The Washington Post - USA (2022-04-03)

E14 EZ EE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, APRIL 3 , 2022

Music

with your spouse while the Lord

smiles down on your hot monoga-

my. Then, near the end of the

album, during “Lonely,” when

Bieber lashes out against those

who “criticized the things I did as

an idiot kid,” the MLK samples

suddenly feel less appalling. In

the end, the justice that Bieber

wants is for himself.

Kanye West, ‘Donda’

I took a long walk around the

neighborhood to listen to this

malformed epic of an album the

moment it landed, and it made

me think of a popped Macy’s

Thanksgiving Day Parade bal-

loon wilting onto Sixth Avenue,

and then of that prickle of micro-

panic you feel when you get lost

inside Costco, and then a sprawl-

ing and abiding sadness over

how one of the most visionary

pop auteurs of our era could

make something so bloated, so

deflated and so adrift. Much like

the nominee ballot it appears on,

this 108-minute mishmash lacks

clear priorities, hoping that its

bloat might signal importance,

and when the Recording Acad-

emy nominated “Donda” for al-

bum of the year, I could barely

summon the energy to listen to it

again, so I listened to 2013’s

“Yeezus” instead. West’s greatest

recordings — including that one

— were not nominated for this

prize, but it’ll only take 11 percent

of the Academy electorate to

think he’s overdue, and voilà, the

worst Kanye album goes down in

Grammy history as the best

Kanye album. Where’s the justice

in that?

The 64th Annual Grammy Awards

will air Sunday at 8 p.m. on CBS.

comes out teal. Who is this music

for? The most reasonable conjec-

ture is so ridiculous, it’s almost

exciting: What if they only made

this album for each other?

Jon Batiste, ‘We Are’

“We Are” wants to be for every-

one. Jon Batiste is a familiar face,

a crowd-pleaser famous for jazz-

ing up the “The Late Show With

Stephen Colbert,” as well as one

of the most prominent pianists

in his field. Here, after perform-

ing protest concerts against po-

lice violence and voter suppres-

sion in 2020, he’s siphoned his

politics through a big-tent sound

that involves the New Orleans

jazz he was raised playing, firm

gusts of Stevie Wonder-ish melo-

dy, lots of hip-hop flash, a little

marching band thunder and

more. Lyrically and musically,

“We Are” delivers its righteous,

pro-justice ideals in energetic,

frictionless ways. It is power-to-

the-people music that the people

can listen to at brunch.

Justin Bieber, ‘Justice’

We can only guess how well he

knows his God and his wife, but

after listening to Justin Bieber’s

God-and-wife-worshiping sixth

album, we can be sure that he

finally knows his own voice. As a

singer, he’s never sounded better

— pillowy and mature, complete-

ly aware of both his charms and

his limits. What Bieber, now 28,

does not s eem to know, however,

is the cultural mood outside the

celebrity bubble that was perma-

sealed around him as a child. This

is the only way to explain why

“Justice” samples two different

Martin Luther King Jr. speeches

amid songs about smoking weed

kind of disproportionality, the

paradox can now make you fa-

mous. Only the closing track,

“Kiss Me More,” is as crazy-sexy-

cool as the rest of “Planet Her”

aspires to be.

H.E.R., ‘Back of My Mind’

“Back of My Mind” is kind of

like “Planet Her” in reverse. It

opens in all its glory with “We

Made It,” a victory lap of an R&B

ballad where the drums bump

and splash in all the wrong plac-

es, positing the sensation of suc-

cess as an awkwardness, a

strangeness, something to adapt

to. It is excellent. But then, almost

instantly, everything settles into a

midtempo inertia centered on

H.E.R.’s pleasantly midrange

voice until she reaches a song

deep in the tracklist titled “Ex-

hausted,” which, unfortunately,

feels entirely convincing, too.

Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga,

‘Love for Sale’

Tony Bennett — now 95 years

old and living with Alzheimer’s

since a 2016 diagnosis — decided

to make the final album of his

career with Lady Gaga, a pal and

fan with whom he’d already re-

corded an album of duets, “Cheek

To Cheek,” back in 2014. This

time, they’re singing some zesty

Cole Porter tunes, and while Ben-

nett’s voice remains impossibly

handsome for his age, the odd-

couple element of this partner-

ship still sounds odder than the

jazz-mentor/pop-pupil might

suspect. That is, the idea is sweet,

but the sound remains tangy.

Gaga’s voice so badly wants to

understand jazz, but whenever

she tries to swirl a blue note in the

back of her throat, it always

Does Lil Nas X want to be nor-

mal? I grew up being made to feel

I was normal, which made me

want to be weird, made me want

to get weird haircuts, like weird

music and have a bad attitude

about all of it without anyone

giving me too much of a hard

time. Lil Nas X grew up Black,

and gay, and it is likely that he

was not made to feel normal in

this world. But by the time he was

19, he had learned enough about

our very-online society to build a

new bridge from virality to celeb-

rity, which means he got the

entire planet to sing along with

his cowboy song, and it trans-

formed him into a beloved new

star, so now that he has real

power, maybe he’s using it to

make music that makes him feel

normal. But what do I know?

Only that those marching band

horns on “Industry Baby” totally

crush.

Doja Cat, ‘Planet Her’

The New York Times Magazine

recently called Doja Cat and Lil

Nas X counterparts in today’s

popscape, and that pretty much

checks out. Both singer-rapper-

content creators have mastered

performing provocatively for

their ravenous online audiences

and prudently for their less ad-

venturous pop music audiences.

“Planet Her” sounds pleasingly

sleek, and if you came to it cold,

you would not suspect you were

listening to a part-time edgelord

with a history of regrettable so-

cial media posts, or someone who

first found fame rapping from the

perspective of a cow. The funda-

mental truth here is that interest-

ing people can make boring mu-

sic — and that with just the right

truth: We all start getting older

the moment we’re born. And

while Eilish has turned 20 since

releasing “Happier Than Ever,”

her music still tempers the burn-

ing curiosity of youth with a

serene self-awareness that most

people spend lifetimes trying to

touch. She sings delicately be-

cause she knows that life is deli-

cate.

Olivia Rodrigo, ‘Sour’

This one gets tricky. Yes, a big

win here for 19-year-old Olivia

Rodrigo would be a win for vivid

teenage emotions rendered in

attentive melodic detail. But it

would also be a para-victory for

Eilish (who swept the top four

Grammy categories in 2020) and

Swift (a three-time album of the

year winner), as well as a poten-

tial embarrassment for the Re-

cording Academy, which too of-

ten reduces artists to types — in

this case, the precocious song-

writer-dynamo type whose hit

singles live at the top of the

charts. For Rodrigo, that hit was

“Drivers License,” a power ballad

fueled by adolescent confusion

and the desire to accelerate into

an unwritten future. If Rodrigo

takes home the night’s biggest

trophy, it should be for her musi-

cal imagination, not the Grammy

electorate’s lack of one.

Lil Nas X, ‘Montero’

Unfettered thoughts that ap-

peared in the mind of a 42-year-

old White man upon hearing the

debut full-length from Lil Nas X,

a 22-year-old Black man, the day

it dropped, Sept. 17, 2021: Why

isn’t this weird? Why make such

freaky-deaky music videos for

such normy sounding pop songs?

The expansion of the slate feels
especially egregious when it
comes to album of the year —
once the Academy’s unofficial top
prize, now more like an award for
recordings that feel reverse-engi-
neered to win it. Still, these are
the albums being touted as the
year’s best, so with the 64th
Grammy Awards in Las Vegas
tonight, let’s give them a fresh
listen in no particular order.

Taylor Swift, ‘Evermore’

From within her cozy new Pot-
tery Barn aesthetic emerges some
wild science fiction: Taylor Swift
is now in the business of folding
time. Back in November, she col-
lapsed a decade by releasing a
rerecorded version of her 2012
album “Red.” Before that, she
ruled the quarantine mindshare
with a pair of tidy, tasteful, intro-
spective albums — “Folklore” and
“Evermore” — shrewdly dropping
them in separate Grammy eligi-
bility windows. Unsurprisingly,
“Folklore” won album of the year
at last year’s Grammys, and if
“Evermore” repeats the feat this
year, it’ll make 2022 feel like 2021,
but also like 2020, potentially
cinching pandemic spacetime
into a Gordian knot from which
we may never be released: Taylor-
time, all the time, evermore, for
real.

Billie Eilish,
‘Happier Than Ever’

Billie Eilish is a graceful old
soul with an artful young voice,
and when she opens her stylishly
elegant second album with a teas-
ing little lullaby called “Getting
Older,” she’s actually telling the

GRAMMYS FROM E1

Giving a fresh listen to Grammy contenders

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LEFT TO RIGHT: Kanye West

and B illie Eilish; Doja Cat,

H.E.R. and Olivia Rodrigo;

Lady Gaga, Tony Bennett and

Jon Batiste; Justin Bieber, Lil

Nas X and Taylor Swift.