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    Beyoncé Joins a History of Black Pop Artists Going Country

    When Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” arrives next week, it’ll join a lineage of albums by stars including Ray Charles, the Pointer Sisters, Tina Turner and more.When Beyoncé confirmed that she would be going all-in on country music with “Cowboy Carter,” the second part of a project that began with her 2022 album “Renaissance,” conversation about pop artists turning to the genre — and how Black artists are received in Nashville — began to heat up.Country remains a cloistered segment of the music industry where Black performers continue to face an especially challenging path — despite the fact that Black pioneers have been essential to the genre, including Lesley Riddle, known as Esley, a guitarist and folklorist who taught the Carter Family in the 1930s and Charley Pride, who scored more than 50 Top 10 country hits from the 1960s through the ’80s.In the past few years, Lil Nas X sparked cultural debate and hit chart gold with “Old Town Road,” a country-rap mash-up that was followed by the arrival of Breland’s aesthetic blend “My Truck,” and songs from O.N.E the Duo, a mother-daughter group making a hybrid of country, R&B and pop. But there’s also a long history of Black artists embracing country after establishing careers in other genres. Here’s how some key figures fared.Ray CharlesRay Charles in 1962, the year he released “Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music.”REPORTERS ASSOCIES/Gamma-Rapho via Getty ImagesRay Charles’s passion for country music dated back to childhood, when his mother would let him stay up late on Saturdays and listen to the Grand Ole Opry. As he told Terry Gross on “Fresh Air” in 1998, “it was fascinating what these guys could do with these banjos and these fiddles and the steel guitars.”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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    Oscars’ In Memoriam: Academy Honors Aleksei Navalny and Andrea Bocelli Performs

    The in memoriam segment at the Academy Awards opened not with a Hollywood star, but with a clip of Aleksei A. Navalny from “Navalny,” the Oscar-winning 2022 documentary about the Russian opposition leader who died last month in a Russian prison.“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing,” read a quote of Navalny’s on the screen.Taking a moment to recognize those in the film industry who have died since the previous Oscars ceremony, the telecast also paid tribute to stars such as Harry Belafonte, the barrier-breaking performer and activist, and Chita Rivera, the Broadway star who also appeared in films, as well as filmmakers such as Norman Jewison, the lauded director behind “In the Heat of the Night,” “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Moonstruck.”To accompany the tributes, the superstar tenor Andrea Bocelli sang “Time to Say Goodbye” — with a new orchestration by Hans Zimmer — alongside his son, Matteo Bocelli.Chita Rivera, the Broadway star who also appeared in films, was honored in the Oscars’ in memoriam segment.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesHere are some of figures the Academy honored:Alan Arkin, the acclaimed actor who won an Oscar for his role in “Little Miss Sunshine”Andre Braugher, a film, TV and theater actor who had roles in Spike Lee and Edward Zwick filmsMichael Gambon, the acclaimed Irish-born actor who played Albus Dumbledore in the “Harry Potter” moviesWilliam Friedkin, director of the box office hits “The French Connection” and “The Exorcist”Bo Goldman, the admired Hollywood screenwriter who took home Oscars for his work on “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Melvin and Howard”Glenda Jackson, the two-time Oscar winner who turned to politics in her 50sPiper Laurie, a respected actress with three Oscar nominations, including for her role in “Carrie”Bill Lee, a jazz bassist and composer who scored the early films of his son Spike LeeRichard Lewis, the acerbic stand-up comic who became a regular in movies and TVRyan O’Neal, who became an instant movie star in the 1970 hit film “Love Story”Matthew Perry, the “Friends” star who had roles in movies such as “The Whole Nine Yards”Paul Reubens, the comic actor behind Pee-wee Herman who had scores of movie and TV creditsRichard Roundtree, one of the first Black action heroes who was catapulted to fame in the movie “Shaft”Ryuichi Sakamoto, one of Japan’s most prominent composers, who scored the films “The Last Emperor,” “The Sheltering Sky” and “The Revenant”Tina Turner, the pop sensation who appeared in films such as “Tommy” and “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome”Carl Weathers, a former pro linebacker, who played Apollo Creed in the “Rocky” movies More

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    A Playlist to Remember the Musicians We Lost in 2023

    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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    The Artists We Lost in 2023, in Their Words

    The many creative people who died this year built their wisdom over lives generously long or much too short, through times of peace and periods of conflict. Their ideas, perspectives and humanity helped shape our own: in language spoken, written or left unsaid; in notes hit, lines delivered, boundaries pushed. Here is a tribute to just some of them, in their voices.“I never considered giving up on my dreams. You could say I had an invincible optimism.”— Tina Turner, musician, born 1939 (Read the obituary.)“Hang on to your fantasies, whatever they are and however dimly you may hear them, because that’s what you’re worth.”— David Del Tredici, composer, born 1937 (Read the obituary.)“Ever since I can remember, I have danced for the sheer joy of moving.”— Rena Gluck, dancer and choreographer, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)“The stage is not magic for me. It never was. I always felt the audience was waiting to see that first drop of blood.”— Lynn Seymour, dancer, born 1939 (Read the obituary.)Paul Reubens.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images“Most questions that are asked of me about Pee-wee Herman I don’t have a clue on. I’ve always been very careful not to dissect it too much for myself.”— Paul Reubens, actor, born 1952 (Read the obituary.)“If you know your voice really well, if you’ve become friends with your vocal apparatus, you know which roles you can sing and which you shouldn’t even touch.”— Grace Bumbry, opera singer, born 1937 (Read the obituary.)“Actors should approach an audition (and indeed, their careers) with the firm belief that they have something to offer that is unique. Treasure who you are and what you bring to the audition.”— Joanna Merlin, actress, born 1931 (Read the obituary.)Glenda Jackson.Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images“If I have my health and strength, I’m going to be the most appalling old lady. I’m going to boss everyone about, make people stand up for me when I come into a room, and generally capitalize on all the hypocrisy that society shows towards the old.”— Glenda Jackson, actress and politician, born 1936 (Read the obituary.)“I don’t see myself as a pioneer. I see myself as a working guy and that’s all, and that is enough.”— William Friedkin, filmmaker, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)“Some people, every day you get up and chop wood, and some people write songs.”— Robbie Robertson, musician, born 1943 (Read the obituary.)“I wasn’t brought up in Hollywood. I was brought up in a kibbutz.”— Topol, actor, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)Jimmy Buffett.Michael Putland/Getty Images“I don’t play at my audience. I play for my audience.”— Jimmy Buffett, musician, born 1946 (Read the obituary.)“I’m still not a natural in front of people. I’m shy. I’m a hermit. But I’m learning a little more.”— Andre Braugher, actor, born 1962 (Read the obituary.)“Some poets do not see reaching many in spatial terms, as in the filled auditorium. They see reaching many temporally, sequentially, many over time, into the future, but in some profound way these readers always come singly, one by one.”— Louise Glück, poet, born 1943 (Read the obituary.)“I paint because I believe it’s the best way that I can pass my time as a human being. I paint for myself. I paint for my wife. And I paint for anybody that’s willing to look at it.”— Brice Marden, artist, born 1938 (Read the obituary.)“Writing is about generosity, passing on to other people what you’ve had the misfortune of having to find out for yourself.”— Fay Weldon, author, born 1931 (Read the obituary.)Ryuichi Sakamoto.Ian Dickson/Redferns, via Getty Images“I went to see one of those pianos drowned in tsunami water near Fukushima, and recorded it. Of course, it was totally out of tune, but I thought it was beautiful. I thought, ‘Nature tuned it.’”— Ryuichi Sakamoto, composer, born 1952 (Read the obituary.)“I hate everything that is natural, and I love the artificial.”— Vera Molnar, artist, born 1924 (Read the obituary.)“A roof could be a roof, but it also could be a little garden.”— Rafael Viñoly, architect, born 1944 (Read the obituary.)“True architecture is life.”— Balkrishna Doshi, architect, born 1927 (Read the obituary.)Sinead O’Connor.Duane Braley/Star Tribune, via Getty Images“Words are dreadfully powerful, and words uttered are 10 times more powerful. The spoken word is the science on which the entire universe is built.”— Sinead O’Connor, musician, born 1966 (Read the obituary.)“Before I can put anything in the world, I have to wait at least a couple of years and edit them. Nothing is going out that hasn’t been edited a dozen times.”— Robert Irwin, artist, born 1928 (Read the obituary.)“An editor is a reader who edits.”— Robert Gottlieb, editor and author, born 1931 (Read the obituary.)Matthew Perry.Reisig & Taylor/NBCUniversal, via Getty Images“Sometimes I think I went through the addiction, alcoholism and fame all to be doing what I’m doing right now, which is helping people.”— Matthew Perry, actor, born 1969 (Read the obituary.)“It was the period of apartheid. You know, it was very hard, very difficult and very painful — and many a time I felt, ‘Shall I continue with this life or shall I go on?’ But I continued. I wanted to dance.”— Johaar Mosaval, dancer, born 1928 (Read the obituary.)“God would like us to be joyful / Even when our hearts lie panting on the floor.” (“Fiddler on the Roof”)— Sheldon Harnick, lyricist, born 1924 (Read the obituary.)“I remember back in the day, saying it’s so cool that the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, David Bowie are still played. That’s what we wanted hip-hop to be.”— David Jolicoeur, musician, born 1968 (Read the obituary.)“Civilization cannot last or advance without culture.”— Ahmad Jamal, musician, born 1930 (Read the obituary.)Harry Belafonte. Phil Burchman/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images“Movements don’t die because struggle doesn’t die.”— Harry Belafonte, singer and actor, born 1927 (Read the obituary.)“Some people say to artists that they should change. Change what? It’s like saying, ‘Why don’t you walk differently or talk differently?’ I can’t change my voice. That’s the way I am.”— Fernando Botero, artist, born 1932 (Read the obituary.)“Performing is my way of being part of humanity — of sharing.”— André Watts, pianist, born 1946 (Read the obituary.)Renata Scotto.Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images“Singing isn’t my whole life.”— Renata Scotto, opera singer, born 1934 (Read the obituary.)“It’s through working on characters in plays that I’ve learned about myself, about how people operate.”— Frances Sternhagen, actress, born 1930 (Read the obituary.)David Crosby.Mick Gold/Redferns, via Getty Images“I don’t know if I’ve found my way, but I do know I feel happy.”— David Crosby, musician, born 1941 (Read the obituary.)“I’m very abstract. Once it becomes narrative, it’s all over. Let the audience decide what it’s about.”— Rudy Perez, choreographer, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)“I don’t have a driven desire actually to be in the act of writing. But my response to any form of excitement about reading is to want to write.”— A.S. Byatt, author, born 1936 (Read the obituary.)“I don’t think I ever wrote music to react to other music — I really had a very strong need to express myself.”— Kaija Saariaho, composer, born 1952 (Read the obituary.)Richard Roundtree.Celeste Sloman for The New York Times“Narrow-mindedness is alien to me.”— Richard Roundtree, actor, born 1942, though some sources say 1937 (Read the obituary.)“The reason I’ve been able to dance for so long is absolute willpower.”— Gus Solomons Jr., dancer and choreographer, born 1938 (Read the obituary.)“My practice is a resistance to the glamorous art object.”— Phyllida Barlow, artist, born 1944 (Read the obituary.)“My lifetime ambition has been to unite the utmost seriousness of question with the utmost lightness of form.”— Milan Kundera, author, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)Mary Quant.Hulton Archive/Getty Images“The most extreme fashion should be very, very cheap. First, because only the young are daring enough to wear it; second, because the young look better in it; and third, because if it’s extreme enough, it shouldn’t last.”— Mary Quant, fashion designer, born 1930 (Read the obituary.)“I spontaneously enter the unknown.”— Vivan Sundaram, artist, born 1943 (Read the obituary.)“The goal is to wander, wander through the unknown in search of the unknown, all the while leaving your mark.”— Richard Hunt, artist, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)Angus Cloud.Pat Martin for The New York Times“Style is how you hold yourself.”— Angus Cloud, actor, born 1998 (Read the obituary.)“I have an aura.”— Barry Humphries, actor, born 1934 (Read the obituary.)“Intensity is not something I try to do. It’s just kind of the way that I am.”— Lance Reddick, actor, born 1962 (Read the obituary.)Alan Arkin.Jerry Mosey/Associated Press“There was a time when I had so little sense of myself that getting out of my skin and being anybody else was a sigh of relief. But I kind of like myself now, a lot of the times.”— Alan Arkin, actor, born 1934 (Read the obituary.)“I have always thought of myself as a kind of vessel through which the work might flow.”— Valda Setterfield, dancer, born 1934 (Read the obituary.)“You spend a lot of time thinking about how to write a book, you probably shouldn’t be talking about it. You probably should be doing it.”— Cormac McCarthy, author, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)Elliott Erwitt.Steven Siewert/Fairfax Media, via Getty Images“In general, I don’t think too much. I certainly don’t use those funny words museum people and art critics like.”— Elliott Erwitt, photographer, born 1928 (Read the obituary.)“Every morning we leave more in the bed: certainty, vigor, past loves. And hair, and skin: dead cells. This ancient detritus was nonetheless one move ahead of you, making its humorless own arrangements to rejoin the cosmos.” (“The Information”)— Martin Amis, author, born 1949 (Read the obituary.)Magda Saleh.Vincent Tullo for The New York Times“I did not do it on my own.”— Magda Saleh, ballerina, born 1944 (Read the obituary.)“The word ‘jazz,’ to me, only means, ‘I dare you.’”— Wayne Shorter, musician, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)“What is a jazz singer? Somebody who improvises? But I don’t: I prefer simplicity.”— Astrud Gilberto, singer, born 1940 (Read the obituary.)“It’s who you are when time’s up that matters.”— Anne Perry, author, born 1938 (Read the obituary.)“When I think about my daughter and the day that I move on — there is a piece of me that will remain with her.”— Ron Cephas Jones, actor, born 1957 (Read the obituary.)“Let us encourage one another with visions of a shared future. And let us bring all the grit and openheartedness and creative spirit we can muster to gather together and build that future.”— Norman Lear, television writer and producer, born 1922 (Read the obituary.)Tony Bennett.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images“Life teaches you how to live it if you live long enough.”— Tony Bennett, musician, born 1926 (Read the obituary.)Photographs at top via Getty Images. More

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    My Haul From the WFMU Record Fair

    Rounding out a record collection with finds from the Beach Boys, Kraftwerk and Roberta Flack.Scenes from a great day album shopping in Queens.Lindsay ZoladzDear listeners,Over the weekend, I spent some time at the WFMU Record and CD Fair — a New York institution returning in person for the first time since 2019. A fund-raiser for the great, listener-supported radio station, this year’s Record Fair featured over 100 dealers hawking vinyl and other musical sundries at the Knockdown Center in Queens. I browsed for hours, and by the time I was done my back was sore from hunching over crates and my arms ached from all the records I was toting around. Who says record collecting isn’t a sport?That lingering pang in my shoulder, though, meant I left with a pretty decent record haul — which I used to create today’s playlist.Some people go to record fairs ready to drop big bucks on rare finds and coveted collectibles. That wasn’t my aim, though: I was in it for the cheap thrills and spontaneous discoveries. I found, for example, a fantastic, good-as-new-condition Ike & Tina Turner live album I’d never heard, at a stand where most records were marked down to 50 percent off in the event’s final hours. (Given that deal, I threw in a copy of Dinosaur Jr.’s scuzzy classic “You’re Living All Over Me” at the last minute, too.) For $5 or less, I acquired records by Bob Dylan and Roberta Flack.But I also learned about the perils of the discount bin. When I added a $3 copy of Waylon Jennings’s “Greatest Hits” to my pile, I thought I’d checked the condition of the LP. But apparently I hadn’t looked at the label. For when I pulled it out of its sleeve yesterday and went to play it, I found that I was actually in possession of … Neil Diamond’s “12 Greatest Hits, Volume II.” Talk about a rude awakening.Overall, though, the fair was a blast, and an opportunity to connect with record sellers in a setting way more personable than ordering something off Discogs. Each stall had its own style and personality quirks — like the one graciously offering a questionably large bowl of free “I More

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    Stevie Nicks Unveils a Her Own Barbie at MSG

    The performer worked with Mattel to create a doll in her likeness, wearing an outfit inspired by the one she wore on the cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours.” She showed it off onstage at Madison Square Garden.Midway through Stevie Nicks’s concert at Madison Square Garden on Sunday night, the musician told the audience that she had a “surprise,” prompting speculation among audience members about a potential unexpected guest: Could it be Lindsey Buckingham?It turned out that the special guest was a Barbie made to look like Nicks, and its musical abilities were limited to a tiny ribboned tambourine.Mattel, the manufacturer of Barbie, officially unveiled the Stevie Nicks doll at midnight on Sunday, the latest addition to the world of Barbie tributes to musicians, including Tina Turner, David Bowie and Celia Cruz.(You may be thinking, that’s a lot of Barbie this year, and you are right. The audience at Madison Square Garden didn’t seem to mind.)Bradley Justice, a doll historian and proprietor of the Swell Doll Shop, which specializes in antique and vintage dolls, said that Mattel has been making celebrity dolls since the 1960s.“I see it as sort of a crossover branding, where you attract someone who previously may have not had an interest at all in the doll or the brand,” he said, “but suddenly is very excited to see their favorite singer or movie star or whatever immortalized in 11 and a half inches.”The Nicks doll’s outfit, as well as a pair of Pasquale Di Fabrizio black platform boots, was inspired by her look on the cover of Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 album “Rumours.”At the concert, Nicks explained that she sent the album cover outfit, which she still had decades later, to Mattel to capture that time in her life. To roaring cheers, Nicks began to speak in a high-pitched Barbie voice, explaining how much the doll meant to her.Nicks wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, that when she looked at the doll, she saw herself at 27.“All the memories of walking out on a big stage in that black outfit and those gorgeous boots come rushing back,” Nicks said, “and then I see myself now in her face.”At the concert, Nicks also chose a fan in the front rows to take one doll home and promptly began to serenade the woman, named Sara, with the track bearing her name from the album “Tusk.”The doll went on sale hours later for $55, and preorders sold out almost immediately.Mr. Justice said that it was normal for the celebrity Barbie dolls to sell out quickly. “When you hear it’s coming, you need to just go ahead and start limbering up your fingers for your keyboard to type in your credit card number,” he said.The design team behind the Tina Turner doll studied Turner’s hair “at all angles.”The rush on the Nicks doll comes after decades of Mattel’s creation of Barbie dolls that honor influential musicians, athletes and pioneers.Mr. Justice said that one of the first celebrity Barbie dolls, released in 1969, depicted Diahann Carroll as the star of “Julia,” the first American television series to chronicle the life of a Black professional woman.More recently, Mattel released a doll of Celia Cruz, the Cuban American singer who was known as the Queen of Salsa. The Cruz doll, dressed in a red lace mermaid dress, was unveiled in 2021 but only went on sale this year.Carlyle Nuera, who designed that doll, said on Instagram that the design team had gone back and forth “with the fabric vendor to get the right scale of the lace design and to maximize the gold metallic threads woven throughout.”A Tina Turner doll that was released in October 2022 has sold out in stores, but it is available on eBay for hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of dollars.That doll depicts Turner in the outfit she wore in the music video for “What’s Love Got to Do With It.”Turner, who died in May, was very involved with her doll’s design process, Bill Greening, a Mattel designer, said in a news release. Mr. Greening explained that the design team studied Turner’s hair “at all angles” to capture her look. “Lots of teasing and hair spray was involved!” he said.David Bowie has been honored with two Barbie dolls dressed in two of his classic outfits.Left, Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images; Chris Pizzello/Associated PressDavid Bowie has been commemorated with two Barbie dolls dressed in tribute to two of his famous looks.Linda Kyaw-Merschon, who led the design of the second doll, which was released last year, said that it was meant to be a Barbie as Bowie, “not Bowie exactly as himself.”The doll was dressed in a replica of the powder blue suit Bowie wore in the “Life on Mars?” music video.The earlier Bowie doll, released in 2019, dressed as Bowie’s alter ego, Ziggy Stardust, wore a metallic red and blue striped get-up with siren-red platform boots and a gold circle on her forehead.The Stevie Nicks doll was released after a big year for Barbie. The Barbie movie released in July made more than $1 billion in ticket sales at the global box office in a few weeks, according to Warner Bros., and has created a windfall for Mattel.Nicks told USA Today that she loved the movie and said “I had to come home and tell my Stevie doll all about it.”Melina Delkic More

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    Just Like a Woman: Female Artists Cover Bob Dylan

    Hear versions by Marianne Faithfull, Joan Baez, Nina Simone and more.Joan Baez and Bob Dylan in 1963.Rowland Scherman/Getty ImagesDear listeners,In 2016, when Bob Dylan became the first singer-songwriter to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, The Guardian asked six female artists to talk about his work. With his wild, Einsteinian coif, Romantic poet adoration and cryptic, sometimes ornery nature, Dylan is often held up as an emblematic example of the modern male genius. We’ve heard plenty about him from men over the years; refreshingly, The Guardian let some brilliant and fascinating women have their turn. “My mother always thought that Dylan was somewhat misogynistic,” the singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega said, “but I don’t see that. I see a whole range of female characters in his music from goddesses and queens and women revered and then also women used, abused.”When adding footnotes to the republished version of an incisive 1967 essay she’d written about Dylan, the great cultural critic Ellen Willis came to a slightly different conclusion. “Here and elsewhere in this prefeminist essay I refer with aplomb if not outright endorsement to Dylan’s characteristic bohemian contempt for women (which he combined with an equally obnoxious idealization of female goddess figures),” she wrote, adding that she’d since come to view these tendencies more critically. Still, these observations didn’t dilute her appreciation of Dylan’s work, nor the rigorous scrutiny she brought to it throughout her life. She was simply asserting something that has often become lost in more recent times — that “talking back” to a piece of art isn’t the same as dismissing it. It is much more often a way of keeping it alive.For today’s playlist, I wanted to put together a kind of musical version of that Guardian piece: a collection of Dylan songs interpreted by women. It’s not meant to be comprehensive; while putting it together I was reminded that there are a lot of great Dylan covers by female musicians, so apologies if your favorite didn’t make the list. (Though feel free to let me know.)As Willis put it, memorably, at the end of that previously mentioned essay, “In a communication crisis, the true prophets are the translators.” She was talking about Dylan, of course. But I think of the following artists — like Marianne Faithfull, Joan Baez and Nina Simone — as translators in their own right, too.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Cher: “All I Really Want to Do” (1965)Cher’s debut single, produced by her then husband Sonny Bono, was this jangly cover of the opening track on “Another Side of Bob Dylan” — a kind of one-person duet between the masculine and feminine ends of Cher’s vocal range. As she writes in her highly entertaining 1998 biography “The First Time,” “No one believed it was just me, because I did both the high part and the low part at the beginning of each verse.” She also recounts, later in that chapter, how she ran into Dylan in a New York recording studio as her version was climbing the charts. He told her that he dug what she’d done with it, which, Cher writes, “made me feel like floating away.” (Listen on YouTube)2. Joan Baez: “Simple Twist of Fate” (1975)By the time she released her 1975 album “Diamonds and Rust,” Baez had been recording gorgeous, reverent covers of material written by Dylan — her folk musical peer, collaborator and former flame — for more than a decade. Her rollicking cover of “Simple Twist of Fate” is something else, though: playful, self-assured and even a little sassy, especially when she uses a laughably nasal Dylan impression in the second half of the song. Writing the haunting title track off “Diamonds and Rust,” a poetic remembrance of her ’60s romance with Dylan, must have freed her up to have some fun with his material. (Listen on YouTube)3. Marianne Faithfull: “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” (1971)In 1965, shortly after the release of her debut single “As Tears Go By,” Faithfull spent some time hanging in the Savoy with Dylan and his entourage, while D.A. Pennebaker was filming “Don’t Look Back.” At one point, Dylan played Faithfull his latest album: “Bringing It All Back Home.” Six years later, when her voice had begun maturing beyond light pop fare and into that seen-it-all croak, Faithfull recorded her own version of the album’s final track, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.” She’d revisit the song again many years later, too, on her 2018 album “Negative Capability.” (Listen on YouTube)4. Nico: “I’ll Keep It With Mine” (1967)It’s a rare experience, getting to hear a song’s muse sing and interpret material that was written about her. (Allegedly, as we must add with any speculation of what or who a Dylan song is “about.”) But such is the poignancy and power of Nico’s rendition of “I’ll Keep It With Mine,” which she recorded for her 1967 debut solo album, “Chelsea Girl.” Dylan wrote the song while traveling around Europe with a pre-Velvet Underground Nico during their brief 1964 romance, and though he attempted to record it for “Bringing It All Back Home” and, later, “Blonde on Blonde,” he ended up saving it for release on his bootleg collection. Nico’s version, then, is probably the best known: The signature, heavy-cream richness of her voice makes it sound impossibly melancholy, but there’s a buoyancy to her cadences that conveys the sweetness and devotion to companionship at the heart of the song. (Listen on YouTube)5. Bettye LaVette: “Ain’t Talkin’” (2018)I discovered this smoldering cover just a few months ago, after reading about it in Greil Marcus’s great 2022 book “Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs.” (Always read Greil Marcus on Bob Dylan.) One of those seven songs is the creepily somnambulant “Ain’t Talkin’,” from Dylan’s 2006 album “Modern Times,” though Marcus rightly praises this reworking by the beloved soul singer Bettye LaVette for enlivening the composition with her unique sensibility. He quotes LaVette, speaking of this and a few other Dylan covers on her 2018 album “Things Have Changed”: “I wasn’t going to tributize him.” Instead she was looking to make the songs “fit into my mouth,” as she put it, “just as if they’d been written for me.” Mission accomplished. (Listen on YouTube)6. Mavis Staples: “Gotta Serve Somebody” (1999)The story goes that Dylan — a huge fan of the Staples Singers — proposed marriage to a young Mavis Staples when his career was just getting off the ground; she turned him down because she wasn’t yet ready to settle down. (She told The Guardian in 2016, “I often think what would have happened if I’d married Dylan.”) Musically, though, the two linked up throughout their lives: Staples joined Dylan for a 2003 duet of his 1979 gospel song “Gonna Change My Way of Thinking,” and in recent years they’ve toured together repeatedly. Staples’s blazing solo version of “Gotta Serve Somebody,” from a 1999 Dylan tribute, revels in the gritty rasp and bottomless depths of her one-of-a-kind voice. (Listen on YouTube)7. Marianne Faithfull: “Visions of Johanna” (1971)I simply could not choose just one Marianne Faithfull cover! And then I realized I didn’t have to! (Listen on YouTube)8. Emmylou Harris: “Every Grain of Sand” (1995)Emmylou Harris’s voice strains and nearly cracks open with exalted feeling on her passionately sung cover of “Every Grain of Sand,” a standout from Dylan’s spiritually minded 1981 album “Shot of Love.” It’s a welcome spotlight on a less appreciated stretch of Dylan’s songwriting. (Listen on YouTube)9. PJ Harvey: “Highway 61 Revisited” (1993)PJ Harvey dredges up the darkness in “Highway 61” with this wild version that appeared on her landmark 1993 album “Rid of Me.” Gone is the whimsical slide whistle; taking its place is Harvey’s torrential storms of guitar distortion and menacingly whispered vocals, making Dylan’s cheeky biblical sendup sound more like a nightmare. (Albeit a very cool one.) (Listen on YouTube)10. Nina Simone: “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” (1969)On her 1969 album “To Love Somebody,” Nina Simone completely reimagines “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” in both arrangement and tone. The version Dylan made famous on “Highway 61 Revisited” is charmingly cluttered, chock-full of layered instrumentation and reference-stuffed lines. But Simone clears almost everything out, building something extraordinary out of little more than quietly played piano, hand drums and that magnificently weary voice, turning Dylan’s surrealist fresco into a deeply felt hymn to the down-and-out. (Listen on YouTube)I’m going back to New York City, I do believe I’ve had enough,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Just Like a Woman: Female Artists Cover Dylan” track listTrack 1: Cher, “All I Really Want to Do”Track 2: Joan Baez, “Simple Twist of Fate”Track 3: Marianne Faithfull, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”Track 4: Nico, “I’ll Keep It With Mine”Track 5: Bettye LaVette, “Ain’t Talkin’”Track 6: Mavis Staples, “Gotta Serve Somebody”Track 7: Marianne Faithfull, “Visions of Johanna”Track 8: Emmylou Harris, “Every Grain of Sand”Track 9: PJ Harvey, “Highway 61 Revisited”Track 10: Nina Simone, “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”Bonus tracksTina Turner’s cover of “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You” is — alas! — missing from most streaming services, but if you dig around I bet you can find it on YouTube. Ahem.Also, on this week’s Playlist, Taylor Swift rewrites her back pages, plus new songs from First Aid Kit, Anohni and the Johnsons and more. More

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    Tina Turner, a Queen of Rock ’n’ Roll Covers

    The musician, who died on Wednesday at 83, was a radical interpreter of other artists’ material. Listen here.Charlie Gates for The New York TimesDear listeners,As the great Tina Turner told it in the wrenching 2021 documentary “Tina,” when she began to envision a solo career finally liberated from her abusive ex-husband, Ike, in the early ’80s, she told her new manager, Roger Davies, “My dream is to be the first Black rock ’n’ roll singer to pack places like the Stones.”Turner — who died on Wednesday at 83 — didn’t need to become a rock singer; she’d been one of the most raucous around since the early 1960s. (And Ike’s 1951 single “Rocket 88” is considered by some to be the first ever rock song.) As rock ’n’ roll entered its fourth decade, though, this genre that owed its existence to unsung Black pioneers was still dominated, at the top and too often in the public imagination, by white men. One of whom, legend has it, Tina herself had taught to dance.By the mid-1980s, Turner’s dream became a reality. Buoyed by the enormous success of her 1984 album “Private Dancer,” she was then headlining those very arenas that the Stones played, all over the world. She bested them (and every other musician on the planet) during her triumphant 1988 concert in Rio de Janeiro, which set a Guinness World Record for the largest attendance for a ticketed concert — more than 180,000 people screaming her name.But Turner was a rock star long before that, as you can hear on her many blistering and visionary interpretations of rock hits from the 1960s and ’70s. Turner wrote some of her own songs (like the great, autobiographical 1973 hit “Nutbush City Limits”), but she was also a radical interpreter of other people’s material — an electrifying vocalist who could torch a familiar song with fire and then weld it into something entirely new.The most famous example, of course, is her and Ike’s reimagining — “cover” almost seems like too reverent a word — of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s mid-tempo Southern rocker “Proud Mary.” The 1970 recording begins with Turner’s declaration that, despite what audiences might want from them, “we never ever do nothin’ nice and easy.” She then issues a warning, as if that galloping tempo change in the middle of the song would have been too shocking without one: “We’re gonna take the beginning of this song and do it easy, but then we’re gonna do the finish rough. That’s the way we do ‘Proud Mary.’”That was also the spirit behind her versions of “Help!,” “Come Together” and “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window” — to name just a few of the Beatles songs she positively Tina-fied. Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones got the treatment, too, and so did “Louie Louie,” with a sultry, little-known rendition which — I’m not even making this up — louielouie.net (“The blog for all things Louie Louie”) called “one of the essential Louie Louie recordings!” with some all-caps emphasis. Amen to that.Tina Turner was a seismic, once-in-a-lifetime musical force, but I don’t need to tell you that; I’ll let this playlist do the talking. And I’ll let my colleague Wesley Morris, who wrote an appraisal worthy of the queen, do some of it too: “They’re saying she was 83? Nobody’s buying that. The ingredients made her seem immortal. For seven decades of making music, it all sizzled in her. That energy. It shot from her — from her feet, thighs, hands, arms, shoulders, out of her hair, out of her mouth.”Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. “Come Together”Released as a single in December 1969, just two months after the Beatles’ own version, this soulful take on the leadoff track from “Abbey Road” shows off the raspy intensity and melodic control of Turner’s voice. (Listen on YouTube)2. “Honky Tonk Women”In late 1969, Ike and Tina toured with the Rolling Stones — an opening gig forever immortalized in an unforgettable scene in the documentary “Gimme Shelter,” when Turner unleashes a transcendent “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.” Around the time of the tour, the duo started playing their own revamped “Honky Tonk Women,” in which Tina flips the titular character from object to subject. Especially in Stones songs about sexual conquests, Mick Jagger wasn’t exactly known for writing nuanced female characters (“Some Girls,” ahem), but here, brilliantly, Tina turns mildly chauvinistic source material into an impassioned demand for equal partnership: “I’m a honky tonk woman,” she sings, hungrily. “Gimme, gimme, gimme a honky tonk man.” (Listen on YouTube)3. “Whole Lotta Love”This is a wild one. In 1975, Turner released “The Acid Queen,” technically the second and final solo album she recorded while still married to Ike; its title was inspired by her character in the rock opera “Tommy.” On this funky, disco-inflected standout, she slows down a Led Zeppelin heater to an unhurried tempo that makes the song unfurl like a slow, slinky seduction. (Listen on YouTube)4. “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window”Lennon and McCartney’s lighthearted ode to the petty larceny of Apple Scruffs transforms, in Turner’s telling, into something more urgent, and adult: “He said he’d always been a hustler, said he worked about 15 hours a day,” she sings, her gravelly holler rivaling even Joe Cocker’s. (Listen on YouTube)5. “Louie Louie”I’ve already told you: “one of the essential Louie Louie recordings!” (Listen on YouTube)6. “Let It Be”On this closing number from Ike and Tina’s 1970 album “Working Together,” Tina turns Lennon and McCartney’s universal prayer into something more personal (“When I find myself in times of trouble, evil thoughts they come to me, taking away my wisdom”) and political (“When prejudiced people finally agree, open their eyes and they will see”). (Listen on YouTube)7. “Help!”Recorded for her triumphant hit album “Private Dancer,” Turner’s “Help!” teases the pathos out of a jaunty Beatles tune by reimagining it as a gut-wrenching, showstopping ballad that became a staple of her live shows. Tina’s maturity and well-known history bring an added depth to certain lines: “When I was younger, so much younger than today,” she sings with palpable weariness, “I never needed anybody’s help in any way.” Now, she’s ready to testify — and, so vulnerably, to ask for the help she’s always needed. (Listen on YouTube)8. “Proud Mary”Performing a song someone else wrote and recorded this transformatively can become its own form of authorship. This is one of the clearer examples in pop music history: John Fogerty wrote “Proud Mary” but Turner embodied it, rolling, rolling, rolling like that accelerating riverboat, grabbing the wheel and gunning straight for rock ’n’ roll ecstasy. (Listen on YouTube)Big wheel keep on turning,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Tina Turner’s Greatest Rock Covers” track listTrack 1: “Come Together”Track 2: “Honky Tonk Women”Track 3: “Whole Lotta Love”Track 4: “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window”Track 5: “Louie Louie”Track 6: “Let It Be”Track 7: “Help!”Track 8: “Proud Mary”Bonus tracksLet me repeat: Wesley Morris on Tina Turner!Also, in 2019, my colleague Amanda Hess interviewed Turner at her Swiss chateau for this absolutely delightful profile. I will forever be thinking about Turner’s deep love of Coldplay and her admirable indifference toward the Chainsmokers.If you’re looking for the hits, Ben Sisario did a great job putting together this playlist of Turner’s 11 essential songs.And if you’re looking for new music, as ever, our Friday Playlist has you covered. This week features songs from Dua Lipa, Jess Williamson, and my favorite album out this week, “Everyone’s Crushed” by the Brooklyn art-rock band Water From Your Eyes. More