Pop and Rock Music

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      At the Grammys, Tracy Chapman Seemed Like She Belonged

      by

      Singing her rousing 1988 hit “Fast Car” live for the first time in years, the elusive folk singer received the reverence and gratitude she’s long earned.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. But during Sunday night’s Grammy Awards, when the camera first pulled back from a tight shot of a woman’s fingers picking a familiar riff on an acoustic guitar and revealed the face of the great, elusive folk singer Tracy Chapman, what you noticed was the joy radiating from her face. Her contented smile. The unwavering tone and rich steadiness of her voice.Singing her rousing 1988 hit “Fast Car” live for the first time in years, duetting with the country star Luke Combs — whose faithful cover of the song was one of last year’s defining hits — and taking in the rapturous applause of her musical peers, Chapman gave off the feeling, in the words of her timeless song, that she belonged.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. (She picked up three awards that night, including best new artist.) 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. He seemed to be a stand-in for the many, many people over the years — of all races, genders and generations — who have heard their deepest desires reflected in this song and wished to pay Chapman their gratitude.They traded a few lines and harmonized beautifully on the chorus — her tone opalescent, his bringing some grit — but Combs never overshadowed Chapman. He knew that in that moment, no one could. Something about the way he looked at her said it all: His eyes shone with irrepressible respect. Here was a grown man, an assured performer who sells out stadiums, visibly trembling before the sight and the sound of the folk singer Tracy Chapman. He was hardly alone in that: The few crowd shots during the performance revealed some of music’s major stars on their feet, thrilled, before a standing ovation.When a cover of a famous song becomes a hit decades after the original was released, it usually requires a stylistic reboot to resonate with a new generation. But the appeal of Combs’s version, which reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, came from how closely it hewed to Chapman’s recording. Combs gave the rhythm section a little more arena-rock oomph and added a slight country twang to his phrasing, but that’s really it. It’s a cliché to call a song “timeless,” but here was proof: “Fast Car” did not need any major souping-up to become a hit once again, more than three decades after it was first released.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

    • 88 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      How Vintage Won the Grammys Red Carpet

      by

      Miley Cyrus, Laverne Cox, Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish — big stars in old clothes was the trend of the night. Because it’s not just about the gowns.The awards show red carpet has become such an access game, such a race of clout and connections to see who can wear the most never-before-seen or sizzlingly-hot-off-the-runway look — the answer, this time, was Beyoncé, in Louis Vuitton men’s wear from Pharrell Williams’s January show — that any other approach can seem like a shock.But recently a different trend has been emerging, and at the 66th Grammys it reached critical mass. Indeed, it’s so applause worthy, here’s hoping it isn’t a trend at all but rather the signal of a permanent shift in the fashion-Hollywood industrial complex.I am speaking of the rise of vintage. Or as it is apparently now known, “archival” fashion. “Archival” here is being used to refer to anything that simply isn’t new. (Well, it was getting a little ridiculous to refer to two-season-old clothes as “vintage.”) That could mean clothes from a brand archive, or a personal one. Sometimes also known as a “closet.”Laverne Cox in 2015 Comme des Garçons.Jordan Strauss/Invision, via Associated PressOlivia Rodrigo in a Versace siren gown from 1995.Jordan Strauss/Invision, via Associated PressAt the Grammys, Laverne Cox, the E! red carpet host, led the way, as she also did at the Emmy Awards, in a Valentine’s Day red contraption from 2015 Comme des Garçons. She chose the look, she said, because that collection had been about “blood and roses” and finding beauty in pain, and, well, it felt particularly apropos.Then there was Olivia Rodrigo, another vintage disciple (remember the 1995 Chanel suit she wore to the White House?), in a white 1995 Versace siren gown. Also Caroline Polachek in gothic 1998 Olivier Theyskens coursing with crimson veins and arteries. Billie Eilish in an upcycled and customized Chrome Hearts “Barbie” baseball jacket. Lana Del Rey in a found-it-herself puff-sleeve black vintage floral number. Coi Leray in a 2019 Saint Laurent jacket and leotards, no pants.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

    • 88 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Annie Lennox Honors Sinead O’Connor at Grammys

      by

      In an emotional ode to Sinead O’Connor at the Grammys, Annie Lennox performed “Nothing Compares 2 U,” the Irish singer-songwriter’s cover of the Prince original that became a No. 1 hit.A forceful performer known for her lilting voice and her political provocations, O’Connor died in July at 56. Her rendition of “Nothing Compares 2 U,” her best-known track, highlighted her ability to veer from breathy high notes to penetrating, heavy vocals, delivering performances with an emotional gut punch.There was a bit of irony in Lennox’s performance: In 1991, the year that O’Connor won the Grammy for best alternative music performance — for the album “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got,” which featured “Nothing Compares 2 U” — she boycotted the ceremony over what she called the show’s excessive commercialism.In a fitting tribute, Lennox took a moment at the end of her performance for an antiwar statement, saying, “Artists for cease-fire,” in reference to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.O’Connor had a tendency of turning public performances into headlines, famously ripping up a photo of Pope John Paul II on “S.N.L.” in protest of sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. As Amanda Hess wrote in a 2021 profile of O’Connor, the act was more personal than it may have seemed. Her mother, who the singer said in her memoir had physically abused her, died when O’Connor was 18. It was her mother’s photo, plucked from a bedroom wall, that O’Connor destroyed on national television.“I’m not sorry I did it. It was brilliant,” she said. “But it was very traumatizing.” Her career never recovered, but she felt a sense of freedom. “I could just be me,” she wrote in her book, “Rememberings.” “I’m not a pop star. I’m just a troubled soul who needs to scream into mikes now and then.”In the days and months following O’Connor’s death, which a coroner later said was the result of natural causes, scores of artists spoke of her bravery and pure talent.Lennox, a Scottish singer-songwriter who started her own solo career around the time of O’Connor’s rise, posted to social media a moving tribute to the singer after she died, calling her raw, fierce and brilliant. More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Taylor Swift Announces New Album, ‘The Tortured Poets Department,’ at Grammys

      by

      As she accepted the Grammy for best pop vocal album for “Midnights,” Taylor Swift announced that she would be releasing her new album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” on April 19.“I know that the way that the Recording Academy voted is a direct reflection of the passion of the fans, so I want to say thank you to the fans by telling you a secret that I’ve been keeping from you for the last two years,” Swift said. “Which is that my brand-new album comes out April 19. It’s called ‘The Tortured Poets Department.’”Swift said she would post the album’s cover from backstage when she was done accepting the prize.Going into the night’s awards show, Swift fans had noticed that the artist had changed her profile picture on X, Instagram and Facebook to a black-and-white version, and many interpreted this as a hint that Swift would announce a new “Taylor’s version” of her “Reputation” album, which has a black-and-white cover.Swift received six Grammy nominations, including nods for “Anti-Hero” in the best song and record of the year categories and a nomination for “Midnights” in the album of the year category.“This is my 13th Grammy,” Swift said in her speech. “This is my lucky number, I don’t know if I’ve ever told you that.” More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Killer Mike, boygenius and SZA Are Among Early Grammy Winners

      by

      Of this year’s 94 Grammy categories, all but nine were given out during a fast-paced, nontelevised ceremony, where some stars (Billie Eilish, Joni Mitchell, boygenius) showed up to accept their awards, but many others (SZA, Michelle Obama) didn’t.The tallies for the early awards gave no clear advantage to any artist. SZA, the night’s most nominated artist, with nine citations, won two (progressive R&B album and pop duo/group performance, with Phoebe Bridgers) but lost three, which puts her in a challenging position going into the main ceremony.The indie-rock trio boygenius won three early prizes, including best rock song, rock performance and alternative music album (for “The Record”). Dressed in identical white suits, with black ties and pink carnations, the band’s three women ran excitedly to the podium and gave emotional speeches.“We were all delusional enough as kids to think this might happen to us one day,” Lucy Dacus, one group member, said.Songs from “Barbie” — which logged 11 nominations total, including some multiple nods in individual categories — took two prizes early in the night. Eilish and her brother, Finneas, were present to accept the award for best song written for visual media, for “What Was I Made For?”“I want to thank our parents,” Finneas said. “Our dad who worked as a construction worker at Mattel Corporation for much of our childhood to keep food on the table. That’s very sick. Thank you for parenting us.”Jack Antonoff — the producer of Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey and other stars — won producer of the year, non-classical, for the third year a row.Although this nontelevised segment is seen by few fans, it can feature notable, heartfelt speeches. Mitchell, 80, accepting the award for best folk album, for “Joni Mitchell at Newport,” a live recording of her surprise comeback appearance in 2022, said: “We had so much fun at that concert, and I think you can feel it on the record. It’s a very joyous record because of the people that I played with and the spirit of the occasion was very high. And it went onto the record. Even the audience sounds like music.”Killer Mike, the Atlanta rap veteran and political activist, was up for three awards in the rap field for music from his album “Michael” — rap album, performance and song — and he won all three.In a passionate series of speeches, his head covered in sweat, he exhorted: “For all the people out there that think you get too old to rap, [expletive]!” He added: “Dreams come true! It is a sweep! It is a sweep! It is a sweep!” More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Adele Springsteen, Bruce Springsteen’s Mother, Dies at 98

      by

      Bruce Springsteen has long said that his mother was among his greatest influences and credited her with encouraging his musical ambitions.Adele Springsteen, who nurtured the budding musical talent of her son, the pioneering rock star Bruce Springsteen, died on Wednesday. She was 98.Mr. Springsteen announced his mother’s death in an Instagram post on Thursday. No cause was given, but Ms. Springsteen had struggled for more than a decade with Alzheimer’s disease.Her son has been outspoken about his relationship with his mother and her influence on him.Ms. Springsteen rented him his first guitar when he was 7, he said in 2021 during his Broadway show, “Bruce on Broadway,” which ran for more than two months as the city began to emerge from pandemic-related closures. The show had wide-ranging reflections, including thoughts about his mother.It was also Ms. Springsteen, he told the brimming Broadway audiences, at the St. James Theater, who danced to 1940s swing music and impressed in him the joys of bop-inspiring tunes, according to the NBC program “Today.”He also spoke of his mother’s ability to persist in her vivacious spirit even as aging and a punishing disease took their toll.“She’s 10 years into Alzheimer’s,” he said. “She’s 95. But the need to dance, that need to dance is something that hasn’t left her. She can’t speak. She can’t stand. But when she sees me, there’s a smile.”Ms. Springsteen was born Adele Zerilli on May 4, 1925, in Brooklyn. She married Douglas Springsteen, with whom she had her son in 1949 and later two daughters, Virginia and Pamela.She worked as a legal secretary and raised a young working-class family in Freehold, N.J., while her husband often struggled to find steady work and grappled with mental illness. He died in 1998.“She willed we would be a family and we were,” Mr. Springsteen wrote in “Born To Run,” his memoir. “She willed we would not disintegrate and we did not.”Ms. Springsteen’s high-spirited ethos, ever-present, seemed to be the through line in her life, and one that buoyed the lives of the people around her.“My mother is the great energy — she’s the energy of the show,” Mr. Springsteen told The Miami Herald in 1987. “The consistency, the steadiness, day after day — that’s her.” He added that “it was she who created the sense of stability in the family, so that we never felt threatened through all the hard times.”In the Instagram post on Thursday announcing his mother’s death, Mr. Springsteen shared a video of his mother, in old age, dancing to “In the Mood” by Glenn Miller, captioned with an excerpt from his own 1998 song about her, “The Wish.”“I’m older but you’ll know me in a glance,” it read. “We’ll find us a little rock ’n’ roll bar and we’ll go out and dance.”Aimee Ortiz More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      How Adele Springsteen Gave Bruce His Rock ’n’ Roll Spirit

      by

      Adele Springsteen bought her son, Bruce, his first electric guitar and encouraged him to get up and dance. She died on Wednesday at 98.Joy and despair, vitality and darkness course through Bruce Springsteen’s songs. The joy, he told the world, came from his mother, Adele Springsteen, who died on Wednesday at 98.When he accepted the Ellis Island Family Heritage award in 2010, Springsteen brought his mother onstage with her sisters, Dora and Eda, and declared, “They put the rock ’n’ roll in me.”Adele, born Adele Zerilli in 1925, was constantly listening to Top 40 radio when Springsteen was growing up, getting her son on his feet to dance with her. She scrimped to buy him his first electric guitar and she encouraged him to be a musician.She worked for decades as a legal secretary, an example that taught her son the dignity and camaraderie of holding a job. “It’s a sight that I’ve never forgotten, my mother walking home from work,” he said during “Springsteen on Broadway,” his autobiographical stage show. “My mom was truthfulness, consistency, good humor, professionalism, grace, kindness, optimism, civility, fairness, pride in yourself, responsibility, love, faith in your family, commitment, joy in your work and a never-say-die thirst for living — for living and for life. And most importantly, for dancing.”She also protected him from his father, who had a lifelong struggle with depression — and whose grimmer view of humanity is the counterweight that runs through Springsteen’s songs. “She was a parent,” he wrote in his memoir, “Born to Run,” and that’s what I needed as my world was about to explode.”As his career took off, she kept detailed scrapbooks of every small milestone. And she danced in the spotlight at her son’s concerts when she was well into her 90s, even when her Alzheimer’s disease had taken its toll and music was an instinctive consolation.“Through my mother’s spirit, love and affection, she imparted to me an enthusiasm for life’s complexities, an insistence on joy and good times, and the perseverance to see the hard times through,” the musician wrote in his memoir. That’s the measured, grown-up Springsteen, striking his balance. But a key moment in “Springsteen on Broadway” was “The Wish,” a song to his mother that glows with pure fondness.In it, he looks back to getting a guitar as a Christmas present, and he reminisces about “me in my Beatle boots, you in pink curlers and matador pants/Pullin’ me up on the couch to do the Twist for my uncles and aunts.” He also considers “all the things that guitar brought us” and offers to play his mother a request, but with one proviso: “If you’re looking for a sad song, well I ain’t gonna play it.”Art is never just autobiography, and children grow up to be far more than the sum of their parents. But anyone who’s ever shouted along on a chorus with an arena full of Springsteen fans — those choruses that often break through the darker thoughts in the verses — clearly owes Adele Springsteen some thanks. More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Madonna’s Celebration Tour Draws Fans Clad in Leather and Lace

      by

      Madonna performed at Madison Square Garden on Monday night as part of her Celebration Tour, a lavish stage spectacle devoted to her catalog of hits as the Queen of Pop. During “Like a Prayer,” she sang from a spinning carousel filled with jumbo crucifixes and shirtless men. When she performed “Vogue,” she invited Kelly Ripa onto the stage to join her in judging the ballroom moves of her dancers with scorecards.“I don’t know when I’m going to be back here playing again, but I’m doing this show like it’s my last show,” Madonna, 65, told the crowd. “And I’m doing this show like it’s my first show.”Before the concert, the scene outside the arena resembled a fashion runway as Madonna fans arrived to serve up style tributes to her. Men emerged from the subway wearing black biker boots and leather jackets. Some women had drawn fake beauty spots onto their upper lips. At a subterranean pregame bar in Penn Station, while hits like “Holiday” and “Papa Don’t Preach” piped from a speaker, Sophy LeMay, a corporate accountant, wore fingerless lace gloves as she nursed a drink.Fans shared their opinions about the lawsuit filed by two concertgoers against Madonna, who has become known as an unpunctual stage performer, accusing her of false advertising and negligent misrepresentation for going on late at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center in December. (Her representatives said that they “intend to defend this case vigorously.”)“It is what it is,” Julio Alvarez, who wore a bowler hat, said. “She’s Madonna.”“I’ve traveled all the way from Oklahoma to see her,” added Kevin Smith, who brandished a black riding crop. “I’ll stay awake until 1 a.m. to see her if I need to.”In the edited interviews below, fans reflected on Madonna’s enduring cultural relevance.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More