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What is it about brothers? So competitive, so determined to outshine the other, so very male. In popular music, there are numerous examples of passionate sibling partnerships that have burned bright only to flame out, leaving recriminatory anger and the occasional lawsuit in their wake.

The Everly brothers were no exception. Foundational pillars of 20th century popular music, they formed the first great harmony vocal duo to bridge country music and pop. Over a five year period from 1957 to 1962, the brothers recorded a series of singles — “Wake Up Little Susie,” “Bye Bye Love” and “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” among them — that imprinted themselves into the pop-music canon, their soaring, wistful, close-interval harmonies gliding straight into our souls.

You don’t have to look too hard to find Phil and Don Everly’s traces. The Beatles regarded them as the harmony group they longed to emulate; you can hear them sing a snatch of “Bye Bye Love” in Peter Jackson’s “Get Back” documentary, and Paul McCartney name-checked them in his 1976 song “Let ‘Em In.” Simon & Garfunkel wanted to be the Everlys and included “Bye Bye Love” on the “Bridge Over Troubled Water” album. In 2013, Billie Joe Armstrong and Norah Jones recorded “Foreverly,” an album of Everly Brothers songs.

And yet, biographies of them are scant. Barry Mazor’s “Blood Harmony” is long overdue, a rigorously researched narrative of the duo’s fascinatingly zig-zaggy 50-plus-year career, as well as a loving valentine to the pair’s enduring musical power.

In his book, Mazor is quick to refute many of the myths that have accreted around the pair, starting with the backstory that the brothers were reared in Kentucky, a cradle of bluegrass, and that their dad, an accomplished guitarist and singer, nurtured them up from rural poverty into spotlight stardom. In fact, Mazor’s book points out that the brothers, who were born two years apart, moved around a lot as kids — Iowa and Chicago, mostly — soaking in the musical folkways of those regions and absorbing it all into their musical bloodstream. Though they were apprenticed by their father to perform as adolescents, they were their own men, with a sophisticated grasp of various musical genres as teenagers.

“They were as much products of the Midwest as they were of Kentucky,” says Mazor from his Nashville home. “The music they learned and the culture they absorbed was in Chicago, where they lived with their parents for a time, and they picked up on the R&B there. All of this eventually adds up to what we now call Americana, which is music that has a sense of place.” The Everlys brought that country-meets-the-city vibe to pop music.

Another misconception that Mazor clears up in “Blood Harmony” is the notion that the Beatles were the first musical group to write and play its own songs. In fact, Phil and Don wrote a clutch of the Everlys’ greatest records, including Phil’s 1960 composition “When Will I Be Loved,” which became a mammoth hit when Linda Ronstadt covered it in 1975. It’s also true that Don is rock’s first great rhythm guitarist, his strident acoustic strum powering ”Wake Up Little Susie” and others. George Harrison was listening, as was Pete Townsend.

The Everlys produced hits, many of them written by one or both of the husband-and-wife team of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant: “Bird Dog,” “Love Hurts,” “Poor Jenny” and others. But the Beatles’ global success became a barricade that many of the first-generation rock stars couldn’t breach, including the Everlys. “Even though they were only a couple of years older than the Beatles, they were treated as old hat,” says Mazor.

Complicating matters further: A lawsuit brought by their publishing company Acuff-Rose in 1961 meant that the brothers could no longer tap the Bryants to write songs for them. The same year, they enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve and found, just as Elvis had discovered a few years prior, that military service did little to help sell records. By the time the lawsuit was settled in 1964, both brothers had descended into amphetamine abuse.

The Everlys had to go back to move forward. Warner Bros. Records, their label since 1960, had become the greatest label for a new era of singer-songwriters taking country-rock to a more introspective place. Future label president Lenny Waronker, an Everlys fan, wanted to make an album that would place the brothers in their proper context, as pioneers who bridged musical worlds to create something entirely new.

Author Barry Mazor is quick to refute many of the myths surrounding the Everlys.

(Courtesy of the author)

The resulting project, called “Roots,” drew from the Everlys’ musical heritage but also featured covers of songs by contemporary writers Randy Newman and Ron Elliott. Released in 1968, the same year as the Byrds’ “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” and the Band’s “Music from Big Pink,” “Roots” sold meekly, but it remains a touchstone of the Everlys’ career, a key progenitor of the Americana genre. “‘The ‘Roots’ album was one last chance to show they mattered,” says Mazor. “And there was suddenly room for them again. It wasn’t a massive seller, but it opened the door.”

If anything, it was their own fraught relationship that tended to snag the Everlys’ progress. Their identities were as intertwined as their harmonies, and it grated on them. Mazor points out that they were in fact vastly different in temperament, Phil’s pragmatic careerism running counter to Don’s more free-spirited approach. This push and pull created tensions that weighed heavily on their friendship and their musical output.

“Phil was more conservative in some ways. He was content to play the supper club circuit well into ‘70s, while Don wanted to explore and was less willing to sell out, as it were,” says Mazor. “And this created a wedge between them.” Perhaps inevitably, from 1973 to roughly 1983, they branched out as solo artists, making records that left little imprint on the public consciousness. They had families and eventually both moved from their L.A. home base to different cities.

But there was time for one final triumph. Having briefly set their differences aside, the brothers played a reunion show at London’s Royal Albert Hall in September 1983, which led to a collaboration on an album with British guitarist Dave Edmunds producing. Edmunds, in turn, asked Paul McCartney whether he would be willing to write something for the “EB 84” album, and the result was “On the Wings of a Nightingale,” their last U.S. hit, albeit a modest one.

“The harmony singing that the Everlys pioneered is still with us,” says Mazor. “If you look back, the Kinks, the Beach Boys, all of these brother acts all loved the Everlys. But there’s also a contemporary act called Larkin Poe, who called one of their albums ‘Blood Harmony.’ They set an example for how two singers can maximize their voices to create something larger than themselves. This kind of harmony still lingers.”

In a TikTok video captured by a fan at one of SiR’s sold-out L.A. shows last August, the Inglewood-born singer-songwriter breaks down into tears after his wife appears onstage behind him.

“Y’all give it up for my beautiful wife, Kelly Ann,” he says on the mic after collecting himself. When he leans to give her a kiss, the crowd erupts into a sea of “aws” and cheers.

It was a tender moment between the couple during the final stretch of his Life Is Good tour in support of “Heavy” — his most vulnerable project yet, which took five years to make and tackles his years-long battle with drug addiction, depression, infidelity and the process of getting sober. Behind the scenes, though, SiR was grappling with a different hardship: The death of his mother, Jackie Gouché, a talented performer who sang with Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder, and helped build SiR’s confidence as an artist.

His team was “ready for me to just drop everything and come home,” says SiR over Zoom. “But I prayed about it. I talked to my family, and we made the decision for me to finish the tour out, in honor of her.”

So by the time he got to the Hollywood Palladium, where he performed back-to-back shows, he says, “I think I was drained and I needed my support, and my wife just so happened to be there, which was just perfect for me. I’ll never forget that night.”

Since that emotional performance, SiR, born Sir Darryl Farris, released an extended version of “Heavy,” subtitled “The Light,” in April, which features six new tracks, some of which are new, such as “Sin Again” and “No Good,” and others that didn’t make the cut on the original project.

The Grammy-nominated singer, who is signed to L.A. powerhouse label Top Dawg Entertainment alongside R&B darling SZA, is set to make his headlining debut at the Hollywood Bowl on July 20 for the KCRW Festival. The upcoming show will feature an opening set from singer-songwriter Leon Thomas, of whom SiR is a “huge fan,” along with two surprise appearances from, he says, the “best guests I could get.”

Ahead of the upcoming show, we caught up with the “John Redcorn” singer to discuss how he’s keeping his late mother‘s memory alive through his music, how becoming a father of two daughters has affected him both personally and artistically and his goal to make a classic record that everyone knows.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

You recently wrapped up your Step Into the Light tour a few weeks ago. How was it being onstage with your older brother, Davion, who sang background vocals, and your uncle Andrew, who is a gospel bass legend?

It was so fulfilling. I’ve worked with them before on so many different levels. My uncle plays on all my songs, and Davion and I write songs together, but to have them on the road with me was just a different outer-body experience. I think my favorite part of all of that was the time we spent [together] before and after the shows, like having dinners with my uncle and finding out things about my parents that I didn’t know. Finding out stories about my grandfather that I’d never heard. Now, our bond is that much stronger. It’s really nice to have him on the road. My uncle Andrew is awesome. I got sick of my brother. [laughs]

You were also on tour last year in support of “Heavy,” which is your most vulnerable project yet. How was it performing these songs this time around as opposed to last year? Did any songs hit differently?

We changed the set list just a tad because we had new music that we wanted to promote. The newer songs felt great. I was really specific about which ones I added because I wanted them to be songs that I enjoyed singing. The songs that I have in the set list that are staples still hit the same, and the audience still responds the same way. But it was surprising to see people singing the new music. I was fully prepared to go there and have to explain myself through these songs, but people were already vibing and singing along, which was great. My audience is great. I love my fans so much.

What songs did you add from the “Heavy Deluxe: The Light” project?

We added “No Good,” “Sin Again,” “Out of My Hands” and then, of course, “Step Into the Light,” which we added to the end of the set. But we also have songs like “John Redcorn” in there, which is a staple. If I don’t sing “John Redcorn,” people will come for my neck.

Last August, a fan posted a video of you crying during one of your shows at the Hollywood Palladium after you saw your wife, and the comment section was filled with sweet and supportive messages. Do you mind sharing what headspace you were in that night and why you felt so emotional in that moment?

That was the end of the tour, so I knew I was done, and in the middle of that tour, I actually lost my mom. At the time, I was on the phone with [TDE Chief Executive Anthony “Top” Tiffith], and he asked me if I wanted to continue. They were ready for me to just drop everything and come home. But I prayed about it, I talked to my family, and we made the decision for me to finish the tour out, in honor of her. My energy was just so low. I’ve never felt like that and had to go perform, and we had like eight more shows left. So by the time I got to the Palladium, I was drained. There’s a song that I sing called “Tryin’ My Hardest,” and I wrote that when I wasn’t sober and I was just trying to work myself through recovery. It was an ode to my mother and my wife, just telling them that I wasn’t giving up every time I relapsed. I [think] it was that song that she came out to. Half the time, tears were flowing down my face. So I think I was drained and I needed my support, and my wife just so happened to be there, which was just perfect for me. I’ll never forget that night. We sold out the Palladium twice.

You had a really close relationship with your mother, Jackie Gouche, who was a phenomenal artist in her own right. Have you written any songs in dedication to her since her passing?

I have a song that goes: (Starts singing lyrics)

Her name is Danielle, born in December but never felt the cold
Chocolate skin and a heart that’s made of gold
A certain resemblance to someone that I know
As bitter, as sweet
As easy as it was to sweep me off my feet
I never imagined that you may never meet
I wish you could be here to watch my baby grow
She’s gonna to do well
Her name is Danielle.

It’s just a song about my daughter that I wrote for her, and hopefully, I put it on the next project. Ooh. But we’ll see. My mother was such a big reason why I started really writing songs and wanting to be SiR. I was a different kind of guy growing up. I was very timid. I wasn’t sure about my musical abilities or gifts, and anytime I sent her songs, she would just light up and tell me how beautiful it was and give me advice, which was very important. After a while, I just kept impressing her and kept blowing her away in her own words. She was a huge part of my confidence.

“I should be able to have an album out every year,” SiR said. “I’m a studio rat so we should be able to find it. But my sobriety had to be at the forefront of everything, and I’m navigating being SiR sober.”

(Rolexx)

You’ve been vocal and vulnerable about your experience of dealing with addiction and all of the lifestyle changes you’ve made since becoming sober. Can you talk about what you’ve learned about yourself throughout this time?

I’ve learned that I have an addictive personality, no matter what the drug is, and I’ve created some good habits. The gym is now the biggest addiction that I have. I definitely had to just learn who I was looking at in the mirror, because when you’re inebriated, intoxicated all the time, you don’t really know what’s going on or who you are, and it’s a tough place to be. It’s a tough hole to dig yourself out of, but once you get out of that, you’ve got to navigate not falling back into the hole. It took about a year before I even got close to being sober. I’d have, like, sober weeks, and relapse after relapse and things like that. But at this point, I’m proud of where I am as a father, as a husband, and I’m trying to make sure that I just keep nourishing my artistry, because as much as I’m glad that that album came out, it took me five years to put that album out, and that shouldn’t happen. I always like to think of myself as a hyper-creative, and I should be able to have an album out every year. I’m a studio rat, so we should be able to find it. But my sobriety had to be at the forefront of everything, and I’m navigating being SiR sober. This is all new, and it’s definitely fun, but I definitely had to really work to get here.

Since releasing “Heavy,” you had another daughter, whom you talked about earlier, so now you’re a father of two. Can you talk about how fatherhood has affected you personally and creatively?

Fatherhood is like, ooh man, it’s a process. It taught me a lot about myself. I’m selfish. I’m impatient. I’m getting old. [laughs] My body doesn’t move and respond the same. When you have a 3-year-old who’s running as fast as she can and you’re trying to keep up with her, it’s tough. But it also just taught me a lot about how well I was raised. My parents were sweet. They were so nice and so kind and so gentle with us, and very protective, but in the best ways. If I’m half as good of a parent to my kids as my mother was to me, I think they’re going to be fine.

On Sunday, you are going to headline the Hollywood Bowl for the first time. How are you feeling about the show and what are you most excited about?

I can’t lie, I was excited about Leon Thomas’ set, but I realize now that I’m not going to be able to watch it, because I’m going to be doing my vocal warmups and getting ready for own thing. So now I’m just excited to see that sea of people. In L.A., I’ve done some really good shows, but it’s a 17,000-cap venue, and I think we’re doing good on ticket sales. This is the largest SiR audience that I’ve ever seen, so I’m excited to see the fans and hear them sing along.

Have you met Leon Thomas before?

We haven’t met, but I’m a huge fan. I don’t know if a lot of people [know], but Leon Thomas was a songwriter before he started putting music out on his own. Of course, everyone knows him from his acting days, but he was a part of a writing group that is based in L.A. and has been writing songs for other artists, so to see him come to the forefront of his own artistry is a beautiful thing. I think I’m on the waiting list for a Leon Thomas session. Collaborating is big right now with me, especially since things have changed and I don’t work as much as I used to on my own. I want to bounce ideas off of good artists, and I want to have great musicians in the room so we can make sure that everything is where it’s supposed to be in the song. We talked about it. I texted him [last] week just to thank him for being a part of this, and I wanted to congratulate him on all of his success. He’s a good guy, and I’m definitely a huge fan.

Why is collaboration so important for you now? What’s changed?

I want better songs. I’ve been around a long time. I got a lot of music out, but I have this thing in my head where I just want a classic. I feel like I have some really good records, but I want a song that everybody knows. As a songwriter, I think the most beautiful music comes from collaboration because you have people there to give you guidance in your own thought process. Even if I’m leading the way, I have somebody in my ear that’s navigating into this place we’re trying to get to. But I definitely just want to write better songs, and I’m not afraid to ask for help. I’ve had to learn that the hard way. I spent a lot of time over the years just kind of closed off in my box, which was great because it created my world, my sound. But now that I have established my sound, I should always be open to people helping me create in my world, especially if they know what my world is.

Have you started thinking about your next project yet?

I am definitely thinking about my next project. It does not have a name. We don’t have a date, but I am as busy as I can be right now, just with new songwriting and trying to stay ahead of it, because if I make you guys wait another five years for another project, I don’t think I’ma survive. I might have to go get me a day job. So I’m definitely working, but I’m not gonna rush. I’m not gonna force anything. I’m not just gonna put out anything. We need, you know, at least 40 to 45 minutes of just greatness, and I’m gonna do everything I can to deliver for the fans, because they deserve it more than anything.

In 2018, Paul Simon walked onto the Hollywood Bowl stage for what most in the crowd believed to be his last tour stop in Los Angeles, ever. Simon expected that too — he’d billed the event as his “Homeward Bound — Farewell Tour.” After 50 years of performing, a then-record three Grammy wins for album, a catalog of some of the most sophisticated and inquisitive American songwriting ever put to paper — he’d go out in full garlands.

So what a shock and delight when Simon, now 83, announced a few years later that he was not quite done yet. In 2023, he released a new album, “Seven Psalms,” an elliptical, gracious invocation for the arc of his life, drawing on biblical imagery and intertwined guitar fugues.

But even better, Simon would also return to the stage for a new tour, including a five-night run at Disney Concert Hall. For L.A. fans, these shows were one last chance to reconnect with Simon, who now had a profound late-career album to bookend his catalog. Those songs spanned from his years in the Greenwich Village folk scene of the ‘60s and ‘70s to a Sabrina Carpenter duet on “Saturday Night Live’s” 50th anniversary special.

Wednesday’s show — the last of the Disney hall stand — got to all of it, with Simon still in exquisite form in the last light of his performing career.

If Simon, seven years ago, had any doubts about his interest or ability to perform live at this exacting level, they must have disappeared the second he got a guitar in his hand at Disney Hall. The set opened with a full run of “Seven Psalms,” a short yet profound song cycle in which a dense, ornamental acoustic guitar figure recurs over several songs in an intimate valediction.

“Seven Pslams” belongs alongside David Bowie’s “Blackstar” or Johnny Cash’s “American Recordings” albums in the canon of wide-lens looks at the mystery of late life. Simon’s music was wise before its time even when he was a young man. But the perspective he has at this vantage, on the backside of 80 with a rejuvenated muse, was especially moving.

“I lived a life of pleasant sorrows, until the real deal came,” he sang on “Love Is Like a Braid.” “And in that time of prayer and waiting, where doubt and reason dwell / A jury sat, deliberating. All is lost or all is well.“

Simon’s band members for this stint — a dozen or so strong, spanning percussion, woodwinds and guitars — were mostly impressionists during this portion, adding distant bells and chamber flourishes to the patina of these songs.

While he kicked up his heels a bit on the bluesy “My Professional Opinion,” there was a trembling power in “Trail of Volcanoes” and, especially, “Your Forgiveness,” in which Simon took stock of his time on Earth and whatever lies next. “Two billion heart beats and out / Waving the flag in the last parade / I have my reasons to doubt,” he sang, followed by a gracious incantation: “Dip your hand in heaven’s waters, god’s imagination … All of life’s abundance in a drop of condensation.”

Paul Simon plays and sings Wednesday at Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

The hit-heavy back half of the show was a little rowdier. One fan even made a bit of history when he tossed a $20 bill onstage, which was enough for Simon to gamely oblige his request to play a verse of “Kodachrome.”

Simon and his band had looser reins here. “Graceland” and “Under African Skies” still radiated curiosity for the world’s musical bounty, with the fraught complexity of that album nonetheless paving a stone on the road for African music’s current global ascent. (He introduced his bassist, Bakithi Kumalo, as the last surviving member of the original “Graceland” band.)

An elegant “Slip Slidin’ Away” led up to a poignant “The Late Great Johnny Ace,” which took a tale of rock ‘n’ roll self-destruction and pinned it to a generational sense of cultural collapse. Simon didn’t reference any current events beyond the John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and John Lennon assassinations, but you could feel a contemporary gravity in the song.

Veteran drummer Steve Gadd reprised his jazzy breaks for “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” and the fatherhood ballad “St. Judy’s Comet” was a sweet, deep-cut flourish. (That mood continued when Edie Brickell, Simon’s wife and vocalist, slipped in from the side stage to whistle the hook on “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard.) But the band hit full velocity on a pair of songs from “The Rhythm of the Saints.” “Spirit Voices” conjured an ayahuasca reverie with its thicket of guitars and hand percussion, while the sprawling and time-signature-bending “The Cool, Cool River” showed Simon the musician — not just the poet — still in absolute command.

Simon’s set never got to “Bridge Over Troubled Water” or “You Can Call Me Al,” but the final encore wrapped with just him and a guitar and the eternal hymn of “The Sound of Silence.” His guitar work retained all its original power in the opening instrumental runs, and Simon looked genuinely grateful that, perhaps even to his own surprise, the stage hadn’t lost its promise or potency for him just yet.

Who knows whether Wednesday was the last time Angelenos will get to see Simon perform live (this tour wraps next month in Seattle). If it was, then it was a beautiful benediction for one of America’s defining songwriters. But if it wasn’t, take any chance you get to see him again.

Of all the pop hits vying to become the song of the summer, Alex Warren’s “Ordinary” might be the most improbable: A stark and brooding ballad full of lurid Christian imagery — “Shatter me with your touch / Oh Lord, return me to dust,” goes one line — it’s about a guy seeking the kind of sexual-spiritual fulfillment not typically found on the beach or at a barbecue.

Yet the song, which has more than 720 million streams on Spotify, just logged its sixth week since early June atop Billboard’s Hot 100 — more than a month longer at No. 1 than Sabrina Carpenter’s “Manchild,” to name one of the sunnier tunes soundtracking the season. (Among Warren’s other competitors: Drake, who posted an image of the current chart on Instagram on Monday showing his song “What Did I Miss?” at No. 2 behind Warren’s hit. “I’m taking that soon don’t worry,” the rapper wrote.)

“Ordinary’s” somber tone is all the more striking given that Warren — whose father died when he was 9 and who grew up in Carlsbad with a single mother he’s described as an abusive alcoholic — first made a name for himself as a founding member of Hype House, the early-2020s conclave of TikTokers known for beaming out goofy bite-size content from a rented mansion in Los Angeles. Half a decade later, Warren is still a faithful user of his TikTok account (with its 18.8 million followers), though these days he’s mostly driving attention — often with the help of his wife, fellow influencer Kouvr Annon — to his music, which combines the moody theatrics of early Sam Smith with the highly buffed textures of Imagine Dragons.

On Friday, Warren will release his debut LP, “You’ll Be Alright, Kid,” featuring guest appearances by Blackpink’s Rosé and by Jelly Roll, who brought Warren to the stage at April’s Stagecoach festival to sing “Ordinary” and to premiere their duet “Bloodline.” Warren, 24, discussed his journey during a recent trip to L.A. from his new home in Nashville, where he lives not far from Jelly Roll and Teddy Swims. “I was just texting Teddy,” Warren says as we sit down. “I got off tour and immediately was like, ‘Oh, I want to buy a go-kart.’ Teddy FaceTimes me, he goes, ‘You a—hole. I’m trying to buy a go-kart right now too.’ Apparently, I bought the last go-kart in Tennessee.” These are excerpts from our conversation.

“Ordinary” is clearly drawing on your identity as a Christian. Yet there’s something almost sacrilegious about the song.
I get that criticism a lot.

To me it’s what makes the song interesting — the erotic energy in a line like “You got me kissing the ground of your sanctuary.”
I’m worshiping my wife in a way — she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. You can’t just write a song like that and be like, “Oh, baby, you’re my everything.” Everyone’s already done “You’re my world,” you know? I wanted to do something different — almost Hozier-esque. I wrote into it being like, I really love my wife, and I have a relationship with God — that’s something I can compare it to.

As the song has gone out, I’ve heard a lot of Christians’ opinions on it, and some people are like, “F— this guy.” There’s also so many people who think it’s a super die-hard Christian song and don’t like it either. I have to be OK with both sides hating me.

You’ve led a peculiar life, which obviously lends context to your music for anyone who knows the details. Yet “Ordinary” is big enough now that many listeners — maybe most listeners — are hearing it without knowing anything about you.
This new song I’ve been teasing [“Eternity”] is about grief, and people are like, “I can’t wait to play it at my wedding.” It’s cool that people are making it their own. It reminds me of Lewis Capaldi’s “Someone You Loved,” where people were like, “Oh my God, this is a breakup record.” No, he wrote it about his grandma.

Are you a Capaldi fan?
I love Lewis. I don’t look like a Justin Bieber/Shawn Mendes traditional pop star, but it’s cool because Lewis kind of made it popular to not give a f—. Lewis and Ed [Sheeran], I would say — I mean, I’ve seen Ed’s closet, and it’s just nine white Prada T-shirts.

You have an unusual voice.
Thank you — I think?

It’s deeper than most pop voices right now. Does it seem unusual to you?
No. I asked my wife, “Do I have a basic voice?” She was like, “What are you talking about?” I was like, “I live with this voice, and I think it just sounds like every other bitch.” But I’m my No. 1 hater.

I went back and looked at the series Netflix made about Hype House.
I’m so sorry.

There’s some significant fluctuations in your weight, and I was wondering how working in a visual field from a pretty young age shaped your ideas about eating and exercise.
When I started making money, I didn’t know what to do with it and I just used DoorDash every second I could. As time went on, especially in Hype House, you have so many people’s opinions and everyone’s pointing out your flaws, and the weight was definitely one of them. After that I was like, “OK, how do I fix this?” I’m 24 now — I was 22, 21 at the time, and I was like, “I should be in the best shape of my life.”

But it definitely does take a toll on you. Even now, if you go look at my TikTok comments, thousands of people are loving me. You go on Twitter, the first 400 comments are like, “He’s so ugly,” “His nose is crooked,” all these things. It hits a point where you have a thousand people loving you, but those two people not — you’re like, “Wait, are they the ones telling me the truth? Is everyone else just gassing me up?”

Kind of bleak.
It’s such a strange career. I have the Kids’ Choice Awards on Saturday, and I’m like, “Should I be eating this the next few days?”

Would you say you’re in a good place in terms of how you think about your physical appearance?
Looking in the mirror, probably not. But when it comes to having to approve a photo, I don’t give a s—. I’ll approve whatever, double chin and all.

Is that true?
Truly, I don’t mind, because I don’t think people are watching my videos for my attractiveness. That being said, if I was lighter, I think I’d be happier looking at myself. But at the same time, I don’t care because these songs to me are more about what they’re about and less about how I look. Also, it gives me some leeway if someone catches me lacking at In-N-Out.

Warren’s song “Ordinary” now has more than 720 million streams on Spotify and has just logged its sixth week since early June atop Billboard’s Hot 100.

(Ethan Benavidez / For The Times)

You’ve said you don’t really drink or do drugs but that you get drunk once a year. What would be the occasion?
I just got drunk with Ed Sheeran — I drank two Modelos and I got put on my ass. This was at Santa’s Pub [in Nashville] — me, Noah Kahan and Ed Sheeran. They had just played something, and Ed was like, “Do you want a drink?” I was like, “If I’m getting drunk this year, it’s getting drunk with Ed Sheeran.” So he gave me a Modelo, and I was like, “Whoa, I’m feeling this.” He’s like, “OK, dude, I’m on my 11th.” He hands me a second one, and my wife had to drive me home.

So I’ve been getting a little loose with it. But it’s always beer — I don’t really drink any hard stuff. Nothing against it, I’ve just always preferred Diet Coke. I wish I liked alcohol.

I mean, you can cultivate this. It’s easy to do.
I’ve been trying. I had a sip of my friend’s old fashioned. I thought it was interesting — sugary, but I liked it.

Your song “The Outside” on this new record talks about the illusory nature of happiness and success.
I went into it wanting to write about the things that people go through to turn to God or another power or something to get out of their own heads. I wanted to depict people finding a sense of purpose.

“Hollywood wasn’t all that she thought / City of Angels but her wings got caught / She got high enough to think she met God.”
You move to L.A. to pursue a dream and you see God after doing a hallucinogenic — that’s referencing a friend of mine who’s now a Christian buff who did ayahuasca. The other [verse] is about health care — watching my friends who don’t have it because it’s so expensive.

“‘It’s just stress,’ so the doctor says / His young heart’s beating out of his chest / Student loans and medical debt.”
The Luigi Mangione case happened around the time we wrote that record.

Luigi was in your head as you were writing?
That second verse is literally about Luigi Mangione. Not to get political, but the things that I feel are necessary in life — you have to pay for it, and it causes people to turn to something like God. The song ends with me being like, “I talk to my dad in the sky, hoping he talks to me back.” That song means a lot to me.

Your music is extremely tidy, which stands in contrast to the singer-songwriter mode of the Zach Bryans —
And the Noah Kahans, where they’re flat in some parts and it doesn’t matter because the emotion’s there.

Why is your instinct as a musician to go for something neater?
Because I don’t have the luxury of being able to make what some people view as mistakes. Coming from TikTok to music, I feel like it needs to be neat — it needs to be, “Oh my God, this guy can do this.” The next album I’m working on, it’s more rugged. I’m finding different parts of my voice. I’ve been listening to a lot of older music too, which has been really good.

Such as?
Hall & Oates — dude, “Rich Girl”? Billy Joel too.

Is there still a Hype House group chat?
I have a group chat with not all of them but the ones that — I’m not gonna name-drop them, but the ones getting popular with music. It was formative years in my life — my college experience, I guess. We’re able to look back on it and have a moment of, like, “That sucked, but it was also awesome.”

Would people in the house have called that you and Addison Rae would be the ones to break out as musicians?
No, I don’t think so — especially not me. Maybe Addison — Addison has always been cool. Everyone loved Addison, even in the house, and she’s always been so kind. Even to this day, she’s a good friend of mine. But no one would have guessed me. I don’t think anyone liked me.

In the house?
Just in general. The Netflix show — a lot of it was fake, but looking at that, I feel like I’m such a better person now.

“The next album I’m working on, it’s more rugged,” says Warren, whose debut LP “You’ll Be Alright, Kid” comes out Friday. “I’m finding different parts of my voice.”

(Ethan Benavidez / For The Times)

Are you glad that “Ordinary” happened after the influencer moment in your life — that there’s a bit of separation?
I started this in 2020, 2021 — I put out my first song then, and I was still an influencer, vlogging, doing all those things. Everyone’s like, “He came out of nowhere,” and I’m like, I’ve been doing this for five years.

But nobody cared until well after your time as an influencer — which might be a good thing, right? I’m not sure the overlap served Lil Huddy. In a weird way, you might’ve gotten lucky.
I think about that often. I made videos with my wife — I never really made videos with the content house — and those videos were successful in their own right. I think a lot of my fans today were watching me at that time, but not for the Hype House. Actually, no, that’s not true.

It’s hard to generalize about the audience for a song this big.
All I do is put my head down and promote the records. I’m not paying attention to the scope of things.

Of course you’re checking the numbers.
I’m not understanding the scope besides the numbers. My monthly listeners [on Spotify], someone told me it was 50-something million — that’s sick. But I can’t contextualize that. If I’m walking down the street, how many people have heard the song and how many people know who I am? I know the song is big, but I’m under the assumption that the record’s bigger than I am.

That seems true.
OK, so what does that mean? I can compare it to a Lola Young, or is it a Benson Boone? I think that’s two separate things right now. Also, I don’t know the age demographic. If I walk into a bingo night, are they gonna know who I am?

A bingo night?
You know what I’m saying. The song is No. 1 on Hot AC — that’s adult contemporary. Is it someone’s mom? I don’t know who’s listening to the record. But I write songs about people passing away, and most people — no matter rich, poor, whatever — it’s typically gonna be your 40-and-up who are gonna relate to that record. Kids don’t necessarily deal with loss the same way.

Is it weird to think that a significant portion of your audience is people twice your age?
No, that’s f—ing rad to me — the older audience is the hardest to grab. I think it’s safe to say that most people judge notoriety on whether their mom knows who they are, right? If that’s where I start, that’s cool.

Connie Francis, the angelic-voiced singer who was one of the biggest recording stars of the late 1950s and early 1960s, has died. She was 87.

Her friend and publicist, Ron Roberts, announced the singer’s death Thursday, according to the Associated Press.

A month prior to her death, Francis was hospitalized for “extreme pain” following a fracture in her pelvic area. The singer, who shared details about her health with fans on social media, used a wheelchair in her later years and said she lived with a “troublesome painful hip.”

Francis emerged when rock ’n’ roll first captivated America. Her earliest hits — a dreamy arrangement of the old standard “Who’s Sorry Now?,” the cheerfully silly “Stupid Cupid” and the galloping “Lipstick on Your Collar” — fit neatly into the emerging genre’s lighter side. Although she targeted teen listeners with such songs as the spring break anthem “Where the Boys Are,” Francis ultimately gravitated toward the middle of the road, singing softly lit, tasteful pop for adult audiences.

Francis’ commercial peak roughly spanned from Elvis Presley’s induction into the U.S. Army to the Beatles first setting foot on American soil. Over that five-year period, Francis was one of the biggest stars in music, earning three No. 1 hits: “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool,” “My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own” and “Don’t Break the Heart That Loves You.” As her singles offered familiar adolescent fare, her albums were constructed for specific demographics. During the early ’60s, she cut records dedicated to “Italian Favorites,” “Rock ’n’ Roll Million Sellers,” “Country & Western,” “Fun Songs for Children,” “Jewish Favorites” and “Spanish and Latin American Favorites,” even recording versions of her hits in Italian, German, Spanish and Japanese.

This adaptability became a considerable asset once her pop hits dried up in the mid-’60s. Francis continued to be a popular concert attraction through the 1960s, her live success sustaining her as she eased into adult contemporary fare. A number of personal tragedies stalled her career in the 1970s, but by the ’90s, her life stabilized enough for her to return to the stage, playing venues in Las Vegas, Atlantic City and elsewhere until her retirement in the 2010s.

Connie Francis circa 1960.

(Archive Photos/Getty Images)

Connie Francis was born Concetta Maria Franconero on Dec. 12, 1938, in Newark, N.J. When she was 3, her father bought her an accordion and she spent her childhood learning Italian folk songs. By age 10, her parents enrolled her in local talent contests. When her father attempted to book her on the New York-based television show “Startime,” producer George Scheck only agreed because Francis played the accordion and he was “up to here in singers.” Francis remained a fixture on “Startime” through her early teens — Scheck served as her manager during these formative years — during which time she also appeared on Arthur Grodfrey’s “Talent Scouts.” Godfrey stumbled over her Italian name, suggesting she shorten it to something “easy and Irish,” thereby giving birth to her stage name.

Scheck managed to secure Francis a record contract with MGM in 1955. As she received work dubbing her singing voice for film actresses — she subbed for Tuesday Weld in 1956’s “Rock, Rock, Rock” and Freda Holloway in 1957’s “Jamboree” — MGM steadily attempted to move her from pop to rock. Nothing clicked until Francis recorded “Who’s Sorry Now?” as a favor to her father, giving the 1923 tune a romantic sway.

“Who’s Sorry Now?” caught the ear of Dick Clark, who regularly played the record on his “American Bandstand,” which had just expanded into the national market. Clark’s endorsement helped break “Who’s Sorry Now?” and sent it into the Billboard Top 10. MGM attempted to replicate its success by having Francis spruce up old chestnuts, but to no avail. The singer didn’t have another hit until she cut “Stupid Cupid,” a song co-written by Neil Sedaka and Howie Greenfield, a pair of young songwriters at the Brill Building who were navigating the distance separating Broadway-bound pop and rock ’n’ roll.

“Stupid Cupid” was the first of many hits she’d have with the songwriters, including the slinky ‘Fallin’” and the ballad “Frankie.” She later said, “Neil and Howie never failed to come up with a hit for me. It was a great marriage. We thought the same way.” Sedaka and Greenfield weren’t the only Brill Building songwriters to command Francis’ attention: She developed a romance with a pre-fame Bobby Darin, who was chased away by her father.

Over the next few years, Francis recorded both standards and new songs from Sedaka and Greenfield, along with material from other emerging songwriters, such as George Goehring and Edna Lewis, who wrote the lively “Lipstick on Your Collar.” Within less than two years, her popularity was such that MGM released five different Connie Francis LPs for Christmas 1959: a set of holiday tunes, a greatest-hits record, an LP dedicated to country, one dedicated to rock ’n’ roll and a set of Italian music, performed partially in the original language.

Connie Francis and Neil Sedaka in 2007.

(George Napolitano / FilmMagic / Getty Images)

With her popularity at an apex, Connie Francis made her cinematic debut in the 1960 teen comedy “Where the Boys Are,” which also featured a Sedaka and Greenfield song as its theme. Francis appeared in three quasi-sequels culminating in 1965’s “When the Boys Meet the Girls,” but she never felt entirely comfortable onscreen, preferring live performance. “Vacation” became her last Top 10 single in 1962 — the same year she published the book “For Every Young Heart: Connie Francis Talks to Teenagers.” Too young to be an oldies act, Francis spent the remainder of the 1960s chasing a few trends — in 1968, she released “Connie & Clyde — Hit Songs of the ’30s,” a rushed attempt to cash in on the popularity of Arthur Penn’s controversial hit film “Bonnie and Clyde” — while busying herself on a showbiz circuit that encompassed Vegas, television variety shows and singing for troops in Vietnam.

A comeback attempt in the early 1970s was swiftly derailed by tragedy. After appearing at Long Island’s Westbury Music Fair on Nov. 8, 1974, she was sexually assaulted in her Howard Johnson’s hotel room; the culprit was never caught. Francis sued the hotel chain; she’d later win a $2.5-million settlement that helped reshape security practices in the hospitality industry. As she was recovering from her assault, she underwent a nasal surgery that went astray, leading her to lose her voice for years; it took three subsequent surgeries before she regained her ability to sing. Francis spent much of the remainder of the ’70s battling severe depression, but once her voice returned, recordings happened on occasion, including a disco version of “Where the Boys Are” in 1978.

Connie Francis.

(ullstein bild via Getty Images)

Francis returned to the public eye in the early 1980s, first as a victims rights activist, then as a live performer. Her comeback was marred by further tragedy — the murder of her brother George, a lawyer who became a government witness after pleading guilty to bank fraud; the police indicated the killing was related to organized crime.

Francis continued to work in the wake of his death, playing shows and writing her 1984 autobiography, “Who’s Sorry Now?,” but she continued to be plagued with personal problems. She told the Village Voice’s Michael Musto, “In the ’80s I was involuntarily committed to mental institutions 17 times in nine years in five different states. I was misdiagnosed as bipolar, ADD, ADHD, and a few other letters the scientific community had never heard of.” After receiving a diagnosis for post-traumatic stress disorder, Francis returned to live performances in the 1990s; one of her shows was documented on “The Return Concert Live at Trump’s Castle,” a 1996 album that was her last major-label release. When asked by the Las Vegas Sun in 2004 if life was still a struggle, she responded, “Not for the past 12 years.”

Francis regularly played casinos and theaters in the 2000s as she developed a biopic of her life with Gloria Estefan, who planned to play the former teen idol. The film never materialized. In 2010, Francis became the national spokesperson for Mental Health America’s trauma campaign. By the end of the 2010s, she retired to Parkland, Fla., and published her second memoir, “Among My Souvenirs: The Real Story, Vol. 1,” in 2017.

Connie Francis married four times. Her first marriage, to Dick Kanellis in 1964, ended after three months; her second, to Izzy Marion, lasted from 1971 to 1972. She adopted a child with her third husband, Joseph Garzilli, to whom she was wed from 1973 to 1978. Her fourth marriage, to Bob Parkinson, ended in 1986 after one year.

Fans of System of a Down desperately hoping the Armenian American alt-metal band will one day release a full-length follow-up to their chart-topping 2005 companion albums “Mezmerize” and “Hypnotize” can at least seek some solace in the latest offering from band co-founder Daron Malakian. “Addicted to the Violence,” the third album from his solo project Daron Malakian and Scars on Broadway, may lack System frontman Serj Tankian’s mellifluous singing, iconoclastic rants and feral screams, but its eclectic structure, melodic earworms, fetching vocal harmonies and poignant themes are sonically and structurally similar to System of a Down — and with good reason.

“All of my songs can work for either Scars or System because they come from my style and have my signature,” Malakian says from his home in Glendale. “When I wrote for System, I didn’t bring guitar riffs to the band. Like with [System’s 2002 breakthrough single] ‘Aerials.’ That was a complete song. I wrote it from beginning to end before I showed it to them.”

Malakian — who tackled vocals, guitar and bass — assembled “Addicted to the Violence” (out Friday) during the last five years, using songs he’d written over roughly two decades. The oldest track, “Satan Hussein,” which starts with a rapid-fire guitar line and features a serrated verse and a storming chorus, dates to the early 2000s, when System’s second album, “Toxicity,” was rocketing toward six-times platinum status (which it achieved nine months after release).

With Scars, Malakian isn’t chasing ghosts and he’s not tied to a schedule. He’s more interested in spontaneity than continuity, and artistry takes precedence over cohesion. None of the tracks on the band’s sporadically released three albums — 2008’s self-titled debut, 2018’s “Dictator,” and “Addicted to the Violence”— follow a linear or chronological path. Instead, each includes an eclectic variety of songs chosen almost at random.

“It’s almost like I spin the wheel and wherever the arrow lands, that’s where I start,” he explains. “I end up with a bunch of songs from different periods in my life that come from different moods. It’s totally selfish. Everything starts as something I write for myself and play for myself. I never listen to something I’ve done and say, ‘Oh, everybody’s gonna love this.’ For me, a song is more like my new toy. At some point, I finish playing with it and I go, ‘OK, I’m ready to share this with other kids now.’”

Whether by happenstance or subconscious inspiration, “Addicted to the Violence” is a turbulent, inadvertently prescient album for unstable times — a barbed, off-kilter amalgam of metal, alt-rock, pop, Cali-punk, prog, Mediterranean folk, alt-country and psychedelia — sometimes within the same song. Lyrically, Malakian addresses school shootings, authoritarianism, media manipulation, infidelity, addiction and stream-of-consciousness ramblings as dizzying as an hour of random, rapid-fire channel surfing.

Is writing music your way of making sense out of a nonsensical world?

I like to think of it as bringing worlds together that, in other cases, may not belong together. But when they come out through me, they mutate and turn into this thing that makes sense. In that way, music is like my therapist. Even if I write a song and nobody ever hears it, it’s healthy for me to make and it helps me work stuff out. When I write a song, sometimes it affects me deeply and I’ll cry or I’ll get hyped up and excited. It’s almost like I’m communicating with somebody, but I’m not talking to anyone. It’s just me in this intimate moment.

Is it strange to take these personal, intimate and therapeutic moments and turn them into songs that go out for the masses to interpret and absorb?

I want people to make up their own meanings for the songs, even if they’re completely different than mine. I don’t even like to talk about what inspired the songs because it doesn’t matter. No one needs to know what I was thinking because they don’t know my life. They don’t know me. They know the guy on stage, but they don’t know the personal struggles I’ve been through and they don’t need to.

Was there anything about “Addicted to the Violence” that you wanted to do differently than “Dictator”?

Different songs on the album have synthesizer and that’s a color I’ve never used before in System or Scars. Every painting you make shouldn’t have the same colors. Sometimes I’m like, “Will that work with the rest of the songs? That color is really different.” But I’m not afraid to use it.

[Warning: Video includes profanity.]

“Shame Game” has a psychedelic vibe that’s kinda like a hybrid of Strawberry Alarm Clock and Blue Oyster Cult, while the title track has a prog rock vibe redolent of Styx, Rush and Mars Volta.

I love all that stuff. I spend more time listening to music than playing guitar. It’s how I practice music. I take in these inspirations and it all comes out later when I write without me realizing it.

In 2020, System released the songs “Protect the Land” and “Genocidal Humanoidz,” which you originally planned to use for Scars on Broadway.

At that time, I hadn’t recorded “Genocidal Humanoidz” yet, but I had finished “Protect the Land,” and my vocals on the song are the tracks I was going to use for my album. Serj just came in and sang his parts over it.

Why did you offer those songs to System when every time you tried to work on an album with them after 2010, you hit a creative impasse?

Because [the second Nagorno-Karabakh War] was going on in Artsakh at that time between [the Armenian breakaway state Artsakh and Azerbaijan], and we decided we needed to say something. We all got on the phone and I said, “Hey, I got this song ‘Protect the Land,’ and it’s about this exact topic.” So, I pulled it off the Scars record and shared it with System.

You released the eponymous Scars on Broadway album in 2008, almost exactly two years after System went on a four-year hiatus. Did you form Scars out of a need to stay creative?

At the time, I knew that if I wanted to keep releasing music, I needed a new outlet, so Scars was something that had to happen or I would have just been sitting around all these years and nobody would have heard from me.

You played a few shows with Scars before your first album came out in 2008, but you abruptly canceled the supporting tour and only released one more Scars song before 2018.

That was a really strange time. I wanted to move forward with my music, but we had worked so hard to get to the point we got to in System, and not everyone was in the same boat when it came to how we wanted to move forward. I just wasn’t ready to do a tour with Scars.

Was it like trying to start a new relationship after a bad breakup?

I might have rushed into that second marriage too quick. I had [System drummer] John [Dolmayan] playing with me, and I think that was [a sign that] I was still holding onto System of a Down. That created a lot of anxiety.

A few years later, you announced that you were working on a new Scars album and planned to release it in 2013. Why did it take until 2018 for you to put out “Dictator”?

I was writing songs and thinking they were amazing, but in my head I was conflicted about where the songs were going to go. “Should I take them to Scars? Is that premature? Would System want to do something with them?” I underwent this constant struggle because Serj and I always had this creative disagreement. I finally moved past that and did the second album, but it took a while.

“Everything we’ve experienced has brought us to where we are now. And now is all we’ve got because the past is gone and the future isn’t here yet. So, the most important thing is the present,” Malakian said.

(Travis Shinn)

System of a Down played nine concerts in South America this spring, and you have six stadium gigs scheduled in North America for August and September. Is there any chance a new System album will follow?

I’m not so sure I even want to make another System of a Down record at this point in my life. I’m getting along with the guys really well right now. Serj and I love each other and we enjoy being onstage together. So, maybe it’s best for us to keep playing concerts as System and doing our own things outside of that.

The cover art for “Addicted to the Violence” — a silhouette of a woman against a blood-red background holding an oversize bullet over her head, and standing in front of a row of opium poppies — is the work of your father, Iraqi-born artist Vartan Malakian. Was he a major inspiration for you?

My approach to art and everything I know about it comes from my dad, and the way we approach what we do is very similar. We both do it for ourselves. He has never promoted himself or done an art exhibition. The only things most people have seen from him are the album covers. But ever since I was born, he was doing art in the house, and he’s never cared if anyone was looking at it.

Do you seek his approval?

No, I don’t. He usually is very supportive of what I do, but my dad’s a complicated guy. I admire him a lot and wish I could even be half of the artist that he is. And if he and my mom didn’t move to this country, I would not have been in System of a Down. I would have ended up as a soldier during Desert Storm and the Second Gulf War. That’s my alternative life. It’s crazy.

Have you been to Iraq?

When I was 14 years old, I went there for two months to visit relatives and it was a complete culture shock. I’m a kid that grew up in Hollywood, and I went to Baghdad wearing a Metallica shirt and I was a total smart aleck. Everywhere we went, I saw pictures and statues of Saddam Hussein. I turned to my cousin and said, “What if I walked up to one of the statues and said, ‘Hey Saddam, go f— yourself?’” Just me saying that made him nervous and scared. Talking like that was seriously dangerous and I had no idea. That was a definite learning experience of what I could have been. And it inspired me later to write “Satan Hussein.”

You had a glimpse of life under an authoritarian regime. Do you have strong feelings about the Trump administration and the way the president has, at times, acted like a dictator?

I don’t hate the guy and I don’t love the guy. I’m not on the right, I’m not on the left. There are some things both sides do that I agree with, but I don’t talk about that stuff in interviews because when it comes to politics, I’m not on a team. I don’t like the division in this country, and I think if you’re too far right or you’re too far left, you end up in the same place.

Is “Addicted to the Violence,” and especially the song “Killing Spree,” a commentary on political violence in our country?

Not just political violence, it’s all violence. “Killing Spree” is ridiculous. It’s heavy. It’s dark. But if you listen to the way I sing, there is an absolutely absurd delivery, almost like I’m having fun with it. I’m not celebrating the violence, but the delivery is done the way a crazy person would celebrate it. So, it’s from the viewpoint of a killer, the viewpoint of a victim, and my own viewpoint. I saw a video on social media of these kids standing around in the street, and one of them gets wiped out by the back end of a car and flies into the air. These kids are recording it and some of them are laughing like’s it’s funny. I don’t want to say that’s right or wrong, but from what I’m seeing, a lot of people have become desensitized to violence.

You’re releasing “Addicted to the Violence” about six weeks before the final six System of a Down dates of 2025. Have you figured out how to compartmentalize what you do with System of a Down and Scars on Broadway?

There was a time that I couldn’t juggle the two very well, but now I feel more confident and very comfortable with where System and Scars are. I love playing with System, and I want to do more shows with Scars. I couldn’t tell you how either band will evolve. Only time will tell what happens and I’m fine with that as long as it happens in a natural way. Everything we’ve experienced has brought us to where we are now. And now is all we’ve got because the past is gone and the future isn’t here yet. So, the most important thing is the present.

Ever since operetta composer Victor Herbert sued Shanley’s restaurant in New York in 1917 to force it to pay for playing his song on a player-piano, songwriters and music publishers have depended on Performing Rights Organizations to make sure they get compensated.

For much of the last century, three organizations dominated the industry, a relatively staid and unglamorous corner of the music scene that remained largely unchanged throughout the eras of radio, records and CDs. But the rise of streaming has led to a surge in revenue and spawned a handful of new organizations looking to cash in.

Now there are at least half a dozen PROs in the United States, representing songwriters and publishers, each demanding that bars, restaurants, hotels and other venues pay a fee or risk being sued.

Businesses say the rising licensing costs have become overwhelming, and some question whether it’s even worth playing music at all. The House Judiciary Committee last fall asked the Copyright Office to investigate the current system and consider potential reforms. In February, the Office opened an inquiry and received thousands of comments from businesses and songwriters.

“The growing proliferation of PROs and their lack of transparency have made it increasingly difficult to offer music in our establishments,” hundreds of small businesses from across the country wrote to the Copyright Office in a joint letter.

“The issue is not that small businesses are unwilling to pay for music,” they wrote, adding that the current system is unfair and untenable. “Small businesses can be left feeling like PROs have them over the proverbial barrel.”

Creating a welcoming ambiance in a restaurant or yoga studio isn’t as simple as putting on a Spotify playlist. Streaming has unleashed trillions of songs, and every one must be licensed and have royalties paid to the songwriter whenever any track is played in public. Violations can cost up to $150,000 per infringement.

This booming market for music publishing has led to a windfall for the two major PROs. The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, founded in 1914, and BMI, established in 1939, together represent more than 90% of musical compositions in the U.S. today with talent lists covering Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, Jay-Z, Lady Gaga and Eminem, to name a few. SESAC, founded in 1931, rounds out the original three and operates on an invite-only basis.

ASCAP, the oldest and, as a nonprofit, the only PRO to publicly share data on its collections and payout, has seen revenue jump to $1.8 billion in 2024 from $935 million in 2010. Broadcast Music Inc., in its last public report as a nonprofit in 2022, showed record revenue of $1.6 billion, with 48% of that from digital sources.

This kind of growth hasn’t gone unnoticed. In just over the last 12 years, three new PROs have emerged. Legendary music manager Irving Azoff founded Global Music Rights in 2013, offering “boutique services” and royalty transparency, building a stable of more than 160 high-profile songwriters such as Bad Bunny and Bruce Springsteen.

AllTrack, founded in 2017, caters to smaller, independent songwriters. Pro Music Rights launched in 2018 and says it represents more than 2.5 million musical works, including AI-created music.

Many songs today are composed by several songwriters, each of whom could be affiliated with a different PRO. Therefore, to legally play those songs, establishments must pay for a license from each PRO. Most PROs offer blanket licensing agreements, meaning that they provide access to their entire repertoires for one fee. And while that gives a particular venue a wide range of musical freedom, it also means bars and restaurants are paying for thousands of songs they may never play or are essentially paying twice, in instances where a song with multiple writers is represented by more than one PRO.

The National Restaurant Assn. said its members pay an average of $4,500 per year to license music, or 0.5% of the average U.S. small restaurant’s total annual sales.

“This may not seem like a large amount, but for an industry that runs on an average pre-tax margin of 3%-5%, this cost is significant, especially since operators don’t clearly understand what they get for this particular investment aside from avoiding the very legitimate threat of a business-ending lawsuit,” the association wrote in public comments to the Copyright Office.

The American Hotel & Lodging Assn. said the mushrooming number of PROs has led to “significant increases in both financial and administrative burdens.” It gave an example of one “major global hotel chain” that reported the cost per hotel for PRO license fees rose by about 200% from 2021-25, with some hotels seeing increases of 400% or more.

A large hotel that hosts occasional live music events could be paying a single PRO $5,000 to $20,000 a year. If it’s paying all of the major PROs, it could be incurring as much as $80,000 in fees, according to the association.

BMI said its licensing fees have remained “relatively steady over the years” and are based on objective criteria that apply equally to all similar businesses. Fees for individual bars and restaurants start at just over $1 a day, according to BMI. Other factors that go into licensing fees include the occupancy rate, and the type of music being played — live, DJed or recorded, for example.

Songwriters’ livelihoods

In the 1917 Supreme Court case that delivered Herbert his victory over Shanley’s, Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: “If music did not pay, it would be given up.”  He wasn’t only referring to the songwriters, but also to the venues themselves and addressing whether music helped generate revenue. The ruling was a win for Herbert personally but also for ASCAP, which he had helped found, and established the royalty payment system that’s largely still in use today.

A spokesperson for ASCAP said an increase in fees paid to songwriters by venues is an appropriate and inevitable outcome of a growing market. The organization’s musical repertoires have grown exponentially over the years to include tens of millions of works, giving music users more music and more choice, the spokesperson said. ASCAP says about 90 cents of every dollar it collects from licensees is made available for distribution to its members as royalties.

“Licensees are seeking more regulation of PROs because they want to pay songwriters less,” ASCAP Chief Executive Elizabeth Matthews said in a statement to Bloomberg. “If transparency, efficiency and innovation are the goals, more free market competition among PROs is the answer— not unnecessary government intervention.”

Songwriters depend on PROs for their livelihoods, especially in the streaming era. Many individual songwriters wrote to the Copyright Office in defense of the PRO system, expressing concern that government regulation would only diminish their hard-won earnings.

“Every royalty payment I receive represents not just compensation for my work, but my ability to continue creating music that enhances these very businesses,” wrote Joseph Trapanese, a composer who has created scores for film and TV.

Performance royalties make up about half of total publishing revenue, which is collected by PROs and dispersed to songwriters, according to the National Music Publishers’ Assn. Last year, only about 5% of songwriters’ earnings came from bars, restaurants and other venues, a figure that is “significantly undervalued,” according to NMPA executive vice president and General Counsel Danielle Aguirre.

“There is a substantial opportunity for growth here,” she said, speaking at the group’s annual meeting in June.

The organization set a goal to significantly increase that money over the next year, likely by enforcing licensing requirements.

Several establishment owners equated the PRO’s efforts to collect fees to a mob-like shakedown, citing aggressive on-site confrontations and threatening letters.

BMI said it spends a lot of time trying to educate business owners on the value that music brings to their establishment, federal copyright law requirements and the importance of maintaining a music license.

Lawsuits are always a last resort, a spokesperson said, which is why BMI spends sometimes years on educational outreach. If those efforts are ignored, however, an in-person visit might occur, and BMI may take legal action.

Opaque, bureaucratic

Despite their differences, songwriters and businesses agree that the current system is opaque and bureaucratic and could serve both sides better.

Businesses complain about the lack of a comprehensive database of songs and the fact that there is no easy system for reporting which songs they’ve played. Meanwhile, songwriters claim that the sheer volume of music and businesses throughout the U.S. makes it hard to track where and when their work is played and to know whether they’ve been properly compensated.

“What’s really being called to question is, is this system working accurately—is the money that should be finding its way to the songwriters’ pockets finding its way in an efficient manner?” said George Howard, a professor at Berklee College of Music. “And the answer is ‘no.’ There’s no excuse for that with the level of technology we have today.”

BMI and ASCAP joined forces in 2020 to launch Songview, a free digital database showing copyright ownership and administration shares for more than 20 million works. The two PROs are exploring including GMR and SESAC, which would add even more songs to the platform.

Some of the complaints about the PRO licensing system go back decades. Michael Dorf, a producer and founder of the legendary Manhattan music club The Knitting Factory, has faced off with PROs numerous times over his 30-some years as a venue operator. In the 1990s, he signed singer-songwriters who performed at his club to his publishing company and submitted their setlists to the PROs, assuming he and his acts would reap the resulting royalties from their performances.

But no money came in

“We didn’t receive one penny,” Dorf, who’s also the founder and chief executive officer of City Winery, said in an interview. “To me, there is a cost of doing business, and we want to have the artists and the songwriters properly paid — we love that. What’s simply frustrating is to pay money and know it’s not going to the reason why it’s being collected.”

Caleb Shreve, a songwriter and producer who’s worked with the likes of Jennifer Lopez and is also chief executive at Killphonic Rights, a rights collection organization, said he hears music he has produced “all the time in yoga spots and bars, and I’ve never seen them on publishing statements.” Many songwriters are convinced the current system favors the biggest artists at the expense of middle-tier and emerging songwriters. Because of the blanket licensing system, BMI and ASCAP don’t track individual song use by those licensees and instead rely on proxy data, like what’s popular on the radio or through streaming platforms, to divvy up those collected fees.

Sometimes radio hits mimic what’s played in an arena, restaurant or bar, but not always.

ASCAP said it tracks trillions of performances every year across all media platforms and only uses sample surveys or proxy data when obtaining actual performance data isn’t feasible or is cost prohibitive.

Technology could be a way to solve the current issues without regulation. London-based Audoo is one company leading the way.

Founded by musician Ryan Edwards in 2018 after he heard his music being played in a department store and discovered he wasn’t getting paid for it, the growing startup uses proprietary listening devices it places in cafes, gyms and other public venues to recognize and log songs. It uploads the data to the cloud, ensuring every artist — not just the chart toppers — receives compensation for their work.

The company has attracted investment from music icons including Elton John and Adele, and its devices are used by PROs in the U.K. and Australia. It made its first foray into the US earlier this year, placing listening devices in about 180 establishments around the Denver area in a test run.The collected data underscored that what’s played in public places doesn’t necessarily mirror what’s on the popular playlists or radio and streaming platforms. Edwards likens the idea of using proxies to political polling — directionally helpful but not precise.

Audoo found that 77,000 unique tracks were played around Denver over two months, split among 26,000 artists, according to data viewed by Bloomberg News. On average, only 6.6% of the top-40 songs played in the venues also appeared on Billboard’s top radio-play chart.

In markets where Audoo has partnered with venues, Edwards said business owners have been proud to support particular songwriters and the music business writ large.

“All of a sudden it went from a push-and-pull of, ‘Why do I owe you money?’ to, ‘OK, I can understand music is funding the people who create,’” Edwards said.

Carman and Soni write for Bloomberg.

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Cole Silberman

Magic jukebox

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Storied Mexican singer Pepe Aguilar is using his platform to elevate the struggle and celebrate the dignity of the immigration experience in the U.S. with his latest single, “Corrido de Juanito.”

The track, which dropped Friday, explores the societal and emotional trials of being far from home while attempting to make the best of life. The song was originally written and recorded by former Calibre 50 vocalist and accordionist Edén Muñoz in 2017.

Aguilar’s take on the song comes at a time when its message takes on a heavier meaning as Immigration and Customers Enforcement agents have increased their presence in Los Angeles under the directive of President Trump.

The “Por Mujeres Como Tú” singer’s track with a message also acts as a monetary service to the immigrant community of L.A. All the proceeds from the song will go to the immigrant rights organization Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA).

“I’m not making a cent off this song. We’re giving away everything, not only from the song, but from my latest released album,” Aguilar told The Times following the single’s release. “[CHIRLA] is helping immigrants to fight this battle legally and peacefully and respectfully. That’s why I created this song, and that’s why I decided to donate whatever it makes and whatever my album makes, for the time that it’s more valuable.”

The advocacy group focuses on the human and civil rights of immigrants and refugees in L.A. and throughout the state of California. Its services include free and low-cost legal services and community education.

“We thank Pepe Aguilar for using his voice and platform to defend and support the immigrant community that is foundational to their fan base,” CHIRLA executive director Angelica Salas said in a statement. “Thank you for your invaluable support and for uplifting the presence and contributions of immigrants in the U.S.”

Following the onset of the ICE raids in June, the 56-year-old Grammy winner posted a message on Instagram in support of the immigrant community.

“I’m not going to fight the system; I’m going to peacefully resist it with art, with memory, with culture, with tradition, with respect,” said in the June 7 social media video.

In the same post, he announced that he would be working on a version of the song that was released today.

Aguilar, who is headlining at the Hollywood Bowl on Aug. 15 and 16, first heard the song at an awards show around the time of its initial release and felt deeply impacted by its message.

“I was really touched by the lyrics and the truthfulness of the song,” Aguilar said Friday morning. “I had a lump in my throat when I first heard it and then it was a hit.”

Flash forward to 2025 and he revisited the Calibre 50 track while singing bohemias with his family at his daughter’s house a few months back.

“Something called me in at that party to sing the song and I had never sang it before,” he said. “I didn’t know what it felt like to sing the song and when I sang it, I loved the way it sounded.”

It was after that experience that he knew he needed to record his own version.

“Now, with everything going on with all these deportations and with immigration, I think it’s a song that applies tremendously to create consciousness around this subject and to portray a reality that is lived by millions,” Aguilar said. “There are millions of Juanitos that are unable to go back home or unable to go to their loved ones funerals and are afraid of being deported, but at the same time they are working and helping the engine of America to remain stable.”

Aguilar channels the pain of homesickness and the worry of becoming forgotten that immigrants face on the daily.

“It’s been almost 14 years since I’ve gone back to the land I was born,” Aguilar sings in the single’s opening lines. “Everything has now changed, I beg God that they don’t forget about me.”

The “Perdonóme” vocalist shared a direct message to the people currently being most affected by the ongoing ICE raids.

“No están solos, we care for you, and when I mean ‘we,’ I’m talking about everybody that understands your situation, not only Mexicans, but I have a lot of friends that are not Mexican, even a lot of full-blooded Americans, who are tremendously worried about what’s going on,” Aguilar said. “[A] lot of associations want to do something about this unfair situation, a tremendously unfair and historically unfair for a country like the U.S. I believe in the principles that created the United States, and I hope that those principles are used in this tremendously sad situation.”

“A Beautiful Noise” is a jukebox musical that understands the assignment.

The show, which opened Wednesday at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre on the Broadway musical’s North American tour, exists to celebrate the rough magic of Neil Diamond’s catalog. If glorious singing of American pop gold is what you’re looking for, “A Beautiful Noise” delivers.

Diamond’s fans will no doubt feel remunerated by the thrilling vocal performance of Nick Fradiani, the 2015 winner of “American Idol,” who plays the young iteration of the double-cast Neil, the Brooklyn-born pop sensation who went on a rocket ship to fame and fortune that gave him everything in the world but the peace that had always eluded him. Fradiani vocally captures not just the driving excitement of Diamond’s singing but the note of masculine melancholy that gives the songs their grainy, ruminative subtext.

Hannah Jewel Kohn and Nick Fradiani play Marcia Murphey and the young version of the double-cast Neil Diamond, respectively.

(Jeremy Daniel)

Jukebox musicals, inspired perhaps by the commercial success of “Mamma Mia!,” tend to muscle an artist’s hits into flagrantly incongruous dramatic contexts. Anthony McCarten, the book writer of “A Beautiful Noise,” avoids this trap by setting up a framework that deepens our appreciation of Diamond’s music by shining a biographical light on how the songs came into existence.

The older version of , now the grizzled Diamond burnt out by tour life and desperate not to duplicate the mistakes he made in his first two marriages, is played by Robert Westenberg. He’s been sent by his third wife to a psychotherapist to work on himself. As he shares with the doctor (Lisa Reneé Pitts), he’s been told that he’s hard to live with — an accusation that his long, stubborn silences in the session make instantly credible.

Introspection is as unnatural to Neil as it was for Tony Soprano, but the doctor gently guides Neil past his resistance. Intrigued by his remark that he put everything he had to say into his music, she presents him with a volume of his collected lyrics and asks him to talk her through one of his songs.

Nick Fradiani, from left, Robert Westenberg and Lisa Reneé Pitts as both iterations of Neil and his doctor during an onstage therapy session.

(Jeremy Daniel)

“I Am … I Said,” which makes reference to a frog that dreamed of being a king before becoming one, cuts too close to the bone. That single will have to wait for a breakthrough in therapy, but he is lured back into his past when the Jewish boy from Flatbush talked his way into a meeting with Ellie Greenwich (Kate A. Mulligan), the famed songwriter and producer, who convinced him not to change his name and gave him the chance that set him down the road to stardom.

The production, directed by Michael Mayer and choreographed by Steven Hoggett, marks this therapy milestone by having backup singers and chorus members emerge from behind Neil’s chair. Out of darkness, musical euphoria shines through.

The show’s approach is largely chronological. “I’m A Believer,” which became a runaway hit for the Monkees, catapults Diamond into the big leagues. Once he starts singing his own material, he becomes a bona fide rock star — a moody Elvis who straddles rock, country, folk and pop with a hangdog bravura.

Neil’s first marriage to Jaye Posner (a touching Tiffany Tatreau) is an early casualty after he falls in love with Marcia Murphey (Hannah Jewel Kohn, spinning a seductive spell musically and dramatically). It’s Marcia who coaches him into playing the part of front man. The hits come fast and furious after that, but the frenzy of tour life exacts a severe toll.

Tiffany Tatreau as Diamond’s first wife Jaye Posner, from center left, Nick Fradiani and Kate A. Mulligan as singer-producer Ellie Greenwich in “A Beautiful Noise.”

(Jeremy Daniel)

Of course, everyone at the Pantages is waiting impatiently for “Sweet Caroline,” the anthem that never fails to transform into a sing-along after the first “bum-bum-bum.” The performance of this ecstatic number is powerfully mood-elevating.

Fradiani’s character work is most impressive in his singing. That’s when the inner trouble Neil has been evading since his Brooklyn childhood hauntingly resounds.

“America,” “A Beautiful Noise,” “Song Sung Blue,” “Love on the Rocks” and “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” songs heard countless times, take on more weight as the circumstances of their creation are revealed. The therapy gets a little heavy-handed in the protracted final stretch. But Westenberg, who’s a touch too emphatic early on, lends poignancy to the cathartic release that ushers Neil into a new place of self-understanding.

By keeping the focus where it should be — on the music — “A Beautiful Noise” thrives where more ambitious jukebox musicals stumble. This is a show for fans. But as the son of one who remembers the songs from family road trips, even though I have none of them in my music library, I was grooving to the sound of a bygone America, high on its own unlimited possibilities.

At the curtain call at Wednesday’s opening, Katie Diamond came on stage and video-called her husband as the Pantages audience collectively joined in an encore of “Sweet Caroline.” It wasn’t easy to hear Diamond sing, but it hardly mattered. Fradiani had supplied that dopamine rush for more than two hours with his virtuoso musical portrayal.

On the stunning “What’s It All For” on her new album, “I Want My Loved Ones to Go With Me,” Noah Cyrus sings: “Why have a family/If that ain’t what you want?/Why have a child/You don’t know how to love?

I’ve asked all of these questions/And I got one more/If that’s all there is/Then what’s it all for?/What’s it all for?”

Cyrus, often writing with Australian singer-songwriter PJ Harding, has a way of storytelling that captures the grit and highs and lows of real life the way Kris Kristofferson does on the classic “Sunday Morning Comin’ Down,” or John Mellencamp and Lucinda Williams do.

Her song, “July,” released when she was 19, was praised by the likes of John Mayer and Leon Bridges and has more than a billion streams. So the potential for something special has always been there. But now that she has put it all together on “I Want My Loved Ones to Go With Me” the result transcends special. The 11 songs on the album bridge storytelling with classic country and folk sounds that hark back to the ‘70s, a la songs like the Eagles’ “Wasted Time.”

“I hope that this record, when I hear it, I hear something that’s very classic and reminds me of music that’s been around for a very long time,” she says.

Cyrus has that “classic” music in her blood and bones. Old soul is often a trite, overused expression, but when you grow up in a famous family in the public eye, as Noah Cyrus has, it is an accurate one — her father is country music veteran Billy Ray Cyrus and her sister is pop star Miley Cyrus.

Cyrus said she grew up faster than most people her age. “I’ve been touring since I was 16, I’ve been making music since I was 16,” she tells The Times. “ I grew up in a family that was in the public eye. I think with that there were certain things that we could and couldn’t do, that felt restricted because of the public eye or the way we’d be judged or the way we were judged whenever we made mistakes just as kids.”

She turned 25 in January, which brought a new maturity. Like another all-time great songwriter, Jackson Browne, who famously wrote “These Days” when he was 16, Cyrus has shown a wisdom beyond her years.

“I found out a lot about my senses on a song and learning to trust that as a songwriter,” Cyrus said. “I learned a lot how to lead for myself as a musician.”

(Jason Renaud)

She addresses growing up throughout the album. “I turned 25 this January and I talk about this on the record It’s one of the themes of the album … growing up and new countries about walking on your own two feet and going into unknown land and no matter where you go, there you are. And just learning how to deal with that and cope with that as a young adult,” she says. “That was something that was going on at the time of creating this record. That’s why I just fell into the themes because as a person I was like, ‘How do I not second-guess myself with every single move? How do I learn to trust myself? How do I learn how to become an adult that’s going to be a mother one day? How do I grow up so one day I can take care of another actual person?’”

Having confronted fame and the insecurity that comes with youth, she was ready to take control of her artistic vision with this album.

“I found out a lot about my senses on a song and learning to trust that as a songwriter. I learned a lot how to lead for myself as a musician. This is the first record that I have actual producer credits on and I actually produce some of these songs with Mike [Crossey],” she says. “It was a really beautiful experience and a great learning experience. I really was surprised by those intuitions. And when I listened to the final product, I think it’s the first time in my career where I’m actually really proud of myself.”

Cyrus made sure her personal touch was felt on every aspect of the record, including the eclectic quartet of guests: Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes, Bill Callahan, Ella Langley and Blake Shelton.

She made sure the invite to Shelton on “New Country” came directly from her. “I really wanted to personally talk to Blake and wrote him a letter and did all the things to really make this a personal connection,” she says. “Blake and I have a mutual friend on the song — Amy Wadge, she’s one of my favorite songwriters and I love her so much. It was like a God thing telling me you have to reach out to Blake. When I heard that song, it was Blake’s from the beginning. And Blake made it happen. It felt like this spiritual thing that was bound to happen and something that was just written up there in the stars was having Blake on this record.”

For all the notable guests, the centerpiece of the album fittingly features Cyrus’ grandfather. The mesmerizing spiritual hymn “Apple Tree,” which is like the love child of a Nick Cave song and Dolly Parton track, is built around her grandfather’s voice.

“I do feel like ‘Apple Tree’ is a song from God because of the prayer that is said at the end and spoken by my grandfather Ron Cyrus,” she says.

It’s fitting that the song features her grandfather because “I Want My Loved Ones to Go With Me” is very much Cyrus returning to her Nashville roots and the music she grew up around. Though she says it’s just a happy accident, her embracing the music that is her birthright coincides with the surge in popularity of country music.

“When I was making this album, country was really getting its mainstream momentum again and taking over the world again as it was when I was a baby, when CMA fans used to have Fanfare and stuff. I remember my dad doing Fanfare. For me it’s really awesome because I think country music has so much more of a wider audience and so many people are starting to connect with country,” she says. “I think that was just God’s timing with the album and everything and it all lining up.”

While artists have been increasingly embracing country, for Cyrus this wasn’t about a trend — she was following the natural order of things. Many musicians will say that as they get older, they return to their roots.

So this was Cyrus coming home. “The more freedom I got I just kept putting more and more of myself into the record, which is metaphorically and literally back to my roots. I think I’ve been longing to feel closer to where I come from. I put that into my music and that’s such a beautiful outlet for me. And I think there’s so many people, not just kids, as an adult, as your parent, you feel things, they’re just like you and the child inside you, it’s all still broken, no matter how old you get, you still have that inner child inside of you. I think a lot of that inner child goes into my music and you hear a lot of my inner child.”

Though Cyrus loves the storytelling aspect of classic country records, it is just as much about the sound of those albums and artists as it is the lyrics. She reveled in that raw, organic sound in making this album.

“The more freedom I got I just kept putting more and more of myself into the record, which is metaphorically and literally back to my roots,” Cyrus said.

(Hannah DeVries)

“That was a fun thing for me again to learn is when you take all the bells and whistles away on a vocal and you just have that person’s originality and that person’s personality and let that shine through on a vocal. That’s the best thing you can do, just have the most amazing and natural raw vocals for people to hear and that’s what I love about the genre of country music and especially older records where you’re singing full takes and that’s what the record is. That’s a lot of the time what Mike and I like to do with our songs, is our songs are full takes of everything. We like everything to feel live, and I think that’s an important part of the record.”

The goal was an album that defies categorization and time. She wanted a record that if you had found it in 1975 and put it on right next to Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks” or you played it in 2025 it would have sounded of that time. In her pursuit of that lofty goal, she transcends the genre tag. This isn’t what most people think of as country today. The closest contemporary artist would be Chris Stapleton, who, when seen live, embodies a Neil Young solo acoustic; it could be country, folk, rock.

That’s what Cyrus set out to do. “When I hear it, I hear a record that will hopefully give the listener a chance to heal as it was a really healing experience for myself,” she says. “And I hope that this record, for me, is something that in 20 years … people are still mentioning and it’s a monumental album in the timeline of my career.”

Noah Cyrus performs Friday at The Ford at 8 p.m.

Last fall, the country singer Parker McCollum played a gig on the south shore of Lake Tahoe — the final date of a lengthy tour behind 2023’s “Never Enough” — then flew directly to New York City to start work on his next album.

“Probably the worst idea,” he says now, looking back at his unrelenting schedule. “I was absolutely cooked when I got there.”

Yet the self-titled LP he ended up making over six days at New York’s storied Power Station studio is almost certainly his best: a set of soulful, slightly scruffy roots-music tunes that hearkens back — after a few years in the polished Nashville hit machine — to McCollum’s days as a Texas-born songwriter aspiring to the creative heights of greats such as Guy Clark, Rodney Crowell and Townes Van Zandt. Produced by Eric Masse and Frank Liddell — the latter known for his work with Miranda Lambert and his wife, Lee Ann Womack — “Parker McCollum” complements moving originals like “Big Sky” (about a lonely guy “born to lose”) and “Sunny Days” (about the irretrievability of the past) with a tender cover of Danny O’Keefe’s “Good Time Charlie’s Got The Blues” and a newly recorded rendition of McCollum’s song “Permanent Headphones,” which he wrote when he was all of 15.

“Parker’s a marketing person’s dream,” Liddell says, referring to the 33-year-old’s rodeo-hero looks. “And what happens in those situations is they usually become more of a marketed product. But I think underneath, he felt he had more to say — to basically confess, ‘This is who I am.’” Liddell laughs. “I tried to talk him out of it.”

McCollum, who grew up in privileged circumstances near Houston and who’s now married with a 10-month-old son named Major, discussed the album on a recent swing through Los Angeles. He wore a fresh pair of jeans and a crisp denim shirt and fiddled with a ZYN canister as we spoke.

I was looking online at your —
Nudes?

At your Instagram. The other day you posted a picture of a box of Uncrustables on a private jet.
That photo was not supposed to make the internet. That was an accident — my fault. I don’t ever post about my plane on the internet.

You’re a grown man. Why Uncrustables?
That’s an adult meal that children are very, very fortunate to get to experience.

Did you know when you finished this record that you’d done something good?
Yes. But I didn’t know that until the last day we were in the studio and we listened to everything, top to bottom. The six days in the studio that we recorded this record, I was s—ing myself: “What the f— have I done? Why did I come to New York and waste all this time and money? This is terrible.” Then on the last day we listened all the way through, and I was like, Finally.

Finally what?
I just felt like I never was as focused and convicted and bought-in as I was on this record. I felt kind of desperate — like, “Am I just gonna keep doing the same thing, or are we gonna go get uncomfortable?”

Why New York?
One reason is that city makes me feel like a rock star. In my head when I was in high school dreaming about being a songwriter or a country singer, I was picturing huge budgets, making badass albums in New York City or L.A., staying in dope hotels — just this fairy tale that you believe in. The other reason is that when you’re cutting records in Nashville, people are leaving at 5 to go pick up their kids, or the label’s stopping by and all this s—. I just wanted to avoid all of that — I didn’t want to record three songs on a Tuesday in June and then record three songs on a Tuesday in August. I wanted to go make a record.

Lot of history at Power Station: Chic, Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie.
John Mayer wrote a song and recorded it in a day there — that song “In Repair,” with him and Charlie Hunter and Steve Jordan. That’s how I found out about the studio years ago. We actually ended up writing a song in the studio: “New York Is On Fire.”

A very John Mayer title.
I wanted to go in the late fall when the trees were changing colors and the air was cool.

Why was Frank Liddell the guy to produce?
I knew if he understood Chris Knight and the songs he had written that he could probably understand me and the songs I had written. I’d made half a record with Jon Randall, who’d produced my last two albums. And I love Jon Randall — he’s one of my closest friends in the world, four No. 1s together, multi-platinum this and multi-platinum that. But I just needed to dig deeper, and Frank was a guy who was down to let the songs do the work.

What do you think would’ve become of the record you were making with Randall?
It would’ve sounded great, and it would’ve had some success. But I don’t know if I would’ve been as emotionally involved as I was with Frank. Frank got a better version of me than Jon did.

What if nobody likes this record?
It’s like the first time I’m totally OK with that.

Country radio moves slowly, which means “What Kinda Man” may end up being a big hit. But it’s not a big hit yet.
It probably won’t be. The only reason that song went to radio is because “Burn It Down” had gone No. 1, and the label wanted another one. I was like, “Fine, go ahead.” I’ve never one time talked with them about what song should go to radio.

On this project.
Ever. I just don’t care. The song that goes to radio is very rarely the best song on the record.

What was the best song on “Never Enough”?
Probably “Too Tight This Time.” It’s slow and sad, which is my specialty.

You recently told Texas Monthly, “I don’t write fun songs. I’ve never really liked them.”
There’s some I like. “Always Be My Baby” by Mariah Carey f—ing slaps. I love feel-good songs. But in country music, feel-good songs are, like, beer-and-truck-and-Friday-night songs, and those have never done anything for me.

“What Kinda Man” is kind of fun.
But I think it’s still well-written. It’s not all the clichés that every song on the radio has in it.

What’s the best song on this album?
“Hope That I’m Enough” or “Solid Country Gold” or “My Worst Enemy” or “My Blue.”

Lot of choices.
I love this record. I don’t think I’ll ever do any better.

Is that a sad thought?
Eh. I don’t know how much longer I’m gonna do it anyways.

Why would you hang it up?
I don’t know that I’m going to. But I don’t think I’m gonna do this till I’m 70. We’ve been doing these stadium shows with George Strait — I think I’m out a lot sooner than him.

You watch Strait’s set?
Every night.

What have you learned from him?
When it comes to George, what I really pay attention to is everything off the stage. No scandals, so unbelievably humble and consistent and under the radar. The way he’s carried himself for 40 years — I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody else do it that well. I’d love to be the next George Strait off the stage.

I’m not sure his under-the-radar-ness is possible today.
I fight with my team all the time. They’re always trying to get my wife and kid in s—, and I’m like, “They’re not for sale.” I understand I have to be a little bit — it’s just the nature of the business. But at home, that’s the real deal — that ain’t for show.

“I can’t explain how deeply emotional songs make me — it controls my entire being,” McCollum says. “The right song in the right moment is everything to me.”

(Matt Seidel / For The Times)

I’d imagine People magazine would love to do a spread with you and your beautiful wife and your beautiful child.
They offered for the wedding. I was like, “Abso-f—ing-lutely not.” I don’t want anybody to know where I live or what I drive or what I do in my spare time. And nowadays that’s currency — people filming their entire lives. Call me the old man, but I’m trying to go the complete opposite direction of that.

One could argue that your resistance isn’t helpful for your career.
I’m fine with that.

Fine because you’re OK money-wise?
I’m sure that plays into it. But, man, my childhood is in a box in my mom’s attic. And nowadays everybody’s childhood is on the internet for the whole world to see. I’m just not down with that. I don’t want to make money off of showing everybody how great my life is. Because it is f—ing great. I feel like I could make $100 million a year if I was a YouTuber — it’s movie s—. The way it started, the way I came up, the woman I married, the child I had — there’s no holes.

Where does the pain in your music come from?
I’ve thought about that for a long time. I don’t think it’s the entire answer, but I think if your parents divorced when you were little, for the rest of your life there’s gonna be something inside you that’s broken. My parents’ divorce was pretty rowdy, and I remember a lot of it. And I don’t think those things ever fully go away.

How do you think about the relationship between masculinity and stoicism?
It never crosses my mind.

Is your dad a guy who talks about his feelings?
F— no.

Was he scary?
I think he could be. My dad’s the s—. He’s the baddest son of a bitch I’ve ever met in my life.

What image of masculinity do you want to project for your son?
When I think about raising Major, I just want him to want to win. Can fully understand you’re not always going to, but you should always want to, no matter what’s going on. I hope he’s a winner.

When’s the last time you cried?
Actually wasn’t very long ago. A good friend of mine died — Ben Vaughn, who was the president of my publishing company in Nashville. I played “L.A. Freeway,” the Guy Clark song, at his memorial service a couple weeks ago. That got me pretty good.

You said you’re OK if fans don’t like this record.
I don’t need anyone else to like it. I hope that they love it — I hope it hits them right in the f—ing gut and that these songs are the ones they go listen to in 10 years when they want to feel like they did 10 years ago. That’s what music does for me. But I know not everybody feels music as intensely as I do.

Was that true for you as a kid?
Even 6, 7, 8 years old, I’d listen to a song on repeat over and over and over again. I can’t explain how deeply emotional songs make me — it controls my entire being. The right song in the right moment is everything to me. Where I live, there’s a road called River Road, in the Hill Country in Texas. It’s the most gorgeous place you’ve ever been in your life, and I’ll go drive it. I know the exact minute that I should be there in the afternoons at this time of year to catch the light through the trees, and I’ll have the songs I’m gonna play while I’m driving that road.

You know what song you want to hear at a certain bend in the road.
Probably a little psychotic.

Are you one of these guys who wants the towels to hang on the rack just so?
I like things very clean and organized.

Is that because you grew up in that kind of environment or because you grew up in the opposite?
My mom was very clean and organized. But I don’t know — I’ve never one time gone to bed with dirty dishes in the sink. My wife cooks dinner all the time when I’m home, and as soon as we’re done, I do all the dishes and load the dishwasher and wipe the counters down.

You could never just chill and let it go.
No, it’s messy. It’s gross.

Parker McCollum performs at the Stagecoach festival in 2023.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Do people ever interpret your intensity as, “This dude’s kind of a d—?”
People would always tell me I was cocky, and I’d be like, I don’t feel cocky at all. I was raised to have great manners: take my hat off when I meet a lady, look somebody in the eye with a firm handshake, “Yes, ma’am,” “No, ma’am,” “Yes, sir,” “No, sir,” no matter the age or the gender of the person. Manners were such a crazy thing in my childhood — it’s the only way I know how to speak to people. So I’ve always thought it was so weird, in high school, girls would be like, “Oh, you’re so cocky.”

I mean, I’ve seen the “What Kinda Man” video. You obviously know you look cool.
I don’t think that at all. I think I look kind of dumb.

I’m not sure whether to believe you.
I couldn’t be more serious. This is very weird for me to say, but Frank finally put into words what I’ve always felt with every photographer, anybody I’ve ever worked with in the business since I was 19 years old — he said, “This record sounds like Parker’s heart and mind and not his face.” The fact that I’m not 5-foot-7 with a beard and covered in tattoos — it’s like nobody ever thinks that the songs are gonna have any integrity.

Boo-hoo for the pretty boy.
People always called me “Hollywood,” “pretty boy,” all this stuff. I guess it’s better than calling you a f—ing fat-ass. But I’ve never tried to capitalize on that at any point in time. I’ve always just wanted to be a songwriter.

But you know how to dress.
Kind of?

Come on, man — the gold chains, the Lucchese boots.
That’s all to compensate for the fact that I don’t know what the f— to wear. I know I like gold and diamonds. Loved rappers when I was younger. Waylon Jennings wore gold chains and diamonds, Johnny Cash did — they always looked dope. I was always like, I want to do that too.

If the fans’ approval isn’t crucial, whose approval does mean something to you?
George Strait. John Mayer. Steve Earle. My older brother. My dad.

You know Mayer?
We’ve talked on Instagram.

Why is he such a big one for you?
The commitment to the craft, I think, is what I’ve admired so much about him. It’s funny: When I was younger, I always said I was never gonna get married and have kids because I knew John Mayer was never going to, and I really respected how he was just gonna chase whatever it is that he was chasing forever. Then he got into records like “The Search for Everything” and “Sob Rock,” and he kind of hints at the fact that he missed out on that — he wishes he had a wife, wishes he had kids. That really resonated with me. I was like, all right, I don’t want to be 40 and alone. It completely changed my entire perspective on my future.

You played “Courtesy Of The Red, White And Blue” by the late Toby Keith at one of Donald Trump’s inaugural balls in January. What do you like about that song?
I bleed red, white and blue. I’m all about the United States of America — I’m all about what it stands for. A lot of people get turned off by that nowadays. I don’t care — I’m not worried about if you’re patriotic or not. But Toby was a great songwriter, and I love how much he loved his country.

In that Texas Monthly interview, you said you felt it was embarrassing for people to be affected emotionally by an artist’s political affiliation.
Nobody used to talk about it, and now it’s so polarizing. Am I not gonna listen to Neil Young now? I’m gonna listen to Neil Young all the f—ing time.

Why do you think audiences started caring?
Social media and the constant flood of information and political propaganda that people are absorbing around the clock. It’s just so dumb. I’ve got guys in my band and in my crew that are conservative and guys that are liberal. It makes no difference to me.

Of course you knew how your involvement with Trump would be taken.
Think about being 16, wanting to be a country singer, then getting to go play the presidential inauguration. What a crazy honor. There’s not a single president in history who was perfect — not a single one that didn’t do something wrong, not a single one that only did wrong. I just don’t care what people think about that stuff. Everybody feels different about things, and nowadays it’s like two sides of the fence — you either agree with this or you agree with that. I’m not that way.

What do you think happens next for you?
This is the only record I’ve ever made that I didn’t think about that as soon as I walked out of the studio. I have no idea what the next record is gonna be. Not a clue.

If we meet again in two years and you’ve made a record full of trap beats, what would that mean?
Probably that I was on drugs again.

In a time of exploding success and creativity in rock music, Creedence Clearwater Revival was quite possibly the finest singles band of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Formed in suburban El Cerrito in Northern California by frontman John Fogerty, his brother Tom on guitar, bassist Stu Cook and drummer Doug Clifford, CCR put up an absurd number of all-timers in the space of about 2 1/2 years, including most of the 20 collected on “Chronicle,” the 1976 greatest-hits LP that still sits on the Billboard 200 album chart today, nearly half a century later.

The band’s instantly identifiable sound — which the members began developing first as the Blue Velvets and then as the Golliwogs — combined blues, rock, psychedelia and R&B; John Fogerty’s voice, preternaturally scratchy and soulful for a guy in his early 20s, gave the music a feeling of sex and grit even as he flexed his commercial pop smarts as a producer and hook-meister.

For all their popularity, Fogerty refused to play Creedence’s biggest hits for decades due to a prolonged legal battle with his old label, Fantasy Records, over the rights to his songs — a feud that reached a kind of apex when Fantasy’s head honcho, Saul Zaentz, sued Fogerty for plagiarizing himself with his solo song “The Old Man Down the Road,” which Zaentz said sounded too much like CCR’s “Run Through the Jungle.” (Fogerty eventually won; Zaentz died in 2014.)

Yet two years ago, Fogerty regained control of his publishing, and now he’s made an album of Taylor Swift-style rerecorded versions of the band’s songs called “Legacy: The Creedence Clearwater Revival Years,” due Aug. 22. Ahead of a concert Sunday night at the Hollywood Bowl, where he’ll be accompanied by a band that includes his sons Shane and Tyler, Fogerty, 80, called from the road to tell the stories behind five of his signature tunes.

‘Proud Mary’ (1969)

After charting in 1968 with covers of Dale Hawkins’ “Susie Q” and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell on You,” Fogerty scored his first hit as a songwriter with this funky and propulsive country-soul jam.

“Proud Mary” came as a bolt of lightning and inspiration from heaven. I’d received my honorable discharge from the Army in the middle of 1968, and I was overjoyed — I mean, absolutely euphoric. It meant that I could now pursue music full-time. So I went in the house with my Rickenbacker guitar and started strumming some chords, and the first line I wrote was “Left a good job in the city / Working for the man every night and day.” That’s how I felt getting out of the Army.

But what is this song about? I really didn’t know. I went to my little song book that I’d only started writing in a few months before — it was a conscious decision to get more professional — and, lo and behold, the very first thing I’d ever written in that book was the phrase “Proud Mary.” I didn’t know what it meant — I just wrote it down because that was gonna be my job. I’ve got this little book, and I’m gonna collect my thoughts.

At the very bottom of the same page was the word “riverboat.” I remember saying to myself, “Oh, this song’s about a riverboat named Proud Mary.” How strange is that? Who writes a song about a boat? But after that I was off and running — finished the song within the hour, and for the first time in my life, I was looking at the page and I said, “My God, I’ve written a classic.” I knew it was a great song, like the people I admired so much: Hoagy Carmichael or Leiber & Stoller or Lennon & McCartney. I felt it in my bones.

Where did the narrator’s accent come from? “Big wheel keep on toinin’” and all that?
Howlin’ Wolf was a huge inspiration to me when I was 10, 11, 12 years old. He said things like that a lot, and I guess it went into my brain. I didn’t do it consciously — it just seemed right to me when I was writing the song.

CCR had five singles that got to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, including “Proud Mary.” Do you recall what was at No. 1 when “Proud Mary” reached No. 2?
Let’s see, this was early 1969 — I’d love to think that it was [Otis Redding’s] “Dock of the Bay.”

“Everyday People” by Sly and the Family Stone.
No kidding. How cool.

Did you know Sly?
I never met Sly Stone. I really loved the records. I was at Woodstock, and he was a couple acts after me. I watched Janis [Joplin] and then some of Sly, and then we retired to our Holiday Inn — must have been 4 in the morning by then.

Ike and Tina Turner remade “Proud Mary” for themselves.
It’s almost a different song. First time I heard it, I was driving in my car — was one of those times you pump your first and go, “Yeah!”

‘Lodi’ (1969)

This twangy account of a musician fallen on hard times first appeared on the B-side of the “Bad Moon Rising” single.

My mom and dad loved traveling from our little town of El Cerrito. We would drive up San Pablo Avenue — I don’t think there was a freeway back then — and cross the Carquinez Bridge into Vallejo and keep going up into the northern-central part of California and all those wonderful places like Stockton and Tracy and Modesto. I got to know all these towns like Dixon and Davis, and I heard my parents talk about Lodi. As a youngster, that was one of the words I saved in my book, like I was talking about earlier. I told myself, “That’s important, John — you need to save that and remember it.”

As I started to get a little older, I remember playing on campus at Cal Berkeley with a ragtag group of guys — a local dance kind of thing for the students. The guy from Quicksilver Messenger Service with the afro [David Freiberg], he was there too playing with his band, and they did a song where it sounded like he was saying “Lodi.” I was heartbroken. When he got done with his set, I went over and asked the gentleman, “What was that song you were doing? Was it called ‘Lodi’?” He said, “Oh, you mean ‘Codeine.’” Boy, did I crack up. Here I am, the farmer boy thinking about Lodi, and he’s the downtown guy talking about drugs.

Anyway, all that meandering my family did through the Central Valley was very important to me. There came a time when I was inspired to write a song framed in a place that was kind of out of the way. I was 23 or so, but I was picturing a much older person than myself — maybe Merle Haggard when he gets older. There he is, stuck in this little town because he’d drifted in and he doesn’t have the money to get out.

‘Fortunate Son’ (1969)

Immediately adopted as an anthem among those opposed to the Vietnam War, Fogerty’s searing protest song was later inducted into the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry.

You said in 2014 that you weren’t entirely satisfied by your lead vocal.
I still feel the same way. The basic tracks for “Down on the Corner” and “Fortunate Son” were both recorded, and one afternoon I went over to Wally Heider’s studio to finish the songs. For “Down on the Corner,” I did the maracas and the middle solo part, then sang all the background vocals, then sang the lead. So I’d been singing at the top of my lungs for probably an hour and a half, then I had to go back and finish “Fortunate Son.” I was screaming my heart out, doing the best I could, but later I felt that some of the notes were a little flat — that I hadn’t quite hit the mark. I always sort of cringed about that.

There’s an argument to be made that the raggedness in your voice is what gives the song its urgency.
I know that in the case of the Beatles, John would just sit in the studio screaming and screaming until his voice got raw enough, then he’d record some takes. Perhaps the fact that it was a little out of tune made it — what’s the word? — more pop-worthy. I don’t know.

“Fortunate Son” was heard at President Trump’s recent military parade, despite your asking him not to use it during his 2020 campaign.
I didn’t watch other than a few seconds. I was trying to find the Yankee game and came across the parade. I was expecting it would be like the Rose Bowl Parade on New Year’s morning, but it seemed really kind of sleepy. Somebody emailed me later that night and told me. I thought it was strange — thought it would be something that someone would be wary of.

Because of the cease-and-desist — and because the song is literally about a person of privilege avoiding military service.
I thought to myself: Do you think somebody did it on purpose? Are they doing it as some weird kind of performance art? I might be giving too much credit to the thought that went into it.

“Fortunate Son” is one of the great rock songs about class, which is a concept that Trump has deeply reshaped in his time.
He’s a rich guy but he manages to make himself look like the underdog and the victim. I’m from the ’60s — the hippie era — when young people were much more unified in the sense that everybody should be equal and everyone should be tolerant and respectful of each other. It’s a little different now, even though I’m very happy that people are protesting and making noise and pointing out injustice — I’m thrilled that’s going on instead of just standing by and watching somebody get lit on fire.

But we’re so polarized in America now. I’m hopeful, though. You didn’t ask me the question, but I am. I think we’re all starting to get tired of that. It doesn’t work very well — what we’re doing right now is certainly not working. If we fire everybody and quit all knowledge and science and education and manners and morality and ethics and kick out all the immigrants — well, I guess you and me are probably gone along with everybody else. I mean, it’s just such complete negativity. As Americans, that’s not us — that’s not how we roll.

‘Run Through the Jungle’ (1970)

With worries about the spread of gun ownership in his head, Fogerty devised one of his eeriest productions for this swampy psych-rock number.

I was trying to do a lot with a little — certainly got the band cooking and got a good groove going. For the intro, I wanted to create maybe a Stanley Kubrick movie soundscape, but of course I didn’t have a symphony orchestra or synthesizers or any of that kind of stuff. I had to imagine: How do I use these rock ’n’ roll instruments — basically guitar and piano and a little bit of percussion and some backward tape — and create that ominous, rolling vibe?

Along with the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, you were one of the few rock and pop musicians of that era who produced your own records.
To me, it was natural. I remember a time in the little shed that Fantasy had built outside the back of their warehouse to use as a recording studio — I was working there one day, had the earphones on and I was at the mic. This was Golliwogs time, probably ’65 or ’66, and I was trying to get something accomplished that was not getting accomplished. I said out loud, “Well, I guess Phil Spector’s not gonna come down here and produce us, so I’m gonna have to learn how to be a producer myself.”

Saul Zaentz famously took you to court for self-plagiarism. Is there anything at all in your mind that connects “Run Through the Jungle” and “The Old Man Down the Road”?
Other than both of them having a very deep footprint within the blues, which is what has influenced me greatly in my life, I never thought they were even similar. The whole thing was preposterous.

‘Have You Ever Seen the Rain’ (1970)

After CCR’s “Pendulum” LP — which included this tender ballad that now boasts more than 2 billion streams on Spotify — Tom Fogerty quit the group; the remaining three members went their separate ways less than two years later.

I loved my band — I thought it was the culmination of everything I’d been working for — and to watch it sort of disintegrating, I just felt powerless. That’s why I use the strange metaphor of rain coming down on a sunny day: We had finally found our sunny day, and yet everybody seemed to be more and more unhappy. I just felt completely befuddled by what was going on — I didn’t know what to say or do that was gonna fix it.

Up to that time, I’d thought the way to fix it was: Well, I’ll just write more songs and we’ll have more success — that’ll take care of all our problems. That’s how I felt — pathetically so — even as far as my relationship with Saul Zaentz and the horrible contract. I thought if I just showed that I was a great songwriter and could make these records that perhaps he would have some empathy and go, “I should treat John better because I want to have more of these songs.” When I say that now, it sounds utterly foolish.

In spite of the pain you were in at the time, this song is one of your sweetest.
That’s true. It’s like an atom bomb going off in your backyard — it’s so horrible that you just sort of cling to your positive human emotion. Even if it’s painful, you try to feel rather than be numb.

“Have You Ever Seen the Rain” has been covered widely: Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, the Ramones, Rod Stewart. You have a favorite rendition besides yours?
I really liked Bonnie Tyler’s version.

BERLIN — In a country that saw its democracy die in 1933, the more than 170,000 people crowding into three of Germany’s biggest soccer stadiums for Bruce Springsteen’s rock concerts in recent weeks have been especially receptive to his message and dire warnings about a politically perilous moment in the United States, one that has reminded some of Adolf Hitler’s power grab in the ’30s.

At these gigantic open-air concerts in Berlin, Frankfurt and Gelsenkirchen, which have been among the largest concerts to date in Springsteen’s two-month-long, 16-show Land of Hope & Dreams tour across Europe, the 75-year-old rock star from New Jersey has interspersed short but poignant political speeches into his exhausting, sweat-drenched performances to describe the dangers he sees in the United States under the Trump administration.

“The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock ’n’ roll in dangerous times,” Springsteen says to cheers at the start of each concert. “In my home — the America I love, the America I have written about — the America that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration. Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us, raise your voices against authoritarianism and let freedom ring.”

Springsteen’s words have had special resonance in Germany, where memories of the Nazi past are never far from the surface and the cataclysmic demise of the Weimar Republic, which led directly to Hitler’s takeover, is studied in great detail in schools and universities. With that Nazi past embedded in their DNA, German fears of President Trump’s tactics probably run higher than anywhere else.

“Germans tend to have angst about a lot of things and they are really afraid of Trump,” said Michael Pilz, a music critic for the Welt newspaper, who agrees that the death of German democracy in 1933 is a contributing factor to the popularity of Springsteen’s anti-Trump concerts this summer. “A lot of Germans think Trump is a fool. It’s not only his politics but the way he is, just so completely over the top. Germans love to see Trump getting hit. And they admire Springsteen for standing up and taking it to him.”

“The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock ’n’ roll in dangerous times,” Springsteen says to cheers at the start of each concert.

(Markus Schreiber / Associated Press)

The crowds in Germany have been as large as they are enthusiastic. More than 75,000 filled Berlin’s Olympic Stadium on June 11; 44,500 were in Frankfurt on June 18; and another 51,000 watched his concert in the faded Ruhr River industrial town of Gelsenkirchen on June 27. All told, more than 700,000 tickets have been sold for the 16 shows in Springsteen’s tour (for concerts that last three or more hours), which concludes on July 3 in Milan, Italy.

“The German aversion to Trump has now become more extreme in his second term — Germans just don’t understand how the Americans could elect someone like Trump,” said Jochen Staadt, a political science professor at the Free University in Berlin who is also a drummer in an amateur Berlin rock band. Staadt believes Springsteen’s 1988 concert may well have helped pave the way for the Berlin Wall to fall a little over a year later in 1989. “Germans are drawn to Springsteen as someone who played an important role in our history when Germany was still divided and as someone who may have helped overcome that division with rock music.”

Springsteen has been filling stadiums across Europe in the warm summertime evenings with his high-energy shows that not only entertain the tremendous crowds but also take on Trump’s policies on civil liberties, free speech, immigrants and universities in thoughtfully constructed messages. To ensure nothing is lost in translation, Springsteen’s brief forays into politics of about two to three minutes each are translated for local audiences in German, French, Spanish, Basque and Italian subtitles on the giant video walls onstage.

To ram the message home to more people, Springsteen also released a 30-minute recording from the first stop of the tour in Manchester, England, that contains three songs and three of his speeches onstage.

“I’ve always tried to be a good ambassador for America,” said Springsteen while introducing “My City of Ruins,” a song he wrote after the 9/11 terror attacks that has taken on a new meaning this summer. “I’ve spent my life singing about where we have succeeded and where we’ve come up short in living up to our civic ideals and our dreams. I always just thought that was my job. Things are happening right now in my home that are altering the very nature of our country’s democracy and they’re simply too important to ignore.”

Springsteen’s first speech during the tour’s Manchester show on May 17 prompted a sharp rebuke from Trump on his Truth Social platform. “Springsteen is ‘dumb as a rock’… and this dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country, that’s just ‘standard fare’. Then we’ll all see how it goes for him!”

Springsteen did not respond directly. Instead, he repeated his messages at every concert across Europe. He delivered more political commentary in introducing his song “House of a Thousand Guitars” by saying: “The last check on power, after the checks and balances of government have failed, are the people. You and me. It’s the union of people around a common set of values. That’s all that stands between democracy and authoritarianism. So at the end of the day, all we’ve really got is each other.” In the song, Springsteen sings about “the criminal clown has stolen the throne / He steals what he can never own.”

His concerts also included the live debut of “Rainmaker,” about a con man, from his 2020 “Letter to You” album. At the concerts in Europe, Springsteen dedicates the song to “our dear leader,” with a line that goes: “Rainmaker says white’s black and black’s white / Says night’s day and day’s night.”

More than 75,000 filled Berlin’s Olympic Stadium on June 11, 44,500 were in Frankfurt on June 18, and another 51,000 watched his concert in the faded Ruhr River industrial town of Gelsenkirchen on June 27.

(Markus Schreiber / Associated Press)

He also changed one line in the song from “they don’t care or understand what it really takes for the sky to open up the land,” to “they don’t care or understand how easy it is to let freedom slip through your hands.”

Springsteen’s enormous popularity across Europe has long been on a different level than in the United States, and that gap could grow even wider in the future. Springsteen’s close friend and the band’s lead guitarist, Steve Van Zandt, recently observed in an interview with the German edition of Playboy magazine that the E Street Band may have lost half of its audience back home because of the group’s unabashed opposition to Trump. (The band’s concerts in the United States are often held in smaller indoor arenas.)

Bruce Springsteen, left, performs with Steven Van Zandt: at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, June 11, 2025.

(Markus Schreiber / Associated Press)

But in Europe, Springsteen and his band have been reliably filling cavernous stadiums during the long, daylight-filled summertime evenings for decades with improbably enthusiastic crowds that sing along to the lyrics of his songs and spent most of the concerts on their feet dancing and cheering. There are also large numbers of hearty Springsteen fans from scores of countries who use their entire yearly allotment of vacation to follow him from show to show across the continent. This summer, Springsteen’s message has been amplified even more, sending many in the boomer-dominated crowds into states of near-ecstasy and attracting considerable media attention in countries across Europe.

“The message of his music always touched a deep nerve in Europe and especially Germany, but ever since Trump was elected president, Springsteen’s voice has been incredibly important for us,” said Katrin Schlemmer, a 56-year-old IT analyst from Zwickau who saw five Springsteen concerts in June — from Berlin to Prague to Frankfurt and two in San Sebastián, Spain. All told, Schlemmer has seen 60 Springsteen concerts in 11 countries around the world since her first in East Berlin in 1988 — a record-breaking, history-changing concert with more than 300,000 spectators that some historians believe may have contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall just 16 months later.

“A lot of Germans can’t fathom why the Americans elected someone like Trump,” said Schlemmer, who had the chance to thank Springsteen for the 1988 East Berlin concert at a chance meeting after a 2014 concert in Cape Town, South Africa. “We saw for ourselves how quickly a democracy was destroyed by an authoritarian. The alarm bells are ringing about what a danger Trump is. People love [Springsteen] here because he tells it like it is and because he is standing up to Trump.”

Stephan Cyrus, a 56-year-old manager from Hamburg, said Germans view Springsteen as a trustworthy American voice during a period of uncertainty.

“When Germans hear Springsteen speaking about his worries about the United States, they listen, because so many of us have so much admiration and longing for the United States and are worried about the country’s direction too,” said Cyrus, who saw the June 11 concert in Berlin. “He definitely touched us with his words.”

In one of his concert speeches, Springsteen goes after Trump without mentioning his name.

Spectators watch Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band perform at the Olympic Stadium, in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, June 11, 2025.

(Markus Schreiber / Associated Press)

“There is some very weird, strange and dangerous s— going on out there right now. In America, they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now. In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death. This is happening now.”

Springsteen then adds: “In my country, they’re taking sadistic pleasure in the pain they are inflicting on loyal American workers. They’re rolling back historic civil rights legislation that led to a more just and plural society. They are abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They’re defunding American universities that won’t back down to their ideological demands. They’re removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons. This is all happening now. A majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government.”

He tells the audiences that those in the administration “have no concern or idea of what it means to be deeply American.”

But Springsteen ends on a hopeful note, promising his audiences: “We’ll survive this moment.”

Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, will no longer be able to enter Australia after releasing a song that praises Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

Tony Burke, Australia’s home affairs minister, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. on Wednesday that the country had canceled his visa in early May, around the time “Heil Hitler” was released.

Ye has visited the country frequently since marrying Bianca Censori, who is from Melbourne.

“If someone argued that antisemitism was rational, I would not let them come here,” Burke said. “[Ye] has been coming to Australia for a long time … and he’s made a lot of offensive comments.”

The song proved to be the final strike for Ye. First shared in a social media post on X, “Heil Hitler” as been widely denounced for its racial epithets and antisemitism. It was also subsequently banned on most streaming platforms.

In the song, Ye sampled an infamous speech made by Hitler in 1935 at Krupp Factory, two years after he was appointed chancellor of the Nazi party.

Its music video, released May 8, shows a group of individuals dressed in animal skins reciting the song’s lyrics.

Ye’s behavior has long been controversial, but his antisemitism in recent years has put former colleagues in an awkward position.

John Legend, whose 2013 effort “Love in the Future” was executive produced by Ye, had a clear response in a recent interview.

“It never affects me personally, but just the whole story is sad. Like, seeing this guy praise Hitler, seeing this guy be this force of hate and just vitriol and nastiness,” Legend said during an appearance on New York’s Hot 97 radio show. “All the things he’s done to make the world more beautiful and interesting, for him to be this now, it’s sad. It’s just sad.”

He clarified that during his time on Ye’s G.O.O.D. Music label between 2004 and 2016, he never saw evidence that the rapper was “obsessed with Hitler.”

Legend added that despite Ye’s recent behavior, he has no regrets over their past collaborations: “I’m so glad we did what we did together.”

This essay is adapted from Merrick Morton’s “La Bamba: A Visual History,” published by Hat & Beard Press.

“Dance!! Dance!! Dance!! to the music of the Silhouettes Band!!” read the handbill. The Silhouettes featured Ritchie Valens — “the fabulous Lil’ Richi and his Crying Guitar!!” — at a 1958 appearance at the San Fernando American Legion Hall in Southern California.

He was 16 years old. The Silhouettes was Ritchie’s first band, and they launched him into history. But a silhouette itself is an interesting thing: You can see the general shape of something while you hardly know the figure casting the shadow. Valens’ musical story begins with the Silhouettes, and we have been filling in his story, and projecting ourselves onto it, ever since he left.

A founding father of rock ’n’ roll, he would lose his life barely a year later, when the plane carrying members of the Winter Dance Party Tour — Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Valens — crashed on Feb. 3, 1959, in an Iowa snowstorm. A Chicano icon. A stranger.

Ritchie was a kid playing his guitar to make money for his family and one song he played was a version of “Malagueña.” The number was rooted in centuries-old Spanish flamenco music that had spread in all directions, becoming a classical music melody and a Hollywood soundtrack go-to by the 1950s. In his hands, it became a catapult for guitar hero god shots.

Candid shot of Ritchie Valens, Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson) and Buddy Holly during the Winter Dance Party Tour.

(C3 Entertainment)

“Malagueña” communicated experience and rico suave flair to his audience. Meanwhile, his mom was selling homemade tamales at his shows in the American Legion Hall. This guileless 17-year-old, Chicano kid from Pacoima found a way to introduce himself to America by taking something familiar and making it feel like nothing you had heard before.

From the beginning, Ritchie heard the possibilities in turning a familiar sound forward. He saw, even as the teenager he will forever be to us, how in reinventing a song, you could reinvent yourself. Listen to “Donna,” the heartfelt love ballad that felt familiar to Chicano ears, listeners who for years had tuned in to Black vocal groups. In the process, he cleared the way for so much great Chicano soul to come in the next two decades.

Valens performing to a packed house.

(C3 Entertainment)

Most of all, of course, listen to “La Bamba.” A centuries-old song from Veracruz, Mexico; the tune has African, Spanish, Indigenous and Caribbean DNA. In the movie, he encounters the song for the first time when his brother Bob takes him to a Tijuana brothel, but however he first heard it, Valens viewed it as a prism, a way of flooding all that was in front of him with his voice and guitar.

The music he made came from Mexico, and it came from Los Angeles, where 1940s Spanish-language swing tunes, Black doo-wop sounds and hillbilly guitar-plucking were mashed together in a molcajete y tejolote. Most of all, it came from the radio, which lined up sounds that were not like the ones that came right before and blasted them out on AM stations from corner to corner across the Southland. Radio devoured difference and transformed it, and if Ritchie is now regarded as a pioneer of Chicano music, he was in his own, brief time, a product of AM democracy, a silhouette with a spotlight shining on him.

Danny Valdez knew all the songs. In the early 1970s, the artist and activist had released “Mestizo,” billed as the first Chicano protest album put out by a major label. The singer-songwriter and his buddy Taylor Hackford would drink beer, belt out Ritchie Valens songs and make big plans. They talked about someday shooting a movie together, with Valdez playing Ritchie and Hackford directing. “Neither of us had a pot to piss in,” said Hackford, “so we never made that movie.” But years later, after Hackford had a hit with “An Officer and A Gentleman,” Valdez called him and raised the idea once more.

There were many steps to getting “La Bamba” on the screen, but it began with an understanding that it would be about the music. That meant they had to make the music feel alive — namely the handful of recordings produced by Bob Keane that Ritchie left behind. The owner of Del-Fi Records, Keane was a guiding figure in the singer’s life, recording his songs, urging him to mask his ethnicity by changing his name from Richard Steven Valenzuela and giving him career advice. Keane booked Gold Star Studios, cheap at $15 an hour, and brought in great session musicians as Ritchie’s backing band, including future Wrecking Crew members Earl Palmer and Carol Kaye. But the recordings he made were not state of the art, even in their own time.

“They weren’t high-quality,” said Hackford, comparing them to the early Ray Charles sessions for the Swing Time label. “I had a commercial idea in mind, of music selling the film, of people walking out of the theater singing ‘La Bamba’ who had never heard of it before,” he said. That meant he needed contemporary musicians who understood the records and could re-record Ritchie’s songs and reach an audience that was listening to Michael Jackson, Madonna and George Michael.

Valens signing autographs for his fans.

(C3 Entertainment)

Ritchie’s family, including his mother, Connie, and his siblings, had already heard that Los Lobos were playing “Come On, Let’s Go” live in East L.A. When the band played a concert in Santa Cruz, where the Valenzuela family was living by the 1980s, a friendship grew.

“Danny and I knew Los Lobos in the ‘70s when they were just starting out,” says writer and director Luis Valdez, “when they were literally just another band from East L.A. We were very fortunate that they were at that point in their career where they could take on this project. Without Los Lobos, we wouldn’t have Ritchie. David Hidalgo’s voice is incredible. I don’t think we could have found other musicians to cover him. They come from East L.A., they’re all Chicanos. They were paying an homage. We happened to be in the airport together when they got the news that ‘La Bamba’ had become number one in the national charts.”

“They called themselves the spiritual inheritors of Ritchie Valens,” says Hackford. “And they went in and re-recorded Ritchie’s songs plus several that he had played in concert but never recorded.” Now Hackford had his own album of old tunes that turned in a forward direction.

Next, Hackford made sure there were roles for modern performers to play the classic rockers from the Winter Dance Party Tour. He cast contemporary performers who could re-record their material too: Marshall Crenshaw as Buddy Holly, Brian Setzer as Eddie Cochran and Howard Huntsberry as Jackie Wilson.

Then there’s the surprise of the first song heard in the film — a rumbling version of Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love?” that had Carlos Santana, hired as a soundtrack composer, playing with Los Lobos, and Bo himself offering a fresh vocal over everything.

“We were so happy to have the touch of Carlos Santana as part of Ritchie’s story,” said Luis Valdez. “It’s his guitar that underscores a lot of the scenes and he had a theme for each of the players. We screened the whole movie for him first and he was very moved by it and ready to go right away once he saw it without his contribution. He was alone on the soundstage at Paramount, where we recorded his soundtrack, doing his magic with his guitar. He became a great friend as a result of that. It’s incredible what an artist can do.”

Actor Lou Diamond Phillips as Ritchie Valens in the 1987 film “La Bamba.”

(Merrick Morton)

The original soundtrack recording topped the Billboard pop charts and went double platinum.

Hackford loved pop music; his first feature film, “The Idolmaker” (1980), was a rock musical. Releasing hit music became a key promotional element of the package. In advance of 1982’s “An Officer and a Gentleman” came “Up Where We Belong” by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes. It went to No. 1 a week after the opening. For 1984’s “Against All Odds,” he selected Phil Collins to sing the title cut, a song released three weeks before opening; the song soon went No. 1. 1985’s “White Nights” had two No. 1 songs, Lionel Ritchie’s “Say You Say Me” and Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin’s duet “Separate Lives.”

One looming problem for “La Bamba” was that the 1987 moviegoing public was not familiar with the name Ritchie Valens. Hackford had ideas for that as well. He set out to introduce him to contemporary audiences — convincing the studio to fund a unique teaser trailer to run weeks before the official movie trailer went into theaters.

The producer assembled a parade of familiar faces to reintroduce Valens. The short film included Canadian hitmaker Bryan Adams and Little Richard talking about the icon. There was also the vision of Bob Dylan in a top-down convertible riding along the Pacific Coast Highway. The 17-year-old Dylan was present at a Valens concert in Duluth, Minn., just days before the plane crashed; he popped up talking about what Valens’ music meant to him. “You bet it made a difference,” said Hackford.

After the “La Bamba” soundtrack became a hit (there was also a Volume Two), Los Lobos made the most of their elevated success. They had experienced head-turning celebrity with “La Bamba,” and they followed it up with “La Pistola y El Corazón,” a gritty selection of mariachi and Tejano songs played on acoustic traditional instruments. They had banked cultural capital and directed their large new audience to this music that many had never heard before. “La Pistola y El Corazón” won a Grammy in 1989 for Mexican-American performance.

The “La Bamba” soundtrack helped set a precedent for the crossover global success of Latin music, which has become a major force in mainstream pop culture. From Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez to Shakira, Bad Bunny, Peso Pluma, Becky G, Anitta, J Balvin, Karol G and Maluma, among others who are dominating the charts, racking up billions of streams, headlining massive tours and festivals.

Does Hackford think “La Bamba” helped set the table for subsequent Latino pop star success?

“I think the one who set the table was Ritchie Valens. He recorded a song in Spanish, a rock ’n’ roll version of a folk song, and he made it a huge hit.

“I challenge you, any party you go to — wedding reception, bar mitzvah, whatever it is — when ‘La Bamba’ comes on, the tables clear and everybody gets up to dance. That’s Ritchie Valens; he deserves that credit. We came afterwards.”

RJ Smith is a Los Angeles-based author. He has written for Blender, the Village Voice, Spin, GQ and the New York Times Magazine. His books include “The Great Black Way,” “The One: The Life and Music of James Brown” and “Chuck Berry: An American Life.”

Walter Scott, who with his twin brother Wallace founded the Los Angeles-based R&B group the Whispers — a hit-making force in the 1970s and ‘80s with songs like “And the Beat Goes On,” “Rock Steady,” “Lady” and “Seems Like I Gotta Do Wrong” — died Thursday, according to multiple media outlets, including Billboard and the Los Angeles Sentinel. He was 81.

The Sentinel reported that Scott’s family said he died in Northridge after a six-month bout with cancer.

With a smooth, danceable sound built on sturdy post-disco rhythms and carefully arranged group vocals, the Whispers put 15 songs inside the Top 10 of Billboard’s R&B chart; “And the Beat Goes On” reached No. 1 in 1980, followed by “Rock Steady,” which topped the tally in 1987. The band’s music was widely sampled in later years, including by 50 Cent, Mobb Deep, J. Cole and Will Smith, the last of whom used “And the Beat Goes On” as the basis for his late-‘90s hit “Miami.”

In a post on Instagram, the musician and filmmaker Questlove described Scott as “one of the most trusted voices in ‘70s soul music” and compared him to “the talented uncle in the family….who btw could DUST you inna min w his dizzying blink & you lost him squiggle gee doo dweedy scatlibs.”

Scott was born in 1944 in Fort Worth, Texas, and later moved to L.A. with his family; he and his brother started singing as students at Jordan High School, according to the Sentinel, and formed the Whispers in the mid-‘60s with Nicholas Caldwell, Marcus Hutson and Gordy Harmon. The group spent time in San Francisco before Scott was drafted to serve in the Vietnam War.

The group recorded for a series of record companies but found its biggest success on Dick Griffey’s Solar label. The Whispers were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame and the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame.

Billboard said Scott is survived by his wife, Jan; two sons; three grandchildren and his brother.

No pop artist today has a more tangled relationship to a venue than the Weeknd has with SoFi Stadium.

First, he chose SoCal’s flagship stadium as the site to film the denouement of his cult-campy HBO series “The Idol” during one of his concerts. Unfortunately, during the set, he lost his voice four songs in and had to send fans home for the night so he could recover and make up the date. For such a perfectionist, that must have been a body blow.

He rebounded a few months later with a triumphal return and the concert doc “The Weeknd: Live at SoFi Stadium.” But that nerve-racking experience stuck with him. He revisited it in his recent feature film (and album) “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” where a fictional version of the Weeknd loses his voice onstage, kicking off a surrealist, violent night with Jenna Ortega. A brief interlude from that LP is titled “I Can’t F— Sing.”

So Abel Tesfaye must have had a range of mixed feelings when he walked out at SoFi on Wednesday night, the first of four nights at the site of some of his greatest triumphs and most bitter disappointments as a live performer. “This is bigger than me — it’s a reflection of the power of music and its impact on people,” Tesfaye told The Times in a brief email just before the show.

The Weeknd performs during his After Hours til Dawn Stadium Tour at SoFi Stadium.

(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)

This slickly cryptic, immaculately performed 2½-hour set covered the whole of his era-defining catalog. But is this run of SoFi dates a swan song to one of the most successful recording projects of our time?

Since first emerging as an anonymous voice atop gothic, coked-up R&B productions on a trilogy of 2011 mixtapes, Tesfaye’s tastes and his unlikely commercial success grew together.

An underground fan base turned up for the nihilism of “Wicked Games” (“Bring the drugs, baby, I could bring my pain”). But with assists from Max Martin and Daft Punk, he became a bona fide pop star. His mournful Ethiopian melodic lilt stood out like nothing else in Top 40, and he hung onto enough art-freak sensibility that he could headline the Super Bowl halftime show with dancers in full-face plastic-surgery bandages. His ’80s-noir, 2019 single “Blinding Lights” remains the most-streamed song on Spotify, ever.

Darryl Eaton, his agent at CAA, told The Times that the 200,000 tickets sold for this SoFi run alone is “like selling out an entire American city.”

Yet Tesfaye has recently hinted at retiring the Weeknd as a premise. “It’s a headspace I’ve gotta get into that I just don’t have any more desire for,” he told Variety recently. “It never ends until you end it.”

Whether he wants to release less conceptual, more personal music, or if he’s simply run out of gas with this all-consuming pop entity he’s created, this SoFi run is likely one of the last chances L.A. fans will get to see the Weeknd. Tesfaye will surely keep making music and films, but it makes cinematic sense that he’d come back to the scene of his most painful night onstage to put this all to bed.

After a brief and typically roiling set from Tesfaye’s recent collaborator Playboi Carti, Tesfaye emerged in black and gold, eyes lit with LED pinpicks, over a ruined cityscape. Opening with the “BoJack Horseman”-riffing “The Abyss,” he grimly promised, “I tried my best to not let you go / I don’t like the view from halfway down … I tried to be something that I’ll never be.” It sure felt like he was saying goodbye to this way of being an artist.

The show kicked into gear with Tesfaye surrounded by a trim live band and minimalist, moving-sculpture dancers in rose-colored robes. He didn’t need much more to let that once-in-a-generation voice carry everything. Tesfaye’s a uniquely dedicated live vocalist on the stadium circuit (it’s kind of honorable that any serious vocal troubles might mean the show’s over). For all his high-concept misdirections in videos and films, you could feel the troubled intimacy that’s kept fans invested in this music over so many aesthetics.

For all his close reads of Michael Jackson’s records on singles like “Can’t Feel My Face,” Tesfaye’s not an especially physical dancer onstage. But he knows exactly how to inhabit and set-dress this music to make it eerie and monolithic, even at its poppiest.

The Weeknd.

(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)

“After Hours” made a seductive case for letting an obviously toxic man back into your life (“Different girls on the floor, distracting my thoughts of you”). After finally taking off his face mask, he played “Take My Breath” like a revving, neo-disco floor-filler that still winked at the darker choke-kinks of his old music.

When he cranked up the pyro on the midcareer lurker ballad “The Hills,” the front rows of SoFi got a bracing reminder of how volatile this music is even when it sits atop streaming charts. Alongside Carti on their collaborations “Timeless” and “Rather Lie,” Tesfaye grounded his pal’s smeary Atlanta noise with evilly pretty melody. This is a voice you just can’t help but believe, even when it’s calling you to self-destruction.

The Weeknd performs at SoFi Stadium.

(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)

If this tour is indeed at the end of his tenure as the Weeknd, at more than three dozen songs, Wednesday’s set delivered every possible angle of valediction — the thrumming decadence of “Often,” the desperate sincerity of “Die for You” and “Is There Someone Else?” Newer material like “Cry for Me” and “São Paolo” showed that, whatever his exhaustion with this aegis, he’s got tons of startling ideas still brimming.

When Tesfaye buried the hatchet with the Grammys back in February, it was a generous gesture to an organization that inexplicably locked him out of honors for “Blinding Lights,” which he should, obviously, have contended for. When he played that double-time, neo-New Wave single toward the end of his Wednesday set, it felt like a strange pearl that he’d discovered — one of the biggest pop songs of all time, played by a guy whose music emerged from a murk of MDMA licks and mournful threesomes.

With perhaps the exception of his (exceedingly stylish if critically skeptical) film career, he’s always found his voice, over and over again. SoFi Stadium has dealt the Weeknd his greatest defeat and some of his finest hours as a performer. Now it’s sending him off to Valhalla, wherever that takes Abel Tesfaye.

The once-clashing R&B songstresses Brandy and Monica are back — together.

The titans announced their first-ever co-headlining tour, “The Boy Is Mine,” on Tuesday, paying homage to their 1998 hit of the same name. Kelly Rowland, Muni Long and recent “American Idol” winner Jamal Roberts are scheduled to appear as special guests along the road.

“This really is a full-circle moment,” Brandy said in a statement to Variety. “Monica and I coming together again isn’t just about the music — it’s about honoring where we came from and how far we’ve both come. ‘The Boy Is Mine’ was a defining chapter in R&B, and to share the stage all these years later is bigger than a reunion — it’s a celebration of growth, sisterhood, and the love our fans have given us from day one.”

She added that she recognized the love “The Boy Is Mine” still received, saying that the song “means everything to me.”

Upon its release, the song spent 13 weeks at No. 1. That was 27 years ago, and though the pair have been on “different journeys” since, they’ve come back together to give “the people what they’ve been asking for.”

“God’s timing perfectly aligned us,” Brandy said.

Presale for the tour begins on June 26, with general tickets going on sale on June 27. The run currently includes one Los Angeles-area show on Nov. 9 at the Kia Forum.

Brandy and Monica had a widely publicized fallout in 1998. Monica is said to have punched Brandy in the face just before they took the stage at that year’s MTV Video Music Awards to perform their hit single.

The duo was seen as a monumental combination of ‘90s talent, with both Brandy and Monica being lauded for their debut records. Brandy had already achieved RIAA platinum status with her eponymous album released in 1994 when she was just 15. “The Boy Is Mine” was an instant hit when it was released four years later, but the VMAs incident seemed to spawn acrimony.

Though both would remain in the music industry, Brandy would also pursue an acting career. The “Vocal Bible” took off following her role as the first African American actor to play Cinderella in 1997. More recently, she starred as a rapper in the ABC drama series “Queens” in 2021.

Monica’s 1995 debut, “Miss Thang,” went platinum when she was 14, but the singer largely remained out of the spotlight following the release of “Code Red” in 2015. She teased a pivot into the country music genre in 2022 with “Open Roads,” which she says was produced entirely by 10-time Grammy winner Brandi Carlile. Though she confirmed its completion in 2023, it has yet to be released.

After the kerfuffle in 1998, it wouldn’t be until 2012 that the two collaborated again on “It All Belongs to Me” and 11 years more before they worked on a remix of “The Boy Is Mine” for Ariana Grande. In 2021, Brandy and Monica appeared on “Verzuz,” a popular webcast series made by Swizz Beatz and Timbaland where two artists pit their best hits against each other.

The affair went down smoothly until about 30 minutes in, when Monica spoke of how she had come a long way from “kicking in doors” and “smacking chicks,” a (seemingly autobiographical) line from her hit song “So Gone.”

“You sure was,” Brandy replied. “I was one of the ones.”

But Monica refuted the quip, claiming, “People think I’m abusive. That’s not what happened.”

After a little back and forth, Brandy conceded, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that … I didn’t mean no shade by that.”

“It was a misunderstanding,” Monica replied before moving on, as both singers seemed to have done with the announcement of the upcoming tour.

Cardi B, entering the newest phase of her rap career, has just one question in mind: “Am I the Drama?”

That’s the title for the Grammy winner’s long-anticipated sophomore album, which she unveiled Monday on social media. The “Bodak Yellow” artist, 32, announced “Am I the Drama?” will drop Sept. 19, seven years after she made her splashy debut with 2018’s “Invasion of Privacy.”

The aptly dramatic “Am I the Drama?” cover art features Cardi B in an abstract red body suit and matching fishnet tights grabbing the heel of one of her sky-high platform pumps. The image also features a raven resting on her shoe and even more of them swarming around her.

Cardi B hinted at her album and its raven motif Sunday in a theatrical teaser as she reflected on “seven years of love, life and loss” and trading in grace for hell.

“I learned power’s not given. It’s taken,” the Bronx native says. “I’m shedding feathers and no more tears. I’m not back. I’m beyond.”

Cardi B broke out with “Bodak Yellow” almost a year before she released “Invasion of Privacy” in April 2018. Times critic Mikael Wood in his review commended the rapper for her relatability — “through her words and delivery … the songs make you feel like she’s speaking directly to you.”

At the 2019 Grammy Awards, Cardi B won a top honor and made history while doing so: She became the first woman to win the rap album category as a solo artist.

Cardi B continued to gain popularity over the following years for hits including “I Like It” with J Balvin and Bad Bunny, and “WAP” with Megan Thee Stallion. The latter, and Cardi B’s recent singles “Up” and “Outside,” will be among the 23 songs on the new album, according to the tracklist preview on Spotify.

“Am I the Drama?” will arrive as Cardi B also marks new milestones in her personal life.

Earlier this year, the “Hustlers” actor made her romance with NFL star Stefon Diggs official after parting ways with Migos rapper Offset. She also became a mother for a third time in September when she welcomed her daughter Blossom Belles, with Offset. They also share 6-year-old daughter Kulture and 3-year-old son Wave.