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    9 Songs That Define R&B’s New Era

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    In my article on the renaissance of women in R&B, I write about a new generation of artists who are reshaping the genre, with some returning to the music’s gospel-based roots and others annexing fresh sonic territory — hybridizing with the latest hip-hop, grafting in global sounds and claiming R&B’s rightful stake in pop music today. That tells only part of the story, though, as many R&B artists resist the industry’s categorizations: While accepting the award for best country album at this year’s Grammys, Beyoncé, a 16-time winner as a solo artist in R&B categories, voiced an opinion shared by many Black artists: “I think sometimes ‘genre’ is a code word to keep us in our place.”What unites today’s R&B with music of the past is its celebration of voice. Fans don’t talk only about who can sing but about who can sang — enlisting their physical gifts and knowledge of tradition in performances that reach past exhaustion. Below is a playlist of nine songs, all released since 2020, by women artists who are extending and redefining R&B’s rich tradition.1. Muni Long’s “Make Me Forget” (2024)“Sometimes people just need to leave stuff alone when it comes to classics,” Long told me in an interview, recalling her hesitancy when the producer Tricky Stewart presented her with the instrumental for “Make Me Forget,” a spare interpolation of D’Angelo’s “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” (2000). But writing her own song on top of one of the most seductive songs (and music videos) in R&B history presented a welcome challenge. The verses tease out the terms of a fledgling relationship, working with and against old-school gender roles (“Know when to walk away / When I’d rather that you stay / Gently put me in my place / Leave when I need some space”). In the chorus, Long pleads three straight times for her new love to make her forget — the pain of her past relationship? The man before him? — only for the final line to reveal that she’s asking for him to make her forget “anything before you that didn’t feel like this.”2. Summer Walker’s “Session 33” (2021)On 2018’s “Session 32,” Walker sings about the messy process of moving on from a failed relationship (“Threw away your love letters / I thought it’d make me feel better”). The recording has all the qualities of a home demo, down to the sequenced title and the absence of the mixing and mastering of the modern studio — a conscious choice to underscore the song’s raw emotions. “Session 33” is its natural extension, but with a difference. Still an acoustic affair, featuring Walker’s voice and guitar, the recording now offers some studio sweeteners that “Session 32” lacked: echoed vocal effects, harmonic overdubs and Walker’s cleanly miked voice. “Session 33” shares with its predecessor the sense that the artist is letting us in on her creative process — as well as on her romantic life. “Should I move on since no one’s here?” she asks herself. The song never answers.3. Jazmine Sullivan’s “Pick Up Your Feelings” (2021)With her 2021 concept album, “Heaux Tales,” Sullivan gave voice to herself and many other women working against the sexist conceit, sometimes perpetuated in R&B, that women are conquests and men are conquerors. On songs like “Put It Down,” “Lost One” and, most powerfully, “Pick Up Your Feelings,” she renovates the tired theme of the no-good man by centering her own — and other women’s — empowerment. The whole album is an exercise in validating female sexual desire while also acknowledging women’s equal capacity to do dirt, all while condemning the societal double standard that lets men do the same without tarnishing their reputations. But Sullivan’s not writing an essay; she’s engaged in a vocal workout session. And her peers have taken notice: “I’ve literally watched Jazmine Sullivan videos hundreds of times, slowed them down to 0.25 speed and mapped out the note transitions on sheets of paper that end up looking like infinite stairs,” says the artist Jessie Reyez. “Hearing her sing is like watching someone make a joke out of gravity.”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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      Muni Long, Victoria Monét and Other Women Reinventing R&B

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      To accompany this article, Adam Bradley created a playlist of the songs that define R&B’s new era.THE R&B SINGER-SONGWRITER Muni Long has a voice that people say could sing the dictionary and they’d still listen. In 2007, as a teen growing up in Gifford, Fla., she put that claim to the test, recording a five-minute YouTube clip in which she sings from Webster’s II New Riverside Dictionary (“aardvark, aardwolf, Aaron …”) to the tune of Fergie’s “Glamorous” (2006). That playful stunt, along with a handful of covers, caught the attention of Capitol Records. Under her given name, Priscilla Renea, she recorded her 2009 debut, “Jukebox,” an album of pop originals that earned good reviews but modest sales. By her 22nd birthday, she no longer had a record deal. Reinventing herself as a songwriter, she spent the next decade building a chameleonic career, writing the 2013 global hit “Timber” for Pitbull and Kesha, as well as songs for Miranda Lambert, Rihanna, Madonna, Sabrina Carpenter and dozens of others.H.E.R., Coco Jones, Victoria Monét and Muni Long pay tribute to the women singer-songwriters of the 1990s and early 2000s.Megan LovalloBut Long never gave up on her own voice. In 2018, she released a slept-on country album. Then, a couple of years later, she found her way to R&B. “I think it was the only genre I hadn’t explored,” says the artist, now 36. She devised a new stage name: Muni, from the Sanskrit for “sage,” a seeker of self-knowledge, filtered through a line from the rapper 2 Chainz’s 2012 song “I’m Different” — “hair long, money long.” That juxtaposition of spirituality and the streets animates the two albums that she’s released under her chosen name: “Public Display of Affection: The Album” (2022) and “Revenge” (2024). On songs like 2021’s “Hrs & Hrs,” her breakout hit, and 2023’s “Made for Me,” Long sings about love, sex and heartache with a passion reminiscent of 1990s slow jams. “R&B hasn’t been at the forefront in over 20 years,” she says. Now’s the time to “help mold a new era.”That new R&B era is here, with women artists leading the way. Born between the late 1980s and the early 2000s, this generation of artists came of age when the music’s stars needed no last name: Whitney and Mariah, Brandy and Monica, Aaliyah and Beyoncé, all chart-topping performers with gifted, even generational, voices who steered R&B through a period defined by male-dominated rap. Today’s stars — SZA and Summer Walker, Normani and Arlo Parks, Raye and Tems, to name just a few, along with the women photographed here — are defying industry formats and fans’ expectations. Some are reviving R&B’s gospel roots, while others are claiming new sonic territory by hybridizing with hip-hop, curating global rhythms and securing the genre’s rightful claim to pop.“R&B is pop music,” Long says — a necessary reminder, given that the music industry has co-opted R&B’s most appealing qualities while relegating the genre itself to the margins. “They took the sounds and they took the swag and they made it mainstream,” she adds. As a consequence, some of R&B’s brightest stars deny the label for fear that it might restrict their audience or, worse, suggest capitulation to de facto racial segregation. “Any music I do will easily and quickly be categorized as R&B because I’m a Black woman,” the 26-year-old singer and actress Chlöe Bailey told Nylon last year. Listen to her sophomore album, “Trouble in Paradise” (2024), and you’ll hear shimmering pop production, booming hip-hop bass lines and the syncopated log drums of Afrobeats. Above all, though, you’ll hear her powerful voice, heir to a distinct tradition that she’s hesitant to claim.Coco Jones (left) and Victoria Monét were also photographed in Los Angeles on Dec. 16, 2024. Jones wears a Gucci dress, $6,900, bracelet, $1,300, bracelet, $1,150, and cuff, $920, gucci.com; Christian Louboutin shoes, $995, christianlouboutin.com; LO Collections earrings, $425, and ring, $300, dinosaurdesigns.com; and Dinosaur Designs ring, $235, dinosaurdesigns.com. Monét wears an Off-White dress, price on request, similar styles at off—white.com; Amina Muaddi shoes, $715, aminamuaddi.com; and LO Collections earrings, $280.Photograph by D’Angelo Lovell Williams. Styled by Milton David Dixon IIIWe 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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      The North to Shore Festival Comes to New Jersey

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      A new arts festival featuring local and marquee-name talent is coming to the Garden State.Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey, along with the first lady, Tammy Murphy, had a vision: A new performance festival in their home state that could rival South by Southwest in Texas or Bonnaroo in Tennessee. And they had a plan to distinguish it.“Austin and Nashville are great towns,” the governor said, referring to two famous arts hubs that are connected to notable festivals. “But if you stop to consider the cultural priorities of the states that govern them, you say, ‘Wait a minute.’ You’re hoodwinked if you get taken by the coolness.”A festival in New Jersey, they argued, would be produced in a state whose values align with issues like gun safety and reproductive rights, a bragging right difficult to come by in the south. But what organizers are really touting with the event, which is being produced for the first time this summer, is the mix of homegrown talent and national acts (Halsey, Santana, Jazmine Sullivan) performing across three different cities, from the state’s largest city to the coast.The North to Shore Festival will roam from Atlantic City to Asbury Park to Newark throughout the month. Its inaugural run will feature more than 220 acts — including music, comedy, dance and film — in 115 venues. “When you combine all the talent we have in New Jersey with the fact that our values are on the right side of history, we thought, there’s no reason we couldn’t give this a shot,” Mr. Murphy said.In May, the festival doubled in size, in part because of a commitment to local talent. Grants of up to $5,000 were handed out to 58 New Jersey-based artists.“What I love about it is that it’s a combination of the biggest names in entertainment and comedy and film,” said John Schreiber, president and chief executive of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, which is producing the festival, “but it’s also a chance to turn up the volume on the local folks I call the local heroes — the artists, the creators, the presenters, the producers — who work in these cities 365 days a year.”One example of this kind of artistic convergence is “You Got VERRRSED: NJ Poets vs. New York Poets,” which will take place in Newark on June 24, the day after Marisa Monte, a Grammy Award winner, performs there.In each host city, venues stretch beyond the familiar. Newark, for example, will host “Jersey Club 101,” a combination dance lesson and party, at Ariya Plaza Hall, a local dance club known for hosting private events and the occasional concert, on June 24.On June 9 in Atlantic City, a brewery, The Seed: A Living Beer Project, will host a multidisciplinary event, “From Earth to Cup,” with live music, pottery making and samples of its craft beers. The following afternoon at Sovereign Avenue Field, a popular skatepark, local hardcore and punk bands will play free shows in the “Back Sov Bullies Concert.”While Asbury Park’s famous rock club, the Stone Pony, will see its share of action — with Eric B. & Rakim, Brian Fallon, Demi Lovato and the B-52’s all scheduled to perform — stages at the lesser-known Watermark, down the street, will also be in heavy rotation and can expect to see more traffic than usual.Alexander Simone and his seven-piece band, the Whodat? Live Crew, will play there on June 14. Mr. Simone, 34, who is from the area and the grandson of Nina Simone, won a grant to take part in North to Shore with the band, which leans toward funk and R&B, after being nominated by local fans. The recognition confirmed something he already knew: “I am definitely one of the most known bands in this community,” he said.Now he hopes that other parts of the country will pay more attention to his music. “Artists are coming this way, to Jersey, and bringing people with them the way South by Southwest brings people to Texas,” he said. “They’re coming to see what we have to offer on this end.”Billboards along the Garden State Parkway and the New Jersey Turnpike are promoting the festival. Mr. Schreiber said he expects more than 350,000 people to attend. The overall windfall for New Jersey’s economy, he added, could be $100 million. “We’re betting the economic impact in all three of these communities will far outweigh any of the investment we have to make,” Mr. Murphy said.Amanda Towers, a founder of the Seed, a Living Beer Project, which will host a multidisciplinary event with music, pottery and beer in Atlantic City.Jennifer Pottheiser for The New York TimesNatalie Merchant, accompanied by New York City’s Orchestra of St. Luke’s, will perform in Newark on June 25. “I think it’s really ambitious and impressive,” she said of the idea behind the festival.But her decision to participate did not have much to do with performing in a liberal-leaning state, Ms. Merchant said. “I tend to not penalize my fans in states with political conditions like abortion restrictions.” Instead, “I talk about them onstage.”The North to Shore Festival will take place June 4-11 in Atlantic City, June 14-18 in Asbury Park and June 21-25 in Newark. More

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      Jazmine Sullivan’s Meditation on Courage, and 10 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Charlie Puth, Chloe Moriondo, Kali Uchis 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.Jazmine Sullivan, ‘Stand Up’“Stand Up,” from the soundtrack to the film “Till,” captures an awakening sense of courage and purpose with a melody that expands upward and rhythms that coalesce from a tentative waltz to an insistent 6/8. Jazmine Sullivan’s voice is grainy, improvisatory and increasingly determined; at the end, it becomes a choir of solidarity, declaring, “Someone’s counting on you.” JON PARELESJamila Woods, ‘Boundaries’With a syncopated acoustic guitar at its core, Jamila Woods’s “Boundaries” could have been an easygoing bossa nova. Instead, it’s laced with nervous undercurrents of percussion and bass, playing up the ambivalence of a song that’s pondering just how close to let a relationship get. “It’s safer on the outside/I’d hate to find a reason I should leave,” Woods argues. But she leaves the song unresolved, as if her decision might not be final. PARELESCharlie Puth, ‘Marks on My Neck’If the songs on “Charlie,” the new album by Charlie Puth, sound familiar, it’s because no pop star shows their drafts quite like Puth does, revealing both his personality and his process. “Marks on My Neck” began as a TikTok in November 2021 — Puth, his hair bouncing, told a lightly intimate story, and showed off the early stages of putting together a song about what had happened to him. The final product is chirpy in a way the sentiment isn’t, but it’s in keeping with Puth’s recent turn to the saccharine, his zest for process sometimes outstripping his appetite for pain. JON CARAMANICAChloe Moriondo, ‘Dress Up’The new Chloe Moriondo album, “Suckerpunch,” is jubilantly chaotic — the production leans much further into hyperpop muscle than her previous work, and her songwriting is rowdier and looser. Take “Dress Up,” a part-sung, part-rapped Disney evil-princess theme song that nods to Doja Cat, Kim Petras, maybe Kitty Pryde. It’s astute pop, and also an astute read on the state of contemporary pop. CARAMANICASpecial Interest, ‘Foul’Warehouse labor barks its discontents in “Foul” by the New Orleans post-punk band Special Interest. Over a crescendo of gnashing guitar noise and thumping, clattering drum-machine beats, Maria Elena (guitar) and Alli Logout (vocals) shout terse lines back and forth — “Short staffed/Overworked/Sleep deprived/It’s an art” — until they work themselves up to righteous, well-earned screams. PARELESKali Uchis, ‘La Unica’“Unica — you know I’m the only one,” Kali Uchis sings, in one of the few English lyrics to this skeletal, bilingual, rapped and sung track. It’s a computer construction of programmed beats, sampled flute lines and disembodied voices behind Uchis’s supremely blasé lead vocal. The song feels grounded in Afro-Colombian tradition, even as it flaunts every bit (and byte) of its processing. PARELESLil Yachty, ‘Poland’“Poland” is a wobbly sound experiment from Lil Yachty, one of hip-hop’s most flexible performers. Here he leans into a digitized warble, delivering a dreamlike incantation with an undercurrent of silliness. Is it a song? An idea? A demo? A joke? It no longer matters — those are yesterday’s distinctions. CARAMANICAArima Ederra, ‘Steel Wing’“My refugee blood/You can’t take my freedom,” Arima Ederra sings in “Steel Wing,” a song about leaving home to prove herself. Ederra is the daughter of Ethiopian refugees, born in Atlanta and now based in Los Angeles, where she has found fellow pop experimenters. “Steel Wing,” from her new album “An Orange-Colored Day,” opens with a loose-limbed beat and a low-fi, not-quite-in-tune guitar lick. The song blooms into full-fledged reggae, but doesn’t settle there; it dissolves into a hand-clapping beat and echoey piano chords, with a few words from Ederra’s mother at the end. Ederra may be away from home, but the family connection holds. PARELESCourtney Marie Andrews, ‘Thinkin’ on You’Pure fondness peals from “Thinkin’ on You,” a song with an unambiguous sentiment about a temporary separation. “While you’re away, I’ll be thinkin’ on you,” Courtney Marie Andrews sings in a grandly retro production that stacks folk-rock guitars, pedal steel curlicues and a string-section arrangement over a girl-group beat. She sings “Ooh, ooh,” with a cowgirl yip, fully confident of an impending reunion. PARELESJohanna Warren, ‘Tooth for a Tooth’“Tooth for a Tooth” is the outlier on Johanna Warren’s new album, “Lessons for Mutants,” which is mostly volatile, guitar-centered indie-rock. Instead, “Tooth for a Tooth” is a slow-swaying piano ballad — with upright bass and brushed drums — that tries to find solace after a breakup: “I’d rather be lonely and empowered/Than on a cross or devoured,” she croons. The piano closely follows her vocal line, kindly offering unspoken support. PARELESMidwife, ‘Sickworld’Stasis is an illusion in “Sickworld,” a wistful, lush meditation by Madeline Johnston, who records as Midwife. “Don’t tell me about the future/Don’t ask me about the past,” she whisper-sings, “I don’t want to stay here/But I can’t go back. The structure is elementary — two chords, arpeggiated for four bars each — but Johnston enfolds them in layers that waft by like fog banks: guitar, piano, voices, strings, all of them substantial and then ephemeral. PARELES More

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      What We Forgot to Talk About in 2021

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherTaylor, Drake, Olivia, Adele, Billie, Lil Nas X, Sondheim, Kanye, Kacey: Popcast has covered them all in the past 12 months. In the second year of the coronavirus pandemic, pop music returned to something like normal, with big stars releasing albums and returning to the road (at least for now). There was quite a lot to talk about.On this week’s Popcast, a loose round table about some of the year’s musical high points that haven’t yet been discussed on the show: the global breakthrough of Maneskin, the ascendance of Jazmine Sullivan, the resilience of Kelly Clarkson, some left field TikTok high points and the musical stylings of Candiace Dillard of “The Real Housewives of Potomac.”Guests:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterCaryn Ganz, The New York Times’s pop music editorConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      Earl Sweatshirt Exhibits His Evolution, and 14 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by FKA twigs, Makaya McCraven, Hazel English 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.Earl Sweatshirt, ‘2010’In 2010, Earl Sweatshirt released his debut mixtape, “Earl,” and his new song titled for that moment in time shows how much he’s evolved while still retaining his sagely iconoclastic spirit. Earl’s more recent releases — “Some Rap Songs” from 2018; “Feet of Clay” from 2019 — have represented his music at its most avant-garde, moving through murky, collagelike atmospheres in a constant state of transformation. “2010,” though, is more straightforward and sustained, with an understated beat from the producer Black Noise that allows Earl to lock into a hypnotic flow. The succinctly poetic imagery (“crescent moon wink, when I blinked it was gone”) and strangely satisfying plain-spoken admissions (“walked outside, it was still gorgeous”) pour out of him as steadily as water from a tap. LINDSAY ZOLADZFKA twigs featuring Central Cee, ‘Measure of a Man’This song’s distinctive descending chord progression, dramatic swells and even its lyrics — “the measure of a hero is the measure of a man” — could make it a James Bond theme. That’s a sign of FKA twigs’s overarching ambitions, her willingness to engage carnality and idealism, and how carefully she gauges the gradations of her voice in every phrase. JON PARELESHazel English, ‘Nine Stories’Call it a meet twee: “You lent me ‘Nine Stories,’ while you starred in mine,” the Australian-born, California-based musician Hazel English sings at the beginning of her ode to every artsy teen’s favorite J.D. Salinger book. The track is a three-minute dream-pop reverie, obscuring lyrics wryly bookish enough for a Belle & Sebastian song beneath a swirl of jangly guitars and shyly murmured vocals. It’s also something of an act of nostalgia, finding the 30-year-old conjuring the sounds and memories of her high school days: “Now that I’m falling, I can’t ignore it,” she sings sweetly, sounding as blissfully crush-struck as a teenager. ZOLADZHorsegirl, ‘Billy’The young Chicago trio Horsegirl is proof that the shaggy-dog spirit of Gen X indie rock is alive and well within a certain subset of Gen Z. Nora Cheng and Penelope Lowenstein’s overlapping vocals are buried beneath a dissonant avalanche of “Daydream Nation”-esque guitars, but enough lyrical imagery comes to the surface to create a strangely poetic impression of their titular character on this stand-alone single, their first release since signing to Matador Records. “He washes off his robes in preparation to be crucified,” Cheng intones, while Lowenstein’s more melodic vocal line adds additional texture to the song’s enveloping, shoegaze-y atmosphere. ZOLADZBen LaMar Gay featuring Ayanna Woods, ‘Touch. Don’t Scroll’On “Touch. Don’t Scroll,” Ben LaMar Gay and Ayanna Woods, two musical polymaths from Chicago, sing about trying to stay connected to each other in an overcorrected world. “Now, baby, I will never leave you ’lone/Oh, can you hear me or are you on your phone?” they drone in unison, an octave apart, over a syncopated beat and lightly twinkling electronics. The track is nestled deep within “Open Arms to Open Us,” Gay’s latest album and probably his most broadly appealing, pulling together influences from country blues, Afro-Brazilian percussion, puckish Chicago free jazz and 2000s indie-rock. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOCardi B, ‘Bet It’“Bet It,” from the soundtrack to Halle Berry’s directorial debut “Bruised,” is only the second solo single Cardi B has released this year. And while it’s nowhere near as fun or inspired than that previous hit, “Up,” “Bet It” is more like a braggadocios status update on Cardi’s recent past, taking in her Grammy wins and her memorable Met Gala appearance in a dress with a “tail so long it drag 30 minutes after.” ZOLADZMorray featuring Benny the Butcher, ‘Never Fail’An impressively feverish turn from Morray, whose 2020 breakout single “Quicksand” leaned toward the spiritual. Here, though, he’s ferocious, rapping with a scratchy yelp and a sense of defiance. He’s accompanied by Benny the Butcher, who is among the calmest-sounding boasters in hip-hop. An unexpected and unexpectedly effective pairing. JON CARAMANICAFrank Dukes, ‘Likkle Prince’The producer Frank Dukes — who’s made understated, hauntingly melodic work with Frank Ocean, the Weeknd, Rihanna and many others — is releasing “The Way of Ging,” his first project under his own name. It’s an album of beats — a beat tape, as they used to say — that’s available for a limited time online, and will eventually be removed from the internet and available only as a set of NFTs. “Likkle Prince” channels early ’80s electro along with some squelched disco majesty. It’s spooky and propulsive. CARAMANICAunderscores, ‘Everybody’s Dead!’A rousing and trippy burst of hyperpop mayhem, “Everybody’s Dead!” is a new single from underscores, who earlier this year released “Fishmonger,” an excellent, scrappy, and puckish debut album. CARAMANICAMicrohm, ‘Spooky Actions’The Mexico City sound artist Microhm, born Leslie Garcia, produced “Spooky Actions” and its accompanying EP using only modular synths. The result feels like hurtling through a Black Hole, where sound and time warp into quantum dislocation. Ambient textures swirl over the lurch of steady drum kicks, as the moments drip into oblivion. ISABELIA HERRERALeon Bridges featuring Jazmine Sullivan, ‘Summer Rain’Leon Bridges looks back to Sam Cooke’s soul; Jazmine Sullivan can go back to the scat-singing of bebop. They trade verses over a slow-motion beat and rhythm guitar in “Summer Rain” to evoke endless conjugal bliss, urging each other “don’t stop now,” for less under minutes of suspended time meant to play on repeat. PARELESIbeyi featuring Pa Salieu, ‘Made of Gold’Ibeyi’s music has always harnessed a sense of ancestral knowledge: The Afro-Cuban French twins grew up listening to Yoruba folk songs that channel the spirit of enslaved people brought to the Caribbean over the middle passage. But their new single, “Made of Gold,” featuring the Ghanian British rapper Pa Salieu, trades the simple but potent piano and cajón for a celestial, spectral otherworldliness. Culling references to the Yoruba deities Shango and Yemaya, as well as Frida Kahlo and the ancient Egyptian “Book of the Dead,” the duo summons power from intergenerational sources to shield them. “Oh you with a spine, who would work your mouth against this Magic of mine,” they intone. “It has been handed down in an unbroken line.” HERRERASting, ‘Loving You’Sting’s new album, “The Bridge,” often harks back to the jazz-folk-Celtic-pop hybrids he forged on his first solo albums in the 1980s; one song, “Harmony Road,” even features a saxophone solo from Branford Marsalis, who was central to “The Dream of the Blue Turtles” in 1985. Many of the new songs lean toward parable and metaphor, but not “Loving You,” a husband’s confrontation with the cheating wife he still loves: “We made vows inside the church to forgive each others’ sins,” he sings. “But there are things I have to endure like the smell of another man’s skin.” Written with the British electronic musician Maya Jane Coles, the track confines itself to two chords and a brittle beat, punctuated by faraway arpeggios and tones that emerge like unwanted memories; it’s memorably bleak. PARELESSingle Girl, Married Girl, ‘Scared to Move’With patient arpeggios and soothing bass notes, the harpist and composer Mary Lattimore builds a grandly meditative edifice behind Chelsey Coy, the songwriter and singer at the core of Single Girl, Married Girl, in “Scared to Move.” It’s from the new album “Three Generations of Leaving.” Cale’s multitracked harmonies promise, “In a strange new half-light, I will be your guide” as Lattimore’s harp patterns construct a glimmering path forward. PARELESMakaya McCraven, ‘Tranquillity’“Deciphering the Message,” Makaya McCraven’s first LP for Blue Note Records, could easily get you thinking of “Shades of Blue,” Madlib’s classic 2003 album remixing old tracks from that label’s jazz archive. On “Deciphering,” McCraven — a drummer, producer and beat dissector — digs through 13 tracks from the label’s catalog and attacks them through his personal method of remixing and pastiche. “Deciphering” crackles with McCraven’s sonic signatures: viscid ambience, restlessly energetic drumming, the recognizable sounds of his longtime collaborators (Marquis Hill on trumpet, Matt Gold on guitar, Joel Ross on vibraphone, et al). “Tranquillity” stems from a track by the vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, from his 1966 album “Components,” and McCraven’s intervention is two-pronged: He doubles down on the original’s curved-glass effect, adding whispery trumpet and fluttering flute atop the original track, but his own drums — kinetic, unrelenting — keep the energy at a rolling boil. RUSSONELLO More

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      Ed Sheeran’s Glossy Late-Night Pop, and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Willow, Helado Negro, Low 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.Ed Sheeran, ‘Bad Habits’In the video for his new single “Bad Habits,” Ed Sheeran boldly declares, “We live in a society.” Though I could have lived my life contentedly without ever seeing the British musician dressed as a glittery, high-flying hybrid of the Joker, Edward Cullen and Elton John, the track itself is a reminder of Sheeran’s knack for sleek songcraft. “My bad habits lead to late nights, sitting alone,” he sings over the kind of brooding chords and insistent, minimalist beat that suggests that pop music will continue to exist in the shadow of the Weeknd’s “After Hours” for at least another trip around the sun. “Bad Habits” doesn’t quite have the fangs that its video incongruously promises, but it’s a well-executed, safe-bet pop song squarely in Sheeran’s comfort zone, which is to say that it already sounds like a smash. LINDSAY ZOLADZWillow, ‘Lipstick’Willow Smith’s swerve into rock continues, abetted by the drums of Travis Barker from Blink-182. Their first collaboration, “Transparent Soul,” was straightforwardly vengeful pop-punk that proved she could belt. “Lipstick” is more idiosyncratic, with angular vocal lines overlapping stop-start guitar blasts of thick, jazzy chords. The sentiments are more complicated, too, juggling confusion, pain and euphoria; it’s cranked up loud, but it’s full of second thoughts. JON PARELESColleen Green, ‘I Wanna Be a Dog’The Los Angeles indie musician Colleen Green has a history of playfully talking back to her punk elders: The title of her first album riffed on that of an iconic Descendents record and featured a song called “I Wanna Be Degraded”; in 2019, she released a gloriously lo-fi cover album of Blink-182’s “Dude Ranch.” So judging by its name, the first single from her forthcoming album “Cool” would seem to be a provocative sneer in the direction of a certain Stooges classic. Except it’s not, really: “I Wanna Be a Dog” is instead a catchy, funny and straightforwardly earnest song about … how nice it would be to be a dog. In a voice that balances self-deprecation with wry humor, Green figures she’s already halfway there: “Each year aging more quickly, but I always still feel so naïve/And I get so bored when no one’s playing with me.” ZOLADZWye Oak, ‘Its Way With Me’Jenn Wasner has released an extraordinary album this year, “Head of Roses,” in her solo guise as Flock of Dimes. Back in Wye Oak, her longtime duo with Andy Stack, she continues to merge intricate music with openhearted emotion. In the gorgeous “Its Way With Me,” a rippling seven-beat guitar line circles throughout the song, as horns and strings waft in and out and Wasner sings, with aching determination, about accepting what life might bring yet staying true to herself. PARELESWet Leg, ‘Chaise Longue’“Chaise Longue” is the semi-absurdist and deliriously catchy debut single from Wet Leg, an intriguing new duo from the Isle of Wight. In their sound and in the self-directed video for this song, Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers are agents of controlled, charismatic chaos. “Chaise Longue” struts a fine line between deadpan restraint and zany freakout, faux-naivety and winking knowingness (“I went to school and I got the big D … I got the big D”). They’re one of those new bands whose sound and aesthetic seem to have arrived fully formed, promising exciting if totally unpredictable things to come. ZOLADZHelado Negro, ‘Gemini and Leo’The music of Helado Negro (Roberto Carlos Lange) has always had a bit of an interstellar quality to it: soft, sci-fi hymns that harness the medicinal possibilities of sound and melody. For “Gemini and Leo,” the new single from his forthcoming album “Far In,” the Brooklyn artist fully ascends into a world of galactic disco. Glossy synths and a syncopated bass line shimmer into a prismatic dance-floor strut. “We can move in slow motion. We can take our time in cosmic balance,” Lange hums. It’s a reminder to embrace tenderness and affection — in love, but also in our relationship to a world still coming to terms with a year of grief. ISABELIA HERRERAHyzah, ‘Dan Mi (Pass Me the Lighter)’Hyzah, a 19-year-old Nigerian rapper and singer, has followed through on a 49-second street-side freestyle that got hundreds of thousands of views after a signal boost from Drake, who must have appreciated both its melodic hook and its sprint into double-time rapping. “Dan Mi” turns the freestyle into a full-length song. As Hyzah sings about trouble, flirtation and ganja, he fills out the song’s modal melody above a peppery Afrobeats track, produced by Ogk n’ Steaks, that sends percussion, voices and synthesized horns ricocheting across the beat in a rush of cross-rhythms. PARELESLow, ‘Days Like These’The new Low song is almost unbearably stirring, a meditation on hope and decay that sounds like a pop-gospel track run through William Basinski’s “Disintegration Loops.” If “Double Negative” from 2018 proved that these indie lifers were still finding uncharted frontiers in their spacious sound nearly three decades into their band’s existence, this first taste of their forthcoming album “Hey What” shows once again that they’re not finished discovering exhilaratingly new ways to sound exactly like themselves. ZOLADZJazmine Sullivan, ‘Tragic’“Tragic” picks up the thread Jazmine Sullivan started on her excellent 2021 album “Heaux Tales,” a record as multi-vocal and casually chatty as a particularly active group chat. “Why do you be looking for me to do all the work?” Sullivan sings here in a weary voice, addressing the less-giving half of a lopsided relationship. But the chorus finds her asserting her own solution, in the form of a tuneful and infectious mantra: “Reclaim, reclaim, reclaiming my time.” ZOLADZJim Lauderdale, ‘Memory’A final collaboration between Robert Hunter, the Grateful Dead’s lyricist who died in 2019, and Jim Lauderdale, who also wrote many songs with him, is, fittingly, an Americana elegy: “You’re with me wherever I go, deep down inside my soul.” The music is twangy and somber, a march floated by pedal steel guitar, and many lines begin with a grainy, fervent hope: “Long live …” PARELESMabe Fratti, ‘Nadie Sabe’Mabe Fratti is a composer, cellist and singer from Guatemala who now lives in Mexico, and “Nadie Sabe” (“Nobody Knows”) is from her new album “Será que Ahora Podremos Entendernos?”: “Will we be able to understand each other now?” Fratti works with layers of repeating cello motifs, plucked and bowed; with layers of guileless vocals, verbal and wordless; and with keyboards that spotlight or float against her Minimalist structures. There are echoes of songwriters like Arthur Russell and Juana Molina. In “Nadie Sabe,” she sings about the moon, about presence and disorientation, about dark dreams and shifting realities; the pulse of the music carries her through them all. PARELESMarc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog, ‘Maple Leaf Rage’On parts of “Hope,” the guitarist Marc Ribot’s new album with his trio Ceramic Dog, the band works like a hyperactive jukebox, stuffing its original tunes with rock ’n’ roll references, reggae guitar, half-rapped lyrics that hark back to the Beats and occasional jam-band grooves. The second half of the album is quieter and less peripatetic. The band might be at its most concise on the album’s longest track, “Maple Leaf Rage,” a Ribot tune that has been in its book for years. For the first half of these 13 minutes and 30 seconds, the trio plays as if at a secret meeting, the drummer Ches Smith using brushes and the bassist Shahzad Ismaily playing in unforced, staccato chords. Then a beat kicks in, Ribot trades in his reverb for a heavy dose of distortion and the band starts marching. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOEli Keszler, ‘The Accident’Eli Kezler, who has provided ultraprecise percussion for Oneohtrix Point Never, is also a composer on his own. His new solo album, “Icons,” is filled with instrumental pieces that are suspended between nervous energy and what might be post-apocalyptic calm. “The Accident” wraps brisk quasi-breakbeats in thoroughly ambiguous electric-piano chords and slow-motion whooshes, hurtling ahead toward unknown consequences. PARELES More

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      The Weeknd’s Super Bowl Halftime Show Breaks With Tradition

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Weeknd’s Super Bowl Halftime Show Breaks With TraditionThis time, the field won’t be swarming with fans crowding the stage. In fact, the stage won’t be on the field at all, but in the stands.The Weeknd in concert. He will be headlining the Super Bowl halftime show in Tampa on Sunday.Credit…Hayoung Jeon/EPA, via ShutterstockJulia Jacobs and Feb. 4, 2021, 3:09 p.m. ETWhether it stars Al Hirt, Michael Jackson or Beyoncé, the Super Bowl halftime show has always taken center stage on the field.But for the first time in the 55-year history of the game, the Weeknd, who is headlining this Sunday in Tampa, Fla., will perform on a stage set up in the stands in keeping with strict coronavirus protocols intended to limit contact with the players and coaches; his act may, however, include a brief interlude on the field.In a typical year, a massive stage is rolled onto the field and hundreds of fans pour out to surround it; this year only about 1,050 people are expected to work to put on the show, compared with 2,000 to 3,000 most years. Performers and crew members will receive Covid-19 tests before rehearsals and before the performance.When he strode to the microphone Thursday at a news conference, the Weeknd took in the room and noted, “It’s kind of empty.” His words were perhaps a preview of how the stadium might look to people watching from home. (About 25,000 fans will be in the stadium — less than half its 65,000-person capacity — joined by thousands of two-dimensional cardboard cutouts of fans provided by the N.F.L.)The Weeknd (Abel Tesfaye), is a 30-year-old Canadian pop star known for hits including “Can’t Feel My Face” and “Starboy.” His concerts often have a brooding feel and a dark, avant-garde edge. (The music video for his latest hit, “Blinding Lights,” opens with the Weeknd laughing maniacally, his face covered in blood.) He said that his halftime show would incorporate some of his trademark artistic themes but that he plans to be “respectful to the viewers at home.”“The story will continue,” he said, “but definitely we’ll keep it PG for the families.”This will be the second Super Bowl halftime show produced in part by Jay-Z and his entertainment company, Roc Nation, who were recruited by the N.F.L. in 2019. At the time, performers were refusing to work with the league, in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who began kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial injustice.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Jazmine Sullivan Ponders Love and Materialism on ‘Heaux Tales’

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s PickJazmine Sullivan Ponders Love and Materialism on ‘Heaux Tales’The singer and songwriter’s first album in five years is also her bleakest.Spoken-word “tales” from six women are followed by songs that flesh them out as character studies on Jazmine Sullivan’s “Heaux Tales.”Credit…Myesha Evon GardnerJan. 7, 2021Updated 12:55 p.m. ETHeaux TalesNYT Critic’s PickJazmine Sullivan has never prettified romance. In her songs, love nearly always leads to pain: rejection, infidelity, heartbreak, violence. She opened her 2008 debut album, “Fearless,” with “Bust Your Windows,” taking revenge on a cheating boyfriend, and a few songs later, the singer ends ongoing domestic abuse with murder. Her narrators don’t spare anyone who wrongs them; they don’t forgive their own failings either.Sullivan’s music carries the churchy, high-stakes emotionality and down-to-earth detail of vintage Southern soul into the everyday situations and electronic soundscapes of hip-hop. And in case no one noticed before, her fourth and bleakest album, “Heaux Tales” — arriving five years after “Reality Show” — makes clear that her stories were never meant to be hers alone.“Heaux Tales” is schematic, a successor to didactic concept albums like “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” and the visual version of Beyoncé’s “Lemonade.” Spoken-word “tales” from six women — confessions and hard-earned observations — are followed by songs that flesh them out as character studies. (Although the spoken-word tracks get some accompaniment from electronic beats and gospel organ, the songs alone stand up far better to repeated listening.)“Heaux” is a Frenchified version of “ho,” placing a longtime insult at an analytical distance. In the songs on “Heaux Tales,” Sullivan looks behind dismissive stereotypes — party girl, avenger, sex addict, gold digger, cheater, castoff — to show complicated human longings behind them.Sullivan released “Pick Up Your Feelings” in November in two versions: as the album’s audio track and as a live version. It’s a cutting, unforgiving farewell to a cheating lover, by no means the first in her catalog. “I deserve so much more than you gave to me/Now I’m saving me,” she declares to someone she’s caught “double dippin’.”The live version, with Sullivan accompanied only by electric guitar and backup singers, matches virtuosity to vehemence as she switches among long swoops, cascading runs, quick jazzy syllables and wide leaps. The album track, with drums, retro-sounding strings and disorienting studio-reversed piano chords, is more dismissive and colder in its fury; Sullivan flings short phrases like a knife-thrower.But the righteous anger of a breakup is one of the album’s easier stances. Other songs venture into trickier, more ambivalent territory. In “Lost One” the singer is the betrayer; it’s a confession of pure despair, moaned in Sullivan’s low register over a hollowly echoing guitar, as she watches the one she cheated on have rebound affairs and begs, “Try not to love no one.”She also embraces female desire as compulsion and challenge. In “Put It Down,” Sullivan sings in crisp, near-rap cadences about letting lust override all her better judgment, while in “On It,” she and Ari Lennox coo over a slow-swaying groove as they tease a lover to “prove why you deserve it,” adding some hints on technique.And with some spoken-word goading, Sullivan ponders the ways sex can turn into a material transaction — being a “heaux” — in “Pricetags,” “The Other Side” and “Girl Like Me.” In “Pricetags,” the singer’s simple greed is answered by Anderson .Paak with comic, escalating exasperation. “The Other Side” has a more sympathetic narrator. She’s broke and struggling, with her voice yearning and sailing upward as she sings, “I got dreams to buy expensive things”; then, over a brisker beat, she reveals her plan to “move to Atlanta” and “find me a rapper” who can afford all her imagined luxuries.Sullivan ties the album’s themes together in its finale, “Girl Like Me.” Joined by H.E.R., with their voices overlapping over a handful of syncopated, descending guitar chords, the singer is wounded and adrift. Her boyfriend moved on with no explanation, leaving her insecure about her body and wondering what he wanted: “What you asked I would have given.” She’s sure “It ain’t right how these hos be winning,” then reconsiders: “That’s what you wanted, that’s what you get/A ho I’ll be.”It’s not a happy ending, much less a role model’s advice. It’s just a way for one scarred character, on an album full of them, to persevere.Jazmine Sullivan“Heaux Tales”(RCA) AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More