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When David Marchese took over The New York Times Magazine’s Talk column in 2019, he had already been interviewing celebrities for several years, first at Spin magazine and then at New York magazine. When I hired him, I called him “one of the most prolific and profound interviewers in the country.” But I never could […] More
In the last month, the planet has figured in new releases by SZA, Kacey Musgraves and Ariana Grande. But for the astrologically inclined, what does a “Saturn return” signify?In two months, Alejandra Herrera will hit a milestone dreaded by many in their late 20s: her 30th birthday. While she has mixed feelings about “adulting,” she at least feels grounded about the whole ordeal — she is, after all, an earth sign.“I’ve been feeling like this whole new rebirth lately,” Ms. Herrera, a Taurus from East Los Angeles, said. “As an ex-people pleaser, I just feel like my 30s are going be, like, a new beginning, where I’ll finally focus on myself.”The last few years were turbulent for Ms. Herrera, marked by a mix of depression and exhaustion that she says arose from her job as an assistant manager at a vegan Mexican restaurant, which she recently quit.“I feel like I have grown so much,” she said, “and I do feel like I’m in that Saturn return because I turned it all around.”Ms. Herrera isn’t alone in looking to the heavens for answers: For a celestial body 887 million miles from the sun, Saturn sure is hot right now. Just last month, the planet supplied the title of SZA’s latest single and was name-checked in the opening lyric (“My Saturn has returned”) of a newly released Kacey Musgraves song. And on Friday, Ariana Grande released an album featuring a track called “Saturn Returns Interlude.”So what is one’s Saturn return? Depending on your openness to celestial fiddle-faddle, it’s a highly personal astrological phenomenon that matters either a whole lot or very, very little. According to the popular astrology app Co-Star, a person’s Saturn return “occurs when the planet Saturn comes back to the same position in the sky that it was at the time of your birth.”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
Roy Nachum designed the spectacle-filled Mercer Labs, which he touts as inclusive. But some advocates for blind people say his use of Braille can feel exploitative.While he was settling into Manhattan after moving from Israel in 2004, the 24-year-old artist Roy Nachum decided to contend with a second challenge: Inspired by his grandmother who had lost her sight, and in search of new inspiration for his artwork, he blindfolded himself. For the next 168 hours, he felt his way around his apartment in the East Village and used a cane to navigate to and from the nearby grocery store.That experience of being engulfed in the sounds and the chaos of a new city helped inspire the exhibits in his new immersive installation, Mercer Labs. It opened for previews in January at a 36,000-square-foot space in a sleek, Brutalist-style building at 21 Dey Street — the site of the former Century 21 department store.Nachum, whose artwork often incorporates Braille, became renowned for designing the Grammy-nominated cover for Rihanna’s album “Anti,” featuring a photo of Rihanna as a child wearing a gold crown embossed with Braille. He and the real estate developer Michael Cayre founded Mercer Labs with an ambitious mandate: to be a “place where the traditional hierarchies between art, architecture, design, technology and culture are dissolved,” and where “diversity and inclusion are celebrated,” according to a news release. The site is expected to open officially on March 28.One of Roy Nachum’s signature designs is this cover image for Rihanna’s 2016 album, “Anti,” which features a photo of her as a child wearing a gold crown embossed with Braille.The founders advertise Mercer Labs as a “museum of art and technology.” At the moment, it contains 14 exhibition spaces that use high-tech projectors, digital screens, LED lights and sound systems to display Nachum’s perception-teasing creations. Some exhibits feature Braille, tactile displays and immersive sounds intended for blind and low-vision visitors as well as sighted ones. In one of the rooms, attendees with vision can don sleeping masks and listen to a set of immersive sounds, the better to understand Nachum’s experiences from 2004 with touch and navigation. In still another space, guests stroll through a cave covered with pink hydrangeas that can be explored through touch.Nachum’s installations are on view at the moment, but when Mercer Labs officially opens in March, Nachum and Cayre intend for it to become a multipurpose site, with exhibitions by other artists, musicians and even actors; event spaces that can be rented for private use; and displays spotlighting fashion brands as well as up-and-coming New York companies. They would not elaborate on which specific brands or artists they have partnered with, citing nondisclosure agreements.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
Take America’s biggest game, add Taylor Swift and Usher, and put it all in Las Vegas, and Kansas City’s repeat as Super Bowl champion makes perfect sense.At some point, the Super Bowl stopped being entirely about football and evolved — or is it devolved — into a corporate carnival with lavish parties, halftime extravaganzas and commercials whose budgets seemed to rival a blockbuster movie.The apex of that transformation arrived with the N.F.L. planting this year’s event in Las Vegas, where the prevailing ethos might well be that a bellyful of anything is barely enough.But Super Bowl LVIII, with its attendant flash — and America’s favorite football fan, Taylor Swift, chugging a beer in a private box — demonstrated on Sunday night how sports stands apart from other types of entertainment.If the Kansas City Chiefs’ 25-22 overtime victory over the San Francisco 49ers was as tightly scripted as Usher’s elaborate choreography, the teams might have been pelted with rotten tomatoes or booed off the stage by halftime. It was mostly an evening of stumbles and bumbles: two fumbles, an interception, a muffed punt, a blocked extra point, a raft of untimely penalties — and for the 49ers enough regrets to last a lifetime.But all the mistakes and all those field goals — seven in all — would eventually be subsumed by the tension that unfolded in the fourth quarter and continued on into overtime of what became the longest game in Super Bowl history.Kansas City receiver Mecole Hardman caught the winning touchdown with three seconds left in the first overtime period.Bridget Bennett for 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
Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicAt Sunday’s Grammy Awards, Taylor Swift won album of the year for “Midnights” and, for good measure, announced a new album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” due in April. Other big winners included Victoria Monét, Phoebe Bridgers (and boygenius), Killer Mike, Miley Cyrus and Billie Eilish.The show featured several moving live performances from elders: Tracy Chapman duetting with Luke Combs on “Fast Car,” a striking Joni Mitchell singalong and a closing stomper from Billy Joel.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation on whether this was the year the Grammys got it correct, whether there was a gap between what the awards indicated and what the speeches were saying, and the grounded joy of seeing worthy stars brought back into the spotlight properly.Guests:Caryn Ganz, The New York Times’s pop music editorJon Pareles, The New York Times’s chief pop music criticLindsay Zoladz, a New York Times pop music criticConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More
The most awarded artists were diverse on Sunday night. How those winners received their honors, however, differed mightily.Sunday night at the 66th annual Grammy Awards, Jay-Z accepted the Dr. Dre global impact award, a sort of éminence grise prize. He’s previously won 24 Grammys, but he did not treat the moment like a homecoming.Instead, he used his speech to alternately nudge and excoriate the Recording Academy, the body that awards the Grammys, for its mistreatment and short-shrifting of Black artists: “We want y’all to get it right. At least get it close to right.” He mentioned his wife, Beyoncé, winner of the most Grammys ever, yet never a winner for album of the year. “Think about that,” he said, as he scrunched up his face with distaste.By this point, the room seemed to understand what was happening — Jay-Z was rinsing the Grammys on its own stage. Beyoncé, in the audience, appeared to be somewhere near tears. “When I get nervous,” Jay-Z said, “I tell the truth.” He reached out and grabbed the hand of his daughter Blue Ivy for support before urging those who have been overlooked and slighted to persevere “until they give you all those accolades you feel you deserve.”Jay-Z’s speech took a moment of acclaim and turned it into a moment for reflection, and maybe a lecture. Over the past few years, several Black artists have effectively been boycotting the Grammys by declining to submit their music for consideration, frustrated with how hip-hop and R&B are treated, particularly in the biggest all-genre categories.This year was no different — album, record and song of the year were won by white artists, though broadly speaking, the most awarded artists were diverse: three each for SZA, Killer Mike and Victoria Monét; four for Phoebe Bridgers (three of which came as part of boygenius) and two each for Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and Miley Cyrus.How those artists received those honors, however, differed mightily.In their speeches, Monét and SZA emphasized how long and roundabout their paths to this moment had been. During her acceptance for best new artist, Monét called the prize the endpoint of “a 15-year pursuit.” She’s primarily been known for her songwriting, particularly her work with Ariana Grande. And while she’d released music independently through the 2010s, her 2023 album, “Jaguar II,” was her first major-label LP. “My roots have been growing underneath ground, unseen for so long,” she said. “And I feel like today, I’m sprouting.”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
Billy Joel’s first new pop song in nearly two decades was sparked by someone miles from the record business: a Long Island doctor.Joel, 74, has long made it known that he isn’t interested in making more albums. He released 12 studio LPs between 1971 and 1993 — most platinum several times over — and retired from the format, though he never stopped tinkering with classical music, or playing live.But new songs? “I have this fear of writing something that’s not good,” he said in an interview last month at his estate in Oyster Bay, N.Y. “I have a very high bar for myself. And the work to get there is intimidating. I don’t want to go through it anymore.”Joel’s influence as a songwriter has endured, drawing in new generations. (“He is everything,” Olivia Rodrigo, 20, who referenced him in her song “Deja Vu,” said last summer.) Over the years, the list of people who’d tried to cajole him back into writing and recording grew legion: Clive Davis. Rick Rubin. Elton John. Yet when Joel’s family doctor urged him to meet “a kid” interested in discussing music near his place out east in Sag Harbor, he agreed to a lunch.The eager man across the table two years ago was Freddy Wexler, now 37, a Los Angeles-based songwriter and producer who grew up in New York and sure knew a lot about Billy Joel. He’d been trying to track down his idol via industry channels with little luck, but his wife — secretly devoted to keeping this dream alive — found an improbable connection.Joel ordered clams on the half-shell and a BLT to go, Wexler recalled, so he knew he had to move fast: “I said, I don’t believe that you can’t write songs anymore or that you won’t write songs anymore. And he said something like, ‘OK, believe whatever you want.’”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
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
