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    I Don’t Know if I Believe in God, but I Believe in Gospel Music

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    How music convinced a religious skeptic to rethink faith.Before I began listening to gospel music about 12 years ago, I was not the most obvious candidate to become a fan of the genre. Raised by divorced parents who were not particularly religious, I didn’t give much consideration to faith. Though my father was a longtime member of the Christ Temple Baptist Church — a Black congregation in Ypsilanti, Mich. — he wasn’t a regular presence at Sunday service nor did he pressure me to join him when he did go. My mother, who was a nonobservant Jewish woman, spent much of her adult life criticizing what she viewed as a patriarchal religion; we never attended synagogue, and I didn’t have a bar mitzvah.My mother’s iconoclasm shaped my attitude toward life, including my taste in music. As a teenager I was drawn to punk rock — loud, fast, angry music that reflected my vague and indeterminate outrage at the world. I defied authority, ranting and raving against the powers that be, including cops, politicians, security guards and my teachers at school, though my defiance usually involved little more than cutting holes in my clothes and quoting song lyrics. I was a perpetually cynical and distrustful young man who believed the world’s problems could be solved by my music and clothing preferences, not by organized religion.As I matured and entered my 30s, my father and I grew closer. We bonded over Donny Hathaway, Curtis Mayfield and Aretha Franklin, artists who sang love songs distinctly informed by their respective backgrounds in the Black church. These singers were my conduit to gospel. After hearing the Swan Silvertones sing “Mary Don’t You Weep” on a compilation album of early R&B and gospel groups, I was instantly hooked, and I sought out their LPs as well as records by the Davis Sisters, Marion Williams, Brother Joe May and the Blind Boys of Alabama. I was drawn to the music not because of its religious lyrics but because its rhythms and vocal harmonies moved something deep in my core. I felt the music in my soul before I had even acknowledged the existence of a soul. Each minor chord on the piano, each impassioned cry from the singer broke through my cynicism. I was carried away — if only for a few minutes.I came to understand that the music’s religious spirit was inseparable from the music: Each served the other, to help us express our connection to and yearning for the ineffable, to give form to that which is unseen. When a gospel vocalist sings of faith and love of Jesus, it sounds to my ears like a higher power is pouring out of them, using the artist as an instrument. At the top of the Staple Singers’ 1965 song “Let Jesus Lead You,” for example, the band leader, Pops Staples, launches into the opening and his three children follow, creating a simple call-and-response: “Let Jesus lead you/Let Jesus lead you/Let Jesus lead you/All the way/All the way/All the way from Earth to glory,” before Mavis Staples takes over, her voice slowly building, from mortal earth to the heavenly realms.The sound of the Staple Singers’ early records is blues-influenced, trading church organs and a large chorus for a small band, stripping the music down to its raw core. But like much gospel, the Staple Singers’ music hinges on a buoyant joyfulness that invites the listener to share in their exaltation. Listening to this song, I clap my hands and stomp a foot on the backbeat. My heart swells with each repetition of the refrain, and I feel myself transported to places I’ve never visited but that the music conjures for me: some storefront church or a down-home revival. I’m connected to a history, to a not-so-distant past that is not a part of my personal experience but is bound up in my cultural heritage.It reached into the hidden, malnourished and underserved parts of my spirit that I so often tried to repress. To paraphrase Mahalia Jackson’s memorable description of gospel, the music brought good tidings and good news to my life. In a world that increasingly fosters self-interest and social isolation, gospel points me toward something more intimate, more collective. Though I don’t subscribe to any particular denomination, I aspire to lead a life of curiosity, generosity and compassion — all the best hallmarks of any faith and of great gospel music.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Swag’ Album Review: Justin Bieber Finds His Old Soul

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      “Swag,” a new album of dreamy beats and unexpected collaborations, eschews formulaic pop to lean into the singer’s R&B instincts.In 2007, back when YouTube was in its infancy and Justin Bieber was not far beyond his, he and his mother posted to the platform a series of videos of him singing covers. Mostly, he gave preternaturally tender versions of R&B hits — Ne-Yo’s “So Sick,” Brian McKnight’s “Back at One,” Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” (!) and more. (There is also 40 seconds of “Justin Bieber playing the djembe” for the curious.)All of these videos remain on Bieber’s YouTube channel and the spirit captured in them has remained in his music, even if at times it has appeared to be shoved into the back seat and told to remain quiet while the adults were talking.By the dawn of the 2010s, he was a pop phenom, and a couple of years after that, he was the most successful male pop star of his generation. The more successful he became, though, the more his connection to R&B was pared back. “Journals,” his 2013 EP of lo-fi soul, became a connoisseur’s favorite, but didn’t reorient his trip to the pop stratosphere. On his biggest hits — especially the 2015 pair “Where Are Ü Now” and “What Do You Mean?” — his voice, and how it was filtered, was more eau de toilette than eau de parfum.A decade has passed since then, and Bieber has spent long stretches of that time in a kind of public retreat. He’s had big hits, and he’s toured big rooms, and he’s been an object of tabloid scrutiny and public speculation about his mental health; largely, he’s been a superstar seeking a shadow.“Swag,” Bieber’s seventh studio album, which was released with almost no advance notice last week, is a winning example of an older artist — though, at just 31, it feels lightly ludicrous to refer to Bieber this way — being willing to toss much of the old playbook away, or at least obscure it really well. It is an album of spacey, sometimes slithery soul music — some of it highly digitally manipulated, some of it refreshingly acoustic — that feels like a reversion to Bieber’s core passions refracted through the lens of a performer who has seen too much.The low-pressure environment of this album is tactile — Bieber sings in a variety of modes, he collaborates with unexpected peers, he has standard-length songs and also snippets and skits.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Justin Bieber’s Surprise Album ‘Swag,’ and 10 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Tyla, Kassa Overall, Syd, Jay Som and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Justin Bieber, ‘Daisies’Justin Bieber has surprise-released a 21-song album, “Swag,” full of lo-fi experiments and unexpected collaborators. The singer has always been a savvy talent scout, and he concocted “Daisies” with the quick-fingered guitarist Mk.gee and the producer Dijon. “Daisies” is a bare-bones track: a lone electric guitar, drums and Bieber’s vocals, mostly using a vintage doo-wop chord progression (I-VI-IV-V) and juxtaposing vulnerability and strength. Bieber sounds needy but sure of his legitimacy: “Whatever it is,” he sings, “You know I can take it.”Syd, ‘Die for This’Syd (formerly Syd tha Kid from the band the Internet) ardently embraces the pleasures of the moment in “Die for This.” A drum machine and plush vocal harmonies buoy her through sentiments like “We can have forever tonight” and “It feels like heaven with you tonight.” She’s absolutely all in; has she convinced her partner?Tyla, ‘Is It’“Am I coming on a little strong?” Tyla teases in “Is It,” a dance-floor flirtation that’s both a come-on and an assertion of power. “Is it the idea that I like, or do I really wanna make you mine?” Tyla asks herself, then advances further. The beat is spartan — often just percussion and a few distorted bass notes — but a chorus of male voices joins her as she takes charge.Flo and Kaytranada, ‘The Mood’The British R&B trio Flo juggles a tricky situation in “The Mood”: saying no for one night, promising future sensual kicks and soothing a partner’s perhaps fragile ego. With a purring bass line and a subdued four-on-the-floor beat provided by Kaytranada’s production, they apologize, “It’s just that I ain’t in the mood tonight.” But they hasten to add, “I swear you’re the only one who does it right.” They also slyly pay homage to their R&B role models by slipping some old song titles into the lyrics.Danny L Harle featuring PinkPantheress, ‘Starlight’The hyperpop producer Danny L Harle has kept busy as a collaborator, but “Starlight” is his first song since 2021 to claim top billing, and it’s just swarming with ideas. With her piping voice run through all sorts of gizmos, PinkPantheress sings about misplaced longings: “I’ve met someone like you / They don’t love me back.” Around her, Harle’s production accelerates from wistful electronic lament to manic, pounding electro-pop, strewing countermelodies all over the place.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Dave ‘Baby’ Cortez, Hitmaker Who Seemed to Vanish, Is Dead at 83

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      His “The Happy Organ” reached No. 1 in 1959, but his pop stardom was short-lived, and his death in 2022, with an anonymous burial, remains a source of mystery.It’s not that Dave “Baby” Cortez was forgotten. A keyboardist, singer and songwriter, he emerged from the thriving Detroit doo-wop scene of the 1950s to score two Top 10 hits, one of which, “The Happy Organ,” an aural Tilt-a-Whirl of an instrumental, soared to No. 1 in March 1959 and sold more than a million copies.But he rarely granted interviews, particularly after largely abandoning the business, with a trace of bitterness, in the early 1970s. The few available online biographies provide almost no details of his life beyond his recording history and chart success.Taryn Sheffield, his daughter, said in an interview that she had not heard from him since 2009. “He’s been a recluse for many, many years,” she said.At times, he appeared to serve as a church organist in Cincinnati, said Miriam Linna, a founder of Norton Records, an independent New York label that in 2011 persuaded Mr. Cortez to record his first album since 1972. At other times, he appeared to be living in the Bronx, doing who knows what.It was only in recent weeks that Ms. Linna learned that he had been dead for three years.According to city records, Mr. Cortez — whose real name was David Cortez Clowney — died on May 31, 2022, at his home on Westchester Avenue in the Bronx. He was 83. His body lies in Plot 434 on Hart Island, the potter’s field off the coast of the Bronx, where some one million bodies are buried in unmarked graves.It was an ignominious end for an artist whose career was curious enough to begin with.Mr. Cortez was born on Aug. 13, 1938, in Detroit, one of two sons of David and Lillian Mae Clowney. His father played piano and encouraged David to follow suit.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Listening Back to When Janet Jackson Was for Lovers

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      Hear six sensual songs by the pop great.Ms. Jackson if you’re nasty.Bonnie Schiffman/Getty ImagesDear listeners,As the senior staff editor for the Arts & Leisure section, I’m often lost in a big profile. The kind that makes you consider the arc of a career, its slopes, its peaks, and its inevitable chasms. And because so much of my life has been organized around music — I was 6 when I first bounced into the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music for voice and theory instruction — the contours of a pop life have always been particularly fascinating to me.There’s a Janet Jackson video that I’ve been thinking about a lot, one that captures her at a moment of metamorphosis. It opens on a warmly lit loft, where Jackson’s dancers, playing themselves, are playfully trying to coax her into handing over the cassette (it’s 1993!) that houses the lead single from her new album. After a false start, it begins. “That’s the Way Love Goes” sounds like sweaty bodies and basement parties, a song in the key of pleasure seeking. It was considered a sonic departure for an artist who, just shy of 27, had prized discipline, control.For the vérité-style video, directed by her partner at the time, René Elizondo Jr., Jackson re-emerged beaming: her skin coppertone, hair a cascade of crinkly waves (not a military cap in sight) — and emitting what I understand now as the aura of a woman who’s given herself permission. In an interview that year with The Los Angeles Times, she described her approach to making the album, titled simply, “Janet.”: “I finally just started writing down all my feelings about love,” she said, “making love, falling in love, falling out of love, everything.”And with that, she ushered in what I can only call the Pleasure Era. Here, my favorites — with a few flirtations from other moments in her catalog.It’s always a summer of love,RebeccaListen along while you read.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How ‘Boots on the Ground’ Two-Stepped Onto Everyone’s Summer Playlist

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      Black Southern line dance culture, and a co-sign from Beyoncé, has helped to popularize the song and its fan-snapping moves.Wagener, S.C., is home to a population of 631, a proud history of asparagus crops and now an unlikely dance phenomenon.To write “Boots on the Ground,” the stomping, midtempo anthem with a wailing chorus, also known as “Where Them Fans At?,” the singer 803Fresh, born Douglas Furtick, lifted a bit of vernacular from the dancers who attend trail rides in the area. Those rides — part horsemanship display, part social gathering — frequently culminate in field parties, where line dancers and steppers show off choreographed moves to Southern soul and country anthems.“I heard a lot of the steppers: They were like, ‘Hey, we got boots on the ground tonight,’” 803Fresh said, describing how they would hype up a trail ride to friends and neighbors. The song’s central query was a genuine one. At one outing, he saw steppers wielding fans and tried to buy one — to no avail. Writing the lyrics, he said, he did not yet fully understand the significance of the fans that were ubiquitous.“It’s a functional piece that’s now being used as part of a cultural statement but it’s always been with us historically,” said DaLyah Jones, a historian and cultural critic who has studied Black Southern arts. She cited their use as a fashionable accessory carried to church, in queer and ballroom culture, and as a functional way to beat the heat at these outdoor gatherings. Items such as napkins and handkerchiefs have also been used as fans and an extension of the dancing.803Fresh performing “Boots on the Ground” at a Juneteenth event in Lancaster, S.C.Nora Williams for The New York TimesSince the release of “Boots on the Ground” in December, the song has steadily spread in an unusual way: Its accompanying line dance has made it a sensation both of social media and the I.R.L. gatherings where a community of Black Southerners could care less about outside trends. It has traveled beyond field dances to TikTok and back out into the world, most notably landing on the stage of Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” tour, where the pop superstar performs part of the line dance during a section of her show.

      @demkuntryfolks Okayyy okayyy, I can get Jiggy with this 🪭🪭🪭🐎 #trailridersoftiktok #linedance #backyard #cowgirls #newlinedance #georgia #linedancing #southcarolina #northcarolina ♬ original sound – Djpayme We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Wayne Lewis, Singer With the R&B Mainstay Atlantic Starr, Dies at 68

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      The group reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1987 with the ballad “Always” and went on to leave a lasting impression on modern-day artists.Wayne Lewis, the dapper vocalist and keyboardist who was a founder of the group Atlantic Starr, a fixture of the 1980s rhythm and blues scene, died on June 5 in Queens. He was 68.His brother Jonathan Lewis confirmed the death but did not specify a cause. He said that Wayne Lewis collapsed while running on a treadmill at a gym and was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.A suave performer with piercing eyes and a rollicking sense of humor, Mr. Lewis served as one of the singers and songwriters of Atlantic Starr, whose ballad “Always” topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1987 and whose other hits included “Secret Lovers” and “Circles.” The band was nominated for three Soul Train Awards and an American Music Award.Writing with his brothers Jonathan and David, Mr. Lewis translated the universal emotions of love, lust and heartbreak into evocative verses backed by lush arrangements. His performances of the sentimental soul ballad “Send for Me,” released in 1980, became a calling card.Fluent in the sartorial language of showbiz, Mr. Lewis meticulously color-coordinated the group’s outfits, Jonathan Lewis said. His own suits — flashy, textured and patterned — were often showstoppers.Reviewing a concert for The Washington Post in 1982, Mike Joyce noted the “pop sheen romanticism” at the heart of Atlantic Starr’s music. As Wayne and David Lewis took center stage, he observed, they brought with them “a heartthrob appeal akin to the Jacksons’.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How the Bay Area Shaped Sly Stone

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      One of the key figures in American music in the late ’60s got his professional start in the Bay Area. These are some of the spots that were crucial to his career.Several cities played outsized roles in the life of Sly Stone, the musical innovator who died on Monday at 82. There was Denton, the northern Texas town where he was born; Los Angeles, where he spent his later years; and even New York City, where he played several memorable concerts, including a Madison Square Garden date in 1974 at which he got married onstage. But no place was more central to Stone’s formation and rise than the Bay Area. His family moved there shortly after he was born, and it’s where he got his professional start and rose to stardom amid the multiracial psychedelic ferment of the 1960s. Here are five Bay Area spots important in his life.Solano Community College (formerly Vallejo Junior College)Stone’s first encounter with music came as a child in Vallejo, Calif., north of Oakland. His father was a deacon at a local congregation affiliated with the Pentecostal sect the Church of God in Christ, and when he was 8 years old, Stone, whose given name was Sylvester Stewart, and three siblings recorded a gospel track. Stone appeared in several bands in high school. And then for a stint in college, he studied music theory and composition — and picked up the trumpet, to boot — at Vallejo Junior College, today known as Solano Community College.Toni Rembe Theater (formerly the Geary Theater)He was best known for funk and psychedelic rock, but Stone’s eclecticism can be heard in the slow, firmly 1950s-style doo-wop music of the Viscaynes, one of his earliest groups. In an instance of foreshadowing, the Viscaynes, like the Family Stone, were multiracial at a time when that was exceedingly uncommon. (“To me, it was a white group with one Black guy,” Stone wrote in his memoir.) The Viscaynes recorded in downtown San Francisco underneath the Geary Theater, now known as the Toni Rembe Theater, and associated with the nonprofit company American Conservatory Theater.KSOL and KDIA radioStone became known for playing artists like the Beatles and Bob Dylan along with the usual soul and R&B his station specialized in.via Michael Ochs Archive/Getty ImagesStone attended broadcasting school in San Francisco and was then a D.J. at two local AM stations: KSOL, based out of San Mateo, and then KDIA, in Oakland. Both were aimed at Black listeners; KSOL, Stone wrote, had even changed its call sign to remind listeners that it played soul. But Stone again broke the mold, playing not just soul and R&B, but the Beatles and Bob Dylan. “Some KSOL listeners didn’t think a R&B station should be playing white acts,” he later wrote. “But that didn’t make sense to me. Music didn’t have a color. All I could see was notes, styles and ideas.”Mid-Century MonsterWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sly Stone, Maestro of a Multifaceted, Hitmaking Band, Dies at 82

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      Sly Stone, the influential, eccentric and preternaturally rhythmic singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer whose run of hits in the late 1960s and early ’70s with his band the Family Stone could be dance anthems, political documents or both, died on Monday in Los Angeles. He was 82. The cause was “a prolonged battle with C.O.P.D.,” or lung disease, “and other underlying health issues,” according to a statement from his representatives.“Sly was a monumental figure, a groundbreaking innovator, and a true pioneer who redefined the landscape of pop, funk, and rock music,” the statement said.As the colorful maestro and mastermind of a multiracial, mixed-gender band, Mr. Stone experimented with the R&B, soul and gospel music he was raised on in the San Francisco area, mixing classic ingredients of Black music with progressive funk and the burgeoning freedoms of psychedelic rock ’n’ roll.The band’s most recognizable songs, many of which would be sampled by hip-hop artists, include “Everyday People,” “Dance to the Music,” “I Want to Take You Higher,” “Family Affair,” “Hot Fun in the Summertime” and “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin).”Mr. Stone, second from left, with the other members of Sly and the Family Stone in 1970.GAB Archive/RedfernsWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More