|
May 16, 2026 
|
|
|
Drake released an avalanche of new music on Friday that will require a moment to digest. But as always, Jon Pareles has what we need in the meantime: a rundown of eight fresh songs out this week and a track from 2024 that finally climbed into the Top 40 of Billboard’s singles chart. Jon also profiled Julieta Venegas, a pop star in Mexico and Latin America for two decades who is revealing more of herself than ever on her ninth album (and in a new memoir).
After attending the Rolling Stones’ new album announcement (their 25th!) and digging into a recent biography of the band, Lindsay Zoladz contemplated their improbable longevity with a playlist in The Amplifier. Brian Raftery spoke to the proprietors of La-La Land Records, a label that specializes in music from older films and TV recordings, often unearthing work that had been long lost or forgotten. And our Eurovision team kicked off coverage of this year’s event with an investigation by Mara Hvistendahl and Alex Marshall into how Israel sought to influence the pop competition’s vote.
And, perhaps burying the lede, after 11 years leading The Times’s pop music coverage, I have decided to move on. (You can’t listen to Madonna’s “Jump” as many times as I have and not be tempted to make a change every now and then.)
I started this newsletter in 2017 to make sure all of our coverage — and music-related stories from around the newsroom — would find an interested audience. It’s been incredible to be able to say things like “I think we should investigate Britney Spears’s conservatorship” or “Let’s dig into the riot grrrl archives” or “Charo deserves a story” and then … make that happen. (Of course, there was a Madonna project, too.)
I also assigned myself a few big profiles (one involved FaceTiming with Dua Lipa as the pandemic took hold), gave you a tour of the memorabilia in my apartment and worked alongside my team on their own beautiful and sometimes unexpected features and very personal pieces; many ambitious endeavors; major news stories and investigations; too many deaths; so many Grammy Awards and Super Bowl halftime shows; so many Taylor Swift album releases. They never stopped impressing me with their expertise, creativity and clean copy. Every editor should be so lucky! And it goes without saying: Jon Pareles is a legend.
So I am signing off, but Lindsay will still be delivering The Amplifier newsletter and the faces and names you know from Louder — including my longtime colleagues Jon P, Ben Sisario, Jon Caramanica, Joe Coscarelli, Lindsay, Melena Ryzik and others — will keep it all going with the editors, photo editors, design experts and everyone else at the NYT who work so hard to make this journalism possible. Thank you for reading, watching and listening, and you can still find me online (and at a lot of shows).
