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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

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      ‘A Freeky Introduction’ Review: Pleasure Principles

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      NSangou Njikam’s latest offering is an ode to the erotic and the divine, set to winking R&B and hip-hop songs, in a new production by Atlantic Theater Company.In “A Freeky Introduction,” the writer-creator, NSangou Njikam plays a quasi-deity, M.C., holy hedonist named Freeky Dee. He is a poet delivering sybaritic couplets above the thrum of R&B tunes. He is a missionary preaching the gospel of freakdom: “All of us are aftershocks of the Divine orgasm.” (The Big Bang, Freeky argues, was an explosive one.) The result is a sort of hip-hop hallelujah — a work of interactive theater that’s funny and familiar in its embrace of Black culture, yet flattened at times by a lack of specificity.Freeky Dee is also a storyteller. He opens the show, now at Atlantic Stage 2 in Manhattan, with the tale of an eagle destined to fly, but born into a nest of bullying buzzards — a not-so-subtle allegory about one species that must resist the self-appointed superiority of another. Accompanied by DJ Monday Blue onstage, Freeky Dee is the sole performer who acts out these scenes, including his pursuit of a fine lady named Liberty (“French, with a splash of Africa” and wearing “a crown that looked like sun rays coming out her forehead” — you get it).Njikam, who wrote and starred in the lively and semi-autobiographical “Syncing Ink,” is a fan of salacious reinterpretations. Under Dennis A. Allen II’s well-paced direction for this Atlantic Theater Company production, he delivers them with the charisma of a folkloric trickster. DJ Monday Blue’s sounds and samples lend a rock-steady groove — a feast of R&B and hip-hop staples. Whenever Freeky Dee sets up for a spoken-word set, the standing bass and sax lines of “Brother to the Night,” from the movie “Love Jones,” ring out. It’s a knowing wink — sonic choices that affirm Black cultural memory as its own special canon.Audience participation also becomes a form of communion for Njikam and Blue. At times, we’re ordered to recite an affirmation-laden “Mirror Song” or do kegel exercises in our seats. The show is always edging the sacred up against the sexual, which set designer Jason Ardizzone-West reinforces, adorning square columns with divine contradiction: half evoke West and North African etchings of figures kneeling in spiritual offering; while the other lean into smut — peach and eggplant emojis, thirst drops, figures on their knees for a different purpose.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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      South by Southwest London Has Its Own Musical Touch

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      The festival, which has a long association with music, presents an opportunity for London acts to perform on a bigger stage.When South by Southwest first began in Austin, Texas, in 1987, the Shoreditch neighborhood in East London was still filled with empty warehouses. But it was beginning to attract a wave of artists who would help it eventually become synonymous with music and culture.Almost 40 years later, this area will be the site of South by Southwest London, the organization’s first foray into Europe. And for some of the London-born musicians who are performing, it’s a huge opportunity that also reflects the area’s reputation and artistic cachet.“It’s super exciting that it’s now finally arriving on home soil,” said Joel Bailey, an R&B and soul artist from Southwest London whose stage name is BAELY. He continued: “London’s got so many different hubs of, kind of like pockets of creative spaces and Shoreditch is definitely one of them. It’s thriving.”Jojo Orme, who performs as Heartworms, was born in London and said she briefly lived in Shoreditch. “They just have the fingers on the pulse there. It’s always beating,” she said, adding that “so many people love to travel to Shoreditch for a show because it’s always a good time.”Jojo Orme, who performs as Heartworms, said people flock to shows in vibrant Shoreditch, the festival’s home base. “They just have the fingers on the pulse there.”@kate.samsara.photographySouth by Southwest London, which begins on Monday and runs through June 7, will feature performances by more than 500 artists across about 30 venues as part of its music festival. It will also include a film and conference series, just like the flagship festival in Austin. An Asia-Pacific branch of the event started in Sydney in 2023.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