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Susanna Hoffs calls it “the list”: a faded piece of paper ripped from a Filofax day planner on which are scrawled the names of every guy she’s ever gone out with — some famous, some not, some “kind of douchey,” as she puts it with a what-can-you-do shrug.

“It was like a dating profile but pre-internet,” Hoffs says of the tally, which she composed sometime in the late 1980s as she was racking up hits — among them the chart-topping “Walk Like an Egyptian” and “Eternal Flame” — as the frontwoman of the Bangles. “I’m a nice Jewish girl,” she adds. “I was just keeping track, doing my homework.”

Today at the bottom of the list in all caps sits the name of Jay Roach, the movie director whom Hoffs met on a blind date in 1991. He’s the subject of a new song called “None of Them Were You,” in which the singer runs down some of Roach’s predecessors — “a very dapper Brit,” “a suave and handsome actor” — before musing on her deep connection with the man to whom she’s now been married for 33 years.

“I ended up with such a good guy,” she says. “It almost brings a tear to the eye.”

“None of Them Were You” isn’t the only tune with that potential on an album Hoffs is preparing to release next month. Due Sept. 18 from her Baroque Folk label, “The List” — Hoffs’ first set of original material in more than a decade — collects a dozen touching and witty songs based on tales from her life as an artist, wife, businessperson and mother. At 67, her winsome singing voice is remarkably unchanged from the era of big hair and dangly earrings. Yet the music reflects an emotional wisdom that had to be earned through experience, as in the folky “Time,” which ponders her and Roach’s relationships with their two adult sons.

“I see you dancing in the kitchen / I feel your tiny hand in mine,” she sings, “What if you fly back home this summer? / We could spend a little while.” (Beware, parents — this one will wreck you.)

A voluble presence with an easy laugh, Hoffs points out that she’s hardly been “hiding in a cave” since 2012’s “Someday.” In 2024, she put out a long-shelved solo record of songs she’d cut back in 1999; before that, she made a series of expertly curated covers albums, including three she recorded with the power-pop maestro Matthew Sweet. But publishing her first novel in 2023 — “This Bird Has Flown,” a charming bestseller about a one-hit wonder looking for a comeback — rejuvenated Hoffs’ devotion to songwriting.

“I never thought the book would sell, and I never thought it would get great reviews,” she says on a recent afternoon at her home in Brentwood. “That was a big turn career-wise.”

For “The List,” Hoffs teamed with CJ Camerieri, a musician and producer known for his work with Paul Simon and Bon Iver, among others; Camerieri in turn recruited an array of songwriters to collaborate with the two of them, including a couple of Grammy winners in Dan Wilson and Jesse Harris.

“Sue has built up decades and decades of goodwill in this town,” Camerieri says, seated next to Hoffs on a sofa, “so you call up somebody like Dan and you say, ‘Hey, you want to write a song with Susanna Hoffs?’ and he goes, ‘Great, yeah, I’m in.’”

The process was simple, the producer explains: “We’d start in Sue’s kitchen with coffee at 10 in the morning —”

“I’m really good at coffee,” Hoffs interjects. “I mean, I use Nespresso. But I’m good at being a hostess to all the lads.”

“So I’d give everybody a yellow legal pad and Sue would start telling stories,” Camerieri continues. “We’re all scribbling notes, and after about an hour, we’d go, ‘I think we got enough here,’ and we’d go write songs about what she’d told us.”

They recorded at Hoffs’ place — “We’d move this couch and the drums would go right here,” she says — beneath a vaulted ceiling that provided just the right ambience. First-call players like Greg Leisz and Wendy Melvoin stopped by to take part in the sessions; for harmony vocals in a country-ish ditty called “Bad Case of Loneliness,” they got Rufus Wainwright, with whom Hoffs had done a version of the Turtles’ “Happy Together” for Roach’s 2025 comedy “The Roses.”

The dreamy-rootsy arrangements are never less than handsome — and never prettier than in “Fool,” which Hoffs says was inspired by her love of the records Dionne Warwick and Burt Bacharach made together. Yet “The List” was built to showcase Hoffs’ rich storytelling.

The LP opens with “Casablanca,” in which she recounts a run-in with the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir in New Orleans in the late ’80s. The Bangles were on tour opening for George Michael; the Dead had a gig at the University of New Orleans’ Lakefront Arena. After Hoffs and Weir ended up at a crawfish boil put on by the Neville Brothers, the two took a walk along Lake Pontchartrain — “He was very cute,” Hoffs says — then later strolled again through the French Quarter.

“At one point, I looked back and there was a sea of Deadheads who realized it was Bob Weir,” she says. “But I was with him. I got to be his pal, which I just couldn’t believe was happening. It was delicious.” (Between the two walks, the Bangles famously jumped onstage with the Dead to perform “Iko Iko.”)

As we’re talking, Camerieri tells Hoffs that he recently met Weir’s former tour manager — Weir died in January at age 78 — and that he’d relayed Hoffs’ memory of the encounter. “He was like, ‘I know this story,’” Camerieri says the manager replied. “‘Bob used to talk about the time he got to walk around New Orleans with Susanna Hoffs.’”

“Oh my God!” Hoffs says, eyes starting to glisten. “So it meant something to him too.”

Bookending “The List” is “What Are Wings For,” a stately ballad about sticking to one’s guns that Hoffs and Camerieri wrote with Edie Brickell, who’s married to Simon, on a trip they took to the couple’s ranch in Texas.

“We were there during the World Series [in 2024],” Camerieri recalls, “and we watched the Yankees game with Paul every night after working on songs.”

Adds Hoffs with a laugh: “He also told me that he thinks the Bangles’ version of ‘Hazy Shade of Winter’ is better than his. I was like, ‘Please don’t — yours is the iconic version.’”

By the time the Bangles covered that Simon & Garfunkel tune for the soundtrack to 1987’s “Less Than Zero,” the band was already a fixture on the radio and MTV. Hoffs formed the group in 1981 with sisters Vicki and Debbi Peterson, who learned to play together in the garage of Hoffs’ parents’ house, just a few blocks from where the singer lives today.

The Bangles came up through L.A.’s ’60s-steeped Paisley Underground scene and found stardom after the addition of Michael Steele with “Manic Monday,” a sparkling pop-rock gem gifted to the band by Prince. (Beyond her list of boyfriends, one of Hoffs’ prized possessions from back in the day is Prince’s original cassette demo of “Manic Monday.”)

“He was brilliant but mischievous,” Hoffs says of the late trailblazer, on whom she modeled the character of Jonesy from her novel. “I remember one time he invited us to Sunset Sound in the middle of the night. We get there and we’re jamming, then suddenly we look around and he’s disappeared. ‘OK, I guess we’re done.’”

The Bangles with an assortment of music execs in Los Angeles in 1987.

(Lester Cohen / Getty Images)

After eight Top 40 singles and a triple-platinum LP, the Bangles split in 1989 amid differing ideas about the band’s creative direction and ambitions. The members pursued solo and other projects but reunited to record a song for 1999’s “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me,” which Roach directed; two more Bangles albums followed in 2003 and 2011, the second minus Steele, whom Hoffs says she’s not in touch with at the moment.

Compared to the Go-Go’s, whose parallel career was detailed in a 2020 documentary and who were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame a year later, the Bangles haven’t quite cemented their legacy, though an authorized biography came out last year and a doc is currently in development.

Yet Hoffs doesn’t seem especially troubled by the possibility that the Bangles might be underappreciated, perhaps because she’s got plenty of her own stuff going on. Before “The List” comes out, she’ll play her old hits in a Sept. 5 gig at Largo at the Coronet and in a handful of dates opening for Billy Idol; after the new album drops, she’ll head east for a residency at New York’s Café Carlyle.

She and Camerieri are also at work on a musical adaptation of “This Bird Has Flown” for the stage or the screen. And just the other day she found a folder on her computer full of songs she wrote years ago with her friend Marvin Etzioni of Lone Justice.

“I don’t like using the word ‘bucket list,’ but all these things are labors of love,” Hoffs says.

What’s the trouble with “bucket list”?

“Oh, I don’t know,” she says, smiling. “It just seems, like, death-y.”

Who pissed off Ariana Grande? Well, who didn’t?

On her new album, “Petal,” the pop superstar opens the spigot on what she’s described as an “unfiltered rage” to blast any number of feckless exes, a prying public obsessed with her body and her personal life — and not least herself for allowing anyone the power to hurt her in the first place.

“Tell me who’s to blame — is it the people or myself?” she wonders against the icy synth stabs of the title track.

Her answer, delivered as a sneering little aside: “Yeah.”

“Petal” marks a dramatic shift from Grande’s previous LP, 2024’s “Eternal Sunshine,” a tender and melancholy electro-pop collection that laid out a kind of emotional philosophy of heartbreak. She recorded the new album with the same team — the hit-making writer-producers Ilya Salmanzadeh and Max Martin — but here they go for a murkier, more percussive sound to match Grande’s dark mood.

Tolling electric guitar accompanies her in “Freak” as she muses on “all of the life I’ve been denied,” while “Oh Well” puts a jittery U.K. garage beat under her sneering farewell to an unnamed antagonist: “Good luck on your way to hell.” In “Hate That I Made You Love Me,” which debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 when Grande released it as “Petal’s” lead single, she sings, “I’ve held your projections when you’ve felt so insecure,” over a trudging groove that moves like a funeral march.

These downcast observations arrive at what would seem to be a professional high point for Grande, who recently wrapped her extended stay in the “Wicked”-verse and who’s in the middle of a tour that’s drawn adoring fans to arenas across the country.

But perhaps that’s the point: Almost every song on “Petal” can be interpreted two ways — as a story about a broken relationship between two people or as a tale about the toxic connection between an idol and her audience. (More than once did this record make me think about Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department.”)

“My pain is music — do you hear me everywhere?” Grande asks in “Warning Signs (Interlude),” which climaxes with a pithy diagnosis of pop stardom in the parasocial age: “You don’t deserve me / You know you don’t, you never have / But I want you to feel me / I wish someone could hear me.”

Complaints about celebrity can be pretty tedious, of course; sometimes it feels as though famous pop singers have forgotten how to write about anything other than life in the social-media fishbowl.

Yet “Petal” gets some creative traction from how Grande chooses to use her voice; instead of belting, she rarely rises above a whisper, which gives a spooky, slightly creepy quality to her thoughts on being endlessly scrutinized. The airiness of her singing provides some comedy too in a hard-edged song such as “Like I Do,” where after noting that “all that s— talk keeps me well-fed,” she tells whoever needs to hear it, “No one f— you like I do.”

Having gotten all this off her chest, Grande finishes the album by allowing in some light: Over a zippy new wave arrangement, “Bad Thing (Bunny Hop)” ponders the renewing energy of a fresh romance — or maybe a rekindled old one — while the glistening “Nowhere, Nobody” has her taking deep breaths with a lover she’s convinced might finally give her what she needs.

“Convinced” is probably the wrong word.

“Hard to believe in a perfect ending,” she admits, “But that’s all right.”

The manager for British singer Boy George has pulled him from the West End revival of “Jesus Christ Superstar” days after the singer released a pro-Israel reggae song online.

Last weekend, the pop star posted on X a reggae song that includes the lyrics, “You say genocide, I say war / When you’re attacked that’s what the army’s for” and “Musicians holding flags, mouthing like sheep / Propaganda fuelled by the Internet feels so weak.” The post was met with swift blowback.

On Thursday, the artist’s manager announced on Instagram that he was pulling Boy George from the West End revival, suggesting the pro-Isreal song might take “the focus” away from the production. He had been slated to play King Herod in a London Palladium production from Aug. 3-15.

“After careful consideration, I have decided, in my capacity as Boy George’s manager, that he will no longer be appearing in Jesus Christ Superstar at the London Palladium,” wrote Paul Kemsley. “The decision has been made with the utmost respect for the producers, the creative team and the entire company. We are grateful for the professionalism and understanding they have shown throughout and sincerely wish everyone involved every success with the production.”

On Friday, the singer posted on X that he was receiving calls with the advice to “pipe down,” but he said, “It’s not an option.”

Since the October 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas and the military response by Israeli forces, several celebrities have spoken out on the bloodshed in Gaza, including musicians Billie Eilish and her brother, Finneas, and the Weekend along with actors Pedro Pascal, Susan Sarandon and Mark Ruffalo, among others.

Kemsley continued that he has “always respected” Boy George for standing by his “personal convictions” but that, as his manager, he feels the responsibility to make decisions “that are in the best interests of my artist while also showing respect to others.”

“In this instance, I felt it was right to step aside, allowing the production to remain the focus, while ensuring everyone involved can move forward with mutual respect and goodwill.”

A representative for the producers of “Jesus Christ Superstar” did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment.

Kavinsky, the French electronic musician and DJ whose moody single “Nightcall” scored the hit film “Drive,” has died. He was 50.

French newspaper Le Figaro and TV station BFM reported that Kavinsky, born Vincent ‌Belorgey, died from a suspected stroke. Paris prosecutors investigated and found “no suspicious elements,” they said.

Kavinsky was a defining act of the Paris electronic scene of the 2000s and 2010s, whose neon-smeared synths and noirish atmospheres lent themselves to L.A. freeways and Montmartre nightclubs alike.

Adopting a droll persona — a red-eyed electronic producer who returned from the dead after a Ferrari crash — Kavinsky was a major figure in the second wave of the “French touch” dance scene.

His popular breakthrough came with “Nightcall,” a collaboration with CSS’ Lovefoxxx and Daft Punk’s Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo. The song was a propulsive theme of Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2011 film “Drive,” a brutal and romantic revenge thriller beloved for its slinky, retro-futuristic soundtrack. Kavinsky performed the song to close out the 2024 Paris Olympics, performing with the French band Phoenix and the Belgian singer Angèle.

While he only released two studio LPs, including the 2013 singles collection “OutRun” and “Reborn” in 2022, he was influential to major acts that came after him. The Weeknd, who sang on an edit of Kavinsky’s “Odd Look,” wrote on X: “So heartbreaking to hear the news. An inspiration to so many, including myself. I will continue to honor your name and your music. Rest easy Kavinsky.”

French President Emmanuel Macron also wrote a tribute on Instagram, calling Kavinsky an artist France could be proud of forever.

Three days ago, Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert commented on a sexy selfie that pop singer Madison Beer posted on Instagram: “That’s my girlfriend!!”

On Tuesday morning, Beer posted several photos of the two of them together, along with a caption that provided a significant relationship status update.

“Meet my fiancé,” Beer wrote, much to the delight of the 1.5 million people who liked the post within the first hour.

The engagement announcement comes not quite a year after speculation started about a possible romantic link between the two. Last August, Herbert was photographed interacting with Beer on the set of the video shoot for her song “Angel Wings” at a house in Hancock Park.

The New York Post reported that Beer was seen introducing Herbert to crew members and that the two left the set together. They were spotted together multiple times soon afterward, including holding hands in Los Angeles the day after the Chargers’ seasonopener in Brazil last September.

They shared what is thought to be their first public kiss Oct. 5 on the SoFi Stadium sideline before the Chargers played the Washington Commanders. Since going public with their relationship, the 27-year-old singer and 28-year-old quarterback have been seen at Game 3 of the World Series at Dodger Stadium and sitting courtside at Lakers games at Crypto.com Arena.

In April, Herbert posted a photo of them on Instagram and captioned it, “My world!” Also this spring, he co-starred with Beer in the music video for her song “lovergirl” and received Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh’s blessing to miss portions of voluntary team workouts to join Beer on her world tour.

Beer’s post announcing the engagement features several photos of the couple, including one of Herbert down on one knee and another of him carrying his smiling bride-to-be over his shoulder with her ring on display. They each also posted one of the photos on their Instagram Story with Perry Como’s “And I Love You So” as background music.

No information on the upcoming wedding has been released.

Herbert was selected sixth overall by the Chargers in the 2020 draft. A two-time Pro Bowl selection, he has gone 52-43 as a starter and has passed for 24,820 yards with 163 touchdowns and 58 interceptions.

Beer has been nominated for two Grammy Awards — best immersive audio album for “Silence Between Songs” in 2024 and best dance pop recording for “make you mine” in 2025. Her third studio album, “locket,” was released earlier this year.

Emmy-nominated composer Bear McCreary has taken a reverse road to symphonic rock. Prog rockers have traditionally integrated symphonic elements; other rock bands have done orchestral versions of their songs. McCreary began creating television and film scores, discovered his inner metalhead, and has since bridged those worlds with his “Singularity” project. It all adds up to a different take on that time-honored formula.

The second of the two albums, “The Singularity: Ekleipsis,” is out Friday and features contributions from guitarist Steve Vai, Coheed and Cambria frontman Claudio Sanchez, Fall Out Boy frontman Patrick Stump and McCreary’s younger brother Brendan, who sings on half the tracks. The multifaceted album feels like “I am Bear, hear me roar.”

“I love that quote,” he says, laughing, during his two-hour interview with The Times. “I want to put that on the posters. I feel like ‘The Singularity’ is a temper tantrum of a record from someone who had been writing music for other people for 20 years, then all these ideas exploded out.” Two years after the release of the first “Singularity” album, “Ekleipsis” feels more focused and personal to him.

From Anthrax dinners to sessions with Slash, Stewart Copeland and Bulgarian choirs, McCreary’s restless curiosity drives genre-bending songs that wrestle with identity, diaspora and the world listeners are trying to survive.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

The first “Singularity” double album — which featured guests like Serj Tankian, Corey Taylor, Rufus Wainwright and Joe Satriani — tied into a graphic novel about a man who repeatedly experiences loss and death at the hands of a villainous character in his every life across their multiverse. This leads to a major revelation at the end. Although McCreary says that “Ekleipsis” is not disconnected from that universe, it is not strictly tied to a narrative.

“I wasn’t setting out to write a concept album again,” McCreary admits, “but there’s something immediate in all the lyrics. Half of them are specifically talking about the world that we all find ourselves living in and trying to overcome in some way.”

McCreary’s sonic diversity continues with “Ekleipsis.” Gojira frontman Joe Duplantier collaborated with the McCreary brothers and the Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices choir on “Black Box” to create a work of dissonant majesty. The composer improvised his way through the initial stages of “Pray for a Storm,” his high-energy collaboration with famed drummer Stewart Copeland.

“Let’s all go into your studio with nothing,” McCreary recalls telling the irrepressible percussionist. “I’m not even going to bring an idea. We’ll plug in our instruments, set the mics up and play. I want to capture your ideas and your energy, then shape it into a song based on the pieces that I get.”

McCreary sees new endeavors as a learning experience. He meets his collaborators in the way they like to work. He was awed while writing with Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith on the anthemic “Cool Kids.”

“Those guys are true songsmiths,” the composer declares. “I think they’re unrecognized as songwriters. They wrote for Ozzy Osbourne. They’re focused on hammering down a riff until it works. We walked into a studio with a riff that Duff had written and walked out with this song that we brought Slash onto. We got that band experience [with them].”

McCreary is best known for scoring series like “Battlestar Galactica,” “The Walking Dead” and “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” along with movies such as “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” and the “God of War” video game franchise. He gained entry into metal through a dinner with Anthrax guitarist and “Battlestar” fan Scott Ian two decades ago.

“‘I know you. You’re a guy who loves Sepultura,’” Ian told him, invoking a musical link for the composer. Intrigued, McCreary listened to Sepultura’s folk-infused Brazilian death metal and loved it. His metal journey began.

Ever since, McCreary has been itching to dive into that arena. He has an important collaborator in that quest.

“My brother’s my secret weapon when it comes to rock,” McCreary says. “His body of [rock] knowledge makes up for mine. Our emphasis is in a different place. He is a fantastic producer because he’s got a really good radar for when things are useless, when a part of a song isn’t pulling its weight. It’s a very good influence to have someone like that. He’s got a great lyrical sense and an incredible voice.”

McCreary says Brendan is often the driving force of their lyrical efforts, and “sometimes we co-write with other people. Claudio Sanchez wrote all the lyrics on ‘Sweet Misery.’ It just depends.”

The younger McCreary was the propelling wordsmith on “One Fine Day.” “It’s about our experience as being in the Armenian diaspora and exploring what that means to us,” McCreary elaborates. “All the songs are very personal, which is another thing that sets this record apart from the last record. Many of them were personal, but I also had a weird song about an automaton that fell in love.”

Mentored at USC by Elmer Bernstein, McCreary now leaps from “God of War” themes to a Higgs boson rock musical and a roaring Singularity tour that hits L.A. on Sept. 17.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Before he jammed with rock icons, McCreary was mentored by the late, iconic Elmer Bernstein for nearly the last decade of his life. The burgeoning young composer organized Bernstein’s music archives, sat in on recording sessions and audited his senior-level classes for three years while studying at the Thornton School of Music at USC. McCreary says that Bernstein “really set me on the path that I am now on, not because I learned how to orchestrate or how to write music from him. But he showed me the life that I could envision myself having when I was 15 or 16, that crucial time when you’re really setting the rudder for where you’re going to go in life.”

That rudder has steered him to many shores. McCreary has been co-writing the musical “Particle Fever” with Zoe Sarnak (“Galileo).” Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony winner David Henry Hwang (“M. Butterfly)” wrote the book, and Tony nominee Leigh Silverman (“Suffs”) is its director. It is based on the documentary of the same name about the discovery of the Higgs boson — the “God particle” — at the Large Hadron Collider in CERN. It will debut at the La Jolla Playhouse in February 2027.

“It is a really kick-ass, earnest rock musical about a really ambitious discovery,” McCreary says. “My hope is that it actually has some of the swagger and fun that people found in ‘Hamilton,’ which also was a very dry subject that you learned about in eighth grade.”

The 47-year-old composer exudes an infectiously upbeat energy. He loves challenges and says he learned that charisma and charm are valuable assets to get in the door to prove one’s talents.

“I’m wired to be very positive and collaborative,” he concedes. “But I got so oppressively excited in my 20s that I started annoying people. My lesson was walk it back.”

His creative energy continues unabated. He’s even scored shorts for filmmakers he met through Twitter. (“I’m down to work.”) He has been blogging about his musical life for 20 years for a core group of followers. (“In hindsight, if Jerry Goldsmith had done that in the ‘80s, my God, my life would be different.”)

McCreary started as a high school keyboardist, then found the accordion in college, an instrument that gave him greater stage motion and which he later used to great effect in his music for the “Outlander” series. He loves to headbang while playing the hurdy-gurdy, an instrument he picked up in 2010 and later employed in the “Black Sails” show and “God of War: Ragnarok” video game. He learned guitar to play rhythm during his 2025 shows.

Those riffs will be on display at the Wacken Open Air festival on Friday and during McCreary’s eight-date September “Singularity” tour of the West Coast that hits L.A. on Sept. 17. McCreary has performed his symphonic scores in Europe and America with orchestras, but now he also loves to rock out (loud).

A big secret of the ambitious McCreary’s success harks back to lessons of simplicity that Bernstein taught him.

“The giant theme that I wrote for ‘God of War’ can be played with one finger on a piano,” McCreary reveals. “That is the thing that it boils down to, and that is what I listen for in music. Most of the time it means there’s a melody in there that sticks with you, and it doesn’t matter how well it is produced or how epic it is or how loud it is. A good song is a good song is a good song, and it really doesn’t matter how good a band performs. If the song is good, it will connect with people.”

On Saturday at Dodger Stadium, as the sun dipped below the horizon, Fuerza Regida took center stage for a career-defining show, delivering cinematic time-travel segments and hints of off-stage controversy.

The Mexican American band joined an illustrious list of legendary acts — Elton John, the Beatles, Michael Jackson and Beyoncé to name a few — to perform at the iconic venue built on Chavez Ravine, the shallow canyon that served as home to thousands of Mexican American families forcibly displaced in the 1950s for the sake of progress.

In June, the San Bernardino quintet kicked off its This Is Our Dream stadium tour across nine U.S. cities to close out its manifestation project “111xpantia.” The 2025 LP peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 in May 2025, becoming the highest-charting Spanish language album by a duo of band ever. It also comes a year after the band sold out the Madison Square Garden and the Hollywood Bowl in consecutive nights.

But the stadium tour — which will end Aug. 7 in New York’s Citi Field — does more than showcase the band’s recent mainstream success. It honors the years of grit it took to get there.

“It’s proof that dreams are worth chasing, fighting for, even when it feels hard or impossible,” said Khrystian Ramos, the band’s rhythm guitarist.

As part of the set design, a massive prop car stereo was affixed atop the stage. Inspired by the 1985 film “Back to the Future,” it doubled as a time traveling machine. But instead of a DeLorean, the band opted for a Chevrolet 454 SS pickup truck, a car that symbolizes the American dream for lead singer Jesús Ortiz Paz, better known as JOP, and is largely associated with the group’s corrido forefather, the late Chalino Sanchez.

The first stop in Fuerza Regida‘s journey to the past was 2018, as the band performed its breakthrough hit, “Radicamos En South Central,” a song about gradually building a drug empire that went viral on YouTube. Shortly after its release, the band signed with independent label Rancho Humilde and followed up with “Sigo Chambeando,” a bouncy corrido that embodies the band’s “never stop hustling” ethos.

It’s a mindset that has served them well.

The more than a decade-long road to selling out Dodger Stadium certainly wasn’t easy for the corrido tumbado band, which formed in 2015 and first built a fan base by performing cover songs at local parties across the Inland Empire. .

Jose “Pelon” Garcia, left, Jesus Ortiz Paz and Khrystian Ramos of Fuerza Regida perform during their This Is Our Dream Stadium tour at Dodger Stadium on July 18 in Los Angeles.

(Carlin Stiehl/For De Los)

“We got kicked out of a gig one time. The guy literally told us that he didn’t like our music,” said Ramos. “That drive home was a key moment in our career.  It showed us that it’s not all stars and rainbows.”

Ramos started the band alongside the band’s 12-string guitarist, Samuel Jáimez. The two met at martial arts school as kids and kept in touch in the years that followed, jamming out together after their 9 to 5 .

The band’s name was originally Raimez — a portmanteau of Ramos and Jáimez— but was later changed to accomodate the arrival of lead singer JOP.

“I remember exactly [where we came up with the name]. We’re driving down the 10 passing Mount Vernon Avenue,” said Ramos. “Fuerza Regida, a  governing force. Wherever you step, the presence is felt.”

That certainly was the case on that warm July evening as the more than 56,000 fans in attendance chanted the band’s name in unison.

“Not in a thousand years, I didn’t see it until it crept up. It was like alcohol,” said Jáimez about the band’s global success.

Sousaphone player José García, also known as Pelon, never imagined that leaving behind a steady job to pursue his musical dreams would pan out like this.

“I worked in construction Monday through Friday and we had gigs with Fuerza Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I practically had two jobs,” said García. “I had life insurance. I had benefits, 401(k), all that. So I left a really good job so I could join Fuerza Regida.”

In 2022, the band added its fifth member, Moisés López, who plays the tololoche — a small upright bass. López, who contributed to the 2020 track “Vamos Bien” as a bass player, said that JOP had asked him to learn the instrument if he wanted to stay with the group. “He bought me it. I picked it up real quick and from there it’s history.”

Jesus Ortiz Paz, left, and Moises Lopez of Fuerza Regida perform during their This Is Our Dream stadium tour at Dodger Stadium on July 18 in Los Angeles.

(Carlin Stiehl/For De Los)

At the concert, the time machine took attendees back to 2022, Fuerza Regida’s bélico era marked by the corridos “Billete Grande” and “Igualito A Mi Apá” as well as its gentler viral hit “Bebe Dame,” the first Fuerza Regida song to reach the Billboard 100, peaking at No. 25.

“We went from clubs to theaters to arenas. I’ve never thought we would get this far,” said López. “We’ve always said hard work beats talent.”

But it isn’t just drive that has shaped Fuerza Regida’s career — time and time again, the band has proved to be adaptable and experimental, always evolving its sound and drawing from a wide range of influences.

2023 saw the release of “Pa Las Baby’s y Belikeada,” a party record that fuses trap, pop and EDM, and features the player anthems “TQM” and “Sabor Fresa”; to complement the womanizer themes of the record, there was a baddie camera on stage, which panned to women in the audience.

As the band sang its 2023 ballad “Una Cerveza” — a song about getting drunk to forget a lost love— a girl across my way called her ex and lifted her phone up in the air so that he could hear its heartbreaking lyrics. Then she hung up.

The Dodger Stadium show felt like a massive celebration, not just for the band but for música mexicana as a whole. Special guest performances throughout the night included Los Gemelos de Sinaloa, Calle 24, Chino Pacas, Clave Especial and Chuyin — acts that have helped fuel the meteoric rise of the genre.

“I’m proud and grateful that la raza is finally doing it. We’re here to stay,” Jaimez said.

Though the show focused on Fuerza Regida’s past, there were also hints of what’s to come. The band’s relationship with its record label Rancho Humilde has become acrimonious and litigious. In recent months, JOP has repeatedly accused founder Jimmy Humilde of withholding royalties and sabotaging the band. In turn, the record mogul has claimed that the band is not fulfilling its contractual obligations. A bitter divorce feels imminent.

“The internet tells a lot of lies. False news. That supposedly someone won a lawsuit. But that lawsuit is still underway and we know who will win,” JOP told the audience before singing “Triston,” a track released at the start of 2026 that was immediately pulled from the streamers. “They took this song off the platform but they can’t stop us from singing the song here.”

Singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell first wrote the numbers for “Hadestown,” a folk musical based on Greek mythology, in 2006. Twenty years later, the Tony-winning smash musical comes to the big screen in a version filmed on the West End in 2025, directed by Brett Sullivan. The production reunites the original Broadway cast — André De Shields, Patrick Page, Reeve Carney, Eva Noblezada and Amber Gray — six years after the show debuted and swept the Tonys in 2019.

There is a timelessness to Mitchell’s work, thanks in large part to the ancient source material, the myths of Orpheus, Eurydice, Hades and Persephone. Developed in partnership with Rachel Chavkin, who directed the Broadway show, the action is set around the 1930s in the American Deep South. The story expresses evergreen themes of love, sacrifice, oppression, addiction and devotion, juxtaposing the tragedy of the way things are against a hope of the way they could be.

There are moments when Mitchell’s songs feel eerily prescient: The show’s villain, Hades (Page), rules the underworld of Hadestown as a fascistic industrialist; his Act I closing number is titled “Why We Build the Wall.” Factory workers sing back to him, “We build the wall to keep us free,” a chorus that foretells the Trumpian rhetoric of 2016 and a reminder that these patterns of division and otherization are the eternal tools of the oppressor.

“Hadestown” is a love story first and foremost, set in a joyous juke joint, the band ringing the stage. The camera follows our narrator, Hermes, played by American theater legend De Shields, as he takes the stage, kissing the heads of his company.

But the show doesn’t start until the 79-year-old De Shields nattily flips his jacket open, to the approving roar of the audience. He introduces doomed Orpheus (Carney), “touched by the Gods themselves,” a born yearner with a gift for song. When Eurydice (Noblezada), a scrappy, skeptical slip of a girl, rolls into town, Orpheus instantly falls head over heels. They have nothing except each other, their love symbolized by a red flower that Orpheus offers.

Party girl Persephone (Gray) brings the summer fun, but her jealous lover Hades wants to keep her all to himself in his domain, trapping the world in a long winter. Orpheus promises to write a song to summon spring again, but a struggling Eurydice is seduced by Hades’ promises of security in Hadestown, and she descends with him, signing her life away to work in his factory. Orpheus tries to rescue his love, but his faith in her is tested on their return to the top — if he turns back to see if she’s there, she’ll be banished to Hadestown forever.

Real-life couple Carney and Noblezada married several months after this production; they met at Noblezada’s audition. Their chemistry makes the emotional devastation of this tragedy that much more real: Every main actor sheds a real tear over the course of the show. Carney’s unique tenor ranges from Jeff Buckley to Freddie Mercury; his rock background and skill with the guitar is required for Orpheus’ lyre-playing and lends to the folk roots of Mitchell’s songs.

Cinematographer Clayton Jacobsen captures unexpected camera angles that a theatergoer wouldn’t get (even one with decent seats), both from down below in the circular pit and above it. He sends the camera soaring over the heads of the audience into intimate medium shots. Sullivan makes the animated and often rowdy crowd an integral part of the cinematic experience, including an extended curtain call with De Shields toasting the audience, sending them out with the warmth with which he brought them in.

There is such a temporal quality to theater, a shared moment in time and space. This production feels like a fleeting moment — a reunion of friends and collaborators retelling a myth that is recounted over and over again. “It’s a sad song, but we sing it anyway,” Hermes reminds us, and it’s a sentiment worth repeating. There may be tragedy, but the summer will inevitably return.

Pat McAfee knows just what the world needs in 2026.

More Pat McAfee.

The former Indianapolis Colts punter and kicker already is seemingly everywhere — as the host of his own show every weekday on ESPN, as an analyst on “College GameDay” and guest on a number of other shows on the network, as a commentator/participant with WWE until earlier this year, as host of multiple podcasts, etc.

McAfee has not, however, released an album full of songs written and sung entirely by the two-time Pro Bowl selection himself.

That situation will be rectified in a matter of weeks.

McAfee announced Wednesday that he would be dropping his debut record, “The Diary of a Polarizing Figure,” on Aug. 14, a musical collaboration with country singer-songwriter Ernest.

“For as long as I can remember my mere existence has made people hate my guts,” McAfee wrote in an X post announcing the project. “I’ve been writing songs about it for 20yrs & it’s time to let them aht.. A LOT of headlines & narratives.. if I was to die, I’d like my kids to know exactly who their dad is.”

Although McAfee definitely has his detractors, it’s interesting that he’s putting out an album focusing on the haters, considering his current popularity is such that he is reportedly in talks for a contract extension with ESPN that would pay him more than $60 million a year.

Some online commenters have criticized McAfee for the timing of his announcement, which comes a day after a number of his ESPN colleagues were laid off by Walt Disney Co. McAfee reposted one such complaint on X and commented simply, “The Diary of a Polarizing Figure, August 14th, 2026.”

He said Wednesday on “The Pat McAfee Show”: “A lot of things are being said about me at this exact moment. [People] are going to hear my responses through these songs because these types of situations have been happening to me throughout my entire life. … Literally since elementary school I’ve had people that just don’t like me because I’m too loud and everything like that.”

In December, McAfee released a country-rock single called “Dookie,” also a musical collaboration with Ernest. A news release at the time stated that the single marked “a new partnership between McAfee and DeVille Records / Big Loud Records.”

Ernest told Whiskey Riff early this year that he and McAfee had recorded eight or nine songs together.

“Any EA Sports game should have a Pat McAfee song on it,” Ernest said in describing the former West Virginia standout’s musical style. “It’s locker room hype s—.”

Many athletes have attempted musical careers, with varying degrees of critical and commercial success. It would seem far fewer sports broadcasters have tried the same crossover, with John Tesh probably being the best-known example after his stint covering athletic events for CBS and NBC in the mid-1980s.

If he wants advice from a peer, perhaps McAfee might seek it from Terry Bradshaw, the four-time Super Bowl champion and longtime NFL analyst who also has released a number of country/gospel albums and even had a top 10 country hit with a cover of “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” in the 1970s.

McAfee said on his show that he “wrote this entire thing over the last 20 years or so in the notes section” of his phone.

“A lot of very personal stuff in here,” he said. “Finding my singing voice has been fun. That has been a blast. Then [to] all the incredible people in Nashville who have assisted and kind of helped me piece all this together, I’m so grateful and thankful.”

Tony Thorpe, the guitarist for the English glam-rock combo the Rubettes, has died. He was 80.

“It is with great sadness that we officially announce the passing of Anthony John Thorpe. He was a father to Clay, a husband to Shirle, a friend to many, and a mentor to countless musicians young and old,” read a statement posted to his Facebook page. “His recently failing health did little to diminish his fierce intellect and sharp sense of humour. He will leave an unfillable hole in the lives of all who knew him, or his music.”

The Rubettes formed in 1973 after a session-musician team cut several doo-wop inspired tracks including the single “Sugar Baby Love.” The song hit number one on the UK charts in 1974 when the band, known for its uniform of white suits, performed on Top of the Pops. The single also charted in the U.S. top 40 and became their best-known song, along with European hits including “Tonight,” “Juke Box Jive,” “I Can Do It.”

The band sold millions of singles, primarily in Europe, over its career. Thorpe sang lead on several songs in the band’s catalog, including the country-influenced single “Baby I Know.” He left the group in 1979, and the Rubettes continued to perform and record in various incarnations.

The Rubettes classic-lineup singer, Alan Williams, posted on the band’s official Facebook page, saying Thorpe was “Mercifully now at peace.”

“Dear Tony, our paths having crossed but fleetingly during which time was conceived wondrous music and often hilariously memorable moments. Your brilliance with the axe and the pen cannot be denied and remains with us, never forgotten. Rest now Cowboy.”

On stage at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado, a far cry from the sweaty basement punk shows of the band’s early days, Jimmy Eat World played breakthrough power pop hit “The Middle” as the sold-out crowd sang along with the final chorus that “everything will be all right, all right.”

“It really is incredible to us to think about everyone who bothered to spend time with this record and made something of it for themselves over 25 years. This is your guys’ record as much as it’s ours, really,” singer-guitarist Jim Adkins said from the stage.

The band, which has generally shied away from nostalgia plays over its 30-plus year career, is performing the platinum-selling “Bleed American” album in its entirety on tour this summer, including a stop at Warped Tour in Long Beach on Saturday, a matching bookend to the band’s original promotion of the album.

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“It solidified us as, ‘This is what we do. Let the day job go.’ It turned into full-time rock and roll. And that moment only happens once, so it felt appropriate to honor it at 25,” bassist Rick Burch said backstage before the band’s Brooklyn tour stop in June.

Released on July 24, 2001, “Bleed American” was one of the last great rock records of the monoculture, arriving months before Apple’s iPod launched and made shuffle the default and 15 years before streaming became the dominant way to consume music.

“When ‘Bleed American’ took off it was right at the transition of the internet,” says Jim Adkins.

(Evelyn Freja / For The Times)

A hit with Hollywood roots

Just over a quarter of a century ago, four guys from Mesa, Ariz., came to L.A. to record their fourth album.

Jimmy Eat World’s Adkins, Burch, drummer Zach Lind and guitarist Tom Linton earned recording money between tours by working construction, driving around car dealership customers and selling art supplies and auto parts.

The band had cut ties with Capitol Records after 1999’s “Clarity” — a sweeping, lush and highly influential work highly regarded by their contemporaries that would inspire third-wave emo superstars including My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy and Paramore — that the major label had no idea how to market, even after “Lucky Denver Mint” got pickup on L.A.’s alt rock tastemaker KROQ-FM.

“If that song would have been on ‘Bleed American,’ that would have been a No. 1 song,” said Jim Suptic, of Kansas-based second-wave emo band the Get Up Kids, who have been on the “Bleed American” anniversary run. Suptic said that he was inspired to start the band after seeing Jimmy Eat World live in the mid-’90s.

With the band’s tight budget, producer Mark Trombino, who produced “Clarity” and predecessor “Static Prevails,” worked with the band for free in L.A., banking on the future success of the album. After recording drums at Cherokee Studios, the band relocated to Harddrive Analog & Digital Recording in North Hollywood to make the bulk of “Bleed American.”

“The studio was so small, it didn’t have a lounge,” Lind recalled.

But there was a bus stop outside they used instead, where they would hang out with “an assortment of characters,” Adkins said.

He and Lind commuted to the Valley from Redondo Beach, where they crashed on the floor of Lind’s brother’s place. Linton fondly remembers the great food in the city and hanging out with friends in other bands while Burch spent downtime skateboarding in L.A.

Even without the cash or support from a label, recording “Bleed American” didn’t feel like a do-or-die moment for the band’s future.

“We just kind of figured we might have to go out and just release this ourselves. Let’s just do the best job we can, and be happy with what we put out,” Linton said.

But with the buzz growing around the new music, record labels came calling.

‘The Middle’ meets the moment

By the time the album dropped in July 2001, the guitar-heavy snarling title track of “Bleed American” had already been in regular rotation on alt-rock stations for a month.

After a stint on the Warped Tour, Jimmy Eat World set out on a U.S. headlining tour in the fall, with Hey Mercedes opening.

“I remember that tour in particular, them sort of really finding their confidence in their voice and their shows and their performance and the whole package. And this was before ‘The Middle’ really broke, but I could tell that they were really firing on all cylinders,” said Hey Mercedes singer-guitarist Bob Nanna, whose influential emo group Braid first played with Jimmy Eat World in 1998.

The album landed on the Billboard charts three weeks after its release, and while its peak position was 31, it remained on the chart for 70 weeks. (A couple of months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the name of the album was changed to “Jimmy Eat World” on pressings before reverting to the original title in 2008.)

“When ‘Bleed American’ took off it was right at the transition of the internet,” Adkins said.

By 2002, “Bleed American” was taking off due to the popularity of the song “The Middle.”

(Scott Gries / Getty Images)

The media landscape hadn’t yet transformed. Rock music magazines like Spin, NME, Alternative Press and Kerrang! were thriving. The band made the rounds on the late-night talk shows as “The Middle” video clip played on MTV’s popular show “Total Request Live.”

“Things hadn’t splintered out into a zillion niche locations just quite yet,” Adkins said.

By March 2002, “The Middle” had hit the Billboard charts, where it climbed to No. 5 by the summer and spent 33 weeks on the Hot 100.

“They were a real band that had a radio hit, and not a radio band reverse engineered,” the Get Up Kids’ Suptic said.

The success was surreal for the band members as they heard the song on the radio, in restaurants and the gym. Today, you can still summon an entire generation with the opening guitar melody.

“I understand why that song has resonated,” Lind said. “I think there’s a few themes in the album that resonate with people in times when things are going tough. You know, ‘The Middle’ is definitely one of those songs that so many people have found encouragement from, whether they’re dealing with a breakup or going through cancer.”

“It seems like one of those songs that people have used to feel better and I think that’s obviously really powerful.”

“It solidified us as, ‘This is what we do. Let the day job go.’ It turned into full-time rock and roll,” says bassist Rick Burch about the success of “Bleed American.”

(Evelyn Freja / For The Times)

Here we are now

But the fans selling out the tour dates around the U.S. know much more than the hits, singing along to the deep cuts after traveling hundreds of miles to get to the show, in some cases.

Fans traveled from states like Michigan and Texas for the tour kickoff at Red Rocks in Colorado.

Robie O’Donnell took the train up to New York from the Washington, D.C., area to take his 12-year-old daughter to her first Jimmy Eat World show. The Brooklyn show was his 25th after he discovered them in the late ‘90s from a recommendation on the Get Up Kids’ website.

Behind him in line hours before doors opened was Jane Kung, who was only 8 when “Bleed American” was released and got into it when she was in high school. She didn’t want to miss the chance to hear it live.

“The fact that so many people wanted to come see this is something I didn’t expect,” Adkins said about the tour.

The fans get a chance to geek out over the rarely-played deep cuts from the album, like “Your House,” which required a revamp because of the studio work on the song, and the live debut of “(Splash) Turn Twist,” which was on the Japanese import of the album. Even louder than the sing-along to “The Middle” is the call and response from the crowd on the album’s second-biggest hit, “Sweetness.”

“Having this piece that we’ve created be embraced by so many is a very accomplished feeling,” Burch said.

Nanna even ventured into the crowd after Hey Mercedes opened the Brooklyn show, singing along to “A Praise Chorus,” the band’s crunchy guitar-filled love letter to rock music, among others.

“The world is a tough, s— place now and to have these moments where everybody can sing along to something that’s just pure joy was really soul enriching,” he said.

OAKLAND — The 17th year of Mosswood Meltdown at Oakland’s Mosswood Park brought with it a parade of free-thinking freaks on stage and in the crowd that descended on a punker’s picnic paradise for its annual outing of 20 bands over three days last weekend.

Hosted by the pencil-mustachioed art film icon John Waters, it began with a “pre-party” that exploded with main-event energy courtesy of lo-fi indie rock heroes Pavement, along with Wednesday and Vivian Girls on Friday night. The main fest lineup, topped by underground legends Iggy Pop and Bikini Kill, brought wild music with a message of unity among generations of punks to the tree-lined stages surrounded by a city that knows how to throw a good-time rager while staying deathly serious about its musical taste. Here are 10 moments that stood out at this year’s fest.

John Waters hosted the entire weekend, bringing his cackle-inducing foul-mouthed band intros to nearly every set at Mosswood Meltdown.

(Dick Slaughter)

Saturday

Singer/guitarist Toyozo (Yusuke Toyoshima)of The Fadeaways at Mosswood Meltdown

(Dick Slaughter)

The Fadeaways stand out early

Performing Saturday in Mosswood Park was a homecoming for Japanese revival rockers the Fadeaways. It was barely a year ago that they played a guerilla-style set by the festival entrance for a crowd of unsuspecting new fans. Going from ground level to being introduced on the main stage by Waters was a bucket-list achievement. “Their intense leaps in the air remind me of a throwback ricocheting tear-gas canister landing in a crowd of ICE agents,” the fabulously filthy host told the crowd before bringing them up. When they took the stage, the band wasted no time exploding into a searing 10-song set led by “That Girl” and including a screeching cover of the Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie.”

Snooper lead singer Blair Tramel performing on the Field Stage at Mosswood Meltdown

(Dick Slaughter)

Snooper and its puppeteers of chaos

Performing its third set at the festival since 2022, this Nashville four-piece band has quickly become a staple of this fest thanks to a larger-than-life-size puppet show and an electro-shock energy that helped it rumble through an early set on the Field Stage Saturday. Frontwoman Blair Tramel let the creativity of her paper-mache puppets made for the show match her highly caffeinated caterwaul on songs like “On the Line” and “Long Way,” where blown-out guitar tones, glitchy beats and shrieking vocals took Saturday’s decibel level unapologetically into the red.

The Spits performing on the Amphitheater Stage at Mosswood Meltdown.

(Dick Slaughter)

The Spits went full throttle

The sunken Amphitheater stage was a tough place to see anything if you didn’t show up to grab a spot at least 20 minutes early (or just climb a tree). But sweating in the sun to watch a band like the Spits, another Mosswood favorite, was worth pre-planning to get into the pit. The four-piece from Kalamazoo, Mich., hilariously clashed with the all-pink game show backdrop of the stage. Entering in sleeveless denim vests backed with a hailstorm of machine samples and maniacal Vincent Price laughter, the band clearly wasn’t playing any games as the members pounced on the crowd with 26 songs performed at breakneck speed, with dirty, piston-pumping rhythms on “Spit Me Out,” “Rip Up the Streets,” “Bring” and “SK8.”

Mannequin Pussy singer Missy Dabice and bassist Colins “Bear” Regisford on the Field Stage at Mosswood Meltdown

(Dick Slaughter)

Mannequin Pussy end with a loud bark

Blissfully ferocious and never short on words from the stage, frontwoman Missy Dabice didn’t get to say as much as she wanted to between songs due to the brevity of a festival set. But after a well-received set full of songs off 2024’s “I Got Heaven” and 2019’s “Patience,” Dabice still left room for some fiery parting words that embodied the tone of the weekend before wrapping things up with the band’s seething battle cry “Loud Bark.” “Don’t forget to celebrate the beauty of life while in every breath in turn fighting against fascism in every section of this country, good night!”

Otoboke Beaver drummer Emi “Leo” Morimoto performing on Saturday at Mosswood Meltdown

(Dick Slaughter)

Otoboke Beaver’s fury lights a fire

This quartet from Kyoto, Japan, put the Mosswood crowd in a stranglehold at the Field Stage and didn’t let up once during its entire set of math-rocky, manic, candy-colored fury. Even if you had no idea of the meaning behind song titles like “Don’t Light My Fire” or “I Am Not Maternal” or “Hey Where’s the Thank You?” sung mostly in Japanese, its joyous hell-raising energy left a lasting impression with the crowd. You couldn’t help but smile watching the members shred as an inflatable, beaver-shaped inner tube bounced around the mosh pit while they did their best to sound like a satanic garage band.

Iggy Pop headlining Saturday night at Mosswood Meltdown.

(Dick Slaughter)

Iggy Pop’s eternal lust for life

Iggy Pop’s ability to stay shirtless and savage at 79 goes beyond scientific explanation. One can only assume he’s made a deal with the devil that he’ll never stop performing. That seemed OK with the packed crowd that watched him headline Saturday night, rolling through all the Stooges and solo classics that made him the king of the underground. He kicked off his 18-song set with “T.V .Eye” and continued ripping into “Raw Power and “I Got a Right” before anyone in the crowd had a chance to catch their breath. With the Los Tropicanos backing band behind him, Iggy’s energy was transferred through the players who bolstered his catalog of Detroit-bred proto punk with tight precision and the right amount of stumbling sleaziness. Though he ended the set in a cage from “Wild One” to “Mass Production,” it’s clear that he’ll never be confined and that should give us all a bit of extra hope for ourselves.

A crowd surfer at Mosswood Meltdown.

(Dick Slaughter)

Sunday

Peaches Christ performing on the Field Stage at Mosswood Meltdown.

(Dick Slaughter)

Peaches Christ sings with punk pride

The fire on stage for Day 2 of the fest started early by a pack of drag queens led by Peaches Christ. She sauntered on the stage with electrified green and purple hair and Vivienne Westwood-style chic to perform a cover of the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen.” Showing the true rainbow colors of the punk scene has always been an important aspect of Mosswood’s ethos and as a staple of the fest, Christ compelled everyone in the crowd to sing loud and proud as she and her squad each took turns performing classics from the canon of mosh pit hits including “New Rose” by the Damned and “Add It Up” by Violent Femmes. Following her was fellow queen Kochina Rude who came out dressed as Pee-wee Herman to perform the Germs’ “Lexicon Devil” before stage-diving into the crowd. Between flamboyant showmanship and a strong commitment to the vocals on tough songs like Suicidal Tendencies’ “Institutionalized” (slayed by Trixxie Carr) the LGBTQ community’s spirit was on display throughout the set.

Drummer Nick Aguilar and bassist Nikki Piclle of Frankie and the Witchfingers.

(Dick Slaughter)

Frankie and the Witchfingers leaves the crowd spellbound

Casting a spell on the crowd with their sharp synth-laden aggression and bouncy ‘80s dance punk rhythms, Frankie and the Witch Fingers arrived with a bang in the late afternoon sun. With a guitar hiked up to his clavicle, frontman Dylan Sizemore convulsed with energy that saw the power of every chord electrify his bones during the jam-heavy “Conducting Experiments” while the rhythm section of drummer Nick Aguilar and the neon green-haired bassist Nikki Pickle kept the crowd bouncing and magnetized the attention of eyes all around the fest. The best crowd surfing of the day came thanks to a seasoned, white-haired fest attendee in a bike helmet who was getting tossed around like a white-water rafter. The head gear was definitely a smart idea.

Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein of the Return of Jackie and Judy perform on the Field Stage at Mosswood Meltdown.

(Dick Slaughter)

The Return of Jackie and Judy revive the Ramones

It’s one thing to perform a set of cover songs, but it’s another thing to play tunes that ensure the vibe of an entire festival is covered as well. “I hope you like the Ramones ‘cuz that’s all we’re playing,” said Carrie Brownstein of Sleater Kinney. Alongside SK bandmates Corin Tucker, Toko Yasuda and “Portlandia” co-star/“Saturday Night Live” comedian Fred Armisen, the quartet formed Ramones tribute the Return of Jackie and Judy. From the thunderous opening chant of “Blitzkrieg Bop” (“Hey! Ho! Let’s Go!”), the all-age crowd strapped in for a roller-coaster ride of leather-clad punk classics that had everyone shouting along. Brownstein did a good job of meeting the moment with both joy and reverence, at various points talking to the crowd about the enduring spirit of the songs as well as dedicating “Rock-n-Roll Radio” to L7 bassist Jennifer Finch, who died Saturday.

Kathleen Hanna and Tobi Vail of Bikini Kill performing on Sunday at Mosswood Meltdown.

(Dick Slaughter)

Bikini Kill passes the torch

The entire vibe around Sunday was fueled by female empowerment thanks to riot grrrl godmothers Bikini Kill. Throngs of young girls in Day-Glo punk garb and face paint mashed against the barricade to see the roots of revolutionary aggression come crashing through the chords of classics like “Carnival,” “Alien She” and, of course, “Rebel Girl.” But frontwoman Kathleen Hanna was just as stoked to see them having a good time in front of her. “I can’t wait to open for you in 10 years,” Hanna said to inspire all the girl bands yet to form in the crowd. . Giving a shout-out to female-fronted young bands like Bitchfit that played one of the most impressive ground-level sets of the weekend was a warm and fuzzy torch-passing moment that summed up the reason a festival like this is still so vital to the survival of punk culture.

When you walk into a room with Los Primos del Este, the happy-go-lucky guys immediately make you feel like part of the family. What they first cultivate with silly banter and lighthearted ad-libs eases into a more vulnerable, introspective atmosphere, comparable to a cathartic therapy session.

When I met the norteño-sax band in at Interscope Records — the major label that signed them in early 2023 — it was just a couple of hours before the official release of Los Primos’ new album, “Dulce Amargo,” on Thursday.

For a young band of players in their early 20s, they play it cool; “Dulce Amargo” is their eighth LP to date. The project feels thoroughly chiseled to their refined sonic tastes (influenced by Julión Álvarez, Legado 7 and Remmy Valenzuela) inflected with raw, sentimental lyricism and a wailing saxophone that commands each track with the spirit of an electric guitar.

“Play it back to back and actually start understanding the sound more and realize there’s new sounds being created,” said lead vocalist Geovanni Flores. “Because a lot of people get stuck in their old ways.”

Made up of five members — Flores, bassist and supporting vocalist Ariel Jesus Lopez, accordionist Juan Luis Hernandez, drummer Alejandro Tellez and saxophonist David Tellez — the group has built a steady momentum in the música mexicana genre. They’ve championed the resurgence of norteño-sax, a subgenre that fuses the accordion sounds of norteño music with an invigorating alto saxophone, made popular by legendary groups like Conjunto Primavera.

Since forming in 2017, the North Carolina-based band has gained over 2 million listeners on Spotify through catchy norteño-sax songs like “No Es Mentira (Version Norteña),” “Poema” and “Mami” — drawn together by a polka-like beat that has made them a staple of Mexican dance venues.

In 2024 alone, the subgenre grew by 39% in both the U.S. and Mexico, per Spotify.

Los Primos del Este formed in 2017 out of North Carolina.

(Arwen Clemans / Los Angeles Times)

The band took a few years to find its groove. Its 2020 debut album, “PDE,” experimented more with the prickly, sad sierreño sound popularized by acts like Eslabon Armado and DannyLux — as well as trap-infused corridos tumbados with a thumping tololoche. Still, this was music one could bop their head to, even if dance parties were limited during the global pandemic. With norteño-sax, the group could incorporate contemporary dating themes into songs that bring people physically closer to one another on the dance floor.

“There’s been a sense of maturity that’s happened within the group. In the past, we would just make music to make music and release it,” said Flores. “ We thought about every single detail now, even down to the album cover.”

Before getting into the thick of their recent music catalog, Los Primos del Este quickly unfurled details of the album cover, which shows the group sprawled across the flatbed of a white truck. The image was inspired by Alejandro Cartagena, a Dominican Republic-born Mexican creative who photographed carpooling laborers on the flatbeds along a highway in Monterrey, Mexico, in 2012. The project was a visual representation of how everyday people — often marginalized individuals — navigate transit in a sprawling suburban area.

Such an open stance on community issues appears to be a norteño-sax speciality. In 2000, their forefathers Conjunto Primavera previously told The Times that they make music for working-class audiences: “Wealthy people don’t like what we do.”

“Personally, I found myself in the bed of a truck at one point, low-income, trying to make something out of nothing,” said Lopez. “That’s the world I grew up in, and that’s the world I wanna show everybody. It’s not all sweet, you know?”

The band also nods to injustices faced by immigrant communities — including the recent fatal shootings of 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and 26-year-old Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Texas and Maine, respectively.

“We’re willing to take the heat,” said Lopez, referring to the band’s pro-immigrant stance. “The community looks at us as a negative presence, but in reality, we’re hard-working, dedicated family people.”

It is both that honesty and vulnerability that are etched into the 14-track LP “Dulce Amargo,” which translates to “bittersweet” in English. The band shared that each member contributed details of his own personal experience to the brainstorming sessions — a process they likened to therapy.

“We were comfortable enough with each other to let [our] stories be heard,” said Lopez. “In the Latino community, there is kinda like that stereotype [that] you have to be strong.  I think this message goes out to everybody — if you’re feeling something, specifically the men, it’s OK to just let it out.”

(Arwen Clemans/Los Angeles Times)

The hazy love melody “Tremenda,” for example, underscores an intense yearning for connection. Written after Lopez was starstruck by a woman, its first lyrics begin in wondrous marvel: “Tal vez fue tu mirada,” or, “Perhaps it was your gaze.”

“What’s the first thing you do when you look at somebody? I look at the eyes,” said Lopez. “They say the eyes are the doors to the soul.”

Alejandro Tellez’s contribution came with the punchy “Linda Sonrisa,” that pleads for someone to realize the realities of the mistreatment they’re facing with another lover.

“How many times are you gonna let him do you wrong until you realize that you have the right guy in front of you?” said Alejandro Tellez in a sing-song twang. “That’s a story that I went through in high school.”

For Flores, the EDM-fused, echoing melody “Mejor Sin Ti,” struck a personal chord; could a relationship be the only thing standing in your way to personal success? “Some people do hold you back, some people tie you down — that’s what I felt,” said Flores.

Hernandez gets a bit teary-eyed when talking about his favorite song, “Sentimientos,” a whirling polka-driven ballad about an avoidant situationship, he said. “To me, it’s like we both kinda love each other already, but we’re kind of afraid to say it,” he explained. “A lot of people are afraid of falling in love again, so that song hits close to home.”

The concept behind “Mereces Mejor,” a trance-inducing ode with floating melodies that implores a loved one to recognize their self-worth, was inspired by David Tellez’s own experience with unrequited love: “She’s trying to go to the bad guy, and I’m over here giving everything I got.”

As the five artists prepare to take their new album on the road — including an upcoming performance at the Lone Star State’s Truck Show Texas Fest on July 25 — they want to make clear that norteño-sax is not a stagnant subgenre. Like most of música mexicana, it, too, is evolving, both in sound and lyricism, encapsulating today’s complex dating culture. Their emotional vulnerability is welcome in a field flooded with artists that may otherwise shrink away from such honesty — perhaps due to the stigma of mental health issues in the Latino community, especially among men.

“We understand that changing the sound may not be for everybody, but we’re making music for the next generation,” said Lopez. “Who knows? Maybe their parents might end up liking this too.”

Jack White stepped in when Charley Crockett accidentally hired, then fired, a satanic doo-wop duo. Happens to everyone, right?

The outlaw country singer apparently thought the husband-and-wife duo known as Twin Temple were like Black Sabbath when he invited them to open two shows for him this week, a July 14 date in Troutdale, Ore., and another on July 18 in Paso Robles. With songs including “Satan’s a Woman,” “Lucifer, My Love,” “Let’s Have a Satanic Orgy” and “Burn Your Bible,” it’s anyone’s guess how Crockett missed the duo’s shtick.

“Today we were informed that Charley Crockett has decided to remove Twin Temple from his upcoming shows next week due to our Satanic imagery,” the musicians wrote on Instagram last week.

“Unfortunately, that means we will not be able to perform for you next week as planned. We are really disappointed as we were looking forward to getting back out and seeing you, and also what it meant as far as bringing different types of people and music lovers together. We are sorry to everyone who was planning to see us.

“We’re grateful for your support, not only of Twin Temple, but more importantly of artistic freedom. HAIL SATAN! 93/93”

Crockett, who dropped his 16th studio album, “Age of the Ram,” in April, posted his own since-deleted message on social media, writing, “Hail Satan? Not me Jack.”

Twin Temple, composed of married couple Alexandra and Zachary James, weren’t out of work for long. White, the former White Stripes frontman, who happened to be kicking off a world tour in support of his new album, “Frozen Charlotte,” caught wind of the debacle and stepped in.

“Twin Temple, Would you like to open my show in L.A. on September 29th at the Hollywood Palladium? Let me know,” White posted on Friday, adding, “Get in front of me Satan!”

The duo was quick to accept, commenting on White’s invite, “Unholy hell…. Sir Jack, you have no idea what this means to us. Lifelong fans- dead leaves on the dirty ground was one of the first songs I (Alex) ever learned on guitar. We were actually planning on coming to this show. It would be a most infernal pleasure to play the devils music with you.”

On Tuesday, Twin Temple announced their third record, “Doomed Lovers,” produced by Shooter Jennings (who also produced Crockett’s “Age of the Ram” and other recent albums). The album will drop Oct. 9 via their own Pentagrammaton Records. The duo told Rolling Stone on Tuesday that they were sad about the turn of events with Crockett but confirmed that their swanky Satan-loving doo-wop isn’t a sham.

“Satan’s the original outlaw, right? He’s a rebel angel,” Alexandra told the outlet. “He’s the one who questioned authority, fought for himself, refused to bow down or conform, and was like non serviam. That was a metaphor that resonated very strongly with me.”

She added, “It’s really fun to go shopping for a human skull and a Ronettes record in the same day, and we get to do that with our band.”

While Twin Temple has been booking shows and working on the album announcement, Crockett has continued to post about the drama from the road. “Well, now I know how it feels when they try to cancel you on the right AND the left,” he wrote on Facebook on Monday. “The thing is, I never subscribed. America can be a One Eyed Jack, but I’ve seen your other side.”

Thinking back on the last two years of his life full of album releases, filming schedules and tour dates, Finn Wolfhard requires squint-inducing concentration to keep it all straight.

“Jesus, a lot has happened,” he says, looking surprised. That’s an understatement.

In that time, the 23-year-old not only finished filming the Netflix hit show “Stranger Things,” which catapulted him to global stardom, and promoted the final season upon its premiere. He also released his feature film directorial debut (“Hell of a Summer,” co-directed with Billy Bryk, which hit theaters in April 2025). Then, he starred in another movie (A24’s creature feature “The Legend of Ochi”), directed a posthumous George Harrison stop-motion music video, wrote, recorded and put out his first solo album (“Happy Birthday”), and embarked on a 22-date tour before recording a new album.

On a video call from his family home in Vancouver, Canada, where he lives with his parents and older brother, he’s chatting about the release of that record, the eclectic, guitar-driven “Fire From the Hip,” which dropped Friday.

“I think it’s a nice day?” he offers when I ask what’s happening in Vancouver. “I don’t know. I’ve been in my basement studio all day, so I don’t … I think it’s nice.”

He’s been down in the basement doing press calls like this, he explains, undoubtedly a familiar routine after so many years in the limelight. He wears a baseball cap and an oversize brown sweater, tugging on the sleeves while he ponders.

Even if Wolfhard is exhausted by the press marathon, he doesn’t show it. He’s excited for the chance to be known on his own terms. He never fails to express gratitude for the projects that afforded him recognition and opportunity, but he’s ready to “take control of the narrative.”

“I spent my whole childhood standing on marks that other people told me to stand on and saying lines that other people told me to say,” he says. “Why wouldn’t I want to make my own stuff?”

Being in control also means being the face of the operation. Before “Happy Birthday” and “Fire From the Hip,” Wolfhard released a total of two records and an EP, plus a whole bunch of singles, with his previous bands, Calpurnia and the Aubreys. Being in a band was a natural fit for Wolfhard, who thrives in an ensemble where he can “hide behind the band name.”

Touring last year was his first time seeing his own name on the marquee.

“It’s just straight up me, and if I suck, I suck,” he laughs. “It’s not like I can be like, ‘Oh, man, we’re having disagreements in the band.’ It’s like, no, that’s you. So there was a little more pressure early on.”

Finn Wolfhard released “Fire From the Hip” on Friday.

(Victoria Stevens)

Stepping into the spotlight required Wolfhard, who admits he shies away from conflict, to own both the pressure and the power of being the one audiences came to hear.

When he got sick and had to cancel a show in Portland, Ore., he remembers feeling crushingly sad “letting down” his fans and bandmates — who, of course, assured him it was outside of his control and urged him not to be so hard on himself.

Wolfhard introduced many of the songs that ended up becoming “Fire From the Hip” to his bandmates while they were still on tour, and he says playing them live “cultivated the spirit” of the eventual recordings. Despite his collaborative ethos, there was a moment during the process where he had to learn how to put his foot down in real time.

“I remember suggesting something and people being like, ‘Ah, I don’t know if I want to do that.’ And I was like, ‘No, you don’t get to do that to me. It’s my record,’” he remembers. “It was very innocent — I don’t think there was much ego on either side. But I think I maybe set up too collaborative of an experience that day.”

“I think I sometimes make it feel like a democracy, which it is in a lot of ways,” he adds. “But also, in the end, it is up to me.”

That thought is echoed in the album’s cover art, an image of two miniature Finn Wolfhards facing off, donning colonial garb and brandishing weapons. It’s meant to represent dueling impulses inside of him, he explains.

Wolfhard, a true-blue music nerd, has been described online as an archetypical example of the “child of a Gen X cool dad,” in the same vein as Olivia Rodrigo. (His dad, a former screenwriter turned lawyer and Indigenous rights researcher, does sound cool, but it was his mom who first introduced him to the Beatles. His parents apparently met over a Stone Roses record.)

That sensibility is evident in his musical influences — “I wanted everything [on drums] to sound like the first two Wilco records,” he says — and in his approach to recording. “Happy Birthday” was recorded almost entirely on four-track cassette tapes, while “Fire From the Hip” uses 24-track reel-to-reel.

The album runs the gamut from its cheeky, surf-rock opener “I’ll Let You Finish” (yes, that is a reference to Kanye West’s infamous speech at the 2009 VMAs) to more ’90s alt-inspired tunes to a surprising dose of straightforward country-folk.

Lyrically, Wolfhard divides his songs into two categories: the “very personal” and the story songs written around books he was reading (“Knockemstiff” by Donald Ray Pollock) or quotes that made him laugh. The personal themes he explores are exactly what you would expect from an early-20s rocker raised in the public eye — namely, relationship expectations and existential fears about the future.

On the nostalgic piano ballad “Good Morning,” he imagines what it might be like to settle down somewhere “with a dog and a wife.”

“I haven’t lived that part of my life yet,” he says now. “So I can really easily get lost in thinking about what that looks like.”

When it comes to sharing his music, especially the more vulnerable tracks, Wolfhard knows his “Stranger Things” fame is the elephant in the room. Anything he sings can and might be used against him in the court of public opinion.

“I could either kind of say nothing and be totally private, because it is scary knowing that everything I say, at least one person will take it a certain way that I wouldn’t want them to. But I just don’t have the control,” he says.

“So if I don’t have the control, then there’s nothing really that I can do, other than try to be as truthful and passionate and well-meaning as I possibly can, you know?”

The double-edged sword of fandom hasn’t stopped Wolfhard or his musically-inclined “Stranger Things” co-stars from pursuing this path. Fellow Hawkins alums Joe Keery (who releases music under the moniker Djo) and Maya Hawke are indie darlings in their own right, and Wolfhard has previously referred to Keery as a mentor. None of them face the unique challenge of relatability in quite the same way, however.

“I’m aware that my specific problems are maybe not as relatable because of how specific of a life I have,” he said. “The only thing I can hope for is that some other person out there listens to it and relates to the same things that I do.”

Sometimes an air of wistfulness accompanies these admissions. When asked about how he feels about Los Angeles, he tells me that it’s complicated: “I think if I wasn’t a young actor, it would be a very different situation.” His favorite parts of the city are its repertory cinemas and lush neighborhoods like Mount Washington, where his godfather resides, because they look the most like Vancouver.

That said, he’s not through with Hollywood. He’ll be back in L.A. for an Oct. 13 show at the Fonda Theatre, and acting and directing are still on the agenda. He would like his next film project — other than the Matt Johnson and Bong Joon Ho projects he’s already committed to, of course — to be something more “personal.”

For now, though, the focus is music. Wolfhard launches a new tour this month, and he’s most looking forward to “doing dumb s—” with his friends.

He tells a quick story to illustrate: When he and the band last toured in Glasgow, Scotland, he was trying to leave the venue without being noticed. (“I have a hard time dealing with fan interaction,” he says.)

“We kind of made it into this joke thing, knowing it wouldn’t work, where me and Rand, my guitarist, were like, ‘let’s switch clothes.’ Rand pretended to be me and I pretended to be Rand,” he says. Miraculously, it worked up until the “very last second” before they stepped on the bus.

“I couldn’t help myself,” he says: He instinctively made eye contact with someone in the crowd. “They did a double take, like, ‘Wait, what?’”

It sounds like a scene straight out of “A Hard Day’s Night” — or maybe inspiration for his next film.

“I’m pretty in my head about things and want them to be a certain way,” he says. “The thing that I have to remind myself all the time is that, like, dude, you’re with your friends, you’re playing music — it’s the best.”

In 1975, 31-year-old Mick Jagger told People magazine that “I’d rather be dead than sing ‘Satisfaction’ at 45.” The Rolling Stones’ frontman is still very much alive, despite having performed that song in concert hundreds of times since then, most recently in 2024 during the band’s “Hackney Diamonds” tour. Jagger was 80 at the time.

“Time waits for no one,” as the Stones once sang, but apparently that doesn’t apply to the “World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band.” To paraphrase the group’s first Top 10 U.S. hit in 1964, time is on their side. Yes, it is.

Consider the fates of the British Invasion superstars who emerged from England alongside the Stones in the 1960s. The Beatles broke up in 1970. The Kinks dissolved in 1996. The original Animals imploded in 1966. The Who called it quits in 1982 but has reunited repeatedly, including for its recent North American farewell tour.

And then there’s the indestructible, indefatigable Rolling Stones. With the partnership of Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards still front and center, the Stones will release their 27th studio album, “Foreign Tongues,” on Friday. Over the decades, they have produced classics such as “Exile on Main St.” and “Some Girls,” mediocrity like “Steel Wheels,” and abominations such as “Dirty Work.” We rank the group’s six-decade studio output from worst to first. All albums are the U.S. editions.

27. ‘Dirty Work’ (1986)

Never has an album cover so captured a band’s mood. “Dirty Work” features a photo of sullen, unsmiling Rolling Stones looking like they’d rather be anywhere else. The music reflects that disinterest. Apart from the cover of “Harlem Shuffle,” nothing here is memorable. It’s no surprise that the Stones nearly broke up during this period.

26. ‘Undercover’ (1983)

The follow-up to the brilliant “Tattoo You” landed with a thud. Although the song “Undercover of the Night” nicely melds a solid guitar riff with trenchant lyrics about political corruption and violence in South America, the rest of the album wilts.

25. ‘Bridges to Babylon’ (1997)

Another in a series of disappointing releases, “Bridges to Babylon” has one great song, “Saint of Me,” and lots of filler.

24. ‘Steel Wheels’ (1989)

Touted as a return to form, this album certainly outshines “Undercover” and “Dirty Work.” But that’s not saying much. With dated production and too many songs that make a good first impression but fail to stick, “Steel Wheels” has gathered moss over the years.

23. ‘Voodoo Lounge’ (1994)

Like its predecessor “Steel Wheels,” this is another attempt to recapture their classic sound. To an extent, the record succeeds. “You Got Me Rocking” sounds like a throwback to something on “Exile on Main St.,” while the ballad “Out of Tears” echoes “Angie.” With the exception of “Love Is Strong,” however, most of the songs here are little more than pleasant exercises in nostalgia.

22. ‘The Rolling Stones: England’s Newest Hitmakers’ (1964)

A solid debut, “England’s Newest Hitmakers” features covers of songs by Willie Dixon, Chuck Berry and Jimmy Reed, firmly grounding the group in its American blues and R&B influences. The sole Jagger/Richards original here, “Tell Me,” only hints at the duo’s future songwriting prowess.

21. ‘Black and Blue’ (1976)

After guitar virtuoso Mick Taylor’s departure from the Stones in late 1974, the band used “Black and Blue” to audition potential replacements. They settled on Ronnie Wood, a former member of the Faces who, ever since then, has engaged in the ancient art of guitar weaving with Keith Richards. Heavy on grooves and jams, this album sometimes feels unfocused and indulgent. The excellent ballads “Memory Motel” and “Fool to Cry” are essential.

20. ‘12X5’ (1964)

A step forward from their debut, “12X5” has the magnificent covers “Time Is on My Side” and “It’s All Over Now.” For those who like their Stones bluesy, early albums like this offer a cornucopia of treasures.

19. ‘Blue & Lonesome’ (2016)

Recorded in just three days, this album of blues covers sizzles. The Stones sound absolutely committed, with Jagger’s harmonica and vocals particularly strong.

18. ‘The Rolling Stones, Now!’ (1965)

On the band’s third U.S. album, the Stones rock harder and softer. Their version of Willie Dixon’s “Little Red Rooster” is a slow burn. The ballad “Heart of Stone,” one of their best early originals, made the Billboard Top 20.

17. ‘Foreign Tongues’ (2026)

The Stones have rarely sounded looser or more alive. Produced again by the classic-rocker whisperer Andrew Watt (Paul McCartney, Elton John, Pearl Jam), the band delivers a clutch of strong songs. In a just world, the single “In the Stars” would be a hit. “Back in Your Life,” fueled by some of Wood’s most sensitive and impassioned playing, is a stunner. At 14 songs and 62 minutes, the album would have benefited from trimming three or four of the more generic tunes. Still, it’s amazing that Jagger and Richards, both 82, and Wood, 79, have made such a fresh and vital record. Sometimes you can get what you want.

16. ‘A Bigger Bang’ (2005)

For the band’s first album of originals in eight years, the Stones remind you what makes them great. The first of their three late-career triumphs, “A Bigger Bang” brings attitude, funk, dirty rockers and dreamy ballads. The blazing “Rough Justice” and the slinky, sexy “Rain Fall Down” are topflight.

15. ‘Hackney Diamonds’ (2023)

Eighteen years passed between the release of “A Bigger Bang” and this album. It was worth the wait. “Hackney Diamonds” is another strong effort, with the banger “Angry” sounding urgent and, well, genuinely angry. The gospel-tinged “Sweet Sounds of Heaven,” featuring Lady Gaga, finds her and Jagger trading vocals and pushing each other to the stratosphere. It’s the best song the group has made since “Tattoo You’s” “Waiting on A Friend” and “Start Me Up” in 1981. The absence of late drummer Charlie Watts is felt, but Jagger and Richards prove that old geezers can still rock.

14. ‘Out of Our Heads’ (1965)

A very strong outing that includes originals “The Last Time,” “Play With Fire” and “Satisfaction,” one of the best rock songs ever written.

13. ‘It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll’ (1974)

Keith Richards’ deepening heroin problem meant Jagger had to carry more of the load himself. On this album, he acquits himself admirably. The anthemic title track positively swaggers. The poignant “Time Waits for No One” features one of Taylor’s most beautiful solos, a fitting coda to the end of his five-year career with the Stones. A fine album with several good songs and a couple great ones.

12. ‘December’s Children (And Everybody’s)’ (1965)

A hodgepodge of live cuts, outtakes, British LP tracks and singles, this album shows the Stones rapidly gaining confidence and playing with equal parts finesse and fire. Any album with “Get Off of My Cloud” and “As Tears Go By” is worth the price of admission.

11. ‘Their Satanic Majesties Request’ (1967)

Released months after “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” this occasionally ill-advised foray into psychedelia pales in comparison to the Beatles’ masterpiece. That doesn’t mean it’s bad. In fact, the Stones never sounded as adventurous or experimental. When it works, as it does on “She’s a Rainbow” and “2000 Light Years From Home,” candy-colored bliss follows.

10. ‘Emotional Rescue’ (1980)

An underrated gem often overshadowed by its predecessor, “Some Girls,” and its successor, “Tattoo You,” “Emotional Rescue” finds the Stones in fine form at the dawn of a new decade. The rhythm section of bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Watts locks in, while Richards and Wood converse with their guitars as only they can. Jagger sounds energized on the rockers “Let Me Go” and “She’s So Cold” and sexy on the incredibly funky “Dance (Pt. 1).”

9. ‘Goats Head Soup’ (1973)

Considered a big letdown after the magisterial “Exile on Main St.,” this album has received a well-deserved critical reappraisal and aged like a fine wine. It’s not the Stones at their peak, but close enough. “Angie” is absolutely gorgeous, while “Star Star” captures the Stones at their most profane.

8. ‘Tattoo You’ (1981)

Needing new material for their 1981 tour, the Stones cobbled together “Tattoo You” from leftovers and half-finished songs dating back to “Goats Head Soup.” Jagger penned new lyrics, recorded new vocals, and presto — the band made its last classic. “Start Me Up,” the band’s best rocker since “Brown Sugar,” propelled the album to multiplatinum sales and shook stadiums around the world. It still does.

7. ‘Aftermath’ (1966)

The first Stones album composed entirely by Jagger and Richards, “Aftermath” represents a quantum leap forward or two. Brian Jones, before drugs and paranoia dimmed his creative spark, made some of his greatest contributions, elevating “Paint It Black” with his sitar and adding the indelible marimba riff to “Under My Thumb.” The Stones had finally lived up to all the hype.

6. ‘Between the Buttons’ (1967)

The American version kicks off with the one-two-three punch of “Let’s Spend the Night Together,” “Yesterday’s Papers” and “Ruby Tuesday” and doesn’t let up. Arguably the band’s poppiest album, it sounds like groovy Swinging London set to music.

5. ‘Some Girls’ (1978)

After the lackluster “Black and Blue” and the mixed critical reception of “It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll” and “Goats Head Soup,” some wondered if the Stones had lost their musical magic. They needn’t have worried. The band, hungry to prove the doubters wrong, made one of its strongest albums. With Wood now fully integrated into the group , punky, guitar-centric rockers like “Respectable,” “When the Whip Comes Down” and “Shattered” snarl. Jagger, entranced by the sounds coming out of New York’s discos at the time, contributed the No. 1 “Miss You.” Add “Beast of Burden” and the countryish “Far Away Eyes” to the mix and you have the ingredients for a stunning comeback.

4. ‘Beggars Banquet’ (1968)

The start of one of the strongest four-album runs in rock history, “Beggars Banquet” is a near-perfect listen from beginning to end. New producer Jimmy Miller helps strip the band down to its rawest, raunchiest essence on songs like “Sympathy for the Devil,” “Stray Cat Blues,” and “Street Fighting Man.” For the first time, the Stones had released an album on par with some of the Beatles’ best work. Indispensable.

3. ‘Sticky Fingers’ (1971)

Unbreakable love (“Wild Horses”); heartbreak (“I’ve Got the Blues”); slavery, interracial sex and heroin (“Brown Sugar”); addiction (“Sister Morphine”) — “Sticky Fingers” has it all, along with some of the most powerful music in the Stones’ catalog. If a Martian came to Earth and wanted to know what made the Stones special, a listen to “Sticky Fingers” would make it abundantly clear.

2. ‘Let It Bleed’ (1969)

By the end of the ’60s, the dream had faded. Vietnam, inner-city riots, and the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. had cast a pall over the Day-Glo optimism of the Love Generation. The Rolling Stones were there to chronicle the impending hangover. “Gimme Shelter” reflected the growing dread of the times. It’s among the darkest, grittiest and most transcendent songs ever recorded, with Jagger singing about rape and murder over Richards’ shimmering guitar. In the powerhouse “Midnight Rambler,” Jagger takes on the persona of a killer, even name-checking the Boston Strangler. Dark stuff. Yet the superb “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” replete with a gospel choir, the country stylings of “Let It Bleed” and “Love in Vain,” sung by Jagger with utter conviction, give the album incredible diversity and depth.

1. ‘Exile on Main St.’ (1972)

And then there was one. Recorded largely in the steamy, sweltering basement of Richards’ rented French villa, Nellecôte, “Exile” reeks of filth, decadence and decay. With Jagger’s vocals often buried deep in the muddy and murky mix, the album initially sounds like a druggy demo. But listen again. And again. Slowly, it reveals itself as quintessential Stones, a potent admixture of styles, sounds and soul. Richards tosses off one indelible riff after another, making “Rocks Off,” “Happy,” “Tumbling Dice” and “All Down the Line” rock and roll perfection. You like your Stones with a dash of Americana? “Sweet Virginia” might be the band’s best country rocker. Blues? Try “Ventilator Blues.” Gospel? “Shine a Light,” accented with Billy Preston’s piano and organ, transports listeners to a higher place. Other Stones records contain more classics and better production, but none holds together as well as a whole or comes as close to the sublime as this one.

Marc Ballon, a former Times, Forbes and Inc. Magazine reporter, teaches an advanced writing class at USC. He lives in Fullerton.

Justin Bieber better be a fast singer.

The World Cup final halftime show already was going to feature three superstar acts with 121 Billboard Hot 100 hits, 20 No. 1 singles and 12 Grammy Awards among them.

Somehow that must not have been enough star power, because another performer with 123 hits, eight chart toppers and two Grammys has been added to the lineup.

Bieber was announced Wednesday as the fourth co-headliner for the July 19 intermission extravaganza at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., joining South Korean boy band BTS, U.S. pop culture icon Madonna and Latin music superstar Shakira.

Four gigantic worldwide acts might seem like a lot to cram into an 11-minute (!) show, but apparently curator Chris Martin doesn’t see it that way. In addition to the quartet of headliners, Martin also has lined up Nigerian Afrobeats performer Burna Boy, soon-to-be-departing Los Angeles Philharmonic conductor Gustavo Dudamel and Staten Island elementary school choir the PS22 Chorus (which will be performing with Martin’s band Coldplay).

Oh yeah, the Muppets will be there, too. Bieber will be lucky if he gets a chance to sing a bar or two from a list of hits that includes “Peaches,” “Sorry,” “Love Yourself” and “Daisies.”

Nonetheless, he seems happy to be part of the festivities, which will support the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund, weeks after attending the U.S.-Paraguay game at SoFi Stadium, where he gave a surprise performance of his song “Yukon” in a backstage area.

“The FIFA World Cup brings the world together in a way nothing else can,” Bieber said in a statement. “I’m grateful to be part of this Halftime Show, and even more grateful knowing it’s already helping expand access to education for children around the world.”

One song that is sure to be featured during the set is this year’s World Cup anthem, “Dai Dai,” by Shakira and Burna Boy. The two acts already performed the song during the tournament’s opening ceremony in Mexico City.

Speaking of hit collaborations, Madonna recently charted with “Bring Your Love,” a duet with Sabrina Carpenter. Not to start any rumors, but surely they can squeeze one more pop superstar onto that stage, right?

Storied norteño group Los Tigres del Norte announced Tuesday that they are teaming up with departing L.A. Philharmonic conductor Gustavo Dudamel for a special performance Aug. 21 at the Hollywood Bowl.

The show is part of a series titled “Celebrating Gustavo at the Bowl,” which looks to send off Dudamel in style as he transitions into his new role as the music and artistic director of the New York Philharmonic. The “Jaula de Oro” artist’s appearance is part of “Gustavo’s Fiesta,” which will also feature performances by other prominent Latino artists.

The norteño act has sold 37 million albums and recorded 500 songs over a career that’s spanned five decades. They have seven Grammy Awards, eight Latin Grammys and have had 66 songs land on Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs chart, the most of any Latin music act ever.

In 2018, Los Tigres del Norte became the first norteño act to headline at the Hollywood Bowl.

Recently, the “La Puerta Negra” hitmakers were immortalized in U.S. pop culture history when its members appeared in animated form in a December 2025 episode of “The Simpsons” and performed an original corrido about the escapades of Homer Simpson and Pedro Chespirito (also known as the Bumblebee Man).

Also featured on the Aug. 21 lineup are Grammy-winning singer Lila Downs, the all-female Mariachi Reyna de Los Ángeles, the explosive cumbia group La Sonora Dinamita and the legendary Mexican bolero trio Los Panchos.

The show will serve as Dudamel’s third-to-last performance as the music and artistic director of L.A. Philharmonic. On Aug. 22, he will be in concert with Foo Fighters. His farewell weekend will conclude Aug. 23 and will serve as a benefit for his homeland of Venezuela, which suffered catastrophic losses from twin earthquakes in late June.

Donations will benefit Dudamel’s Earthquake Recovery to Support Venezuelan Communities fund, in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme and the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean fund.

One Wednesday evening in May, at the boutique hotel Dream Hollywood — located just off the Walk of Fame — a young hotel staff member shuffled over to her co-worker to discuss a special guest on the top floor. Together they exchanged whispers about an artist’s unknown whereabouts and whether or not they would catch him on his descent to the first floor.

The name “Tito Double P” slipped out, referring to the Mexican corrido singer who happened to be in town promoting his latest album, “Acomodo.”

I met the 28-year-old on the top floor, where he opted for a warm, friendly hug in lieu of a firm business handshake. We were quickly rushed into a side room to conduct his last interview of the evening.

Those who’ve followed Tito Double P’s musical journey since 2023 would likely describe him as a chaotic force, with weathered vocals, off-the-cuff ad libs, riotous pelvic thrusts and suggestive tongue expressions.

Come Sunday, he’ll bring the ruckus when he headlines Belico Fest in L.A.’s BMO Stadium. But when we spoke about his second solo album, “Acomodo,” the Nayarit-born, Sinaloa-raised singer, whose real name is Jesús Roberto Laija García, arrived polished, perfumed and poised.

“After this LP, don’t be surprised if you see different things from me,” said Laija García.

Released on May 28, the LP contains 23 corridos, which see Laija García strike the commanding tone of brazen CEO. In its focus track, “Me Vale V,” the singer firmly declares he is manifesting his dreams and not paying anyone else mind. Its lyrics reveal it all: “Ya van tres días que no paro, pero bien trabado” (I’ve been going nonstop for three days now, but I’m totally locked in).

But listeners also get a more vulnerable side of the músicana mexicana singer, who agonizes over heartbreak in “La Fama” — while simultaneously voicing his vice for women and boozy escapades. Throughout the record, the singer sprinkles in the catchphrase, “Bélico pero no tanto, mija,” which translates to “warlike, but not too much, my dear” — striking a balance between his hard-shelled exterior and inner tenderness, namely in the yearning jazzy corrido “Pase y Pase,” in which he pleads for a late-night booty call.

Most notably, “Acomodo” boasts no features whatsoever, a rarity in an industry where artist collaborations play a key role in bringing in bigger audiences (and bigger payouts).

“Many people called me to ask why they weren’t going to be on [the record],” he said. But the solo move marked a milestone achievement for Laija García, who had no designs of becoming an international musical marvel.

“I was never the child who sang, who played the guitar in school festivities or at family parties,” said Laija García in a calm tone — occasionally referring to his stage name in the third person.

The singer still can’t fathom his own success. He cut his teeth by penning career-defining songs for his famous cousin, Peso Pluma — including anthemic corridos like “El Belicon,” “Siempre Pendientes” and “AMG.” These standout ballads touted a rugged lifestyle with elements of organized crime, which aided his primo’s ascent to the mainstream.

Tito Double P released his second solo album “Acomodo.”

(Adan Ornelas Anta)

In the process of composing his cousin’s Grammy-winning 2023 album, “Génesis,” Laija García asked him if he could also release his own material. “Let’s go!” he recalled Peso Pluma saying. “Your first song will be a duet with me.”

The plan was to debut Tito Double P with “La People,” a fiery narcocorrido that details the inner life of a cartel’s tactical security guard, who narrowly escapes a police raid.

But Laija García’s rollout plan took a detour when an unmastered version of his track was leaked to TikTok in spring 2023 — a bouncy tune he later renamed “Dembow Belico,” which is characterized by a Dominican-style boom-chi-boom-chick rhythm and raw, spitfire lyrics. This party track introduced audiences to a version of Tito Double P that radiated a lighthearted madness — fueled by Skyy vodka and Old Parr whiskey, as per the song’s lyrics.

“I liked it, it was something new,” said Luis R. Conriquez, who called up the new singer to be a collaborator. “What makes him special is his voice, his sound. He’s his own person.”

Together with Conriquez and Joel De La P, “Dembow Belico” was released on June 5, 2023, and became Tito Double P’s official debut in the music world — even giving life to one of the most viral clips of Mexican boxer Canelo Alvarez, who can be seen awkwardly dancing to it.

“From there on, Tito Double P was another persona,” said Laija García. Throughout his lively retelling of the story, he added a series of sound effects to move the story line — among them, wacha, pum, pum, pum, gol. “More than anything, Tito Double P came across as a character, because that guy was totally crazy, he didn’t give a damn.”

“More than anything, Tito Double P came across as a character, because that guy was totally crazy, he didn’t give a damn,” said Jesús Roberto Laija García, better known as Tito Double P.

(Adan Ornelas Anta)

In real life, Laija García considers himself a timid, camera-shy guy. That’s why he chose an illustration for the cover of his 2024 debut album “Incómodo,” rather than a real-life image of himself; the LP title directly translates to “discomfort.”

“I was going to be one of those artists that [only] releases songs, because [I thought,] ‘How embarrassing would it be if I got up on stage?’” he mused. “But now, I dominate the stage from head to toe. And I don’t want to come down.”

The debut record also served as an experimental project for Tito Double P, whose hard-won swagger elevated every sound he toyed with — whether it was on the brass-heavy banda song “La 701” with Luis R Conriquez, the techno thump of “La Bandolera,” the heavy-hitting urban track “Linda” with Neton Vega and the guitar-powered ballad “Los Cuadros” ft. Peso Pluma).

Featuring collaborations with established acts, such as Natanael Cano, Junior H and Grupo Frontera, the album peaked at No. 11 on the Billboard 200 chart and helped the rising star distinguish himself from his high-profile cousin — who he toppled from the No. 1 spot on the Top Latin Albums chart, five weeks after his debut release.

Although Laija García hasn’t shied away from embracing that familial tie either; in May, both Tito Double P and Peso Pluma concluded their “Dinastía” tour following their joint 2025 album of the same name.

“I still see comments on TikTok where people are surprised that we are cousins,” remarked Laija García.

Now with “Acomodo” — which debuted at the top of both Spotify Top Albums USA and Top Global Charts across all genres — Tito Double P affirmed his rightful place in música mexicana upper echelons.

“That’s why it’s called ‘Acomodo,’ because everything is aligning itself as it should be,” he said.

As Tito Double P made his way to the lobby, a member of the Dream Hollywood valet — who likely bore witness to Hollywood A-listers and other luminaries — asked if he could take a picture with the singer. “Tito, Tito, a photo please!” asked the employee.

Laija García flashed a friendly smile. Thankfully for the attendant, Tito Double P is always camera-ready.

Donny Hathaway had already been expounding on the splendors and indignities of American life by the time he got to the Troubadour in West Hollywood in the last week of August 1971.

A classically trained pianist with a declamatory voice shaped by his years in the church, Hathaway closed Side 1 of his 1970 debut with an original called “Tryin’ Times” — “Maybe folks wouldn’t have to suffer,” he sang, “if there was more love for your brother” — and finished the LP with a stately rendition of Nina Simone’s “To Be Young, Gifted and Black.” Months after the album was released, he dropped a joy bomb of a holiday single, “This Christmas,” that unapologetically made space for a Black experience in the yuletide-industrial complex.

Donny Hathaway performs at Mister Kelly’s in Chicago in 1971.

(Val Mazzenga / Chicago Tribune / Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

Yet Hathaway captured something indelibly American during his week of shows at the Troubadour, which were recorded (along with a later gig at New York’s Bitter End) for the singer’s classic “Live” album that came out in February 1972. On an LP full of spine-tingling performances, the undeniable high point is Hathaway’s take on Carole King’s “You’ve Got a Friend” — a clear-eyed if optimistic portrait of resilience and cultural exchange.

King — who’d made her name in the 1960s as half of a prolific Brill Building songwriting duo with her husband, Gerry Goffin — wrote “You’ve Got a Friend” after leaving Goffin and moving to Los Angeles with her two young daughters. Here she remade herself as a low-key singer-songwriter dispensing wise yet unflashy tunes about love, home and family — part of a gentle resetting of pop’s mood after the turmoil of the previous decade.

Cut like the rest of the album at A&M Studios on La Brea Avenue, “You’ve Got a Friend” helped drive King’s 1971 “Tapestry” LP to sales of more than 10 million copies and to a boatload of trophies (including album, record and song of the year) at the Grammy Awards; the singer’s pal James Taylor, whom she’d performed with for the first time in late 1970 at the Troubadour, topped Billboard’s Hot 100 with his own cover of “Friend” featuring background vocals by Joni Mitchell.

On the advice of Atlantic Records’ Jerry Wexler, Hathaway also recorded “Friend” as a studio duet with Roberta Flack, a fellow Howard University alum; their take sat in the Top 20 of Billboard’s R&B chart as Hathaway began his run at the Troubadour — popular enough that the audience on “Live” erupts at the sound of Hathaway’s opening organ lick.

Carole King at A&M Studios in Los Angeles in 1970.

(Jim McCrary / Redferns via Getty Images)

Indeed, the crowd is really the thing in this live version of “You’ve Got a Friend.” Hathaway and his band — including guitarist Phil Upchurch, bassist Willie Weeks and 16-year-old Fred White (soon to be of Earth, Wind & Fire) on drums — are cooking, to be clear; the groove is funky and viscous, and Hathaway’s vocal is gorgeous, not least in his nimble ad-libs.

But it’s his interplay with the few hundred folks in the room that elevates the recording to a deeply moving piece of art.

For King (and Taylor), the song’s promise of unflagging support is an intimate one-to-one matter; their renditions use homey acoustic arrangements to create a picture of two people exchanging confidences. In Hathaway’s hands, “Friend” is about community: Before he even asks them to, the audience takes over for him on lead vocals in the song’s chorus, a congregation in all but name.

Given the proximity to the civil rights movement, it’s impossible to hear Hathaway’s “You’ve Got a Friend” as disconnected from the struggles of Black people. At the Troubadour (as in his and Flack’s duet), he nixes the song’s second verse to arrive more quickly at the bridge, in which he describes a cold world filled with those who’d “hurt you and try to desert you” — even “take your soul if you let them.”

As Emily J. Lordi notes in her 2016 book about “Donny Hathaway Live,” the crowd lays back during the bridge before rejoining Hathaway for the song’s second chorus; the decision, somehow spontaneous and collective at once, is an expert bit of record-making on the part of an audience that, according to legend, hadn’t been told the concert was being taped.

“From this perspective,” Lordi writes of Hathaway’s fans — some number of whom had surely availed themselves of the Troubadour’s bar, as she points out — “they are not stealing the show so much as they are holding him up, ensuring he won’t sing the duet alone.” Together, performer and audience are turning back (not that they necessarily had a choice) to the ugly truths that singer-songwriter music sometimes sought to move past.

In this way, Hathaway’s “Friend” becomes a reinvention of a reinvention — an act of moral imagination about as American as it gets.

This wasn’t the only instance of a Black soul singer interpreting a tune King had written as a single mom newly arrived in L.A.: In May 1972, the Isley Brothers released a sultry cover of “It’s Too Late”; a month after that, Aretha Franklin’s live “Amazing Grace” album mashed up “You’ve Got a Friend” with “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,” completing the gospel-ification that Hathaway had begun in a bastion of white rock culture temporarily remade as an African American church.

Yet in Hathaway’s “Friend” you can hear the whole story American music tells about identity and belonging (and about commercial ambition).

“This might be a record here,” Hathaway tells the crowd near the end of the song, and so it was — a document of adaptation, a testament to borrowing, a bulwark against pretty fictions.

The bass legend and superproducer Don Was didn’t expect to be covering Curtis Mayfield’s Civil Rights-era anthem “This Is My Country” on the road in 2026. But lately, the chaos in the United States made the song seem regrettably apropos.

“It wasn’t supposed to still feel potent. It was supposed to be something that served a moment,” said Was, who included the defiant single on his 2025 album “Groove In the Face of Adversity.”

“It’s shocking to be here in 2026 and, whatever distance we traveled from 1966 until now, to see it all get reset,” Was said. “That song’s a more powerful statement now than it was then. It was inconceivable that it would still be relevant — this is supposed to be the utopian age of Aquarius. This is not the way it was supposed to turn out.”

Was remembers the tumult, violence and hope that came out of that era in his hometown of Detroit. The city’s music, famed for rough-hewn virtuosity from blues to soul to techno, is the spring that waters “Adversity.” It is, remarkably, the 73-year-old’s first solo album after a career spanning the pioneering electro-pop band Was (Not Was) and deep producer relationships with the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Bonnie Raitt.

He also spent years in Bob Weir & Wolf Bros with the late Grateful Dead founder, and will play from the Dead’s landmark “Blues for Allah” on his tour that stops at Lodge Room on July 7.

With a backing band of studio killers dubbed the Pan-Detroit Ensemble, “Adversity” has an expansive modern atmosphere, yet a lived-in, filament-bulb quality in the playing that carries through funk, jazz, rock and R&B. It’s largely a covers record, but you wouldn’t know it from the depth of the revisions — veering from the Yusef Lateef standard “Nubian Lady” to Hank Williams’ “I Ain’t Got Nothin’ But Time,” closing with funk group Cameo’s “Insane.”

“I’ve been carrying it around in my head for 30 years,” Was said. “This first album to me is really a handshake, a ‘nice to meet you,’ this jambalaya of Detroit sounds.” While much of the source material comes from elsewhere, the cumulative mood is extremely personal to an artist who has spent his life helping the greats find true expression.

“I’ve come to admire artists who are willing to go in deep inside their most personal thoughts for the sake of helping the listener understand their own lives,” he said. “To help them deal with the trauma of being human — especially in these times, man.”

Tops on that list is the late Grateful Dead founder Bob Weir — who died in January at 78 — as a model for a band staying fearless and uncompromising. Was, still heartbroken about the loss of his friend and bandmate, recalled their first time on tour.

“When Bobby called asking me to play bass with the Wolf Bros, I thought at the very least, this is going to be a master class in losing self-consciousness and forgetting about fear,” Was said. “If the band stumbled, the audience wouldn’t walk out. They appreciated the fact that you were trying to do something new for them. Then there’d be a couple moments every night with an incredible exchange between the musicians and you can feel the audience becoming a member of the band.”

Playing the Dead’s “Blues for Allah” on this tour — an LP rooted in Middle Eastern scales, pirouetting time signatures and improvisational telepathy — put him in communion with his old friend.

“I used to think that songs like ‘King Solomon’s Marbles’ were just jams and conversations on the spot. But when we really got into it, there’s a form underneath and you can take tremendous liberty with that form,” Was said.

Was’ production career was built on a similar principle.

His early band Was (Not Was) remains a visionary electro-pop act with subtle, salient politics. “Out Come the Freaks” is a favorite on Pride month dance floors — “If you just wanted to do poppers and dance all night, it worked, and if you wanted to think about the government careening out of control, it worked too,” Was said of the band’s club material.

The late Ozzy Osbourne sang on the band’s international hit “Shake Your Head,” alongside a winking, very game Kim Basinger. The actor was a replacement after Madonna backed out, leaving the proto-rave tune one of the era’s most unlikely collaborations.

He recalled Ozzy fondly. “In 1975, this folk group I was in booked us to open for Black Sabbath at the Toledo Sports Arena, playing for a bunch of 14-year-old white boys on amphetamines,” Was said. “They weren’t having it. I’ve heard the tape of that show, and the drummer was bleeding from being hit by so many bottles that we had to stop playing. That was my first exposure to Ozzy, so I was a little afraid to do the session, but he was up for an adventure.”

Don Was and the Pan-Detroit Ensemble

(Gemma Corfield)

A Stones confidant and producer from 1994’s “Voodoo Lounge” up until 2023’s “Hackney Diamonds” (where Andrew Watt took the helm), Was had nothing but praise for the band, and still admits to a twinge of fandom in their presence.

“There’s never been a day in the studio with the Rolling Stones where I didn’t look around the room and go, ‘Oh my God,’” he said. “I’ve known Mick for over 30 years, but the last time they played L.A. at SoFi Stadium, Mick came walking down that stage and I was like, ‘Wow, there he is, it’s 1965 again.’”

With Dylan, he recalled the mercurial genius’ impish side. “I was producing Dylan, and George Harrison came in to play guitar. Bob was messing with him, Bob pushed the engineer aside and he ran the tape machine. George had never heard the song before, didn’t know what key it was in, and Bob just starts the tape. George played a respectable solo, but clearly it was rough. Bob, just to be funny, stopped the machine and said ‘That’s it, perfect.’ George turns to me and said, ‘What do you think, Don?’ And Bob goes, “Yeah, what do you think, Don?’ I’m looking at these two guys and time slowed down. I remembered trying to sell my car to get a ticket to go to New York to see the Concert for Bangladesh. Now they’re asking me what I think. I was paralyzed.”

“A voice appeared in my head,” he said, “Telling me, ‘He’s not paying you to be a fan.‘ So I said to George, ‘It was good, man. Let’s see if we can beat it.’ You can’t allow the iconography to dictate the outcome in the studio. You have to put that aside.”

As president of Blue Note Records, the estimable jazz label he’s led for more than a decade, Was relentlessly looks forward. He’s released restless modern records by Domi & JD Beck, Fathers, Makaya McCraven and Julian Lage (the hotshot jazz guitarist now playing with Dylan). He’s refreshingly optimistic about challenging music in streaming’s ruthless economy.

“Don’t make music for the delivery system,” Was said. “I don’t think about streaming, I think about touching people. If you do that, nothing has changed fundamentally in the music business. If your purpose is to get under people’s skin and make them feel something, that’s the same job it was for Mozart. How people listen can keep changing, but I don’t think the palette of human emotion changes, and that’s who you’re addressing.”

Was came from a working-class industrial city, making music reflective of Detroit’s technological upheaval and economic neglect. “Adversity” is a beacon to keep playing in spite of everything.

“I think that the salvation of musicians is that no matter what happens, what technological advancements come along, there’s still nothing like the experience of being in the same room as people who are playing together,” Was said. “It’s always been tough, man. It’s harder these days to buy a Ferrari as a musician, but I don’t know that that’s necessary. I have total confidence that the opportunity is there for anybody who is willing to give the audience a meaningful experience.”

“I’ve talked about rain on this show more than I have in my entire life,” Kittrell says.

It was a constant consideration, both on set and in the writers room. Weather became a way to distinguish Elle from those around her in Seattle. The locals never carry umbrellas; Elle shows up with a pink one.

“We had a writer from Seattle who always said the city gets a bad rap because of the rain,” Kittrell says. “But the rain is what makes it beautiful — it makes Seattle green.”

Elle entering the halls of Rainier West High School with her pink umbrella.

(Kimberley French / Prime Video)

That philosophy stayed with the writers, later showing up in a line Miles (Jacob Moskovitz), Elle’s crush, says to her, and ultimately leading them to Garbage’s “Only Happy When It Rains” as the show’s theme. “We were like, of course,” says Kittrell. “This is what we’ve been talking about the entire time.”

The song was originally meant to end the pilot. “Then we decided we should just be hearing it in every single episode,” says Neustadter. (The pilot instead uses Radiohead’s “Creep,” which also bookends the series.) The main title sequence, an animated “saga sell” from the studio Shine, tells the story of Elle’s move from Bel-Air to Seattle.

“We’re constantly reminding the audience of the contrast between Elle’s essence and the world she’s now in,” Neustadter adds. “There’s an optimism to ‘Only Happy When It Rains’ that feels very Elle Woods. And the irony of it is so delightful.”