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    Chappell Roan’s Rocket-Ship Year

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicChappell Roan has become one of the biggest breakout pop stars of the past year, and made it happen in novel fashion: creating grand-scale, 1980s-influenced pop refracted through a queer lens; building a drag-inspired performance character; and calling into question the way that fans worship their heroes while rapidly accumulating fans online and in real life.Her debut album, “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess,” continues its rise toward the top of the album chart, more than a year after its release. And her festival performances have become wildly viral events. Roan’s ascent has tested the boundaries of contemporary pop, and also may create a template for a next generation of stars.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the fits and starts of Roan’s early career, the events that propelled her to fame and the ways in which she is remaking the star-fan dynamic.Guest:P. Claire Dodson, associate director of culture at Teen VogueConnect 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.Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. More

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    Daniel Nigro’s Path to Hitmaker for Chappell Roan and Olivia Rodrigo

    The songwriter and producer has helped craft huge albums with Chappell Roan and Olivia Rodrigo. What’s the key to his success? “Dan always believed in me,” Roan said.When Daniel Nigro and Chappell Roan wrote and recorded “Pink Pony Club” back in 2019, Nigro knew they had something special. The problem was, no one believed him.It was the second song the pair had written together, a stirring origin story of Roan’s self-awakening from the Missouri-born Kayleigh Rose Amstutz to the burgeoning queer artist Chappell Roan, spurred by her home away from home, a Los Angeles gay bar where “boys and girls can all be queens every single day.”At the time, Roan was signed to Atlantic Records, which had released her downcast debut EP to little notice. Nigro was scuffling, too; he’d left his middling Long Island emo band to try his hand at songwriting in L.A., where he had some success with credits on songs by Sky Ferreira and Carly Rae Jepsen, among others. But in his mid-30s, he was still paying the bills in part with money he’d earned writing commercial jingles.When Atlantic executives heard “Pink Pony Club,” they were not impressed. “I was convinced the song was incredible,” Nigro recalled, “and then they told me it wasn’t.” The label suggested excising the song’s ebullient guitar solos, played by Dave Stewart’s son Sam, that Roan had pushed for and Nigro helped compose, “and I was like, nope,” he said. Atlantic dropped Roan, and in 2021 Nigro started his own label, Amusement Records, just to release her music. In August, her debut album, “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess,” hit No. 2 on the Billboard 200.“Dan always believed in me,” Roan said in an email. “He has been there from the beginning, and brought me into realizing what makes me feel good to perform, what makes me feel good to sing, to write about. Because he believed in bringing that part of myself to life, I started to believe in it, too.”Nigro performing in 2010 with As Tall as Lions, the emo band he formed with high school friends on Long Island.Joey Foley/FilmMagic, via Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    It’s Touring Season: Chappell, Sabrina and Mk.gee Hit the Stage

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicGrand-sized tours are everywhere you look right now. Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan, young pop stars who’ve experienced sudden jolts of attention that reshaped their careers this year, are playing arenas and amphitheaters. In rooms slightly smaller, you can see the rising guitar hero Mk.gee, who’s become one of this year’s most unlikely breakout successes. Vampire Weekend, Cash Cobain, Bleachers and more are all on the road.On this week’s Popcast, a roundup of some of the bigger tours making their way around the country at the moment, and a discussion of what it takes, creatively, to fill up a very large room, and how some musicians demonstrate parts of their personalities onstage that their albums can’t fully capture.Guest:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterConnect 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.Soon, you’ll need a subscription to keep full access to this show, and to other New York Times podcasts, on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Don’t miss out on exploring all of our shows, featuring everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts. More

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    Chappell Roan Seeks the Line Between IRL and URL

    For Chappell Roan, who has been toiling in the pop music trenches for several years now, the recent burst of acclaim she’s received has been overdue, affirming and more than a little disorienting. Perhaps the most energizing breakout star of this year, she has songs that center queer romance, a robust aesthetic gift and, most striking of all, an unusually moral sense of how a famous person should be treated.As she’s being embraced, she’s also being tested. The last couple of weeks especially have provided Roan a case study in the difference between IRL and URL fandom — the people who show up to commune with you, and the people who make you the object of their study and chatter online — and which to stake her future on.Last Tuesday in Franklin, Tenn., she took a mid-show breather to survey the 7,500 people who’d come to see her perform at the FirstBank Amphitheater.“I know how hard it is to be queer in the Midwest and the South,” she said. She grew up around seven hours west, in Willard, Mo., chafing against her conservative surroundings. As a young person, she continued, “I really needed a place where people weren’t going to make fun of me for how I dressed or who I liked.”For the night, the amphitheater just outside of Nashville had become such a place. Carved into a rock quarry, the open-to-the-sky venue felt cloistered, protected. A place for intimate but very loud conversation out of view of prying ears and eyes.Fans came to the show in costume: Realtree camouflage, pink cowboy hats, Western boots, frilly dresses, hand-drawn shirts with Roan references. Amy Harris/Invision, via Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Chappell Roan Cancels a Pair of Big Shows After Tumultuous Weeks

    The pop star said things had “gotten overwhelming” and bowed out of festivals in New York and Maryland after a period in which her politics came under scrutiny.Chappell Roan, the pop star who has rocketed to stardom over the summer, abruptly canceled a pair of major festival performances scheduled for this weekend, citing “pressures” and the need to prioritize her health.The sudden cancellations of the shows in New York and Columbia, Md., come after a tumultuous few weeks for Roan, in which she called out aggressive fan behavior, engaged in a verbal spat with a photographer on the red carpet at MTV’s Video Music Awards and became entangled in politics as fans scrutinized her leanings in the 2024 presidential election.In a statement posted on her Instagram Stories on Friday, Roan said she had become overwhelmed by it all and needed to bow out her performances at the All Things Go festival.“I apologize to people who have been waiting to see me in NYC & DC this weekend at All Things Go, but I am unable to perform,” Roan said. “Things have gotten overwhelming over the past few weeks and I am really feeling it.“I feel pressures to prioritize a lot of things right now and I need a few days to prioritize my health. I want to be present when I perform and give the best shows possible. Thank you for understanding.”In the festival’s own statement, which was placed at the end of an Instagram Story that included posts from fans sharing their eagerness to see Roan, All Things Go said it was “heartbroken” by the news but supported “artists prioritizing their well-being.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    MTV Video Music Awards: 7 Memorable Moments

    Taylor Swift set a record and Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter and Katy Perry delivered noteworthy performances as the show struck a balance between past and present.Wednesday night’s MTV Video Music Awards marked the show’s 40th anniversary, and much of the festivities strived for déjà vu by honoring memorable performances and moments from shows past. Montages of “V.M.A. flashbacks” like Michael Jackson heartily kissing Lisa Marie Presley, Madonna writhing through “Like a Virgin,” and Eminem storming the building with a regiment of bleached look-alikes peppered the telecast.This year’s show paid homage to those events too, sometimes explicitly. Eminem, for instance, opened the show performing his latest single, “Houdini,” alongside an army costumed to look like him, with dark beards underneath blond wigs that referenced the old days. The host Megan Thee Stallion donned an outfit that nodded to the silky green top Britney Spears wore in 2001 to perform “I’m a Slave 4 U,” and sported a yellow boa constrictor to boot — though Megan’s genuine discomfort with the creature worked to comedic effect.The V.M.A.s are forever looking to inaugurate new stars to take up the mantle of the classic music-video era icons. This year’s class, including Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, Tyla and Rauw Alejandro stood out amid the throwback references. Katy Perry bridged the gap between eras, and Taylor Swift did what she does best at award shows — dance zealously to other artists and collect hardware. Here are the highlights.Shawn Mendes returned to the stage with new music.The last time Shawn Mendes was on the V.M.A. stage, it was 2021 and he was performing “Summer of Love” with Tainy. He’d last released an album, “Wonder,” in 2020 but later postponed a 2022 tour to focus on his mental health.Wednesday Mendes returned to the stage to perform an acoustic and stripped-down new single, “Nobody Knows,” from his upcoming album “Shawn,” expected to release in October. Fans on social media speculated that the song contained a reference to his ex-girlfriend and fellow V.M.A. performer, Camila Cabello. In the song, Mendes sings, “When the bottle is open, anything can happen/flying too close to the sun”; Cabello’s Instagram bio reads, “long, thick black hair turned white from flying too close to the sun.” — SHIVANI GONZALEZWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Readers Pick Their Song of the Summer

    You sent in an eclectic mix of tracks from Chappell Roan, Bad Bunny, Lawrence and more.A lot of you got into Chappell Roan this summer.Chona Kasinger for The New York TimesDear listeners,A few weeks ago, I asked you to share your 2024 song of the summer. Not necessarily your favorite of the pop smashes that defined the balmiest months of this year — because I’ve already compiled a playlist of those — but the song that served as your personal soundtrack to the season. The song that will conjure a montaged rush of summer of ’24 memories when you hear it years from now.As usual, Amplifier readers delivered, sending me an eclectic mix of songs and some of your lively personal stories.Over and over, it occurred to me while reading your submissions that a song of the summer does not need to be the kind of frothily fun, carefree tune that we usually associate with that phrase. Sure, there are quite a few tracks on this playlist that fit the bill, from artists like the New York-bred sibling duo Lawrence, the ’60s pop singer Keith and the French icon Zizi Jeanmaire. But quite a few of you recommended more subdued songs that had inspired reflection (like a ballad from Zach Bryan’s latest album) or that provided the soundtrack to a challenging moment (like one reader’s selection of a Mississippi John Hurt classic).I wish I could have selected every single song you submitted — but that would have been a very, very long playlist. It was difficult to pare it down to just 13 tracks, but these selections reflect the range of what you recommended: Some new and some old, some familiar and some so obscure I’d never even heard of them. Thanks to each and every one of you who shared your song and your story.Also, reading through these submissions gave me concrete proof of something I’d suspected: A lot of you got into Chappell Roan this summer. Femininomenon indeed.Ouch! Mi corazón,LindsayWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    20 Pop and Jazz Albums, Shows and Festivals Coming This Fall

    Anticipated debuts and long-awaited follow-ups are due this season. Our critics plucked out a list of the most notable.Some of the year’s buzziest artists (Charli XCX, Chappell Roan) are headlining tours and festivals this fall, and a bevy of new albums from established stars (Shawn Mendes, Jelly Roll) and up-and-comers (Flo, Nemahsis) are on the way. Dates and lineups are subject to change.SeptemberNILÜFER YANYA The British musician Nilüfer Yanya makes pensive, intricately layered songs that revel in unexpected textural jolts. On “Like I Say (I Runaway),” the lead single from her third album, “My Method Actor,” the deadpan, Sade-like cool of Yanya’s vocals is interrupted by a sudden eruption of PJ Harvey-esque guitar distortion. A melodically rich meditation on identity, desire and the reverberations of heartache, “My Method Actor” is a confident and hypnotic follow-up to her 2022 release, “Painless.” (Sept. 13; Ninja Tune) LINDSAY ZOLADZNEMAHSIS Nemahsis — the songwriter Nemah Hasan, who has Palestinian roots — sings about seizing her tangled identity as an independent artist, a Muslim, the daughter of immigrants and a self-questioning but determined individualist. On her debut album, “Verbathim,” her producers include Drake’s regular collaborator Noah (40) Shebib, with songs that can be folky or test the electronic edges of hyperpop. (Sept. 13; Verbaithim) JON PARELESSEXYY RED Fresh off several high-profile collaborations with Drake, Sexyy Red, the 26-year-old St. Louis rapper, makes the leap to headlining arenas on her Sexyy Red 4 President tour, on which she’s playing songs from her latest mixtape, “In Sexyy We Trust.”. That’s one way to kick off election season. (Sept. 17; Barclays Center) ZOLADZSexyy Red’s tour started in late August and comes to Brooklyn in September.Torben Christensen/Ritzau Scanpix Denmark, via ReutersCHARLI XCX AND TROYE SIVAN Most live performances by the British pop singer, songwriter and producer Charli XCX tend to feel more like semi-legal warehouse raves than highly choreographed arena shows, but the breakout success of her sixth album, “Brat,” means that, on the Sweat Tour that she is headlining with the Australian pop star Troye Sivan, the 32-year-old industry veteran will be playing some of the largest venues of her career. Bid farewell to Brat Summer in style starting Sept. 14 in Detroit. (Sept. 23; Madison Square Garden) ZOLADZWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More