© Amanda Hakan for The New York Times
Parton was born 30 miles from college campus
The Tennessee Volunteers will be honoring Dolly Parton with a helmet sticker this season, the college football team’s head coach, Josh Heupel, announced on Monday.
Parton, a Tennessee native, died last week at the age of 80 from cancer.
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© Photograph: Wade Payne/AP
© Photograph: Wade Payne/AP
© Photograph: Wade Payne/AP
O2 Arena, London
The polymath rapper’s stage show, which also features SWAT teams and a warship, is truly bravura stuff – but you can’t help feeling this is an artist at a creative crossroads
A$AP Rocky dangles precariously from a helicopter, while beneath him black-clad SWAT officers brawl with his white-masked followers. This isn’t some cliffhanger setpiece from the rapper/actor’s latest film – it’s just how shows on his Don’t Be Dumb tour open. It’s a big production: there are further prop helicopters, including a smaller one up in the rafters from which he also raps (a reference to his single Helicopter), while the stage recreates the top deck of a naval warship, for reasons that never become clear.
The bizarre set underscores a sense of a man in career transition, unsure who he is any more. In the eight years since his last album, this survivor of homelessness and incarceration became a father, three times, with Rihanna; he’s pivoting towards movies – good ones – and co-chairs the Met Gala. His new record sought to redefine him as an artist, juggling more of his trademark pugilistic rap with ambitious stylistic experiments and unexpected collaborations (Damon Albarn! Danny Elfman!).
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© Photograph: Thepinkrosephotographyltd/Laura Rose
© Photograph: Thepinkrosephotographyltd/Laura Rose
© Photograph: Thepinkrosephotographyltd/Laura Rose
The queen of country was interred next to her late husband in an intimate ceremony attended by close family
Dolly Parton was laid to rest in a private ceremony in Nashville on Friday, her family has confirmed.
The queen of country music, who died aged 80 on 25 August “after bravely facing a brief battle with cancer”, was interred at Woodlawn Memorial Park and Mausoleum alongside her husband of 60 years, Carl Thomas.
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© Photograph: Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
© Photograph: Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
© Photograph: Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
The queen of country was interred next to her late husband in an intimate ceremony attended by close family
Dolly Parton was laid to rest in a private ceremony in Nashville on Friday, her family has confirmed.
The queen of country music, who died aged 80 on 25 August “after bravely facing a brief battle with cancer”, was interred at Woodlawn Memorial Park and Mausoleum alongside her husband of 60 years Carl Thomas.
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© Photograph: Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
© Photograph: Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
© Photograph: Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
The performances often gave me goose bumps, but I also got to observe the highs and lows of audience behaviour
Read more in this series here
I was 24, had just moved into a share house I couldn’t afford, and my job as a nanny was proving less than ideal. I’d graduated from my music degree a few years prior and was floating along, feeling a little lost.
A friend had told me to apply to become a front-of-house staff member at Australia’s busiest performing arts centre, Arts Centre Melbourne. It was a rare opportunity, as people rarely quit. To be surrounded by art again sounded like a dream.
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© Composite: Getty Images / Lauren David
© Composite: Getty Images / Lauren David
© Composite: Getty Images / Lauren David
Former gang leader Duane ‘Keffe D’ Davis, 63, is accused of ordering the killing of the hip-hop star in 1996
A Las Vegas jury is now deliberating after hearing closing arguments in the trial of the South Side Compton Crips gang leader Duane “Keffe D” Davis, who is accused of ordering the murder of hip-hop legend Tupac Shakur.
Davis, 63, is accused of leading a group of men to kill Shakur in retaliation for the beating of his nephew, though not of pulling the trigger himself. Davis has pleaded not guilty.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting
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© Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
AI company faces multibillion dollar lawsuit over misuse of copyrighted songs to train Claude models
All AI wants for Christmas is a vast back catalogue of songs without paying for it, according to a multibillion-dollar lawsuit against the startup behind the Claude chatbot.
Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell, music publishers who manage the copyright of songs on behalf of songwriters and composers, are seeking damages for alleged misuse of “tens of thousands” of copyrighted works by Anthropic.
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© Photograph: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for MC
© Photograph: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for MC
© Photograph: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for MC
Beldina Odenyo alchemised the pain of exile, loss and racism into music as Heir of the Cursed before her death in 2021, as this attentive tribute explores
Instead of an artist in a booth, a lone amplifier plays the music of singer-songwriter Beldina Odenyo for a cluster of microphones to pick up during the posthumous recording of her debut album. It is a haunting encapsulation of the absence and presence at the heart of Louise Lockwood’s documentary, which makes a commendably thorough exploration of the mental illness that led to Odenyo killing herself in November 2021, and its roots: exile, loss and racism.
Performing under the moniker Heir of the Cursed, a translation of the Tetela name of assassinated Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba, Odenyo was on the verge of bigger recognition at the end of 2021 after a successful performance at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall. But hemmed in by successive Covid lockdowns, the 31-year-old is clearly unwell in a discomfiting backstage interview. Squirming, monosyllabic, she seems to be regressing to the non-verbal state of shock in which she arrived in Dumfriesshire from Kenya as a young child.
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© Photograph: Euan Robertson
© Photograph: Euan Robertson
© Photograph: Euan Robertson
© Will Crooks for The New York Times
Quite a few music artists are in their flop era right now. Think about it: Drake hasn’t been the same since Kendrick Lamar knocked him out in their 2024 beef. Katy Perry once dominated the charts, but her recent releases haven’t been fireworks. And there was once a point where it felt impossible to step foot in a workout class without hearing Lizzo, but her latest album fizzled out.
Some examples, in other words, are obvious. But what does it really mean for a song to flop? According to Tom Breihan, executive editor at StereoGum and author of the book The Number Ones Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the History of Pop Music, it’s all relative.
“There’s a million songs on Spotify that nobody will ever hear,” he told Vox. “Those songs are not necessarily flops because they did not necessarily come with expectations. When a major artist does not reach whatever benchmark they or their fans or their label expect for them, it can be embarrassing. People love to seize upon that embarrassment and take off running with it.”
Why do some songs flail while others succeed? And how does an artist bounce back from those unmet expectations? We find out that and more on this week’s episode of Explain It to Me, Vox’s weekly call-in podcast.
Below is an excerpt of my conversation with Breihan, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you’d like to submit a question, send an email to askvox@vox.com or call 1-800-618-8545.
Are the songs that flop bad? Is that why they’re flopping?
In some cases, yeah. You can definitely pick out a few and be like, “That wasn’t the one.”
A lot of it is just timing and luck. Sometimes an artist comes along at the exact right moment and builds up goodwill and puts out the right song for themselves. Sometimes they misread the room in sort of howlingly, clangingly obvious ways, and they end up not doing well.
It’s happened to plenty of great people. Plenty of stars have bounced back from having flops, but it does happen.
What are some really good songs that have flopped?
As an online indie music critic, my prototypical example is Emotion by Carly Rae Jepsen. She had had this gigantic global breakout smash with the song “Call Me Maybe.” The album that she put out after this is this brilliant, layered, excellent pop record that became, I would say, influential upon the idea that you could be a pop star who was a cult artist, like an indie rock band or an underground rapper. But it didn’t sell. It didn’t do numbers. So in its moment, it was a critically beloved flop.
How much of becoming a hit is about the music itself and how much of it is about virality and marketing?
Those things are so bound up with each other. A lot of the time, artists are making songs that are engineered to go viral, or they’re making songs that comment on their own public perceptions.
When someone like Lizzo comes along and puts out a record that doesn’t do well, it becomes a bigger story than just, “Oh, people weren’t feeling this song.” It becomes, “Oh, people don’t like this person,” or “This person has run out of goodwill.”
Like a Lizzo song: You hear her persona jumping through the speaker, whether the song does well or not. So the song and the artist become inextricable from each other. The song and the marketing become inextricable.
There is another example of an artist who has gone from really high highs to very low flops that I would love to get into, and that’s Katy Perry. I feel like we’ve come a long way from Left Shark at the Super Bowl. What happened there?
Katy Perry has had the career that pop stars used to have, where they have a crazy dominant stretch where they’re knocking out hit after hit after hit, and they’re unstoppable. Then everything kind of tails off over time. One album has five No. 1 hits. The next album has two No. 1 hits. The next album has no significant hits at all, but a couple top 10s.
She put out an album right at the beginning of the pandemic. You can say, “Well, that one didn’t do well, and that’s not her fault.” Then she spent a long time on American Idol as a judge; she spent a long time playing Las Vegas residencies. And then she was like, “That’s it. I’m quitting American Idol. I’m coming back. I’m being the pop star that you all want me to be.“
She made a bad album. She also reunited with Dr. Luke, who was the co-writer and producer of lots of her big hits but who, in the time since she stopped working with him, accusations were made. Kesha, who was friends with Katy Perry when she came up, was the person making those accusations. So there’s a lot for the internet to glom onto there.
“Especially now, a song can debut at No. 1 based on streams and conversation, and then it can disappear from the charts.”
That’s how a song goes from being a bad song to a notorious flop — when not only does the song not perform, it actually burns up a lot of the goodwill that this person has had.
What songs did everyone maybe expect to be huge, but then bombed?
It is possible for a song to be a No. 1 hit and still a flop. Especially now, a song can debut at No. 1 based on streams and conversation, and then it can disappear from the charts.
In 1996, Michael Jackson released “You Are Not Alone.” The song debuted at No. 1. It fell pretty quickly. The album didn’t do that well. The song ultimately is not remembered that well, and has really entered the notorious shadow zone over the years.
Are there examples of songs that critics hated initially, and then over time became classics?
So many. The songs that were hits and were universally regarded as irritating in their time have a great hit rate. People were annoyed by “MMMBop,” by Hansen, or “Wannabe” by the Spice Girls.
There were certainly critics who understood ABBA when they were popping off, but they were, I would say, widely regarded as a punchline. Now that is just an impeccable, beautiful, influential pop catalog.
A song like the Quad City DJ’s “”C’mon N’ Ride It (The Train)” was not a song the critics were really lining up to praise in the 1990s, but as a person who was a child then, I can tell you that song goes so hard and never stopped going hard.
What’s the biggest misconception people have about pop music success?
I think the biggest misconception is the idea that a label or a corporation can engineer a giant hit. They can observe trends. They can put their money into promotion. But you never know what people are going to actually grab onto and what they’re not.
There are things that they can do to create the impression that something is connecting, but you need to have real sustained success to have everybody be like, “Okay, no, this actually is huge.”
How do artists tend to respond if they’ve entered a flop era?
There’s a grand, beautiful history of artists who instead of trying the same thing over and over again, they become behind-the-scenes figures. They write songs for other people, or they produce, or they become managers.
Max Martin, who is now ahead of John Lennon, but behind Paul McCartney in terms of songwriters with No. 1 hits, he was the lead singer for a Swedish band in the ’80s that was trying to be Bon Jovi, and they never caught on. His band was called It’s Alive. You can look their songs up online. They’re not that great, but he wound up making all these incredible records with all these different people.
There’s a lot of that. That has happened many, many times throughout pop history. It’s certainly one way to deal with the flop problem.
© Will Crooks for The New York Times
The Black Bananas singer knows all the words to Rapper’s Delight and relates to AC/DC, but which song reminds her of a heartbreaking theft?
The first song I fell in love with
Van Halen’s Runnin’ With the Devil. I was five or six and I went to visit my cousin Tommy who was much older. He was on a hockey team and we went to see them practise before the game and they had Runnin’ With the Devil on really loud. I was like: “Wait, what’s this?!”
The song I do at karaoke
You Shook Me All Night Long by AC/DC. Me and Brian Johnson – my voice has that thing, you know?
© Photograph: Bunny Biskit
© Photograph: Bunny Biskit
© Photograph: Bunny Biskit
Country music fans use the Long Road festival in Leicestershire to mark the passing of Dolly Parton
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© Photograph: Orlando Gili/The Guardian
© Photograph: Orlando Gili/The Guardian
© Photograph: Orlando Gili/The Guardian
© Ron Galella, via Getty Images
Grammy award-winning American artist selected as 13th person to submit written work to Oslo-based project
The next manuscript by the American artist Laurie Anderson will remain unseen for 88 years, as she becomes the 13th figure to contribute to the Future Library project.
Anderson joins Margaret Atwood, Han Kang, Ocean Vuong and other prominent authors who have written secret manuscripts, which have been locked away until 2114.
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© Photograph: Wolfgang Tillmans
© Photograph: Wolfgang Tillmans
© Photograph: Wolfgang Tillmans
Grammy award-winning American artist selected as 13th person to submit written work to Oslo-based project
The next manuscript by the American artist Laurie Anderson will remain unseen for 88 years, as she becomes the 13th figure to contribute to the Future Library project.
Anderson joins Margaret Atwood, Han Kang, Ocean Vuong and other prominent authors who have written secret manuscripts, which have been locked away until 2114.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Wolfgang Tillmans
© Photograph: Wolfgang Tillmans
© Photograph: Wolfgang Tillmans
If you haven’t yet heard about how a certain fella is choosin’ a woman from Texas over Ella Langley, it’s only a matter of time.
Langley’s massive hit, “Choosin’ Texas,” began dominating the Billboard Hot 100 charts a few months ago — and never looked back. It’s still sitting at No. 1 after 19 weeks, tied for the longest time spent atop the charts among non-holiday songs. In a few more weeks, Langley could shatter the all-time record and dethrone Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”
It’s a runaway success for Langley, who is relatively new to country music but has quickly vaulted to a new tier of stardom. To break down how it happened, Today, Explained turned to Marissa Moss, a senior writer at Rolling Stone and the author of Her Country: How the Women of Country Music Became the Success They Were Never Supposed to Be.
Moss talked with Today, Explained co-host Noel King about where Langley’s success came from, what it means for women in country music, and why many fans don’t know what to make of Langley, who has maintained a low profile for a star artist.
Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
Tell me about “Choosin’ Texas.”
“Choosin’ Texas” is a song about a woman who is essentially losing her man in real time. She goes to a bar or a honky-tonk in Texas. She’s from Tennessee. She suddenly realizes that he sees his ex who’s from Texas and drifts away from her to this woman. It’s that feeling of knowing when you see it in someone’s face that they’re going to be leaving you and figuring out whether it’s worth it to hold on or to let go.
How big is this song, exactly?
It is huge. It is up there right now in competition with Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” which owns the record for the most weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with 22 weeks. Her only [other] competition is from Shaboozey and Lil Nas X, which are country-adjacent songs.
She really could blow by Mariah Carey. Of course you get a boost every time Christmas comes around, but we’re a little ways off from Mariah Carey declaring once and for all that it’s Christmas season. So I think Ella has plenty of time to catch up. And it could be the biggest song of all time, which is crazy.
You’re a music writer and you’re based in Nashville. How big a deal is Ella Langley in a place like Nashville and in the country industry?
She’s a big deal. And it’s exciting because she’s a relatively newish artist in terms of how long she’s been putting out music. She only released her debut album in 2024, called Hungover.
It’s really exciting because as a lot of people know, it can be really hard for a woman to make it in Nashville. Usually under 10 percent of songs on country radio are by women, so having someone like her out there and having so much country radio airplay and presence on the Hot 100 and breaking all these records, you really hope that it’s going to help influence people in Nashville to sign more women, platform more women, do all of those things to try to sort of flip this longstanding sexism that has existed in Nashville.
Not to put all of our hopes and dreams on one woman, because it’s not up to her to do this. It’s up to the industry to respond. But you sure have to hope so.
Was it a surprise that “Choosin’ Texas” became such a big hit?
I would’ve never predicted this. I loved the song when I heard it, but I don’t think I ever thought that something this country could be this popular.
“Despite the lyrical content, which may be a little bit of a bummer, the song does just feel so good. And it’s like a little bit of a brain weed gummy.”
And yes, country music is becoming so much more popular nationwide, worldwide. But it is also country music in a lot of ways that is a little bit more pop-leaning. Morgan Wallen is extremely popular, but he’s not putting out super-twangy tears-in-your-beer kind of country music songs.
“Choosin’ Texas” is kind of sad, but more than sad, I think it’s relatable. It taps into this feeling that a lot of people have, especially in the summer. If you’re thinking about a summer romance, of losing something that you once had, of letting go, of nostalgia, I think that’s something that we really want to feel right now.
And despite the lyrical content, which may be a little bit of a bummer, the song does just feel so good. And it’s like a little bit of a brain weed gummy. The second it comes on and you hear that little guitar lick it relaxes you. It gives you that summer feel of airy and fresh and a lot of people want to feel that way right now.
You’ve said she’s not a person who shares a ton about herself. Probably smart in this day and age. But country music often does get politicized. And I’ve seen that happening a bit around her and around this song. Tell me about the way she is being slotted into certain perspectives in the US, whether she wants to be or not.
One thing I’ve seen is a lot of people from the far right wanting to use her as an example of a return to sort of this anti-girlboss era. They like to take the fact that she speaks about her faith on stage and warp that into that being sort of her overriding agenda and that she wants this return to traditional values.
And then on the left, I’ve seen some people sort of play with the same. I personally think you could just as easily make a case that she’s a feminist who had Miranda Lambert produce her album and writes with women and takes all these women on tour.
So many people want this moment to serve their own narrative and want Ella Langley to stand for something on every side. And if you don’t give people a little, they’re going to go wild. But maybe that’s better than putting your personal views out there and having them ripped apart. I can’t say I really blame her, to be honest.
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