song

Only Taylor Swift could compel hundreds of Angelenos to spend their Saturday morning at a listening party film screening for an album they’ve already heard.

“The Official Release Party of a Showgirl,” which hit theaters this weekend for a limited three-day run, features the debut of the Swift-directed “The Fate of Ophelia” music video, behind-the-scenes footage and notes from Swift about the inspiration for each of the songs on her new record, “The Life of a Showgirl.” The 89-minute companion film opened to an estimated $15.8 million on Friday and is projected to gross more than $30 million over the weekend.

The box office success comes as no surprise, “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” brought in $96 million in 2023 in its first four days in theaters and became the highest-grossing concert film of all time. Hitting 21 countries in 21 months, the Eras Tour itself earned more than $2 billion in revenue, the first music tour to ever hit that milestone.

Even as “Showgirl” seems destined to become Swift’s most divisive album yet — with critics and fans alike split in their reactions — the Taylormania was palpable Saturday morning at AMC Century City, which that day screened “The Official Release Party of a Showgirl” 21 times across three screens.

Madison Story, 34, made sure to catch the film at the luxury Dolby Cinema, calling “Showgirl” Swift’s “most cinematic album yet.”

“When I was listening to it, I just pictured Nora Ephron movies,” Story said. In true rom-com fashion, the longtime Swiftie wore a Lover cardigan. Others sported various Swift tour merch, sequined scarves and showgirl-inspired attire.

Taylor Swift’s new album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” is advertised outside of AMC Century City 15, which is screening “The Official Release Party of a Showgirl.”

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

As theatergoers took their seats during the prelude to the show, Swift’s “Reputation” opener “Ready for It?” played over a slideshow of “Showgirl” promo photos. At 10 a.m. on the dot, the screen went dark, then switched to an Eras Tour-style countdown clock — set to 12 seconds, for Swift’s 12th studio album (which, naturally, also features 12 songs).

When Swift finally graced the screen to introduce the program, audience members were mesmerized. Hardly anyone made a peep.

“I’m Taylor, the official hypothetical showgirl in question,” Swift said, telling the crowd that in making the movie that’s not quite a movie, she was, as always, “trying to surprise you guys.”

“I hope you guys have a blast. I hope you sing along,” she said.

Despite Swift’s invitation, and the help of lyric displays for each “Showgirl” track, the crowd was surprisingly quiet throughout the screening aside from a few rounds of applause and occasional laughter at Swift’s trademark awkward-girl charisma. (“My bread is actually a music video star!” was a crowd-pleaser.)

“I feel like her quirkiness has been the same since she did [her] debut [album], and it’s neat to see that that has lasted through all the different iterations and eras,” said moviegoer Kelley Sheets, 30.

Sheets and her friends Sarah Borland, 29, and Ariana Diaz, 30, were taken aback by the quiet atmosphere in the auditorium, especially compared to “The Eras Tour” movie.” They suspected the album might be too fresh for people to feel comfortable singing and dancing along.

Attendees’ low energy may have also been a symptom of the morning showtime. Still, their delight was clear from their wide smiles and intermittent head bobbing, most pronounced during the ear-catching “Opalite” chorus.

As expected, some of Swift’s more questionable lyrics — many of which were exponentially funnier as clean versions — garnered some chuckles, and “Actually Romantic,” an alleged Charli XCX diss track, notably concluded without applause. But claps were generous for Swift’s closer, which saw the artist sincerely thanking her fans for being her muse.

“This album was completely inspired by the most incredible time of my life that was so exciting, because you made the Eras Tour what it was,” Swift said.

“The way that that tour felt, the way that it just kind of lit up my whole life, was such a through line of making this music,” she said. “So thank you for being that unknowing inspiration behind the scenes. I was internalizing all of that love and putting it into that record.”

During Swift’s album rollouts more than a decade ago, she hosted listening parties she dubbed “secret sessions.” At these intimate gatherings, the singer gave select fans a sneak peek at her new music, explaining the inspiration for each track and even playing some songs live.

Nick Eittreim, 28, was always jealous of the fans who got to attend those parties. With “The Official Release Party of a Showgirl,” he said, “It’s like I’m finally invited to that ‘secret session.’”

Rachel Birnam, 30, said while the “secret sessions” were “such a special thing, it’s nice that this is accessible to everybody.”

Taylor Swift fans Nick Eittreim and Melissa Roberts, both 28, arrive for “The Official Release Party of a Showgirl” at AMC Century City 15 on Saturday.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Anthony Cendejas, a manager at AMC Century City, said the theater has been noticeably busier with the release of “The Official Release Party of a Showgirl.”

“More people than usual are dressing up,” Cendejas said, adding that many theatergoers have followed up their AMC visits with a stop at “The Life of a Showgirl” TikTok fan activation, running until Oct. 9 in the Westfield Century City Atrium. The immersive experience allows visitors to take photos and videos on a series of sets replicating those in “The Fate of Ophelia” music video.

Jamie Phillips and her daughters Rowan, 11, and Finley, 12, visited the TikTok activation Saturday afternoon. The trio also brought the biggest Swiftie in their family, their Saint Bernard named Lincoln, along with them. In their family photos, Lincoln wore a feather boa to match Rowan and Finley’s.

Jamie Phillips, left, takes a photo of her daughters Finley, 12, center, and Rowan, 11, with their dog Lincoln at a TikTok fan activation for Taylor Swift’s new album.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

When the Phillips family heard “The Life of a Showgirl” for the first time, Jamie Phillips said, “All of us were pleasantly surprised.”

“Usually it takes me, particularly with her albums, a lot of listens to be like, ‘OK, it’s OK,’” she said. But this one they loved on the first go-around.

The trio hadn’t yet made it to “The Official Release Party of a Showgirl,” but they hoped to squeeze it in Sunday along with a “Gilmore Girls” anniversary event at the Grove.

In the meantime, they couldn’t wait to get back home, where their “Showgirl” merch was waiting for them.

For better or worse, “The Life of a Showgirl,” Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album, is unlike anything the megastar has done before.

On the 12-track album, which dropped Friday to mixed critical reception, Swift is uncharacteristically risqué and, for possibly the first time, indulges her inner theater kid without reservation. In that sense, much of the pop record is daringly new.

Still, on each track are sonic echoes from the 14-time Grammy winner’s decades-spanning discography — from the verve of “Reputation” to the romantic whimsy of “Lover.”

Swifties are sure to be playing “The Life of a Showgirl” on repeat today. But if that gets a bit tiresome after the 13th time, here is a list of Swift sister songs to try instead, based on your favorite track from the new album.

(Some song pairings are based on sound, while others are based on shared themes.)

“The Fate of Ophelia”

“Showgirl’s” opening track has a sultry groove and low pulse that could easily be the soundtrack to a flirty nightcap or the series finale of a dark comedy.

Find the same alluring melody with an extra dash of spice in “I Can See You,” a vault track from 2023’s “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version).” And for bonus points, head to the music video for a dose of the Swift-signature theatricality dripping from “The Life of a Showgirl.”

“Elizabeth Taylor”

This allusive track boasts the album’s most sweeping chorus, anchored by Swift’s mesmeric alto and a masterfully orchestrated rhythm that uses moments of quiet to its advantage.

“Reputation‘s” slow-burn hit “Don’t Blame Me” follows a similar playbook, using a killer choral backing to achieve the same hymnal quality that complex vocal layering creates on “Elizabeth Taylor.”

Plus, both songs share a secret weapon: Swift’s irresistible enunciation of the word “baby.”

“Opalite”

An immediate inductee into Swift’s “Glitter Gel Pen” song Hall of Fame, “Opalite” is for dancing around your kitchen with a glass of orange wine in hand.

Fuel that infectious joy with the most twirl-worthy — and arguably most underrated — track of Swift’s career, “Sweeter Than Fiction.” Swift released this shimmering tune in 2013 for the “One Chance” film soundtrack, and true to its title, it is sweet as a peach.

Honorary mention: If you prefer a tambourine to a synth, try “Lover” B-side “Paper Rings,” perhaps more suitable for kick-stepping than spinning but nonetheless another “Opalite” lookalike.

“Father Figure”

The natural choice here would be “The Man,” another song wherein Swift adopts a masculine persona to prove just what a boss she is.

But I have no more sage advice than to head to George Michael’s original “Father Figure” (1987), which recently got a streaming boost after being featured in the 2024 erotic thriller “Babygirl.” Swift used an interpolation of Michael’s song in her track of the same name — with a gleeful sign-off from the late singer’s estate.

“When we heard the track we had no hesitation in agreeing to this association between two great artists and we know George would have felt the same,” George Michael’s estate wrote Thursday on his official Instagram.

“Eldest Daughter”

It doesn’t feel entirely fair to compare these two — especially given one of them has Phoebe Bridgers and the other one has the line “I’m not a bad b—, and this isn’t savage” — but “Eldest Daughter” and “Nothing New (Taylor’s Version)” share the same grief for a younger self that a woman in her 20s knows best.

If you need a good cry, these two are here for you.

“Ruin the Friendship”

Speaking of debilitating nostalgia, this one might feel a bit out of place in this album’s universe, but it’s a heartrending gem nonetheless.

For a similar remorseful trip into the past, minus the boppy bass line, try “We Were Happy,” a vault track from “Fearless (Taylor’s Version)” about young love lost.

“Actually Romantic”

While this alleged Charli XCX diss track may be more scathing than usual for Swift, the singer is no stranger to shade, as evidenced in “Reputation” B-side “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” — a perfect pairing for “Actually Romantic.”

In both songs, Swift is unapologetically petty, offering her foes a metaphorical bouquet of flowers thick with thorns.

These tracks aren’t everyone’s speed, but every misfit has its fans. And in the case of “Actually Romantic,” Nicki Minaj seems to be one of them.

“Wi$h Li$t”

Showcasing this album’s gentler side, “Wi$h Li$t,” which Swift said may be her personal favorite, is a tender tribute to her fiancé Travis Kelce, backed with ethereal synth sounds and soft vocalization from a clearly smitten showgirl.

“I just want you” is also the mission statement of “Glitch,” a short and sweet pop number from 2022’s “Midnights.” Turn this one on, and in no time you’ll find yourself swaying side to side, daydreaming about the love you never expected but can’t imagine letting go.

Honorary mention: For a more upbeat option, go for “Gorgeous,” a bubblegum–pop anthem just as swoonworthy as the aforementioned tracks.

“Wood”

This raunchy disco track had jaws dropping across the globe upon its release, and for good reason.

While not as high on shock factor, Swift’s “I Think He Knows,” a lesser-known track from “Lover,” is equally dancy and down bad. On top of that, it’s famously set at a perfect strutting pace. What more could you ask for?

“CANCELLED!”

This is the second song in Swift’s oeuvre featuring a title with an exclamation point (we’ll get to that later), and it’s not the best one.

But if you like the dark energy Swift has going on here, you can get plenty more of it in her live rock ’n’ roll version of “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” which she pulled out for the 1989 World Tour and hasn’t played since.

Here’s hoping the country crossover artist has another genre hop in her.

“Honey”

True to its title, “Honey” is a welcome salve for some of this album’s more sour numbers and shares striking sonic similarities with Swift’s best song adorned with an exclamation point, “‘Slut!’”

The “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” vault track, like “Honey,” uses a name-calling motif to paint a rosy portrait of her romantic partner. Neither is lyrically complex, but if “‘Slut!’” is any indication, “Honey” is sure to wind up a true fan favorite.

“The Life of a Showgirl (feat. Sabrina Carpenter)”

Finding a song that sounds like “The Life of a Showgirl” is a tall order, if not an impossible one.

So for a theme-based pairing, try fellow album closer “Clara Bow,” which caps off the original edition of “The Tortured Poets Department” (2024) with a mournful commentary on the constant churn of young female stars.

As Swift and Carpenter say, “You don’t know the life of a showgirl, babe, and you’re never gonna wanna.”

Honorary mention: For another Swift track about the pitfalls of fame, try “The Lucky One,” off 2012’s “Red.”

On the eve of the release of her 12th album, Taylor Swift received a thank-you note from George Michael’s estate for including his work in her version of “Father Figure.”

“When we heard the track we had no hesitation in agreeing to this association between two great artists and we know George would have felt the same,” the “Freedom!” singer’s estate posted Thursday on X.

Taylor’s take on “Father Figure” incorporates an interpolation of Michael’s 1987 song from his album “Faith.”

Both songs share a common thread of telling the tale of a specific relationship. In a 1987 interview with ET, the former Wham! singer turned solo star — who died over the Christmas holiday in 2016 — vaguely discussed the meaning behind his track.

“‘Father Figure’ is just a very, without going into too much detail, it’s just a very specific experience that I wrote about a specific relationship with one person,” Michael said.

“I think there’s a definite pattern in people’s lives where they move away from their parents, then they spend time on their own and then they look for that replacement,” he added.

Similarly, the fourth song on Swift’s album “The Life of a Showgirl,” which was released on Thursday, tells the experience of a specific relationship between a mentor and his protégé.

Hmmm. Who could it be? Are the lyrics imaginative or are the details too specific to brush off as fiction? Let’s dissect.

Swift opens her track with: “When I found you, you were young, wayward, lost in the cold / Pulled up to you in the Jag’, turned your rags to gold.”

There is one person who turned her into the gold standard of pop — music executive Scott Borchetta, who signed her to his Big Machine Records label back in the day.

Swift worked with Borchetta on her first six albums until she wanted to buy her master recordings from the label, which led to the end of their partnership.

The song initially takes the perspective of the mentor who sees potential, profit and the opportunity to be a father figure for the protégé. In the tail end of the track, the point of view changes to the other side.

“You want a fight, you found it / I got the place surrounded / You’ll be sleeping with the fishes before you know you’re drowning.”

Again, the details seem too specific to write it off as pure fiction, but Swifties may have to stick to speculation unless Swift goes on the “New Heights” podcast to discuss the meaning behind her lyrics with her future husband, Travis Kelce, and soon-to-be brother-in-law, Jason Kelce.

Don’t hold your breath — there’s probably a better chance she releases a new version of “Life of a Showgirl” first.

After the mess, the mop-up.

That’s one way to understand Taylor Swift’s new album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” on which music’s biggest star offers up a dozen precision-cut pop songs just 18 months removed from last year’s sprawling and emotionally unstable “The Tortured Poets Department.”

That earlier LP, which contained 16 tracks before Swift expanded it with 15 more, was perhaps the most divisive of the singer’s two-decade-long career; it racked up bonkers sales and streaming numbers, of course — at this point, she’s truly too big to fail — but its mixed reception among tastemakers and even some fans seemed to rattle Swift, who for all her alertness to the brutality of being a woman in the public eye has become accustomed to a certain level of idolatry.

• Share via Close extra sharing options

So here’s “Showgirl,” her 12th studio LP, for which she stepped away from her longtime creative partner Jack Antonoff to reteam with Max Martin and Shellback, the two hit-making Swedish producer-songwriters who helped her transition cleanly from country to pop in the mid-2010s with blockbuster albums like “Red” and “1989.” Swift has said she made the new album while roaming around Europe in the summer of 2024 on her record-obliterating Eras tour, which explains the title even as it begs all sorts of questions about her psychotic work ethic.

And let’s be clear: These three can craft a hook as neatly and as skillfully — as deviously, really — as anyone in the business. In contrast with the bleary “Tortured Poets,” which yielded only one pop-radio monster in the Hot 100-topping “Fortnight,” “Showgirl” is likely to spin off several, not least the album’s lead single, “The Fate of Ophelia,” which rides an irresistible new wave groove that evokes the veteran hookmeisters of Eurythmics. (Look ’em up, kids.)

As a piece of psychological portraiture, though — the framework, for better or for worse, by which Swift has trained us to interpret her music — this collection of expertly tailored bops falls well short of its predecessor; “Showgirl” feels like a retreat from the vivid bloodletting of “Tortured Poets,” which captured a woman whose one-of-one success had emboldened her to speak certain toxic truths.

Is that because she’s ended up in a healthy romantic relationship with Travis Kelce, the NFL star whom she’s engaged to marry? One hates to indulge hoary ideas about happiness being bad for songwriters. Yet there’s no denying that Swift’s lyrics about love here lack the kind of depth she’s mined in tunes thought to have been inspired by the dastardly likes of John Mayer and Matty Healy.

“Please, God, bring me a best friend who I think is hot,” she sings, somehow, in the electro-trappy “Wish List,” which recounts all the hoping and dreaming she did before she finally met Mr. Right; “Wood,” a kind of kiddie-disco number that sounds like Martin was aiming it for the “Trolls” movie franchise, exults in the erotic thrill of a guy brandishing “new heights of manhood.” (In case you missed it, I’m sorry to say that’s a reference to Kelce’s podcast, on which Swift recently appeared and dropped a bar about her fiancé — “He may not have read ‘Hamlet,’ but I explained it to him” — that she really should have saved for “The Fate of Ophelia.”)

Elsewhere, she makes familiar complaints about the punishing experience of celebrity, as in “Elizabeth Taylor” — “Oftentimes, it doesn’t feel so glamorous to be me” — and “Cancelled!,” which feels like a goth-Nirvana redo of “Look What You Made Me Do,” from 2017’s genuinely startling “Reputation.”

And then there’s the acidic “Actually Romantic,” which seems to be a response to Charli XCX’s “Sympathy Is a Knife,” in which Charli expressed her anxieties about being compared to Taylor in a zero-sum pop scene; Swift gets off some funny lines about chihuahuas and cocaine but totally forgoes the sense of empathy that made her such an icon to every pop songwriter who’s come up behind her.

What’s good on “Showgirl”? “Opalite” is a gorgeous soft-rock tune about overcoming old instincts — “I had a bad habit of missing lovers past / My brother used to call it ‘eating out of the trash’” — while “Ruin the Friendship” looks back at a shoulda-woulda high-school dalliance with the pin-prick precision that Swift has always mustered when writing about her adolescence. Both songs ride coolly laidback Fleetwood Mac-style grooves that feel new for Martin and Shellback, who throughout the album rely more than you’d expect on live instrumentation. (Hang with “Wish List,” if you can, for a killer bass line that shows up in the second verse.)

Swift sings more than once about legacy and inheritance on this album: “Father Figure,” which interpolates George Michael’s late-’80s classic of the same name, is narrated by a mentor who’s betrayed by his protégé; the Broadway-ish title track, which closes the album with a feature from Sabrina Carpenter, tracks the aspirations of a showbiz hopeful from fresh-faced naivete to all-knowing cynicism.

Maybe those songs are Swift’s way of telling us that she knows “The Life of a Showgirl” isn’t as sharp as it could’ve been. We’ll see if it’s as tidy as it needed to be.

Hayley Williams is happy to confirm that Morgan Wallen is the “racist country singer” she is referring to in her song “Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party.”

During a recent interview on the New York Times’ ”Popcast” to discuss her latest solo album, the Paramore lead singer was asked whether she would like to “name names” to reveal who she means when she sings about being “the biggest star / At this racist country singer’s bar” in the title track.

“It could be a couple but I’m always talking about Morgan Wallen,” Williams said. “I don’t give a s—. Find me at Whole Foods, b—, I don’t care.”

In 2021, Wallen was caught on video drunkenly using a racist slur. The Grammy-nominated country star’s This Bar and Tennessee Kitchen, named after one of his songs and paying homage to his upbringing, opened in Nashville last year.

(Video of Wallen’s 2024 arrest for reckless endangerment is making headlines again this week too. In police bodycam video obtained by the Associated Press, Wallen denies throwing a chair off a Nashville bar’s roof but apologizes for “caus[ing] problems.” He took a plea deal after being charged in the case and was sentenced to seven days’ incarceration at a DUI Education Center, two years’ probation, a $350 fine and payment of court fees.)

Williams, who was born in Mississippi, met her future Paramore bandmates after moving to Tennessee as a child. She has been open about her political beliefs and having to navigate her own upbringing as a white southern Christian. Some of her latest music addresses religious hypocrisy and the racial tensions and racist legacy of the South.

“I’m never not ready to scream at the top of my lungs about racial issues,” Williams said in her interview. “I don’t know why that became the thing that gets me the most angry. I think it’s because it’s so intersectional that it overlaps with everything from climate change to LGBTQIA+ issues.”

In addition to her years with Paramore and the inspiration behind her latest solo work, Williams spoke about how proud she is of the diversity of Paramore’s fan base and audience at shows.

“I’m very passionate in that we have a long way to go in making people feel like that they belong in the world,” she said. “The repercussions of people not feeling like they’re a part or they belong, we see it all the time in the news. I think music is not only the easiest but the beautiful way to tap into people’s hearts and their subconscious and change their minds.”

The expression “stay woke” started out as an affirmation for African Americans.

In the last decade it has been used by some Republicans — and some Democrats — as a pejorative for people thought to be too “politically correct,” another term that took on negative connotations as it gained wider use.

“Woke” has come up in cultural and political firestorms. Eight months into his second term, President Trump pledged to review content at the Smithsonian Institution for being “WOKE” and where “everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was.” At the beginning of this year, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared in his State of the State address that government would keep “woke agendas” out of universities and K-12 schools, including “woke gender ideologies.”

On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he was ending the “woke” culture in the military, saying the service has been hamstrung by political correctness. He referenced diversity efforts, transgender troops, environmental policies and other disciplinary rules.

“America is no longer woke under President Trump’s leadership. The word ‘woke’ represents radical ideologies that are used [to] divide the American people and harm our country,” Liz Huston, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement.

Here’s where “woke” came from, and how its meaning has evolved:

The history of ‘woke’

“Wokeness” originated decades ago as African American cultural slang for having awareness and enlightenment around racism, injustice, privilege or threats of white supremacist violence.

Several historians trace the idea to a 1923 compilation of speeches and articles by Jamaican-born Black nationalist Marcus Garvey. In one essay, Garvey writes “Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa!” Another reference appears in 1938 in the song “Scottsboro Boys,” by blues artist Lead Belly, whose real name was Huddie Ledbetter. The tune follows the true story of four Black youths unjustly convicted by an all-white jury of the rape of two white women (they were later freed). The lyrics warn Black listeners to be careful and “stay woke. Keep your eyes open.”

Gerald McWorter, a professor emeritus of African American studies and of information sciences at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, says “woke” was about having a voice after hundreds of years of Black suffering going back to the African slave trade.

The phrase also popped up in a 1962 essay by novelist William Melvin Kelley for the New York Times. The headline — “If You’re Woke, You Dig It.” Kelley’s widow and daughter believe he heard the term while walking around their Harlem neighborhood, said Elijah Watson, a pop culture writer and editor who has written about Kelley, who died in 2017.

‘Woke’ reawakening

In the 21st century, singer-songwriter Erykah Badu is often credited with reviving the term “woke.” Her song “Master Teacher” on her 2008 album, “New Amerykah: Part One,” includes the refrain “I stay woke.” Badu picked up the phrase from co-writer and producer Georgia Anne Muldrow, who heard it from a saxophone player she collaborated with — Lakecia Benjamin.

The 2014 fatal shooting by a white police officer of 18-year-old Michael Brown — who was Black and unarmed — in Ferguson, Mo., made “woke” and “stay woke” galvanizing pledges in the growing Black Lives Matter movement.

The movement drew support from other racial groups. “Woke” also became popularized by white liberals who wanted to show they were allies.

The war on woke

The backlash against “woke” and “wokeness” bubbled up in the 2010s, amid discussions about including more Black history in American history lessons. Many people said that bringing “critical race theory” to schools was meant to program children to feel guilty for being white.

This argument became front and center in 2022 when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the “Stop W.O.K.E. Act” into law. It banned teaching or business practices on race and gender. (The law is now on hold after a federal judge deemed it unconstitutional).

For George Pearson, a former chair of the Illinois Black Republican Coalition, “woke” is a hollow word.

Democratic politicians who purport to be “champions” of wokeness and DEI have done little for Black people, he said. So, “woke” has no sway as a rallying cry. He also thinks it’s unfair that those who do not support “woke-ism” are told “’you’re racist. You’re a homophobe. You’re a bigot.”

Even among liberal Black Americans, there is a debate whether the intention of “woke” does more harm than good.

Who says woke now?

In Watson’s experience, “woke” is no longer part of Black vernacular. If he hears it from anyone in his social circles, it’s almost always said “in jest.”

Some progressives are trying to take the word back. Academy Award-winning actor and activist Jane Fonda brought up being “woke” while receiving the Screen Actors Guild lifetime achievement award in front of an A-list audience.

“Make no mistake, empathy is not weak or woke. By the way, woke just means you give a damn about other people,” Fonda said.

Seena Hodges started her own business as a DEI strategist for individuals and groups in 2018 and called it the Woke Coach. She and her team consult on everything from workplace interactions to best recruiting practices. She touches on inclusion for groups from people of color to breastfeeding mothers.

The “bastardization” of “woke” and DEI as words akin to slurs doesn’t bother her, she said. To her, at its core being “woke” is about awareness.

“What it really boils down to is helping people develop a more acute level of emotional intelligence,” she said.

Tang writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Christopher Megerian in Washington contributed to this report.

Actor, singer and businesswoman Selena Gomez and music producer Benny Blanco were married Saturday in California, according to posts the couple shared on Instagram.

Gomez shared a series of dreamily filtered photos of the couple on a lawn in wedding attire — Gomez in a white halter-styled gown and Blanco in a classic black tuxedo, both reportedly designed by Ralph Lauren — while embracing and holding hands as Gomez gripped a simple bouquet of white flowers. The caption simply stated the date — “9.27.25” — flanked by white heart emojis and audio of “La Vie En Rose” overlaying the display. “My wife in real life,” read a comment from Blanco on the post. By Sunday morning, the post had already racked up more than 17 million likes, including from stars like Sabrina Carpenter and Sydney Sweeney. (It’s unclear if the photos were taken the day of the ceremony or earlier.)

On Sunday, Blanco shared his own commemorative post on Instagram with a caption that read: “i married a real life disney princess.” The series of photos included the couple, in their wedding attire, lounging on a white sofa and a close-up shot of their left hands with the wedding rings that now adorn them.

The couple’s weekend extravaganza was held in Santa Barbara, according to Vogue, with Taylor Swift and Gomez’s “Only Murders in the Building” cast mates Steve Martin and Martin Short among the guests reportedly in attendance. Meryl Streep, however, spent her weekend in Milan for Fashion Week, filming scenes for the sequel to “The Devil Wears Prada.” Earlier this month, Gomez said on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” that Short would be the ring bearer. (We’re still hoping that’s true.) Other stars said to be invited are Ed Sheeran and Gomez’s “Wizards of Waverly Place” co-star David Henrie.

The celebration comes nearly a year after Gomez, 33, and Blanco, 37, announced their engagement in December 2024. At the time of their engagement, Gomez shared the news on Instagram, captioning a series of photos of her ring with the words, “forever begins now.”

Gomez revealed in a cover story with Interview Magazine that she first met Blanco more than a decade ago, when she was about 16 or 17, to potentially collaborate on a song. (As a producer, Blanco has worked with numerous A-list pop stars, including Katy Perry, Sheeran, Kanye West and Maroon 5.)

But it wasn’t until years later that they finally worked together on the 2019 song “I Can’t Get Enough,” which also featured J Balvin and Tainy. In 2023, the couple confirmed their relationship and, that same year, worked together on her song “Single Soon.” Earlier this year, the couple released their first album together, titled “I Said I Love You First.”

Calabasas High senior Elie Samouhi, who considers himself a music producer, performer and writer of songs, got to do his own two-minute concert in front of fans on Friday night before the Los Alamitos-Calabasas football game.

He played the national anthem on his electric guitar. And it was good.

Like a coach trying to give his student confidence, Samouhi’s teacher kept telling him before he began, “You got this.”

You could see how much he enjoyed the spotlight during the rendition.

Samouhi said he’s been playing guitar since he was 5. He’s 18 and hopes to attend USC or NYU.

It was another positive experience during high school sports competition.

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email [email protected].

For many, Omara Portuondo is best known for her participation in the Buena Vista Social Club; but the nonagenarian has lived many lives before and after the formation of the internationally recognized Cuban group. The new PBS documentary, “Omara: Cuba’s Legendary Diva,” looks to reexamine and capture the beauty and the chaos of these other many lives.

Directed by Hugo Perez, the feature — which premieres Sept. 26 on your local PBS channel — tells Portuondo’s personal history not only through the lens of her Afro-Cuban heritage but also through the prism of a woman confronting the realities of Cuba’s longstanding political strife.

“It immediately occurred to me that I was being given a once-in-a-lifetime chance to work with a great artist in the twilight of their career — imagine taking a time machine and going back in time to work with Ella Fitzgerald or Billie Holiday in their later years,” Perez said in a press release.

“When we began, Omara was in her late eighties, and still touring extensively around the world. Yet despite the fact that she was still selling out venues across the globe, she was confronting ageism from promoters and journalists who only wanted to write about her ‘final tour.’ I felt that there was an opportunity not just to create a portrait of an iconic artist but to document how she responded to age bias with verve and panache and not just a little sauciness. Never count a Cuban woman down and out.”

Born into a mixed-race family in Havana on Oct. 29, 1930, at a time when such relationships were considered taboo, Portuondo began gracing the stage at age 17 by joining the dance group of the famed Tropicana Club. As a member of Cuarteto d’Aida in the 1950s, she sang alongside Nat King Cole and toured the U.S. while also recording albums. From the late 1960s through the 1980s, Portuondo found continued success as a solo act and even ventured into the world of film and television.

Ever involved in the political events of the moment, she never shied away from performing songs dedicated to revolutionaries like Che Guevara. In 1974, the singer recorded an album dedicated to the U.S.-ousted Chilean socialist president Salvador Allende.

In the mid-1990s, Portuondo began traveling the world with the renowned Cuban musical ensemble, the Buena Vista Social Club. The band’s fame skyrocketed in 1999 after German filmmaker Wim Wenders made a documentary about the musicians titled “Buena Vista Social Club” that received numerous awards and was nominated for an Academy Award. At the heart of the film were moments when Portuondo’s talents jumped off the screen and worldwide audiences could see the power and history behind her artistry.

The story of the Buena Vista Social Club was turned into an eponymous musical in 2023, with Portuondo featured as one of the main characters. After the musical hit Broadway in 2025, Natalie Venetia Belcon — who portrayed Portuondo as part of the show’s original Broadway cast — won the Tony for featured actress in a musical at this year’s awards.

While, for many, Portuondo’s impact and star power emanates from all things Buena Vista Social Club, the new documentary spotlights how Portuondo has not slowed down her hustle at her advanced age as she continues touring worldwide. Included in the movie are interviews with musicians from across the globe, like Diego el Cigala, Roberto Fonseca and Arturo O’Farrill.

The film also captures some of Portuondo’s more recent performances, which reveal new depths of the singer’s soulfulness and power.

“I also wanted to make a film that would show her in performance today, spotlighting songs that would help carry us through the story of her life,” the movie’s director said. “When she sings about love, Omara plumbs the depths of heartbreak, and I could not imagine telling her story without seeing her singing these great songs.”

Barred from Eurovision, Russia held its own rival song contest called ‘Intervision’ featuring singers from 23 countries. Moscow presented the event as a showcase of ‘family values’, while Ukraine condemned it as ‘hostile propaganda’.

Sonny Curtis, a vintage rock ‘n’ roller who wrote the raw classic “I Fought the Law” and posed the enduring question “Who can turn the world on with her smile?” as the writer-crooner of the theme song to “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” has died at 88.

Curtis, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of The Crickets in 2012, died Friday, his wife of more than a half-century, Louise Curtis, confirmed to The Associated Press. His daughter, Sarah Curtis, wrote on his Facebook page that he had been suddenly ill.

Curtis wrote or co-wrote hundreds of songs, from Keith Whitley’s country smash “I’m No Stranger to the Rain” to the Everly Brothers’ “Walk Right Back,” a personal favorite Curtis completed while in Army basic training. Bing Crosby, Glen Campbell, Bruce Springsteen and the Grateful Dead were among other artists who covered his work.

Born during the Great Depression to cotton farmers outside of Meadow, Texas, Curtis was a childhood friend of Buddy Holly’s and an active musician in the formative years of rock, whether jamming on guitar with Holly in the mid-1950s or opening for Elvis Presley when Elvis was still a regional act. Curtis’ songwriting touch also soon emerged: Before he turned 20, he had written the hit “Someday” for Webb Pierce and “Rock Around With Ollie Vee” for Holly.

Curtis had left Holly’s group, the Crickets, before Holly became a major star. But he returned after Holly died in a plane crash in 1959 and he was featured the following year on the album “In Style with the Crickets,” which included “I Fought the Law” (dashed off in a single afternoon, according to Curtis, who would say he had no direct inspiration for the song) and the Jerry Allison collaboration “More Than I Can Say,” a hit for Bobby Vee, and later for Leo Sayer.

Meanwhile, it took until 1966 for “I Fought the Law” and its now-immortal refrain “I fought the law — and the law won” to catch on: The Texas-based Bobby Fuller Four made it a Top 10 song. Over the following decades, it was covered by dozens of artists, from punk (the Clash) to country (Johnny Cash, Nanci Griffith) to Springsteen, Tom Petty and other mainstream rock stars.

“It’s my most important copyright,” Curtis told The Tennessean in 2014.

Curtis’ other signature song was as uplifting as “I Fought the Law” was resigned. In 1970, he was writing commercial jingles when he came up with the theme for a new CBS sitcom starring Moore as a single woman hired as a TV producer in Minneapolis. He called the song “Love is All Around,” and used a smooth melody to eventually serve up lyrics as indelible as any in television history:

“Who can turn the world on with her smile? / Who can take a nothing day, and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile? / Well it’s you girl, and you should know it / With each glance and every little movement you show it.”

The song’s endurance was sealed by the images it was heard over, especially Moore’s triumphant toss of her hat as Curtis proclaims, “You’re going to make it after all.” In tribute, other artists began recording it, including Sammy Davis Jr., Joan Jett and the Blackhearts and Minnesota’s Hüsker Dü. A commercial release featuring Curtis came out in 1980 and was a modest success, peaking at No. 29 on Billboard’s country chart.

Curtis would recall being commissioned by his friend Doug Gilmore, a music industry road manager who had heard the sitcom’s developers were looking for an opening song.

“Naturally I said yes, and later that morning, he dropped off a four-page format — you know ‘Girl from the Midwest, moves to Minneapolis, gets a job in a newsroom, can’t afford her apartment etc.,’ which gave me the flavor of what it was all about,” said Curtis, who soon met with show co-creator (and later Oscar-winning filmmaker) James L. Brooks.

“[He] came into this huge empty room, no furniture apart from a phone lying on the floor, and at first, I thought he was rather cold and sort of distant, and he said ‘We’re not at the stage of picking a song yet, but I’ll listen anyway,’” Curtis recalled. “So I played the song, just me and my guitar, and next thing, he started phoning people, and the room filled up, and then he sent out for a tape recorder.”

Curtis would eventually write two versions: the first used in Season 1, the second and better known for the remaining six seasons. The original words were more tentative, opening with “How will you make it on your own?” and ending with “You might just make it after all.” By Season 2, the show was a hit and the lyrics were reworked. The producers had wanted Andy Williams to sing the theme song, but he turned it down and Curtis’ easygoing baritone was heard instead.

Curtis made a handful of solo albums, including “Sonny Curtis” and “Spectrum,” and hit the country Top 20 with the 1981 single “Good Ol’ Girls.” In later years, he continued to play with Allison and other members of the Crickets. The band released several albums, among them “The Crickets and Their Buddies,” featuring appearances by Eric Clapton, Graham Nash and Phil Everly. One of Curtis’ more notable songs was “The Real Buddy Holly Story,” a rebuke to the 1978 biopic “The Buddy Holly Story,” which starred Gary Busey.

Curtis settled in Nashville in the mid-1970s and lived there with his wife, Louise. He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1991 and, as part of the Crickets, into Nashville’s Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2007. Five years later, he and the Crickets were inducted into the Rock Hall, praised as “the blueprint for rock and roll bands (that) inspired thousands of kids to start up garage bands around the world.”

Italie writes for the Associated Press. Associated Press journalist Mallika Sen contributed reporting.

What a piquant moment for Nine Inch Nails to be back on the road playing their version of David Bowie’s “I’m Afraid of Americans.”

At the Forum on Thursday, for the first show of a final two-night stand of the electronic-rock band’s Peel It Back arena tour, singer Trent Reznor didn’t elaborate on the freshly resonant subtext in Bowie’s song (one that Reznor remixed for the late Brit and, in its music video, played a Travis Bickle-esque creep).

But you could feel the sold-out Forum roil with new unease at that squelching industrial song, as Reznor muttered Bowie’s scabrous lyrics about “No one needs anyone … Johnny wants p— and cars … God is an American.”

At this point, who isn’t a little afraid of Americans? Nine Inch Nails thrive in the murk of base human instinct and tech-driven dread. Who better to help us limn out these feelings of disgust, rage and desolation right now?

Now in their fourth decade as a group, Nine Inch Nails — the duo of Reznor and producer/keyboardist Atticus Ross along with a closely held touring band — does two difficult things extraordinarily well.

For 15 years, Reznor and Ross have served as Hollywood’s eminent techno-intellectuals, with a pair of Oscar wins for their film scores including the brooding lashes of David Fincher’s “The Social Network” and the yearning ambiance of Pixar’s “Soul.” They have an upcoming film-music festival, Future Ruins, that will be the first of its kind and caliber in Los Angeles.

1

2

3

1. Robin Finck of Nine Inch Nails. 2. Trent Reznor. 3. Fans react as Nine Inch Nails perform at Kia Forum. (Hon Wing Chiu / For The Times)

But Thursday’s Forum show was a decadent reminder of just how nasty and violent this band can be as well.

Opening on the smaller, in-the-round B-stage, Reznor took a solo-piano run through “Right Where It Belongs,” gradually adding Ross, bassist-keyboardist Alessandro Cortini and guitarist Robin Finck into a squalling “Piggy (Nothing Can Stop Me Now),” before finally introducing drummer Josh Freese on the calisthenic drum workout of “Wish.”

Freese was a last-minute addition to the touring band, after the group unexpectedly swapped percussionists with Foo Fighters days before Peel It Back kicked off. But Freese — an NIN veteran of the mid-2000s — has become a fan-favorite returning hero, bolstering this lineup with pure rocker muscle.

Back on the main stage, they redlined through “March of the Pigs” and seethed with fuzzbox rot on “Reptile.” They veiled the stage in gauze on “Copy of A,” casting dozens of Reznor shadows while he strutted and howled about a despondent, depersonalized modernity.

A second pass through the rave-ready B-stage gave a hint at what the band’s cryptically billed upcoming Coachella set might look like. “Nine Inch Noize” — implying an ongoing collaboration with their opener and collaborator, the German club music producer Boys Noize — took form here under a monolithic, blood-colored lightbox. Reznor, Ross and Boys Noize revved up a new single, “As Alive As You Need Me To Be” from the film “Tron: Ares,” but also revamped the eternal hit “Closer” and “Came Back Haunted” with an after-hours sizzle.

It’s impossible to imagine a single as desperately sexual, as sacrilegiously sacred as “Closer” ever making it to the Hot 100 today. For the Gen Z fans fascinated by Nails’ gothic-erotic aesthetic, it felt more transgressive than ever.

After slashed-up takes on “The Perfect Drug” and “The Hand That Feeds,” the band closed out the set with an opposing pair of songs that covered the full range of what its audience is likely going through today. How viscerally satisfying to scream “Head like a hole, black as your soul / I’d rather die than give you control” as American life seems to unravel with each passing hour.

But of course, the band closed on “Hurt.” Johnny Cash recorded his canonical version at 70, a cover now synonymous with a lion in winter starting down the grave. Just 10 years younger at 60, Reznor performed it Thursday with all the tightly coiled emotion and intimate grandeur of the kid who wrote it. American life is pain; Nine Inch Nails endures.

Maruja’s music isn’t merely following the times; it’s a reflection of them.

The rock band, whose debut album “Pain to Power” was released Friday, has carved out a niche in today’s music scene, garnering praise and raising eyebrows for their innovative instrumentation and song composition.

But the Manchester-born quartet — Harry Wilkinson, Matt Buonaccorsi, Joe Carroll and Jacob Hayes — has already done the forming, recording, and touring trifecta.

This can largely be credited to their three EPs, “Knocknarea,” “Connla’s Well” and Tir na nÓg,” released in 2023, 2024 and 2025, respectively. Each project draws on elements of post-punk, jazz rock and art rock that blend in an enthusiastic musical cocktail.

“We began touring, and then it kind of hasn’t stopped since,” Carroll says with a laugh, via a Zoom call. “That was about two and a half years ago… towards the end of last year, we did about four months, 47 shows all around Europe.”

And they haven’t let up. As soon as they got home from touring, they were right back to it. Altogether, the “best ideas” of “Pain to Power” were written and recorded over the span of two months: January and February of this year, when the band made the studio its second home.

“We had to just go ‘ham’ in the studio for six days a week. It’s pretty hardcore,” he says.

Some tracks had “spawned from jams” before being shelved for a while: “Some of them took two hours, some of them took two years,” he puts it plainly.

But this wasn’t an issue for the band, as they picked up those “jams” like they’d never put them down.

“All the songs we’ve written, they feel like they’re still within the same world, but just through different filters sometimes,” Buonaccorsi says.

“Born to Die,” which existed for the better part of the last couple of years, represents the halfway point in the album and features one of its most impressive sonic shifts. It also takes on the herculean task of merging many of the ongoing tones and deepest themes of the project.

“I know what this life is worth / We are universal spirits / And our kingdom is this Earth,” Wilkinson opens, as if a light has shone down on him.

The song is soft, with a distant, wailing sax peeking in for a brief moment among drum lines. It’s almost symphonic, carrying on for almost seven minutes before descending into a lulling silence.

“Our feelings are just visitors / Competing for attention / Avoiding every trigger / While still reaching for ascension,” he continues, in a quasi-monologue.

Hayes breaks in, thrashing his drums alongside Wilkinson’s guitar and an enthralling bass line from Buanoccorsi. Naturally, Carroll’s sax follows suit. The song then recedes into serenity once again, before picking up on “Break The Tension.”

It’s an exhilarating ride that carries on over the rest of the album, ebbing and flowing between chaos and calm. A lot of “Pain to Power’s” strength is in its latter half, and particularly across the three track run that is “Trenches,” “Zaytoun” and “Reconcile,” the album’s nearly 10-minute closer.

“What you’re seeing is these notions of pain that we are getting out of us in these songs,” Wilkinson explains. “These aggressive songs like ‘Bloodsport,’ ‘Look Down On Us’… we’re turning all of that aggression and that pain and anger into something beautiful, and that’s reflected in a track like ‘Saoirse.’”

“It’s quite a dynamic album,” Buonaccorsi adds. “You’ve got quieter songs, more intimate songs, and you’ve got loud, bombastic, crazy, aggressive songs, but they all still feel like they’re part of the same sonic universe.”

“Saoirse,” the third track on the album, reflects the somber first half of “Born to Die.”

“It’s our differences that make us beautiful,” Wilkinson sings repeatedly, like he’s muttering out a mantra. Sure, it’s a bit on-the-nose, but it embodies what Maruja is all about.

“Saoirse,” which translates to “freedom” or “liberty” in Irish, has historically morphed into a term representing the country’s desire for independence from British rule and cultural autonomy. These allusions to Ireland are ever-present in the band’s creations, with titles such as “Tir na nÓg” and “Connla’s Well” specked across their discography.

But how did a British outfit become synonymous with Irish activism?

“When we were recording ‘Knockarea,’ my dad started getting really ill and that led to me connecting with his parents a lot more, and they told me about my great-granddad, who was a photographer,” Carroll remembers.

“We ended up using all of his photos for the early stages of the music… all the black and white stuff is my great granddad’s photos in Ireland… I got really into my Irish heritage, and I’m really proud of it… and feel very connected to the culture and the land,” he continues.

The group says it has a strong correlation with their avid support for Palestinian rights, which the Irish have shown for decades: “They were the first Western government to speak up in public support for the Palestinian people,” Hayes says.

In that, they’re also speaking out against their home, Britain, which they say is “entirely complicit” in the Israel-Palestine conflict.

“The colonization of Ireland from the British Empire, and then the… secret police of the Black and Tans [in Palestine] is a direct relation to the colonialist and imperialist ways of the British government today,” Hayes says.

According to the Irish Times, Winston Churchill demanded a “picked force of white gendarmerie” be deployed in Palestine after facing unrest in 1921. The force was composed of “members of both” his Auxiliaries and Black and Tans, who were “assigned to Palestine once their presence in Ireland was no longer deemed necessary.”

“In England, we just see this deranged hypocrisy continue to lord over our political landscape,” he adds. “We want to give voice to those who are voiceless… If we can help raise awareness, raise a message, and… highlight the complicity of our government, we’ve got to do it.”

On “Bloodsport,” this is clear, with Wilkinson crying out pleas to the world.

“Complicit in the narrative of pacified killings it’s a / Sore sight when you gotta choose / The lesser of two evils either one will prove / That we’re socially in apathy what’s left to lose?”

Their activism is heavily tied to their music and has undoubtedly contributed to some of the band’s recognition on a global scale. But, to them, it’s just part of their responsibility, and their music is an indication of that.

“We’re just reflecting our environment,” he explains. “Our lives are downtrodden with politics and with war and with the world suffering.”

Buonaccorsi chimes in, referencing a quote from “the great” Nina Simone: “An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times.”

“It’s our job… to speak about things that really matter to us, things that we feel like should not be happening in this world,” he says. “The barbarity and horror that we’ve never been able to see in our lifetimes… now, we see it before our eyes on phone screens.”

In the beginning, it was 1981 and bassist Nikki Sixx left London, the glam metal band he’d formed in Hollywood three years earlier, to start a new project with drummer Tommy Lee. Then, they pulled in guitarist Mick Mars, who responded to the duo’s classified ad for a “loud, rude, and aggressive guitar player,” and eventually persuaded singer Vince Neil, a former classmate of Lee’s, to leave his band Rock Candy for Mötley Crüe.

From its start with 1981 debut “Too Fast for Love,” Mötley Crüe lived up to its mismatched epithet, from its diabolical breakout “Shout at the Devil” in 1983 to the late ‘80s with its most commercially successful release, “Dr. Feelgood.”

Addictions, near-death experiences, hiatuses, departures and reunions — Mötley Crüe survived them all. Each step on its musical journey is commemorated on “From the Beginning,” an album that includes the band’s first single “Live Wire” through its most recent track, “Dogs of War,” released 43 years later. The band also revived a Mötley Crüe classic with a newly recorded version of its “Theatre of Pain” ballad “Home Sweet Home,” featuring Dolly Parton, which reentered the charts in 2025 at No. 1, 40 years after the original recording’s release.

“Mötley Crüe and Dolly Parton together is the ultimate clickbait,” says Sixx, with a laugh. He previously played bass on the country legend’s 2023 “Rockstar” album. “I guess it’s part of that wow factor that has been part of the Mötley Crüe fabric for a long time.”

Proceeds from the new recording of “Home Sweet Home” benefit Covenant House, the nonprofit with which the band has partnered for nearly 20 years through its Mötley Crüe Giveback Initiative. Sixx first worked with Covenant House around the publication of his 2007 memoir, “The Heroin Diaries,” and helped develop a music program at the Hollywood center. In October 2024, the band also played a series of intimate club shows, dubbed Höllywood Takeöver, at the Troubadour, the Roxy and Whisky a Go Go in West Hollywood, which helped raise $350,000 for the organization.

“These kids are everything,” says Sixx. “These kids are the future. They might end up changing the world. What if one of these kids can cure cancer and they just didn’t have a shot?”

Playing those smaller shows in 2024, which also included the Underworld in Camden, London, and the Bowery Ballroom in New York City, is the bare-bones sound, much like rehearsals, that Sixx has always loved.

“One of my favorite parts about being in a band is rehearsal,” he says. “There’s nothing like it. It’s raw, just bass, drums, guitar, and vocals off the floor. Then, you add all the bells and whistles as you go along. When we can do things like that, it just reminds me who we are.”

It’s also part of what keeps Lee excited at this stage of the band’s career, which includes its third residency in Las Vegas in 13 years, which kicked off last week and runs through Oct. 3 at the Dolby Live at Park MGM. (A portion of the ticket proceeds from the 10-show residency will benefit the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth.)

“I’ve been married to Nikki and Vince for over 44 years,” says Lee. “Like with any marriage, you gotta create ways to make it exciting, to keep it fun, or else you find yourselves at the breakfast table, with your face in the paper saying ‘Pass the butter.’ So Vegas in Dolby Atmos, new music, club shows, crazy videos, Dolly — we’ve always been trying different stuff to make the audience and us go ‘Oh, f— yeah.”

For Mötley Crüe, Las Vegas has nearly become a second home since the band’s first residency at the Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel in 2012 and its “An Intimate Evening in Hell” a year later.

“We’ve got this great body of work that you don’t really realize until you get this far,” says Sixx. “But now, we’re in one of those interesting places where, if we don’t play the hits, we get
s—, and if we do play the hits, we get s—.”

“From the Beginning” is Mötley Crüe’s new compilation album.

(Chris Walter)

Some deeper Crüe cuts worth inclusion in the set include “Stick to Your Guns,” a non-single on “Too Fast for Love,” and a song that the Runaways’ ex-manager, producer Kim Fowley, asked a then-teenaged Sixx to write for Blondie in 1979.

“I was 17 years old, and we recorded that song, and because no record company would sign us, we started our own label and got a distribution deal,” Sixx recalls. “When we finally joint-ventured up with Elektra Records in ’82, they said we needed to take a song off since it made the vinyl sound thinner, so ‘Stick to Your Guns’ got cut, but I’ve always loved that song.”

Sixx recently revealed that Guns N’ Roses once considered covering the early Crüe track.

”Now I get people saying, ‘We want to hear, “Stick to Your Guns,” ’ “ says Sixx, laughing. “There’s like eight people that know that song. That’s a good way to shut down an arena.”

For Lee, there’s something more paternal around the band’s lengthy catalog.

“I know every artist says it, but our songs are like our kids,” he says. “And over the years, they grow up and they develop [their] own personalities and character. Some stay pretty close to home, settle down, and start their own family. Others go out on a Thursday night and come home on Sunday with no shoes and a shaved head, but we love them all the same.”

With every song, Lee says, the band members understand each other more. “We know how to push each other a little further, and hopefully get the greatest out of each other.”

While there’s always room to make new music, Sixx, who has been the band’s chief songwriter since its inception, prefers the pace of releasing singles.

“It’s just a different landscape now,” he says, “so to create one or two ideas, or co-write three is manageable, and it’s also digestible for the fans.”

So many things have changed, and he is also aware of some misconceptions about the band. “The music is Mötley Crüe — Mötley Crüe is not ‘The Dirt,’ ” says Sixx, citing the 2019 film based on the band’s 2001 tell-all memoir. “People have it confused because we were so honest and it became such a part of the fabric of us that they forget about the riff on ‘Kick Start My Heart’ and just remember the hotel that we tried to burn down in Ontario.”

Another misconception, Sixx says, is the band’s split with Mars in 2022. After issuing a statement that Mars had retired from touring due to his ongoing battle with ankylosing spondylitis, the guitarist sued Mötley Crüe in April 2023, alleging that he was forced out of the band and that his bandmates attempted to cut his 25% ownership stake. Guitarist John 5 — who has filled in on lead guitar duties since October 2022, prior to the lawsuit — continues to tour with the band.

“[Mick] came to us and said, health-wise, he couldn’t fulfill his contract, and we let him out of the deal,” recalls Sixx. “Then he sued us because he just said that he can’t tour. We were like, ‘Well, if you can’t tour, you can’t tour.’ I will probably come to that too someday.”

Although there was no final settlement in court between Mars and the band, a Los Angeles judge ruled in 2024 that the band failed to provide documents to Mars in a timely manner and was ordered to pay his legal fees, Loudwire reported. The underlying dispute regarding the band’s business and Mars’ potential ousting went into private arbitration.
The arbitration is still ongoing but in the first phase the arbitrator ruled in favor of the band and against Mars. The arbitration is still ongoing but in the first phase the arbitrator ruled in favor of the band and against Mick.

Mars’ claims around the band’s use of backing tracks were another point of contention and something Sixx has continued defending. He says the band started playing around with audio enhancements in 1985 and cites the “Girls Girls Girls” track “Wild Side” as a “perfect example” with its sequenced guitar parts. “Anything we enhance the shows with, we actually played,” he says. “If there are background vocals with my background vocals, and we have background singers to make it sound more like the record. That does not mean we’re not singing.”

Mars, who is currently working on his second solo album, was contacted by The Times but declined to comment for the story.

Sixx calls Mars’ accusations a “crazy betrayal” to his legacy and to the fans. “Saying he played in a band that didn’t play, it’s a betrayal to the band who saved his life,” adds Sixx. “People say things like, ‘Well, if you guys are really playing, then I need isolated tracks from band rehearsal.’ … It’s ludicrous.”

Another battle the band has found itself in involves Neil’s health problems and the criticism he’s faced following recent performances. Originally scheduled to perform in March and April, Mötley Crüe postponed its Las Vegas shows so the lead singer could undergo an undisclosed medical procedure. “He needed time to heal, and he’s been working really hard,” Sixx says.

“You can tell he’s working up the stamina, and a lot of people are like, ‘Oh, man, he’s not kicking ass like he used to,’ but it takes a lot of courage to have a doctor tell you you will probably never go onstage again and to fight through that. If he’s got some imperfect moments here and there. They’re getting erased as the days go with rehearsal.”

Back in Las Vegas, Lee has looked forward to connecting with fans again, even if those in their teens and 20s were turned on to the band via “The Dirt.”

“Our goal is the same for all: to give them an incredible show,” he says, “to leave it all on the stage.”

Now, more than 40 years into Mötley Crüe, it may have been a patchwork journey of emotions for Sixx, but he wouldn’t change the experience for anything.

“We believe in this band,” he says. “It’s been 44 years. We’ve been in the band longer than we weren’t in the band. We’ve seen everything — everything. I guess that’s why it was a movie.”

Terry Reid, the bombastic British singer who famously passed on fronting both Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, has died. He was 75.

Reid’s representatives confirmed his death in a statement to the Guardian. He had been treated for cancer just before his death, and a GoFundMe had been set up for donations.

Reid, born in Cambridgeshire, England, had a uniquely resonant and soulful voice with an enormous range that earned him the nickname “Superlungs.” He was a coveted figure among the arena-rock titans of the era — even vocal powerhouse Aretha Franklin once claimed in 1968 that “There are only three things happening in England: the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and Terry Reid.”

Reid first found local success in the teen rock group the Redbeats, and soon joined the band Peter Jay and the Jaywalkers. After a performance at London’s Marquee club, where Mick Jagger and Keith Richards caught Reid’s set with the Jaywalkers, the Rolling Stones brought the group on a support tour. Also on that package — Ike & Tina Turner and the Yardbirds, then the main project of guitarist Jimmy Page.

Reid, who had also become close friends with Jimi Hendrix then, left the Jaywalkers to become a solo act. The Stones asked him to support them on a U.S. tour. Citing those tour obligations, he declined Page’s offer to front a new group he was forming. Reid instead recommended vocalist Robert Plant and drummer John Bonham of Band of Joy, and that group soon debuted as Led Zeppelin.

“Lots of people asked me to join their bands,” Reid told the Guardian. “I was intent on doing my own thing. I contributed half the band — that’s enough on my part!”

Led Zeppelin wasn’t only the massive act Reid nearly fronted. He also turned down Ritchie Blackmore’s pitch to front Deep Purple, after Rod Evans left the band in 1969. Ian Gillan took the job instead.

As a solo artist, Reid signed a deal with the influential talent manager Mickie Most, and his debut 1968 LP, “Bang Bang, You’re Terry Reid,” included a song, “Without Expression,” he wrote at 14. That song would become a popular cover of the era — John Mellencamp, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and REO Speedwagon all took a crack at it.

He supported Cream, Fleetwood Mac and Jethro Tull on tour (and nearly opened for the Stones at the infamous Altamont festival, but skipped that date), but he never achieved chart success commensurate with his proximity to fame. Yet exquisitely performed albums like 1973’s ‘River” remain cult classics in the ’70s rock canon, and in the ’80s he turned to session work with Bonnie Raitt, Don Henley and Jackson Browne. Reid befriended Brazilian musicians Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso after they moved to the U.K. during Brazil’s military coup, and he played both the first Isle of Wight festival and opened the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury’s 1971 festival, with David Bowie side stage.

Reid later moved to California and lived outside Palm Springs in his later years. His musical reputation was revived by both the crate-digger era of DJs (the virtuoso turntablist DJ Shadow collaborated with him) and the ’90s and 2000s rockers enamored with his vocal prowess. Chris Cornell, Marianne Faithfull and Jack White’s band the Raconteurs covered his songs. He reportedly recorded a number of unreleased tracks with Dr Dre. Reid told the Guardian the rap mogul “became fascinated with [Reid’s album] ‘Seed of Memory’ and invited me into his studio where we reworked it alongside his rappers, a fascinating experience.”

Reid is survived by his wife, Annette, and daughters Kelly and Holly.

Rome Ramirez wasn’t built in a day.

He was once a guitar-strumming, teenage Sublime fan in a Mexican American household in Fremont, Calif. At 18, he moved to Los Angeles to follow his dream of making music. He swept floors, lived in his van and eventually did the impossible: He became the singer of his favorite band.

In 2009, 13 years after the death of Sublime’s founding singer-songwriter Bradley Nowell, Rome befriended Sublime’s remaining members, Bud Gaugh and Eric Wilson, and became the frontman of Sublime with Rome — playing to an established fan base in amphitheaters around the world. Behind the scenes, Rome developed a robust songwriting career of his own, cutting his teeth in the studio-session culture in L.A. and racking up credits on Enrique Iglesias and Selena Gomez songs.

Yet eventually, the band started to feel more like a job than a calling. After several lineup changes, Sublime with Rome embarked on its farewell tour in 2024. “For the majority of being in Sublime, our recording schedule was so busy,” he says. “I knew that in order to do a solo career, it takes everything from you if you want to do it right, so that was not on the mind.”

Despite being a lifelong California boy, Rome moved his family to Nashville during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. There are perks to living in America’s songwriting capital — like a slower pace of life and the ability to do “more errands per day than in L.A.,” he says with a laugh. But now, he says that he and his children are some of the only Latinos in their neighborhood.

“There [are] a lot of people who leave California,” says Rome. “They trash-talk California, but it’s just such a huge part of my identity and culture — growing up as a Mexican American in California, that Chicano culture. I will always love Los Angeles.”

After 15 years in Sublime with Rome, the 37-year-old has forged a new path as a solo artist. His sound is a West Coast cocktail of beachy reggae and hip hop-inspired grooves, specially made for summertime — like his new single “Slow & Easy,” featuring the Dirty Heads, his friends from back when he slept in his van.

It’s the first offering from his debut EP, “Gemini” — “It’s about the duality of my music, I can’t be put into a box,” he says — which is set for a Sept. 19 release. He’s also announced a slate of tour dates in the U.S., starting Sept. 17 in Destin, Fla.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Your solo career was kick-started by stepping down as the lead singer of Sublime with Rome. Was having a solo career something you had in your head for a while?
Through the course of touring with Sublime, I was really heavily involved in songwriting. I was doing all kinds of records for people I really looked up to — like Selena Gomez and Jason Derulo and Enrique Iglesias. Huge names. As a kid who grew up writing songs in his mom’s basement, this was just like a dream come true.

It wasn’t until the pandemic happened where for the first time Sublime with Rome wasn’t touring, we were at home and I started live-streaming. People were showing up in these rooms — like 500 to a thousand people. I was one of the first people in my music community who was already outfitted with cameras, ready to go in the studio. I would start with a Sublime album and go through every song on the stream. And then the next album, then the Sublime with Rome album, then I would do covers. After about like six months, I ran out of songs and people were just asking like, “Dude, do you have any music? Like, are you working on anything?” And honestly, I hadn’t worked on music for myself in so long.

I think part of that was not wanting to dig deep into traumas, [like] growing up in a household with drugs. But during the pandemic, I had time to start writing music again for fun — playing with sounds that I loved and grew up on, and starting to pull the scabs off of [wounds] that I tucked [away] in the past. After a while I had a handful of songs, and I just knew I [couldn’t] put them in the Sublime with Rome set. This thing I love to do started to feel like a job, and that is a no-go. So I asked myself, “Am I going to do Sublime with Rome for money, or am I going to really follow something that I believe in?”

We started having conversations about what the future of the band was looking like prior to our summer tour in 2023. I’m really glad that everything happened the way it did. We had a roll out for everything. I needed to trust my gut and follow through with my belief in this music and what I’m building.

“Lay Me Down” with Dirty Heads is one of your biggest songs, with nearly 120 million Spotify plays, but it came out in 2010 — much earlier than your current venture in your solo career. What’s the story behind this song?
I’m from the Bay Area, but I moved down to Los Angeles when I was 18 to go make something of myself. I was hanging around this recording studio that the Dirty Heads were just getting started at.

I was just interning, sweeping floors, [eating] cheeseburgers, that kind of thing. Everyone knew that I could write a song, and eventually, after hanging out there for so long, me and the Dirty Heads worked up a friendship. They said, “Let’s get together and write a song one day.”

So we barbecued some hot dogs and just hung out in one of the guys’ backyard with a couple of guitars on a picnic bench … and we wrote “Lay Me Down.” The song sat around for a year, but we really liked it.

They were going on tour in the van and I wasn’t doing anything — I was homeless at the time, Sublime wasn’t even a thought. They offered me to go on the road with them, so I did and played that one song with them. From there, our manager took the demo to KROQ. The song started getting played on the radio and the shows got fuller. It was such an amazing experience. It was just just by the grace of God, it like all worked out and our lives changed from that point. We cashed our first checks and bought our first cars together from that.

You collaborated with the Dirty Heads again on your recent single “Slow and Easy.” It’s your first single since you’ve gone solo. What was that process like?
It’s come full circle with my best friends again. I knew this song was special. I went into the studio with the aim of — “I want to make a summer song that feels like a Van Morrison record, but [an] Uncle Kracker [vibe]. Real simple.”

I went in with my boy, Nick Bailey, who I write a lot of music with, and we nailed that song in two hours. After I got the demo I was like, “Man, it’s so close. What if I put the Dirty Heads on it? [With] a little rap and a little melody, it would just be so different.”

They loved it. They sent me their vocals the next week and I was like, “OK, I feel like this is a good song.” Eventually some awesome promoters at radio stations heard it and they wanted to take a chance on the record.

The summer vibes are strong on “Lay Me Down” and “Slow and Easy.” What artists introduced you to this sound that’s present in everything you do?
I grew up on Motown and Bob Marley. That’s what I circled back to after I left Sublime.

As I was working on music during the pandemic, I was like, “What do I want to hear? What’s the shit that I like?” And it’s like Stevie Wonder, it’s the Supremes, it’s the Four Tops, it’s Fiona Apple, it’s Leon Bridges, it’s Van Morrison. I really like feel-good music that sonically reminds me of an older time.

I have kids now, so I’m very conscious about the message I put into the world. I’ll try to write a song that the world could benefit from hearing, but not make it a preachy song.

How would you describe the sound of Rome?
The underlying factor is soul music. When you hear soul music, you think of Teddy Pendergrass and things like that. I love soul music. [Take] Bradley’s voice in Sublime, you cannot tell me that that man wasn’t a soul singer.

That’s the music that I really gravitate to, music that just feels really honest. Reggae music [lives] in me. Jack Johnson is another huge influence. My sound is reggae and soul and pop music, for lack of better words, because I write simple-ass songs.

How do you feel like your Mexican heritage makes its way into your music? Or in how you move and how you present yourself?
Growing up Mexican shaped my whole framework for how I live my life. I don’t speak Spanish, but I grew up in two households that were fully fluent in Spanish. All my friends growing up were Mexican. [I remember] seeing Carlos Santana playing with Rob Thomas on [television] and my dad was like, “He’s mexicano right there.” Man, that was pretty sick.

Growing up in a really thick Mexican culture [meant] both my parents worked their ass off, but at the same time, family always came first. These are the kind of morals that are really instilled in Mexican culture, that I’m so proud that I have. As a family man now, those things are so prominent in my life. We take a lot of pride in what we do, we work our asses off … then when it’s time to play, we play.

What makes a good summer song?
Something that you don’t have to try too hard to listen to. There are some songs where you’re like, “All right, I need to get in the car and drive and listen to this thing, ride it out the gate.” When I envision a summer song, it’s very simple and easy to play.

People online are debating what the song of the summer is in 2025. What has been your song of the summer?
In terms of listening and all the damn content I’ve been making, it’s “Slow and Easy!” But aside from one of my own songs, probably “Golden” from “KPop Demon Hunters” because that’s what my kids are spinning. The music is shockingly good. It’s like Max Martin s—.

You’re on quite a big U.S. tour. How is it going?
It’s so sick. We just rolled out a couple dates in Florida just to test the waters and those shows are selling really good, so promoters have been adding more and more.

I’ve been to so many of these places [with Sublime], of course, but the energy’s different. I’m playing smaller spots, [connecting] with people before and after the shows. You can’t really do that in amphitheaters. I’m experiencing everything in reverse. I was homeless when I met Sublime and then I was on the tour bus. Now, it’s like we’re climbing up the ranks again.

I have such a long lineage of songs I’ve been working on and the fan base — shout out to the Romies — who’ve followed me over the years. Putting together the set list has been a celebration of the different eras of my life. I’m just having a lot of fun doing this.

TELLURIDE, Colo.  — Jeremy Allen White asked all the questions any normal human being would ask when offered the chance to play Bruce Springsteen in “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.” In theaters Oct. 24, it’s a movie that examines a slice of the rock legend’s career when he was battling depression and creating 1982’s incomparable exploration of alienation “Nebraska,” a record he didn’t know he was making when he recorded the songs on a primitive four-track tape machine in a rented New Jersey home. It turned out to be his favorite of all his albums.

Most of those questions could be boiled down to: Why me? White didn’t know how to play the guitar. He loves to sing but would never call himself a singer. And while he has a relationship with an audience, particularly those who have white-knuckled their way through his Emmy-winning work as Carmy, the talented and troubled chef on “The Bear,” he says it’s a far cry from the bond Springsteen has forged with his fan base for the past 50-plus years.

“The relationship a musician has with fans is so intimate,” White, 34, tells me the morning after the movie had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival. “You listen to him in the car, you go to see him live. He’s there in your ear and it’s just the two of you. You feel like you’re being spoken to. Bruce is so important to so many people. It was daunting. I didn’t want to disappoint.”

By the time we talked, though, White was well past any anxiety about disappointing, if only because he had the approval of the person who mattered the most: Springsteen himself.

“Jeremy tolerated me and I appreciated that,” Springsteen said at a festival Q&A, suggesting that his input on the movie was ongoing and significant — and also welcome. He noted that it was easy to sign off on director Scott Cooper’s vision for the movie, which, with its narrow focus on the deep dive of “Nebraska,” he called an “antibiopic.”

“And I’m old and I don’t give a f— what I do,” Springsteen added, laughing.

White and I are sitting in the sun outside his hotel, basking in the warmth the day after a steady rain. Wearing a battered Yankees cap, jeans, boots and a blue pullover, he’s sporting the casual uniform of the festival, if not the Boss himself. White asks if I mind if he lights an American Spirit. He reaches for his lighter. The premiere is over and his mood is light. We dive right in.

Jeremy Allen White in the movie “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.”

(Macall Polay / 20th Century Studios)

Was there an immediate point of connection with Springsteen?
The more I talked with him, the more I learned. And at the point in his life we show in the movie, he was feeling so fraudulent. Not in his work, but as a human. He felt like he was being caught in a lie all the time. And I don’t want to speak for all actors, but I’ve certainly dealt with that kind of feeling.

It feels like there’s a line between your Springsteen and Carmy on “The Bear,” two men carrying generational trauma and emotional baggage they have no idea how to deal with. Do you see that?
For sure, you can draw that line. They’re cousins. And they’ve both got their art, something they feel confident about. What Bruce was feeling in his relationship with his father and the environment he grew up in, is he felt incredibly unsafe. And that made it difficult for him to trust people and form real connections. For a long time, the only connection he felt was in that three hours he spent on stage.

But then what do you do the rest of the time?
Absolutely. And I’m familiar with those feelings. But my home life as a child was more loving and supportive, so I had to do some creative work to find that tether to Bruce.

You mentioning Springsteen’s dad just popped a thought into my head. Is Carmy’s dad alive?
[Long exhale] We don’t know. That’s a decision that’s up to [showrunner] Chris [Storer].

It’s above your pay grade.
Well above.

You’re really good at playing men who have trouble articulating their feelings, which puts a lot of weight on your shoulders to convey an interior life through close-ups. Do you like that kind of acting?
I do. You have to have an understanding. The camera knows. If you’re just staring at a wall and you don’t have anything going on, the camera will know. The audience will, too.

You do also get to rock out and sing “Born to Run” and “Born in the U.S.A.” How did your vocal chords feel afterward?
I spent an afternoon singing “Born in the U.S.A.” and I got a migraine and I lost my voice. I saw Bruce afterward and he asked, “What’d you do today.” And I said [affecting a hoarse voice], “Uh, I recorded ‘Born in the U.S.A.’” And he smiles and says, “Sounds about right.”

Most of your singing is the “Nebraska” songs, these delicate acoustic songs about despairing characters who have lost hope. Putting across their stories in these songs feels like its own imposing challenge.
I was so focused on just sounding like Bruce and my coach, Eric [Vetro], asks, “What are you singing about? What’s the story? Where’s Bruce coming from? Is he singing from his perspective? Is about his childhood? Is he playing a character?” All these questions that, for an actor, should be right at the front of mind. Because I was so anxious about sounding like him, I found myself blocked by the real thing, which was: How can I just sing the song as honestly as possible?

What song was the breakthrough?
“Mansion on the Hill.” Bruce listened to it and said, “You do sound like me. But it’s you singing the song.” And that gave me permission, not just in recording the music, but making a film where I could tell his story but not be afraid to bring myself to it.

Did you have a favorite song?
Probably “My Father’s House.” It seemed like a warning for me. There’s regret in it. What I heard is a song about a young man not wanting to regret that he didn’t reach out for his father, who he had a love and connection with earlier. There was an immediacy to it, which you then see with Bruce and his father in the film.

Did it make you want to call your dad?
I called him right after recording that song in Nashville. Like many fathers and sons, we have a loving relationship, but we’ve also gone through periods where things have been difficult and it was hard to communicate. Making this film and singing this song has given me another perspective. It also coincides with getting older and having children of my own.

I’m glad you made the call. You can’t have those conversations after a certain point.
That’s what I mean about the warning of that song.

You told me yesterday that you and Springsteen had a debate about “Reason to Believe.” What was the source of the disagreement?
It’s the last song on the album and Bruce says people confuse it as being hopeful. He says that’s not correct. The song is about a woman whose husband has left her and she stands at the end of the driveway every day, waiting for him to come home. And I hear that, and I think, “Oh, that’s real love. That’s romance. Someone’s gonna drive down that road at some point.”

Either that or this poor woman is just going to be walking up and down her driveway the rest of her life.
And no one’s gonna be there. It depends how your ear is on a song.

But you choose to believe.
I choose to walk to the end of the driveway. Absolutely.

Would you call yourself an optimist?
No. [Laughs] Not really.

“Nebraska” came out in 1982 and was informed by the idea that there was a growing divide between the wealthy and the poor and that what we think of as the American Dream was becoming more elusive. Where do you think the album sits more than four decades later?
People are angry. That’s what seems to define our country right now. Anger. And it doesn’t seem to be going away. The songs on “Nebraska” are still going to be speaking to us four decades from now. They’re timeless.

Jeremy Allen White in the movie “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.”

(Macall Polay / 20th Century Studios)

Did your early dance background help you with the physicality of the role, the way he carries himself on stage or even just walking around?
For sure. Finding the way he holds his gravity was important. I put little lifts in the boots and that made my posture change, my legs a little longer. Wearing the pants up to here [he points to a spot above his hips], that gets your gravity in your belly button, where I’m crouched over all the time.

There’s a lot of scenes in diners where he’s sitting with one arm over the back of the booth …
… like he’s on his way out almost all the time. One foot in, one foot out.

Musician friends turned you on to “Nebraska” in your early 20s. What music were you listening to then?
My folks are a little older so I grew up listening to a lot of music that Bruce listened to — Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, the Beatles, the Stones, Aretha Franklin.

Your parents had a strong record collection.
Still do. And I grew up in in Brooklyn in the ’90s, so I got really heavy into hip-hop in my teenage years. I discovered Nas and Jay-Z and Big L and Wu-Tang. Tribe. De La Soul. And then I was around for an exciting time in the New York scene. I was young so I couldn’t really experience it, but the Strokes were coming out and LCD Soundsystem. I felt lucky to be close that stuff as it was happening.

The way you’re talking about all this, it feels like music is a fundamental part of your life.
Absolutely. I love that it’s always with you. I’ve taken a couple of cross-country trips, and I love putting on Motown. I go through periods where I listen to the same 20 songs for a couple of weeks. But then I’ve got thousands of “liked” songs. And the nice part about a long drive is you can shuffle that and it’s like you’re traveling in time. I love getting to visit past versions of myself through music.

Springsteen takes an eventful cross-country trip in the film. What’s your most memorable one?
I did one by myself when I was about 24. I thought I was going to give myself about two weeks to go from New York to L.A. The first week was great. I was enjoying my solitude, listening to a lot of music. Then when I hit Utah, I got incredibly lonely.

Did the landscapes get to you?
Maybe. I had a certain amount of anonymity, which I enjoy on a road trip. You don’t know anybody in these towns and that allows you to be whoever you want to be, passing through. I remember getting to Utah and just being desperate to see somebody who knew who I was. And I got a flat in St. George, Utah. It was a disaster. My phone had died. I didn’t have a spare. I was out on the side of the road trying to borrow somebody’s phone. I took that as a sign. After I got it repaired, I raced to have dinner with a friend, because I felt this this crazy loneliness.

Springsteen says everyone has their “genesis moment,” an experience that charts your path. His was watching Elvis Presley perform on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1956. What’s your genesis moment?
I had been dancing on stage but I didn’t act until I was 14 when I got up in front of a group in middle school. I had this great teacher, John McEneny, and he was having us do this improvisational exercise — two characters, one speaking, one quiet. And my friend, Yael, was playing a mother and I was playing her child who didn’t know how to speak yet. So I wasn’t speaking, like so much of my work [Laughs].

It’s Carmy’s genesis moment too.
Yes. And I remember feeling a presence. I had a hard time focusing as a child, a hard time being present. Still do. But I remember even in silence feeling so at ease and present. And of course I remember the eyes. And even without me doing anything or speaking, I felt attention, people waiting to see what I would do next. And I went, “Whoa.” I felt at peace. I felt present and people were interested. And I thought, “Let me follow this a little bit and see where we can go.”

There’s a scene in the movie, taken from real life, where Springsteen is flipping through the channels one night and stumbles upon Terrence Malick’s “Badlands,” a movie that ultimately influences “Nebraska.” With streaming, we don’t really have those serendipitous discoveries any more. Have you ever had a moment like that?
I can’t think of one. But “Badlands” was a favorite of my parents and they showed it to me when I was 13 or 14. Martin Sheen was cool as hell in that role, and I was so impressed with his commitment to that character. And Sissy Spacek conveys so much with so few words.

And like “Nebraska,” “Badlands” was difficult to make. There was a lot of pushback against Malick and what he was trying to do.
There was a lot of confusion going on. They weren’t on the same page. Like with Bruce, it took a lot of diligence on Terrence Malick’s part to realize his vision. It’s so beautiful when you hear about the process of making a film is so difficult, and then something so beautiful and perfect comes out.

Where do you like to see movies in L.A.?
I love the New Beverly. I saw “2001: A Space Odyssey” at the Egyptian not long ago. The Aero, if I’m on the Westside. I miss the Cinerama Dome and the Arclight. New movies, probably the Sunset 5. My favorite thing is go to a movie on a Tuesday at like one in the afternoon. You’re there by yourself. I like seeing movies by myself. Some people get out of a movie and like to start talking about it. I like getting out of a movie and being quiet for awhile.

Did you see “Weapons”? That was my favorite movie theater experience this summer.
I loved “Weapons.” And obviously, it’s a great horror film and funny at times and that ending is just crazy. But also I found myself very emotionally affected. To me the horror of the movie was about, from the child’s perspective, looking at all these adults who were totally incapable, whether it was due to addiction or narcissism.

Bringing this full circle, I’m watching this movie about kids feeling unsafe and I thought of the times in Bruce’s upbringing where he felt a similar way and how that made it so difficult to grow up and be trusting. That he ultimately got to that place is so beautiful. I hope people come away from watching this movie feeling that and, if they’re in a place that’s not so good, maybe thinking that connection can still be possible.

Pop superstardom, it turns out, did absolutely nothing to improve Sabrina Carpenter’s love life.

That’s the thrust of the singer’s shrewd and tangy “Man’s Best Friend,” which dropped Thursday night, just a year after last summer’s chart-topping “Short n’ Sweet.” The earlier album, which spun off a pair of smash singles in “Espresso” and “Please Please Please,” went on to be certified triple platinum and to win two Grammy Awards — more than enough to transform Carpenter, now 26, from a former Disney kid into the latest (and horniest) member of pop’s A list.

Yet all that success seems only to have attracted more of the losers she sang about last time. Here she’s dealing with a smooth talker doling out empty promises, a crybaby who can’t decide what he wants, even a guy so fixated on self-betterment that he’s lost interest in the bedroom.

“He’s busy, he’s working, he doesn’t have time for me,” she trills exasperatedly in “My Man on Willpower,” “My slutty pajamas not tempting him in the least.”

It’s a veritable gallery of rogues, this LP, not least the dude in the dark suit pictured on the cover of “Man’s Best Friend” with a hank of Carpenter’s blond hair in his fist as she kneels before him. The image inspired an instant controversy when she unveiled it in June, with critics accusing her of propping up dangerous ideas about the submission of women in the age of the tradwife.

Responded the singer in a CBS News interview that aired Friday: “Y’all need to get out more.”

Indeed, to take the album artwork at face value is to miss the whole point of Sabrina Carpenter, which is not just lampooning a prudish instinct — of course she’s in on the joke — but demonstrating the limits of a dating scene — of an entire social power structure — in which this is what a girl at the top has to work with.

“I like my boys playing hard to get / And I like my men all incompetent,” she sings in the LP’s opener and lead single, “Manchild.” She swears she’s not choosing them — that they keep choosing her. Then she punctuates the claim by batting her fake eyelashes and rhyming “Amen” with a flirty “Hey, men.”

As with “Short n’ Sweet,” Carpenter made “Man’s Best Friend” with a tight crew of accomplices — Jack Antonoff, John Ryan and Amy Allen, plus a bunch of tasty studio players — and once again they get a sound that combines the hooky splendor of ’70s-era AM-radio pop (think ELO, Wings and especially ABBA) with touches of country and dance music.

“Tears,” in which Carpenter lusts after a guy capable of putting together a chair from IKEA, is a pillowy disco thumper with echoes of KC and the Sunshine Band’s “That’s the Way (I Like It)”; “Nobody’s Son” puts starchy palm-court strings over a bouncy reggae groove. Carpenter’s singing plays like an actor’s sizzle reel, by turns winsome, sneering, bubbly and resigned; in the twangy “Go Go Juice” alone — it’s about a woman who’s woken up at 10 a.m. and opted to spend the day drunk-dialing exes — she runs through every emotional gradient separating determination from shame.

Song for song — line for line, really — “Man’s Best Friend” isn’t quite as sharp as “Short n’ Sweet,” which offered the rare thrill of a young artist coming into her own on her sixth studio album. Occasionally, you can sense Carpenter reaching for a memeable lyric, as in the many gags about wetness in “Tears”; “When Did You Get Hot?,” meanwhile, feels like something Ariana Grande abandoned after workshopping for a minute.

When she’s on, though, she’s on: “Goodbye” is a dazzling orchestral-pop number in which she gives the boot to a hot-and-cold lover — “Arrivederci, au revoir / Forgive my French, but f— you, ta-ta” — and “House Tour” a winking sex romp whose thwacking drums and rubbery funk bass call to mind Paula Abdul’s “Opposites Attract.” (After Doja Cat’s Antonoff-produced “Jealous Type,” might this signal a coming Abdul-aissance?)

Near the end of the album, Carpenter dials down the comedy for “Don’t Worry I’ll Make You Worry,” a sad and shimmery ballad about the thin line between love and war. “Silent treatment and humbling your ass / Well, that’s some of my best work,” she sings over strummed acoustic guitar before promising oh so sweetly to “leave you feeling like a shell of a man.”

If you can’t join ’em, beat ’em.

The heart and soul of suites by Bach and Handel are often found in the slow, central sarabande, said to be a dance of Spanish origin. In Bach’s cello suites, the sarabande stops time. Watch Yo-Yo Ma play a sarabande. His eyes seem to recede under his eyelids, as though entering a profound state of hypnosis. He can make a Bach sarabande work anywhere, including on a river rafting trip with a background of gurgling water on his latest Bach recording.

The sarabande from Handel’s D-Minor Keyboard Suite is well known as the theme from “Barry Lyndon,” about to thrill Stanley Kubrick fans all over again with the new 50th anniversary 4K restoration screening Saturday night at the Egyptian.

That Handel sarabande was one of the catchy opening numbers of “Sarabande Africaine,” Ma’s joint appearance with Afropop singer-songwriter Angélique Kidjo at the Hollywood Bowl on Thursday night. Ma and Kidjo met seven years ago at an event in Paris commemorating the end of the World War I. That led him to look a little deeper into music he had been playing since he was a young boy and was by now ingrained in his DNA.

And it led him to loudly exclaim, before playing the sarabande from Bach’s Second Solo Cello Suite in his short solo set, “Who knew?”

Musicologists have discovered the origin of the rhythmic patterns of what became this Baroque era vehicle for the transmigration of souls in dances carried by enslaved Africans to 16th century Spain. The church banned the sarabande for its perceived lusty eroticism. But when the dance later reached the hands of a certain German father of 20 children, Bach made sarabandes of such mystical serenity that eros equaled the sacred miracle of new life.

That Ma, an old Silk Road musical warrior, and the multifaceted Kidjo bonded is hardly surprising. But that they could put on a show with a fabulous family of African drummers, Caribbean piano and percussion, and assorted electric guitars and brass and dancers in which all the world — not just Bach but Philip Glass, Dvorak, Gershwin, Ravel, you name it — seemed to be just waiting for the right African accent, and that traditional African music needed no translation at all for some 17,000 at a near full Bowl, that was something.

Even so, Kidjo and Ma are an odd couple. Kidjo proudly transforms anything she comes into musical contact with. To hear “Summertime” in Swahili, a beautiful language for song, is indescribably touching. Kidjo added words to “Bolero.” They were not translated and didn’t need to be. Ravel’s rhythms had a riveting new freshness.

Ma’s cello, on the other hand, fits in, often remaining in the background, though not a distant background. He got into playful duets with drummers and a moving one with Kidjo as an intro to “Summertime.”

There was talk of peace, a better world where we understand each other, by both Ma and Kidjo. They demonstrated how that might work, with Kidjo commanding the stage, brilliantly dressed, while Ma, seated and in a sport coat for the first part, speaking a different yet compatible musical language. Even so, it was the big, crowd-pleasing Kidjo numbers that ultimately sent the audience home dancing.

There was, however, one particularly fascinating area of communality. Glass has written important pieces for both. Ma is featured in Glass’ 2002 score to “Naqoyqatsi,” the third in the “Qatsi” trilogy of silent documentary films by director Godfrey Reggio. Although the least known, “Naqoyqatsi” has an antiwar theme that would have fit right in with “Sarabande Africaine.”

Glass also fell under Kidjo’s spell, first composing three enchanted “Yoruba” songs for the singer, and then his Symphony No. 14 (“Lodger”) for her and premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2019. The third in another Glass trilogy, this of symphonies based on David Bowie albums, “Lodger” consists of seven Bowie songs sung by Kidjo with new music by Glass.

For “Sarabande Africaine,” Kidjo sang the first of the songs in the symphony, “Move On,” arranged for cello, piano and percussion. Ma carried the main orchestral melodic lines. Bowie, who sometimes felt the need to move on, could well have written the song for Kidjo, with lines like, “Somewhere, someone’s calling me.”

The two-hour “Sarabande Africaine,” without intermission, could get a tad preachy. The evangelical mixing of musical genres and geography had its touristy elements; however engaging and engrossing the wonder-making, it was always fleeting.

But, ironically, “Move On,” in its new setting, had the powerfully intimate feel of stopping and reflecting. This was the one composer Kidjo and Ma both knew personally. They were equals and equally at home with his style, and the movement put the moving on, the “drifting like a leaf,” “feeling like a shadow,” stumbling “like a blind man,” in revealing relief.

“Move On” ends with Ma tracing a haunting, fleeing cello response to Kidjo singing “Can’t forget you / Can’t forget you” She might have been speaking for how her audience hears her, but also of the forgetful nature of the history of music, in which we are maybe not meant to remember. You hear something, make it your own and move on.

A decade ago, “Weird Al” Yankovic launched his 12th concert tour, which covered 200 shows over two years. Somewhere along the line, the pop world’s foremost parodist was backstage putting on a fat suit “for literally the 1,000th time” when he was suddenly struck by the desire to “go out on stage and do a show like a regular musician.”

Soon after, he launched his “Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour,” playing small venues with no video screens, no costume changes, no props or choreography, and none of the song parodies that made him famous. The songs were still comedic — “Everything I write winds up a little warped,” he says — but were original tunes that were pastiches of, say, Frank Zappa or They Might Be Giants’ style. He enjoyed it so much he revived the concept a couple of years ago.

Yankovic, 65, has also not released a parody song for more than a decade, in part, he says, because there’s no longer a “monoculture where it’s more obvious what the hits are,” but also because he enjoys the challenges of those original pastiches, some of which take months for him to develop.

“I wanted to prove that I’m more than just the parody guy,” says Yankovic, who also co-wrote the 2022 TV film “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.” The loopy biopic satire starred Daniel Radcliffe and earned Yankovic an Emmy nomination for his writing. (Recently, he also had self-parodying cameo in “Naked Gun.”)

“The smaller tours cleansed the palate for me and were fun for my band and the hardcore fans,” he says. “But now we’re back playing the big tent. We’ve ramping up the silliness.”

(Wesley Lapointe / Los Angeles Times)

Now, having proved he was more than the parody guy, Yankovic has re-embraced the whole full-throated “Weird Al” parody thing — his “Bigger & Weirder” tour, which comes to the Kia Forum in Inglewood on Saturday, features plenty of video screens, lots of costume changes and props, and twice as many band members.

And, of course, it features parodies covering decades of pop music: The Knack (“My Bologna”), Michael Jackson (“Eat It”), Madonna (“Like a Surgeon”), Coolio (“Amish Paradise”), Nirvana (“Smells Like Nirvana”) and Robin Thicke (“Word Crimes”).

“The smaller tours cleansed the palate for me and were fun for my band and the hardcore fans,” he says. “But now we’re back playing the big tent. We’re ramping up the silliness.”

That includes reviving not just old songs but also old bits. “Some fans feel comfort in repetition, which is OK,” he says. While he’ll change up individual jokes, “we’re trying not to change too much what people came to see — if we don’t fulfill their expectations, they’re liable to walk away disappointed.”

(His fans are committed enough that some even parody his songs with their own rewrites. Yankovic is particularly impressed by Steve Goodie, who parodied his “Hardware Store” with “Dumbledore” and even has a one-man show called “AL! The Weird Tribute (and How Daniel Radcliffe Got Mixed Up in This Nonsense).” “It’s fun and gratifying and a little ‘Inception’-like,” Yankovic says, although he has yet to parody Goodie’s parody.)

And so band newcomer Probyn Gregory, a musician who worked with Brian Wilson, Paul McCartney, Billy Joel and Eric Clapton, spends “Smells Like Nirvana” dressed like a janitor and mopping the stage as part of the performance. “He’s an amazing artist, but you can’t have a sense of shame and be part of this entourage,” Yankovic says.

For the most part, of course, Yankovic is putting Gregory and the other multi-instrumentalists he hired to more practical uses — three of them are women because he wanted three-part female harmonies, but between them they also can add percussion, guitar, saxophones and more. “I needed somebody that could play the trumpet and then someone to play clarinet for the polkas,” he says. “In the arenas, I hear our sound and think, ‘Wow, this is much, much bigger than it’s ever been.’”

It’s also more layered, with all those instruments enabling him to “stretch and do songs that were out of our reach as a five-piece.”

To show off his band, Yankovic drops the funny stuff at one point in each show, covering a classic song and playing it straight. In recent weeks, the group has played Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al,” George Harrison’s “What Is Life,” the Box Top’s “The Letter,” the Doobie Brothers’ “China Grove,” and even Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman.”

“It’s a rotating slot and almost every night is something different,” he says. The fans get into it, he says, although when he talks to them about it, he sometimes finds their reactions “baffling.”

“People sometimes say, ‘Oh, you guys can really play. You can really do real music,’” he says. “What do you think we’ve been doing? Just because the words are funny, it’s not real music?”

Yankovic is a “pop culture sponge” and has always listened to various music genres, first for pleasure and then for work. “I just like to soak it in and regurgitate it in my own demented way,” he says. But he was also raised on Dr. Demento, and was heavily influenced by Spike Jones, Tom Lehrer, Allan Sherman, and Monty Python. Those comedians taught him that craftsmanship matters even, or especially, when you’re being silly.

“I think that the craftsmanship is one of the reasons that the humor works so well and I think the best parody is material that emulates the original source as closely as possible,” he says. “It helps the joke if you’re sucked into thinking you’re listening to a particular pop song and then think, ‘Wait a minute, these aren’t the lyrics I’m used to.’”

For that to work, the craftsmanship in his writing and arranging must be matched by the musicianship in his band; he hopes his audience appreciates both sides of that coin.

He adds that he thinks he personally has improved over time. “I think I’m a better singer now than I was in the ’80s and I’m a better musician and a better arranger,” he says.

Even with the four newcomers, Yankovic relies heavily on his original band. “I’ve got one of the best bands in the world and they do every genre flawlessly, and that’s what helps make the whole act work,” he says. “The core band has been together for over 40 years and we’re kind of telepathic in the way we communicate now, so we’re a lot better than we were back in the day.”