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☆ On ‘The Tortured Poets Department,’ Taylor Swift Could Use an Editor
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-19 | by ( Lindsay Zoladz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

If there has been a common thread — an invisible string, if you will — connecting the last few years of Taylor Swift’s output, it has been abundance. Her last LP, “Midnights” from 2022, rolled out in multiple editions, each with its own extra songs and collectible covers. What Swift reveals on her sprawling and often self-indulgent 11th LP, “The Tortured Poets Department,” is that this stretch of productivity and commercial success was also a tumultuous time for her, emotionally. — there was a second “volume” of the album, “The Anthology,” featuring 15 additional, though largely superfluous, tracks. Gone are the character studies and fictionalized narratives of Swift’s 2020 folk-pop albums “Folklore” and “Evermore.” The feverish “Tortured Poets Department” is a full-throated return to her specialty: autobiographical and sometimes spiteful tales of heartbreak, full of detailed, referential lyrics that her fans will delight in decoding.

Persons: Taylor, Swift, ‘, ’ ” Swift, Department ” Organizations: Poets Department, Department

☆ St. Vincent Dives Headfirst Into the Darkness
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-18 | by ( Lindsay Zoladz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

On a recent Tuesday night in a dressing room of the Brooklyn Paramount Theater, Annie Clark, the 41-year-old musician who records as St. Vincent, thumbed through a shelf of secondhand records and sipped a glass of pink champagne. Clark, invited to D.J. the venue’s grand reopening party, was the room’s first inhabitant since a major renovation restored the former movie palace; a pristine, new-car smell lingered. She wore a cream-colored silk blouse, black kitten-heeled shoes and a gauzy black bow tied artfully around her neck. Even in a moment of relative repose, Clark possessed a feline hyper-awareness of her surroundings.

Persons: Annie Clark, Vincent, thumbed, Clark, Dave Grohl, ”, “ I’ve Organizations: Brooklyn Paramount Theater Locations: St

Additional readingYou can explore a longer playlist of Kim Gordon’s music here. You can read our recent profile of Kim Gordon here. The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Persons: Kim Gordon’s, Kim Gordon Organizations: New York Times

☆ Kim Gordon’s Coolest Act Yet
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-29 | by ( Lindsay Zoladz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Plenty of people she loved attended her 60th birthday bash in New York, but she still felt unmoored. Gordon’s 70th birthday party last year, though, was another story entirely. For one thing, it was in Los Angeles, the city she’d grown up in and returned to in 2015. But also, as Gordon explained on a video call from her book-strewn home in late February, it doubled as a celebration of finishing her second solo album, “The Collective.”“It was kind of great to have done that on my 70th birthday,” she said and laughed from behind tinted sunglasses. (The title is partially inspired by Jennifer Egan’s novel “The Candy House.”) But left turns are business as usual for Gordon, a restlessly curious artistic polymath who has never settled for the conventional, expected or familiar.

Persons: Kim Gordon, “, ”, Thurston Moore, Gordon, I’d, Jennifer Egan’s Locations: New York, Los Angeles

☆ How Hurray for the Riff Raff Learned the Power of the Present
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-13 | by ( Lindsay Zoladz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Almost a year after the sudden death of Alynda Segarra’s father, the sight of a Bronx-bound subway entrance made the musician cry. “I walked by the 1 train yesterday, and the color of the red and the ‘1’ and the ‘Van Cortlandt Park’ and the ‘Uptown’ — I just burst into tears,” Segarra, who uses they/them pronouns, said. “My dad loved enjoying,” Segarra said. “He just didn’t deny himself pleasure. So now I’m really starting to be like, ‘Why not?’”

Persons: Alynda, “, ” Segarra, Riff Raff Organizations: Manhattan’s Hotel Chelsea, Chelsea Locations: Bronx, Van Cortlandt, ’, Manhattan’s

☆ Listening to boygenius, Together and Apart
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-09 | by ( Lindsay Zoladz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Dear listeners,It’s been a big week for boygenius, the singer-songwriter supergroup of Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus. “This is our last show,” Dacus told the crowd, “and we’re feeling it.”Is it weird to say I wasn’t mad about this news? “The Record” itself had been an unexpected bonus, since boygenius initially seemed like a one-off project that wouldn’t last longer than a six-song EP and a subsequent tour. But the runaway success of “The Record” also means that some people are more familiar with boygenius than with the three accomplished solo artists who make up the group. It’s a celebration of both the individual work of Baker, Bridgers and Dacus (which sounds like a law firm that I would definitely hire) and also the magic that happens when they put their Captain Planet powers together and become boygenius.

Persons: It’s, Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, boygenius, ” Dacus, I’m, I’d, we’d, ”, Baker, Bridgers, who’s, plumb Organizations: boygenius, Los Locations: Los Angeles

☆ 7 Grammy Winners Worth Another Spin
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-06 | by ( Lindsay Zoladz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Dear listeners,I can hardly believe I’m saying this, but this year’s Grammys were … really good? Tracy Chapman, radiating joy and in fine voice, sang “Fast Car” publicly for the first time in ages, alongside a visibly reverent Luke Combs. For today’s playlist, we’re going to hear from some more of those slightly-less-than-household-name artists who took home Grammys this year. I chose two selections of my own, and I also asked my fellow Times pop critics Jon Pareles and Jon Caramanica to send me a few of their picks — a mix of jazz, folk, pop, gospel and more. Listen below to tracks from Laufey, Peso Pluma and Samara Joy, and check out the Bonus Tracks for more of our Grammy coverage.

Persons: Tracy Chapman, Luke Combs, Joni Mitchell, Billie Eilish, Finneas, Taylor Swift, she’s, Phoebe Bridgers, Karol G, Lainey Wilson, Victoria Monét, Jon Pareles, Jon Caramanica, Samara Joy Organizations: SZA Locations: Laufey, Samara

Two of the night’s strongest performances came from young women using pianos to accompany the wispy, stratospheric upper reaches of their registers — and to comment on the tyranny of fragility and prettiness. The second was Olivia Rodrigo, who nailed the vertiginous high notes that punctuate her rock-operatic smash “Vampire,” and then riffed on the song’s theme as she smeared herself with spurting fake blood. Each performance, in its own way, felt like a rebuttal to the constricting standards to which so many young women are held. Eilish’s was about the pain of being perceived as an object; Rodrigo’s reimagined the same kind of pressure as a horror movie. LINDSAY ZOLADZ

Persons: Billie Eilish, Barbie, Olivia Rodrigo, Eilish’s, LINDSAY ZOLADZ

☆ Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs Gave America a Rare Gift: Harmony
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-05 | by ( Lindsay Zoladz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

When a beloved artist who has not performed live in some time returns to the stage, we often expect them to appear fragile, unsteady, ill at ease. It was a genuine moment of warmth and unity, the sort seldom offered these days by televised award shows — or televised anything, really. Thirty-five years ago, at the 1989 Grammy Awards, Chapman stood alone onstage and performed a wrenching rendition of “Fast Car” accompanied by only her own acoustic guitar. What made Sunday night’s performance feel different wasn’t just the time that had passed, or the gray hair that now elegantly frames Chapman’s face. It was the presence of Combs, born a year after that Grammy performance, regarding Chapman with an awe-struck reverence.

Persons: Tracy Chapman, Luke Combs —, Chapman, Combs, —

☆ Guide to the Grammys
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-04 | by ( The Staff Of The Morning | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Two beloved songwriters, almost half a century apart in age, are set to be stars of tonight’s Grammy Awards. Joni Mitchell, who nearly died from an aneurysm several years ago, will give her first Grammys performance at the age of 80. And Taylor Swift has a shot to win her fourth album of the year award, something no other artist has done. But Swift, who has six nominations, faces tough competition. We asked three Times music critics — Jon Pareles, Jon Caramanica and Lindsay Zoladz — to share their thoughts on who might win tonight’s awards.

Persons: Joni Mitchell, Taylor Swift, Swift, SZA, ”, Victoria Monét, Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish, Miley Cyrus, Jon Batiste, — Jon Pareles, Jon Caramanica, Lindsay Zoladz —

☆ Meet the 2024 Grammys’ Best New Artist Nominees
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-02 | by ( Lindsay Zoladz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Dear listeners,Some people swear there’s a curse that comes with winning the Grammy for best new artist, but it’s difficult to believe that when you remember who has actually taken home the trophy. Toggle the winners list back another decade and you’ll see some established industry power players like John Legend (best new artist 2006), Carrie Underwood (2007) and Adele (2009). The Grammys even got it right as far back as 1965, when the award went to a group of worthy Liverpudlian newcomers called the Beatles. Today’s playlist is an introduction to the eight artists who stand a chance to join their ranks at this Sunday’s Grammys. Personally, I’d be happy to see the 34-year-old mom take home best new artist; I love when someone who’s been toiling in semi-obscurity for years finally gets her moment in the spotlight.

Persons: Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo —, John Legend, Carrie Underwood, Adele, Jelly Roll, Coco Jones, Victoria Monét, Ariana Grande, Chloe x Halle, Monét, I’d, who’s Locations: Dua Lipa

☆ Joni Mitchell Adds a Gig to Her Comeback Tour: The Grammys
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-29 | by ( Ben Sisario | More About Ben Sisario | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Nine years ago, Joni Mitchell fans wondered if they might ever hear her perform again, after Mitchell — the Canadian singer-songwriter and icon of the folk movement — had an aneurysm that initially left her unable to speak. But in recent years she has made a gradual recovery, and in 2022 she surprised the music world with a performance at the Newport Folk Festival. And on Sunday, at age 80, Mitchell is set to perform at the Grammy Awards for the first time. Show organizers offered no details about her appearance, including whether she is expected to play solo or with guests. “To hear Mitchell hit certain notes again in that inimitable voice was like glimpsing, in the wild, a magnificent bird long feared to have gone extinct.”

Persons: Joni Mitchell, Mitchell —, —, Mitchell, “ Joni Mitchell, Brandi Carlile, Wynonna Judd, Marcus Mumford, George Gershwin’s, Carlile —, ” Lindsay Zoladz, “ Organizations: Newport Folk, The New York Times Locations: Newport, ”, George

☆ A New Way to Hear The Amplifier (Plus 5 More Whistling Songs)
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-26 | by ( Lindsay Zoladz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Starting with today’s Amplifier, we’ll be including links to stream our playlists with either Spotify or Apple Music, in addition to YouTube links to individual songs. Where do I find the new Amplifier playlist each Tuesday and Friday? There’s a main playlist on both Spotify and now Apple Music that we fill with the new songs every time we send out a new Amplifier. How can I listen to an older Amplifier playlist? (We’ve added the 10 most recent Amplifier playlists to our Apple Music account page and will continue to archive the older ones throughout the next few weeks.)

Persons: I’ve, We’ve Organizations: Apple, Spotify, New York Times, Times

☆ Dolly Parton Covers Billy Joel, and 8 More New Songs
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-19 | by ( Jon Pareles | Lindsay Zoladz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Now that she’s released the deluxe edition — in honor of her 78th birthday, on Friday! — Dolly Parton’s already sprawling double album “Rockstar” runs nearly three hours long and clocks in at an indefatigably rockin’ 39 tracks. “I know the game, you’ll forget my name,” she sings, with a slight ache in her voice. “And I won’t be here in another year, if I don’t stay on the charts.” Given that “Rockstar” became the highest-charting album of Parton’s career just a few months ago, that fate seems, blessedly, unlikely. LINDSAY ZOLADZ

Persons: she’s, Dolly Parton’s, Billy Joel’s, ”, Parton, Rockstar ”, LINDSAY ZOLADZ Organizations: Rockstar

☆ Sleater-Kinney’s 10 (or Actually 11) Best Songs
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-19 | by ( Lindsay Zoladz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Dear listeners,I first heard the band Sleater-Kinney when I was a teenager, and it’s not an exaggeration to say it changed my life. The drummer, Janet Weiss, played harder than pretty much anyone I’d ever seen, of any gender, and she sometimes wore pigtails. I still believe that Sleater-Kinney’s two-decade, eight-album stretch from 1995 to 2015 ranks among the strongest runs ever by an American band. But its last three albums, released since Weiss left the group, have largely left me cold. But I’d be lying, or blindly stanning, if I said I rank this new album with the band’s best work.

Persons: Kinney, it’s, —, I’d, Janet Weiss, Weiss, Carrie Brownstein Locations: American

☆ Doja Cat Makes the Leap From the Internet to the Arena Stage
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-30 | by ( Lindsay Zoladz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

More than most artists on pop’s current A-list, the 28-year-old rapper and singer Doja Cat is a child of the internet. Born Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini, she spent much of her youth making beats and rabble-rousing social media posts. 1 on Billboard — retains the glint-eyed, anarchic spirit of an internet troll. She has been a near constant presence on the charts for almost four years, but as a live performer she is still largely unproven. Her dreamy, disco-inflected breakout hit, “Say So,” was released in January 2020 and, during the pandemic, became a TikTok sensation.

Persons: Doja, Amala, Zandile Dlamini, ”, doesn’t Organizations: Billboard, Barclays Center Locations: New York City

Her voice sounds utterly guileless as she sings about lust, betrayal, revenge and healing. 3. boygenius, ‘The Record’Synergy reigns in boygenius, the alliance of the singer-songwriters Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus. Paul Simon, ‘Seven Psalms’“Seven Psalms” comes across as a farewell album from Paul Simon, 82. Simon sings about mortality as a “great migration” and extols the presence and purpose of “The Lord,” as the biblical psalms do. The songs on her second album, “Guts,” combine pop’s concision and melody with rock’s potential to erupt.

Persons: Karol G, Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, mentorships, Paul Simon, ‘, It’s, Simon, ”, Olivia Rodrigo, Oliva Rodrigo, Feist, ’ Feist Locations: Colombian, Dominican, Afrobeats, boygenius

☆ Brenda Lee, a Queen of Christmas and So Much More
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-29 | by ( Lindsay Zoladz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Lee inducted Tucker into the Country Music Hall of Fame in October, and people are still talking about the dry delivery and killer comic timing of her speech. Lee has, Tucker added, “the best sense of humor known to man (or woman).”For the past four years, “Rockin’” has peaked at No. Because while Brenda Lee is a Christmas queen, she’s also so much more. Brenda Lee has stories. While still in her teens, Lee shared bills with Little Richard, Chubby Checker, Dusty Springfield — the list is seemingly endless.

Persons: Tanya Tucker, Lee, Tucker, “, ”, Mariah, ” Lee, Carey, Brenda Lee, she’s, Elvis Presley, Elvis, “ I’m, I’ve, ” Patsy Cline, Little Richard, Chubby Checker, Dusty Springfield, John Lennon, Lee “ Organizations: Country Music Hall of Fame, Ole Opry, Beatles Locations: Hamburg

☆ Taylor Swift’s ‘“Slut!”’ and the Evolution of a Pop Star Feminist
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-27 | by ( Lindsay Zoladz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

That titular syllable is exhaled breathily on the chorus and later, as the song’s intensity builds, shouted like a slur from the cheap seats. “If they call me a slut,” she sings, in a love-struck, lavender haze, “you know it might be worth it for once.”That lyric feels flippant, even half-baked. But it’s also important to remember where, in 2014, Swift was in her evolution. “‘Slut!’” is not a great Taylor Swift song, though it is an interesting one. For all its messiness, this track feels like a more honest snapshot of who she was at a certain moment in time — a young woman, wielding words, still figuring it all out.

Persons: Swift, Kathleen Hanna, “, ”, ” Swift, it’s, Lena Dunham, you’re, Amber Rose, Reese Witherspoon, Taylor

☆ PinkPantheress’s Music Broke the Internet. Up Next? Everything Else.
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-26 | by ( Lindsay Zoladz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

“A lot of albums these days are just insanely long collections of what people have been working on, shoehorned into a theme,” Mura Masa said. It traces a loose narrative of a doomed love and is held together by a thematic focus on death and the afterlife. So that song is me being like, ‘I’m not your internet girlfriend. “Sometimes I’d rather not explain what I want something to sound like, I’d rather just do it,” she said. When people are basically flaunting how much something costs, I find that those aren’t really the people that I’m drawn to working with.”

Persons: Mura Masa, “, ”, ” Pink, —, They’re, I’ve, I’m, ’ ”, Pink, “ I’m Organizations: “, ”

☆ Jamila Woods’s Songs Have Many Loves
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-11 | by ( Lindsay Zoladz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

Most people first heard Woods’s voice — warm, heartfelt and sincere — when she was featured on gospel-tinged tracks by Chance the Rapper (“Blessings”) and Segal (“Sunday Candy”). Each song took the name of a different pioneer: “Zora,” “Miles,” “Octavia.”That’s not to say there wasn’t any Jamila in them. “With ‘Legacy!,’ there’s a lot of songs where I was actually writing a lot about myself, but I’m like, ‘I’ll call it ‘Sonia!’” she said and laughed. “Water Made Us,” which she considers her most personal and vulnerable album to date, found her “shedding” armor. I don’t need to put that layer on top of it anymore.”“Water Made Us” is all about Woods’s own search for love.

Persons: Woods, Chance, Segal, Candy ”, “, ”, Tubman ”, Zora, ” “ Miles, ” “ Octavia, ” That’s, Sonia, ’ ”, ‘, It’s, Said it’s

“Dolores” is easily one of the most infectious melodies Wayne Shorter wrote during his stint as musical director for the Miles Davis Quintet. But it’s not one of the (many) Shorter tunes you’re likely to hear called at a jam session or covered at a straight-ahead gig. Maybe there is something intimidating about the balled up, stop-and-start melody; the centerlessness of its structure; or how perfectly the quintet plays it on the classic 1966 recording. Strong-but-bendable rhythm, splintered melodic lines and rough-and-tumble interplay are par for the course for (this) Davis, especially with her Diatom Ribbons project. When Lage departs from it on his solo, he travels far — and the band comes with him.

Persons: “ Dolores ”, Wayne Shorter, Miles Davis, it’s, Kris Davis, Davis, Trevor Dunn, Terri Lyne Carrington, Julian Lage’s, Lage, RUSSONELLO Organizations: Village Vanguard

☆ Are We Finally Ready to Take Tammy Wynette Seriously?
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-01 | by ( Lindsay Zoladz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Chastain tackles the songs herself, and though her pipes are decent, her performances never quite transcend honky-tonk bar karaoke. Watching the series, you miss the specific and elusive magic of Wynette’s own voice, making clear how easy it is to take for granted. As Clinton’s curt 1992 dismissal attests, the women Wynette sang about and embodied in her songs often seemed at odds with second-wave feminism. She often sang about the sorts of people and situations that aren’t usually championed in a culture that devalues women’s work and doesn’t treat their perspectives seriously. Easton notes, astutely, that Wynette’s songs often depicted “failures of the domestic,” and that “Wynette’s best work is about when the most private failures become public scandals.”

Persons: Wynette, Jones, weepie “, ”, George, Tammy ”, Chastain, Steacy Easton, Tammy Wynette, Easton, Clinton’s curt, “ Locations: Nashville

Just a week after performing at the historically Black Tougaloo College in Jackson, Miss., supporting James Meredith’s March Against Fear, Nina Simone was on fire as she strode onstage to play for a very different audience at the Newport Jazz Festival on July 2, 1966. Her interactions with the bourgeois New Englanders at Newport were hardly warm: In the middle of an acid-rinsed version of “Blues for Mama,” she dismisses them — “I guess you ain’t ready for that” — and later she hushes them: “Shut up, shut up.” But she pours every ounce of vitriol she’s got into the performance, especially on “Mississippi Goddam.” She’d first released the song in 1964, and two years later it felt as topical as ever. Meredith had just been shot while marching across Mississippi, and unrest was overtaking redlined Black neighborhoods across the country. At Newport, she amends one of the verses to address the oppression of Los Angeles’s Black community: “Alabama’s got me so upset/And Watts has made me lose my rest/Everybody knows about Mississippi, goddamn!” The entire Newport performance is now available for the first time as an album titled “You’ve Got to Learn.” It’s spellbinding, heartbreaking stuff, reminding us just how much Simone would still be lamenting today. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO

Persons: James Meredith’s, Nina Simone, strode, ”, —, she’s, ” She’d, Meredith, “ Alabama’s, Watts, It’s spellbinding, Simone, GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO Organizations: Black Tougaloo College, Newport Jazz Festival, Englanders Locations: Jackson, Miss, Newport, “, Mississippi

☆ Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga Dueted. Their Stars Were Reborn.
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-21 | by ( Lindsay Zoladz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

In August 2021, while battling Alzheimer’s disease, Bennett, who died on Friday at 96, made his final public appearance on that very same stage, again with Lady Gaga. A poignant “60 Minutes” segment captured Bennett’s struggles in rehearsals but his ultimate triumph when he took the stage. He sang with more eclectic and, in some cases, even younger musicians on his series of “Duets” albums, from 2006 to 2012. Gaga satisfied Bennett’s desire to stay active and involved with a younger generation of musicians, and her professional stability made her into the most committed of his duet partners. I felt dead,” Gaga said of the time before “Cheek to Cheek.” “And then I spent a lot of time with Tony.

Persons: Alzheimer’s, Bennett, Lady Gaga, Bennett’s, Gaga, “, ’, ”, “ Cheek, Cheek, I’d, ” Bennett, Elvis Costello, K.D, Lang, Amy Winehouse, ” Gaga, Tony Organizations: MTV Locations: Radio City

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