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      Lady Gaga and Silk Sonic Follow the Grammy Formula: Old, but New

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      Despite nods to Gen Z, this year’s show favored history-minded performers like Silk Sonic, Jon Batiste, H.E.R. and Lady Gaga.There is no surer way for a young musician to acquire a quick coat of gravitas than an appearance on the Grammy Awards. And there is no surer way for a young musician to speed the way to the Grammys than by already appearing to be old.Such is the chicken-egg conundrum bedeviling the awards, and also the pop music industry, which coexist in uneasy alliance, looking askance at each other while furtively holding hands. At the Grammys, maturity is rewarded, and often demanded, putting it at direct odds with a music business that continues to valorize youth.At the 64th annual Grammy Awards, which took place in Las Vegas on Sunday night, these tensions were on display in myriad ways. Take Justin Bieber, who began his performance of the glistening, slinky “Peaches” sitting at the piano, singing earnestly and with pulp. For Bieber, 28, not generally regarded as a musician’s musician, it was a pointed ploy, or perhaps a plea.Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak — performing as Silk Sonic — won both song and record of the year for “Leave the Door Open,” a stunningly slick slice of 1970s-style soul. At the show, they nailed the yesteryear aesthetic, too, from suits to hairstyles to mannerisms. Both men, masterful purveyors of retro sonic ideology, are 36.Read More on the 2022 Grammy AwardsThe Irresistible Jon Batiste: The jazz pianist is an inheritor more than an innovator, but he puts the past to use in service of fun.A Controversial Award: Some people questioned the decision to bestow the Grammy for best comedy album to Louis C.K., who has admitted to sexual misconduct.Old, but New: Despite nods to Gen Z, this year’s show favored history-minded performers like Silk Sonic, H.E.R. and Lady Gaga.The Fashion: An exuberant anything-goes attitude was a reminder of why red carpets are fun in the first place.Zelensky’s Speech: Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, addressed the audience in a prerecorded video. Here’s what he said.Jon Batiste, the New Orleans jazz scion and late-night bandleader who won album of the year, delivered a performance that channeled second-line funk, classic soul and just the faintest touch of hip-hop. He is 35.Justin Bieber opened his performance of “Peaches” at the piano.Mario Anzuoni/ReutersThese are the sorts of performances, and performers, the Grammys crave: appearing young but aiming to embody old-fashioned values of musicianship. Because the Grammys telecast draws generations of viewers, and because Grammy voters are drawn from a wide pool that skews older, what emerges on the show, and in the awards themselves, is a kind of piteous compromise that holds real innovation at bay. The artists nominated in the top categories were refreshingly democratic, in terms of genre and age, but Batiste and Silk Sonic bested them all.That meant that the only one remaining for Olivia Rodrigo, nominated in all four, to win was best new artist, which she did. Rodrigo was last year’s clear breakout star, and the prime placement she was given on the telecast, with one of the first performances, indicated the Grammys understood her power. She was a jolt of uncut youth, performing “Drivers License” with a light eau de grunge, and then later thanking her parents when accepting the award for best pop vocal album for “Sour.”But that was something of a head fake, as was most of the show’s opening run of performances, which also included the precocious Grammy fave Billie Eilish, the K-pop group BTS, the reggaeton star J Balvin and Lil Nas X, whose blend of raunch and wit felt slightly tamped down during his medley of recent hits. The only other moment the show approached a moment of honest freshness was when Doja Cat raced to the stage to accept her award for best pop duo/group performance after leaving the room for a bathroom break. She and her co-winner SZA giggled at the snafu, and Doja spoke in the unfiltered manner she’s become known for, which felt fresh in this context: “I like to downplay a lot of [expletive], but this is a big deal.”As for several other young stars, well, they declined to show up — Tyler, the Creator, who won best rap album; Drake, who withdrew himself from consideration in the categories in which he was nominated; the Weeknd, who after last year’s no-nomination debacle has stated he’ll never again submit his music for consideration by the Grammys; Cardi B, nominated just once. (Taylor Swift also did not attend, but that absence did not have the air of a protest so much as an acknowledgment that this year was unlikely to garner her any trophies.)Lady Gaga brought very-old-school flair to a medley of songs from her duet album with Tony Bennett.Chris Pizzello/Invision, Associated PressThat lineup of no-shows could fuel an alternate award show, or concert (as was proposed by the hip-hop mogul J. Prince). And therein lies the Grammys’ Achilles’ heel: It needs artists like these, both for reasons of relevance and also as tribute-payers. As hip-hop has become the dominant sound of pop music, its stars are going to become the elders of tomorrow. If the Grammys continue to alienate its young titans, its attempts to honor the music moving forward will consistently fall flat. (That was emphasized by the oldest featured performer at this year’s show: Nas, 48, who spent half of his set performing 20-year-old songs that deserved a Grammys stage long ago.)This chasm — between the Grammys and youth, between the Grammys and hip-hop — means that the show has to double down on younger stars willing (and excited?) to be in dialogue with the sounds of yesteryear. Some of the most strikingly mature vocals of the night were by Rachel Zegler, singing Sondheim as part of the in memoriam segment. One of the show’s most stirring moments came from the R&B singer-songwriter H.E.R., who has perhaps been over-indexed with awards-show acclaim in recent years. Her performance, alongside Lenny Kravitz, Travis Barker and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, connected her to three generations of funk and rock.And then there is Lady Gaga, the onetime pop disrupter who has become the embodiment of institutional legacy through her ongoing work with the crooner Tony Bennett. Their latest album, “Love for Sale,” won best traditional pop vocal album, and Gaga performed a tribute to Bennett, 95 — who did not attend — singing two of the album’s songs, which originated in the 1930s. Her singing was sharp and invested, making a case for decades-old standards on a contemporary pop stage, the embodiment of the Grammys’ cross-generational goals.It was easy to lose sight of the fact that Lady Gaga is only 36. And looking at the next generation of pop talent — Eilish, Rodrigo, Doja Cat, Tyler, the Creator and beyond — it’s hard not to wonder how long will they be allowed to be young before the Grammys insists they grow up. More

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      Silk Sonic Win Song of the Year at the 2022 Grammys

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      The first televised award of the night, following three elaborate performances, was a major one: “Leave the Door Open,” by the throwback soul and R&B duo Silk Sonic, won song of the year, a category with 10 total nominees and steep competition. The track peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.The Grammy, awarded to a track’s songwriters, went to the group’s members, Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak, along with Christopher Brody Brown and Dernst Emile II, known as D’Mile, who dedicated the win to his mother, who died on Wednesday.“Because of you guys, me and Andy gonna be singing this song forever,” Mars said at the microphone.Anderson .Paak, whose initial remarks were bleeped as he appeared to adjust the zipper on his pants, concurred: “For the rest of our lives! We love you!”“Leave the Door Open” topped an expanded field that also included Olivia Rodrigo’s “Drivers License”; Billie Eilish’s “Happier Than Ever”; Doja Cat’s “Kiss Me More” (featuring SZA); Justin Bieber’s “Peaches” (featuring Daniel Caesar and Giveon); Brandi Carlile’s “Right on Time”; Lil Nas X’s “Montero (Call Me by Your Name)”; Ed Sheeran’s “Bad Habits”; Carlile and Alicia Keys’s “A Beautiful Noise”; and “Fight for You” by H.E.R., who won the prize last year for a protest anthem, “I Can’t Breathe.”The award was presented by Questlove, who won earlier at the preshow, for “Summer of Soul,” which was named best music film. Referring to the film’s win at the Oscars last weekend — a celebration that directly followed Will Smith smacking Chris Rock — Questlove said, “I trust that you people will stay 500 feet away from me.” More

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      Soccer Mommy Stretches Her Sound, and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Phife Dawg, Omar Apollo, Zola Jesus 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.Soccer Mommy, ‘Shotgun’Sophie Allison, who records as Soccer Mommy, continues to stretch beyond the sparse indie-rock of her early songs. “Shotgun” previews an album due in June — “Sometimes, Forever” — that is produced by Oneohtrix Point Never (Daniel Lopatin), an auteur of big, blurry implications. “Shotgun” is a promise of devotion to someone who might be troubled. It places Allison’s breathy, dazed vocals above a hefty beat and a low, twangy riff; as the chorus vows “Whenever you want me I’ll be around,” new layers of echoey guitars and sudden drum blasts loom, suggesting that her path isn’t entirely clear. JON PARELESMaren Morris, ‘Humble Quest’“Humble Quest,” the title track of the new album by Maren Morris, carefully balances humility and a growing determination: “I was so nice till I woke up/I was polite till I spoke up,” she sings. The verses are dogged and subdued, with steady drums and descending piano chords; the chorus leaps upward, insisting, “Damn I do my best/Not gonna hold my breath.” But the song tapers off at the end, returning to the piano chords; the quest continues. PARELESKurt Vile, ‘Mount Airy Hill (Way Gone)’As usual, Philadelphia’s Kurt Vile is an ambling, amiable presence on “Mount Airy Hill (Way Gone),” a gently psychedelic ditty in no particular hurry to get to where it’s going. “Standing on top of Mount Airy Hill … thinkin’ ’bout … flying,” he begins, sounding like a cross between Bill Callahan and John Prine, the kindred spirit he collaborated with on the 2020 EP “Speed, Sound, Lonely KV.” Beginning with that release, Vile has begun to embrace more directly the country inflections of his music and vocal delivery, and here they add to the song’s eccentric charm. “I’ve been around, but now I’m gone,” he vamps, letting that last word fly loose in an airy falsetto before adding a winking line that doubles as the title of his forthcoming album: “Watch my moves.” LINDSAY ZOLADZFlock of Dimes, ‘It Just Goes On’Under her solo moniker Flock of Dimes, Jenn Wasner tends to make knotty, intricate indie-rock, enlivened by unexpected chord changes and unusual time signatures. She’s described the hypnotic “It Just Goes On,” though, as “perhaps one of the most simple and direct songs I’ve ever made,” and the understated arrangement allows her dreamy vocals to shine. The first track on a B-side companion piece to her excellent 2021 album “Head of Roses,” “It Just Goes On” is a slow-motion reverie centered around a murky guitar riff that hangs, like Wasner’s evocative lyrics, in a state of suspended possibility: “If it never started, it doesn’t have to end, it just goes on.” ZOLADZJane Weaver, ‘Oblique Fantasy’The English songwriter, singer and guitarist Jane Weaver reaches back to the clockwork Minimalism of 1970s kraut-rock in “Oblique Fantasy,” a patiently evolving assemblage of guitar and synthesizer lines — picked, strummed, fluttering, blipping, peaking into feedback — over an unswerving, motoric beat, as she lives up to her promise: “I will get under your skin.” PARELESKilo Kish featuring Miguel, ‘Death Fantasy’The avant-pop singer Kilo Kish has a pipe dream: the demise and undoing of all frameworks, definitions and limits that might constrain her. On “Death Fantasy,” from her new album “American Gurl,” Kish raps in a breathless staccato about her ambition: “I have a death fantasy/Death of my aesthetics, this falsing fiction carved in my way,” she chants. On Instagram, Kish referred to the song as a “manifesto” and a “declaration of freedom.” But with lurching drums, neon-drenched synths, Miguel’s sky-high, looping vocalizations and a jarring flatline, “Death Fantasy” is less anthemic — it’s more a trance-like spell, conjured to convince you of the promise of starting anew. ISABELIA HERRERAPhife Dawg, ‘Forever’Well-earned 1990s nostalgia and grown-up regrets fill Phife Dawg’s “Forever,” the title track from a new album, released six years after his death, that blends his last raps with tribute verses from guests. Phife Dawg had reunited with A Tribe Called Quest, but he died before their final album together was released in 2016. In “Forever,” he rhymes through the group’s history as “four brothers with a mic and a dream.” A plush soul string section, a lurching beat and old-school turntable scratching accompany him as he recalls the group’s ascent. Suddenly he silences the track and, a cappella, he admits, “Lack of communication killed my tribe/Bad vibes.” But bygones are bygones, he declares: “Despite trials, tribe-ulations, no doubt we were built to survive.” PARELESOmar Apollo, ‘Tamagotchi’The 24-year-old singer Omar Apollo has a knack for jagged, irreverent pop songs. On “Tamagotchi,” he conscripts the Neptunes to mastermind his latest vision: there’s Pharrell’s signature four-count start, a muted Spanish guitar loop coiling under bilingual bars about Apollo’s ascendant celebrity. But the best part of “Tamagotchi” is that Apollo doesn’t take himself too seriously: “I’m making bread (Bread)/Sound like Pavarotti,” he snickers at one point. By the honey-soaked R&B bridge, you’ll be drenched in his charisma. HERRERAFrya, ‘Changes’Frya, from Zimbabwe, has clearly listened to Adele: where she applies vibrato, her approach to syncopation and sustain, and where she makes her voice build and break. But she has a songwriter’s gift: how to turn words and sounds into an emotional connection. “Say my name please in that tone again,” she begs in “Changes,” as it climbs from piano ballad to orchestral plea, perfectly strategized and emotionally telling. PARELESSon Lux and Moses Sumney, ‘Fence’The magnificently eerie “Fences,” from the soundtrack to the metaverse movie “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” deals in falsetto reassurances and gaping abysses. Over sustained electronic tones, tolling bass notes and orchestral swells, Moses Sumney sings an apologetic, waltzing refrain — “Only meant to give you my all/never meant to build you a wall” — that multiplies its vocal harmonies but sounds ever more bereft. PARELESZola Jesus, ‘Lost’“Everyone I know is lost,” Nika Roza Danilova, who records as Zola Jesus, wails on the doomy, kinetic new single from her forthcoming album, “Arkhon.” The track begins with a decidedly post-apocalyptic vibe: earthy, guttural rumbles, synthesizers that toll like air-raid sirens, and a percussive series of sharp breaths, spliced together to create the song’s beat. But Danilova’s powerful vocal soon provides a stirring counterpoint and a defiant sign of life, like a signal flare shot up through an icy landscape. ZOLADZMarvin Sewell, ‘A Hero’s Journey’The guitarist Marvin Sewell, who’s usually heard injecting soul and scruff into other people’s bands, takes a moment to ruminate alone on “A Hero’s Journey.” He plays the acoustic guitar with a shivering slide, returning frequently to a mournful motif on the higher strings. Though understated, the track is a standout on “Black Lives,” a two-disc compilation of new music performed by a wide stylistic range of contemporary jazz artists. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOMark Turner, ‘Waste Land’At first, the occasional clatter from Jonathan Pinson’s drums seems like the main source of agitation on an otherwise low-key track: The interplay between Mark Turner’s tenor saxophone and Jason Palmer’s trumpet — both of them doused in reverb, played with crystal clarity and zero hurry — is almost placid. But there is a worried tension in the space between their horns, one that doesn’t get totally exposed until near the end. Finally, we’re left without resolution, as the band rises toward a landing that never fully comes. RUSSONELLO More

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      Arcade Fire Ignites a Fresh Era, and 11 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Normani, Brad Mehldau, Valerie June 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.Arcade Fire, ‘The Lightning I, II’Rarely does critical consensus pivot as quickly and sharply as it did for Arcade Fire, a band that began the 2010s snagging a surprise album of the year Grammy for its beloved, towering double album “The Suburbs,” and ended the decade caricatured as out-of-touch scolds when its 2017 technology critique “Everything Now” left just about everybody cold. The overwhelming return-to-form narrative that has greeted its first new music in five years, from an album due May 6, though, suggests that many were simply waiting for the group to once again make songs that sound like “The Lightning I” and “II.” “I won’t quit on you, don’t quit on me,” Win Butler sings through gritted teeth on the first part of the song, which moves at the tempo of someone running against the wind. Then, all at once, the track kicks into a rapturous gallop and becomes the kind of urgent, clenched-fist anthem the band was once known for: “Waiting on the lightning, waiting on the lightning, what will the light bring?” Butler sings, burning once again with an earnest, fiery hope. Somebody kept the car running after all. LINDSAY ZOLADZOumou Sangaré, ‘Wassulu Don’Oumou Sangaré has carried a women’s song tradition from Mali’s Wassoulou region to a worldwide audience. Her first new song since 2017, from an album due in April, is the Malian fusion of “Wassulu Don”: the quavering vocal lines and call-and-response of Wassoulou songs propelled by the modal, six-beat electric guitar picking — echoing Ali Farka Toure — that has been called “desert blues,” topped by an openly bluesy slide guitar. The song, it turns out in translation, praises regional economic development “thanks to colossal investments”: a prosaic text for a euphoric piece of music. JON PARELESNormani, ‘Fair’Her debut full-length is so long awaited, to some people the phrase “new Normani album” has come to mean roughly what “Chinese Democracy” used to, or — heaven help us —“#R9” still does. But the arrival of Normani’s new single “Fair” is promising on two counts: It indicates that 2022 really could be the year she puts out that mythical album; and it’s much better than “Wild Side,” the sultry but ultimately snoozy Cardi B duet from 2021. Mining the liquefied sounds of Y2K-era TLC or Aaliyah, “Fair” is an anguished ballad with a deep, menacing undertow. “Is it fair that you moved on?” Normani asks, “’cause I swear that I haven’t.” All the while, the moody track throbs with a sputtering but persistent heartbeat. ZOLADZInside the World of RosalíaIn just a few years, the Spanish singer from Catalonia has grown into one of the most worshiped, scrutinized and counted on young artists in the world.Reinventing Flamenco: Rosalía first burst onto the scene with her take on tradition, earning worldwide acclaim and introducing new generations to the genre.New Album: With “Motomami,” the singer adds irony and humor to her thematic arsenal, while turning up the sex and swagger.The Making of a Star: Before racking up magazine covers and millions of views with her YouTube videos, Rosalía spent years training in one of the world’s oldest musical art forms.Diary of a Song: For her hit “Con Altura,” the singer and her collaborators entered the studio with the express mission of paying tribute to old-school reggaeton.Residente featuring Ibeyi, ‘This Is Not America’Setting aside his intramural reggaeton beef with J Balvin, the Puerto Rican rapper Residente returns to major sociopolitical statements with the furious “This Is Not America,” which is rapped in Spanish but purposefully titled in English. It’s a darker sequel to the hemisphere-spanning “Latinoamérica” by Residente’s former group, Calle 13: a far-reaching indictment of repression, corruption and abuse across North, Central and South America. Driven by deep Afro-Caribbean drumming and choir harmonies, it insists, “America is not just the U.S.A.,” with a video that recapitulates brutal human-rights abuses in nation after nation. PARELESBrad Mehldau, ‘Cogs in Cogs, Pt. I: Dance’A three-part suite, “Cogs in Cogs” sits at the center of Brad Mehldau’s new album, “Jacob’s Ladder,” which collects 12 complex, hard-toggling tracks: an attempt to use the tools of prog-rock — his first musical love — to explore how a worldly life might have both shaken and strengthened his Christian faith. Mehldau, who continues to build out from his fixed identity as one of the country’s top jazz pianists, plays almost every instrument on Part 1 of “Cogs in Cogs”: piano, Rhodes, harmonium, mixed percussion and more. He sings some, too. Underpinned by the syncopated rhythm and woven harmonic progression that he outlines at the start, the track works as a patient immersion, providing some balance to the heady overload of so much of this album. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLODonae’o featuring Terri Walker, ‘Good Mood’Everyone in this dystopian moment wants something better. Here’s a song for whenever, eventually, the situation might feel right: a stripped-down bit of electronic funk topped by gritty human voices, placed in a digital grid but hoping there’s a warm, real, physical space beyond it. PARELESSyd and Lucky Daye, ‘Cybah’On the brink of a new romance, Syd — Sydney Loren Bennett, the songwriter and producer who emerged from Odd Future — airs her misgivings in “Cybah,” whispering a question to a prospective partner: “Could you break a heart?” Lucky Daye responds with conditions of his own: “Promise me you’ll always keep my heart in a safe place.” The hesitancy is built directly into the track, three slowly descending chords atop a bass line that sometimes falls away into complete silence, keeping the next step uncertain. PARELESValerie June, ‘Use Me’Valerie June’s “Use Me” isn’t the 1972 Bill Withers song. It offers a more kindly, less exploited version of the same generously loving sentiment: “I’ll let you use me when the world is doing you wrong,” she promises. It’s a soul waltz that gathers a circusy momentum from an oom-pah-pah beat, slightly delayed snare-drum rolls and jovial horns that sound like they wandered into a bar and decided to stick around. PARELESRosalía, ‘Hentai’A delicate, demure piano arrangement serves as a sonic red herring for the raunchiest song Rosalía has released to date. On the surface, “Hentai” is achingly gorgeous, as sparse and intimate as anything the pop-flamenco queen has ever done. “So, so, so good,” she croons ecstatically on the chorus, starry-eyed and accompanied by nothing more than a few plinking notes — the sound of a multifaceted artist revealing yet another side of herself. ZOLADZEthan Gruska and Bon Iver, ‘So Unimportant’Two meticulously disorienting songwriters and producers — Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) and Ethan Gruska (Phoebe Bridgers’s producer) — collaborated remotely on “So Unimportant.” It’s a waltz that mingles an argument and an apology, with Gruska eventually deciding, “It’s so unimportant what started the fight.” What could have been a folksy, homey waltz is layered with hazy sonic phantoms — echoes, altered voices, electronic tones, a hovering string arrangement — that hint at the emotional complexities of everyday frictions. PARELESDanilo Pérez, ‘Fronteras (Borders) Suite: Al-Musafir Blues’As the founder of the Berklee Global Jazz Institute in Boston, the celebrated Panamanian pianist Danilo Pérez has a utopian goal, framed by his own experience of jazz: He sees the music as a tool for international solidarity, and a pathway toward some kind of global sonic language. Pérez’s Global Messengers are a transnational band that has grown out of his work at Berklee, and that seeks to put some evidence behind the ideas. “Al-Musafir Blues” comes as part of the “Fronteras (Borders) Suite,” which contemplates the pain of forced migration. “Al-Musafir Blues” is an 11-minute epic unto itself, starting with a plodding, lovely pattern from the Palestinian cellist Naseem Alatrash that melds slowly into a full-band arrangement; by the end, Pérez’s scampering piano is guiding the conversation. RUSSONELLO More

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      Timmy Thomas, Singer Whose Biggest Hit Was an Antiwar Anthem, Dies at 77

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      His “Why Can’t We Live Together” rose to the top of the Billboard charts in 1973. He could never match its success.In the summer of 1972, the singer and keyboardist Timmy Thomas was watching the “CBS Evening News” and heard Walter Cronkite tick off the day’s death count of American and Vietcong soldiers.“I said, ‘what?!’ You mean that many mothers’ children died today?” Mr. Thomas told Spin magazine in 2015. “In a war that we can’t come to the table and sit down and talk about this, without so many families losing their loved ones?’ I said, ‘Why can’t we live together?’”His question became the title of his best-known song: a soulful, plaintive statement against the Vietnam War which he sang to his own accompaniment on the electric organ and drum machine. With a sentiment similar to Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” from a year earlier, Mr. Thomas sang on “Why Can’t We Live Together”:No more wars, no more wars, no more warUmm, just a little peace in this worldNo more wars, no more warAll we want is some peace in this worldEverybody wants to live togetherWhy can’t we live together?The song, released on the Glades label, a subsidiary of the Miami-based TK Records, reached No. 1 on Billboard’s R&B chart and No. 3 on its Hot 100 chart in early 1973 and sold upward of a million copies.Mr. Thomas never again had a hit anywhere as big as “Why Can’t We Live Together,” but the song had a lasting impact. Forty-two years later, Drake sampled it on “Hotline Bling,” his hit about late-night cellphone calls from a former lover, which rose to No. 1 on the Billboard rap chart and No. 2 on the Hot 100.“He had an opportunity to use Snoop Dogg beats, Dre beats, all these new beats,” Mr. Thomas told Miami New Times in 2018. “He went all the way back … and used my original.”“Why Can’t We Live Together” has also been covered by artists including Sade, Joan Osborne, Santana, Steve Winwood and Iggy Pop, who recorded it with the jazz organist Lonnie Smith for Mr. Smith’s 2021 album, “Breathe.”Mr. Thomas died on Friday at a hospital in Miami. He was 77.His wife, Lillie (Brown) Thomas, said the cause was cancer.Timothy Earle Thomas was born on Nov. 13, 1944, in Evansville, Ind. His father, Richard, was a minister, and his mother, Gwendolyn (Maddox) Thomas, was a homemaker. By the time he was 10, he told Blues & Soul magazine, he was playing organ at his father’s church. “I always had a good ear for music,” he said. “I was one of 12 kids and most of them were into music, but I guess I pushed a little harder.”After graduating from high school in 1962, he spent a week studying at a Stan Kenton summer music clinic at Indiana University, Bloomington, where his teachers included the saxophonist Cannonball Adderley and the trumpeter Donald Byrd.While attending Lane College in Jackson, Tenn., from which he would graduate in 1966 with a bachelor’s degree in music, Mr. Thomas recorded a few songs in Memphis for the Goldwax label and was a session musician at Sun and Stax Records.Even as he pursued a career in music, he worked as a financial aid director at Lane and a vice president of development at Jarvis Christian College, in Hawkins, Texas, and Florida Memorial University, in Miami Gardens.He later shifted his focus to teaching. In 1993 he became the choir master at Miami Norland High School, and from 1996 to 2005 he taught music at Shadowlawn Elementary School in Miami. He earned a master’s degree in mental health counseling from Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale in 1997.Mr. Thomas in 2017. His 1973 hit has been covered by Sade, Steve Winwood and others.Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for BMIIn addition to his wife, Mr. Thomas is survived by his daughters, Tamara Wagner-Marion and Li’Tina Thomas; his sons, Tremayne and Travis; 12 grandchildren; four great-grandchildren; his sisters, Diane Winton, Mary Davis and the Rev. Velma Thomas; and his brothers, Ray, Kenneth, Roland, Jerome and the Rev. Jeffery Thomas.More than a dozen of Mr. Thomas’s songs landed on the Hot R&B chart between 1973 and 1984, but the outsize success of “Why Can’t We Live Together” cast him as a one-hit wonder. And he understood that it was difficult to replicate the success of his megahit.He recalled that he once asked Henry Stone, the co-founder of TK Records, what he thought the problem was.“He said, ‘Timmy, your major problem was what you said was so profound that you could never back it up,’” Mr. Thomas said, recalling the conversation to Spin magazine. He added, “I thought about it, I said, ‘You know, that’s tough. … ’ I had some nice regional records after that, but nothing that worldwide.” More

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      Florence + the Machine’s Conflicted Coronation, and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Bonnie Raitt, Kehlani, Mahalia 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.Florence + the Machine, ‘King’Career vs. family. Artistic inspiration vs. a stable life. “The world ending and the scale of my ambition.” Florence Welch takes them all on in “King,” which affirms both the risks and rewards of her choices. Like many of the songs Welch writes and sings for Florence + the Machine, “King” moves from confessional to archetypal in a grand, liberating crescendo, while its video elevates her from a tormented partner to something like a saint. JON PARELESBonnie Raitt, ‘Made Up Mind’It’s an old story: the bitter end of a romance. “Made Up Mind,” written and first recorded by a Canadian band called the Bros. Landreth, tells it tersely, often in one-syllable words: “It goes on and on/For way too long.” On the first single from an album due April 22, “Just Like That,” Bonnie Raitt sings it knowingly and tenderly, after a scrape of guitar noise announces how rough the going is about to get. PARELESKehlani, ‘Little Story’Kehlani has long narrated tales of devastating romance, but “Little Story,” the latest single from the forthcoming album “Blue Water Road,” opens a portal to a world of candor. Sounding more self-assured and tender than they have in years, the singer (who uses they/them pronouns) curls the honeyed sways of their voice over the delicate strumming of an electric guitar. “You know I love a story, only when you’re the author,” Kehlani sings, pleading for a lover’s return. Strings crescendo into blooming petals, and Kehlani makes a pledge to embrace tenderness. “Workin’ on bein’ softer,” they sing. “’Cause you are a dream to me.” ISABELIA HERRERACarter Faith, ‘Greener Pasture’A bluesy lite-country simmerer in which the cowboy does not stick around: “I was his Texaco/A stop just along the road/I shoulda known I ain’t his last rodeo.” JON CARAMANICANorah Jones, ‘Come Away With Me (Alternate Version)’With the 20th anniversary of Norah Jones‘s millions-selling debut, “Come Away With Me,” arrives a “Super Deluxe Edition” featuring this previously unreleased alternate take of the title track, with the band work shopping the song. There’s a constant, pendulum-swinging guitar part in this version, matching the songwriter Jesse Harris’s lulling bass figure and pushing the band along. Ultimately you can see why this take didn’t make the cut: The biggest draw is Jones’s matte, desert-rose voice, and it seems most at home when in no hurry, cast in lower contrast to the rest of the band. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOPorridge Radio, ‘Back to the Radio’One electric guitar chord is strummed in what seems to be 4/4 time, repeated, distorted and topped with additional noise for the first full minute of “Back to the Radio.” Then Dana Margolin starts singing, decidedly turning the 4/4 to a waltz as the lyrics push toward a confrontation with someone who matters: “We almost got better/We’re so unprepared for this/Running straight at it.” The song is pure catharsis. PARELESMahalia, ‘Letter to Ur Ex’The threat is both restrained and potent in “Letter to Ur Ex” from the English songwriter Mahalia. She’s singing to someone trying to maintain a connection that has ended: “You can’t do that any more,” she warns. “Yeah, I get it/That don’t mean I’m gonna always be forgiving.” Acoustic guitar chords grow into a programmed beat and strings; her voice is gentle, but its edge is unmistakable. PARELESEsty, ‘Pegao!!!’The Dominican American artist Esty collides genres and aesthetics like a kid scribbling on paper. “Pegao!!!,” from her new “Estyland” EP, mashes up the singer’s breathy, coy raps and sky-high melodies with razor-sharp stabs of synth and a skittish, percussive dembow riddim. She declares her imminent ascent in the music industry, whispering, “They say I’m too late/But I feel like I’m on time.” Her visual choices are part of the plot too: between the anime references, her love for roller skating (which has made her famous on TikTok) and a head full of two-toned braids, Esty’s aesthetic is a kind of punk dembow, her own little slice of chaotic good. HERRERAMura Masa featuring Lil Uzi Vert, PinkPantheress and Shygirl, ‘Bbycakes’Here is how layered things can get in 21st-century pop. The English producer Mura Masa discovered “Babycakes” by the British group 3 of a Kind. He pitched it up and sped it up, keeping the catchy chorus hook. He also connected with Pink Pantheress, Lil Uzi Vert and Shygirl. The new, multitracked song is still both a come-on and a declaration of love, but who did what is a blur. PARELESR3hab featuring Saucy Santana, ‘Put Your Hands On My ____ (Original Phonk Version)’Saucy Santana’s “Material Girl” is the optimal viral hit — easy to shout along with, organized around a catchy phrase, full of performative attitude. For Saucy Santana, onetime makeup artist for the rap duo City Girls turned reality TV star, its emergence as a TikTok phenomenon a couple of months ago (more than a year after the song’s initial release) was a classic case of water finding its level. And now, a future full of promising party-rap club anthems beckons. This easy-as-pie collaboration with the D.J.-producer R3hab is an update of Freak Nasty’s “Da Dip,” one of the seminal songs of Atlanta bass music, and a bona fide mid-1990s pop hit as well. It doesn’t top the original, but it doesn’t have to in order to be an effective shout-along. CARAMANICALil Durk, ‘Ahhh Ha’The first single from the upcoming Lil Durk album, “7220,” is full of exuberant menace. Lil Durk raps crisply and with snappy energy while touching on awful topics, including the killing of his brother DThang and of the rapper King Von, and instigating tension with YoungBoy Never Broke Again. In the middle of chaos, he sounds almost thrilled. CARAMANICAKiko El Crazy, Braulio Fogón and Randy, ‘Comandante’On “Comandante,” two generations of eccentrics — the Dominican dembow newcomers Kiko el Crazy and Braulio Fogón, alongside the Puerto Rican reggaeton titan Randy — join forces for a send-off to a cop who threatens to arrest them for smoking a little weed. Randy drops a deliciously flippant, baby-voiced hook, and Fogón’s offbeat, anti-flow arrives with surprising dexterity. When that timeless fever pitch riddim hits, you’ll want every intergenerational police satire to go this hard. HERRERACharles Goold, ‘Sequence of Events’The drummer Charles Goold and his band are hard-charging on “Sequence of Events,” the opening track to his debut album as a bandleader, “Rhythm in Contrast.” He starts it with a four-on-the-floor drum solo that has as much calypso and rumba in it as it does swing. When the band comes in — the slicing guitar of Andrew Renfroe leading the way, with Steve Nelson’s vibraphone, Taber Gable’s piano and Noah Jackson’s bass close on his heels — that open approach to his rhythmic options remains. Goold graduated from Juilliard, probably the premiere conservatory for traditional-jazz pedagogy, but he’s also toured with hip-hop royalty. All of that’s in evidence here, as he homes in on a sincere update to the midcentury-modern jazz sound. RUSSONELLO More

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      Irma Thomas, a Soul Queen Far Beyond New Orleans

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      As she turns 81, the singer whose intimacy matches her grandeur is the subject of a PBS documentary, “Irma: My Life in Music.”The singer Irma Thomas has long been known as the Soul Queen of New Orleans, a title that feels both richly deserved and far too provincial. Her songs never topped the Billboard pop chart, but they did climb it. And even today, they’re covered by bar bands and in blues jams across the country.Still, if the title suggests a mix of regality and relatability, it makes decent sense. Irma Thomas is, first and foremost, a straight shooter. You feel it in conversation, where she’s neither unduly humble nor conceited. And you can hear it in her singing, which achieves the grandeur often expected from R&B singers in the early 1960s, but has always retained a special kind of intimacy; she often sounds a bit like a more plain-spoken Etta James.“Straight From the Heart,” from her breakthrough 1964 album, “Wish Someone Would Care,” is a demand for sincerity that might be a manifesto, and a standout in a catalog studded with gems. As is made clear in “Irma: My Life in Music,” a documentary debuting on PBS stations across the country this month, Thomas has treated baring her soul as serious work for the past six decades. And she has her rules, rooted in faith and practice: Gospel doesn’t belong in an R&B set. One ought to take requests, she said in a recent interview, to be sure an audience “won’t leave disappointed.”It’s the same attitude that made Thomas an indispensable musical partner for the famed producer and songwriter Allen Toussaint: “He knew he could depend on me,” she said.Thomas, who turns 81 on Friday, began singing professionally in her teens, while already raising four children, and by the mid-1960s her career was taking off. A stint in Los Angeles in the late ’60s and ’70s resulted in frustration — as did watching the Rolling Stones score a smash hit off “Time Is on My Side” after they’d heard her version. But she returned home in the mid-70s to a hero’s welcome, and has been a fixture at nearly every New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival since it began more than half a century ago.More recently, she’s found a new generation of fans through Netflix’s “Black Mirror,” where her haunting doo-wop hit, “Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand),” frequently cameos. In a phone conversation this month from her home in New Orleans East, Thomas was amicable and down-to-earth as ever — “You ask the questions, and I’ll answer ’em,” she said as we began — as she talked about growing up and thriving in New Orleans, and revealed which of her many songs she treasures the most. These are edited excerpts from the interview.Thomas said she got her start singing in church, and noted, “I’m in the choir at church even now.”Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesWhen did you begin to realize that you really had a passion and a talent?Well, singing was something I did all the time. I mean, I can’t remember when I wasn’t singing. From a wee child, even living in Greensburg, La., I sang “The Tennessee Waltz” for my elementary schoolteacher’s play, “Cinderella.” I thought everybody did it. I didn’t think it was anything unusual.We did a lot of singing, keeping each other company or entertaining each other on the front porch during the week, when we weren’t working in the field. That was in the country. Then when I came to the city, we used to play and sing in the complex where we were. There were several kids who were playing music in school, and on weekends they would be playing music and we were singing whatever the most recent record that was out at the time. To me, I didn’t have such a big deal of a voice. Everybody around me was, you know, musically inclined to sing or play whatever instrument they were playing.You didn’t feel like you got a special response when you sang?Well, they applauded — they didn’t boo me! [Laughs]Your love for singing actually cost you work early in life, correct?I enjoyed singing for pleasure, so I was singing to keep myself company when it got me fired the first time, working the 11-to-7 shift. The second time I got fired for singing on the job, I was supposed to be waiting tables. So rather than waiting tables — or, in between waiting tables — I would get up and sing with the band that was playing at the club.How did your relationship with Allen Toussaint take shape? Was it clear immediately that you two had a special connection?It grew over time. There was just no hardships involved whenever I was working with him. He would have me sing a lot of his demos for people that he was writing songs for. I was a quick learner. When he wanted something done, he knew he could depend on me to sing it the way he wanted it sung. I never knew who he was presenting these songs to, I was just doing the demos for him.But you also made some special records together.Oh yeah, of course. He was one who wrote songs specifically for the artists: He knew my vocal ability and he would write a song that he knew would fit. And there was never a song he wrote that I turned down.One thing we haven’t talked about yet is your relationship to gospel music.I grew up in the church, so naturally I would be singing gospel music. Every Sunday when I’m not working, I still sing in church. I’m in the choir at church even now. Most of us grew up in the church, and a lot of us got our influences in the church. So it would be a natural progression to sing and to be a part of the gospel scene, whenever you could.After Katrina, Quint Davis decided that he would like for me to do a tribute to Mahalia Jackson, which I started doing. And I’m still doing the gospel set at JazzFest every year. I do a gospel set, then I do an R&B set. That’s just the natural thing to do. [Laughs]“He knew my vocal ability and he would write a song that he knew would fit,” Thomas said of working with the famed producer Allen Toussaint. “And there was never a song he wrote that I turned down.”Camille Lenain for The New York TimesHow big was Mahalia Jackson’s influence on you?I grew up listening to Mahalia Jackson’s music as a child. My parents had some of her records, back when it was 78s, and then in New Orleans we had radio stations that had gospel programming during the day. But we heard all kinds of music locally on the radio back then, because the radio stations were owned by local producers and owners. So they played a lot of local music as well as a lot of national music.So people who are my age, who grew up here in New Orleans, we had the best of both worlds because we were hearing it all. And then we didn’t have to fight to have a local record played. Nowadays, you’re lucky to hear your record once a year, because it’s not owned by local people. It’s, you know, ClearChannel or something like that, and they couldn’t care less. When you hear one hour, that’s what you’re going to hear all day long. So you don’t get a chance to call in and request what you would like to hear.Hurricane Ida had a big impact on New Orleans. It was nothing like Katrina, but the city appears to still be struggling in the wake of it.Yeah, because now supplies are hard to come by, because of the problems with shipping replenishing them. And so many people lost the roofs on their houses, so you have to wait in line, I guess. But New Orleans is a city that, you know, we’re resilient. We don’t run away. We stay here, and we snap back and move on.I’m sure almost everyone who interviews you must ask about “Time Is on My Side.” But could you talk about why you gave up playing it for a while in the middle of your career?Well you know, after a while, when you sing something that you know you’ve recorded, and you did the first national version of it, and when you’re singing, somebody tells you: “Oh, you’re doing a Rolling Stones song,” I got tired of explaining that I did it before the Rolling Stones. After a while that gets to be old. And so I stopped doing it, because I got tired of explaining that. They didn’t do their homework, they made assumptions. And so at some point you get tired of repeating yourself. Even now, I don’t do it as much as I do others. I sing it, but a lot of times it’s requested before I think about doing it, because I have so many other songs I can do.I have a large enough repertoire that by choice I can either do all of my own material or I can do a few cover songs that I like. And by taking requests, it makes it simpler, because then you are doing what your audience wants to hear. And I’ll put it this way: Most folks leave satisfied that they’ve heard their favorite song.In fact, “Anyone Who Knows What Love Is” — I recorded that back in 1964. I was at a show on the East Coast somewhere, and somebody in the audience asked me to play “Anyone Who Knows What Love Is.” I said, “Wow, I haven’t heard that request in a long time.” I sang it for them, and then when I got through, I asked them: “What album did you get that from?” They said, “We didn’t get it off an album. We heard it on ‘Black Mirror.’” You never know where you’re going to get a request from, or where they heard the song. And so I prepare — I put as much of my own material in my iPad, lyrically, so in case someone asks for it, I’ll do my best to do it for them.Is there one song that you consider nearest to your heart?The only one that I could say I’m closest to would be the one that got me my first big hit, which was “Wish Someone Would Care.” It became No. 17 in the nation, and if it hadn’t been for the British Invasion, it might have gone a little higher in the charts. There were some personal things going on in my life and I wrote the song because of those things. So that would be the closest to me. More

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      Betty Davis, Raw Funk Innovator, Is Dead at 77

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      “Nasty Gal” and her two other 1970s albums influenced generations of R&B and hip-hop.Betty Davis, the singer and songwriter whose raunchy persona, fierce funk grooves and Afrofuturistic style in the early 1970s made her a forerunner of R&B and hip-hop to come, died on Wednesday in Homestead, Pa., the town outside Pittsburgh where she had lived. She was 77.Her reissue label, Light in the Attic, distributed a statement from her friend of 65 years, Connie Portis, announcing the death of a “pioneer rock star, singer, songwriter and fashion icon.” The cause was not specified. Ms. Davis, who first recorded as Betty Mabry, got her last name from her one-year marriage to the jazz bandleader Miles Davis. The music she made in the early 1970s didn’t bring her nationwide hits, but it directly presaged the uninhibited funk of musicians from Prince to Janet Jackson to Janelle Monáe.On the three albums she released from 1973 to 1975, Ms. Davis growled, moaned, teased and rasped through songs that were lascivious, bluesy and hardheaded. She posed in lingerie, in neo-Egyptian regalia and in space-warrior garb, with her hair in a towering Afro; she performed in silvery thigh-high boots, short shorts and a bustier. The poet Saul Williams described her as “the burning secret of Black womanhood and sensuality as expressed through song.”In a 2018 interview with The New York Times, Ms. Davis said, “I wrote about love, really, and all the levels of love,” proudly including carnality. “When I was writing about it, nobody was writing about it. But now everybody’s writing about it.”In the 2000s, Light in the Attic reissued Ms. Davis’s albums with her approval.“Nasty Gal” would be her last studio album released near the time it was recorded, and she never had a certified hit. As the 1980s began, she left the music business almost completely. Yet listeners and musicians have repeatedly rediscovered her, and Davis gained ever-increasing respect as her music was sampled — by Ice Cube, Method Man and Lenny Kravitz among others — and reissued. “This lady was hip before hip was hip,” Mr. Kravitz tweeted.She was born Betty Gray Mabry on July 26, 1944, in Durham, N.C., to Henry and Betty Mabry and grew up in rural North Carolina and in Homestead. Her father was a steelworker, her mother a nurse. In the 2017 documentary film “Betty: They Say I’m Different,” she recalled listening as a little girl to the blues and rock ’n’ roll — Big Mama Thornton, Howlin’ Wolf, Elmore James, Chuck Berry — and singing along with the record player. She was 12 when she wrote her first song, “Bake a Cake of Love,” and she sang in local talent shows.As a teenager, Ms. Mabry went o New York City to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology; she brought along a notebook full of songs. She worked as a model for the Wilhelmina agency, appearing in Glamour and Seventeen magazines and as a pinup in Jet magazine. She also worked as a club hostess, and she savored the city’s 1960s nightlife and met figures like Andy Warhol and Jimi Hendrix.Her first single, in 1964, was “The Cellar.” According to Danielle Maggio, an ethnomusicologist and adjunct professor at the University of Pittsburgh who wrote her dissertation on Ms. Davis, the song was named after a private club at Broadway and West 90th Street. Ms. Mabry became its M.C., disc jockey and hostess, and the club drew artists, musicians and athletes.In 1967, the Chambers Brothers recorded one of her songs, “Uptown.” The South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela, then her boyfriend, produced a 1968 single for her, “Live, Love, Learn.”Ms. Davis with her husband, Miles Davis, at their home in New York in 1969. During their yearlong marriage she introduced him to the music of Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone, catalyzing his move into rock and funk.Baron Wolman/Getty ImagesShe met Miles Davis at a jazz club and became his second wife in 1968. A photograph of her is the cover of Davis’s 1969 album, “Filles de Kilimanjaro,” which includes a tune titled “Mademoiselle Mabry.” Ms. Davis introduced her husband to the music of Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone, catalyzing his move into rock and funk.While Mr. Davis was working on a later album, he considered calling it “Witches Brew”; his wife suggested “Bitches Brew,” the title that stuck. She also convinced him to trade the dapper suits of his previous career for flashier contemporary fashion. “I filled the trash with his suits,” she recalled in the documentary.Mr. Davis encouraged her to perform. In 1969, he produced sessions for her, choosing musicians including Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter from Davis’s quintet and Mitch Mitchell and Billy Cox from Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys. His label, Columbia Records, rejected the results, which remained unreleased until 2016.The marriage was turbulent and sometimes violent before ending in 1969. “Miles was pure energy, sometimes light but also dark,” Ms. Davis recalled in the documentary. “Every day married to him was a day I earned the name Davis.”She kept the name as she returned to songwriting. Material she wrote for the Commodores brought her an offer to record for Motown, but she turned it down because she insisted on keeping her publishing rights.Ms. Davis subsequently moved to London — where a new boyfriend, Eric Clapton, offered to produce an album for her — and then to the Bay Area, where Michael Lang, who had promoted the 1969 Woodstock festival, signed her to his label, Just Sunshine. Greg Errico, the drummer from Sly and the Family Stone, produced her debut album, “Betty Davis”; it opened with “If I’m in Luck I Might Get Picked Up” and included “Anti Love Song,” which warned, “Just as hard as I’d fall for you, boy/Well you know you’d fall for me harder.”Ms. Davis wrote all the songs on her albums, and she produced the next two herself: “They Say I’m Different” and “Nasty Gal,” which brought her to a major label, Island Records. The music and arrangements were hers; she sang each part to her band members. Her songs were aggressive, jaggedly syncopated funk that was anything but shy. In “Nasty Gal,” she boasted, “You said I love you every way but your way/And my way was too dirty for you.”But while Davis conquered club audiences, she found little traction on radio, denying her any commercial success. In 1976, she recorded another album, which included the autobiographical “Stars Starve, You Know.” The song complains, “They said if I wanted to make some money/I’d have to clean up my act.”Island shelved the album, which went unreleased until 2009, and dropped Ms. Davis. “The doors in the industry kept closing,” she said in the film. “All these white men behind desks telling me to change. Change my look, change my sound. ‘Change your music, Betty.’”In 1979, she found independent financing to make another album, “Crashin’ With Passion,” recording it in Los Angeles with musicians including Mr. Hancock, Martha Reeves (of Martha and the Vandellas) and the Pointer Sisters; it, too, went unreleased. Ms. Davis felt that the music business was done with her. In 2018, she said: “When I was told that it was over, I just accepted it. And nobody else was knocking at my door.”The death of her father, in 1980, deepened her isolation and depression. On a yearlong visit to Japan in the early 1980s, she played some club dates with a Japanese band, her last live performances. She left no immediate survivors.But as the decades passed, she was far from forgotten. In the 2000s, Light in the Attic reissued her albums with her approval, along with the Columbia sessions produced by Mr. Davis and her unreleased 1976 album, “Is It Love or Desire.” Hip-hop samples made clear how hard-hitting her productions still sounded, and the 2017 documentary brought new affirmations that Ms. Davis had been ahead of her time.“Being different is everything,” she said in the film. “It is the way forward.” More