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☆ As Objects Fly Onstage, Stars Become Part of the Audience’s Show
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-02 | by ( Jon Caramanica | More About Jon Caramanica | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Is the star of the concert onstage, or in the crowd? In part, that’s because the barrier between the stage and the crowd is more porous than ever, going both ways. Recent weeks have seen a spate of objects flying toward artists, a sign that fans are seeking out ways to insert themselves into the performances they’re attending. But pop stars are wise to this, too, understanding that in an era of social media-inspired invasiveness, allowing themselves to be touched by the crowd is a powerful marketing and publicity tool. The barrier between stage and audience is philosophical, a shared understanding of social practice but not anything more than that.

Persons: they’re

☆ How Aimé Leon Dore Took New York
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-27 | by ( Jon Caramanica | More About Jon Caramanica | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

He met Anthony Bigio, now vice president for design, when Mr. Bigio was designing custom Air Force 1s for clients at Nike’s Mercer Street location. Joe Bavasso, now ALD’s vice president for product, had a job at Todd Snyder but sought out Mr. Santis in hopes that ALD would sponsor his summer basketball team in the Rockaways. A few years ago, Mr. Santis discovered the New Balance 550, a low-top lifestyle sneaker, in an old New Balance catalog and revived it as a collaborative release with ALD. Since then, the 550 has become in “a staple iconic franchise for New Balance,” said Chris Davis, the New Balance chief marketing officer and senior vice president for global merchandising. “It was one of those phenomenons in sneaker culture that only comes around once every few years.”

Persons: David Z, Michael K, ravenously, Santis, Anthony Bigio, Bigio, Joe Bavasso, Todd Snyder, ”, Chris Davis Organizations: Air Force, Nike’s, Yankees, Mets, New, New Balance

☆ The Night Sinead O’Connor Took on the Pope on ‘S.N.L.’
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-26 | by ( Jon Caramanica | More About Jon Caramanica | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

She was something grander than a simple pop star — she became a stand-in for a sociopolitical discomfort that was beginning to take hold in the early 1990s, a rejection of the enthusiastic sheen and power-at-all-costs culture of the 1980s. And so, in an era where late-night television performances could still prompt monocultural mood shifts, her gesture was a volcanic eruption. And she was a savvy radical — reportedly she had done something slightly different in rehearsal, and saved the pope photo for the actual show. (The photo itself had hung on the bedroom wall of O’Connor’s mother, who O’Connor later said had physically and sexually abused her as a child.) Also, she was on live television, holding court for three minutes on the miseries of discrimination and abuses of power, under the guise of being a pop star performing a song.

Persons: Sinead O’Connor’s, Bob Marley’s, O’Connor intoned, Pope John Paul II, “, O’Connor —, —, O’Connor

☆ Hip-Hop’s 50th Anniversary: 50 Rappers Share Their Stories
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-18 | by ( Joe Coscarelli | Jon Caramanica | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

50 Rappers, 50 StoriesOver five decades, hip-hop has grown from a new artform to a culture-defining superpower. In their own words, 50 influential voices chronicle its evolution.

☆ Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘Vampire’ Takes a Note From Taylor Swift: Leave a Mark
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-04 | by ( Jon Caramanica | More About Jon Caramanica | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Rodrigo is 20 now, and “Guts,” due in September, will be her second album. And while “Drivers License” and its fallout became tabloid fodder, the public narrative wasn’t encoded into the song itself. “Vampire” changes that. On “Drivers License,” Rodrigo still saw the other woman as an enemy, or source of tension, but now on “Vampire,” she understands what the lines of allegiance truly are, marking an emergent feminist streak. Here, she finds kinship with her ex’s other partners, and lambastes herself for thinking she ever was the exception: “Every girl I ever talked to told me you were bad, bad news/You called them crazy, God, I hate the way I called ’em crazy too.”

Persons: Rodrigo, Bia, Mayer, Swift, John, ”, ” Rodrigo, lambastes Locations: Angeles

☆ Popcast (Deluxe): Pharrell Williams at Louis Vuitton and Gunna’s New LP
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-21 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Popcast (Deluxe): Pharrell Williams at Louis Vuitton and Gunna’s New LP What’s the role of global celebrity in high fashion? Why hasn’t hip-hop penetrated the charts this year? And what’s the snack of the week? Produced by Leslye Davis. Audio editing by Pedro Rosado.

Persons: Pharrell Williams, Louis Vuitton, Jon Caramanica, Joe Coscarelli, Leslye Davis, Pedro Rosado Organizations: Louis

☆ Pharrell Williams, Louis Vuitton’s New Don
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-18 | by ( Jon Caramanica | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Earlier this month, Pharrell Williams was in the men’s atelier on the second floor of Louis Vuitton’s corporate office in Paris, sunglasses on, surveying his new perch. “This window is different.”The window by his desk looks out over the small plaza on the north side of the Pont Neuf, where in just a couple of weeks, his first show as Louis Vuitton men’s creative director would take place. A 50-foot statue of the artist Yayoi Kusama, a Vuitton collaborator, hovered just outside. The rapper Pusha T and the streetwear innovator Nigo were milling about. I mean, the Seine River right there — it’s like the moat.”

Persons: Pharrell Williams, Louis Vuitton’s, ”, Pont, Louis Vuitton, Pusha, Williams’s, “ Locations: Paris, Seine

☆ Popcast (Deluxe): A.I. Pop Stars and Luke Combs’s ‘Fast Car’
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-14 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Popcast (Deluxe): A.I. Pop Stars and Luke Combs’s ‘Fast Car’ Dissecting the recent wave of songs “by" Drake and others, plus your questions about band reunions, a rundown of new songs and more. Hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli. Produced by Leslye Davis. Audio editing by Pedro Rosado.

Persons: Luke Combs’s, Drake, Jon Caramanica, Joe Coscarelli, Leslye Davis, Pedro Rosado

☆ Popcast (Deluxe): Taylor Swift and Matty Healy, Plus ‘The Idol’
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-07 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Popcast (Deluxe): Taylor Swift and Matty Healy, Plus ‘The Idol’ Breaking down Ice Spice’s new feature on Swift’s “Karma” remix, the explosion in pop music documentaries and more. Hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli. Produced by Leslye Davis. Audio editing by Pedro Rosado.

Persons: Taylor Swift, Matty Healy, Jon Caramanica, Joe Coscarelli, Leslye Davis, Pedro Rosado

☆ Taylor Swift’s ‘Midnights’ (Lindsay’s Version)
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-30 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Dear listeners,This past weekend, along with more than 200,000 people in the New York metropolitan area, I attended Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. I saw sights I will never forget: more than one person, in late May, dressed head to toe as a Christmas tree (an inside joke about Swift growing up on a Christmas tree farm … I think? ); a father proudly wearing a handmade shirt that read “Real Men Listen to Taylor Swift”; enough sequins per square inch that, when the sun hit it right, MetLife Stadium could probably be seen from space. But, of course, I also saw a generation-defining pop superstar performing at the top of her game, throughout a sprawling, near-three-and-a-half-hour set that highlighted her stylistic versatility, physical stamina and ongoing evolution as a songwriter. Though Swift has long had a flair for both spectacle and intimacy in a live setting, what I couldn’t shake (shake, shake) during this marathon 45-song set was how completely she’s come into her power as a performer.

Persons: Taylor, Swift, Taylor Swift, Jon Caramanica, “, ” Organizations: MetLife Locations: New York

☆ Lewis Capaldi Will Break Your Heart. (But Don’t Take Him Too Seriously.)
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-06 | by ( Jon Caramanica | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

At the Grammys in 2020, he had an Andy Kaufmanesque face-off on the red carpet with an unsuspecting Ryan Seacrest. Sometimes, they happen when he’s onstage — at one recent concert, the crowd finished the songs that he couldn’t. But the tics subside when he’s at ease: When fans came up to him outside the Ear Inn to chat, they all but disappeared. “Every piece of content or thing I see with my name next to it is closely followed by Tourette’s. Which is mental, ’cause then I’m like, Billie Eilish has Tourette’s, and she doesn’t bang on about it like I do.”He continued, “It feels dirty.

☆ Jai Paul Emerges, Tentatively, for His First Headlining Concert
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Jon Caramanica | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Tuesday night at Knockdown Center in Queens, nearly 2,000 people were handed something fragile and entrusted — implicitly implored — not to break it. For the last decade, the British electronic music producer and singer Jai Paul has functioned more as a memory than as an active musician. Since then, apart from the formal release of those demo recordings in 2019, he has stayed mostly quiet until this year. His show on Tuesday was his first true headlining concert, following performances at the two weekends of Coachella earlier this month. Which is to say, this was a precious, anticipated, frankly anxious affair — the materialization of a beloved and mercurial performer moving from the chimerical to the literal.

☆ Taylor Swift, Pop’s Maestro of Memory, Returns to the Stage
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-18 | by ( Jon Caramanica | More About Jon Caramanica | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Of late, Swift — obsessive about memory and even more obsessive about lore — has made revisiting her old work integral to her public presentation. Her ongoing rerecordings project layers a veneer of artistic liberation atop a business tug of war with the owners of her master recordings. And Swift herself tackled each period of her career — the dynamic ones and the flaccid ones alike — with real gusto, in outfits covered in glitter, or fringe or glittery fringe. Her stage was set up for both big-tent power and maximum intimacy; it jutted out into the crowd for almost the entire length of the floor. She concluded with a selection of songs from “Midnights,” a challenging album to wrap a show of this magnitude — it’s more an amalgam of old Swift ideas than a harbinger of a new direction.

Persons: ”, Swift, —, ” “, John, “, King Locations: Nashville, King Kong

☆ Ice Spice Broke Out With ‘Munch.’ Rap’s New Princess Is Just Warming Up.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-20 | by ( Jon Caramanica | More About Jon Caramanica | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

All of her released songs so far have been produced by Riot (born Ephrem Lopez Jr.). The two met when they were both studying communications at SUNY Purchase, where Ice Spice also played volleyball, as she did at the Catholic high school she attended in the Bronx. They found a common language in drill songs that didn’t shy away from the personal, and that were lyrically emphatic, line by line. She also found that writing personal stories came naturally. “It’s just like a relief whenever I complete a song.”Before “Munch,” attention came in fits and starts, not all of it positive.

Persons: ”, “, Ephrem Lopez Jr, “ It’s, “ Munch, Drake unfollowed Organizations: Riot, SUNY, Catholic Locations: Brooklyn, Bronx, Toronto

☆ Did That Hit Arrive in 2022 or 1987? This Year, It Was Hard to Tell.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-14 | by ( Jon Caramanica | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +12 min

Turns out it’s the same sample, a sleight of ear designed to trigger warm nostalgia, and also maybe a little confusion. Even its video is optimized for recognition, with Santana doing the same stomp Beyoncé does in hers, in an almost identical outfit. Throughout 2022, that gambit has been deployed again and again — by pop singers and rappers, established stars and newbies. Here, old songs — hip-hop classics, pop novelties and more — are scrunched and stretched sometimes to the point of absurdity. These songs are concessions that say the quiet part out loud — everyone has always been borrowing voraciously, from everyone else, constantly.

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