Dear listeners,
I’m trying something a little different for this week’s Amplifier. Rather than offering up a playlist of thematically linked songs, as I usually do, today I’m giving you five tracks that have nothing in common except for the fact that, for one reason or another, I have enjoyed listening to them over the past week. Think of it as my listening diary from the last seven days, full of random discoveries and rediscoveries. You’ll hear, among other things, something old (from the Rolling Stones), something new (from Olivia Rodrigo) and a song that makes me realize that 2007 was such a long time ago that I am now blue.
Beyond that, we’re also celebrating Miles Davis’s 100th birthday with a glimpse into the comments section of a very fun feature for which some cultural luminaries — like Erykah Badu and Meshell Ndegeocello — chose their favorite Davis tracks.
And I’ve included a roundup of our coverage remembering another jazz legend, the incomparable saxophonist Sonny Rollins, who died yesterday at 95.
Oh major-major-minor-minor,
Lindsay
Listen along while you read.
One Perfect Song
The Rolling Stones: “Time Waits for No One”
Over the weekend I finished reading Bob Spitz’s new doorstop biography of the Rolling Stones — mentioned in a recent, Stones-themed installment of The Amplifier — which I supplemented with a chronological revisit to each album in the Stones’ catalog. A few revelations emerged, such as my realization that “Emotional Rescue” is actually a much more solid LP than I remembered. (“Dirty Work,” however? Still bad!) But above all, revisiting the Stones’ 1974 album “It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll” has given me a newfound appreciation for this deep cut, considered (correctly) by many fans to be the guitarist Mick Taylor’s finest moment. It’s also one of his final moments with the band, since “It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll” would be the last Stones album completed before his departure in December 1974.
That the song is such a sonic outlier in the Rolling Stones catalog suggests the ways in which the virtuosic Taylor was always an odd fit: If anything, he had the mixed blessing of being too excellent a guitar player for the Stones’ scrappy, shambolic sound. But in the five years that Taylor was with the group, his playing conjured many moments of magic, perhaps none more potent and elegiac than the final few minutes of this song. I hear it as a long, wordless goodbye.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
One Song I Enjoyed Live
Grace Ives: “Shelly”
Grace Ives may not be a household name, but to the ecstatic crowd of 600 or so people at her sold-out her concert at Music Hall of Williamsburg last week, you’d have sworn she was the biggest pop star in the world. The show was such a blast, and Ives was radiating joy from the opener to the encore. Not only was it a hometown gig for the Brooklyn-born indie-pop musician (who I profiled earlier this year), but it was the final date on her headlining tour in support of her excellent 2026 album “Girlfriend.”
One of my favorite moments in the set was Ives’s rendition of this new-wavy standout from her 2022 album “Janky Star” — quite possibly the greatest song ever written about having a crush on a girl who looks like Shelly Johnson from “Twin Peaks.” That punchy, chugging bass line — played live by John DeBold, who worked with Ives on “Girlfriend” and is now a part of her touring band — really makes the whole song.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
One Song I Had Totally Forgotten About
New Young Pony Club: “Ice Cream”
While killing time before the Grace Ives concert, browsing in a clothing store with a name I will not mention because no free ads here, my spirit was briefly teleported back to the golden age of indie sleaze — 2007! — when whatever algorithm had been programmed to provide millennials like me with a pleasantly nostalgic shopping experience served up this bit of post-punk blog-rock ephemera. I tried desperately to remember the name of the band, to prove that constant access to the internet has not completely ravaged my memory … but it has, so I Shazam-ed it. New Young Pony Club! Of course. Apparently their drummer, Sarah Jones, now plays in Harry Styles’s backing band, and N.Y.P.C. is reuniting for a gig in London next month, if you need further proof that the mid-aughts are so back.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
One New Song
Olivia Rodrigo: “The Cure”
I’m not the only one who hears a Smashing Pumpkins influence in Olivia Rodrigo’s latest single, “The Cure”; those ominous opening chords give me some welcome “Disarm” vibes. Incidentally, Rodrigo has said that “Siamese Dream” was one of the albums her mother listened to when she was pregnant with her, a fact that makes me feel even older than Shazamming a New Young Pony Club song does.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
… And One for Rob Base
Lyn Collins: “Think (About It)”
Finally, this week hip-hop lost yet another of its pioneers way too young, when the Harlem rapper Rob Base died at age 59. Base was the M.C. on “It Takes Two,” the immortal 1988 hit he released with his musical partner DJ E-Z Rock, who died in 2014 at the also-way-too-young age of 46. “It Takes Two” was built around an exuberant sample of this 1972 funk tune by Lyn Collins, written and produced by none other than James Brown. Although the Collins song’s kinetic beat and ecstatic “woo! yeah!” would go on to be sampled so frequently that it became known simply as “the ‘Think’ break,” Base and DJ E-Z Rock were among the first to recognize its brilliance.
“A lot of people said, ‘Oh too much ‘woo, yeah,’ you need to take it out at some point,’” Base said in a 2018 interview with Rolling Stone. “I had to fight and say, ‘Nah, we got to keep that in the whole record. That’s got to stay in there.’” Rest in peace to a man who knew there’s no such thing as too much “woo! yeah!”
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
The Amplifier Playlist
“5 Great Songs I Encountered This Week” track list Track 1: The Rolling Stones, “Time Waits for No One” Track 2: Grace Ives, “Shelly” Track 3: New Young Pony Club, “Ice Cream” Track 4: Olivia Rodrigo, “The Cure” Track 5: Lyn Collins, “Think (About It)”
Happy Birthday, Miles
Today we’re celebrating an important milestone in music history: This would have been Miles Davis’s 100th birthday. In honor of the occasion, my colleague Hank Shteamer had 10 artists name their favorite Miles Davis track — and plenty of Times readers talked about their own favorites in the comments. Below, take a peek at the conversation, and add your own pick if you’re so inclined.
Remembering Sonny Rollins
On Monday, the saxophone colossus and unparalleled improvisor Sonny Rollins died at 95. The last surviving subject of the jazz luminaries immortalized in Art Kane’s famous photograph “Harlem 1958” left behind an immense catalog of studio and live recordings, from which Shteamer has selected 12 essential albums. Giovanni Russonello also recently spoke with some Rollins admirers for a crash course in “5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Sonny Rollins,” and in 2020, David Marchese had the enviable experience of visiting Rollins at his home in Woodstock, N.Y., where he mused on life in retirement.
As Rollins so eloquently told Marchese, “my highest place musically was not about playing for a crowd. I played a couple of concerts early on where I was out in the open in the afternoon. I was able to look up at the sky, and I felt a communication; I felt that I was part of something. Not the crowd. Something bigger.” Indeed he was.
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Lindsay Zoladz is a pop music critic for The Times and writes the music newsletter The Amplifier.
The post 5 Great Songs I Encountered This Week appeared first on New York Times.
