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      Miley Cyrus and Brandi Carlile’s Raw Duet, and 9 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Bartees Strange, Nicki Nicole, Caroline Rose and others.Every 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.Miley Cyrus featuring Brandi Carlile, ‘Thousand Miles’From Miley Cyrus’s new album, “Endless Summer Vacation,” comes this rugged, low-to-the-ground duet with the polished roots-rock yowler Brandi Carlile. Both are capable of broad vocal theatrics, but it should be said, Carlile is holding back here, in order to allow Cyrus the space to ruminate in this song about failure: “I’m not always right/but still I ain’t got time for what went wrong.” In her post-Disney career, Cyrus has flirted with various forms of adulthood in terms of performance — sexual defiance, hippie experimentalism and so on. But she’s perhaps at her most appealing when applying restraint. JON CARAMANICANicki Nicole, ‘No Voy a Llorar’Latin R&B enjoys a whiff of hyperpop helium in “No Voy a Llorar” (“I’m Not Going to Cry”), a preemptively defensive breakup song. The 22-year-old Argentine songwriter Nicki Nicole insists she’s fully prepared if things go wrong. “When you leave, I’m not going to suffer,” she predicts. The song’s chord progression could have come from the 1950s, but its production is as contemporary as its brittle attitude. Her pop soprano gets pitched further upward as the track begins; elusive background vocals and synthesizers puff their syncopations around the beat. Even the exposed voice-and-piano coda, the sincere payoff, gets computer-tweaked. JON PARELESBaaba Maal featuring the Very Best, ‘Freak Out’The Senegalese songwriter Baaba Maal, with an extensive catalog behind him, has lately been heard worldwide with vocals on the soundtracks of the Black Panther films. He collaborated with the African-tinged English group the Very Best on “Freak Out,” from his coming album, “Being.” Ignore the song’s psychedelic title. The lyrics draw on an old proverb from Maal’s culture, the Fulani, instructing that someone who has deep knowledge should say neither too little nor too much. Its music merges programmed and hand percussion with a desert drone, an electric-guitar lick and the backup vocals of the Very Best’s Malawian singer, Esau Mwamwaya. It’s both up-to-the-minute and resolutely grounded in traditional wisdom. PARELESEladio Carrión featuring Future, ‘Mbappe’ (Remix)Last year, the Puerto Rican rapper Eladio Carrión had a hit with “Mbappe” a drowsy and delirious Migos-esque boast. Future appears on this remix with a pair of verses that are somehow both utterly rote and also grossly charming, rapping about the place where carnality and expensive jewelry intersect, and the elation of toxic love. CARAMANICANF, ‘Motto’NF has always rapped as if full of anxiety, and on a core level, that hasn’t changed on “Motto,” a clever narrative about unshackling oneself from the stressors of pop music success. But over classicist boom-bap production amplified with a whimsical swing and some of the howling dynamics of rock groups like Imagine Dragons, “Motto” feels somehow lighter. In his early career, NF sounded as if he was internalizing all the pressures of the world, but now he sounds free and calm, dismissing those same pressures with a shrug. CARAMANICABartees Strange, ‘Daily News’“Daily News” was tucked away on the vinyl version of the album Bartees Strange released in 2022, “Farm to Table.” Now it’s streaming, and it sums up and expands the album’s moods and dynamics. Strange sings about alienation, numbness and anxiety — “I can feel the weight/Crashing over me again” — as electric-guitar lines coil and intertwine around him. A bridge finds him even more alone — reduced to nervous, isolated vocals — but someone rescues him. Perhaps it’s a partner; perhaps it’s an audience. “I’ve found you,” he exults, in a full-band onrush of drums, saxophone and tremolo-strummed guitars, and the connection sounds rapturous. PARELESCaroline Rose, ‘Tell Me What You Want’A breakup could hardly be messier or more noisy than the one Caroline Rose depicts in “Tell Me What You Want.” “I am just pretending not to lose my mind,” she explains, in a track that swerves between acoustic-guitar strumming and full grunge blare. She blurts both “I can’t bear to lose you” and “Boy you’re going to hate this song!” She wonders if she should hold on; she wants to smash everything and move along. The video clip, a drunken trek through Austin, Texas, spells out all of her conflicting impulses. PARELESAngel Olsen, ‘Nothing’s Free’The steadfastness of vintage soul carries Angel Olsen through “Nothing’s Free,” as she sings about an unspecific but primal revelation. Slow gospel organ and piano chords, bluesy saxophone and patiently hand-played drumming sustain her amid — and in a long closing instrumental, beyond — something that sounds both life-changing and inevitable, as she sings, “Nothin’s free like breaking free/out of the past.” PARELESNoia, ‘Verano Adentro’Noia is Gisela Fullà-Silvestre, a songwriter from Barcelona who’s now based in Brooklyn. In “Verano Adentro” (“Summer Inside”), she wafts her voice over an amorphous, ever-shifting electronic backdrop. At first it’s tentative — chords and pauses, the clatter of a rainstick — but other, more ominous sounds crowd in: distorted guitar, insistent drums, rumbly low arpeggios. Nothing ruffles her as she basks in bliss: “All I need is an ocean, all I need is time,” she coos. PARELESSarah Pagé, ‘Premiers Pas Au Marécage’“Premiers Pas Au Marécage” translates as “First Steps in the Swamp,” and it’s a meditation on evolution — formlessness into forms — by Sarah Page, a harpist and composer from Montreal. She mingles electronics and plucked strings in this piece, which opens with yawning, amorphous sounds and recordings of Hungarian frogs, then deploys a quintet of Japanese kotos to join her in a measured, echoey waltz and march, a tentative climb toward order. PARELES More

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      On Her SOS Tour, SZA Makes Small Feelings Huge

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      The R&B star’s first New York arena show supporting her blockbuster album “SOS” was a deft mix of styles and sounds, with guests Cardi B and Phoebe Bridgers.SZA’s performance at Madison Square Garden Saturday night was vigorous, confident, theatrical and intimate — the sort of show that manages the rare trick of feeling both vibrantly communicative and also protectively insular.But one particular five-song stretch encapsulated the range that has made SZA — whose second studio album, “SOS,” has spent 10 weeks atop the Billboard album chart — one of the most au courant performers of this era, a beacon for the vulnerable, the stubborn, the besieged and the broken.A few songs into her set, she told the crowd that she was performing a song that hadn’t previously been part of the set list, and started into “Ghost in the Machine,” a plinking whisper about needing escape. A few moments later, out shuffled Phoebe Bridgers, the beloved indie-rock singer-songwriter who guests on the track, wearing a promo T-shirt for “Smell the Magic,” the 1990 album by the all-woman grunge band L7. They sang their parts, grinning at the improbability of it all, then deeply bowed to each other.After that, SZA shifted into “Blind,” a quick-tongued acoustic soul number rich with lovely guitar curlicues, singing about all the walls she puts up, literally and figuratively: “You still talking ’bout babies/And I’m still taking a Plan B.” And after that, “Shirt,” a spacious thumper with echoes of 1990s R&B and a low center of gravity. Her voice, so breathy on the prior song, was tart here, as she worked through sinuous choreography with a quartet of backup dancers while sighing about taking “comfort in my sins.”SZA’s stage design leaned heavily on aquatic themes; at one point, she rode a lifeboat on wires high above the crowd.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesThen, another guest: the charisma machine Cardi B, who joined for “I Do,” which features a winningly cocky hook by SZA. (Cardi stuck around to perform her verse from GloRilla’s “Tomorrow 2” for good measure, much to SZA’s apparent glee.) And following that came “Smoking on My Ex Pack,” a grounded, earthen hip-hop song in the vein of, say, Earl Sweatshirt, in which SZA navigates romantic push and pull: “Them hoe accusations weak/Them bitch accusations true.”It was, in sum, a 15-minute tour de force, spanning genres and modes, attitudes and feelings. It also felt utterly modern — indebted to the past but not beholden to it, unconcerned with old stylistic limitations, casually adroit.On “SOS,” one of last year’s most impressive albums, SZA writes about situationships with microscope acuity, self-lacerating and scowling in equal measure. In the five years that she took between albums, she became more particular, more pointed and more adventurous. That was clear on the pop-punk number “F2F,” which channeled Paramore, and “Nobody Gets Me,” which, depending on the lens, either leans heavily on Mazzy Star, or on melodramatic alt-country. She performed that one with particular fervor, recalling female power rockers of the 1990s like Alanis Morissette.This concert — the first of two sold-out nights in New York — was full of such peaks. The rapturous crowd met her up-tempo songs featuring dance routines with equal enthusiasm as her lonely ballads. On those, her voice was luscious, pure and full of nuance. (In this context, her more straightforward hits, like the Doja Cat collaboration “Kiss Me More,” or the songs with flickers of feisty verses from Kendrick Lamar, Travis Scott or Ol’ Dirty Bastard, didn’t much stand out.)SZA started and ended the show echoing the cover of “SOS”: perched at the end of a high diving board.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesUniting it all were water themes — she opened the show sitting on the edge of a diving board, as she does on the cover of “SOS,” here wearing a navy jersey bearing the name Yemaya, the Yoruba goddess of the sea. (She returned to that perch at the concert’s end, this time wearing white.) At the back of the stage, a huge screen displayed waters that increasingly turned choppy, then undersea life. Some of her onstage setups included a huge fishing vessel and an oversized anchor, though they were more props than narrative devices.The show’s first section perhaps overindexed on choreographed numbers, but by midway through, SZA was soaring — first figuratively, and then literally, in a lifeboat rigged up to float above the crowd. Singing “Special,” a sweetly anguished song about self-doubt and jealousy, from up in the sky gave it a delicious inversion.While many artists touring concerts of this scale build to a sort of triumphant ending, SZA’s concluding run before the encore felt more like a retreat inward — the quiet storm smolder of “Snooze,” followed by the head-nodding manifesto of jealousy “Kill Bill,” one of the most unsettling smashes of recent memory. She followed that with “I Hate U,” a scalding indictment that’s virtually lo-fi on record, but here took on epic scale. And then finally, “The Weekend,” a stunningly calm song about an anxious situation, a timeshare kind of love: “My man is my man is your man/Heard it’s her man, too.” But she didn’t sound even a bit unsettled. Everyone was singing along, protecting these private troubles with public comfort.SZA performs at Madison Square Garden on Sunday. Her SOS Tour continues through March 23; szasos.com/tour. More

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      SZA’s ‘SOS’ Is No. 1 for a 10th Time, as Morgan Wallen Waits on Deck

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      The R&B singer-songwriter matches chart runs by Adele and the country star Wallen, who is about to release his next album, “One Thing at a Time.”Can anything halt SZA’s reign over the Billboard album chart?For a 10th time, “SOS,” the second studio LP by SZA — the genre-blurring R&B singer and songwriter born Solána Imani Rowe — is the No. 1 album in the country. In the last 10 years, only six other releases have lasted as long at the top: Adele’s “25” (2015) and Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” (2021), also with 10 weeks apiece; Taylor Swift’s “1989” (2014), with 11; and the “Frozen” soundtrack (2013), Drake’s “Views” (2016) and Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” (2022), each with 13.Since it came out in early December, “SOS” has been a steady streaming hit, though its numbers have gradually slipped. For the current chart, the album logged the equivalent of 87,000 sales in the United States, including 118 million streams, according to the tracking service Luminate. In its 11 weeks out, “SOS” has racked up nearly two billion streams.Also this week, “Trustfall,” the latest by Pink, opens at No. 2 with the equivalent of 74,500 sales. That total includes 59,000 copies sold as a complete package and 17 million streams. Swift’s “Midnights” holds at No. 3 and Metro Boomin’s “Heroes & Villains” is No. 4.How much longer can SZA dominate? A few just-released titles could challenge “SOS” on next week’s chart, including “AfterLyfe,” by the rapper Yeat, and “Mañana Será Bonito,” by the neon-haired Colombian star Karol G.But SZA still has a few levers left to pull. Last week she embarked on her first arena tour, and any day now she is expected to release an expanded version of “SOS” with as many as 10 additional songs, which could give the LP a second wind on the chart.If any artist is capable of displacing SZA, it is surely Wallen, who on Friday will release “One Thing at a Time,” his third studio album and the follow-up to “Dangerous,” which has had an astounding chart run. This week, “Dangerous” is No. 5, notching its 108th time in the Top 10 — more than any LP except the soundtrack to “The Sound of Music” and the “My Fair Lady” cast recording. More

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      ‘Mama, I Want to Sing!’ Returns for 40th Anniversary

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      Gospel soul returns to the stage as the long-running musical is revived for Black History Month at El Museo’s El Teatro.Ahmaya Knoelle Higginson first appeared onstage before she was even born. Her mother, Vy Higginsen, a co-writer of the gospel musical “Mama, I Want to Sing!,” was pregnant with Higginson in 1983 as she performed in the show about a preacher’s daughter who becomes a pop sensation. When Higginson was a toddler, she waddled backstage during the musical’s international tours, and at the age of 10 she joined its choir for performances at Madison Square Garden. Then as a teenager, she stepped into the lead role of Doris Winter.“I ended up being a product of my environment,” Higginson said. “Whether I heard the music from the womb or not.”Now, Higginson, 39, is directing a revival of “Mama, I Want to Sing!,” which is celebrating its 40th anniversary with a nearly three-week run. The performances, also coinciding with Black History Month, will run through March 12 at El Museo’s El Teatro, formerly the Heckscher Theater, where the 1983 musical ran for years in the ’80s.Higginsen, who created the production with her husband, Ken Wydro, said she could not have predicted that her daughter, as director, would carry on the show’s legacy. But it’s no surprise she did: Her daughter, “saw every iteration, saw every singer, every star,” Higginsen said, adding, “Who’s more capable to direct the show at this stage than she is?”Higginson, left, overseeing a rehearsal, as Elise Silva, at rear, who shares the lead role in the musical, awaits instruction. Scott Rossi for The New York TimesHigginson leaned into her mother as they spoke about the show’s evolution during a recent interview at the Mama Foundation for the Arts in Harlem, an organization created by Higginsen to preserve and promote Black music through free educational programming.“Mama, I Want to Sing!” is a family affair. The story was inspired by Doris Troy, Higginsen’s older sister, who was a choir girl in her father’s Harlem church and later became a soul singer, known for her 1960s chart hit “Just One Look.” (Troy played the role of her mother in the musical from 1984 to 1998, before her death from emphysema in 2004.) The musical also has deep roots in Harlem, with a fictional Doris finding her voice at Mount Calvary Church and auditioning at the Apollo Theater.More on N.Y.C. Theater, Music and Dance This SpringMusical Revivals: Why do the worst characters in musicals get the best tunes? In upcoming revivals, world leaders both real and mythical get an image makeover they may not deserve, our critic writes.Rising Stars: These actors turned playwrights all excavate memories and meaning from their lives in creating these four shows, which arrive in New York in the coming months.Gustavo Dudamel: The New York Philharmonic’s new music director, will conduct Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in May. It will be one of the hottest tickets in town.From 1983 to 1991, the musical had more than 2,800 performances at the Heckscher Theater, and Higginsen said she still remembered lifting the chains from the theater, which had previously been shuttered, scrubbing dirt and dust from the seats. “At first we didn’t know whether it was going to work, but then the word of mouth spread like wildfire.” The success of “Mama, I Want to Sing!” led to national and international tours, with stops in Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Japan and London. Then came the 1990 sequel, about Doris Winter’s marriage and first child, and the 1996 production of “Born to Sing: Mama III,” which followed Doris’s international tour and her teenage daughter’s singing aspirations.All along, Higginsen said, she was thinking of the show’s legacy. She wanted the next generation to become ambassadors of gospel, jazz and R&B music, starting with her daughter, who has gone from performing onstage to sitting in the director’s chair.Faith Cochrane, 16,  is one of three teenagers alternating in the role of the young starlet, Doris Winter.Scott Rossi for The New York Times“This story begs to be told in an authentic way,” Higginsen said, “to really pay tribute to the music, to pay tribute to the artists that came before us, and to make sure that people recognize the contribution that African American music has made to the American musical landscape.”The Rev. Richard Hartley, who plays Rev. Winter in the current production, first joined the show in 1987 as a member of the musical’s church choir, and later took on other roles, including the narrator and the boisterous choir director. “This is an American institution,” Hartley said, “and to be a part of it — and it’s Black History Month — it’s just so fulfilling.”Higginson and her mother could feel the spirit of Doris Troy in the room, Higginson said, adding that she was grateful to breathe life into the gospel musical once again.Scott Rossi for The New York TimesTo cast the next Doris for the show’s latest iteration, Higginson began a nationwide search last year but it was unsuccessful. The people who came to audition were overrehearsed, she said, and she craved the vulnerability and authenticity that earlier productions had. (The last version of the show to be performed onstage was a 2013 production of “Mama, I Want to Sing: The Next Generation,” in Japan.)Then in November, after consulting a colleague who teaches at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, she visited the school on a Tuesday and auditioned 20 students in the hallway.“People say expect the unexpected,” Higginson said. “I could see that on their face, but that’s exactly what we wanted.”Faith Cochrane, a 16-year-old junior and vocal major, said she was eating lunch when Higginson arrived. She was nervous, she said, and didn’t hit all of the notes in her audition song, “Amazing Grace.” But Higginson was impressed by her potential, and Cochrane was asked to join the production. She is now one of three teenage performers — including Elise Silva and Asa Sulton — alternating in the role of the young starlet.“Something that I had to work on was really stepping outside of my comfort zone,” Cochrane said. “But when I did, the response from everyone else was really good and it made me feel better.”During rehearsals in Harlem last week, Higginson led the Sing Harlem choir, instructing them to stand tall, jive to the rhythm, and hit sharp staccato notes. In between scenes, the three teenagers playing Doris giggled and danced, bouncing their shoulders and stomping their feet. And as different performers sang solos, choir members clapped and fanned in approval. Higginson and her mother could feel the spirit of Troy in the room, Higginson said, and she was grateful to breathe life into the gospel musical once again.“I’ve been in the spotlight for so long,” she added. “The awesome part is to see the flower grow.” More

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      Huey ‘Piano’ Smith, New Orleans Rock ’n’ Roll Cornerstone, Dies at 89

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      With songs like “Don’t You Just Know It,” “Rocking Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu” and “Sea Cruise,” he put a firm backbeat behind joyful nonsense.Huey “Piano” Smith, whose two-fisted keyboard style and rambunctious songs propelled the sound of New Orleans R&B into the pop Top 10 in the late 1950s, died on Feb. 13 at his home in Baton Rouge. He was 89.His daughter Acquelyn Donsereaux confirmed his death.Mr. Smith wrote songs that became cornerstones of New Orleans R&B and rock ’n’ roll perennials, notably “Rocking Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu,” “Don’t You Just Know It” and “Sea Cruise.”As a pianist and bandleader, Mr. Smith was known for strong left-hand bass lines, splashy right hand and forceful backbeat. He didn’t take center stage; his band, the Clowns, was fronted by a group of dancing lead vocalists, among them Bobby Marchan, who often performed wearing women’s clothes.Mr. Smith’s lyrics were full of droll wordplay and irresistible nonsense-syllable choruses. “I use slangs and things like that,” he was quoted as saying in John Wirt’s biography, “Huey ‘Piano’ Smith and the Rockin’ Pneumonia Blues” (2014), “When you put the music with words and things together, the songs just make themselves. And after you listen at it, it says something its own self, that you hadn’t planned.”Mr. Smith’s songs have been covered by Aerosmith, the Grateful Dead, Johnny Rivers, Patti LaBelle, Deep Purple and many others. But he struggled to collect royalties through more than a decade of lawsuits, and in the 1990s he filed for bankruptcy. His song “Sea Cruise” was handed over by his label to a white singer, Frankie Ford, whose voice was overdubbed atop the backing track recorded by Mr. Smith and his band.A publicity photo of Mr. Smith from early in his career. He and his group, the Clowns, had a national hit in 1957 with “Rocking Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu.”Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty ImagesHuey Pierce Smith was born on Jan. 26, 1934, in New Orleans, the son of Arthur Smith, a roofer and sugar cane cutter, and Carrie Victoria (Scott) Smith, who worked at a laundry. He taught himself to play boogie-woogie piano, strongly influenced by the New Orleans master Professor Longhair, and by his teens he was performing regularly at the Dew Drop Café, a top Black club in what was still a segregated city. He formed a duo with Eddie Lee Jones, who performed and recorded as Guitar Slim and who gave him the “Piano” moniker. He also backed Lloyd Price and other New Orleans performers onstage.Mr. Smith also became a regular session player at J&M, the recording studio owned by Cosimo Matassa, where the sound of classic New Orleans R&B was forged. His piano opens the Smiley Lewis hit “I Hear You Knocking,” and he was also heard on recordings by Earl King, Little Richard and many others.He formed the Clowns in 1957 and had a nationwide hit that year with “Rocking Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu” (later versions often rendered it as “Rockin’”), which reached No. 5 on Billboard’s rhythm-and-blues chart and No. 52 on the pop chart. A medical-minded follow-up, “Tu-Ber-Cu-Lucas and the Sinus Blues,” didn’t fare as well.With his new career as a bandleader thriving, Mr. Smith married Doretha Ford in 1957. They had five children before they divorced in the mid-1960s.Mr. Smith and the Clowns reached the pop Top 10 in 1958 with the wry “Don’t You Just Know It.” The title was a phrase often used by the band’s bus driver, Rudy Ray Moore, who would go on to a career as a bawdy comedian and the star of the “Dolemite” movies.That same year, Mr. Smith recorded “Sea Cruise.” Johnny Vincent, the owner of his label, Ace Records, was a partner in a distribution company, Record Sales Inc., with Johnny Caronna. The day after Mr. Smith recorded the music for “Sea Cruise,” planning to have the Clowns add vocals, Mr. Caronna claimed the song for a teenage singer he was managing, Frank Guzzo, professionally known as Frankie Ford.According to Mr. Wirt’s biography, Mr. Smith was told, “Johnny Vincent agreed that if you can sell a million on this record, Frankie can sell 10 million” — and, he later recalled, “It hurt me to my heart when he told me he was taking that.”Mr. Vincent, who died in 2000, also claimed co-writing credits on many songs Mr. Smith wrote and recorded for Ace, including his hits, although he later relinquished those credits. Mr. Smith moved to Imperial Records as the 1950s ended, but he returned to Ace to record a rollicking holiday album, “’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” on which he declaimed the title poem over a jaunty horn section.With the British Invasion of the 1960s, guitar-driven rock supplanted piano-centered New Orleans R&B on the pop charts. Mr. Smith continued to record on the Pitter Pat and Instant labels through the late 1960s, under his own name and others, and he had some regional hits. He also wrote and produced songs for other performers, notably Skip Easterling, who had a hit across the South in 1970 with Mr. Smith’s funk reworking of the Muddy Waters standard “Hoochie Coochie Man.”Mr. Smith married Margrette Riley in 1971. She survives him, along with his children Ms. Donsereaux, Sherilyn Smith, Huerilyn Smith, Hugh Smith, Katherine Smith, Tanisha Smith, Tyra Smith and Glenda Bold; his stepson, James L. Riley Jr.; 18 grandchildren; and 47 great-grandchildren.Barely able to make a living from his music in the early 1970s, Mr. Smith turned to other work. He started a gardening business, Smith’s Dependable Gardening Service. He also became a Jehovah’s Witness and gave up drinking and smoking.Meanwhile, the value of his old songs was increasing. In 1972, Johnny Rivers’s remake of “Rocking Pneumonia” reached No. 6 on the pop chart. Dr. John included a medley of Mr. Smith’s songs on his album “Dr. John’s Gumbo,” and Ace Records rereleased Mr. Smith’s songs on compilation albums. Mr. Smith performed occasionally as the 1970s ended. At the New Orleans club Tipitina’s and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 1979 and 1981, he reunited with singers from the Clowns’ peak years. At the 1981 festival, his musicians included the Meters’ rhythm section: George Porter on bass and Zigaboo Modeliste on drums.Mr. Smith moved to Baton Rouge in 1980 and stopped performing soon after that. His catalog continued to be heard — in cover versions, on movie soundtracks, in commercials and in reissues — but bad deals deprived him of much of his royalty income.In a series of lawsuits from 1988 to 2000, Artists Rights Enforcement Corporation — a company Mr. Smith had engaged in 1982 to help collect back royalties and then fired in 1984 — demanded and won a 50 percent share of Mr. Smith’s ongoing royalty income from four of his biggest songs, including “Rocking Pneumonia.”Mr. Smith declared bankruptcy in 1997; by then, he had pawned his piano. When full rights to the four songs were sold for $1 million to the publisher Cotillion Music in 2000, Mr. Smith remained entitled to foreign royalties but netted less than $100,000 to escape bankruptcy.The Rhythm & Blues Foundation gave Mr. Smith its $15,000 Pioneer Award in 2000, and he gave his last major performance at the foundation’s gala. He was inaugurated into the Louisiana Blues Hall of Fame in 2001.Mac Rebennack, the New Orleans pianist, guitarist and singer who recorded as Dr. John, received vital early songwriting guidance from Mr. Smith, according to Mr. Wirt’s biography. “Anyone who can talk can write a song,” he recalled being told. “So whatever you got to say, play good music and say it. You just put it where you need to say it.”Mr. Smith, Mr. Rebennack said, also advised, “If you don’t have a song that’s got some kind of simple melody people can hum, sing with and roll with, it’s like, what do you got?” More

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      SZA’s Very Roundabout Path to Success

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicSZA’s second major label album, “SOS,” spent its first seven weeks atop the Billboard album chart, a startling feat for a performer who has at almost every turn made choices inconsistent with the demands of pop stardom.Five years have passed since her debut album, “Ctrl.” She generally makes music with a small circle and doesn’t collaborate widely. Until lately, she has largely shunned the press.But the release of “SOS” appears to mark a new chapter for the singer, who at 33 is one of the most forthright songwriters working, and who has a flexible vocal approach that’s only expanding.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about SZA’s lyricism and production choices, her deliberate and slow career path and new models of star-making in the contemporary pop marketplace.Guest:Danyel Smith, author of “Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop”Connect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      SZA’s ‘SOS’ Is the No. 1 Album for an Eighth Time

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      The R&B singer-songwriter has matched Taylor Swift’s run with “Folklore,” the last time a female artist held the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s chart for eight weeks.SZA is not done with No. 1 yet.After a one-week dip to second place on the Billboard album chart, SZA — the genre-blurring R&B singer-songwriter born Solána Imani Rowe — returns to No. 1 this week for an eighth time with “SOS,” the hottest LP of the season.“SOS,” SZA’s long-awaited second studio album, had the equivalent of 100,000 sales in the United States in its most recent week out. Virtually all of that activity was attributed to the album’s popularity on streaming services, drawing 135 million clicks, according to the tracking service Luminate. Since “SOS” came out nine weeks ago, it has been streamed 1.7 billion times in the United States alone.With eight weeks at the top, “SOS” has tied the chart run of Taylor Swift’s “Folklore” in 2020, the last time a female artist racked up as many times at No. 1. (For both albums, the accomplishment came in nonconsecutive spans; it took Swift 13 weeks to notch an eighth No. 1 for “Folklore.”) In the last few years, the only albums that have had more are Disney’s “Encanto” soundtrack (nine weeks), Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” (10) and Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” (13).Also this week, Swift’s “Midnights” rises one spot to No. 2, while the K-pop group Tomorrow X Together, which opened at No. 1 last week with big CD sales of its new five-song EP, “The Name Chapter: Temptation,” fell to No. 3. Wallen’s “Dangerous” is in fourth place — its 106th time in the Top 10 — and Metro Boomin’s “Heroes & Villains” is No. 5.The country-pop star Shania Twain opened at No. 10 with her latest release, “Queen of Me.” More

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      Lizzo and SZA Spin Up a Fresh ‘Special,’ and 7 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Luke Combs, Jessie Ware, Indigo de Souza and others.Every 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.Lizzo featuring SZA, ‘Special’Lizzo’s soulful, gospel-choir-backed performance of “Special,” the title track from her 2022 album, was a highlight of this year’s Grammys telecast, and now she’s recruited SZA to provide a fresh spin on the song. “You call it sensitive, and I call it superpower,” SZA sings, nimbly skipping across the beat, while Lizzo offers her a message of solidarity: “I thought that I’d let you know, in case nobody told you today, you’re special.” If the original version was a more general anthem of uplift, SZA’s presence gives the song a more intimate call-and-response quality, as if she and Lizzo were two girlfriends exchanging words of support after a long day. LINDSAY ZOLADZBeyoncé, ‘Cuff It (Wetter Remix)’It’s easy, and expected, to think about Beyoncé from the top down. On Sunday, she won four Grammys, giving her a career total of 32 and making her the most decorated performer in the show’s history. Conversations about her music, how she assembles it and how she releases it often take on a world-historical tone. She is the defining superstar of the stan era, publicly available only every once in a while.The Emotionally Charged Sound of SZAThe artist, whose real name is Solána Imani Rowe, has become a dominant figure in American pop.View From the Top: Her moody, enigmatic music made SZA a megastar. Can she learn to live with success?‘Ctrl’: The artist’s first album for a major label, released in 2017, held on to the electronics and the leisurely tempos of her past work. But it placed her fully in command of her songs.Interview: After receiving five Grammy nominations for “Ctrl,” the singer sat down to discuss her journey to success and facing her inner critic.‘SOS’: On her second album, SZA presents herself not as a heroine but as a work in progress who knows she’ll make more mistakes.But she is listening. One of the more gratifying and unexpected turns of the “Renaissance” era has been her acknowledgment of how fans listen to her, responding in something like real time. First, in August, she formally released a mash-up of “Break My Soul” and Madonna’s “Vogue” that had been floating around online.Now, she’s done it again. A few months ago, the D.J. and producer esentrik made a mash-up of “Cuff It” with “Wetter,” a temperate love rap from 2009 by the Chicago fast talker Twista, produced by the Legendary Traxter. It was a hit on TikTok, and now, it’s become something even more substantive. Beyoncé recorded new vocals for this version, which takes the sauciness of the original and cools it down slightly, leaning into afterglow.Making this remix official is savvy acknowledgment that fans listen to music in ways artists can’t anticipate, and it behooves artists to be mindful of how they’re being consumed. And it is savvy business too, a way of formalizing the chaos of TikTok and bringing it under the umbrella of the empire. JON CARAMANICAJessie Ware, ‘Pearls’Jessie Ware’s latest disco-inspired track is an effervescent invitation to, as she puts it, “shake it til the pearls fall off.” The single from her April album “That! Feels Good!” is thick with sumptuous atmosphere and Ware’s signature sass. But most impressively, its chorus’s ascending melody is a dazzling showcase of Ware’s stratospheric upper register. Sing along at your own risk. ZOLADZMegan Moroney, ‘I’m Not Pretty’A razor-sharp premise for a song: “Somewhere out there my ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend is scrolling through my Instagram/Tearing me down, passing the phone around.” A young country singer with a voice that mixes sweetness with wryness, Megan Moroney targets this charming, funny, exhausted song at women who tear other women down. CARAMANICALuke Combs, ‘Love You Anyway’In midcareer mode, Luke Combs doesn’t let it rip quite as often as he once did. His bellow is more stable, his emotional presence more dignified. But there’s still something of a purring engine inside songs like “Love You Anyway,” which in the hands of a lesser singer, would be a familiar, cloying ode to a love so strong, it’s worth the pain of potentially losing it. But when Combs sings, “If your kiss turned me to stone, I’d be a statue standing tall in ancient Rome,” he sounds like he’s thoroughly pondered the consequences — the likelihood of heartbreak — and is pressing on with force nonetheless. CARAMANICAIndigo de Souza, ‘Younger & Dumber’“Younger & Dumber,” from the Asheville singer-songwriter Indigo De Souza, is a slow-burning tear-jerker, a gradual accumulation of heartbreaking lines that takes flight in a soaring climax. “Sometimes I just don’t want to be alone, and it’s not because I’m lonely,” De Souza sings in a wearied croon. “It’s just that I get so tired of filling the space all around me.” But just then, her voice swells in intensity and fills that space with her own wrenching emotion. ZOLADZYaya Bey, ‘Exodus the North Star’Brooklyn’s Yaya Bey brings a light touch to “Exodus the North Star,” the title track from an upcoming EP that follows her excellent 2022 album “Remember Your North Star.” “Exodus” is a love-struck reverie that begins as a sparse arrangement — just Bey’s voice and some celestial keys — but soon explodes into a joyful, horn-kissed celebration. “Baby, it’s the way you make me feel like your girl could get up and fly,” Bey sings and, accordingly, the song suddenly takes flight. ZOLADZFrench Montana featuring 2Rare, “Ratataaaaa’Turns out that French Montana’s meandering smears, typically at home over lightly galloping production, sound equally intriguing over sounds twice as quick. This song (which perhaps is an allusion to an old TikTok meme) is jubilant and spacious, and a little odd. The Philadelphia club rapper 2Rare, who guests here, is more naturally bouncy than his host, but his antic energy is mostly a counterweight to French Montana’s impressionistic almost-raps. CARAMANICA More