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As the intro of his song “Girls, Girls, Girls” poured over the crowd at SoFi Stadium late Friday night, Jay-Z locked eyes (from behind his ever-present shades) with a guy near the stage whose excitement had bubbled over at last.

“Oh, this yo s—,” the rapper observed with a knowing little laugh. “You was waiting for this s— all night long.”

Dude was lucky not to wait even longer: The first of two SoFi gigs, Friday’s show was an almost comically overstuffed display of hits by an aging cultural giant in the middle of a legend-reclamation project; Jay-Z performed parts of three dozen songs over two hours, which was still only a fraction of the 152 entries he’s notched on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart since 1996.

“We got a million of these,” he said after doling out a few verses of “On to the Next One” — not bragging so much as explaining.

Having earlier visited stadiums in London, Paris and his hometown of New York, the 56-year-old is in Inglewood this weekend as part of what he’s calling JAŸ-Z30: a yearlong celebration of himself timed to the 30th anniversary of his debut album, “Reasonable Doubt,” and the 25th anniversary of his commercial high point, “The Blueprint.” Last month, HBO premiered an 8-part docuseries in which Jay-Z combs through the minutiae of his songwriting with the producer Rick Rubin; any day now, the rapper is expected to announce that he’ll return to SoFi in February to headline the halftime show at Super Bowl LXI.

That’s a lot of action for an artist who’s spent much of the last decade in éminence-grise mode — Jay-Z’s most recent solo album, “4:44,” came out in 2017 — but he seemed in fighting trim Friday, moving nimbly through the songs that made him a superstar and helped put hip-hop at the center of pop music. He was backed by a muscular live band (complete with horn players and a string section) that could push the music toward plush soul, sticky funk or crunching hard rock; “99 Problems,” in particular, made you think about how funny it’ll be, if indeed Jay-Z ends up at the Super Bowl, to see a rapper bring big guitars back to an event that rock fans love these days to lament.

Jay-Z’s daughter Blue Ivy joined him to play piano during “The Story of OJ” and “Dead Presidents II”; he beamed as she walked offstage afterward — a moving vision of fatherly pride. He also brought out Scarface, the veteran Houston MC, to do “This Can’t Be Life” and Scarface’s Geto Boys classic “Mind Playing Tricks on Me.” A pair of OGs still competing in a young man’s game, the two traded compliments before parting: “Jay-Z is a killer,” said Scarface, whom Jay-Z hailed as “one of the best writers of any genre.”

With a set list that jumped freely among albums and eras, the concert felt a little scattershot; it wasn’t always clear what story Jay-Z was trying to tell about his life and career beyond the glorification of his success. And you have to wonder how a man who’s found work as an event planner — booking the halftime show falls under the purview of his Roc Nation company — could end the night so anticlimactically with an appearance by a past-his-prime DJ Khaled. (It didn’t help that many in the audience were anxiously awaiting Jay-Z’s wife, Beyoncé, who performed with him at Yankee Stadium but didn’t show on Friday.)

The evening’s emotional peak came maybe two-thirds of the way through in “Never Change” and “Song Cry,” two tracks from “The Blueprint” written by a guy in his early 30s struggling with how — or whether — to hold onto his complicated past. That he performed them here as a middle-aged billionaire proved he figured it out; that they were so lush with the pain of nostalgia proved he remains an artist.

Eric Dangerfield is surrounded by senior citizens.

After a packed set at Riot Fest the previous weekend, the 25-year-old lead singer and rhythm guitarist of the Paradox welcomed the quiet of his boomer-dominated neighborhood.

“I’m a suburban dude,” he said, smiling from his home in metro Atlanta, his cropped two-toned dreads bobbing as he spoke.

The Paradox spent much of the summer on the festival circuit, powering through a growing discography of pop-punk gems, so Dangerfield and the three other band members are taking a brief breather before their Proceed With Caution Tour starts this month — their first as headliners.

It’s peaceful. That is, “Except when the boys come over,” he adds.

On a late morning in September, the boys are here and accounted for: patching in to a video call, minutes apart, from their homes, also in suburban ATL. Dangerfield, born with the perfect stage name, has ideas that flow faster than he can seem to get them out. Then there’s Donald Bryant on bass. Yin to Dangerfield’s yang, with a quiet, commanding presence.

Percy “PC3” Crews has been playing drums since he was 3, and his vicious skills on the drum kit contrast with a cheery, relaxed demeanor. Finally, there’s Christopher Bernard, a.k.a. Xelan — the lead guitarist and Dangerfield’s vocal complement.

Dangerfield likens the four to musical superheroes from a Marvel series. But not so much the “Earth’s mightiest heroes” variety.

On their first headlining tour, the band brings its new EP, “Proceed With Caution,” to Los Angeles while claiming space in a historically white genre and weaving social commentary into its pop-punk sound.

(Shorefire Media)

“I’m like Mister Fantastic and Donald’s my Invisible Woman. Xelan’s the Thing, and Percy is John Storm,” he says of his partners in musical mischief. “If I’m ugly, just say that,” quips Xelan, the band’s oldest member at 30. “Yeah. Because you’re strong, bro,” reassures Eric.

By this time, the interview has devolved into fun-loving chaos.

They finish each other’s sentences and switch up their Google Meet backgrounds, cracking up as an awkward graduation portrait pops up. At some point, Bernard decides to give a bedroom tour, showing off his collection of Blink-182 and Fall Out Boy posters.

A photo of him with Travis Barker hangs next to a framed Billboard plaque on a nightstand. Barker was featured on the Paradox’s 2025 single “Bender” and performed with the group at Vans Warped Tour the same year.

The Billboard plaque commemorates the band’s song “Get the Message” from its debut EP, “NSFW,” reaching No. 1 on the Alternative Airplay chart in January — a great achievement for any rock artist — but the Paradox also happens to be the first all-Black band to do so.

The success, although rapid, didn’t come from nowhere. All of the members have been working toward music in some form for years.

Dangerfield had a deal with a small label where he was originally making a go of it as a pop and R&B soloist. He also put out his music online. Looking for something different, he remembered his passing interest in pop-punk from his days growing up in Palm Coast, Fla. It was the “Fat Lip” video by Sum 41 that sealed the deal.

Yearning to be in a band, he started working with Bernard, whom he met online and shared his passion for the genre. Bryant was Dangerfield’s childhood friend from Palm Coast who had also moved to Atlanta, while Crews had been a fixture on the local music scene. And the name? It came from Dangerfield’s love of quantum physics.

Shortly after the group officially formed in June 2024, Dangerfield’s then-girlfriend — now wife and band “momager” Lexi Dangerfield — opened Instagram and TikTok accounts filming and posting their homey videos. The band’s song “Kaitlyn” and some covers blew up. The artists’ perspective, filtered through a Gen Z lens, struck a multigenerational nerve.

Attention came so quickly that Dangerfield felt the need to defend against online detractors who were convinced the group was an industry plant.

From there, the fairy-tale plot thickened. Billie Joe Armstrong followed Dangerfield on Instagram, and the two struck up a friendship that led to the Paradox opening for Green Day on the Atlanta stop of its Saviors Tour. But this was, of course, after Jack White’s people called — who the group ended up opening for at Basement East in Nashville.

Things haven’t slowed down in the two years since, with opportunities coming fast and furious. In the spring of last year, the band signed a deal with Hundred Days Records, a subsidiary of Virgin Music Group, and teamed up with producers Mike Pepe and Robopop to work on “NSFW.”

“Bender,” the group’s collaboration with Barker, and “Do Me Like That” are featured on Madden NFL 27 and NBA 2K26 video game soundtracks. Last month, the musicians streamed a concert from Twitch superstar Kai Cenat’s house. And now, instead of opening for their idols, they are inviting them up on stage as guests. For their second Warped Tour in Long Beach, that meant Deryck Whibley of Sum 41 and Logan Henderson from Big Time Rush.

The embrace from established musicians has definitely helped the band navigate its rise. In a moment of doubt, Crews said Good Charlotte’s Joel Madden, in particular, came through with sage advice.

“He asked me a question: ‘How does it feel being where we were?’ And I was like, ‘It feels like a dream.’ It felt like I was gonna wake up on my desk sophomore year with drool on my f— table. And I was telling him that, and he was like, ‘You know, it may feel that way, but it is real … It’s real, and it’s you … you belong in these rooms.’”

The irony of being embraced in a mostly white subgenre of punk rock while Black American culture formed its foundation is not lost on the group. Had the band come about during one of Dangerfield’s favorite eras of music, the ’50s and ’60s — there would likely have been rooms in which they weren’t welcomed.

While the band members understand the impact their visibility has — especially for non-white kids who grew up in the suburbs as they did: skating, riding BMX, building Legos, watching anime, dreaming of a life onstage — it does require some balance. “They’re not asking Taking Back Sunday this stuff,” Dangerfield acknowledged when asked if they might tire of the representation mantle. “Or Blink, but … We are a minority in this space and in this country, and I think that you know the stuff that comes with being Black should definitely be talked about. I think those conversations are important.”

He said as much in August, when the group made its Tiny Desk debut in celebration of NPR’s Black Music Month. “Now, like they said, we made history,” he said, leaning into the mic after the first song. “And the Paradox is in the business of bringing rock ’n’ roll back to the originators.”

A glance at the comment section under the video makes clear the group’s authenticity resonates with those who haven’t felt seen or heard in certain spaces.

“I’m a black girl from the suburbs of Metro ATL,” wrote @rainjojo. “And I’m glad to see representation of people who are like me indulging in punk rock. I got into this genre from childhood shows like “16,” “Stoked”, and other early 2000 to 2010 shows, and I remember being bullied for being whitewashed. Please keep making more music like this.”

The tour is named after “Proceed With Caution,” the band’s sophomore EP released on Oct. 2. Across six tracks, it continues in the same vein as “NSFW,” with sharp melodies and a dash of humor thrown in. But on “That’s Not Fair,” the group wades deeper into social commentary. It was also the most difficult to record, cut raw with no click track.

“We were just trying to think of things that were not fair, [from] small and trivial like losing your keys to, I don’t know, using it as a bridge to talk about larger issues and things like that,” Dangerfield says of the song. “I think a big thing for me personally, it’s not political … is kind of the fact that everything is getting so expensive. The price of everything is rising so rapidly, and the salaries that people are being paid are not really growing to match that.”

The Paradox perform at The Moroccan Lounge on Thursday, Oct. 22.

(Hunter Lyon)

“And it’s like, we got very lucky, but the thing is, most people don’t,” he continued. “If you’re gonna sacrifice all your time, slaving away working for big corporations and stuff like that, you should at least be able to, you know, buy a candy bar or something.”

So far, the musicians aren’t taking anything for granted and are trying to enjoy the in-between moments.

Dangerfield and his wife took their daughter on a Disney cruise for her second birthday — she’s spent much of her young life traveling with the band.

With some of his publishing money, Bernard indulged his love of vintage Japanese fashion and has a 2000s-era Tuscan house on his vision board. Crews stays healthy, listens to lots of Snarky Puppy, and looks forward to the relaxed cannabis laws of L.A. when the tour stops at the Moroccan Lounge on Oct. 22 and 23. If time allows, he might even have time to surf in Malibu.

Bryant, who counts Mike Dirnt, Mark Hoppus and James Jamerson among his biggest influences, balances a dream of seeing his band play for thousands with looking forward to a life lived like his older brother: a chiropractor with a nice family.

But some dreams will have to wait as the band goes back to making music, hopefully with lasting impact. The members want to become household names, “like Nirvana,” with music people will play for hundreds of years. Why not?

Anything is possible when you are a fantastic foursome.

It’s the third afternoon in another string of sweltering days in Los Angeles. A recent Friday offers no salvation for the weekend ahead besides sitting in front of a fan or turning up the air conditioning.

Thankfully, standing inside the climate-controlled walls of the Line hotel’s lobby and behind a cup of joe from its Alfred Coffee, there’s a smidgen of comfort.

The bell to the ground floor elevator rings and out steps a tall figure, wearing an all-black ensemble. His shorts hang just below his knees, his hair is a bit messy and his boots climb up his calf.

Grian Chatten looks remarkably cool for someone who’s just rolled out of bed, even more so for someone who has a performance at Hollywood Forever Cemetery later that night. He’s the leading man behind Fontaines D.C., a Dublin-born rock quintet that’s become one of the most exciting acts to grace a stage today.

And how couldn’t they be?

Their 2019 debut, “Dogrel,” was met with critical acclaim, a masterful album with references to James Joyce and a teeming garage-style production. Fast-forward five years later and their fourth effort, “Romance,” became their first to chart in the United States, reaching No. 97 on the Billboard 200.

Nowadays, they’re kicking up dust again with the release of “Dopamine Chamber,” which came out last Friday via XL Recordings. Its a continuation of the precedent they’ve set in terms of lyrical and sonic quality, but simultaneously is far more melancholic and synthesized than their previous work.

“Dopamine Chamber” is the band’s fifth release, following the success of “Romance” back in 2024.

(Ewen Spencer)

However, its rollout was rocky as the debut music video “Marianne” was criticized for its use of artificial intelligence. When the psychedelic, entrancing recording first hit YouTube, it listed a credit for AI “artists” in its description, sounding alarms among the band’s loyal fan base.

After all, it was widely viewed as contradictory of the group, which has been vehemently outspoken on various contemporary issues, including what the U.N. Human Rights Council has officially concluded to be genocide in Gaza.

We sat down with Chatten to discuss the new album, as well as some of the backlash the band has recently faced.

Tell me about this album title. Is it a literal happiness chamber?

It was me [who came up with it] because it originated as a line in a song, and the song never made it onto the album. We kept the pairing of words “dopamine chamber.”

I wanted to make it a bit more literary. Turns out that the dopamine chamber … it’s where they put rats to test different chemicals or in order to check their dopamine levels. We found that out after.

So it’s fake happiness.

It’s almost like nonconsensual happiness. I mean, if that exists.

Do you ever feel like that in life? Like you’re like forced to be happy with everything bleak that’s going on?

I think we force ourselves to feel a certain happiness every now and then, just so we can compartmentalize things and go about our day. I think that’s a survival mechanism, anyway. But to lose that is dangerous.

This album is a lot more synthesized than your previous work. “Six Short Morning” and “Mimesis” definitely stand out there.

It made sense, thematically. I felt that those textures signaled … I hate using the word “dystopian,” but the dystopian future. I wanted the album to feel more like an advanced version of “Romance,” where the body of the record had become more bionic. There’s a reason that there are so many strings and cinematic stuff, that’s the organic world that I wanted to draw on — people like Mina, the ‘60s singer from Italy.

The acoustic sounds are, of course, still present.

They’re supposed to be kind of like fighting for space, a little bit.

One track that stuck out to me was “Happy for You,” because of it’s insincere flattery. Who or what do you have in mind when you write songs like that?

It’s a bit like [R.E.M.’s] “Shiny Happy People,” it’s a similar function. That song is a jealousy of other people’s happiness or well-adjustedness.

I noticed those internal struggles show up a lot on this album. On “One Man,” are you singing about feeling the weight of many?

I think that’s more about the general existential feeling of helplessness in the face of things that are happening in the world. I’ve got a really good friend called Nikolaj Schultz, do you know him?

No idea.

He’s a sociologist and philosopher, and he writes mostly about the environment, the Anthropocene, and he’s written a couple of books with the French philosopher Bruno Latour, who passed away [in 2022]. He’s someone who’s strapped to their bed and feels away the world from morning to night.

That was a profound influence on “Romance” and on this album. So I think “One Man” pertains to that, maybe even to him.

It seems like you are heavily inspired by literature, more so than other artists would be by just general music and listening.

I think in literature, I can understand sometimes what the point is in what they’re writing. For example, this Schultz book “Land Sickness,” the style of it is to render the audience sensitive to this issue just by the osmosis of showing how much it affects you. Like, my mom got me into music by showing me how much it affected her.

How did the feature with Rosalía come about for “Where Is Gone?”

Well, this is our first feature. Carlos [O’Connell], our guitarist, grew up in Spain and had been listening to her first couple of records. Then we got into “Motomami” together and it became a fixture to listen to it backstage before our shows. When “Lux” came out, we were all quite obsessed with it.

We were four days out from mixing or from mastering the album, and Carlos rang me. He was like, “I think we’d be mistaken to not just send Rosalía something and see if she’d be interested.”

We sent her four tracks. We sent her “Where Is Gone?,” “One Man,” “Tongue,” and I can’t remember what the other one was. She got back within 48 hours with a full vocal of “Where Is Gone?”

You weren’t in the studio together?

She was on tour. She was in Miami at the time.

What happened with “Marianne?” There was a moment where it was credited to AI “artists.” Then it was corrected to be effects artists.

I woke up at like 5:30 a.m. the day after the video came out, and I saw an article that said there was AI used in the video, and I called our management, and I was like, “What the f—, is this true?” and it turned out that there was some AI used in like the workflow or the postproduction.

So all those main scenes and main effects and stuff were VFX and prosthetics, like the cheeks and everything. Over 110 people worked on the thing. It was a real huge human effort. But then somewhere in the process, someone from the VFX team I guess used some kind of AI in the workflow. And none of us were told about it. Apparently, not even our label or our management were told about it and it was a real shock.

Yeah, it seemed like you guys didn’t know.

Of course. I mean, we’re gonna have it written into our contracts going forward that like it can’t be in our music videos. You know what I mean? I don’t condone it.

I think a lot of people were shocked just because you guys are so active in contemporary issues, which AI certainly is.

It’s so f— ironic. No, very contradictory. The themes of the f— album as well. I was hoping to talk about how I felt about AI in interviews at some point anyway, and then this kind of pulled the rug from under that conversation a little bit.

It just f— sucked.

Well, how do you feel about AI?

I think it’s f— terrifying. I was watching a Robin Williams scene from “Dead Poets Society” when he talks about poetry, literature. These are the things that we stay alive for, and well, that’s exactly what AI threatens to rob from the human race.

I’ve seen those articles about those guys who are leaving AI companies because they said that the human race is going to be dead within 10 years. AI is literally rendering our souls obsolete and I think that is true death.

A lot of people say, “It’s here, we have to deal with it.”

We should just shut it off.

It always ends here. Every conversation [about AI] just ends grim. This is like every conversation with my dad over the last three years about it. It makes it tough to be alive, doesn’t it?

What’s the opposite of a victory lap?

One answer arrived this year in the form of “Music, Fashion, Film,” Charli XCX’s bracing follow-up to 2024’s Grammy-winning “Brat.” An emotionally complicated dance-pop album about the relationship between power and vulnerability, “Brat” struck a nerve in a weird cultural moment and finally brought Charli the kind of stardom she’d been openly seeking for ages. In the LP’s immediate aftermath, the English musician hungrily scooped up the spoils of her success — playing Coachella’s main stage, starring in a highbrow mockumentary, soundtracking Hollywood’s latest take on “Wuthering Heights.”

Yet “Music, Fashion, Film” wonders what it all meant. It’s a digitally enhanced rock record — probably 2026’s best thing-with-guitar — that cycles through thoughts on ambition and trend-chasing before landing with a moving sense of serenity on the idea that everybody dies and takes their accomplishments with them.

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“No One Lasts Forever” is the album’s final track, and Sunday night that was also Charli’s closer at Inglewood’s Kia Forum, where she headlined the second of two shows over the weekend.

Structurally, the concert bookended songs from “Brat” (for which she was accompanied by prerecorded tracks) with stuff from “Music, Fashion, Film” (for which a scuzzy live band backed her up). There were stray oldies too, including “Constant Repeat,” which she introduced as one of the first songs she wrote about her husband, George Daniel — “even though it’s not exactly truthful,” she added — and the landmark hyperpop cut “Vroom Vroom.”

She also did “House,” a spooky goth-folk song from “Wuthering Heights” that had her writhing on the stage in the white-hot heat of a single spotlight — a sex kitten turned scream queen (or perhaps vice versa). And she brought out Adéla, the Slovakian singer famously booted from the reality show that created Katseye, to do her viral hit “Nicole Kidman,” which is just one of a handful of rough-edged pop hits this year that demonstrate “Brat’s” lasting influence.

Indeed, what was illuminating about the middle of the show — basically a half-hour-long club night with strobes cranked happily to here’s-the-seizure-you-ordered — was seeing how very un-tired Charli’s fans are of being pulverized by songs like “Club Classics,” for which she donned her Superman’s-cape sunglasses, and “Guess,” during which pairs of underwear rained down on the audience in a nod to the music video for the song’s remix with Billie Eilish.

Charli had opened with the new album’s “Rock Music,” in which she declares that “the dance floor is dead”; here, her sarcasm fooled precisely nobody.

My favorite part was the home stretch of tunes from “Music, Fashion, Film”: “Camera,” a startlingly frank confession of her movie-star aspirations; “Magic Metal Montana,” a deeply tender ode to her friend and collaborator A.G. Cook; “SS26,” a jittery electro-punk jam about “walking on a runway that goes straight to hell.”

I love the strange emotion in these songs — the feeling that you might as well say what you want because the only thing more embarrassing than taking a risk is not taking one.

At some point, Charli lit up a cigarette and waved it around like someone who’d discovered a critical truth. What were they gonna do — make her end the concert early?

Define early; better yet, define late.

“For me, performance can’t be everything,” Miley Cyrus declared on Friday night, and you had to admire her choice of setting: onstage at the Hollywood Bowl in front of approximately 18,000 people who’d turned up precisely to see her perform.

A star since her teenage days on the Disney Channel’s “Hannah Montana,” the 33-year-old musician and actor was maybe half an hour into the first of two sold-out concerts at the iconic hillside amphitheater — a place close to Cyrus’ heart, as she explained in a videotaped intro recalling a gig she and her fiancé, Maxx Morando, caught last year by the French band Air.

“I step into wine, which soaks onto my boots,” she said in the dramatic black-and-white clip. “I don’t mind stained leather — it only adds to their character.”

Cyrus’ shows were billed as part of the rollout of her latest album, “Bass Persuades,” which came out in September (and which found her dropping her last name to go simply by Miley). Yet the two-night engagement is really meant to mark her grand return to the stage after she said a few years ago that she’d sworn off touring because it was too harmful to her mental health.

Is “grand” the right word for a comeback as equivocal as this one? Despite all the hype surrounding this weekend’s concerts, Cyrus spoke again and again Friday about how much less space for performance she has in her life these days than she used to; she talked repeatedly about her quest to balance her fans’ emotional needs with her own.

At one point, after singing a couple of numbers on a small B-stage about halfway up the bowl, she walked through the crowd back to the main stage, gripping and grinning the entire way. Then she described the toll her trip had just taken: “I appreciate each of you guys reaching out and touching me, and me getting to feel you. But I do want to say — it is a lot for me,” she said. “It is a little bit overwhelming.”

In an era of parasocial pop stardom, the radical honesty of Cyrus’ approach — her clear-eyed appraisal of the relationship that binds an idol and her audience — was kind of a thrill to behold. The problem was that her singing for the most part wasn’t.

As she described being overwhelmed, her band slowly revved up her song “Wrecking Ball.” It’s one of the great power ballads of the last 25 years, with a chorus as cathartic as any in modern pop; Cyrus, the showbiz lifer, surely understood the payoff she was building toward. Except when the moment arrived, she inexplicably dodged it, skipping the song’s first chorus and soft-pedaling the second — an anticlimax for the ages.

Indeed, Cyrus let the audience and her backup singers handle vocals for many of her biggest hits, among them “The Climb,” “Party in the U.S.A.” and “We Can’t Stop”; during that last one, she twerked for a second, evoking memories of the infamous 2013 MTV performance that briefly scandalized a nation.

She sang more heartily in songs from “Bass Persuades,” which would’ve been better news if that tuneless mishmash of bleary synths and dated club beats weren’t one of the year’s least likable pop records. (This month Variety reported that, after debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, the album took the biggest fall in chart history in its second week of release.)

The paradox of Cyrus’ career at this stage is that she wants to do the thing that nobody wants her to do — “Bass Persuades” is just the latest in a string of crummy LPs — and doesn’t want to do the thing that everybody wants her to do. Truly, her bad taste should be studied: On Friday, she welcomed Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips to the B-stage for a duet on “Karen Don’t Be Sad,” from the miserable psych-rock record they made together in 2015. Naturally, Cyrus said it was her favorite of her albums.

One highlight of the show was Cyrus’ tribute to her late godmother, Dolly Parton, whom she memorialized with a rendition of “Jolene” and with a funny and touching account of the time Parton tried unsuccessfully to get Cyrus to sing with her at the Bowl.

I also found myself moved near the end of the night by Cyrus’ performance of the only keeper on “Bass Persuades” — a dreamy little love song called “Let’s Get Married” for which Morando joined her onstage. As he played drums, she ran her hand tenderly over his chest before laying her head on his shoulder; the moment reminded me of that goofy intro video about the Air concert, which she likened to a bubble containing only the two of them.

“That’s how it feels when we’re together,” she said. “I think I’d live in that bubble.”

Rock band Pavlov’s Dog is mourning the loss of singer-songwriter and lead vocalist David Surkamp, who died Monday at age 74.

Violinist and Pavlov’s Dog member Abbie Steiling announced Surkamp’s death Wednesday on Facebook. Additional information about Surkamp’s passing, including a cause of death, was not revealed.

“David leaves behind a legacy of endless creativity, unmistakable artistry, and a body of music that has touched lives across generations and around the world,” Steiling said on the band’s behalf.

Pavlov’s Dog also remembered its vocalist for his “profoundly poetic spirit and a romantic heart that found its way into every note, every lyric and every performance.”

Surkamp was born May 23, 1952, and led Pavlov’s Dog, known for songs “Julia” and “Late November,” since its founding in 1973 in St. Louis. He founded the band alongside bassist Rick Stockton, violinist Siegfried Carver and drummer Mike Safron, according to the band’s website. The group, which first signed to ABC Records under a six-figure deal, released its debut album “Pampered Menial” in 1975. The release featured the band’s most popular songs and showcased Surkamp’s high-pitched and trembling, yet powerful, vocals.

Pavlov’s Dog’s second release “At the Sound of the Bell” followed in 1976 and its third, “Lost in America,” came more than a decade later in 1990. Surkamp departed Pavlov’s Dog while recording its junior album and traveled to Seattle to further develop his musical talents. This led to a collaboration with British musician Iain Matthews and their power pop duo Hi-Fi.

Surkamp and his Pavlov’s Dog collaborators reunited in the early 2000s and Surkamp’s wife, Sara, joined as a vocalist and guitarist. The group went on to tour Europe, including playing the Netherlands’ Arrow Rock Festival in 2006. Over the years, Pavlov’s Dog saw members come and go: Some musicians departed the group because of conflicting commitments and others — including founding members Carver and Rayburn — died in the late aughts and early 2010s.

The group, with Surkamp still at the helm, later released albums “Echo & Boo” in 2011, “Wonderlust” in 2025 alongside some live albums, remasters and unreleased demos.

“He always allowed the musicians around him to shine in their strengths, generous with the spotlight and appreciative of what each brought to the music,” Steiling continued in the band’s Facebook post. “No matter what life held for him, he came alive onstage. Even on his hardest days, when the lights came up and the count-off began, he was a consummate performer. If he was playing music, it was a great day.”

Surkamp was preceded in death by his wife Sara, who died in 2025 at age 72. He is survived by children Saylor and Evan.

As swiftly as Barry Manilow returned to the stage following a health-related hiatus, he has stepped away.

On Friday, Manilow cut his concert short just two songs after it began. The 83-year-old crooner abruptly told the crowd to talk among themselves as he walked off stage, according to concertgoers who detailed the incident on social media. The curtain dropped, and a few moments later the audience was told the show was a wrap. Manilow’s performance slated for Saturday was subsequently nixed.

The day before, on Thursday, the “Copacabana” singer had returned after a six-week break to perform at the International Theater at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino, telling the audience, “I’m back!” Manilow appeared to be spry and energetic throughout the show. “God, I feel like I’m a teenage idol again,” he joked when a couple of audience members tossed underwear onto the stage. He picked up a pair of full-coverage briefs and asked if they needed to go to the laundry, then a pink lacy thong and joked, “I’ll keep this pair.”

“After a triumphant welcome-back concert on Thursday, Barry got hit with bronchitis and had to cancel his Friday and Saturday shows,” reps for Manilow told Paste Magazine.

Last year, Manilow revealed that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer and that surgery would require him to postpone several performances. In May, he told The Times that, since he had surgery, he was getting winded just walking down the hallway. “Ninety minutes of screaming in tune, which is what I do for a living — I’m not up for that yet,” he said at the time. “I will be, but it’s taking a long time to get my voice back. They warned me that I’d have to learn to breathe again. So these days, I get up, I go to my piano and I try to be creative. Before I know it, the afternoon’s over.”

The star returned to the stage in June following a six-month hiatus, in support of his latest album, “What a Time,” his first LP loaded with new material in almost 15 years.

But in August, Manilow canceled shows because of vocal and technical problems before telling fans he needed to pause. “We just finished a fantastic summer tour, 29 shows in 68 days,” the singer said. “The shows were fantastic. The audiences were fantastic. And I sounded fantastic. But it seems that we were pushing a little too hard.

“Now we all need to sit down and shut up,” Manilow said.

Oct. 12, 2026 6 AM PT

One word that could describe Aria Vega’s whirlwind 2026? Chévere.

The Colombian expression for “awesome” is also the name of the fast-rising star’s global smash hit. Released in January, the breezy tropical swing of “Chévere” — and the rest of her sun-kissed singles — embodies the spirit of Colombia’s Caribbean coast where she hails from.

Ahead of the Latin Grammys on Nov. 12, where Vega will be in the running for the best new artist award, Vega is taking what she calls her “Costeñita Core” pop movement on the road, with her first-ever U.S. tour.

“Looking back at all the dreams I’ve accomplished and made come true, it’s all blessings,” a wide-grinning Vega says over Zoom from Miami.

“I’ve been crying tears of joy with my family, my friends and my combo chévere, as I like to call my fandom. Every artist wishes and dreams of a Latin Grammy, and for me, just to be one of the nominees is like, ‘Yo, I’m a winner!’”

Vega was born Mariana Padilla Pérez in Barranquilla, where she lived the lifestyle of the costeños — or the people of Colombia’s Caribbean coastal region. She has been steadily chasing her dreams of superstardom since competing on “Idol Colombia” in 2014; but Vega finally started making waves last year when she integrated more costeño culture, rhythms and slang into her mellowed, Spanglish pop flow.

“Chévere” exploded in popularity after fellow Colombian singer Ryan Castro jumped on the remix in February. Since then, Vega has pushed “Costeñita Core” further into the mainstream with songs like the alluring “Cule Poco (Sirena_Besarico_Costeña),” and the sultry “Compa Coleto (Uy_Como),” offering unhurried takes on champeta and other Afro-Caribbean rhythms.

Vega just kicked off her U.S. Cariavales Tour, which includes a stop at the Roxy in Los Angeles on Oct. 13. Just a week before, she was handpicked by her pop foremother and icon from Barranquilla — Shakira — to perform as part of her 12-show residency in Madrid.

In an interview with The Times, Aria Vega opened up about her Latin Grammy nomination, representing costeños and getting a co-sign from Shakira.

How did the success of the song “Chévere” change your life?
I didn’t expect to be on [so many] airplanes and flights. Right now, I’m starting to feel the weight of that. I’ve seen what it’s like to live on the road. The remix happened after Ryan [Castro] sent me a DM on Instagram saying, “‘Chévere’ is a banger!’” I was really excited to even get that message from him, because I’m a fan of his music. That was a really cool moment.

What can you tell us about your upcoming debut album?
It’s Afro-Caribbean-inspired music. Right now, the album is really long. I have recorded more than 30 songs for it. I’m working on cutting it down to hopefully 15 songs that will touch your heart and soul … I want to make people vibe with my songs, feel cool, and feel chévere. That’s my goal with this album [I call] “Costeñita Core.”

What does “Costeñita Core” mean to you?
It’s an energy that you either vibe with or you don’t. It’s like our food, our slang and experimental fashion. Caribbean maximalism and shifting [mainstream] culture. Overall, it’s about making bold choices and being rebellious.

How do you feel about representing costeño culture through your music and visuals?
It’s a big responsibility. I feel really happy and excited when I see comments that say things like, “It’s an honor for you to represent us, and we love what you’re doing.” I get emotional because I don’t always get that response … There’s also people that say, “I feel that I’m not represented by her in any way.” It’s a mixture of feelings. What can I say? I’m doing this with a lot of love for Barranquilla, Colombia and Colombia’s Caribbean coast. I want to be a voice of the Caribbean coast.

What did it mean for you when Shakira selected you to perform for her residency in Madrid?
As soon as my team told me about this opportunity with Shakira, I was going crazy because she’s so inspiring. She’s also from Barranquilla. Her music has been a part of [my] life. It has been like a companion for me. Since I was like 5 years old, there’s always been a Shakira song that I was vibing with. I’m really excited even about the possibility of meeting her.

How do you feel about performing in L.A. for the first time on your U.S. tour?
I’ve been to Los Angeles before in meetings with my agents and stuff like that, and it felt like a movie. It’s Hollywood vibes and I’ve never felt that energy in my life. It’s really special getting to perform all my songs that are not just in Spanish, but in Costeñol [the costeño dialect of Spanish] at the Roxy. I’m going to wear outfits with cultural designs and perform traditional dances that have been part of my life, ever since I was literally in my mom’s belly. Los Angeles is a coastal city too, so there’s something that connects us.

What are your thoughts about being nominated in the category of best new artist at this year’s Latin Grammys?
Everyone says it’s a really important category, because you can’t be nominated twice. You can only be nominated once in your career. Hopefully I’ll go to Las Vegas for that Latin Grammy and I’ll take it over to la costa.

What will you do if you win the award?
Maybe I’ll do a concert at home. I want to do something that feels honest and authentic, because that’s what led me to being nominated. I dream of becoming a bearer of my culture. What better way to do it than being recognized in the eyes of the Latin Recording Academy?

What was the inspiration for your latest single “Compa Coleto (Uy_Como)”?
My muse is always my tiburón, my shark. It’s no secret that I’m in love. It just makes sense to talk about him in these really loving and cool songs. It’s a song with flirtatious vibes. When you understand the song’s lyrics, it just makes sense to flirt that way and have fun with it.

Who do you want to collaborate with in the future?
I would love to collaborate with Shakira and Beéle. I feel they do a lot for Barranquilla as well. I would love to collaborate with Bomba Estéreo from Santa Marta. Maybe I’ll do vallenato music with Silvestre Dangond. That would be really cool. Felipe Peláez has an amazing voice. It would be cool to bring these sounds of our own to the world.

Brandon Flowers stands onstage at the Ford Theatre wearing a sharp black suit and a bejeweled bolo tie and tells the audience about his cousin Bobby’s job parking cars in the 110-degree heat of the Las Vegas Strip.

“That was gonna be me in another life, only my big plan was to work at the Bellagio,” he adds. “Nicer place, more tips.”

As the frontman of the Killers, Flowers, 45, has spent more than two decades singing about the struggles and the temptations at the heart of the American dream. But on his new solo album, “Thrasher,” he trades the Killers’ gleaming, synth-laced rock for the crackling sound of hand-played country music.

He cut the LP at Nashville’s historic RCA Studio A, where country giants like Dolly Parton and Waylon Jennings once worked; not only that, but to accompany him he recruited veteran session players including David Rawlings, Bruce Bouton and 85-year-old Charlie McCoy, who played harmonica on George Jones’ immortal “He Stopped Loving Her Today.”

Yet for all its old-school country cred, “Thrasher” also emphasizes Flowers’ roots as a Vegas showman — his tremulous croon, his go-for-broke emotion, his almost preacherly understanding of how to take a crowd up (and up) and how to take it back down. Think Glen Campbell or Donny Osmond.

“Or Wayne Newton,” says Rawlings with admiration. The guitarist, known for his long collaboration with Gillian Welch, performed with Flowers at July’s Newport Folk Festival. “It’s really thrilling to see the way he inhabits this stuff onstage,” he adds. “I have such incredible respect for anybody who knows how to entertain at that level because it’s an absolute gift — and it’s really hard work.”

Flowers, who grew up in Las Vegas and Utah and who shares three sons with his wife, spoke about the album in his dressing room last month a few hours before the Ford show. A sequel to “Thrasher,” recorded during the same sessions, is due out next year.

The Nashville OGs who played on these records — do you think they were impressed by you?
I think they were refreshed. I think they didn’t quite know what they were getting into and were pleasantly surprised.

For you, it was a different way of working, right? These players are artists. But it’s also just another day on the job.
You feel that: “Charlie’s got to leave at 4 to go to the Opry.” He still gets his licks in.

I wonder what it would’ve sounded like to cut 10 Killers classics with this band.
Probably like the Traveling Wilburys or something. The second album has some of that DNA. This one was more of a narrative album — a lot of stories. The other one, it’s more in the romantic realm. I’m excited to get it out. I have another one cooking.

A third album?
Well, because they’re so efficient. It’s opened up a door for me that I feel like I’ll always be able to explore. If I have 10 songs, I can go to Nashville for five days and cut the whole thing. We do two songs a day, no problem.

You’ve said there’s this idea in rock music that making an album needs to feel like climbing a mountain.
I blame it on U2. You don’t feel like you’re doing it right if you’re not doing that. We really went into that on “Sam’s Town” — we climbed Everest, man. When we finished “Sam’s Town,” I remember the last day — it was like 6 in the morning, the sun was up and we were finally done. What a relief it was.

Now the veil has been lifted.
It doesn’t have to be like that.

Did you get a feel for Nashville as a town while you were there?
I got a breakfast spot: Cafe Roze. I don’t want to blow it up too much because I want to be able to get in. But you know Cafe Stella in Silver Lake? They used to have my favorite breakfast in the world: sourdough, soft scramble, prosciutto and Parmesan. And they have that exact thing at Cafe Roze — it’s like I’m transported back. I could eat it every day with a side of avocado.

“Thrasher” follows a number of country excursions by rappers and pop stars. Do you have any anxiety about being seen as a carpetbagger?
No, because I’m not trying to bulldoze my way into the world and open a bar in Nashville. This is an authentic part of myself — I have an education in this music. People have a lot of preconceptions about country music, especially lately. Everyone says the same thing: cold beer, dirt road, Friday night. But there’s such an art to the tradition — it’s a soulful artistic endeavor. I’m trying to come at it from that angle.

What’s your relationship with modern country music — Morgan Wallen and Miranda Lambert and the like?
I don’t have one. It’s more people that are on the fringes, I guess — Jason Isbell or Sturgill Simpson. I got Sturgill’s guitar player because I was a fan of that stuff.

Before I heard “Thrasher,” I expected kind of a stripped-down Isbell vibe.
I could see him doing “In a Heartbeat” or “Miss America.” But once we got to Nashville and got the guys in the room, it just got a little more pep in its step.

Does being embraced by the Nashville industry feel like a reasonable goal?
That’s a whole other nut to crack. You hear stories about Dwight Yoakam having a tough time — and he brought some heat. Or John Prine just because he was from Illinois and not from further south. I’m not gonna go on a campaign to prove how worthy I am.

You’ve been dinged by people who think you’re putting on an accent on this record.
I feel like this is more how I speak than maybe they’re accustomed to. I don’t know, I might’ve leaned in a couple times. There is a Utah accent — it was something I was embarrassed by when I was younger. But now I’ve lived there 16 years of my life total, so it just starts feeding its way back in.

Is your vocal approach different for country than for rock?
There’s more quiet in these songs — more room for the story to be told. In the rock band, I’m competing — everybody wants to be heard — whereas this one, there’s this beautiful thing where the guys don’t mind being in the background. They want to frame the picture, and I’m the picture.

Did you find yourself making more of an effort to enunciate?
I’ve always been cognizant of that. Just today, there was a band — I won’t say who it was — but I was interested in hearing their new thing, and I didn’t understand a word until the chorus. I was rooting for the guy the whole time, but it’s like: How can I fall in love with this if I don’t know what’s happening?

Brandon Flowers performs last month at the Ford Theatre.

(Rob Loud)

Got some questions about specific songs. “One of Us” is about your brother-in-law, which made me realize how few people write songs about their in-laws.
He passed away unexpectedly a few years ago. You know, I’m the youngest of six, and he married my oldest sister. She’s 17 years my senior, so when they got married, I was a kid — he became my big brother and was a masculine figure in my life and all that. There’s your family and then there’s your found family, and he’s part of my found family. I wanted to honor him, and this is my way of doing it.

I assume your sister’s heard the song.
Oh yeah. A lot of those moments happen on this record where I had to play the song for the person, and you just can’t help but be brought closer together. You’re taking part in their grief but we’re also celebrating him. It was beautiful.

“Miss America” is about another one of your sisters.
The one next in line.

She’s addressing an abusive ex, and you sing it from her point of view — from a woman’s perspective.
It just started like that. I don’t remember a moment of thinking: Am I gonna do this from the outside or am I gonna step into her shoes? Maybe it’s something to do with that Tom Waits song [“Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis”] — something about that maybe gave me permission.

Did you play “Miss America” for that sister?
It felt like the gentlemanly thing to do. If she’d said no, I would’ve been heartbroken because I think “Miss America” is gorgeous — I’m really proud to be part of it. But I would’ve honored her wishes.

In “An American Dream,” the point of view seems to keep shifting. At one point I think the narrator becomes Elvis Presley?
Chorus 1, I’m singing with this man that used to give me cigars and tobacco when I was a kid — we’re singing it together. Giving a 13-year-old Red Man tobacco — there was nothing shady about it, or nothing too shady — but it was still a wild move. Then Chorus 2, Elvis and I are both singing — I see it that way.

Which era of Elvis are you envisioning?
Whenever I think of him, I think of him in ’68. Nobody’s ever looked that good — it’s not fair.

You’re known for your flights of lyrical fancy: “Burning down the highway skyline in the back of a hurricane,” for instance, from the Killers’ “When You Were Young.” Did country music allow for those flourishes?
Verse 2 of “Does It Ever Cross Your Mind?” is a great example: “I could’ve been born in Bangladesh but I wasn’t / I was born here with just enough jelly beans in my basket to ask you to go wishing on a star.” That’s fun.

In “An American Dream” you say, “We blew through starlight on bricklayers’ knees.”
We’re performers, and we’re here to entertain you. But we’re working-class men, me and Elvis.

Some of these lines get at this crucial point that I think your music makes, which is that pageantry and sincerity can coexist.
I think people get confused a lot — they might look at a line like the one you just talked about and think it’s total bulls—. It’s annoying to me to read a review and see where they just don’t get it — and they think they’re the smart one. I saw someone talking about my tropes, and they brought up the Bangladesh line. I thought: What are you talking about? That’s the most left-field line.

You’re challenging the listener to accept that over the top doesn’t necessarily mean phony.
It’s so American to be over the top and to still have substance. That’s the chorus of “An American Dream”: “Gold and silver / God and glitter.” I guess I’m trying to spoon-feed it there a little bit.

Plenty of Killers songs involve people making bad decisions. How do you think about the degenerate’s place in country music?
It’s funny how people aren’t quite familiar with how wild it was. The same person in me that was excited about old Depeche Mode stories still gets excited about old George Jones stories. And a part of me yearns for that. But I keep it under wraps.

Your oldest son is 19, which means you became a dad at a fairly young age.
It was just par for the course. I grew up in an LDS family — my sisters were having kids when they were 17 and 18. So having Ammon at 26 — that was the oldest anyone had had their first child in my family. They were like, “Brandon might be gay.”

How did you reconcile the rock star and new dad halves of your life?
It sort of gave me a direction early on because I was a little bit teetering in those days. Who’s ready to have this wild fame brought on them at such a young age? We weren’t the Beatles, but “Hot Fuss” and “Sam’s Town” were really successful records — we went straight to arenas. It was tough to navigate, and family gave me an anchor.

Do you hear before parenthood and after parenthood in your music?
There’s a song called “Be Still” on the fourth record — a song to the kids. But I don’t know if the writing changed that much. Everybody was getting older in the band, so whatever happened, you can’t place the blame just on me.

Kacey Musgraves is taking another trip to “Uncertain, TX” — this time with a little bit of Tejano flair courtesy of a legendary South Texas band.

On Tuesday, Musgraves released a Spanish version of her critically acclaimed track featuring Tejano group Intocable — a song she originally recorded with country star Willie Nelson, which debuted at No. 50 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs after the May 1 release of her seventh studio album, “Middle of Nowhere.”

“Having a song with the legends of Intocable is such a thrill for me,” said Musgraves in a press release on Tuesday. “As a Texan, I am proud of the cultural melting pot that makes our state so great and this collaboration is such a fun example of that.”

According to Intocable lead singer and accordionist Ricardo “Ricky” Muñoz, who spoke with The Times via Zoom, Musgraves had first thought of including the great conjunto accordionist Flaco Jiménez, who passed away in August 2025, to join in on the original track with Nelson, a fact that the country gal herself confirmed on the Zane Lowe interview series on Apple Music in May.

“Flaco Jiménez’s son told me that Kacey wanted to do an all-Texas thing where Willie Nelson was in the song and Kacey also invited Flaco to play accordion,” said Muñoz, who heard the original demo. “I believe at the time, Flaco was not good, health-wise, so he wasn’t able to do it.”

Muñoz, who has always been a fan of the “Rainbow” singer, said the song was “orbiting” around him. Three weeks ago, he received a call from Musgraves’ team to help with the Spanish version.

“I was very conservative on the accordion part. I just played little parts here and there,” said Muñoz. “Then they call me back and they go like, ‘No, give me some more of that.’”

This isn’t Musgraves’ first collaboration with a música mexicana artist. In August 2025, the 38-year-old singer-songwriter joined forces with Carin León for the cross-cultural ballad “Lost in Translation.”

Muñoz considered the collaboration a “perfect fit.”

“We’re representing the Tejano community,  and I’m proud of that,” said Muñoz, who comes from a long line of Texas-born Mexicans. “ Once we meet in person and we get to play together, it’s even gonna be a better connection to the song.”

On Thursday, the two acts will perform together for the first time for Musgraves’ Middle of Nowhere tour at the Moody Center in Austin, Texas.

The iconic Tejano band formed in the border town of Zapata, Texas, in 1993, and rose to fame thanks to Tejano pop hits like “Fuerte No Soy,” “Soñador Eterno” and “Estás Que Te Pelas.”

In July, the “¿Y Todo Para Qué?” group received its own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. At the ceremony, hitmaker and songwriter Edgar Barrera, who grew up in the same borderland area, said that Intocable “showed the world what música mexicana could be.”

But the Grammy-winning band isn’t resting on its laurels. Of the Walk of Fame star, Muñoz said, “that’s just part of the journey. It’s awesome, but I haven’t really paid any more thought than the day I was there.”

Instead, the “Enséñame A Olvidarte” act is looking ahead. The group is preparing for the release of its 16th studio album next year, “Nostalgia Radical,” a project inspired by Muñoz’s mental health journey , which he said has allowed him to show up as his most authentic self.

“I was exploring myself, being vulnerable and asking questions,” said Muñoz. “ To me, going to therapy every Tuesday is like taking out the trash.”

This November, the band — which is currently zigzagging between Mexico and the U.S. for its Cultura Tour — is also up for a Latin Grammy for regional song for their country-fused pro-immigrant anthem “Estamos Todos.”

“We’re all asking all these questions, and we’re not getting the right answers or any answers. We’re just being danced around with the answers,” said Muñoz. “But in the meantime, we’re all together in this.”

The band’s pro-immigrant stance is another thing it has in common with Musgraves, who in May invited invited three teen mariachi brothers previously detained by ICE to open for her sold-out, three-night residency at Gruene Hall in New Braunfels, Texas, the oldest dance hall in the state..

The country singer also asked fans to donate to the Young Center for Immigrant Rights, which helps children whose parents have faced deportations, during the opening night of her tour in Chicago back in August.

“We need more people to talk about this and not stay quiet. Kacey is coming from another community and stepping up, I mean, that’s big, man. That’s huge.  I commend her for that,” said Muñoz.