Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week's most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter , a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.
The first single from the forthcoming Doja Cat album "Planet Her" features SZA and mixes the breeze of lite 1980s funk with the bawdiness of 2020s hip-hop, a juggling act that Doja Cat has pioneered, if not trademarked, by now. JON CARAMANICA
Crisply ecstatic new-wave R&B from the Toronto duo Majid Jordan. What's most impressive about "Waves of Blue," besides its spot on texture, is its modesty — the singer Majid Al Maskati doesn't over-sing to emphasize his point, and the producer Jordan Ullman builds synths like pillars, unostentatiously building a whole world. CARAMANICA
"Shy Away," the first song from a May album called "Scaled and Icy" from the genre-agnostic Ohio duo Twenty One Pilots , starts off as jittery electro before expanding into the dreamy, arms-outstretched pop that keeps arenas and hearts full. There's a Strokesian energy to the track, but the lyrics don't bristle with angst; they (not so gently) nudge a loved one to start on a new path. CARYN GANZ
Over the last decade, Miguel has placed his darkest thoughts and most experimental music on his series of "Art Dealer Chic" EPs; he released "Art Dealer Chic Vol. 4" on Friday. In "So I Lie," he sings, in a soulful falsetto, about fear, pressure, and alienation from himself: "I can barely breathe, treading water/Smile on my face while I'm turning blue/Nobody cares, just work harder/I do what I can to avoid the truth." The chorus, repeating, "Lie, lie, lie," would almost be jaunty if it weren't surrounded in swampy rhythms, wordless voices and hollow echoes, like all the anxieties he can't evade. PARELES
A singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist hailing from St. Louis, Aaron Michael Frison has been making music as Coultrain for well over a decade, pulling together what sounds like a hybrid of the early 2000s Soulquarian scene , the spiritual jazz of Lonnie Liston Smith and the kind of dusty old Southern soul records that you'd find hiding in the dollar bin. On "The Essentials," from his new album, "Phantasmagoria," over a glutinous backing of synths, vocal overdubs, bass and drums, he professes his commitment ("'Cause there's no other for me/It ain't no coincidence that you reflect my eyes") before dipping into a wily rap verse and capping things with a mystical choral passage that sounds a note of uncertainty: "I wish I could promise forever/If I could promise forever/I would promise forever to you," he sings, the layers of his voice all in a conversation with each other. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO
An earnest power country slow-burner from the new duo Kat & Alex, who competed on "American Idol" last year, and who sing in both Spanish and English (though not here), "Heartbreak Tour" is delivered with soul music conviction and just the right touch of melodrama. CARAMANICA
The Chilean singer Mon Laferte infuses vintage styles with up-to-date sentiments and fierce attitude. Her new album, "Seis," looks toward Mexican music, and she shares "La Mujer" ("The Woman") with one of her idols: the Mexican singer and songwriter Gloria Trevi. They trade verses and share choruses in a bolero with punchy organ chords and rowdy horns, escalating from sultry self-confidence to unbridled fury at a man who's getting decisively dumped: "Goodbye, sad coward," is Laferte's final sneer. PARELES
Over a slow-motion strut of a bass line and a glass of chardonnay in the lyrics, Queen Naija and Ari Lennox sweetly intertwine their voices, enjoying each other's explicit details about their latest hookups. Then they realize it's the same guy — and the conversation turns into a conspiracy to "Set Him Up." Female solidarity reigns. PARELES
One Eye Closed roasts dull pop music with ironic "All of Us" single
Despite “All of Us” being a relatively poppy piece, it offers way more than that. Bringing in additional flavors from funk and jazz, you will soon notice that the guitar and bass are more technical than what the average Joe can handle.
YungBBQ Can Be Almost Anyone. Just Watch. - The New York Times
Alexis Feacher, 21, has built a following with her freestyle dance impersonations of pop cultural figures and fictional characters. Her improvised movements and elaborate costumes have helped her convey the essence of Tina Turner , Jimmy Neutron , Missy Elliott and so many more.
"People think when you're on social media everything is an act," Ms. Feacher said. But performing has been part of her identity since she was a child growing up in St. Petersburg, Fla.
In high school, Ms. Feacher created the persona YungBBQ (which stands for "Young Black Beautiful Queen"; it's also her Instagram handle) and began dressing up as her favorite music artists and movie characters. She eventually started posting videos of her dances on Vine, Facebook and Instagram.
A turning point came in 2019, when Ms. Feacher attended a hip-hop summer dance workshop in New York City taught by her brother, Charles Smith, a professional choreographer who has worked with Lizzo, Jidenna and the Brooklyn Nets. Compared with dancers who had been training in classrooms for years, Ms. Feacher's style was unrefined, but it made her stand out. It gave her confidence to keep leaning into her quirkiness, according to her brother. (He's now her manager.)
That year, an Instagram video of her dancing in the background with friends quickly gained an audience online. "I noticed that when you go viral, it's good for a week or so," Ms. Feacher said. "So I started creating a lot of videos during that time. I was more focused on, 'People are watching me now. I don't want to just leave it.'"
On a day in the fall of 2019, when it had just stopped raining, Ms. Feacher recorded a video of herself with a bright orange wig lip-syncing and dancing to "Rain" by K. Michelle. Her neighborhood was the backdrop. K. Michelle reposted it, Ms. Feacher said, "and I was like, 'Wait, I might be on to something.'"
Independent artists and record labels have also reached out, asking if Ms. Feacher could make dance videos to their songs. So far, she has worked with Footaction , Spotify and Atlantic Records. Netflix teamed up with Ms. Feacher to recreate the opening scene of the sitcom "Girlfriends" when the show debuted on the streaming platform.
Ms. Feacher has also created content around the premiere of "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air Reunion" on HBO Max and for the 35th anniversary of the Janet Jackson album "Control."
"What's really great is they don't bother her," Mr. Smith, her brother, said. "And when they see her, they move away — but then you may see people come by if they see her doing a video." Sometimes, people in the neighborhood will ride by to see if they can catch a performance in real time.
Pop-Rap Boy Band Brockhampton Drops New Album, 'Roadrunner: New Light, New Machine' |
Six years ago, a new kind of boy band hit the music scene, one that bucked the traditional formula set out by groups like NSYNC and One Direction.
The 13 friends in Brockhampton serve as everything from vocalists and producers, to photographers and app programmers. The earliest members met in high school or coalesced around a post on a Kanye West fan forum.
The members of the band identify as gay, straight, Latinx, Black and white, and from an experiment out of southern Texas to stages worldwide, Brockhampton has kept their identity and diversity at the heart of their message and music.
The group's six albums tread the line between styled pop and trap house rap. Music critics have called Brockhampton the loudest voice of a generation — which is why some fans were shocked when Kevin Abstract , one of the lead members of Brockhampton, tweeted that "Roadrunner" and another unannounced album in 2021 would be the group's last.
"You gotta know when to end something, and that doesn't mean the family or the friendship would end, or anything like that," he says. "It's kind of like breaking away from making music as a rap group boy band, whatever."
Abstract says the decision to close the doors on Brockhampton is less about breaking up and more about evolving. And that means shedding this label of "boy band," even though the group used the term as a way to subvert pop culture's idea of what a boy band looks and sounds like.
"When you hear of something like this and you see the pain of someone you love is going through, it kind of shapes your perspective in a different way, and that finds its way into the songwriting and the process of making the songs and the videos and the art and everything," Hemnani says.
That expression of emotion is a signature of the group's sound, and Abstract says that being forced to slow down during the pandemic — in many ways — served as an inspiration to the album.
"Before lockdown, I would say I wasn't that inspired to make another album," Abstract says. "But I was just watching this Beastie Boys documentary, me and Romil saw it together and that just made me feel ready to lean into being a creative again."
Nile Rodgers 'hitmaker' guitar is the most heard in pop
When David Bowie fancied a forage into a more commercially munificent artistic realm, he said, 'get me, Nile Rodgers'. The man is a hitmaker, plain and simple. In fact, if you dusted down modern pop music, his fingerprints would be all over it (but you shouldn't hold that against him). Teaming up with Bowie resulted in 'Let's Dance', a track that achieved the rare feat of ridiculous levels of global mainstream success but managing to be too damn euphoric to alienate even the most contrarian of existing fans.
It was a herculean task that Nile Rodgers has managed time and time again, seemingly at ease. And he has done a hell of a lot of it on one very particular 1960 custom model Fender Stratocaster. The 'Hitmaker' is perhaps the most significant single guitar in the history of pop, and you may well have had no idea that you'd heard it before.
Certain guitarists see the bond between themselves and their axe of choice as some spiritual marriage. If that is the case, when Rodgers traded in his old heavy jazz Gibson following the advice of bassist Bernard Edwards as their band Chic shifted genres, and he picked up the custom Fender, the pop heavens must have hummed a harmonious G chord. Rodgers left the Miami Beach pawnshop with a guitar that would change music, and it only cost him a few hundred dollars for his troubles.
The guitar's particulars allowed him to develop a playing style called 'chucking' (which is essentially a mandolin technique transposed onto the guitar that involves muting certain chords). The guitar has a thin body, a thin C shaped neck, a chrome-plated pickguard which brings the whole tone down (in a purely musical sense); the neck pick up is weak, which brightens it all up. It's really, really, light which allows him to play it like a toy, and maybe that's the most important factor in its inherently fun sound. As Big Bill Broonzy said about the blues, "you've got to have it to play it," well, maybe the same can be said when you want to make a fun record: when Nile's playing his hitmaker, he always seems to be having fun.
With this guitar, Rodgers has managed to create a sound that could be called Rodgers-esque if it wasn't for the fact that it has featured on hits for so many other people that its singular identity proves hard to trace. This is how its ubiquitous presence in pop has remained mysterious. As it says on Rodgers' official website, "Many might not recognize the name, but make no mistake—the sounds of Nile Rodgers and the Hitmaker are virtually inescapable. As a guitarist, producer, composer and arranger, his sales have topped more than 100 million albums over a career now in its sixth decade, and hardly a day goes by when you don't hear music to which he has contributed in some invaluable way, very often with the Hitmaker in hand."
The list of tracks that have been blessed by the Hitmaker is simply stupendous. Rodgers and his trusty white disco axe have mystically concocted hits for David Bowie , Debbie Harry , Michael Jackson and more. In fact, it is believed that the Hitmaker has played out a musical value of around $2 billion USD. Not bad for a beat-up old secondhand guitar! Perhaps there really is something to this Excalibur hoodoo of man and beast entwined in a six-string marriage woven by some mystic figures of musical fate.
What's With All the '70s Cosplay in Music These Days? - InsideHook
Her recent music video for single “The Melting of the Sun” features some trippy ’70s-style animation that’s instantly recognizable to anyone who’s ever seen the opening sequence from Grease or an episode of School House Rock . And her SNL performances featured all the costumes and tropes you might expect from someone looking to emulate the era: a Candy Darling-inspired blonde haircut, bell-bottoms, big lapels, a trio of backup singers performing synchronized choreography, a jacket with the word “Daddy” embroidered on the back in a retro font.
We’re due, for one. Fashion and pop culture are cyclical, and if you stick to the rough “every 20 years” theory that explains why ’70s-inspired stuff like flared jeans and Dazed and Confused were big in the ’90s, it makes sense that the retro aesthetic that was embraced in the late ’90s and early ’00s is on pace to come back around now.
"I think every year there's at least one moment of nostalgia. We went through a phase in which everything was '90s, when Bruno and Cardi B did the 'Finesse (Remix)' together," singer-songwriter Tayla Parx recently said when asked about Silk Sonic on the Switched On Pop podcast . "Well, right now, we're kind of in the loop of the late '70s, early '80s."
But ’70s revivalism isn’t unique to 2021. Greta Van Fleet, whose new album The Battle at Garden’s Gate is out next week, have had to deal with plenty of criticism throughout their young career over the fact that they’re essentially aping ’70s icons Led Zeppelin. (Note: naming your album The Battle at Garden’s Gate is not the best way to convince detractors that you’re not ripping off Led Zeppelin.) In his 2018 review of their album Anthem of the Peaceful Army (which he generously gave a 1.6), Pitchfork’s Jeremy D. Larson wrote , “They are a new kind of vampiric band who's there to catch the runoff of original classic rock using streaming services' data-driven business model. Greta Van Fleet exist to be swallowed into the algorithm's churn and rack up plays, of which they already have hundreds of millions. They make music that sounds exactly like Led Zeppelin and demand very little other than forgetting how good Led Zeppelin often were.”
But where is the line? When does an influence become a costume? Why are St. Vincent and Silk Sonic just doing cool homages to bygone eras while Greta Van Fleet are (rightly) dismissed as derivative?
The key difference is that St. Vincent, Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak all started as something else. (Mars wears his throwback influences on his sleeve more than the others, but when it comes down to it, he’s still ultimately a contemporary pop artist.) They’ve got the ’70s looks and sounds down pat, but it’s done with the understanding that this is just a phase, that they’re in on the joke, championing the decade’s kitsch with a wink, and they’ll be on to the next thing on the next album cycle.
The implication there is that this vibe is being cultivated specifically for this record. Greta Van Fleet, on the other hand, came out of the gate as a Led Zeppelin sound-alike, dressed the part, and haven’t really deviated from that formula since. It’s a fine line, but a clear one: pretending it’s 1973 is cool, but only if you’ve got your own thing going on and are doing it semi-ironically. Musicians are, of course, constantly going to draw inspiration from one another, and at this point, there’s nothing new under the sun; we can’t really fault someone for having a little fun with their influences. So dig those platform shoes out of the back of your closet, keep your eyes peeled for that Silk Sonic full-length, and get ready for the Summer of ’70s.
From Queen of Pop to Prince of Darkness: The honorific royalty of the music world |
For as long as pop music has been a thing, we've been granting grand titles on some of the titans of the industry. While they'll never have the influence of real royal figures like Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh, these artists' influence on popular culture has been nothing short of supreme.
Let's start with pop. The undisputed Queen of Pop is, of course, Madonna . With more than 300 million record sales under her belt, she's the highest selling female recording artist of all time and continues to innovate and challenge the pop status quo in her career . Meanwhile, the King of Pop is Michael Jackson , who had the most awards of any recording artist, while his album Thriller remains the top selling album ever released.
For such monarchical titles, it would take someone particularly special to supplant Madonna and Michael Jackson, but when it comes to the Prince and Princess of Pop, that's a little more debated. The latter is sometimes considered between former rivals Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera , who have some of the most recognisable voices in the world of pop, while Prince of Pop is occasionally used to describe Justin Bieber . That leads us to consider some newer Princesses of Pop; namely Lady Gaga and Rihanna . But do they really have the clout to replace the likes of Britney and Xtina?
There's no question why Eminem is considered the King of Rap with sales of more than 220 million records and being the best-selling artist of the 2000s. However, the Queen of Rap is currently a much fought over title between Nicki Minaj and Cardi B . On the one hand Nicki Minaj was the second female rapper to debut at the top of the charts after Lauryn Hill, and on the other Cardi B is the only female to win Grammy Award for Best Rap Album as a soloist following debut album Invasion of Privacy .
While King of Soul is a title often attributed to either Sam Cooke or Otis Redding (both of them being pioneers in their own way), the Queen of Soul can only be Aretha Franklin and it likely always will be. She earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her contributions to music, and was also the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The Prince of Soul (as well as the Prince of Motown) is 60s artist Marvin Gaye , while the Princess of Soul is often considered the much later artist Jennifer Hudson who rose to success with her Academy Award-winning appearance in Dreamgirls .
When we think of music royalty, one of the first artists that pops into one's head is Elvis Presley , who's often simply known as "The King". He remains the best-selling solo artist of all time and is certainly one of the most iconic and recognisable faces in American history. His Queen of Rock 'n' Roll counterpart is usually thought of as Tina Turner , though in more recent times Joan Jett has been recognised as such; she certainly represents a more modern era of rock music.
Of course, there are endless unofficial titles for a variety of genres from the Queen of Country Pop Shania Twain to the Goddess of Pop Cher and it's up to fans and media alike to bestow such titles on artists. But one thing's for sure, official or not, there's definitely a regal hierarchy when it comes to the music industry.
How Sook-Yin Lee is transforming tragedy into unabashed pop | CBC Music
Sook-Yin Lee, via Zoom, is pointing off-camera to a picture of Adam Litovitz, her longtime collaborator and former partner. Lee paints a vivid image of the photo she's referring to: in it, he's sitting on a little blue chair in the hallway of a community centre where he and Lee often went swimming. That spot, Lee notes, was where he would normally sit and meditate to the sound of industrial fans. But instead of closing his eyes and meditating, he is smiling directly at the camera this time. "It's one of the last photos that I took of him," Lee reveals.
Her work with Litovitz, specifically the musical project Jooj, was a space for them to explore and understand each other through a sonic language that, in many ways, can't be explained with words. Lee herself breaks down the unique process of trading fragments of songs and translating them to each other, but is unable to succinctly convey what it was that they were actually doing. "Adam and I never came up with a name for that wordplay, but it was definitely wordplay," she attempts to summarize. Even the band name itself proved to be intangible; Lee jokes that her and Litovitz never agreed on a pronunciation of Jooj. In private, she's always seen it as an acronym for "joy of our joys."
"I knew that I would release it, that was never a question," she asserts. In fact, she's in possession of all of Litovitz's creative work still, and plans to share, as she repeatedly, lovingly described it, "his good work."
"He's such a beautiful expresser," she continues. "His paintings, his writing, his music … it's very pleasurable for me to be working with the music because I can hear him. I can hear the bounce in his step in the bass lines, I can hear him in the music. I want to share his good work so other people can enjoy Adam's expression and, on this album, our expression together."
Jooj two is a celebration of Litovitz, of his boundless creativity and his and Lee's playful bond. Whereas Jooj was a minimalist, moody collection of torch songs, jooj two , as Lee explains, is an unapologetic embrace of pop music — "put through our own very experimental, artful blender." Songs are much more driven by propulsive, mostly electronic beats and Lee's refrains are woven in through repetition, which can easily play on a loop in your mind for days. (The way Lee sings, "And away with her," on lead single "Run Away With Her" is just one of many examples of small moments that find their way of burrowing into your brain.)
In order to complete the album, Lee discarded some songs and wrote new ones in their place. One of those new additions was the closing track, "Adam." Perhaps the biggest departure from the pop embrace, "Adam" finds Lee reciting a Tibetan chant called the Green Tara mantra over spare gamelan accents. It was a chant that Lee and Litovitz performed together, sometimes in stairwells or parkades, just so they could "hear our voices reverberating off of the walls."
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Fast-Rising Music Artist Ryan Hagan Unveils New Single – Don't Let Me Stop | National |
NASHVILLE, Tenn., April 9, 2021 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — Pop music artist, Ryan Hagan, is a voice that's crashed into the music scene, and he's quickly turning heads. His first two singles charted on the radio within one year and he's just released his third, "Don't Let Me Stop." And, it's looking like it won't be his last.
Produced by Grammy®-nominated, multi-platinum producer, Bryan Todd, and co-written by Hagan, "Don't Let Me Stop," speaks to people who have been burned in love and need to learn to trust again.
Hagan and Todd's previous two collaborations, "You Deserve Better" and "Reset" charted on the radio in the U.K. on Music Week's Commercial Pop, Upfront Club and Black Music (formerly "Urban") charts. It went as high as number seven.
Hagan has not always been an aspiring singer/songwriter. His background is steeped in athletics and he's a five-time national wrestling champion. He was also a powerful football and track-and-field athlete during high school. He became a top recruit in his class with the certainty of enrolling in a Division 1 college, but some significant, damaging injuries twisted that path. Always having a passion for music, he decided to give it a serious shot.
So, how did Hagan get here? It all started when a friend connected him with Kim Wood Sandusky, former vocal coach for Beyonce and Destiny's Child.
"I got an audition with her and she asked me to sing something. After 15 seconds, she said, 'We're going to work together.' The rest is pretty much history," Hagan says.
Hagan is an American singer-songwriter named to the "Top 20 Artists of 2020" by Music Observer, "Best Artist of 2020" by Nashville Music Reviews and "Top 20 People to Follow on Instagram" by US Reporter. He's teetering on the edge of international esteem and planning a European tour, post-pandemic. He ultimately plans to expand his reach in the U.S. to become a critically-acclaimed musical artist.
This press release was issued on behalf of the news source (Ryan Hagan) who is solely responsibile for its accuracy, by Send2Press® Newswire . Information is believed accurate but not guaranteed. Story ID: 70618 APDF-R8.2
To view the original version, visit: https://www.send2press.com/wire/fast-rising-musical-artist-ryan-hagan-unveils-new-single-dont-let-me-stop/
What makes K-pop idols a magnet for global popularity? : The DONG-A ILBO
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