| | | | Special Edition | |  It is said, and said often, that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” But I don’t believe it. The evidence is here in our new Music Issue. On the contemporary scene, Kelefa Sanneh, whose first piece for the magazine was a 2001 profile of the rapper Jay-Z, now gives us Kim Petras, an emerging star and Grammy winner who, earlier this year, on “Saturday Night Live,” popped out from underneath Sam Smith’s immense pink tulle gown during a performance of the duo’s hit, “Unholy.” Jia Tolentino profiles Matty Healy, the impossibly voluble front man of the 1975 and a very close friend of Taylor Swift’s. Healy’s current persona, Tolentino writes, is of “a post-woke rock star, switching unpredictably between tenderness and trollishness.” On the business side of things, Evan Osnos writes about what musicians call “privates”––posh and lucrative private gigs that range from high-end weddings, Sweet Sixteens, and stops on the bar- and bat-mitzvah circuit to the self-celebrations of well-heeled autocrats, dictators, and industry titans everywhere. Osnos, a dogged reporter who has covered foreign wars and the dankest corners of Washington politics, here gives us deep (and often hilarious) reporting on an aspect of the business in which we find, to take one example, Jennifer Lopez singing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” to Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, the despotic leader of Turkmenistan. And John Seabrook, the author of “The Song Machine,” an essential book about the way pop songs are created, takes us inside the recent court case in which Ed Sheeran was accused of plagiarizing a Marvin Gaye tune. Elsewhere in the issue, Amanda Petrusich reviews Paul Simon’s elegiac new album, “Seven Psalms”; Burkhard Bilger portrays the creators of the transporting sounds of Stax; Hanif Abdurraqib, who recently joined us as a contributing writer, assesses new music by Christine and the Queens; and Alex Ross, the most respected classical-music critic in the country, reflects on a weekend at Lincoln Center, where he attended productions of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” and “Don Giovanni” at the Met, and a performance by the New York Philharmonic, led by Gustavo Dudamel, of Mahler’s final symphony, the Ninth. I hope you enjoy the Music Issue. Even the cover, by Masha Titova, sings. Start clicking on it and you’ll see what I mean. —David Remnick Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » | | | | Editor’s Picks |  Onward and Upward with the Arts Who Is Matty Healy? For the front man of the 1975, fame is its own kind of performance. By Jia Tolentino |  Letter from Memphis The Secret Sound of Stax The rediscovery of demos performed by the songwriters of the legendary Memphis recording studio reveals a hidden history of soul. By Burkhard Bilger | | | | | On Television |  On Television The Roy Kids Shit the DeathbedIn the finale, we see a brief moment of genuine connection between the siblings. But this is Jesse Armstrong’s “Succession,” and nothing gold can stay. By Naomi Fry | | | | | On Television How “Barry” Went from Hollywood Satire to Existential EpicThe final season of Bill Hader’s HBO series was the most ambitious. By Inkoo Kang | | | | |  | Memorial Day Sale in The New Yorker Store! Enjoy a discount of 15% off all products, including apparel, tote bags, games, and coffee mugs, by using the code TAKE15 at checkout. The sale runs through today. Explore the store » | | | | | | Cover Story | | There is a world of sound hiding behind the shapes on this week’s cover, “The Music of Art,” by Masha Titova. The art editor Françoise Mouly takes us behind the scenes, in which some of The New Yorker’s more musically adept staffers—including Nick Trautwein, a senior editor who moonlights as a saxophonist, and David Remnick, the editor, on guitar—gathered to interpret Titova’s shapes, selecting the ones they wished to play. As Julia Rothchild, a managing editor, who contributed piano, viola, and voice, explained, the process was “an exercise in synesthesia. What sound would that square make, or those triangles? A thud, or a flutter?” | | | | Fun & Games Dept. |  Name Drop Play Today’s Quiz Can you guess the notable person in six clues or fewer? By Will Nediger |  Daily Shouts Updated SNICK Shows for Today’s Millennials “Bawl That,” “Kenan & Keller,” and “Are You Afraid of Existential Dread?” By Timothy Cahill and Kristina Libby | |  Crossword A Challenging Puzzle Affliction that might be treated by breathing into a paper bag: seven letters. By Anna Shechtman |  Daily Cartoon Monday, May 29th By Emily Bernstein | | | | | | P.S. There is something about musicians that inspires great turns of phrase. Take Frank Sinatra, whose artistry prompted E. B. White to observe, “To Sinatra, a microphone is as real as a girl waiting to be kissed,” and who yielded this, from Bing Crosby: “Frank is a singer who comes along once in a lifetime, but why did he have to come in my lifetime?” | | | | | | | |
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