” into a snaking, meditative groove, while the early hip-hop producer Arthur Baker reworks two different extended club mixes of Cherry’s ebullient hit “Buffalo Stance,” furthering its eternal cool. LINDSAY ZOLADZCredit…UMeCream, ‘Goodbye Tour Live 1968’(Polydor; four CDs, 66-page book, $69.98)Cream — Eric Clapton on guitar, Jack Bruce on bass, Ginger Baker on drums — was a power trio of flashy virtuosos with big egos; it lasted only from 1966 to 1968. While its studio work was disciplined and cooperative, marrying blues to psychedelia, its live sets were improvisatory free-for-alls, with all three musicians goading one another and grappling for attention. This collection gathers three full California concerts from October 1968 along with Cream’s last show, Nov. 26 at the Royal Albert Hall; half of the tracks, including an entire San Diego concert, were previously unreleased. The nightly set list barely varies, but the performances are explosive jams — tempos shift (listen to the assorted “Crossroads”), vocal lines swerve and stretch, guitar solos take different paths each night. The California shows were carefully recorded, but with historic stupidity, the BBC filmed Cream’s last shows yet only captured the music in muddy, low-fi mono. Cream’s members didn’t think they played well at their farewell, and through the murk, that final show is full of wailing excess and rhythm-section overkill. But it deserved better preservation. JON PARELESBela Fleck, ‘Throw Down Your Heart: The Complete Africa Sessions’(Craft; three CDs, one DVD, $49.99)The banjoist Bela Fleck visited Africa in 2005 with a film crew for a five-week trip to Mali, Gambia, Tanzania and Uganda, tracing the banjo’s African origins and collaborating with African musicians. The results were a documentary, “Throw Down Your Heart,” two albums of collaborations recorded in Africa and, in 2009, a tour with Toumani Diabaté, a Malian master of the harplike kora. Live recordings from the 2009 tour were released earlier this year as “The Ripple Effect,” a showcase for tradition-bridging melodies, flying fingers and shimmering plucked-string counterpoint. This box gathers them all, including a newly expanded version of the documentary. The whole project shows Fleck learning from every encounter and figuring out countless ways that his bright, speedy, bluegrass-rooted picking and runs can intertwine with African tunes and rhythms. PARELESCredit…UMePJ Harvey, ‘Dry — Demos’(Island; one CD, $13.98; one LP, $24.98)When a 22-year-old Polly Jean Harvey and her band released their sensual, earth-rumbling 1992 debut album, “Dry,” some listeners and critics regarded its songs as almost feral outpourings of spontaneous intensity. A recently released collection of demos proves, once and for all, they were remarkable and carefully constructed achievements of songcraft. Available for the first time as a stand-alone album, “Dry — Demos” is sparse, often consisting of just Harvey’s mesmeric voice and rhythmic stabs of guitar. But the bones of enduringly sturdy songs like “Dress,” “Sheela-Na-Gig” and “O Stella” are, impressively, already locked in place. As a finished product, “Dry” was hardly overproduced or polished, but the incredible artistic confidence of these demos brings the album’s elemental power, and Harvey’s songwriting gifts, into even greater clarity. ZOLADZElton John, ‘Jewel Box’(UMe/EMI; eight CDs in hardcover book, $109.80; four LP set “Deep Cuts Curated by Elton,” $89.98; three LP set “Rarities and B-Side Highlights,” $59.98; two LP set “And This Is Me…” $35.98)Elton John’s “Jewel Box” is at least three projects side by side; its vinyl versions make them available separately. For two CDs of “Deep Cuts,” John selects non-hit album tracks; he likes sad songs with dark lyrics, collaborations with his idols (Leon Russell, Little Richard) and music that evaded his usual reflexes. Three CDs of “Rarities 1965-71” — with five dozen previously unreleased songs — detail his songwriting apprenticeship with the lyricist Bernie Taupin, a good argument for Malcolm Gladwell’s proposition that expertise requires 10,000 hours of practice. At first they tried to write potential hits that were generic enough for others to cover; John once called them “pretty horrible.” The duo learned by obvious imitation, with near-miss mimicry of both British and American approaches: the Beatles, Motown, Phil Spector, country. They made and scrapped “Regimental Sgt. Zippo,” an album of pop psychedelia. Gradually, they homed in on a distinctive Elton John style: openhearted, big-voiced storytelling backed by two-fisted piano. Two more discs are housekeeping — an archive of B-sides and non-album tracks — and the final pair, “And This Is Me …” is a playlist of songs mentioned in John’s memoir, “Me” — which gives him a chance to end with his 2020 Oscar winner, “(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again.” PARELESLil Peep, ‘Crybaby’ and ‘Hellboy’(Lil Peep/AUTNMY; streaming services)Platforms change, their overlords get finicky, they get sold to conglomerates that might not respect the historical legacies they contain. Which is why it is crucial for artist catalogs that live in only one place online to be spread as far as possible. It’s a relief that the two key early Lil Peep albums, “Crybaby” and “Hellboy” (from 2016), have finally made it up from SoundCloud to other streaming services (fully cleared, with only minor tweaks). Lil Peep — who died in 2017 — was a critical syncretizer of emo and hip-hop: He was swaggering, dissolute and deeply broken, a bull’s-eye songwriter and a rangy singer and rapper. During this era, he finally figured out how all of those pieces fit together, especially on “Hellboy,” a pop masterpiece that pop just wasn’t ready for yet. JON CARAMANICACredit…Photo by Jochen Mönch, Design by Christopher Drukker‘Charles Mingus @ Bremen, 1964 & 1975’(Sunnyside; four CDs, $28.98)Charles Mingus was stubborn, self-righteous — and open to just about anything. When this bassist and composer gave his first concert in Germany in 1964, at the Radio Bremen studios, he was leading one of the finest bands of his career: a sextet that could carry a ton of weight while turning on a dime, like a dump truck made by Maserati. With Johnny Coles on trumpet, Eric Dolphy on reeds, Clifford Jordan on tenor saxophone, Jaki Byard on piano and Dannie Richmond on drums, the band followed Mingus’s plucky lead, leaping between Ellingtonian miniatures, bluesy hollers and extended avant-garde improv. The group’s now-legendary performances on that tour might well have represented a high-water mark. But when he returned to Bremen 11 years later, with a quintet, his penchant for misdirection and ludic sophistication had only grown stronger. Both shows are presented side-by-side in this four-CD set, which features remasters of the original radio source tapes. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOCredit…UMeCharlie Parker, ‘The Mercury & Clef 10-Inch LP Collection’(Verve; five LPs, 20-page booklet, $69.99)By the end of the 1940s, the alto saxophonist Charlie Parker was only a few years into his recorded career as a bandleader but he’d already turned jazz inside-out, contouring the next frontier in American modernism as one of bebop’s lead architects. The impresario and producer Norman Granz recognized Parker’s brilliance — and he saw the potential to broaden his appeal, by shining a softer spotlight on his lemon-cake tone and his richly coiled melodies. The 10-inch LPs that Parker recorded with Granz between 1949 and 1953, for the Mercury and Clef labels, offer portraits of the artist from many angles, including the steaming “Bird and Diz,” the only studio session to feature the Big Three of bebop (Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk); the gauzy orchestral fare of “Bird With Strings”; and “South of the Border,” mixing big-band jazz with Mexican and Afro-Caribbean styles. This boxed set features five newly remastered albums from that period, most of which have been out of print on vinyl since the ’60s. Faithful to their original format, the albums come on 10-inch discs, packaged with David Stone Martin’s now-classic artwork, while the booklet includes new essays from the pianist and jazz historian Ethan Iverson and the Grammy-winning writer David Ritz. RUSSONELLOCredit…UMeIggy Pop, ‘The Bowie Years’(Virgin; seven CDs, $99.98)In 1977, David Bowie restarted Iggy Pop’s career by producing two albums for him — “The Idiot” and “Lust for Life” — and joining Pop’s band on tour. Bowie admired Pop’s pure-id approach to songwriting and performing, but smoothed him out just a little — supplying some glam-rock-tinged backup — and spurred him onward, suggesting concepts and approaches. And the punk rock that Iggy and the Stooges had presaged nearly a decade earlier was taking hold in the United States. The alliance was fertile for both of them; Bowie would have a 1980s hit remaking their collaboration, “China Girl,” a song about acculturalization, imperialism and lust from “The Idiot.” This box includes the two studio albums, the howling 1978 live album “T.V. Eye” (with Bowie in the band on keyboard and backup vocals), a disc featuring rawer alternate mixes from the albums and three live Iggy concerts from 1977. Two of the live discs are low-fi and redundant, but a fierce 1977 set from the Agora Ballroom in Cleveland documents a telling rock moment. PARELESCredit…New West RecordsPylon, ‘Box’(New West; four LPs and 200-page hardcover book, $149.99; four CD version to be released in March 2021, $85.99)Formed in 1978 by art-school amateurs in Athens, Ga., Pylon made hardheaded, pioneering, danceable post-punk. Bass and drums staked out sinewy, deliberate, unswerving riffs. The guitar poked into interstices with pings or echoey chords or scratchy syncopation or dissonant counterpoint. Laced through the instrumental patterns, riding or defying them, were vocals by Vanessa Briscoe Hay: declaiming, rasping, chanting, confiding and yelling while she sang about daily life as a pragmatic revelation — and, onstage, moved like no one else. “Box,” on vinyl, includes Pylon’s first two albums, “Gyrate” (1980) and “Chomp” (1983), plus a disc of extras including Pylon’s brilliantly decisive first single, “Cool”/“Dub,” and a find: the band’s first recording, a vivid 1979 rehearsal tape that shows Pylon already fully self-defined. Pylon was very much of its time, akin to Talking Heads, Gang of Four, Bush Tetras and Pylon’s Athens predecessors and supporters, the B-52’s. But Briscoe Hay’s arresting voice and the music’s ruthless structural economy have made Pylon more than durable. PARELESCredit…Rhino RecordsLou Reed, ‘New York (Deluxe Edition)’(Rhino/Warner Bros.; three CDs, two LPs and one DVD, $89.98)Three decades after its release, Lou Reed’s midcareer 1989 opus, “New York,” retains a haunting present-tense resonance: “Halloween Parade” mourns West Village neighbors lost to an epidemic, “Last Great American Whale” frets about environmental collapse, and Trump and Giuliani even cavort through the appropriately titled “Sick of You.” This deluxe edition, released a year after the record’s 30th anniversary, features both a live album and a previously unreleased concert DVD. But its most revelatory additions are the small scraps of Reed’s “work tapes,” capturing such intimate moments as Reed figuring out the chord progression that would become the album’s hit “Dirty Blvd.,” or humming what the bass should sound like on a demo of “Endless Cycle.” Despite his shrugging exterior, these tapes show how deeply Reed cared about the details. ZOLADZCredit…Rhino RecordsThe Replacements, ‘Pleased to Meet Me (Deluxe Edition)’(Rhino/Warner Bros.; three CDs and one LP, $64.98)Like their beloved Big Star, the Replacements were never quite in the right place at the right time — or maybe, whenever either band was on the brink of mainstream rock stardom, their self-destructive tendencies kicked in. Regardless, the Mats’s fifth album, “Pleased to Meet Me” from 1987, was at once their record company’s last push for success (see the echoing “Jimmy Iovine Remix” of the great single “Can’t Hardly Wait,” which, apparently, even the Midas-like producer couldn’t turn into a radio smash) and a spiritual communion with their underappreciated heroes (the group recorded the album at Big Star’s former Memphis stomping ground Ardent Studios, with their sometime producer Jim Dickinson). The resulting LP, naturally, was caught in the middle: It was too polished to ascend to the cult status of “Let It Be” from 1984, but too snarling and strange to be a hit. This fantastic and exhaustive deluxe edition (featuring 29 never-before-released tracks), though, finally puts it in its proper context: Raw and unvarnished demos (including the final recordings made with their original guitarist, Bob Stinson) restore these songs’ barbed, punk energy, while a rich spoil of melodic leftovers reassert this period as a golden age of Paul Westerberg’s songwriting. ZOLADZCredit…Janette BeckmanStretch and Bobbito, ‘Freestyle EP 1’(89tec9/Uprising Music; streaming services)For some mid-90s New York rap obsessives, the ne plus ultra collaboration is “The What,” by the Notorious B.I.G. and Method Man. For others, it’s “Brooklyn’s Finest,” from the Notorious B.I.G. and Jay-Z. The connoisseur’s choice, however, might be traced back to the night in February 1995, that Big L brought Jay-Z up to the Columbia University radio station WKCR-FM for “The Stretch Armstrong and Bobbito Show,” then the definitive proving ground for the city’s MCs. The result is startlingly good — an excellent showing from Jay-Z, still shaking loose of the twisty syllables he leaned on in his earliest recordings. But Big L — who was killed in 1999 — is the radiant star here, delivering left-field boasts in ice-cold arrangements. Previously available only on hard-to-find cassette releases and online rips, it appears here in an official release for the first time (though sadly without the between-verse banter). It’s one of three unearthed freestyles on this EP — the others are a Method Man and Ghostface Killah team-up, and also the Notorious B.I.G.’s first radio freestyle, a hellacious rumble from 1992. CARAMANICACredit…Cash MoneyVarious Artists, ‘Cash Money: The Instrumentals’(Cash Money/UMe; two LPs for $24.98 or streaming services)The beats used for many of the late 1990s breakout hits of New Orleans’s Cash Money Records were head spinners, one after the next — Juvenile’s fleet, squelchy “Ha,” B.G.’s prismatic “Bling Bling,” Lil Wayne’s chaotic “Tha Block Is Hot.” This compilation gathers those and many others — made mostly by the in-house maestro Mannie Fresh — for a set that lands somewhere between bounce futurism and avant-garde techno. It’s an expanded version of the label’s “Platinum Instrumentals” compilation from 2000, but a less disciplined one, too — the sleepy funk of “Shooter” is wildly out of place here, one of a few more straightforward Lil Wayne tracks that would have been better left off, inconsistent with the pure digital esoterica that made the label impossible to emulate. CARAMANICAVarious Artists, ‘Excavated Shellac: An Alternate History of the World’s Music’(Dust-to-Digital; 100 MP3s and liner notes, $35)Excavated Shellac is a website created by Jonathan Ward, a collector of 78-rpm recordings of global music who shares his finds and his research. The digital collection “Excavated Shellac” unearths 100 of his previously unavailable discoveries from nearly as many countries, most released only regionally and long ago. They are extensively annotated, translating lyrics and delving into musicians’ biographies and each country’s recording history. It’s a trove of untamed three-minute dispatches from distant places and eras, full of raw voices, rough-hewed virtuosity and startling structures. Try the ferocious fiddle playing of Picoglu Osman from Turkey, the blaring reeds and scurrying patalla (xylophone) momentum of Sein Bo Tint from what was then Burma, or the accelerating, almost bluegrassy picking and singing of Tiwonoh and Sandikola, from Malawi. Nearly all the tracks are rowdy; as Ward’s notes explain, disc recording favored performers who were loud. PARELESCredit…David GahrGillian Welch, ‘Boots No. 2: The Lost Songs’(Acony; three CDs and 66-page book, $49.99; three LPs and 66-page book, $79.99)The four dozen songs on this collection were all unreleased until this year — they were recorded by the modern folk hero Gillian Welch and her longtime partner, David Rawlings, in a fevered stretch to fulfill a publishing contract in 2002. And yet these are the sketches of a patient perfectionist. Like most of the music Welch put out in that essential era, these songs are marked by the omniscience she builds with small details and her studiously unhurried voice (bolstered by Rawlings’s sturdy sweetness — see especially “I Only Cry When You Go”). It is a torrent of material from an artist who’s long communicated by trickle. And given the music’s elemental beauty, it seems absurd that it languished for all this time, all but unrecorded by others. CARAMANICAAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      2020 Popcast Listener Mailbag: Taylor, Dua, MGK and More

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storyPopcastSubscribe:Apple PodcastsGoogle Podcasts2020 Popcast Listener Mailbag: Taylor, Dua, MGK and MoreAnswering your questions about the year’s biggest stars, and also some of its curious flops.Hosted by Jon Caramanica. Produced by Pedro Rosado.More episodes ofPopcastDecember 23, 20202020 Popcast Listener Mailbag: Taylor, Dua, MGK and MoreDecember 15, 2020Taylor Swift’s ‘Evermore’: Let’s DiscussDecember 9, 2020The Best Albums of 2020? Let’s DiscussNovember 29, 2020Saweetie, City Girls and the Female Rapper RenaissanceNovember 18, 2020  •  More

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      The Breakout Stars of 2020

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Breakout Stars of 2020Here are the 12 stars and trends that managed to thrive and shine in an impossible year.Clockwise from bottom left: Sarah Cooper, Maria Bakalova, the hand of the artist Salman Toor, Jonathan Majors and Radha Blank.Credit…Clockwise from bottom left: Lacey Terrell/Netflix; Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York Times; Peter Fisher for The New York Times; Adria Malcolm for The New York Times; Douglas Segars for The New York Times Dec. 23, 2020Updated 7:44 a.m. ETWhile plenty of us felt trapped this year, wandering through the same spaces and talking to the same people, it was the artists and entertainers who kicked open windows to new sights, sounds and experiences. Yes, the pandemic dealt a significant hit to the culture world, but nothing could derail its creativity. So, despite the limitations, stars in a variety of disciplines managed to thrive and shine, and by doing so, made a difficult year more tolerable for most everyone. Here are 12 artists and trends who gave us a fresh perspective in 2020.Radha Blank wrote, directed and starred in the autobiographical satire “The 40-Year-Old Version.”Credit…Douglas Segars for The New York TimesFilmRadha BlankRadha Blank was the hero many of us needed in 2020, when the concept of time got an overdue interrogation. In her autobiographical satire “The Forty-Year-Old Version,” which was on Netflix, she portrays a playwright who — refusing to believe that her dreams have an expiration date — pivots to rap as a grown woman. Like her character, Blank, who grew up Brooklyn, is a 40-something playwright who knows what it’s like to fight to elevate her voice.And elevate it she did. She wrote, directed and starred in the film, her first feature, a New York Times Critic’s Pick that A.O. Scott called “a catalog of burdens and also a heroic act of unburdening.”In “I May Destroy You,” Michaela Cole explores sexual assault, truth, revenge and trauma; she also created the HBO series.Credit…Natalie Seery/HBOTelevisionMichaela CoelMichaela Coel may have created the most important TV show of 2020: “I May Destroy You.” The series, which premiered on HBO in June, is inspired by Coel’s own experience with sexual assault, and in it, she deftly plucks apart ideas around truth, revenge, anxiety, trauma and fear.Coel, a 33-year-old British-Ghanaian writer and actor, plays a writer who is drugged and raped in a bathroom stall. The assault leaves her traumatized and grappling with hazy, fragmented memories. “Coel brings a superb discipline to the portrayal of distress,” wrote Mike Hale, a TV critic at The Times.In a critic’s notebook, Salamishah Tillet, a professor and contributing critic at large for The Times, noted that the show could be considered “part of a larger cultural trend in which Black women’s experiences with sexual assault are appearing with greater frequency and treated with more sensitivity.” (She pointed to the documentary “Surviving R. Kelly” and TV shows like “Queen Sugar,” “The Chi” and “Lovecraft Country” as examples.)“By offering multifaceted endings,” Tillet went on, “Coel gives victims of sexual assault, particularly Black women who have survived rape, some of the most radical and cathartic moments of television I have ever witnessed.”ComedySarah CooperSarah Cooper, 43-year-old comedian, made her mark in 2020 by pantomiming the words of President Trump in viral videos that have been viewed tens of millions of times across social media. Jim Poniewozik called her first Trump lip-sync, “How to Medical,” a “49-second tour de force” and said Cooper was helping to develop “a kind of live-action political cartooning.”“Cooper’s Trumpian drag is partly a caricature of performative masculinity,” Poniewozik wrote.The success of her videos helped land Cooper a Netflix special, “Everything’s Fine,” directed by Natasha Lyonne. “This special shows that she can do much more than lip-sync,” Jason Zinoman, a comedy columnist at The Times, said of the production. “She has a promising future as an actor in television or movies.” She currently has a show in the works for CBS.Maria Bakalova, the Bulgarian actress who plays Borat’s teenage daughter in “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.” Credit…Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesFilmMaria BakalovaIt’s no easy feat to stand out next to the unabashed actor-prankster Sacha Baron Cohen, but Maria Bakalova, a 24-year-old from Bulgaria, was riveting as the teenage daughter of his Borat character in his most recent mockumentary film. As the culture reporter Dave Itzkoff put it in The Times: “Sacha Baron Cohen may be the star of ‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,’ but it is Maria Bakalova who has emerged its hero.”Her performance also grabbed headlines for an edited scene involving President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, who is seen putting his hands down his pants in a hotel room, where Bakalova, impersonating a TV journalist, is interviewing him. He later denied any wrongdoing.About the opportunity to star in a major American film, Bakalova said: “I will be really grateful to Sacha for giving this platform to an Eastern European, to play a strong and complicated character who’s not just one thing.”Adrienne Warren was nominated for a Tony for her starring role in “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical.” Credit…Molly Matalon for The New York TimesTheaterAdrienne WarrenAdrienne Warren’s starring role in “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical” earned her a Tony nomination in October for best actress in a musical. But it was her vocal and steadfast stand on racial injustice, including in the arts world, that brought Warren, 33, more deeply into one of the most urgent conversations of 2020. In an impassioned, impromptu speech this summer — during the Times event Offstage: Opening Night on the subject of being Black on Broadway — she questioned whether she even wanted to continue performing as part of an institution that didn’t stand up for people like her.“The last thing on my mind right now is me going back to Broadway,” Warren said. But in an interview with The Times after her nomination, she said, “I know this is what I’m supposed to do, but the question is whether I want to do it at the address I’ve been doing it.”As for what a dream role might look like for her in the future: “I want to make sure that I’m telling stories that represent me as a Black woman and also push the needle forward in ways that resonate with people, both in this nation and abroad,” she said.Jonathan Majors made a mark in both HBO’s “Lovecraft Country” and the Spike Lee drama “Da 5 Bloods.”Credit…Adria Malcolm for The New York TimesTelevisionJonathan MajorsJonathan Majors isn’t afraid of pain, and that may just be his secret to success. “I’m willing to hurt more,” he told Alexis Soloski in The Times over the summer. “It doesn’t bother me.”The 31-year-old star had a big year doing just that to great effect onscreen, as a Korean War veteran in the supernatural HBO thriller “Lovecraft Country,” set in 1950s Jim Crow America, and the son of a Vietnam War veteran in “Da 5 Bloods,” Spike Lee’s drama for Netflix that was named a Critic’s Pick in The Times by A.O. Scott.“Emotions in the men in my family run deep,” Majors told Soloski — who described him as “an actor of precision and intensity.” When asked if acting gave him a place to put those big emotions, he said: “With acting, it was almost like I was in a corridor, and it just appeared to me and said, ‘Go that way, son.’ I didn’t get in trouble once I started acting. I had a place to put the energy, to put my focus.”The artist Christine Sun Kim performing in American Sign Language at the Super Bowl in Miami in February.Credit…A J Mast for The New York TimesArtChristine Sun KimIn February, just minutes ahead of the Super Bowl in Miami, the artist Christine Sun Kim stood at the 40-yard line performing in American Sign Language as Yolanda Adams sang “America the Beautiful” and Demi Lovato sang the national anthem.“As a child of immigrants, a grandchild of refugees, a Deaf woman of color, an artist and a mother, I was proud to perform,” she wrote in an Op-Ed for The Times afterward. But because only a fraction of her performance was aired, she called the experience “a huge disappointment — a missed opportunity in the struggle for media inclusiveness on a large scale.”“Being deaf in America has always been political,” she wrote.Kim, 40, who was born in California and is now based in Berlin, has spent years channeling this perspective into her art. At the Whitney Biennial in New York last year, she exhibited hand-drawn charcoal drawings from her “Degrees of Deaf Rage in the Art World,” and in 2013, the Museum of Modern Art selected her for its exhibition “Soundings: A Contemporary Score,” dedicated to sound art.“I want people to start thinking about what deafness means,” she told Vogue this year, “and maybe that will reduce the stigma and society will be more inclusive of people with disabilities.”MusicVerzuzYou could call it a battle, a face-off, a showdown. But Verzuz is also something else entirely: a pandemic pivot, cutting right to the very core of quarantine entertainment by combining livestreaming and nostalgia while filling a hole left by canceled live shows and shuttered clubs.Since April, Verzuz, the creation of Swizz Beatz and Timbaland, has streamed over 20 battles. Each one has brought together two hip-hop or R&B heavyweights: Gladys Knight vs. Patti LaBelle, Erykah Badu vs. Jill Scott, Gucci Mane vs. Jeezy, Babyface vs. Teddy Riley, Snoop Dogg vs. DMX, Ludacris vs. Nelly, to name a few. Millions of people have tuned in.Initially, Verzuz was streamed on Instagram Live. In July, Verzuz and Apple Music announced they’d struck a partnership which allowed the videos to be viewed live and on-demand on that platform, too.Jon Caramanica, a pop music critic for The Times, called the events staples of this era and “less battles in the conventional sense than choreographed chest-puffing combined with bows of respect.” To that point, there is no winner winner. As Swizz Beatz told ABC News: “The people won, the culture won, the music won.”The artist Salman Toor has his first solo museum show, “How Will I Know,” up at the Whitney Museum of American Art.Credit…Peter Fisher for The New York TimesArtSalman ToorThe painter Salman Toor was about to have his first solo museum show, “How Will I Know,” at the Whitney Museum of American Art early this year when the shutdown thwarted the whole thing. He took it pretty well. “My first reaction was, thank God,” he told The Times in June. “I’m not a social animal.” But disappointment inevitably crept in as he realized the exhibition might never happen.Thankfully for him and fans of figurative and queer art, the show eventually did go up at the Whitney, where it will appear through April. And that’s only the start for Toor. Over the summer, he joined the gallery Luhring Augustine, which will open an exhibition of his work in the next few years.Toor, 37 — who was born and raised in Lahore, Pakistan, and moved to the United States in 2002 — primarily depicts gay men of South Asian descent. In The Times, the writer Ted Loos described Toor’s contemporary settings: “iPhones appear here and there, the glow emanating from them emphasized with bright lines.” Toor said that he aspired to represent “what this new free space is like,” referring to living an openly queer life. In Pakistan, gay sex is illegal. “People are curious to know what it means to have the freedom of so much choice, and what is the nature of that freedom and what is the cost of that.”TheaterElizabeth StanleyUp against Adrienne Warren for that Tony is Elizabeth Stanley, who was nominated for her gutting performance as Mary Jane — “a brittle tiger mom suppressing secret trauma,” as Jesse Green, a theater critic for The Times, put it — in “Jagged Little Pill,” based on Alanis Morissette’s smash album from 1995. When Broadway shut down, Stanley, 42, did not take too long before shifting her energy toward digital performances.In April, she told Deadline that she’d already been wondering about what else she could do during the pandemic: “How can I twist to this and find something new and exciting out of this time?”What came of that question epitomized what much of theater looked like in 2020: creating new digital spaces for live performance.In April, she delivered a jaw-dropping rendition of “The Miller’s Son” from “A Little Night Music,” for the acclaimed event “Take Me to the World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration.” In June, she sang her wrenching rendition of “You Learn,” from “Jagged Little Pill,” for an Opening Night Times event on the future of Broadway. On Dec. 13, Stanley and her “Jagged Little Pill” co-stars reunited for “Jagged Live In NYC: A Broadway Reunion Concert.”Kali Uchis performing in Atlanta in 2018. She recently released the album “Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios).”Credit…Paul R. Giunta/Invision, via Associated PressMusicKali UchisIn 2018, Kali Uchis released a debut album titled “Isolation.” Clearly she was ahead of her time. In November, the Colombian-American artist — with a moody, seductive, dance-inducing style — dropped her second studio album, this time predominantly in Spanish, “Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios).” (Its lead single, “Aquí Yo Mando,” features the up-and-coming rapper Rico Nasty.) The album “goes genre-hopping and era-hopping, from romantically retro orchestral bolero to brittle reggaeton,” Jon Pareles, the chief pop music critic of The Times, wrote this month.Having grown up between Colombia and the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area, Uchis, 26, had many inspirations and influences, she told Interview magazine. “The last thing I ever want to do is be a predictable artist. I love that my fans never know what to expect when I drop a song.”DanceThe Year of the SoloIt wasn’t just that the coronavirus put an end to live performance in March. The need for social isolation uprooted every part of what gets a dance onto a stage: Suddenly, there were no more classes, no more rehearsals. How to fill that void? The solo.This solitary form has provided an outlet for frustration, for sadness and even for euphoria as dance artists continue to find meaning through movement. It’s true that some attempts have been sentimental and aimless, but much good has emerged from it, too. Instagram, from the start, illuminated these explorations in a steady stream of posts; choreographers worked with dancers remotely to create films in which the body could be fearless and free. “State of Darkness,” Molissa Fenley’s 1988 solo revived for seven dancers, was a glittering, harrowing reminder of the achievement that comes from strength, both internal and external.One of its interpreters, the dancer Sara Mearns, said that she saw herself as “someone that has gone through really, really hard times, but then in the end has come out stronger and on top.” Yes, dance and dancers are suffering right now. But the solo has given it — and them — a powerful voice. — Gia Kourlas, dance critic for The New York TimesAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      14 Largely Skeptical, Somewhat Unconventional Holiday Songs

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Playlist14 Largely Skeptical, Somewhat Unconventional Holiday SongsHear tracks by U.S. Girls, 100 gecs, Big Freedia and more.Meghan Remy of U.S. Girls sings about consumerism and the climate crisis on “Santa Stay Home.”Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesJon Pareles, Jon Caramanica and Dec. 18, 2020Updated 4:41 p.m. ETEvery Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. 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.U.S. Girls featuring Rich Morel, ‘Santa Stay Home’[embedded content]If you’ve been searching for a Christmas carol that addresses rampant consumerism, the climate crisis, and even the strange mass-tradition of cutting down oxygen-giving pine trees only to throw them in the trash after a few weeks — have U.S. Girls got a song for you! “With both poles melting and the seasons blending,” the frontwoman Meghan Remy sings, “hurry up, slow down.” What saves the song from being too grinchy, though, is its toe-tapping beat and catchy melody, carrying on the U.S. Girls tradition of writing sweet-sounding songs about bitter truths. LINDSAY ZOLADZTayla Parx, ‘Ain’t a Lonely Christmas Song’“Ain’t A Lonely Christmas Song,” a festive offering from the hit songwriter and frequent Ariana Grande collaborator Tayla Parx, begins with humorous anti-sentimentality and Parx crooning, “I’m used to being at the family function showing up with liquor and myself.” But this year is different: “Since you came along, this ain’t a lonely Christmas song,” she sings on the chorus, the whole arrangement suddenly becoming merry and bright. ZOLADZTony Trischka, ‘Christmas Cheer (This Weary Year)’The bluegrass banjo player Tony Trischka wrote “Christmas Cheer (This Weary Year)” years ago for a song cycle about the Civil War, with lyrics envisioning soldiers during a holiday cease-fire: “Let us still our guns and dry our tears, friends and foe alike.” This quarantine year gives new resonance to its chorus: “Christmas cheer this weary year, not like the last you know/Hopefully by the next we’ll be united with our families back home.” The guitarist Michael Daves sings the lead vocal accompanied by virtuosic picking, with a coda of elegant string-band counterpoint. JON PARELESSam Smith, ‘The Lighthouse Keeper’Sam Smith promises comfort, safety and happiness in “The Lighthouse Keeper,” a modern hymn that summons a cappella harmonies, a string section and subdued timpani. As Smith vows, “Don’t resist the rain and storm/I’ll never leave you lost at sea,” the cadence hints at “Good King Wenceslas”; perhaps that’s why they included the lines about “Hoping you’ll be home for Christmas time” for a song that offers far more than a seasonal visit. PARELESFinneas, ‘Another Year’Finneas’s Christmas song is decidedly secular: “I don’t believe that Jesus Christ was born to save me/That’s an awful lot of pressure for a baby,” he croons over cozy parlor-piano chords. Instead, it’s a seasonal love song, oddly tinged with uncertainty and pessimism; he proclaims his love, but adds, “I hope it lasts another year.” PARELESgirl in red, ‘Two Queens in a King Sized Bed’The holiday offering from Marie Ulven — who records as girl in red — sprinkles the dusty reverb of indie rock with enough saccharine chords to make you mindful it’s December without distracting from the song’s true purpose. That would be love, which she gently sings about with lyrics that merge the damp desperation of intense attraction with the wry lingo of holiday capitalism:I don’t have a lot to giveBut I would give you everythingAll my time is yours to spendLet me wrap you in with my skinJON CARAMANICAAlessia Cara, ‘Make It to Christmas (Stripped)’Alessia Cara released “Make It to Christmas” last year as a Phil Spector-style buildup, with drums kicking in for the chorus. Her “stripped” remake brings out the song’s underlying despair. She knows her romance is falling apart, but she just can’t bear the thought of being single during the holiday: “Don’t have me spending it alone/This time of year is precious,” she begs. The arrangement isn’t that stripped — she still has massed strings, chimes and choirlike backup vocals — but without the drums to propel her, hope fades. PARELESJulia Jacklin, ‘Baby Jesus Is Nobody’s Baby Now’“Last Christmas at my auntie’s house, I tried so hard to make my uncle shut his mouth,” sings the wryly observant Australian singer-songwriter Julia Jacklin. But her holiday single “Baby Jesus Is Nobody’s Baby Now” is something much more affecting than a collection of Yuletide punch lines about family dysfunction: It’s a musical short story as vivid and specific as any on her excellent 2019 album “Crushing.” Out of materials as simple as a quietly strummed chord progression and her hushed but evocative voice, Jacklin weaves something as unique and haunting as a spider web. ZOLADZMandy Moore, ‘How Could This Be Christmas?’Slowly swaying, wistful and sweet, “How Could This Be Christmas?” is a vintage-style missing-someone-at-Christmas song. Written by Mandy Moore with her husband, Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes, and Mike Viola from the Candy Butchers, it has piano triplets for a 1950s feel, and a vocal leap up to the word “Christmas” that sounds daring and forlorn each time she makes it. PARELESVíctor Manuelle, ‘Ya Se Ven Las Bombillitas’“Ya Se Ven las Bombillitas” (“The Lights Can Already Be Seen”) is the latest single released from Victor Manuelle’s 2019 Christmas album, “Memorias de Navidad,” which was just nominated for a Grammy. In upbeat salsa, punctuated by horns and laced by runs on the guitar-like cuatro, Manuelle sings about maintaining traditions through generations: both Christmas decorations and the vintage salsa style he upholds. PARELESCorey Porche & Paul ‘Bird’ Edwards, ‘Papa Nwèl Ap Vini o Vilaj’[embedded content]The guitarist Chas Justus gathered top musicians from Louisiana bayou country to make “Joyeux Noël, Bon Chrismeusse,” an EP of Cajun and zydeco arrangements of familiar Christmas songs translated into Cajun and Louisiana Creole. “Papa Nwèl Ap Vini o Vilaj” turns “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” into a genial zydeco shuffle, with accordion tootling and rub board ratcheting away. PARELESBig Freedia featuring Flo Milli, ‘Better Be’Call it sitcom bounce music: Big Freedia takes a bawdy spin on gift receiving on this song from a new seasonal EP, “Big Freedia’s Smokin’ Santa Christmas,” joined by the tart-talking rapper Flo Milli. CARAMANICA100 gecs, ‘Sympathy 4 the Grinch’When your music sounds like a bunch of addled tweens’ playtime, making holiday music likely comes naturally. The chirpy kitchensinkcore maximalists 100 gecs’s seasonal entry, “Sympathy 4 the Grinch,” is all about what Santa failed to bring, and the price he must pay for that transgression. It is the highest compliment to say it sounds like a foulmouthed outtake from an Alvin & the Chipmunks Christmas album. CARAMANICAPup and Charly Bliss, ‘It’s Christmas and I ___ Miss You’This wickedly catchy, obscenity-laced collaboration from the indie-rock bands Charly Bliss and Pup certainly captures the feeling of late-2020 exasperation: The Charly Bliss frontwoman Eva Hendricks is “crying on the couch to ‘Elf’ alone,” while Pup’s Stefan Babcock suggests, “We should call it, because this whole year’s been [expletive] anyway.” The video, though, is unexpectedly poignant: Amid clips of the band members recording their parts of the song remotely is archival footage from tours gone by and taken for granted, in much less socially distanced times. It’s a stirring holiday ode to missing your bandmates, or maybe just your friends. ZOLADZAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More