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    What Comes After Trauma and a TikTok Hit? Gigi Perez Is Finding Out.

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    The artist, 25, struck platinum with “Sailor Song.” Her debut album is a tribute to her lost sister, and an attempt to make sense of a few rudderless years.Gigi Perez walked into a Brooklyn restaurant last week with a toothpick wedged in her mouth, stood up after dinner and slid in another one. She had glanced at a clear box of them sitting on the table periodically, like she was seeking comfort or reinforcement. But for two hours, she mostly kept her gaze fixed to the side, avoiding eye contact while she spoke — as she often finds herself doing — about death.“Getting older, watching the people in your family get older — I feel like I’m on a conveyor belt that’s going to this inevitable end,” she said.At 25, Perez speaks with a weariness of someone at least twice her age. She was at one of her favorite Japanese spots in Williamsburg, not too far from where she used to live; she was days away from releasing her debut album and 10 hours from a brutally early wake-up call for “The Today Show.”Like many young musicians, Perez is figuring out what comes next after virality. Her lilting, guitar-powered anthems have blazed through TikTok, amassing millions of streams and a fervent fan base. “Sailor Song,” a ballad about lusting after a girl who looks like Anne Hathaway (yes, it was based on a real woman), went platinum and has been planted on Spotify’s most-streamed songs in the United States for months; it became a No. 1 single in the United Kingdom last fall. But Perez’s career hasn’t been built on celebration. She is carving a catalog out of grief.“When you’re a kid, music is verbalizing things you don’t know how to say — you don’t have the vocabulary to understand. You’re discovering how you feel in real time,” Perez said. OK McCausland for The New York TimesOne of her first songs to garner attention on SoundCloud, “Sometimes (Backwood),” took off six months after her older sister, Celene, died suddenly in 2020. Perez’s LP, “At the Beach, in Every Life,” released less than a week ago, is largely a tribute to her. It is also an attempt to shape and sharpen the last, often rudderless years of her own life.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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      Beyoncé Cowboy Carter Tour Review; The Star Remixes American History, and Her Own

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      The last time Beyoncé performed “Daddy Lessons,” the stomping, biting number from her 2016 album, “Lemonade,” was at that year’s C.M.A. Awards, in a blistering rendition alongside the Dixie Chicks (now the Chicks).Not everyone in country music embraced Beyoncé’s experimentation. “I did not feel welcomed,” she wrote in album notes leading up to the release last year of “Cowboy Carter,” her eighth solo album, an exploration of the many tendrils of American roots music and their connections to Black music of all stripes and generations.So it was meaningful, and pointed, that at the opening night of the Cowboy Carter Tour at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., on Monday, Beyoncé played “Daddy Lessons” for the first time since that rejection. It came right after she sang her renovated version of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” — approved by the country royal herself — while soaring over the rapturous crowd in a flying horseshoe.Full-circle moments don’t just happen — they are the products of intention and diligence and allergy to loose threads. Throughout this roisterous and clever show, there were suggestions that loop-closing has been very much on Beyoncé’s mind, along with culmination.At almost three hours long, her seventh solo headlining concert tour was a characteristic Beyoncé epic. The New York TimesBeyoncé’s Cowboy Carter show featured the debut of many of the album’s songs, but also brought back tracks from across her catalog.The New York TimesWe 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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      Chubby Checker, Outkast and the White Stripes Will Join the Rock & Hall of Fame

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      Joe Cocker, Cyndi Lauper, Bad Company and Soundgarden — but not Oasis or Phish — are also part of the 40th anniversary class.Chubby Checker is finally joining the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, 65 years after “The Twist” became a No. 1 hit and an international dance craze.Checker, 83, who has campaigned for decades to be admitted to the pantheon — at one point taking out a full-page ad in Billboard magazine that said “I want my flowers while I’m alive” — is part of the 40th annual crop of performer inductees. He is joined by Joe Cocker, the White Stripes, Outkast, Cyndi Lauper, Bad Company and Soundgarden, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation announced on Sunday evening, after a Rock Hall-themed segment on ABC’s “American Idol.”Those artists — a lineup that mixes classic rock, hip-hop, 1990s-vintage alternative rock and a female pop icon — will formally join the hall on Nov. 8 in a ceremony at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles that will stream live in Disney+.Checker, Cocker, Outkast and Bad Company were all accepted on their first nomination.The induction of the White Stripes, the stylish garage-rock minimalists whose “Seven Nation Army” has become a stadium-rousing standard, could lend some anticipatory drama to this year’s ceremony. Since the band broke up in 2011, Meg White, its drummer, has become one the great recluses of 21st-century pop, rarely seen in public and declining all interview requests — which would make any possible appearance by her a major coup for the Rock Hall.Among the other honors this year, Salt-N-Pepa, the pioneering female rap group, and the singer-songwriter Warren Zevon will receive the musical influence award. The musical excellence citation will go to the keyboardist Nicky Hopkins, the studio bassist Carol Kaye and the producer Thom Bell, a key figure in Philadelphia soul. Lenny Waronker, a producer and longtime executive at Warner Bros. Records, will receive the Ahmet Ertegun Award.Among the nominees who failed to make the final cut this year are Oasis, the Britpop standard-bearers who have reunited for perhaps this year’s most in-demand world tour, and Phish, the veteran Vermont jam band. Phish won the hall’s fan ballot — a single vote, entered alongside those submitted from the hall’s voting body of more than 1,000 music historians, industry professionals and previously inducted artists.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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      David Thomas, Leader of the Band Pere Ubu, Dies at 71

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      David Thomas, the singer and songwriter who led Pere Ubu and other bands that stretched the parameters of punk and art-rock, died on Wednesday in Brighton and Hove, England. He was 71.Mr. Thomas had suffered from kidney disease, but the announcement of his death, on Pere Ubu’s Facebook and Instagram sites, did not specify a cause, citing only “a long illness.” He lived in Brighton and Hove, but the announcement did not say if he died at home.Through five decades of recordings and performances, Mr. Thomas maintained an audacious, unpredictable, ornery and ambitious spirit. He perpetually defied and upended structures and expectations, and he reveled in dissonance and unsprung sounds.In the mid-1970s, at the dawn of punk rock, Pere Ubu described itself as “avant-garage.” And as punk developed its own constraints and conventions, Mr. Thomas purposefully warped or ignored them. When late-’70s punk bands sported T-shirts, leather and ripped jeans, he performed in a suit and tie. And while much of his music stayed grounded in rock, he also delved into chamber music, cabaret, electronics and improvisation.Mr. Thomas in performance in 1979. Big-boned and overweight, he wielded his bulk proudly onstage. David Corio/Redferns, via Getty ImagesHis voice was always distinctive: a liquid, androgynous tenor that he pushed to its limits and beyond — crooning, chanting, whooping, muttering, barking, burbling, yelling. His lyrics could be apocalyptic, free-associative, mocking, euphoric, cryptic or startlingly direct. Onstage, gesticulating vehemently, he veered between endearing and irascible.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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      Roy Thomas Baker, Who Helped Produce ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’ Dies at 78

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      Among the most successful music producers in the 1970s and ’80s, he helped churn out hits for acts like Queen, the Cars, Journey and Foreigner.Roy Thomas Baker, who was among the most successful music producers of the 1970s and 1980s and who helped produce Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” one of the most unconventional pop hits, died at his home in Lake Havasu City, Ariz., on April 12. He was 78.His death was announced by Bob Merlis, a spokesman, who said in a statement that the cause was unclear.Besides Queen, Mr. Baker collaborated with other well-known bands like the Cars, Journey, Mötley Crüe and Foreigner while working as a producer and sound engineer at several recording studios over the course of his career.He is perhaps best known for helping to produce the nearly six-minute-long “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen. In an interview with The New York Times in 2005, Mr. Baker said that the song was “ageless” because “it didn’t confine to any given genre of music.”“I thought it was going to be a hit,” said Mr. Baker, who produced the song with Queen. “We didn’t know it was going to be quite that big. I didn’t realize it was still going to be talked about 30 years later.”Roy Thomas Baker was born on Nov. 10, 1946, in Hampstead, England. He began his career at Decca Studios in London in 1963, working as a second engineer to Angus Boyd (Gus) Dudgeon, an English record producer who would later become known for his collaborations with Elton John; and Tony Visconti, an American producer who went on to work with artists like David Bowie and Marc Bolan.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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      Amadou Bagayoko, Half of Malian Duo Who Went Global, Dies at 70

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      As Amadou & Mariam, he and his wife were improbable pop stars on two counts. Their style was venturesome and eclectic, and they were blind virtuosos.Amadou Bagayoko, a Malian guitarist and composer who with his wife, the singer Mariam Doumbia, formed Amadou & Mariam, inventing a broadly accessible sound that made fans of people worldwide who otherwise knew little about music from Africa, died on Friday in Bamako, Mali’s capital. He was 70.His death was announced by the Malian government, which did not provide a cause. He and Ms. Doumbia lived in Bamako.In the late 2000s and early 2010s, Amadou & Mariam was regularly described as the new century’s most successful African musical act.Mr. Bagayoko, who grew up listening to Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, called their sound “Afro-rock,” and the group regularly combined his winding guitar solos with, for example, the pounding of a West African djembe drum.Yet the group’s music also consistently evolved. Their breakout hit, the 2005 album “Dimanche à Bamako,” had chatty spoken asides, sirens, the hubbub of crowds — city sounds turned into melodies. Their 2008 album “Welcome to Mali,” conversely, embraced an electronic style of funk, opening with a song, “Sabali,” featuring Damon Albarn of the arty hip-hop group Gorillaz.What was consistent was a sweet, graceful sound that still had the power to build to crescendos, with Ms. Doumbia’s alto achieving clear, pleasant resonance over a rich orchestration.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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      Rare Beatles Audition Tape Surfaces in a Vancouver Record Shop

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      The recording appears to be from the band’s 1962 audition for Decca Records, which notably rejected the group.The tape sat unremarkably on a shelf behind the counter, collecting dust for five, maybe 10 years — so much time that Rob Frith says he lost track.Frith, 69, could not seem to recall how it had found its way to Neptoon Records, his store in Vancouver, British Columbia, which in its 44 years has become a repository for tens of thousands of vinyl records and other musical relics.The label on the cardboard box said it was a Beatles demo tape, but, having heard enough bootleg recordings over the decades, Frith was skeptical until he enlisted a disc jockey friend, Larry Hennessey, to load it onto his vintage tape player a few weeks ago.It was just before midnight on March 11 when they pushed play on the mystery tape. From the opening guitar riff and the intonation of a 21-year-old John Lennon, Frith said he could not believe his ears as he listened to the Beatles performing a cover of the Motown hit “Money (That’s What I Want).”“Right away, we’re all kind of looking at each other,” Frith said. “It seems like the Beatles are in the room. That’s how clear it is.”Frith said the tape appeared to be a professionally edited recording of the Beatles’ New Year’s Day 1962 audition for Decca Records in London, a session that notably ended with the band’s rejection.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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      Scowl Made Hardcore Purists Angry. Now the Band Is Doubling Down.

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      The punk band fronted by Kat Moss wound its way from a local scene to national attention. Its second album, “We Are All Angels,” unpacks the pain of the journey.Last fall, on the second-floor stage of a cramped tavern called Neck of the Woods in San Francisco, Kat Moss was throwing elbows, shoving men twice her size into a packed circle pit and screaming into a microphone.Moss, the frontwoman for the Bay Area hardcore band Scowl, held her own. In the tight-knit circle of Northern California punks, this sweating, pulsing, tattoo-covered cluster of bodies were her people. Just before midnight, the crowd streamed out of the swampy bar into the cold air, bruised and smiling. In this crowd, stage diving, moshing and the occasional foot to the face all come from a place of love.But as Scowl’s star has risen from a group of underdogs playing house shows across the West Coast to a broader national audience, Moss and her four bandmates have been engaged in a different kind of fight — one with the gatekeepers who believe the band isn’t hardcore enough.The band was blasted on message boards and social media in 2023, accused of “selling out” when it struck a brand deal with a corporate sponsor. (Many hardcore contemporaries have done similar ones.) The group later took heat for putting out what some saw as pop sensibility masquerading as punk. Scenesters chafed when megastars like Post Malone and Hayley Williams of Paramore said they were fans of the group. And some of the most aggressive purists didn’t appreciate Moss’s proclivity for posting beauty tutorials on her personal social media channels. (Her mop of neon lime hair is hard to miss in a crowd.)Scowl isn’t shying away from the conflict. Instead, its members want to push the limits of their sound and what they feel hardcore music can be. With Scowl’s second album, “Are We All Angels” out April 4, the group is moving from the stalwart hardcore label Flatspot Records to Dead Oceans — home to Phoebe Bridgers and Mitski. It has enlisted Will Yip, a producer known for broadening the sound of punk bands. And it has leaned more into a slower, heavier sound with grungy riffs and catchier choruses.Scowl’s members want to push the limits of their sound and what they feel hardcore music can be. Mariano Regidor/Redferns, via Getty ImagesWe 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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      Girls to the Front: Punk Pioneers Are Coming to Lincoln Center

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      The institution’s annual American Songbook series honors “singer outsiders” including Fanny and Poly Styrene in events curated by Kathleen Hanna and Tamar-kali.For more than 65 years, Lincoln Center has hosted virtuoso concert musicians, opera singers and ballet stars.But a noise queen with ripped tights and a screeching guitar?Enter Kathleen Hanna and Tamar-kali, musicians with big bootprints in the punk scene, and curators of the latest iteration of Lincoln Center’s venerable American Songbook series. Their version honors “singer outsiders,” which includes a series of concerts and tributes to acts like the Slits, Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex and more, this month and next. It’s the first time Lincoln Center has celebrated the raw, propulsive D.I.Y. genre of punk, let alone the women who kicked their way through.The idea was to introduce an uptown audience to “our canon,” as Hanna, the Bikini Kill and Le Tigre frontwoman, and riot grrrl originator, put it. They booked contemporary artists to showcase punk’s elasticity, and to highlight styles that have historically been overlooked.“As a songwriter, there’s a lot of delegitimizing of aggressive music,” Tamar-kali said. But curating for Lincoln Center offered validation: “It just feels like I’m real musician now,” Hanna said, and they both laughed.Tamar-kali, a Brooklyn singer and composer (born Tamar-kali Brown), helped found the New York collective Sista Grrrl Riot, an outlet for feminist Afropunk, in the late ’90s; she and Hanna met in the early aughts and have been seeking ways to work together since.“As a songwriter, there’s a lot of delegitimizing of aggressive music,” said Tamar-kali, one of the series’ curators.Jack Vartoogian/Getty ImagesWe 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