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    A Playlist to Remember the Musicians We Lost in 2023

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    A playlist honoring David Crosby, Wayne Shorter, Sinead O’Connor, Jimmy Buffett and other musicians who died this year.David Crosby, a founding member of the Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, died in January.Sulfiati Magnuson/Getty ImagesDear listeners,Doesn’t it seem like the “In Memoriam” segments on awards shows get longer with each passing year? It can sometimes feel like we’re in a perpetual state of mourning, saying goodbye to one brilliant musician after the next. Social media, the 24-hour news cycle and an aging population of era-defining artists all contribute to the perception that we’re constantly suffering huge losses.Even by that light, 2023 was a year of exceptional grief in the music world. We bid farewell to some absolute titans (Harry Belafonte, Tina Turner, Tony Bennett), countercultural icons (David Crosby, Robbie Robertson, Jeff Beck), and beloved rebels (Sinead O’Connor, Tom Verlaine, Shane MacGowan), among many others.For today’s newsletter — the final Amplifier of 2023 — I thought it would be fitting to compile my own “In Memoriam” segment, in the form of a playlist honoring those we lost throughout the year. It’s an eclectic collection in terms of genre, generation and geography; Japanese electro-pop legends sit alongside American jazz greats and Canadian folk revivalists. This may be cold comfort, but we’ll take any silver lining we can get: The magnitude of those we lost this year means this is a very, very good playlist.Like any “In Memoriam” tribute, this one inevitably omits a few names. But I hope it honors some of the musicians who meant something to you and that it introduces a few unfamiliar artists whose discographies are ripe for posthumous discovery.One programming note: As I mentioned, this is the last Amplifier of the year, as we’re taking a one-week break over the holidays. We’ll be back the first week of January with a roundup of the best older songs you discovered in 2023. I’m loving all the submissions we’ve received so far; keep them coming! We may use your response in an upcoming edition of The Amplifier.As ever, thanks to each and every one of you for reading and listening this year. Happy 2024.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Jeff Beck: “Over the Rainbow”Let’s start off with a classic, reimagined as a soaring, wordless aria by the guitar legend Jeff Beck, who died on Jan. 10 at 78. “For all his speed and dexterity,” my colleague Jon Pareles wrote in an appreciation of this performance, “Beck never underestimated the beauty of a sustained melody.” (Listen on YouTube)2. David Crosby: “Laughing”On Jan. 19, the world lost the irascible, angel-voiced David Crosby, who defined the sound of folk-rock in the 1960s and ’70s as a founding member of the Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. I’m a fan of his meanderingly beautiful 1971 solo album “If I Could Only Remember My Name,” and this track in particular. I also count myself absurdly lucky to have interviewed Crosby over the phone about a year and a half before he died; he called beforehand to ask if he could push back our conversation a few minutes because his hotel breakfast had just arrived. I said of course, and he called back maybe half an hour later, still grateful, easefully friendly and very forthcoming. Rest in peace to a man who appreciated a good breakfast. (Listen on YouTube)3. Television: “See No Evil”There’s a rare pantheon of records that, regardless of passing trends, will always sound effortlessly and undeniably cool to each new generation that discovers them. Television’s “Marquee Moon” is one of those albums, in large part because of the frontman Tom Verlaine, who died on Jan. 28 at 73. As a guitarist, Verlaine had chops to spare, but it took a certain attitude — heard on this leadoff track of “Marquee Moon” — to make virtuosity sound punk. (Listen on YouTube)4. Dusty Springfield: “(They Long to Be) Close to You”Burt Bacharach, who died on Feb. 8 at age 94, wrote a seemingly infinite number of perfect pop songs, like this one that the Carpenters made a No. 1 smash in 1970. Dusty Springfield’s earlier version, recorded in 1964, isn’t as well known, but it’s every bit as stirring, thanks in large part to the emotional acuity of Bacharach’s timeless composition. (Listen on YouTube)5. Wayne Shorter: “Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum”Until his death on March 2 at 89, the saxophonist Wayne Shorter was considered by many to be the greatest living jazz composer. His singular, expressive playing on this highlight from his 1966 album, “Speak No Evil,” is one of many recordings that suggest why. (Listen on YouTube)6. Yellow Magic Orchestra: “Technopolis”The pioneering Japanese electronic group Yellow Magic Orchestra lost two of its three principal members this year: the drummer and vocalist Yukihiro Takahashi on Jan. 11 and, a little over two months later, the keyboardist Ryuichi Sakamoto. Both had long and varied solo careers as well, but their work in Y.M.O., like on this leadoff track from the 1979 album “Solid State Survivor,” is still enduringly influential and instantly recognizable. (Listen on YouTube)7. Harry Belafonte: “Jamaica Farewell”“Calypso,” the blockbuster 1956 release by the Jamaican American singer, actor and activist Harry Belafonte, helped bring Caribbean sounds to the masses: It is said to be the first LP by a solo artist to sell over a million copies. This wistful West Indian folk tune was the album’s lead single, and it long remained a signature song for Belafonte, who died on April 25 at 96. (Listen on YouTube)8. Gordon Lightfoot: “Sundown”The Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot, who died on May 1 at 84, was a familiar presence on AM radio in the early 1970s, when he scored hit after unlikely hit. None charted higher than the infectious “Sundown,” the title track off his 1974 album and his only song to hit No. 1 in the United States. The track’s buoyant rhythm and lush harmonies contrast with its lyrical preoccupation with jealousy, inebriation and mistrust, creating an alluringly dark pop song. (Listen on YouTube)9. Tina Turner: “What’s Love Got to Do With It”Talk about a comeback. The mighty Tina Turner hadn’t had a Top 10 hit in the U.S. in more than a decade when in 1984 she returned with a vengeance, belting out this anthem and strutting down the streets of New York in its unforgettable music video. “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” released when Turner was 44, was her long-awaited liberation, and the force of her vocal delivery tells you how much life — and rock-star attitude — she had in her. She died May 24 at 83. (Listen on YouTube)10. Astrud Gilberto: “Berimbau”The 83-year-old Brazilian bossa nova singer Astrud Gilberto, who died on June 5, was best known as the serenely stylish vocalist who sang Stan Getz’s “The Girl From Ipanema.” But her discography is full of other treasures, like her lovely 1966 album of songs arranged by Gil Evans, “Look to the Rainbow,” on which this elegant, atmospheric track named for a one-stringed Brazilian instrument appears. (Listen on YouTube)11. The Band: “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”Robbie Robertson’s music had an almost eerie way of fusing the past and the present, creating compositions that sound at once rooted and untethered to linear time. This song — a Canadian musician’s evocation of Civil War-era America, with a little help from his then-Bandmate, the Arkansas-born Levon Helm — is an ambiguous document, still sparking fresh debate more than 50 years after its release. But above all it is a testament to the slippery songwriting power of Robertson, who died on Aug. 9 at 80. (Listen on YouTube)12. Jane Birkin: “Jane B.”The iconic Jane Birkin — perhaps the most quintessentially French person ever to be born outside of France — was so much more than just the namesake of a coveted Hermès bag. As a musician, too, she was more than just a coquettish co-conspirator with her onetime husband Serge Gainsbourg; she forged a long solo career that continued after they split in 1980. This orchestral, Chopin-inspired ballad is from one of their greatest collaborations, the 1969 album “Jane Birkin/Serge Gainsbourg,” but here it’s Birkin, who died on July 16 at 76, who takes the lead. (Listen on YouTube)13. Tony Bennett: “(I Left My Heart) In San Francisco”Tony Bennett was a New Yorker through and through, but for the three-minute span of this classic, you could have sworn he was a Frisco kid. Bennett, who died on July 21 at 96, showed off both the crystalline purity of his voice and his ample lung power on the song that became his most recognizable standard. (Listen on YouTube)14. Sinead O’Connor: “Black Boys on Mopeds”On July 26, music lost one of its great and most uncompromising truth tellers. The piercing voice, moral courage and fierce compassion of Sinead O’Connor are all front and center on this acoustic ballad from her second album, “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got,” a track as devastatingly relevant today as it was when she wrote it in 1990. (Listen on YouTube)15. Rodriguez: “Crucify Your Mind”The final decade of the folk singer Sixto Rodriguez’s life was a prolonged and deserved victory lap, thanks to the Oscar-winning 2012 documentary “Searching for Sugar Man,” which introduced his once-obscure music to a whole new audience. His performance of this song on “The Late Show With David Letterman,” 42 years after its release, still haunts me. (Listen on YouTube)16. Jimmy Buffett: “A Pirate Looks at Forty”The Mayor of Margaritaville left us on Sept. 1 at 76. Though best known for his party anthems, this meditation on mortality, “A Pirate Looks at Forty,” proves that Buffet was no stranger to the introspective ballad — albeit one seasoned with his own special salt. (Listen on YouTube)17. The Isley Brothers: “Livin’ in the Life”Though his brother Ronald usually sang lead, Rudolph Isley, who died on Oct. 11 at 84, provides a memorable assist on this sublimely funky single from their group’s 1977 album “Go for Your Guns.” (Listen on YouTube)18. The Pogues: “If I Should Fall From Grace With God”Music lost one of its most cantankerous poets on Nov. 30, when Shane MacGowan, the lead singer and songwriter of the Celtic punk band the Pogues, died at 65. This defiantly rousing title track from the band’s 1988 album should serve as an appropriately unsentimental requiem: “If I’m buried ’neath the sod, but the angels won’t receive me/Let me go, boys/Let me go, boys/Let me go down in the mud where the rivers all run dry.” (Listen on YouTube)To be where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“In Memoriam: Musicians We Lost in 2023” track listTrack 1: Jeff Beck, “Over the Rainbow”Track 2: David Crosby, “Laughing”Track 3: Television, “See No Evil”Track 4: Dusty Springfield, “(They Long to Be) Close to You”Track 5: Wayne Shorter, “Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum”Track 6: Yellow Magic Orchestra, “Technopolis”Track 7: Harry Belafonte, “Jamaica Farewell”Track 8: Gordon Lightfoot, “Sundown”Track 9: Tina Turner, “What’s Love Got to Do with It”Track 10: Astrud Gilberto, “Berimbau”Track 11: The Band, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”Track 12: Jane Birkin, “Jane B.”Track 13: Tony Bennett, “(I Left My Heart) In San Francisco”Track 14: Sinead O’Connor, “Black Boys on Mopeds”Track 15: Rodriguez, “Crucify Your Mind”Track 16: Jimmy Buffett, “A Pirate Looks at Forty”Track 17: The Isley Brothers, “Livin’ in the Life”Track 18: The Pogues, “If I Should Fall from Grace with God” More

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      Rodriguez, Singer Whose Career Was Resurrected, Dies at 81

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      Two albums in the early 1970s went largely unnoticed in the United States, but not overseas. Then came the 2012 documentary “Searching for Sugar Man.”Rodriguez, a Detroit musician whose songs, full of protest and stark imagery from the urban streets, failed to find an American audience in the early 1970s but resonated in Australia and especially South Africa, leading to a late-career resurgence captured in the Oscar-winning documentary “Searching for Sugar Man” in 2012, died on Tuesday. He was 81.A posting on his official website announced his death but did not say where he died or provide a cause.Rodriguez’s story was, as The New York Times put it in 2012, “a real-life tale of talent disregarded, bad luck and missed opportunities, with an improbable stop in the Hamptons and a Hollywood conclusion.”Rodriguez — who performed under just his surname but whose full name was Sixto Diaz Rodriguez — was playing bars in Detroit in the late 1960s, his folk-rock reminding those who heard it of Bob Dylan, when the producer Harry Balk signed him. In the documentary, Dennis Coffey and Mike Theodore, who would go on to produce his first album, “Cold Fact” (1970), told of hearing Rodriguez at a particularly smoky establishment called the Sewer on the Detroit River, where he was playing, as he often did, with his back to the audience.“Maybe it forced you to listen to the lyrics, because you couldn’t see the guy’s face,” Mr. Coffey said.A single released under the name “Rod Riguez” went nowhere. “Cold Fact,” released on the Sussex label, drew a smattering of favorable notices; its first track, “Sugar Man,” gave the documentary its title.“Rodriguez is a singing poet/journalist, telling stories of today,” Jim Knippenberg wrote in The Cincinnati Enquirer. “He does it with a voice much like Dylan’s, very Dylanesque imagery and a musical backing dominated almost entirely by a guitar. But he’s not a Dylan carbon. Rodriguez is much more explicit.”Mostly, though, the album went unnoticed in America, as did its follow-up a year later, “Coming From Reality.”“Getting the records cut was easy,” Rodriguez told The Sydney Morning Herald of Australia in 1979. “Getting them played was a lot harder.”Rodriguez performing in Paris in 2013. He found a fan base overseas and went on tour after the documentary was released to rave reviews.Pierre Andrieu/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHe was being interviewed by an Australian newspaper that year because, while he had settled into a life as a laborer and office worker in Detroit (though still playing bars and even running unsuccessfully for various political offices), he had — unknown to him — been developing fans overseas. Australia was one place where his music had found an audience, and in 1979 he was invited to tour there. He returned in 1981 for a few shows with the band Midnight Oil and released a live album in Australia.Rodriguez’s music had found an even bigger following in South Africa, which was still under apartheid and cut off from the rest of the world in many respects. He seemed to have no idea how popular he was there, especially among white South Africans uncomfortable with apartheid and the country’s rigidly conservative culture.“To many of us South Africans, he was the soundtrack to our lives,” Stephen Segerman, owner of a Cape Town record store, said in the documentary. “In the mid-’70s, if you walked into a random white, liberal, middle-class household that had a turntable and a pile of pop records, and if you flipped through the records, you would always see ‘Abbey Road’ by the Beatles, you’d always see ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ by Simon and Garfunkel, and you would always see ‘Cold Fact’ by Rodriguez. To us, it was one of the most famous records of all time. The message it had was ‘Be anti-establishment.’”In the mid-1990s Mr. Segerman began trying to find out more about the mysterious artist known as Rodriguez and how he had died; rumors were rampant that he had killed himself onstage, died of an overdose, and so on. He joined forces with Craig Bartholomew-Strydom, a journalist who was also searching for Rodriguez, and eventually they found the singer, still living in Detroit. A 1998 tour of South Africa followed, with Rodriguez playing six sold-out shows at 5,000-seat arenas.“It was strange seeing all those bright white faces, all of them knowing every word to every one of my songs,” he told The Sunday Telegraph of Britain in 2009.After the South Africa tour he played shows in England, Sweden and other countries. In the United States, the label Light in the Attic rereleased “Cold Fact” in 2008 and “Coming From Reality” in 2009.“Searching for Sugar Man,” which focused on two men and their search for Rodriguez, won the Oscar for best documentary feature.Sony Pictures Classics/courtesy Everett Collection
      And there was another round of rediscovery ahead. In 2012 Malik Bendjelloul released “Searching for Sugar Man,” his first and only documentary (he died in 2014), to rave reviews. The film, which won the Oscar for best documentary feature, concentrated on the search by Mr. Segerman and Mr. Bartholomew-Strydom and included an interview with Rodriguez, who in the aftermath found himself at the Hamptons International Film Festival and embarking on a fresh round of touring.Matt Sullivan founded Light in the Attic Records, which reissued Rodriguez’s albums.“His words and music were brutally honest and raw to the core,” he said by email. “It instantly struck a chord the second we heard it, and still does, nearly 20 years later.”Sixto Diaz Rodriguez was born on July 10, 1942, in Detroit. His mother, Maria, died when he was a boy. His father, Ramon, was a laborer who became a foreman at a steel plant.He said that he started playing the guitar at 16.“Of course I’ve been into Dylan forever,” he told The Times in 2012, “and also Barry McGuire, the whole ‘Eve of Destruction’ thing.”During his period of relative anonymity after the release of his albums, he earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy at Wayne State University in Detroit.Information about his survivors was not immediately available.The “Coming From Reality” album includes a song called “Cause,” a lament about hard times and life’s disappointments.“They told me everybody’s got to pay their dues,” Rodriguez sings. “And I explained that I had overpaid them.”But in the 2009 interview with The Sunday Telegraph, he was more serene about his unusual career path.“My story isn’t a rags to riches story,” he said. “It’s rags to rags, and I’m glad about that. Where other people live in an artificial world, I feel I live in the real world. And nothing beats reality.” More

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      The Enduring Appeal of Magical Mystery Musicians

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      As the elusive British singer and producer Jai Paul makes his live debut, hear songs by Sault, Burial and others.Jai Paul onstage in New York this week.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesDear listeners,On Wednesday night, I witnessed something that I never expected to see: a live performance by the mysterious British vocalist and producer Jai Paul.Paul’s music — full of glitches, strangely compressed sounds and spliced-together samples — is unmistakably a product of the digital age, yet his artistic persona could not be further from the era of social-media oversharing and streaming-service savvy. He has given one known interview, in 2011. His only full-length release was leaked, unfinished, in 2013; although it was rapturously received, the intrusion led him to suffer what he later described in a statement as “a breakdown of sorts.” After that, he retreated even further from the public eye, and didn’t officially release his album, “Leak 04-13 (Bait Ones)” — on which most tracks were still labeled “unfinished” — for six more years.What is it that enthralls us about a musical enigma? Paul’s story reminds me of other artists who have eschewed the spotlight to toil in anonymity (like the reclusive yet wildly prolific folk musician Jandek), as well as those who have chosen, much to the consternation of a rabid fan base, never to follow up a beloved record (like Neutral Milk Hotel, the band behind the adored 1998 indie-rock landmark “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” — and then not really anything else).The faster culture moves, the more we seem to revere these artists who have opted out of the musical rat race. We are bombarded each day with such a glut of information — so many songs imploring to be heard; so many links baiting us to click — that there is a relief in encountering a finite discography or an artist who forgoes the traditional promotional routines in favor of letting the art stand on its own.That was certainly apparent at the Jai Paul concert, which was only his fourth live show ever. His return was subdued in every sense — he didn’t tease the concerts with any new material, and there was an endearing awkwardness to his stage presence — but the audience respected that. In a way, we were all there to thank him for his reticence, his increasingly rare refusenik stance, and, of course, the enduring mystery of his music.Today’s playlist is a tribute to artists like Paul: an appropriately fleeting, gently melancholy collections of tracks from artists who have cultivated a certain mystique. In addition to Paul and Neutral Milk Hotel, it features the long-lost (and finally found, thanks to the Oscar-winning documentary “Searching for Sugarman”) singer-songwriter Rodriguez; the shadowy, shape-shifting R&B collective Sault; and the eventually unmasked but still cryptic British electronic musician Burial. It does not include Jandek, because it is possible to be so elusive that your albums are not on any streaming services.Listen along here on Spotify as you read.1. Jai Paul: “Str8 Outta Mumbai”The first proper song on Paul’s only album is a kinetic explosion of textures centered around an exhilarating sample of Vani Jairam’s “Bala Main Bairagan Hoongi,” which she wrote with Ravi Shankar. He closed his live show on Wednesday with it, and it was the unquestionable highlight of the set. (Listen on YouTube)2. Neutral Milk Hotel: “Holland, 1945”A crashing, calamitous tear-jerker from the underground hero Jeff Mangum’s 1998 opus, “Holland, 1945” had a brief moment in the mainstream in 2014 when Stephen Colbert chose it, in tribute to his late family members, as the final song played on “The Colbert Report.” (Listen on YouTube)3. Rodriguez: “Crucify Your Mind”For decades, a macabre rumor swirled that the Detroit-born folk singer Sixto Rodriguez had died onstage. In Malik Bendjelloul’s remarkable 2012 documentary, “Searching for Sugarman,” he discovered that Rodriguez was not only still alive, but that he was huge in South Africa. Better late than never, the film inspired a much-deserved Rodriguez revival. (Listen on YouTube)4. Sault: “Wildfires”The prolific R&B collective Sault lets its music speak for itself: no interviews, no press photos, no music videos. It’s not entirely clear who is in Sault. What is clear is that it makes passionate, purposeful and hypnotic tunes that give voice to collective struggle, like “Wildfires,” a soulful meditation on police brutality that appears on its harrowing 2020 album “Untitled (Black Is).” (Listen on YouTube)5. Burial: “Street Halo”“I’m a low-key person and I just want to make some tunes, nothing else,” Will Bevan wrote on Myspace in 2008, when he “came out” as the anonymous but influential producer Burial. (He broke a certain corner of the internet six years later, when he posted a selfie.) From his closely guarded realm of privacy, though, the London artist has released a steady stream of moody, brooding electronic music, including this rain-streaked title track from the 2011 EP “Street Halo.” (Listen on YouTube)6. Jai Paul: “Jasmine (Demo)”The stuttering production and hiccuping vocals of “Jasmine (Demo),” Paul’s second single, convey an introversion suffused with incredible longing. Like a lot of Paul’s best music, there’s a sonic shyness about it, but also a deep undercurrent of tenderness. (Listen on YouTube)I was born for the purpose that crucifies your mind,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Magical Mystery Musicians” track listTrack 1: Jai Paul, “Str8 Outta Mumbai”Track 2: Neutral Milk Hotel, “Holland, 1945”Track 3: Rodriguez, “Crucify Your Mind”Track 4: Sault, “Wildfires”Track 5: Burial, “Street Halo”Track 6: Jai Paul, “Jasmine (Demo)”Bonus tracksNew newsletter alert! Madison Malone Kircher, whose story about Taylor Swift merch I linked to in last week’s Amplifier, has just introduced a weekly missive about all things internet called It Happened Online. The first installment is out today, and it is outrageously fun. Subscribe here.I went back and forth on which Rodriguez song to include, and at the last minute, I went with “Crucify Your Mind.” But you should also listen to the one I almost chose, the poetic and heartbreaking “Cause.”“Tuesday night at Knockdown Center in Queens, nearly 2,000 people were handed something fragile and entrusted — implicitly implored — not to break it.” On Tuesday night, my colleague Jon Caramanica went to the first of Jai Paul’s two New York shows and wrote an excellent review. I also enjoyed Jia Tolentino’s report for The New Yorker, in which she wrote, astutely, “Paul’s overall vibe was that of a time traveler. He had been ahead of the past decade of music, and now he was playing a 10-year-anniversary nostalgia show that was also his debut.”And if you’re looking for even more music recommendations, this week’s Playlist has new tracks from Jack Harlow, Jessie Ware, Four Tet and more. More