Tag Archives: Pop and Rock Music

Some rock bassists make it their job to hold down the bottom of a song: to hone parts that crisply but unobtrusively stake out a harmonic and rhythmic foundation, that are felt as much as heard. Phil Lesh, a founding member of the Grateful Dead who died on Friday at …

While Bryan Ferry was picking songs for “Retrospective: Selected Recordings 1973-2023,” — a new boxed set recapping his long solo career apart from Roxy Music, the pioneering British art-rock band he led — the singer noticed a recurring theme. “There’s a lot of love songs, a lot of romantic songs,” …

The Grateful Dead and its various successors and offshoots were famous for making sure no two concerts were the same, changing their set lists with each performance. But since the late 1990s, at most every show featuring the original bassist Phil Lesh, who died Friday at 84, there was one …

Pop stars start out as pop fans. Like countless other listeners, they find songs that move them, sounds they enjoy and public personas they identify with. Then, if they are talented and determined and lucky enough, they forge their own artistic identities and inspire new fans. “The Great Impersonator,” the …

Liam Payne was just 14 when he took his first shot at the big time, trying out for the hit star-making show, “The X Factor.” He was 17 when the show’s judges teamed him up with Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan and Louis Tomlinson — all young, handsome, telegenic-but-relatable …

When Lynda Carter released the pop single “Pink Slip Lollipop” over the summer, she saw it as a way to give men who ghost and gaslight a candy-coated boot. “I just thought it was funny,” she said in a video call from her home outside Washington, D.C. Carter may forever …

Libby Titus, a singer-songwriter known for her wistful ballad “Love Has No Pride,” covered by Linda Ronstadt and Bonnie Raitt, and for her collaborations with Burt Bacharach, Dr. John and her husband, Donald Fagen, of Steely Dan, died on Oct. 13. She was 77. Mr. Fagen announced her death on …

Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs. FKA …

Inside the Mark Taper Forum in downtown Los Angeles on a recent Wednesday, the air was saturated with stage fog and preshow jitters. The first performance of a revival of Green Day’s “American Idiot” was just hours away, and the choreographer Jennifer Weber had some final instructions for the cast …

Eugene Hutz still owns his copy of “Slayed?,” a 1972 album released the year he was born by the British bad boys Slade that his father purchased on the Ukrainian black market. Its spine is now lined with tape, its cover deeply ringed by the record inside. But for Hutz, …