song

Perhaps no one genre of music screams “Mexican” more than mariachi music.

Yet a close second is probably the melodic sound of British rock band the Smiths.

Many have pondered why Mexicans and Mexican Americans have such an affinity for those blokes from across the pond. Maybe it’s that lead singer Morrissey’s outsider mentality and melancholic words resonate with the demographic — or there’s something acutely relatable about the melodramatic musings of a romantic yearner.

Decades ago, The Times’ own Gustavo Arellano explored the Smiths and Morrissey’s appeal to Latinos and Mexicans, specifically.

He noted that Morrissey’s malaise mirrors the sentiment of many ranchera songs, also citing that his effeminate onstage persona is a perfect subversion of Mexican machismo. These elements make the singer an anglophone mash-up of Pedro Infante and Juan Gabriel, Arellano added.

Both the Smiths and mariachi music can drive even the most macho Mexican man to tears with their poetic lyrics and layered instrumentals.

To celebrate the special choke hold these musical stylings have on Mexican Americans in Southern California, the L.A.-based group Mariachi Tierra Mia is putting on a “Mariachi Meets the Smiths” show at the Ford amphitheater on Sunday. The show will merge not only the cultural resonance of the two in Mexican American culture, but also unite the sounds.

The idea to incorporate elements of mariachi music into a cover of a Smiths tune happened by happenstance in December 2024.

Members of Mariachi Tierra Mia were performing at a Christmas party when an attendee requested that the group perform the 1984 Smiths track “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now.”

Members of rock band The Last Line of Defense who will perform at The Ford as part of “Mariachi Meets The Smiths.”

(Mariachi Tierra Mia)

The ensemble’s leader, Maira Solis, didn’t know the song — but her husband and fellow bandmate Ivan Peña signaled that he did. Later on in the night, he performed the song alongside two dancing, masked luchadors.

The video of Peña belting out the song while outfitted in his mariachi regalia struck a chord with audiences online after the group posted it on social media.

“The relationship between Mexicanos and the Smiths needs to be studied,” Peña told The Times. “[The video] seemed like a very innocuous thing, but days later, it had 3 million views. That was the first time that ever happened to us, and to me, personally.”

The overwhelmingly positive response to Peña’s rendition of the Morrissey-penned tune let him know that people had an appetite to see the Smiths and mariachi blended together.

Born in 1991, Peña was born years after the Smiths broke up, but was introduced to the group’s catalog at age 5, while his uncle drove him around in a lowrider. The first tracks he heard from the band were “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” and “Ask.”

“I don’t think the music has aged a wink. It’s just gotten better with time,” he said. “It’s clearly resonated across generations. Now you even see Gen Z getting in on it too and realizing music of the past is so substantial.”

But the fandom surrounding the Smiths, and more specifically Morrissey, has entered more complex territory in light of the Smiths frontman’s past political commentary.

In recent decades, the crooner has grown increasingly sympathetic toward far-right political stances, voicing anti-immigration and anti-Muslim sentiments, as well as his allegiance to white nationalist party For Britain in the U.K.

Despite this, many fans, like Peña, don’t see a problem with continuing to listen to the Smiths and Morrissey’s solo work.

“I get that he’s a polarizing guy. I know he’s notorious,” Peña said. “I [say], separate the art from the people behind it … because the piece itself is not at fault for the shortcomings or views of the people who made it.”

Sunday night’s concert will be split in two acts, with the first being a bilingual mariachi set by Mariachi Tierra Mia composed of genre standards and more modern covers. For the second act, Peña’s rock group the Last Line of Defense will perform songs by the Smiths and be joined by the mariachi group to merge the sounds.

Incorporating the mariachi to create straightforward covers of the Smiths’ material proved challenging as Peña did not want to put a spin on the songs’ composition — no added notes and no new harmonies were allowed.

“You could task a mariachi band with doing a one-for-one adaptation of the Smiths’ songs, [but] most of the tracks do not work on the mariachi setting,” he said. “Whereas the guitar is leading the charge in a rock band. The guitar and the vihuela are essentially the rhythm section, so you have to translate guitar riffs to the melody section of the mariachi, [which is the] trumpets and violins.”

According to the 34-year-old musician, very few of the English band’s song fit into that mold.

He knows that fans love the original material and he wants to respect the essence of the time-tested songs. Out of that reverence for the group’s music, Peña noted that all the Smiths covers will be performed only in English.

Peña’s final take on why Mexicans are so infatuated with the Smiths?

“Mexicans love catchy music,” he said. “It’s all of the feels. It’s the good, the bad, and a bit of longing. The lyrics aren’t lying to you. [We can all relate to] Morrissey’s angst, his rebellion, his malaise, and, on the other side of that, his optimism.”

Friday is Dolly Parton Day and the late country icon remains a gift that keeps on giving.

Just months before her death in August at age 80, Parton had recorded a duet with Bono that will be included in U2’s upcoming album, “Carnaval de Luz,” the band announced Thursday. It is reportedly her final recording.

“When she got ill … she got out of her bed to sing this song. And you can hear that,” Bono told Rolling Stone. “And I can’t even listen to it now.”

The Irish singer told the outlet that he had approached Parton to ask her to collaborate on a different side project inspired by Irish folk music. She ultimately turned down that request for being “a little too Irish” for her, but countered by offering Bono one of her songs, titled “Torn,” to see if he could “take it somewhere else, maybe.”

According to Bono, he and Snow Patrol’s Johnny McDaid rewrote the lyrics and Parton agreed to sing that version. Parton shares writing credits for the track with members of U2 and McDaid.

“She sang her heart out,” Bono said. “And I cannot believe that’s an 80-year-old woman.”

“Torn,” which features lyrics around a mother who is watching her family get torn apart, will be the closing track of “Carnaval de Luz,” which will be released Nov. 13.

Parton was reportedly able to listen to the final mix of the song to give her approval.

“Dolly loved it,” the album’s producer, Garret “Jacknife” Lee, told Rolling Stone. “She was so proud of her vocal and the recording. She was thrilled with it. We were very nervous that she might not approve, or would be uncomfortable with it, but she loved it.”

For fans that can’t wait until November, 20th Century Studios and Disney on Friday announced that a newly restored version of “9 to 5” will hit theaters for a special week-long run in October. Proceeds from ticket sales to see the workplace comedy from Oct. 9 to 15 will be donated to the Dollywood Foundation to support Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.

The announcement was made to commemorate “Give Like Dolly Day,” established by the Dollywood Foundation and also observed on Friday in Parton’s honor.

“You only need to find one person in this entire world who doesn’t find you completely insufferable.”

That’s the wisdom Taylor Swift dispenses near the end of “Cleveland!,” one of four new songs on a newly expanded edition of “The Life of a Showgirl,” and if that exclamation point doesn’t tell you she’s found that person then I don’t know what would.

Released Thursday night, almost exactly a year after the original album came out, “The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore” tacks four bonus songs onto the blockbuster 2025 LP that set a new record for the biggest opening week of all time even as it drew the harshest reviews of her career. It also follows Swift’s high-profile wedding in July — her husband, the NFL star Travis Kelce, grew up in Cleveland Heights — and comes just as Grammy voters are about to decide on nominations for February’s awards ceremony, where “The Life of a Showgirl” is eligible for Swift’s eighth album of the year nod. (In case you haven’t been keeping track, that would tie her with Frank Sinatra for the most in Recording Academy history.)

In a statement ahead of “The Encore’s” release, Swift said she’d taken a trip to Sweden to celebrate “Showgirl’s” success with Max Martin and Shellback, her two principal collaborators on the album. “Really we just wanted to reflect and take in how grateful we were for the moment we were in,” she wrote, “but there was a studio there and we did what we do when we feel anything at all: We wrote more songs.”

Here are the four “Encore” tracks, ranked from worst to best.

4. ‘Cleveland!’
The exclamation point really is hilarious. (No shots at Cleveland.) I kind of dig the airy jangle-pop production, which reminds me a bit of “Ruin the Friendship,” by far the best song on the original “Showgirl.” But writing about her and Kelce’s romance as a bulwark against all the hate she receives as a rich and powerful pop star feels pretty uninspired, at least as rendered here. “The taste of me is acquired, but it’s his favorite dish”? Alas, no.

3. ‘Patient Zero’
“Encore’s” lead single — with a splashy music video set to premiere during Sunday night’s MTV Video Music Awards — has Swift fielding a phone call from a woman who’s dating one of the singer’s exes and could use a little advice. (“I’ve gotta be honest — I’ve been expecting your call,” Swift tells her.) That’s a rich premise, and I like the way the unexpected fiddle lick scrapes against the glossy synths. Again, though, the lyrics lack the emotional sophistication with which she once would have told a story like this one. And the song’s central image — a guy with a “devil on his shoulder under his halo” — is downright awkward.

2. ‘Pink Clouding’
OK, now we’re getting somewhere. This shimmering electro-pop number takes its title, as I just learned, from a term used among people experiencing addiction to describe the temporary euphoria one might feel in the early stages of recovery. (Recall that Swift wrote “Lavender Haze” a few years ago after hearing the phrase on “Mad Men.”) Here she’s looking back with regret at a relationship that she can see now was clearly a rebound: “You met me at a cursed time / I told you I was fine / And you were so good / That’s why you haunt me like you should.”

1. ‘Babylon’
Look, I’m not crazy about “liberated libertine.” And “Love is ice upon the ladder that you need to climb”? It’s giving Airbnb wall art. But man, oh man, does Swift finally tap into something deep in “Encore’s” closer: a trembling acoustic-guitar ditty about someone who’s realized only too late what they let slip away. Listen for yourself to hear how she sings it — this is a beautifully tender vocal performance — but the verse about the all-but-abandoned young mom sneaking into the bathroom to call her mom is an absolute killer. Taylor Swift: good songwriter!

Nearly every summer, Tove Lo finds herself itching for a change.

Typically, the sweltering season will prompt the Swedish singer-songwriter to do something new, like dye her hair black or switch up her personal style. But even in the midst of this annual metamorphosis, she tends to find her way back to the same place: a small Swedish fishing village called Torekov.

Between recovering from her first heartbreak and overcoming burnout from her debut album “Queen of the Clouds,” the remote town has offered her a seaside refuge ever since childhood. Yet, with the making of her latest studio album “Estrus,” Torekov officially solidified itself as a mainstay in the singer’s artistic process.

“It’s kind of an emotionally triggering place for me, both good and bad,” Lo said, as she sank farther into the booth at Thai Angel on a humid August afternoon. “I needed a second to be in a place without distractions, where I’m more like a person than an artist … It almost offers a creative force field that I need to enter every process now.”

Torekov, as Lo describes it, is what the neighborhood in “‘The Truman Show’ is like before they hit record.” It’s somewhat of an idyllic place where the seashore is lined with wooden houses; sheep graze along the grassy cliffsides and residents wander around the shops in bathrobes and clogs, right after their morning swims.

However, when Lo visited during the off-season, its emptiness was “ominous” — unintentionally stirring her inner want to cause chaos. In true Tove Lo fashion, the surrounding serene village made her turn to the familiar sounds of heavy club electronica, further building on the contradictory ethos that comprises “Estrus.”

“Every song feels different. It’s like every feeling I’ve ever felt condensed into 13 songs,” Lo said, in between sips of her iced tea. “[Listeners] are getting this horny, rolly, aggressive bass line, and these super intimate, knife-to-the-heart kind of emotions in a very intimate way. I feel like they’re going to be emotionally exhausted.”

Under the dim red light of the Koreatown bar, the singer exuded an air of comfort, as she’s somewhat of a Thai Angel regular. The Swede, who’s lived in L.A. for nearly a decade, hosts a secretive, recurring party at the bar called SOUP. Usually the bar is a rowdy reprieve filled with sweaty bodies and pounding bass lines, with Lo situated behind the DJ decks. But on that Monday afternoon, hours before the bar opens, she had the place almost entirely to herself.

Tove Lo outside Thai Angel, a Koreatown bar where she hosts a recurring party.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

With only the swirling sounds of an overhead air conditioning vent to cloud her thoughts, she explained that, at the beginning, “Estrus” was bogged down by an unprecedented wave of writer’s block. The singer had initially tried to get a head start on her sixth studio album at home in Los Angeles, but she felt a new kind of pressure hanging over her head.

“I had this feeling that this is my sixth album and I had something to prove, like I needed to have a message or some kind of advice,” Lo said.

She credits the newfound tension to her career’s longevity. The 38-year-old, raised in the suburbs of Stockholm, got her start in music as a songwriter in the early 2010s, earning credits on tracks including Ellie Goulding’s “Love Me Like You Do” and Lorde’s “Homemade Dynamite.”

She gave in to her pop-star ambitions in 2014, with the release of her debut album, “Queen of the Clouds.” The record featured her breakout hit “Habits (Stay High),” which details her getting the munchies, throwing up in a tub and going to sex clubs to get over a heartbreak. Lo said she likes to think that, with the early success of the rebellious anthem, she was “very clear from the start.”

“I’m a hot mess,” Lo remarked, between laughs. “Here you go.”

Since then, she’s continued to develop her raw pop sound by collaborating with DJs like Flume and SG Lewis, while adding to her library of cult-classic tracks like “disco tits” and “Glad He’s Gone.” But at this point in her career, she said it also felt like she “should’ve had all the answers” by now.

“I had this idea that I had to prove that I had become a better, bigger person,” Lo said. “But I’m just the same f— messy girl.”

And the sound of “Estrus” follows suit. Immediately, the opening song, “a lot of feelings, no solutions,” hits listeners with a punchy bass line and blatant lyrics about having no advice to offer. Throughout the 13-track record, she flip-flops between being vulnerable and playful while also being hedonistic and making sacrifices. For example, on “the bad one,” she takes accountability for being a “problematic” partner over staccato percussion and a cinematic synth, while also being grateful she got out of the relationship. Similarly, on “F.A.M.T,” she leans into her avoidant tendencies on top of a choir of high-pitched cyber chimes and resorts to sexual endeavors instead of looking inward.

Tove Lo is set to perform at the Greek Theatre on September 27 as part of the Estrus tour.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

“We suppress a lot to be respectful to other people, and there’s nothing bad in that,” Lo said. “But if you never let your vices drive you for a night or a day, I think you’ll go absolutely crazy. You just need to have moments where you don’t think about the consequences. Just be hedonistic for a second. Indulge.”

Like much of Lo’s music, the new project, named after a female mammal in heat, is centered around the age-old tension between the body and mind. On her previous album “Dirt Femme,” released in 2022, she opened up about being unsure if she wants children, while denouncing the societal expectations that come with being a married woman.

And it’s still something she’s trying to figure out on “Estrus.” The album’s final track, “source of life,” offers up a mantra of contradicting adjectives like “feral,” “euphoric” and “fragile,” while questioning if she ruined her chances of motherhood by “partying late.”

“My body [says] well, maybe we should just have like one baby, and my mind is like, absolutely not,” said Lo. “I don’t know who’s gonna win. But I do feel like I’m in the final boss of adventures.”

By the end of “Estrus,” it’s apparent that the tug-of-war between her body and mind isn’t over. And she’s not sure if there will be a resolution. It’s still an ongoing battle — and it’s precisely what Lo says she was aiming for.

“There’s no good advice on this album,” she playfully reiterated. “Just don’t ask me.”

Dolly Parton — the “queen of country,” benevolent ruler of Dollywood and America’s true sweetheart — died at age 80 last month. But she lives on forever at home in our living rooms, in the warm echo of a Tennessee twang from the speaker and, perhaps surprisingly (although that shouldn’t be so), in the flickering glow of our television screens.

Parton got her start on the small screen, appearing on the “Cas Walker Farm and Home Hour” when she was 10. Eleven years later, she had a down-home breakthrough on the widely syndicated “Porter Wagoner Show.” There were multiple interviews with Barbara Walters, “Tonight Show” appearances with Johnny Carson, two successive variety shows and many a guest spot, including on “Hannah Montana,” “Designing Women” and “Reba.”

At the Emmys on Monday, Reba McEntire sang a soulful tribute to Parton with a cover of her 1983 song “Appalachian Mountains,” one of McEntire’s all-time favorites. Before that, though, came a heartfelt speech by Sally Field, Parton’s co-star in “Steel Magnolias.”

“If there are truly angels on Earth, then we just lost one: Dolly Parton,” Field said. “It was my great good fortune to have worked with Dolly in a film called ‘Steel Magnolias.’ And over the years, I never stopped loving her, though we lived very far apart. I adored her from Day One; how could you not? She was genuine and humble, supportive and blisteringly funny, with a bawdy sense of humor that would send any rude guy looking for a place to hide.

“I couldn’t see then what a real giant Dolly was — not just as an artist, but as a human,” she added. “She was a humanitarian whose contributions have made a profound difference in the lives of so many in her home state of Tennessee, and across our country. God bless you, Dolly Parton, my friend. I am not the only one on Earth that will love you forever and ever.”

Then came an archival clip of Parton introducing “Appalachian Mountains” the year it came out. “I’m very, very proud of the fact that I had the kind of parents that I did, and grew up in the Smoky Mountains, the Appalachian Mountains,” she said. “And I have written a song that touches me very deep, and I’m sure that, in your own way, that you certainly will relate to this. This song, like I say, is very important to me, and I hope you like it. And if you don’t like it, well, if you don’t mind, I would rather not hear about it later, OK? It’s a song that I call ‘Appalachian Mountains.’ ”

Two years ago, the biggest record labels took artificial intelligence music generators to court for copyright infringement. Now several of them are licensing their catalogs to those same companies, and the deals are starting to turn into products.

The latest example came earlier this month, when Suno, an AI music company valued at $5.4 billion, released its first models built with licensed music from Warner Music Group, BMG and Believe. Rival Udio has licensing deals with Universal Music Group and Warner.

The companies are pitching AI as a new revenue stream for artists. But so far, none of them have disclosed what artists will be paid, how many artists have opted in, or how much input individual musicians have over whether their work is used. And some musicians and songwriters are fearful of how these AI deals might affect livelihoods.

“It’s sort of a creepy and ominous cloud,” said Matt Evans, a 35-year-old Pasadena resident who’s played brass instruments on shows like “The Late Late Show With James Corden” and Netflix’s “Dr. Seuss’s Red Fish, Blue Fish.” “The fact that I could do something once and then it could be reused, and if that’s not negotiated in a contract, then I never got to make a choice to receive additional compensation. It all comes down to the loss of money.”

The American Federation of Musicians sued Universal and Warner in June, alleging the labels licensed recordings its members played on to Suno and Udio without paying those musicians or telling the union which recordings were involved. The labels have moved to dismiss the case.

In 2024, Universal, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner sued Suno and Udio for copyright infringement, alleging the AI companies trained their models on copyrighted songs spanning many artists, genres and time periods. The settlements began the following year. Universal settled with Udio in October and became its partner, and Warner settled with both Udio and Suno in November, signing licensing deals with each.

“The reason why they would settle this is they think they’re going to profit more from licensing music to them rather than from the outcome of a lawsuit,” said Jane Davidson, an entertainment attorney at Nolan Heimann who specializes in copyright and trademark infringement.

More deals followed. Udio signed with Merlin, which licenses music on behalf of independent labels, and with independent publisher Kobalt. Suno signed with BMG in August and with Believe, owner of the DIY distribution platform TuneCore, this month. Spotify, which wasn’t part of the lawsuits, struck deals with Universal and Merlin.

Not everyone is settling. Sony filed a second lawsuit against Udio over more than 30,000 recordings, and it is still suing Suno alongside Universal, which is licensing its music to Udio and Spotify at the same time. Sony and Universal also filed a new lawsuit last week alleging that Suno’s latest model still infringes on their copyrighted works. In July, a Munich court ruled against Suno in a case brought by GEMA, which collects royalties for German songwriters and publishers.

The deals between labels and AI music platforms — on which consumers can create full songs from text prompts — share a basic promise. Artists signed to the participating labels can opt in and will be credited and paid.

But each company is building something different. Udio operates under a “walled garden” model favored by Universal, in which songs made on the platform can’t be downloaded or distributed elsewhere. Spotify’s tool, a planned paid add-on for Premium subscribers, has no launch date. Suno lets users download what they make and release it elsewhere, with download caps and watermarks meant to curb abuse; songs made with its new models can be distributed through Believe and TuneCore.

Whether an artist opts out depends on who owns the rights. Songs typically carry two copyrights — one for the composition, usually held by songwriters and their publishers, and one for the sound recording, usually owned by the label. Every contract is different, so it’s unclear how AI products will handle music where those rights are split.

Waveforms of audio files from various instruments are displayed on a computer screen during the making of an AI musical piece at Suno.

(Robert F. Bukaty / Associated Press)

“These companies are able to make deals on behalf of their artists, and their control over their music is pretty significant based on what major label contracts typically say,” Davidson said. “But I expect that we will have some artists that push back against this and say that they didn’t authorize the use of their music for this purpose.”

Warner’s agreement with Suno, for example, lets artists opt in to having their names, likenesses, voices and compositions used in AI-generated music. But Jack Brody, Suno’s chief product officer, acknowledged that labels “ultimately have their contracts in place that will have some say in what an artist can and can’t do.” It’s also not always clear whether opting out keeps an artist’s recordings out of AI training, or only out of fan-facing features.

Michelle Lewis, a songwriter and the co-founder and chief executive of the nonprofit Songwriters of North America, said the composition side of that copyright split is often the harder one to defend.

“With AI, it’s so much easier to tell if you’ve infringed on the sound recording. You know what Beyoncé and Drake’s voices sound like,” said Lewis, who wrote Cher’s “A Different Kind of Love Song,” Little Mix’s “Wings” and the music for the Disney Jr. show “Doc McStuffins.” “But songwriting is so much more nebulous, so much harder to sue.”

“From the creator side, nobody asked for this. We like our job,” added Lewis. “The job is the process and what makes it special, interesting and artful.”

Some musicians argue the deals can’t cover rights the labels don’t control. A proposed class action filed last month by Jason Isbell and other musicians alleges Suno lets users generate songs that evoke specific artists’ identities without their consent, a right-of-publicity claim the plaintiffs say belongs to performers no matter who owns their recordings. Suno disputes the claims.

Session musicians like Evans are pushing back through their union.

“By licensing our members’ performances to AI platforms like Suno and Udio without consent, credit, or compensation, companies like Universal, Warner Records, and Atlantic are bypassing the very human creators who made their catalogs valuable in the first place,” AFM International President Tino Gagliardi said in a statement.

The labels have disputed the claims and argue that these deals advance the interests of artists and songwriters.

Jonathan Wyner, head of artistic technology initiatives at Berklee College of Music’s Emerging Artistic Technology Lab, compared the AI deals to the arrival of streaming services. Wyner has advised Suno.

“It’s a good step, and I think it was an inevitable step, especially if you want to stay engaged with musicians and the creative community,” he said.

That comparison cuts both ways. Streaming grew the industry while fueling years of complaints about artist pay.

Damon Krukowski, a musician and the legislative director at United Musicians & Allied Workers, said the deals so far don’t seem to benefit working-class musicians and could be used to cut them out entirely.

“It’s a new technology, but it’s not a new corporate story,” Krukowski said. “But the tools are even more powerful. It seems within their possible reach to destroy the labor market. The major labels are just seeing dollar signs without any regard to the long-term health or sustainability of this industry, because they’re envisioning an industry without artists who can push back.”

Brody disputed that, saying Suno is building ways for independent and unsigned artists to benefit, such as its deal with Believe and TuneCore.

With terms under wraps, it’s too early to know whether any of this will pay off for artists. The tests are still ahead — whether Sony and Universal win or settle, and what the first payouts actually look like.

“A label making a deal and an individual artist having a choice are not necessarily the same thing,” said Drew Silverstein, the senior advisor for AI at music tech company BandLab Technologies. “Our music industry has a long history of new revenue streams coming into existence that benefit certain folks, and create great financial opportunities for rights holders.”

Over the years, the concept of the “song of the summer” has been well-contested: Is it merely based on statistics? Is it the song that has become so omnipresent that many have become sick of it? Does this mean that “Happy” by Pharrell Williams and “Fancy” by Iggy Azalea count?

Last year, it was likely somewhere between Sabrina Carpenter’s “Manchild” and “Luther” by Kendrick Lamar, featuring SZA. Just based on numbers, it was Alex Warren’s “Ordinary,” but this is a strong case for why metrics don’t always matter.

On Sept. 23, the autumn equinox will arrive, officially bringing an end to the summer season and countless attempts at giving it an anthem. This year, there was a plethora of choices. So much so that we couldn’t narrow it down to a definitive tune.

However, you can find our potential picks below.

“The Peace,” underscores

“I don’t speak unless I’m spoken to / And I won’t smoke unless you’re smoking too.”

Underscores, the artist that you are. After “U” dropped in March, “The Peace” was one of the first tracks to go viral across social media. It’s since maintained its cultural relevancy, with the artist performing it as part of her DIY pop-up sets, staged from the back of a U-Haul truck.

Historically, underscores hasn’t written much about her personal life, opting for conceptual work. However, “The Peace” offers a rare, intimate glimpse into the artist’s love life and the feeling of sacrificing basic boundaries in order to satisfy someone else.

Beyond its storytelling, the song’s melody and chopped vocal riff are unforgettable on this track, standing out from the rest of the album. This isn’t a jab at the project — “U” is an incredible album and the song is just that good.

“stupid song,” Olivia Rodrigo

A song from Olivia Rodrigo’s third album, “You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love,” was always going to make this list, given the strong reception it’s received and its incredible replayability. As further evidence of this, within weeks of its release, the song hit 300 million streams.

The album’s third single, “stupid song,” just makes it in over “the cure,” its second single. Though the latter has one of the best bridges of the year, its undeniably melancholic and macabre nature is what put it out of contention.

Though “stupid song” has its somber moments, it’s easier to scream in a crowd without catching concerned glares. This call for catharsis is ever-present in Rodrigo’s discography, but this last album is the artist in full stride.

“Dance…,” Slayyyter

Speaking of artists in full stride, Slayyyter has been the breakout act of the summer, which is incredible considering that her debut mixtape released in 2019. She’s got skin in the game but hasn’t really been able to crack the mainstream until the release of “Worst Girl in America” and a subsequent, viral Coachella set.

“Dance…” is the opening track of that album and also arguably the best song on it. After about a full minute of pensive, progressive, electronic buildup, listeners get a taste of bliss, sewn-in synths and heavy bass.

When one individual made the bold claim on X that it was “one of the best album intros ever,” Slayyyter was quick to respond with a simple “TRUE.” Shortly after its release, it went viral on Instagram reels and TikTok as creators used the song in a trend where they’d act fatigued before bursting into motion on beat.

“Caught in a Jam,” Portraits of Tracy

This is easily one of the most fun, captivating tracks of the summer — it’s funky, bouncy, buzzy and everything in between. Solidifying its cool is the reassuring note at the end of the music video description: “No generative AI was used at any stage in the production of this material.”

It features — without a doubt — one of the best bridges and refrains of the year, and perhaps onward. Not to mention, its lyrics are equally as enjoyable as the production.

“Oh, something changed in me, I felt it instantly / I had to hit the club so they could all see / Now I’m the dancing queen / F-f-f-far far from 17”

“Caught in a Jam” would an impressive feat from any artist, but it’s exciting to hear it coming from a 22-year-old. Hopefully, the future is bright and groovy for Portraits of Tracy. Reception of the artist’s latest EP, “Q: From Where Do Our Primal Instincts Originate? A: MTV! EP,” has been overwhelmingly positive, with Pitchfork placing it a 7.6 rating.

“BbY Wow,” Karol G, Judeline, rusowsky

The 2026 Coachella headliner is back at it again. This time around, Karol G released “BbY Wow” at the tail end of July, allowing it just enough time to seep into the brains of all its listeners.

Realistically, it needed no time at all. It didn’t take long for the song to hit No. 1 on Spotify global charts, receiving over 3 million streams within a week of its release.

The song is a masterclass in production, pulling and syncopating a sample from iconic dance hall tune “Coolie Dance Riddim,” released by Jamaican producer Cordel Skatta Burrell in 2003. In this, a lot of the heavy lifting is done, and all three artists are left to ride the smooth beat.

Naturally, Karol G really shines here, but Judeline and rusowsky provide an interesting dynamic to the song, making it an instant hit.

“Girl Like Me,” PinkPantheress

“Girl Like Me” is an odd entry for potential song of the summer. The track was released back in May 2025 as part of her second mixtape, “Fancy That.” However, it didn’t receive much buzz until April 2026, when PinkPantheress performed at Coachella.

Not long after, she released the official music video for the song, which blew up almost as soon as it landed on YouTube. The video, made in collaboration with faceless director Lauzza, features buildings shuffling on beat and other excerpts of British culture.

It would soon witness the same treatment on streaming, garnering a 165% increase in streaming activity over a four-week period, Billboard reported.

But it’s not all about numbers in the world of music and, thankfully, “Girl Like Me,” delivers sonically, as well. The song flips both “Romeo” and “Always Be There” by aughts-defining electronic duo Basement Jaxx and turns it into a thumping dance pop tune.

“Dine N’Dash,” the Strokes

As plainly stated in our coverage of the Strokes’ appearance at Just Like Heaven in August, the band is “currently riding the high” of its first Coachella performance in 15 years. “Reality Awaits” is an incredibly polarizing album. What’s dividing fans is Julian Casablancas’ insistence on using Autotune, as many prefer his raw vocals.

However, Autotune or not, “Dine N’Dash” is reminiscent of the best of the band, confirming that they’ve still got the juice to make hits 25 years after their debut. The chorus is the key here, as its smooth riff pauses for Casablancas to softy wail out “We could never afford it / So we dine and dash / I would always go last.”

Hello, 2001!

“brand new chanel$,” Slayyyter

It’s always difficult to give an artist a double entry on a list, but in the case of Slayyyter, it was mandatory. “Brand new chanel$” is poised to be a song off of a potential upcoming project, which is expected to be an inverse, “brother album” to “Worst Girl in America.”

In that, it completely lives up to her promises, taking the route of a more traditional pop song, while still delivering on all fronts. Notably, her vocal ability really shines through on this track, as she belts out “I‘m holding it alone just for tonight / I wonder if you / got her in your room / I call you on the phone to start a fight” during the chorus.

The song’s outro is equally as intoxicating, referencing the lyrics and melody of its apparent brother track, “Beat Up Chanel$.”

Like “Dance…,” the song was quick to go viral on social media, and the artist revealed that the song was made to process romantic trauma. Just two days before “WGIA” dropped and during rehearsals for her Coachella set, Slayyyter found out she had been cheated on by her then-boyfriend.

“Choosin’ Texas,” Ella Langley

It’s been 22 weeks since Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” first appeared on top of the Billboard 100, tying Mariah Carey’s seasonally ubiquitous “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” Whether you like the song or not, its appeal is officially undeniable.

On Spotify, it’s racked up more than half a billion streams and on YouTube, nearly 100 million. Not to mention, it’s impossible to crawl into any dive bar in the country without being ambushed by “She’s from Texas, I can tell by the way / He’s two steppin’ ‘round the room,” delivered in a Southern drawl.

Is it the “Happy” or “Fancy” of 2026? We leave that with you to decide.

We’re hunkered down in a dark stairwell on the side of a hotel facing a busy street in Hollywood. To passersby, we could easily be mistaken for two teenagers hiding in the shadows. In reality, I’m sitting with Kelela, the electronic R&B architect whose uncompromising vision has quietly reshaped the contours of alternative music.

Dressed in oversize sunglasses, an acid-washed tee, light blue jeans, checkered Vans and a vibrant auburn-colored French bob with micro bangs, she effortlessly rolls a joint with long ombre nails that mimic smoke and fire. She slips it between her lips and flicks a lighter stamped with a single word: Gotham.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Her lighter choice is pure coincidence, she says, but it fits the apocalyptic visual universe she’s built for “New Avatar,” her dark, guitar-heavy third album that merges her early D.C. indie roots with shoegaze, grunge, futuristic club music and R&B. Produced almost exclusively by Oscar Scheller — who has crafted tracks for PinkPantheress and Lily Allen — the 12-track project finds Kelela chasing intimacy, desire and emotional refuge in the midst of an increasingly chaotic world. From the color-inverted cover art to her icy white hair and bleached brows in the video for “idea 1” — a song that draws inspiration from Octavia Butler’s 1993 sci-fi classic “Parable of the Sower” — the world-building is unmistakable.

“I used it to describe the context … of these stories on the record,” Kelela explains about the Gotham visual concept. “It’s a basic reference, but it feels like it applies. It’s the context for people needing to be saved and everything being f— on some level, but there still being hope.”

Just a few miles from the Hollywood stairwell where we’re sitting, Kelela will translate her genre-flexing record for the stage at the Wiltern during two back-to-back shows on Sept. 21 and 22.

Although she’s a New Yorker now, Los Angeles plays a crucial role in her musical journey. In 2010, the Ethiopian American singer-songwriter moved to Venice to work as a nanny before taking a gig as a solar panel telemarketer — a job she picked to avoid moving back home but unexpectedly excelled at.

“I’ve sold solar power to hundreds of people in the L.A. area,” she quips. “I would level with people. I didn’t sound like a salesperson because I can’t sell something that doesn’t make sense.”

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

The job funded her first solo apartment in MacArthur Park, but an insurance payout from a totaled car ultimately gave her the financial runway to leave sales behind and focus solely on music. That freedom manifested into her debut mixtape “Cut 4 Me,” featuring fan favorites like “Send Me Out” and “Bank Head.”

“It’s a very L.A. story,” she says with a laugh.

More than 10 years after the breakthrough record, Kelela returned to L.A. to record “New Avatar” with Scheller at his home studio in Silver Lake.

During their first session, she played him “Outta Time,” a track featuring British singer-producer A.K. Paul (Jai Paul’s brother) that she’d been holding onto for a decade until she was ready to make her first guitar-centered album. She also showed Scheller her “white bag” playlist — a collection of indie, rock and alternative tracks she loved as a teenager, from Incubus to Deftones to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He understood the assignment and by the end of their session, they walked away with two songs: the lead single “Idea 1” and the sensual, U.K. garage-infused “Don’t Piss Me Off.”

“I had a sketch and I think that felt very magical,” Kelela says.

Their natural flow was part of the reason why Kelela was able to release “New Avatar” sooner than previous albums. It arrives just three years after its predecessor, “Raven.”

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

But leaning into her “white bag” wasn’t just about nostalgia. It’s a return for the artist who was once the frontwoman of indie rockers Dizzy Spells and was rocking out with her then-boyfriend, guitarist Tosin Abasi (of Animals as Leaders). It’s also a direct confrontation with the industry’s racialized genre boxes — a phenomenon Kelela identifies as “sonic racism.”

“It’s designed to keep us apart, to keep us out,” she says, “and I think clocking that is really important.”

She points to the unspoken kinship that forms when Black fans who love heavier guitar music find each other in white-dominated crowds.

“When they meet it’s a different type of bond through the music — like ‘I’ve always felt on the outside,’ but also ‘We are so inside,’” she says. “That catharsis is another feeling and I knew so much of my audience had an experience with this music, but maybe had to compartmentalize and be on the outside in order to enjoy it.” With “New Avatar,” she wanted to “dismantle and disrupt” that dissonance without abandoning her R&B roots, she says.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

That philosophy echoes through the record’s lyricism. Where 2023’s “Raven,” a rave-inspired, post-pandemic offering that ruminated on the times and being firm in your boundaries, “New Avatar” is its older sister who is a bit more wise and speaks with even sharper conviction.

“We need space to feel over it,” she says, “and to not be considered Debbie Downers. That’s basically the role that Black women have been sort of relegated to — to be truth tellers. Then everyone’s like ‘Ugh, come on…’ But it’s like we’re laughing all the time. I’m so happy. I’m not unhappy.”

She adds, “The key is not rooted in escapism. The key is rooted in being honest about what you saw, and that’s kind of the tradition that I’d want my work to live in.”

On “Point Blank,” Kelela explores the emotional labor for a woman in a one-sided relationship: “By now, I hope you see/That bullet set me free/And the more I pour, the more you reap/And I’m too spent too weep.” As the title implies, “Don’t Piss Me Off” sees a woman losing her patience with a lover: “Know you want me/Tell me I’m wrong/Takin’ all night/Don’t piss me off.” But by the album’s closer “If We Meet Again,” she cuts ties entirely: “If we ever amend/Nevermind, over and out.”

“A lot of the songs are like “Y’all ain’t s—,’” she says laughing, “But I try to say it in an artful way.”

Two bright spots on the album arrive in the final act: the dream pop-infused “New Life Forms” featuring Fousheé and “The Bridge,” a song about yearning with PinkPantheress, who returned the favor after Kelela appeared on her track “Bury Me.” Directed by Yasser Abubeker, “The Bridge” music video features a memorable, sultry dance number between the two singers — a sequence Kelela encouraged fans to learn before her shows.

“I cried the first time that Yasser sent me the edit,” she says. “It’s like a love letter to Black queer culture, our intimacy. It’s so sexy without me and her having an overt love interest. It just feels so implied in this smart way.”

The day before we met in Hollywood, Kelela gave an intimate live performance for Spotify. Backed by an all-Black femme band featuring a string quartet, guitar, bass and backup vocals, she performed “Idea 1” and a cover of Incubus’ “Mexico” — a rendition that earned her praise on social media from Incubus’ frontman, Brandon Boyd, himself.

“It’s a really important image,” says Kelela about the video. “In addition to it sounding exquisite, I’m not gonna lie, it also tore visually and symbolically.”

She’ll also be backed by a full band during her “New Avatar Live” tour, which she envisions as a high-energy rave that could break into a mosh pit at any moment.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

“It’s another medium for me to be able to articulate or dismantle those constructs around what makes sense together,” Kelela says. “It’s going to be first and foremost — like any record or anything that I do — cathartic for me.”

She continues, “So I’m going to be living my best f— life and through that I know I will give a good show because it just excites me. It’s a dream come true to be able to pull these things together.”

LONDON — Ireland will boycott the Eurovision Song Contest for a second year over Israel’s participation, the country’s national broadcaster said Thursday.

RTÉ said it will not send an act to the 2027 competition in Bulgaria and will not broadcast the show because of the “appalling and ongoing loss of lives in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis there which continues to put the lives of so many civilians at risk.”

Ireland was one of five countries — along with the Netherlands, Iceland, Slovenia and Spain — to skip Eurovision this year to protest Israel’s inclusion in the pan-continental music contest.

Eurovision Director Martin Green said organizers regretted RTÉ’s decision but “fully respect” it.

“All broadcasters decide on an annual basis to participate in the following year’s contest. We will remain in dialogue with RTÉ and hope to welcome them back to the contest in the future,” Green said.

Dutch broadcaster AVROTROS announced last month it will also boycott next year, calling Eurovision a “platform for division.”

“AVROTROS will not participate in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2027 because the event can no longer be considered neutral, with a participating country still involved in a large-scale military conflict,” it said.

Next year’s competition is due to take place in Bulgaria’s Black Sea resort of Burgas in May, after Bulgarian singer Dara won the 2026 event with her infectious party anthem “Bangaranga.”

The contest was founded in 1956, in part to help unite a shattered continent after World War II. It pits acts from dozens of countries against one another for the continent’s musical crown.

Israel has taken part in Eurovision since 1973, one of a few non-European countries to compete. But calls for Israel to be kicked out have swelled over the conduct of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza.

The 2024 Eurovision contest in Malmo, Sweden, the 2025 in Basel, Switzerland and this year’s contest in Vienna saw pro-Palestinian protests and heightened security.

Moments after the final rapid-fire rhythm of Anthrax’s opening number “Caught in a Mosh” fades from the open air of the Sports Illustrated Stadium in Harrison, N.J., shaggy-headed vocalist Joey Belladonna addresses the audience. “I gotta ask everybody out there right now. Who’s never seen Anthrax before?” Around half of the 6,000-or-so crowd members who showed up by 6 p.m. for the three-band bill, headlined by heavy metal legends Iron Maiden, raise their hands. “Ah, yeah! We got a lot of new friends here today. Thank you for being here.”

Some bands with a four-decade career would be disappointed by the turnout, or by the realization that many fans not wearing Maiden shirts are dressed in Megadeth merch. But for Anthrax, preaching to the unconverted is an opportunity to expand their fan base beyond the somewhat insular community of thrash metal, a style of music that took the aggression of bands like Iron Maiden and turbocharged it with the speed and fury of hardcore punk. As much as Anthrax cherish being one of the “Big Four” — Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax — playing a 35-minute set well before dark is a great way to reach new listeners.

“We have a strong base of fans that are deeply into this band, but we know there are also people that have never listened to this type of music before,” says bald-headed, gray-bearded rhythm guitarist and lyricist Scott Ian from his home office outside of L.A. a week before the show. “They’ve heard band names, but maybe they haven’t dipped their toe in the water. So, it would be great to reach them and give them something they didn’t even know they wanted and then they’ll fall in love with it.”

A full 10 years have passed since Anthrax released their last studio album, “For All Kings,” which helps explain why they’re not as well-known as some metal veterans. Instead of rushing out an album after the pandemic, Anthrax took their time writing and fine-tuning new songs before entering Dave Grohl’s Studio 606 in L.A. in 2022. Then, they wrote more songs and massaged those for another two years before finishing the recording and sending the album to be mixed in 2025.

“I nitpicked over every detail of these songs before I even sent the demos to the other guys to put their two cents in,” says drummer and main songwriter Charlie Benante, clad in a black T-shirt and blue jean shorts, and sporting cropped black hair and a slanted mustache. “I wanted them to be as good as they could possibly be. Being good enough wasn’t OK.”

The 11 tracks on “Cursum Perficio” (Latin for “I complete my journey”) encapsulate the finessed brutality, incisive melodies and experimental flourishes from Anthrax’s years with Belladonna (from 1984-1992 and 2005 to the present), during which the band wrote its fastest, most aggressive songs. As much as Anthrax were driven this time by the desire to attract new fans, they were also motivated by many popular new metal albums — and not in a good way.

Anthrax’s meticulously crafted album was recorded at Studio 606, using Iron Maiden support slots to court new listeners beyond the thrash faithful.

(Travis Shinn)

“I hear bands with new records out, and they’re horrible,” Benante says, squinting his eyes and grimacing. “The genre has gotten stagnant to the point where you see a social media post by some band mentioning they have new music coming out, and you can tell exactly how it’s going to sound just by the way they look.”

While “Cursum Perficio” may be a bit heavy for some metal fans, it’s neither dull nor predictable. The album is loaded with Anthrax trademarks — serrated, crunchy riffs, soaring lead vocals, bludgeoning beats, and scorching guitar — but there are also galactic noise effects, angular song structures and atypical chord configurations. The most striking number, “The Edge of Perfection,” starts with chiming ethereal guitars and gently tapped cymbals, then detonates in a conflagration of feral blast beats, minor-key tremolo guitar picking (redolent of black metal), and chanted tribal vocals before climaxing in a slithering riff and ebullient chorus.

“After 30 years as a band, I can honestly say that’s the best song we’ve ever done,” says Ian, the most voluble member. “I feel like it’s genre-defying and can appeal to fans of atmospheric stuff and extreme metal, and anyone who likes aggressive music or even just guitar rock.”

For such a bruising cut, the lyrics of “The Edge of Perfection” are surprisingly optimistic. “It’s about striving for perfection, which, of course, is impossible. But that doesn’t mean you can’t reach for it,” says Ian. “To me, true perfection is happiness and health, and that comes from love, and it isn’t a given. I work hard at being an empathetic person and I only do things out of love and wanting to make everybody around me feel good as well.”

Lest Ian’s Zen-like proclamation color him a romantic, the guitarist stresses that much of the energy and anger of “Cursum Perficio” stems from the political, social and economic turmoil of the last decade. The problems, he stresses, are cutthroat capitalism, rampant partisanship and mankind’s seemingly innate instinct to destroy.

“Humans are really good at one thing and that’s murder, and we’ve excelled at it over the centuries,” Ian says, shattering the good vibes that flowed like a clean mountain spring just a minute ago. “Every year, we get better at treating each other terribly, which I can’t understand. I mean, there are people on this planet who, if they wanted to, could end world hunger. But I guess there’s no money in that. They would rather make the world a s— place by draining the resources. I swear to God, it’s just like [the 1971 Dr. Seuss book] ‘The Lorax.’”

While Ian purposely scrapped any early lyrics he wrote about politics in the age of Trump (“that would have been boring”), on “Everyone’s Got a Plan” he addresses the partisan strategy of “divide and conquer,” and in the first single, “It’s for the Kids,” he writes about the ubiquity of school shootings. Neither song has stopped naysayers from characterizing Anthrax as left-wing.

“I’m not a liberal,” he plainly states. “I’m a centrist. I like skeet shooting and I enjoy going to a range and shooting at targets.  But I believe in common sense. And no matter what your political leanings, I think everybody can agree that nobody wants to see an 8-year-old shot in the face, which happens all too often.”

“I love this country,” interjects Benante. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t have some problems with it…. The way we go about things in this country is just wrong, and it makes me frustrated to the point where I’m like, ‘F— it. I’ll just put my head down and write a song.’”

“Cursum Perficio” delivers classic Anthrax crunch with experimental flourishes, anchored by genre-defying centerpiece “The Edge of Perfection.”

(Travis Shinn)

Much of “Cursum Perficio” caters to neither the left nor the right. “NYC 93” is about the celebratory chaos of band life in the early ’90s, “The Long Goodbye” addresses the horrors of dementia, and the title track is about closure, whether positive or problematic. The Latin translation of the phrase, along with Benante’s past comments that he can’t imagine writing another full Anthrax album anytime soon, have led to speculation that the band is nearing the end of the line; the theory is seemingly supported by lines like, “The journey’s over/ The threads that hold it all together.” But while there are no plans now to write any new songs, and four of the members are in their 60s (lead guitarist Jonathan Donais is the baby at 47), growing too old to headbang isn’t even a notion.

“I truly believe that going out and playing shows keeps us young,” concludes Benante. “We get in a zone, and the music takes over and the energy going through our bodies is the same as it was when we were 20. Why would we ever want to give that up?”

Wiederhorn is the co-author of Scott Ian’s 2014 autobiography, “I’m the Man: The Story of That Guy From Anthrax.”

THERE was an on-stage mystery last night as Nicole Scherzinger ‘went missing’ from a Pussycat Dolls song on their tour.

Her bandmates even failed to cover her lyrics when Nicole was nowhere to be seen on the stage in Poland on September 16.

The Pussycat Dolls’ reunion tour was thrown into chaos after lead singer Nicole didn’t appear on stage for their hit Buttons.

The reunion gig fast became rather awkward when the group’s leading lady failed to appear for the first half of the pop hit.

Bandmates Ashley Roberts and Kimberly Wyatt were left dancing alone, and failed to provide gig goers with the full song or lyrics in Nicole’s absence.

Instead they offered only backing vocals and ad-libs, as well as elite dance moves with their back up dancers.

TALLY OF THE DOLLS

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no buttons

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Nicole, who carries pretty much the entire vocal on the 2006 hit, was missing for nearly two minutes before joining the second half of the song.

Fans were quick to react to the rather awkward moment during the concert.

One person said on TikTok: “Could the other girls not just fill in a sing her part.”

“This feel proper awks,” penned a second.

“Why didn’t they just sing her part?” asked a third.

“That was so awkward,” added a fourth.

While a fifth said: “I would ask for a refund haha.”

And a sixth added: “She was missing for half of the song and was visibly p***ed as hell after she came out.”

The PCD Forever Tour marks 20 years since the group’s debut album was released.

The string of gigs feature just three of the group’s original members after most US dates were cancelled due to poor ticket sales.

British fans will see the group take to the stage in Birmingham later this month.

There are also further UK dates including London’s O2 weeks later in October.

The Latin Recording Academy has unveiled the nominees for its 27th Latin Grammy Awards. The ceremony will air live Nov. 12 on Univision from the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.

Edgar Barrera leads the count with a total of 10 nominations, followed by Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso, Jorge Drexler, Karol G and Rosalía, who each received seven nods.

Trailing behind them are indie folk artists Silvana Estrada and Mon Laferte, who each received six nominations.

All nominations are for recordings released between June 1, 2025, to May 31, 2026.

Hit songwriter Barrera — who now holds the record for the most Latin Grammy nominations, reaching 84 this year — could make history once more if he wins in any category.

The Texas-born composer — who has collaborated with the likes of Bad Bunny, Karol G, Shakira and Maluma, along with anglophone divas like Ariana Grande and Madonna — is currently tied with Calle 13’s Residente for the title of most-awarded individual in Latin Grammy history.

Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso took home five Latin Grammy awards last year, which tied them for the most wins that night alongside Bad Bunny — who received no nominations this year.

Now, the kooky Argentine pair are nominated in multiple top categories, following the release of their experimental 2026 LP “Free Spirits” — which features collaborations with British musicians Sting and Fred Again, as well as California’s very own Anderson .Paak and Jack Black. The duo is competing for album of the year, as well as record of the year for the song “Ha Ha.”

Karol G is also contending for top prizes, including album of the year for “Tropicoqueta,” her 2025 survey of Latin American pop. (She previously won the honors back in 2023 for her heartbreak album, “Mañana Será Bonito.”) Her tender pop duet with Marco Antonio Solis, “Coleccionando Heridas,” is also nominated for record of the year and song of the year.

Spanish singer Rosalía is up for record of the year, song of the year and pop song for the song “La Perla” — which features the música mexicana sibling trio Yahritza y Su Esencia. The band resurfaced from the shadows following a public fallout with Mexican media regarding their American-leaning tastes in cuisine; their 2026 album, “Metamorfosis,” is also nominated for contemporary Mexican music album this year.

There are several notable first-time nominees, some of whom De Los has previously profiled. This includes Xavi, whose album “Dosis” is up for contemporary Mexican music album, as well as his viral TikTok song “No Capea,” which he recorded with Grupo Frontera, in the regional song category. Working-class hero Macario Martínez is also in the running for the new artist award.

Colombian artist Ryan Castro is also nominated for the first time alongside Afrobeat singer Kapo and producer Gangsta for their song “La Villa” in the urban performance category. Castro is also nominated for urban music album for his joint LP “Omerta” alongside J Balvin.

Here’s the list of nominees in all general categories:

Record of the year

“Ha Ha” – Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso

“¿Cómo Se Ama?” – Jorge Drexler

“Dime” – Silvana Estrada

“O Amor Nos Encontrou” – Loulu Gilberto

“Coleccionando Heridas” – Karol G & Marco Antonio Solís

“Femme Fatale” – Mon Laferte

“Desde Que Te Tengo” – Carín León

“Niño” – Milo J

“La Perla” – Rosalía Featuring Yahritza y Su Esencia

“Alma” – Elena Ros

Album of the year

“Equilibrivm” – Anitta

“Free Spirits” – Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso

“Taracá” – Jorge Drexler

“Vendrán Suaves Lluvias” – Silvana Estrada

“Tropicoqueta” – Karol G

“Femme Fatale” – Mon Laferte

“Muda” – Carín León

“La Vida Era Más Corta” – Milo J

“¿Dónde Es El After?” – Rawayana

“Lux (Complete Works)” – Rosalía

Song of the year

“Coleccionando Heridas” – Edgar Barrera, Kevyn Mauricio Cruz, Luis Miguel Gomez Castaño & Karol G, songwriters (Karol G & Marco Antonio Solís)

“¿Cómo Se Ama?” – Jorge Drexler & Diego López Crespo “Mauro”, songwriters (Jorge Drexler)

“Dime” – Silvana Estrada, songwriter (Silvana Estrada)

“Femme Fatale” – Mon Laferte, songwriter (Mon Laferte)

“Hasta Jesús Tuvo Un Mal Día” – Rafa Arcaute, Renee Barri, Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso, Vicente Jimenez “Vibarco”, Martin Kierszenbaum, John Ryan, Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner & Federico Vindver, songwriters (Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso Featuring Sting)

“Humano” – Emmanuel Briceño, Juanes, Felipe Navia & Vivir Quintana, songwriters (Juanes & Vivir Quintana)

“La Perla” – Noah Goldstein, David Rodríguez, Ryan Tedder, Rosalía & Dylan Wiggins, songwriters (Rosalía Featuring Yahritza y Su Esencia)

“Mi Gran Amor” – Edgar Barrera, Becky G, Luis Miguel Gómez Castaño, Manuel Lorente, Daniel Rondón & Carlos Santana, songwriters (Santana Featuring Becky G)

“Nilo” – Massimo Giovanardi & Zanna, songwriters (Zanna)

“Solifican12” – Santiago Alvarado, Milo J & Santiago Ruiz, songwriters (Milo J)

Best new artist

Delilah

Fabian

Loulu Gilberto

Arath Herce

Macario Martínez

maye

Sofia Monroy

Kendall Peña

Dora Sanches

Aria Vega

Zeca Veloso

When Judy Collins comes to Los Angeles, she likes to stay at the Beverly Hilton in part because “they serve a fabulous breakfast,” she says over coffee at the hotel on a recent morning. “That’s rare today,” she adds. “Too often a place will just send up a cardboard shopping bag with the things you ordered in it.”

Collins knows her amenities: At 87, the Grammy-winning singer and songwriter still plays about 120 shows a year, drawing audiences around the world with her high, clear voice and an expansive repertoire that blends the hits that made her famous in the 1960s and ’70s — Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now,” Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne,” Stephen Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns” — with traditional folk tunes and material of her own.

Yet now she’s preparing to hang it up with a lengthy farewell tour she’s calling Sweet Judy Blue Eyes (after “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” the folk-rock classic her one-time lover Stephen Stills wrote about her for Crosby, Stills & Nash). The night before our interview, Collins played L.A.’s Ford Theatre; she’ll be back through Southern California for a Sept. 27 date at the Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara and again next year for shows in Palm Springs and Aliso Viejo.

After we talk, she plans to do a bit of tai chi, for which she uses an app on her phone and which she wishes more people practiced. “Maybe that would alter civilization,” she says. “If we were all doing tai chi, we couldn’t be at war with Iran.” Then she’ll head to the airport for a flight home to New York, where she’s lived for decades — most of them with her husband, industrial designer Louis Nelson, who died in 2024.

At breakfast, Collins is wearing a patterned turquoise jacket over a matching dress and high-heeled black leather boots.

“You like these?” she asks of the boots. “These are Stuart Weitzman. I bought them 30 years ago, and I’ve never stopped wearing them.”

That’s a well-made boot.
They fit, they’re great and I reject all invitations to get rid of them.

Has your thinking about clothes changed over the decades?
I used to dress in jeans because I was a cowgirl — I hung out with rodeo riders in Colorado. As I came up, I liked what was simple. My mother made all our clothes on a Singer sewing machine for years. Now I love beaded things. I have full closets I need to go through.

Before you came onstage last night, an announcer told the audience not to take pictures or videos.
That’s my management’s doing — it’s important to them, so I go along with it. But the pictures are usually bad. Also, the phones take people’s minds off what’s going on onstage. People need the chance to focus. We’re in a period of insanity right now, so people need time to sit wherever they are. They could go to the ballet or to the theater, but they choose to come to me, and they get to sit there and they get to listen and they get to think about their own lives.

As a performer, that’s what you seek to provide.
I’m providing silence. It’s such a noisy world — so full of crappy music that plays outside all these hotels and places where we stay. It drives me nuts.

You have a line in the show where you say, “Something unexpected happened — I turned 87.” It got a good laugh.
People applaud too.

What are they saying by applauding?
They want to be acknowledged for their own ages, whether they’re 87 or 90 or 19. People are coming to see me, but they’re also coming to see their history. They’ll remember what happened 60, 70 years ago — they were probably marching at the same things I was marching at. And if they’re 19, they want to know why we’re not marching now.

Judy Collins performs on “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” in 1969.

(CBS via Getty Images)

You said we’re in a period of insanity.
This country is losing so much of the depth of our origin. The fact that workers who’ve come to this country are being taken off to God knows where — it makes no sense. Number one, these people often have some sort of legality. And secondly, they do the work here. Nobody else wants to go up to the orchards in Oregon and pick the fruit. Do you?

I can’t say that I do.
I don’t want to do that.

This tour is billed as your grand farewell.
So long, you guys.

I’m always reluctant to trust that framing. Cher’s done like eight farewell tours.
I hadn’t counted them up — shame on me.

Should we really believe you?
I think we have to believe in the present tense. What you’re hearing is what’s happening.

You had a music stand onstage with you. What was on it?
All the lyrics to all the songs.

You can’t possibly need the lyrics anymore.
Oh, yes, I do.

You’ve been singing some of them for decades.
Doesn’t matter — it has to be there in case you have to look at it.

Would you say you do look? Or is it more of a security blanket?
It’s a security blanket. But my eyes wander — I like to see who’s in the audience and what’s going on. I like to look up and down the aisles, and I like to fantasize: How did this happen?

Your life and career?
I mean, I know how it happened. I was 16, and I started going to the Denver Folklore Society, which was run by a guy named Lingo the Drifter. And Lingo the Drifter had these wonderful evenings where we all played the guitar and sang and drank illegal whiskey and so on.

Judy Collins last month in Beverly Hills.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Before Denver, you lived briefly as a kid in Los Angeles.
My father was a very eclectic and fabulous radio personality. He had a radio show for 30 years in Seattle then here in Hollywood, broadcasting out of CBS — a big deal. If we weren’t in school, we would drive up Santa Monica Boulevard into Hollywood and we’d stand around and watch them produce the radio mysteries. People would walk in a sandbox to get the sound of somebody walking up the gravel road to the door.

Are you familiar with the term “nepo baby”?
No.

It refers to the child of a famous artist who follows in their parent’s footsteps.
Oh, that’s interesting.

People use it derisively, as if to say that a kid has overly benefited from their advantages.
We certainly had advantages. For instance, the Library of Congress, which is the jewel in the crown — I don’t know what they’re doing now — but they sent us Braille books and they sent us all the shows from New York and they sent us the recordings of all the Shakespearean plays by the great Dame Judith Anderson and John Gielgud. I had all that growing up. In some ways, I wasn’t raised — I was trained. I got to see how a professional has to handle his life. My father was a professional in all ways. He drank — occasionally, not all the time — but he was absolutely organized about everything, including that.

You’ve been sober for something like half a century.
Forty-eight years. I’m in my 49th now.

You ever miss drinking?
Oh, my God, no. I was so sick — I was gone. Bye-bye.

Some people replace one addiction with another.
I had an eating disorder, which is still kind of … You know, last night, I asked for apple juice during the show — I was in trouble because I wasn’t eating. When my husband died, I stopped eating again. I’d stopped eating in the ’60s and ’70s and ’80s, but I got over that. But suddenly I didn’t want to eat again.

Would you consider that disordered eating?
I don’t know. Anyway, I have to really be careful. We had a talk about it last night. I have to eat these protein bars, and I have to eat them all the time.

Do you remember the first gig you played after your husband died?
Oh, yes — I had to go out. When my son took his life in 1992, I got a call from Joan Rivers — she and I knew each other pretty well. She was getting ready to go out and do her show in Las Vegas, and she called me in New York and she said, “I have to tell you this” — her husband had just killed himself — she said, “You cannot stay home. You have to go out.” I was canceling all my shows, and she said, “You can’t do that because you won’t ever get over this if you do.”

How did you take that advice?
I said, “Thank you,” and I called my staff and I said, “Put ’em back on.” My mother came out with me, Louis came out with me, my sister came out with me, and it was incredibly true: I had to be working or else I would die. So when it came to Louis, I was out three days later.

What did that feel like?
Well, it was wonderful because I was working. I can work and get through anything — that’s the psychological effect of what I’m doing on the stage. I’m interacting with people, I’m hearing the laughter, I’m hearing the music. What could be more healing?

This is why I’m wondering why you plan to stop touring.
But you see, I have all these other things to do — I have a life that’s not just touring. I’m working on the music for a Broadway show. And I’m doing a new book — it’s called “Singing Through the Storm,” and it’ll be out next year, I hope.

Judy Collins and Leonard Cohen attend the 41st annual Songwriters Hall of Fame ceremony in New York in 2010.

(Larry Busacca / Getty Images)

You’ve interpreted the music of so many great songwriters: Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen. Was there ever a writer whose work you admired but couldn’t find your way into?
No.

OK.
I’ll tell you my funniest Leonard story. In 2014, I think it was, I went to this little group in Norway called Democrats Abroad — lonely group of people. That night, this woman came up to me and said, “Hi, I’m Marianne.” I said, “Hi, Marianne.” And then she said, “I’m Leonard’s Marianne.” She said, “There’s something I’ve wanted to tell you for many years: We were living together in Spain, Leonard and I, and he was writing songs and we were swimming in the nude. And then one day he came to me and he said, ‘Marianne, I’m going to New York to sing my songs for Judy Collins,’ and he went to New York and he played you all his songs and you recorded them.” Marianne said, “I just wanted to tell you that you ruined my life.” Fortunately, we became friends on Facebook.

You opened last night’s set with “Both Sides Now.”
Oh, yes.

This might be the most famous song you do. Some artists would save it for later in the show.
I don’t want people to wonder for an hour and a half: Will she? Won’t she? What will I do if she doesn’t?

Do you still enjoy singing “Both Sides Now”?
I love it. It was Al Kooper who brought me to Joni — she sang it to me over the phone. Al is living a very sane, quiet life in the Northeast now. He’s married — never goes out anymore. It’s hard to think of Al Kooper just sitting there enjoying his marriage and his garden.

What will you do on the plane home today?
I’ll probably get out the computer and noodle around on the book and see what I can come up with.

The work never ends.
It never ends because it’s not done.

In an abandoned warehouse in Barcelona, the diva concealed her face beneath a helmet. Her hair moved like a black waterfall as she strutted, bare feet arched, as if in heels. The heels do appear later, click-clacking as the camera reveals a screen on her pelvic region, and as she reveals her face, growling a provocative verse from “Taconeando” — “Yo sé que tu quieres que me venga.”

Throughout the course of her July 27 “XXXXX” livestream, which beamed her first album in five years to the world, the artist-producer Alejandra Ghersi Rodríguez, best known as Arca, bathed in the warm hue of red light and strobes — and later, what seemed to be blood.

She blew kisses to the camera and toward the sky. She let out vocoded screams as she writhed on an industrial floor and lay resplendently upon a mountain of sand. She covered her bikini-clad body in peonies, visually echoing an Ana Mendieta “Silhueta.”

It would be too simplistic to label “XXXXX” as a return to form for the expansive Venezuelan artist; this record is more than a pop-timized syncretization of her previous electronic experimentations, such as her 2013 debut EP “&&&&&,” or the hourlong single “@@@@@.”

Lest we forget her celebrated self-titled album in 2017, which was the first time we heard Arca’s voice untreated to the doleful melody of a tonada, the Venezuelan folk genre popularized by llanero troubadour Simón Díaz; or the wildly ambitious five-album “Kick” cycle, in which she indulged in the Caribbean sounds of dembow and reggaeton, then melded them together into one ambient stream, with her signature glitchy flair.

The album cover of “XXXXX,” which calls to mind one of Swiss artist’s H.R. Giger’s biomechanoid machine-human chimeras, nods to the much-ness inherent here: specifically the post-humanist conceit of “diva as technology” that lies at the bloody, beating heart of this record.

What best captures her ambitions on “XXXXX” is the aptly named song “Everything,” which centers a soft-hard sequence of percussion that threatens to consume you — and if it does, you let it.

When every color of paint is mixed together, a dark color emerges. When every sound is blended together, what does it become? An orchestral flourish slowed to a whisper as in “Finisher?” An explosion, like in the fast-rattling crackle of “Syncope?” Or a hand on your hookup’s throat, telling them they know exactly what you want from the interaction as in “Fxck?”

The alchemy on “XXXXX” doesn’t always go down smoothly. Arca’s never been an artist to be easily swallowed and thrown back into the ouroboros of the pop machine; if she’s always been the sand in the cog, what happens when the underground diva herself surfaces to mainstream superstardom? These are problems to ponder in the shadows of a club.

The diva as a concept is already rooted in transformation. A beautiful, powerful woman flaunts her voice dramatically onstage, reaching new heights and incarnating — to paraphrase Wayne Koestenbaum’s observations on operatic divas, like Maria Callas in his seminal text “The Queen’s Throat” — an airy sense of freedom.

Arca — a nonbinary trans woman who makes uncategorizable music and embodies unquestionable glamour — anchors her divahood in a mutation of body, soul and sound. It’s a concept she has been playing with since her second album, “Mutant,” which also gave her fanbase a name.

Still, attempting to situate her in any tradition is moot.

Her divahood exists in the context of Venezuelan underground electronic music, where Arca was the youngest of a generation of DJs and producers. This includes the raptor house don DJ Babatr; hard fusion father DJ Yirvin; Luis Garban (who plays as Cardopusher and Safety Trance); MPeach; and Phran.

It was two years ago that Arca brought all of them together in Caracas; it was then that the glitchy young experimentalist, now the most famous contemporary Venezuelan musician, became the gravitational center of a scene as fractured as the country it was born from.

Arca is now the kind of artist who could be seen walking runways in Berlin, or seated front row at the Saint Laurent show at Paris Fashion Week. Last month in Iceland, Arca served as the high priestess of Echolalia: an eclipse rave helmed by longtime collaborator Björk and a coterie of local acts.

Arriving in a summer defined by pop divas switching gears — Charli XCX turning to rock music (in a sense), Madonna leaning hard into nostalgia after a career of refusing to repeat herself, and the ever-smiley Karol G surrendering to her saudade — Arca’s “XXXXX” is similarly an invitation to transmute.

But if we can locate Arca’s divahood in a lineage, it might be in the modern tradition of the anonymous and enigmatic doll at the rave: ready to let her ego dissolve into the bass.

You listen to the quiet internal world Arca conjures on “Raver,” with its jangling and haunted electronic keys. You can see her clearly there: lost under the strobes, eyes turned up toward heaven, letting herself sway, sweaty, between moments of euphoria, completely in her body. Has anyone ever been more enraptured and glorious? Every raver has, in a sense, wandered gladly to oblivion with “eyes closed and heart open,” as Arca says on “Cinch.”

We may get drugged up to forget it all; or we go sober with earplugs and water and good sneakers and coffee, or cold yerba mate toward the music. Yet all of us seek to get lost in the sound, to cinch our waists and let the bass move through us — to have the transcendental experience of “[letting] the beat f— you,” as Australian scholar McKenzie Wark describes halfway through her essential book, “Raving.”

The aesthetics of ravers reaching the mainstream — and into the hands of normies through the rise of so-called “corporate raves” — has allowed for the creation of depictions that exist outside of the real, silent moments of transcendence. It’s the communion, after so much ceremonial dance, with the divine.

For all the modernity of its rave philosophy and sci-fi metallic soul, “XXXXX” has a connection to an ancient divinity — to older technologies, from ritual to radio.

Near the beginning of “XXXXX,” the song “Willow” ushers us into this new world, with a clanging that evokes the sound of church bells in space. After a minute of this, the crash of hi-hat punctures the silence. Arca’s pitched-up vocals seep through, matching the beat in a disjointed chant: “Willow tree blowing in the wind, let it fall.” The song continues flourishing with the deconstructed trap beat and dark synthesizers that call to mind the classic sounds of witch house. It’s the opening of the ceremony, the energetic cleansing of the space.

The album’s loose framework as a transmission from an intergalactic underground radio station, “Diva Experimental FM,” is a structure she’s been playing with for years in the form of a show streamed on NTS. She launched this new era with another mix for the show called “Airdoll,” a storm of baile funk with currents of ambient music, R&B and Gregorian chants. These various sonic streams fuel the mechanical but witchy futurist soul of “XXXXX.”

In their multi-genre 2025 book “Dysphoria Mundi,” Spanish trans philosopher and activist Paul B. Preciado points to gender dysphoria as a symptom of the world’s broken state and the utopia that could well rise from the ashes. The constant procession of natural disasters — and the indifferent leaders and the violent bloodthirsty systems they work under — push society to mutate into something better. As with Arca the artist, “XXXXX” is a curse-breaker, a cultural palate cleanser and a call to evolve.

Turn on a radio between 1978 and 1987 and you were sure to hear Journey — any of the more than two dozen sumptuous yet muscular rock hits that shaped young America’s ideas about love, inspiration and wanting it the way you need it. Four decades later, the band’s music is still everywhere, including television, social media and streaming platforms like Spotify, where Journey has more monthly listeners than Bruce Springsteen, U2 or Bob Dylan. Yet Saturday night the group will bring what it’s calling its farewell tour to Crypto.com Arena — a capstone (at least if the band is to be believed) to a long career full of twists and turns.

Indeed, domination was hardly a given when guitarist Neal Schon and keyboardist Gregg Rolie — both of whom had played with Carlos Santana — formed Journey as a kind of jazzy proto-jam band in San Francisco in 1973. But with the addition a few years later of singer Steve Perry, the group found its gloriously dramatic sound and began racking up hits one after the next (though critics were rarely kind). Perry eventually quit, which took the wind out of Journey’s sails until Schon discovered an uncanny soundalike from the Philippines, Arnel Pineda, on YouTube; he’s helped the band get back into arenas and the occasional stadium even as Schon and keyboardist Jonathan Cain, who replaced Rolie in 1980, have battled each other in court over financial matters.

Got all that? To try to make sense of Journey’s path, I’ve ranked all 25 of the band’s hits that have charted on Billboard’s Hot 100, starting with the worst and ending with the best. Hold onto that feeling — it goes on and on and on and on.

25. ‘Walks Like a Lady’ (peaked at No. 32 in July 1980)

Some are born to sing the blues, as Perry once observed — just not Perry himself, who chews his way through this corny come-on like an overserved uncle at the Hard Rock Cafe. Nice showcase for Rolie’s organ work, though, on one of the last Journey singles he played on before leaving the band.

24. ‘Just the Same Way’ (peaked at No. 58 in May 1979)

Rolie and Perry tag-teaming lead vocals is not a form of democracy I’d vote for.

23. ‘After the Fall’ (peaked at No. 23 in August 1983)

Safe? Sterile? Soulless? Look, the haters can’t always be wrong.

22. ‘Too Late’ (peaked at No. 70 in January 1980)

“Before your time has run astray / You’ve got to try to get away.”

21. ‘Anytime’ (peaked at No. 83 in July 1978)

After overseeing Queen’s first few albums, producer Roy Thomas Baker turned his attention to Journey (and to the Cars); this midtempo number from the “Infinity” LP offers a credible approximation of Queen’s trademark stacked vocal harmonies.

20. ‘The Party’s Over (Hopelessly in Love)’ (peaked at No. 34 in April 1981)

Three platinum plaques in less than two years — for “Infinity,” “Evolution” and “Departure” — meant that Journey had no choice but to drop a live record, “Captured,” at the top of 1981. (It went platinum by Christmas.) As extra consumer bait, the double album closed with this new studio cut built around a killer Schon lick (and not much else).

19. ‘Good Morning Girl’/‘Stay Awhile’ (peaked at No. 55 in September 1980)

Phantom of the roller rink.

18. ‘Why Can’t This Night Go On Forever’ (peaked at No. 60 in May 1987)

Propelled by the success of his debut solo album — not to mention his appearance on the smash all-star “We Are the World” — Perry assumed greater control of Journey’s sound for 1986’s synthed-up “Raised on Radio,” which spawned no fewer than five singles, ending with this slightly lugubrious ballad. Yet the takeover came with a cost: By the end of 1987, the band had entered a hiatus that would last nearly a decade.

17. ‘Still They Ride’ (peaked at No. 19 in July 1982)

Listen to how nimbly Perry maneuvers some very tricky intervals.

16. ‘When You Love a Woman’ (peaked at No. 12 in December 1996)

Journey reunited for 1996’s “Trial by Fire,” which brought the band its only Grammy nomination (and which might feature the ghastliest album cover in music history). If the members knew that rock had changed dramatically while they were away, they didn’t show it in the LP’s romantic lead single: “When You Love a Woman” — a chart-topper for three weeks on Billboard’s adult contemporary tally — clearly sought to pick up where “Open Arms” and “Faithfully” had left off.

15. ‘Girl Can’t Help It’ (peaked at No. 17 in November 1986)

Wonder what Perry and Huey Lewis talked about between takes on “We Are the World.”

14. ‘Be Good to Yourself’ (peaked at No. 9 in May 1986)

“Karate Kid”-core.

13. ‘Only the Young’ (peaked at No. 9 in March 1985)

More “Karate Kid”-core, in this case released first as a song by Patty Smyth’s band Scandal; Journey’s version later wound up alongside Madonna’s “Crazy for You” on the soundtrack to “Vision Quest.”

12. ‘Wheel in the Sky’ (peaked at No. 57 in May 1978)

Before Perry came aboard in 1977, Journey spent a few months with Robert Fleischman as lead singer — long enough for Fleischman to co-write the group’s first Hot 100 entry, not so long that he got to sing it on the record.

11. ‘Any Way You Want It’ (peaked at No. 23 in April 1980)

Ooh, baby, hold tight.

10. ‘Suzanne’ (peaked at No. 17 in August 1986)

Easily Perry’s most unhinged vocal performance.

9. ‘Send Her My Love’ (peaked at No. 23 in November 1983)

A luscious and melancholy white-soul song that I’d bet Phil Collins admired back in the day — and that Justin Bieber would probably flip for now.

8. ‘Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’’ (peaked at No. 16 in October 1979)

Inducting Journey into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2017, Train’s Pat Monahan belted the na-na-na outro of the band’s first Top 40 hit as he made his case for the group’s excellence. “They didn’t even need lyrics — that’s how badass this band is,” he pointed out. Still, let’s not gloss over the appealing perversity of starting a song this horny the way Perry does: “You make me weep and want to die.”

7. ‘Lights’ (peaked at No. 68 in September 1978)

Dodgers fans can delight in the fact that Perry originally wrote this paean to San Francisco — an anthem taken up at one time or another by every Bay Area pro sports team, including the Giants — about the lights going down and the sun shining on … Los Angeles. (Swap out “the bay” for “L.A.”) Maybe that’s why “Lights” has always felt to me like a precursor to the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Under the Bridge.”

6. ‘Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)’ (peaked at No. 8 in March 1983)

[Listens to “Eye of the Tiger” once.]

5. ‘I’ll Be Alright Without You’ (peaked at No. 14 in February 1987)

Shout out to future “American Idol” judge Randy Jackson, who joined Journey for “Raised on Radio” and proceeded to lay down the slinkiest, sultriest, funkiest bass line the band had ever known.

4. ‘Don’t Stop Believin’’ (peaked at No. 9 in December 1981)

Believin’ in what, exactly? The genius of Journey’s most-streamed track on Spotify (with more than 2.9 billion plays) is its use of concrete images to advance a pretty mysterious narrative. We’ve all stood under a streetlight; we all know the smell of wine and cheap perfume. Yet everybody’s midnight train is going to a different anywhere.

3. ‘Open Arms’ (peaked at No. 2 in February 1982)

Famously — and fortuitously — rejected by a former bandmate of Cain’s as “sentimental rubbish,” “Open Arms” was perhaps just waiting to be embraced by Perry, who sings it with the wounded gusto of a man well acquainted with regret. In a poetic twist, Journey’s highest-charting hit was blocked from No. 1 by the J. Geils Band’s “Centerfold,” in which the heartbroken narrator goes laughing all the way to his bed.

2. ‘Who’s Crying Now’ (peaked at No. 4 in October 1981)

The first of three Top 10 singles from 1981’s 10-times-platinum “Escape,” this immaculate R&B jam imagines an alternate dimension where Perry and Cain hear Earth, Wind & Fire’s “After the Love Has Gone” and decide to form a new group with David Foster. Except Perry remembers the song as a high point for Schon: “You know the guitar outro from ‘Who’s Crying Now’?” he asked a New York Times reporter in 2003. “I fought for that because I knew no DJ would cut that song off with Neal’s guitar wailing at the end of it. It was too brilliant.”

1. ‘Faithfully’ (peaked at No. 12 in June 1983)

It wasn’t the first rock ballad about life on the road — and it definitely wasn’t the last — but “Faithfully” might be the most emotionally generous: “Loving a music man ain’t always what it’s supposed to be,” Perry tells his lady, grounding the song in the experience of those who leave and those left behind; later, he envisions their reunion with such tenderness — “I’ll get the joy of rediscovering you” — that you know he’s already decided to take off again.