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      Jennifer Lopez and Black Keys Tour Cancellations Raise Questions for Industry

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      High-profile cancellations from Jennifer Lopez and the Black Keys have armchair analysts talking. But industry insiders say live music is still thriving.For the concert business, 2023 was a champagne-popping year. The worst of the pandemic comfortably in the rearview, shows big and small were selling out, with mega-tours by Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Drake and Bruce Springsteen pushing the industry to record ticket sales.This year, as with much of the economy, success on the road seems more fragile. A string of high-profile cancellations, and slow sales for some major events, have raised questions about an overcrowded market and whether ticket prices have simply gotten too expensive.Most conspicuously, Jennifer Lopez and the Black Keys have canceled entire arena tours. In the case of the Black Keys — a standby of rock radio and a popular touring draw for nearly two decades — the fallout has been severe enough that the band has parted ways with its two managers, the industry giant Irving Azoff and Steve Moir. Through a representative, Azoff and Moir said they had “amicably parted” with the band.At Coachella, usually so buzzy that it sells out well before any performers are announced, tickets for the second of the California festival’s two weekends were still available by the time it opened in April.Those issues have stoked headlines about a concert business that may be in trouble. But the reality, many insiders say, is more complex, with no simple explanation for problems on a range of tours, and a business that may be leveling out after a couple of extraordinary years when fans rushed to shows after Covid-19 shutdowns.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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      Biden Dons Kansas City Helmet to Celebrate Its Super Bowl Victory

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      Taylor Swift was not at the White House to celebrate with her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, but kicker Harrison Butker, who recently drew controversy for a commencement speech, attended.On Friday, President Biden urgently called for an end to the war in Gaza. He solemnly discussed the rule of law after former President Donald J. Trump’s criminal conviction. And he donned a shiny red helmet to the whoops and cheers of a pack of football players and fans.The visit to the White House by the Kansas City Chiefs to celebrate their second straight Super Bowl win gave the president a few moments of frivolity in a week replete with sobering events.“Winning back-to-back — I kind of like that,” Mr. Biden said, hinting at the tough re-election bid he faces in his rematch with Mr. Trump. He added, “When the doubters question if you can pull it off again, believe me, I know what that feels like.”The South Lawn celebration was a blip on the president’s schedule, squeezed between a meeting with the prime minister of Belgium and his weekend plans in Rehoboth Beach, Del., during a month with an endless string of campaign events. Yet, with some of the National Football League’s most famous names, it carried a certain celebrity wattage.Still, the spotlight was far dimmer than it could have been. Taylor Swift did not make the trip with her boyfriend, the star tight end Travis Kelce, as she was touring in Europe and had performed in Madrid on Thursday night.The White House had previously said it was up to the Chiefs whether to extend an invitation to the star musician, who has largely avoided embroiling herself in politics. She endorsed Mr. Biden in 2020, leading to speculation about whether she would do so again.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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      DOJ to Sue Live Nation, Accusing It of Defending a Monopoly

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      Live Nation Entertainment, the concert giant that owns Ticketmaster, faces a fight that could reshape the multibillion-dollar live music industry.The Justice Department and a group of states plan to sue Live Nation Entertainment, the concert giant that owns Ticketmaster, as soon as Thursday, accusing it of illegally maintaining a monopoly in the live entertainment industry, said three people familiar with the matter.The government plans to argue in a lawsuit that Live Nation shored up its power through Ticketmaster’s exclusive ticketing contracts with concert venues, as well as the company’s dominance over concert tours and other businesses like venue management, said two of the people, who declined to be named because the lawsuit was still private. That helped the company maintain a monopoly, raising prices and fees for consumers, limiting innovation in the ticket industry and hurting competition, the people said.The government will argue that tours promoted by the company were more likely to play venues where Ticketmaster was the exclusive ticket service, one of the people said, and that Live Nation’s artists played venues that it owns.Live Nation is a colossus of the concert world and a force in the lives of musicians and fans alike. Its scale and reach far exceed those of any competitor, encompassing concert promotion, ticketing, artist management and the operation of hundreds of venues and festivals around the world.The Ticketmaster division alone sells 600 million tickets a year to events around the world. According to some estimates, it handles ticketing for 70 percent to 80 percent of major concert venues in the United States.Lawmakers, fans and competitors have accused the company of engaging in practices that harm rivals and drive up ticket prices and fees. At a congressional hearing early last year, prompted by a Taylor Swift tour presale on Ticketmaster that left millions of people unable to buy tickets, senators from both parties called Live Nation a monopoly.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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      Kansas City’s Harrison Butker Draws Intense Criticism for Graduation Speech

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      Kansas City’s Harrison Butker quoted Taylor Swift lyrics while telling men to be “unapologetic in your masculinity” and women to focus on being homemakers.Harrison Butker of the Kansas City Chiefs is one of the best place-kickers in the N.F.L. That is enough to make him somewhat famous in the football world, but players of his position aren’t typically known by more casual observers — unless they do something especially great or terrible on the field.Last weekend, with the N.F.L. solidly in its off-season, Mr. Butker found himself at the center of a great deal of vitriol on social media, and it had nothing to do with his job.On Saturday, Mr. Butker delivered a 20-minute commencement address to the graduates of Benedictine College, a conservative Catholic school in Atchison, Kan., about 50 miles northwest of Kansas City. He packed his speech full of conservative political discourse, railing against “degenerative cultural values and media.” He rebuked President Joe Biden for his stance as a Catholic who supports abortion rights, and urged women to forgo careers so that they could support their husbands.“I can tell you that my beautiful wife, Isabelle, would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother,” Mr. Butker said. “I’m on this stage today and able to be the man I am because I have a wife who leans into her vocation.”He added: “It cannot be overstated that all of my success is made possible because a girl I met in band class back in middle school would convert to the faith, become my wife and embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.”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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      Rihanna, Taylor Swift and Beyoncé Missed the 2024 Met Gala

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      In the week leading up to the Met Gala, tabloids volleyed predictions about Taylor Swift’s possible attendance: She would be there with her football player boyfriend, Travis Kelce! Actually, she wouldn’t! She might go but leave Mr. Kelce at home!On Monday night, fans finally got their answer. The party of the year would have to go on without Ms. Swift.Other notable absences from the red carpet: Beyoncé, who had not been expected to attend, and Rihanna, who seemed poised to be the closing act of fashion’s annual parade of one-upmanship.Last year, every other guest had walked the carpet — as had one uninvited cockroach — before Rihanna arrived at 10:15 p.m., wrapped in Valentino camellias that she said made her feel “expensive.”Rihanna, 36, who swung from pop stardom into a prosperous second act as a lingerie and makeup mogul, told Extra TV earlier in the week that she had planned on attending the gala. People magazine reported on Monday that the singer had come down with the flu.The singer had become one of the most hotly anticipated presences on the Met’s steps. Her turn as a miniskirted pope in 2018 touched off an internet frenzy, and the 55-pound, daffodil yellow gown she wore in 2015 helped earn its designer a slot on the haute couture schedule in Paris.The gala’s influence as a joint advertising opportunity for brands, sponsors and celebrities depends in part on the level of star power that is willing to show up. The gala still attracted boldface names this year, including Zendaya and Jennifer Lopez, but many fans online said that the lack of Rihanna had been a blow. (Some even circulated images of the singer hitting the carpet that appeared to have been created by artificial intelligence.)Rihanna has been a frequent presence at the gala in recent years, but Taylor Swift and Beyoncé have not attended since 2016.Ms. Swift began attending the gala in 2008 and was a co-chair in 2016. In the past year she has not exactly been hurting for the Met’s spotlight: Her Eras Tour stimulated both economic and seismic activity on its yearlong (and counting) romp around the world, and her recent album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” overcame mixed reviews to become her 14th release to hit reach No. 1 on the Billboard album chart.Beyoncé attended the gala seven times from 2008 to 2016, toying with silhouette in strapless Armani and mermaid-style Emilio Pucci gowns. She has lately been leading a high-fashion rodeo in wide-brimmed hats and western boots while promoting her album “Cowboy Carter.”Even without showing up to the Met on the first Monday in May, Beyoncé wields immense power in the fashion sphere, Vanessa Friedman, the chief fashion critic of The New York Times, recently wrote: “She is practically a Met Gala unto herself.” More

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      Taylor Swift’s ‘Tortured Poets’ Breaks Records With Blockbuster Debut

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      Only the Beatles have more No. 1 LPs now: The pop superstar reigns atop the Billboard 200 for the 14th time with the equivalent of 2.6 million album sales.There was never any doubt that Taylor Swift’s latest release, “The Tortured Poets Department,” was going to be big. The question was just how big.And the answer is, gigantic.“The Tortured Poets Department,” Swift’s 11th studio album, opens at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart with historic numbers, including huge results in streaming and vinyl sales. It is Swift’s 14th chart-topping title, tying her with Jay-Z for the second-most No. 1 albums by any act in the 68-year history of Billboard’s flagship album chart; only the Beatles, with 19, have more.In its first week out, “Tortured Poets” had the equivalent of 2.6 million album sales in the United States, according to Luminate, which tracks the data behind Billboard’s charts. That is the biggest overall first-week take for any album since Adele’s “25” in 2015, which opened with nearly 3.5 million, driven by in-store CD sales.The “equivalent” figure is a composite, based on a formula used by Luminate and Billboard to reconcile the various ways listeners now buy and consume music. And in each way, “Tortured Poets” was a smash.It sold 1.9 million copies in traditional album sales, including 859,000 for vinyl alone, which blew away Swift’s own previous record of 693,000 LPs, set just six months ago. Advance sales through Swift’s website — begun the day Swift announced the album, at the Grammy Awards — were key. She offered an array of tinted vinyl variants and CDs, some in “deluxe” versions advertised with autographs or on-brand trinkets like engraved bookmarks that went for as much as $50 apiece. According to Billboard, 1.4 million copies of the album were sold on its first day, many preordered over the last two months.The opening followed a promotional blitz that included a blanketing of social media and radio, tie-ins with streaming platforms and IRL happenings like an Easter-egg-filled library installation at a Los Angeles shopping center. “Tortured Poets” also arrived following several years of Swift’s increasing saturation of pop culture, with her Eras Tour generating an estimated $1 billion in ticket sales last year, with months left to go.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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      Popcast (Deluxe): Taylor Swift’s ‘Tortured’ Era

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:The new Taylor Swift album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” and Swift’s “imperial era” How the album addresses her rumored relationship with Matty Healy of the 1975 A possible face-off between this album and Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” at next year’s Grammys The Tortured Poets Department” as a detailed recitation of Swift’s life over the past 2 years The production choices of Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner How the album alludes to the work of the 1975 and Healy Swift’s resentfulness streakSongs of the week from Drake featuring A.I. versions of “Tupac” and “Snoop Dogg,” plus Mozzy and Odetari featuring Ayesha EroticaSnack of the weekConnect 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

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      Taylor Swift Has Given Fans a Lot. Is It Finally Too Much?

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      Swift has been inescapable over the last year. With the release of “The Tortured Poets Department,” her latest (very long) album, some seem to finally be feeling fatigued.Four new studio albums. Four rerecorded albums, too. A $1 billion oxygen-sucking world tour with a concert movie to match. And, of course, one very high-profile relationship that spilled over into the Super Bowl.For some, the constant deluge that has peaked in the past year is starting to add up to a new (and previously unthinkable) feeling: Taylor Swift fatigue.And it is a feeling that has only solidified online in the days following the release of “The Tortured Poets Society,” which morphed from a 16-song album into a 31-song, two-hour epic just hours after its release.Many critics (including The New York Times’s own) have suggested that the album was overstuffed — simply not her best. And critiques of the music have now opened a sliver of space for a wider round of complaint unlike any Swift has faced over her prolific and world-conquering recent run.“It’s almost like if you produce too much… too fast… in a brazen attempt to completely saturate and dominate a market rather than having something important or even halfway interesting to say… the art suffers!” Chris Murphy, a staff writer at Vanity Fair, posted on X.Which is not to say nobody listened to the album; far from it. Spotify said “Poets,” which was released on Friday, became the most-streamed album in a single day with more than 300 million streams.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