More stories

  • in

    Jennifer Lopez and Black Keys Tour Cancellations Raise Questions for Industry

    High-profile cancellations from Jennifer Lopez and the Black Keys have armchair analysts talking. But industry insiders say live music is still thriving.For the concert business, 2023 was a champagne-popping year. The worst of the pandemic comfortably in the rearview, shows big and small were selling out, with mega-tours by Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Drake and Bruce Springsteen pushing the industry to record ticket sales.This year, as with much of the economy, success on the road seems more fragile. A string of high-profile cancellations, and slow sales for some major events, have raised questions about an overcrowded market and whether ticket prices have simply gotten too expensive.Most conspicuously, Jennifer Lopez and the Black Keys have canceled entire arena tours. In the case of the Black Keys — a standby of rock radio and a popular touring draw for nearly two decades — the fallout has been severe enough that the band dismissed its two managers, the industry giant Irving Azoff and Steve Moir, those men confirmed through a representative.At Coachella, usually so buzzy that it sells out well before any performers are announced, tickets for the second of the California festival’s two weekends were still available by the time it opened in April.Those issues have stoked headlines about a concert business that may be in trouble. But the reality, many insiders say, is more complex, with no simple explanation for problems on a range of tours, and a business that may be leveling out after a couple of extraordinary years when fans rushed to shows after Covid-19 shutdowns.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

  • in

    The Justin Timberlake Conundrum

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicJustin Timberlake’s sixth solo album, “Everything I Thought It Was,” has been met with a rather unusual amount of critical dismissal as well as weaker than usual sales, becoming his first solo release to miss No. 1 since “Justified” in 2002. Timberlake, once the most prominent male star in American pop music, has become something of a musical afterthought in recent years.That is connected to his musical choices, to be sure, but also to a larger social-cultural backlash in the wake of public re-evaluations of his relationship with Britney Spears, and how he navigated the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show incident that sent Janet Jackson into exile and largely left him unscathed.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the state of Timberlake’s music career, the long stretch of time during which he left his roles in the Jackson incident and Spears relationship publicly unexamined, and what, if any, paths forward remain for him musically and beyond.Guests:Steven J. Horowitz, senior music writer at VarietyJoshunda Sanders, an author and former columnist at the San Francisco ChronicleConnect 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

  • in

    Ariana Grande Beats Kacey Musgraves and Justin Timberlake on the Chart

    “Everything I Thought It Was,” Justin Timberlake’s first new album since “Man of the Woods” six years ago, opens in fourth place.Ariana Grande holds the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s album chart this week with “Eternal Sunshine,” beating out new releases by Kacey Musgraves and Justin Timberlake.“Eternal Sunshine,” Grande’s first new studio album in almost four years, stays at the top for a second time with the equivalent of just over 100,000 sales in the United States, including 115 million streams and 13,000 copies sold as a complete package, according to the tracking service Luminate.Grande’s total was down 56 percent from its opening week, giving it enough — by a thin margin — to succeed over Musgraves’s “Deeper Well,” which started with the equivalent of 97,000. “Deeper Well,” Musgraves’s second LP since winning album of the year at the Grammys in 2019 with “Golden Hour,” starts at No. 2 with 38 million streams and 66,000 copies sold. Those sales included 37,000 copies of the album’s nine vinyl editions — among them a picture disc showing cardinals in a tree and another featuring “scented sleeves.”“Everything I Thought It Was,” Timberlake’s first new album since “Man of the Woods” six years ago, opens in fourth place with the equivalent of 67,000 sales. It is Timberlake’s first solo studio album not to make it to No. 1 since “Justified,” which went to second place in 2002.Also this week, Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” is No. 3 and Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season” is No. 5. More

  • in

    Justin Timberlake Looks Back but Doesn’t Reckon on ‘Everything I Thought It Was’

    On “Everything I Thought It Was,” his sixth solo album, this artist feigns new vulnerability but relies on old tricks and his ’N Sync bandmates.Shortly before writing the song that would become his first single in six years, Justin Timberlake worked with his musical director Adam Blackstone on an arrangement of John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy,” in the style of Donny Hathaway’s famous cover.As they rehearsed the version that Timberlake would sing at a small jazz club where Blackstone had a residency, they discussed the song and, as Timberlake recounted in a recent interview with Zane Lowe, “the idea that you just don’t hear that from men often — that they would express an emotion that makes them vulnerable.” Inspired by Lennon and Hathaway’s soul-baring, the lyrics to “Selfish,” the lead single from Timberlake’s new album, “Everything I Thought It Was,” began to pour out.A truly vulnerable Justin Timberlake — one stripped of the Teflon charm that has coated his music and career thus far — is a tantalizing concept, especially at this moment. In the years since his minor 2018 misstep “Man of the Woods,” Timberlake’s image has tarnished somewhat. Audiences are reconsidering mid-2000s pop cultural events like the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction seen ’round the world at the Super Bowl halftime in 2004, and the media’s cruel treatment of Britney Spears, Timberlake’s ex-girlfriend.In February 2021, amid the re-evaluation of Spears’s career and nearing the end of her court-ordered conservatorship, Timberlake posted a long, since-deleted statement on Instagram, apologizing specifically to Jackson and Spears. He added, “I am deeply sorry for the times in my life where my actions contributed to the problem, where I spoke out of turn or did not speak up for what is right.”Is “Selfish” a musical reckoning with all of this? Well, not exactly. The song does bear some sonic hallmarks of introspection: It’s muted, minor-keyed and sung in a slightly deflated tone. But, lyrically, Timberlake seems to have confused vulnerability with humblebragging. “It’s bad for my mental,” he sings in his nimble croon. “But I can’t fight it when you’re out lookin’ like you do, but you can’t hide it.” This is not exactly a soundtrack for dismantling masculine bravado: The song’s most intimate confession is that Timberlake gets jealous when other men look at his girl — and that they are always looking at his girl, because damn, she is hot.Still, the song debuted at the respectable, if not spectacular, position of No. 19 on the Billboard Hot 100, and, after he performed it on the Jan. 27 episode of “Saturday Night Live,” it was warmly received by one unexpected well-wisher. “I am in love with Justin Timberlake’s new song ‘Selfish,’” Spears wrote on Instagram the next day, in a post where she also apologized “for some of the things I wrote about in my book.”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

  • in

    Popcast (Deluxe): Pop Stars vs. the Attention Economy

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:The new Jennifer Lopez album “This Is Me … Now,” and an accompanying film, “This Is Me…Now: A Love Story,” that covers her romantic biography in intimate and sometimes unexpected and extravagant detailWhat belongs on the Mount Rushmore of Lopez’s careerConfusing rollouts for other pop stars including Dua Lipa, Justin Timberlake and Camila Cabello.The new album from the rapper Yeat, “2093”The up-from-the-bottom success of recent songs by Teddy Swims and Benson BooneNew songs from Lainey Wilson and John Summit feat. HaylaSnack of the weekConnect 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

  • in

    13 New Songs: Justin Timberlake’s ‘Selfish,’ Ice Spice’s ‘Fart’ and More

    Hear new music from Marc Anthony, Ice Spice and Hiatus Kaiyote.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes), and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Justin Timberlake, ‘Selfish’“Selfish,” Justin Timberlake’s first new solo song in six years, covers a thematic terrain similar to Nick Jonas’s hit “Jealous” (2014), but swaps that tune’s bravado for muted melancholy. “So if I get jealous, I can’t help it,” Timberlake croons, in a flatter approximation of Justin Bieber’s more successful forays into mid-tempo R&B. “I want every bit of you, I guess I’m selfish.” A fun, lightly carbonated beat keeps things moving forward — perhaps the only element of the song aware that it’s not quite as deep as Timberlake thinks. — LINDSAY ZOLADZMarc Anthony, ‘Punta Cana’The lilting, understated guitars and pattering bongo drums of Dominican bachata usually carry songs of restrained regret. But the salsa singer Marc Anthony isn’t one for restraint. In “Punta Cana,” named after the Dominican resort town, he’s a rejected boyfriend bitterly monitoring the happy photos posted by his ex — a scenario like the one in Maluma’s hit “Hawái.” From the first verse, he works up to throat-tearing rasps, trying to convince himself that one kiss would get her back, eventually deploying a horn section as his desperation grows. No wonder she’s keeping her distance. — JON PARELESTierra Whack, ‘Shower Song’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?  More

  • in

    What Songs Would ‘Saltburn’ Characters Have Spun in 2007?

    The soundtrack to Emerald Fennell’s movie has been a talker. Hear tracks by M.I.A., Girl Talk, Nelly Furtado and others that would have been a good fit.“Saltburn” has catapulted the 2001 song “Murder on the Dancefloor” back to the charts, but there’s a lot more to discuss about the film’s soundtrack.Chiabella James/Amazon StudiosDear listeners,Over the weekend, I finally watched “Saltburn,” the provocative, polarizing and occasionally downright icky coming-of-age thriller that no one can stop talking about right now.The movie, written and directed by the “Promising Young Woman” filmmaker Emerald Fennell and starring the current It Boys Barry Keoghan and Jacob Elordi, charts the fates of two unlikely friends who meet at Oxford and later spend a debauched summer at the titular estate where the (much) wealthier of the two boys lives with his aristocratic family.“Saltburn” plays out like a diabolically dark, millennial take on “Brideshead Revisited.” And the operative word there is millennial, since the 38-year-old Fennell delights in planting innumerable period-specific details — including an evocative soundtrack — that remind viewers that these boys belong to the Class of 2006.The soundtrack has elicited such potent nostalgia that it has catapulted Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s 2001 neo-disco hit, “Murder on the Dancefloor,” used in a crucial scene, back into the Top 10 on the British charts. This week, the song cracked the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time.Fennell has confirmed that most of the movie takes place in summer 2007, and ever since, armchair script supervisors on social media have made a sport out of pointing out the film’s most chronologically questionable cultural references. (For example: Some of the characters are watching a DVD of “Superbad,” which was still only out in theaters that summer.)The most egregious music cue is a karaoke scene featuring Flo Rida’s party anthem “Low,” which was released in October 2007 and didn’t become a global smash until early 2008. Eagle-eared listeners have also pointed out that an Arcade Fire song released in mid-2007 plays in a pub scene meant to take place near the beginning of the 2006 school year, and that MGMT’s “Time to Pretend,” the song that’s the soundtrack to a languid summer 2007 montage, appeared on an album that didn’t come out until that fall. (The movie’s music supervisor has responded, “It’s as close as possible, really, just to put you back in that space. If it had been a couple of years later, that would have been an absolute no.”)Still, ever since watching the movie, I’ve become obsessed with these quibbles and consumed with one question: What would the characters in “Saltburn” have actually been listening to in summer 2007? Today’s playlist is my attempt to answer that.I am not a professional music supervisor, nor am I member of the king’s nobility — I’m not even British. But I do have credentials that make me exceptionally qualified to create this particular playlist: In the summer of 2007, I was a rising junior in college with a nearly full 160GB iPod.I consulted a number of primary sources, including a playlist on said iPod that I actually created at the end of the year “Saltburn” takes place (titled, with undergraduate melodrama and for reasons I now truly do not recall, “2007 Was a Bad Year”). It features a few artists whose music does appear in “Saltburn” (MGMT, Bloc Party) and quite a few whose songs do not, but whose sounds I think would have potently conjured the era (M.I.A., Hot Chip, that auteur of the aughts sound Timbaland). It is probably not as quintessentially British as the film’s actual soundtrack, but alas, I did not go to uni, I went to “college.”As you can probably already tell, I had way too much fun putting this playlist together. You may call this sound “indie sleaze,” but I just call it my early 20s.Listen along on Spotify while you read.1. MGMT: “Time to Pretend”Hilariously, or perhaps just fittingly, the first song on my actual 2007 iPod playlist is a song that was prominently featured in “Saltburn.” Few albums were debated as hotly around my college radio station office that year as MGMT’s glam-pop debut, “Oracular Spectacular.” While it technically wasn’t released until Oct. 2, this song is such a perfect, montage-ready encapsulation of that era’s sound that I will permit Fennell a little poetic license with this one. (Listen on YouTube)2. Spoon: “Don’t You Evah”Another one from my 2007 iPod playlist, from another album I played a lot that summer: Spoon’s effortlessly tuneful sixth album, “Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga.” I can picture the elegantly wasted denizens of Saltburn vibing to this bass line. (Listen on YouTube)3. Johnny Boy: “You Are the Generation That Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve”Any 2007 playlist worth its salt had to have at least one semi-obscure, critically adored indie-pop track downloaded from a music blog. This 2006 should-have-been-smash from the short-lived British duo Johnny Boy checks that box, with flair. (Listen on YouTube)4. M.I.A.: “Boyz”It was also the summer of “Kala,” M.I.A.’s bold, blown-out sophomore album, which I think still stands as her greatest achievement. Though “Kala” was not released until early August, this exuberant single came out in June, setting the season’s tone. (Listen on YouTube)5. Hot Chip: “Boy From School”I actually cannot believe this song was not used in “Saltburn”: The title says it all! Though released in 2006, the British electro-pop group Hot Chip’s moody dance floor anthem would still have been getting plenty of play the following summer, especially in Britain, where it peaked at No. 40 on the singles chart. (Listen on YouTube)6. Justin Timberlake featuring Timbaland: “SexyBack”Another 2006 banger that would have still been ubiquitous the following summer, the Timbaland-produced “SexyBack” was released at the height of Justin Timberlake’s commercial popularity and his poptimist-approved hipster cred. (Listen on YouTube)7. Chamillionaire featuring Krayzie Bone: “Ridin’”This is the song I would have put in place of “Low”: another instantly recognizable, era-defining hip-hop track, but one that would have by then been out for long enough that an out-of-touch bloke could have credibly mangled it at karaoke. (Listen on YouTube)8. Nelly Furtado: “Maneater”It was simply not a party in the summer of 2007 until someone put on “Maneater,” the sublime and slightly hipper alternative to Furtado’s other 2006 single about a lascivious woman. (Listen on YouTube)9. Bloc Party: “Banquet”Of course there was song from the post-punk revivalists Bloc Party’s 2005 debut, “Silent Alarm,” in “Saltburn”; I just would have chose this more propulsive and admittedly on-the-nose selection instead of “This Modern Love.” (Listen on YouTube)10. Girl Talk: “Bounce That”And finally, nothing said “college party in the mid-to-late-aughts” like a cut from Girl Talk’s 2006 hyperactive mash-up opus, “Night Ripper” — or maybe just someone stealing the aux cord and playing the entire album from start to finish. (Listen on YouTube)Take ’em to the chorus,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“2007: The Summer of ‘Saltburn’” track listTrack 1: MGMT, “Time to Pretend”Track 2: Spoon, “Don’t You Evah”Track 3: Johnny Boy, “You Are the Generation That Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve”Track 4: M.I.A., “Boyz”Track 5: Hot Chip, “Boy From School”Track 6: Justin Timberlake featuring Timbaland, “SexyBack”Track 7: Chamillionaire featuring Krayzie Bone, “Ridin’”Track 8: Nelly Furtado, “Maneater”Track 9: Bloc Party, “Banquet”Track 10: Girl Talk, “Bounce That”Bonus TracksAfter I featured the British musician and poet Labi Siffre in Friday’s newsletter, a Times editor sent me a link to Siffre’s exquisitely funky 1975 song “I Got The …” — which is prominently sampled in Eminem’s star-making 1999 single, “My Name Is.” I admit that this kind of blew my mind. It also led me to two fascinating facts I’d like to share with you.First, that Beck and his producers the Dust Brothers were planning to sample “I Got The …” on a single from the 1999 album “Midnite Vultures,” but Eminem beat him to it. (What could have been!) Also, even more impressively, Siffre refused to clear the Eminem sample for the producer Dr. Dre until they removed all lyrics that Siffre had deemed homophobic. “Diss the bigots not their victims,” Siffre said years later in an interview. “I denied sample rights till that lazy writing was removed.” If only every Eminem song had undergone the Labi Siffre test! More

  • in

    ‘Trolls Band Together’ Review: This Must Be Pop

    The third installment of the “Trolls” franchise reunites ’N Sync in this entertaining boy band fever dream.When DreamWorks kicked off the “Trolls” franchise in 2016, one could practically hear the squeals of joy from studio execs: a tentpole blockbuster that took the name-brand dolls and reimagined them as colorful singing creatures doing renditions of seemingly every pop hit of the last half century. It was built for mass appeal toddler fixation. The movies also could be charming and even take their premise in interesting directions.After the previous film delved into various music genres, the natural next progression for the third movie, “Trolls Band Together,” seemed to be the boy band craze. After all, Justin Timberlake was already the franchise’s star (and yes, the third “Trolls” movie is what reunites ’N Sync for their first new song in over two decades). It turns out, his character, Branch, has four older brothers and they once formed a boy band known as BroZone. When the band broke up, so did the brotherhood.But when one of his brothers is kidnapped and drained of his talent by an evil pop duo, Velvet and Veneer (Amy Schumer and Andrew Rannells), Branch — with the encouragement of Poppy (Anna Kendrick) — begrudgingly reunites with his brothers for a rescue mission.That journey takes us on what, with its alarmingly frenetic pacing and visual stimuli, feels at times like experiencing an acid trip at a rave for babies. And yet, in execution the movie, directed by Walt Dohrn, never feels cheap. The animation is strong, if too candy-coated, and the film is clever and funny from time to time. And parents might even find their own inner boy band fever ignited alongside their kids.Trolls Band TogetherRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters. More