NPR Music - New Music Friday: The best albums out Oct. 11

Episode Date: October 11, 2024

The rapper-turned-country star Jelly Roll, who has had a major breakthrough in Nashville in the last couple of years, leads the pack of the most exciting albums out on Friday, October 11. As NPR Music's Daoud Tyler-Ameen and WRTI's Nate Chinen discuss, his new album Beautifully Broken is a powerful (and sometimes overwhelming) portrait of recovery and empathy for those grappling with addiction.Also on the show this week: The second album from punk teens The Linda Lindas feels like confirmation of a promising career; Samara Joy and Immanuel Wilkins put two different approaches to the modern jazz vocal album on display; E L U C I D combines influences from Miles Davis to Public Enemy into a harrowing experience of modern indie rap and Charli XCX's remix album leads us to consider the tradition of artists reworking their own songs.Featured albums:• Jelly Roll, 'Beautifully Broken'• The Linda Lindas, 'No Obligation'• Samara Joy, 'Portrait'• Immanuel Wilkins, 'Blues Blood'• E L U C I D, 'REVELATOR'Check out our long list of albums out Oct. 11 and stream our New Music Friday playlist at npr.org/music.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Just a quick heads up, this podcast contains explicit language. Nate, thanks for joining me. I know you're just back in town. What are you been up to? Yeah, I'm still on Texas time. I am fresh off the plane, really, from the ACL Music Festival in Austin, which is happening again this weekend. So who did you see? Duolipa. Those are her only North American dates this year. So it was the radical optimism tour, which the rest of the country will get to see next year. Also, a reunited blink 182. How did that treat you? I mean, Travis Barker, come on.

There's a reason that guy's phone doesn't stop ringing. Yeah, totally. Also, I have to say, Chapel Rhone. Hey. I had fingers crossed going in that she would actually perform, and she, boy, did she. It was pretty epic. There was no denying that she was the, you know, the sort of gravitational force for the entire festival.

Hey, everybody. It's New Music Friday from NPR Music, here to talk about the best and most discussion-worthy new albums coming out today, October 11th. I'm Dawood Tyler Amin, here with Nate Chenen, editorial director at member station WRTI, and our jazz critic here at NPR. How you doing, man? I'm doing great. Coming up today, new music from Samara Joy and Emmanuel Wilkins, an awesomely terrifying release

from the indie rapper Lucid, and a few thoughts on when artists choose to return to their earlier works and utterly transform them. But first, you cannot look away from the phenomenon that is this man, even if he's got a little competition now in the category of face-tatted Southern boys who successfully pivot from hip-hop to country. I'm speaking, of course, of Jelly Roll, whose latest album is titled Beautifully Broken and Begins in a Church Basement with a song called Winning Street. Count me I'm still, I'm... Who makes a jagged rock bottom

Right now I got two shaky hands Only one way to stop And I haven't touched a drop in seven hours three minutes Hardly sobered up already want to quit quitting Sweating in an old church basement Wishing I was wasted Never thought I'd say this Hello, my name's Jason

And I've been losing myself I've been losing my mind And I've been standing in the range of Who is this guy? He is 39-year-old Jason DeFord from Antioch, Tennessee. You might have caught his 10 years or so toiling unsuccessfully as a hip-hop artist. But for most of us, the story really starts in 2021 when he makes his grand old opera debut. And then in 2022, the song Need a Favor really kind of breaks things open for him.

And he becomes a real contender in Nashville. But not only Nashville. I mean, that's the thing about this guy, is that he's managed to straddle like a couple of different sections of the charts all at once. I will admit, Daoud, that I was more familiar with Jelly Roll as a personality. Yeah, same. You know, than as a musician. It says something about the largeness of his presence in culture. You know, like, he's kind of like this, like, genie that pops up in your social media feed.

And he's, he's, you know, very charming. I don't know. He's just got that, like, exuberant presence and spirit. And so, like, I was aware of him before I heard him ever sing, you know. And listening to beautifully broken, I mean, it's by a considerable margin, this is the longest amount of time I've spent, like, considering his musical output. How did the message and the, you know, vibe of this album speak to you? Well, I guess to answer that, we have to look a little bit at what he was up to in the time before he became a public figure, since it is so much a part of his public story.

This song, Winning Streak paints a picture for us of, you know, a 12-step support group. He describes sweating in an old church basement. He says, you know, he already wants to quit quitting. There's talk of measuring clean streaks, not in years or in months, but in hours. I mean, there's a couple of things going on here right away. One is this addiction narrative that is just a giant part of his story and comes up over and over again across this album and across all of his music. But the other thing, so much of the phrasing here is so entwined with, hip-hop. And it really makes me think about how country and R&B and hip-hop and pop have all been

kind of stretching in the direction of a particular sound over the past decade or so that is like, you know, kind of the midpoint between all of them in a way that might actually need its own name. Like sometimes just calling it a hybrid feels inadequate. This confluence, you know, which is really organic, right? I mean, it doesn't. always feel organic, but historically speaking, like, these musics all do share the same set of

tributaries. They're coming from a place. We're dancing around it a little bit. Maybe we should jump straight ahead to when the drugs don't work. When the drugs don't work. I've been a user. I've been a thief.

I've been knocked down on I've been hurt. I've been shamed. I've been the one who called. When the drugs don't work. What a title, first of all. And, David, you mentioned earlier, like, the backstory on this album. It really is an album that comes with a lot of baggage.

But you don't need to do homework to understand it. There's also a song called Get By. And there's one called I Am Not Okay. And what's wrong with me? You know, I think that that heart-on-sleeve emotional character, It's actually quite winning because the sincerity is so intense. It's like searing, you know?

And I actually read in an interview that Jelly Roll, as he was putting this album together, he wrote more than a hundred new songs. Oh, wow. And had to assemble, you know, the 22 on this album out of that, like, giant pile. And so clearly it's like he just opened a spigot, you know? These feelings.

they're just like pouring out of him. His willingness to deal with addiction and the sort of dark corridors of life that addiction leads down, you know, crime and social alienation and whatever, you know, he's coming at them in a very honest way. And yet he's also aware of how to make it entertaining. He's no longer, you know, in the throes, right? He's kind of the person who's like throwing a burly arm around your shirt. older and saying, you can do this, brother.

That's a good point, and it's good to point out that he's, you know, he's not glamorizing this life in any way. There's a kind of song pairing, a little bit of a shot and chaser, if you'll excuse the expression, called Higher Than Heaven and Liar. The first of those offers some acknowledgement of why people use drugs and what it feels like in those sort of vanishingly few moments of euphoria. And then Lyre is the chaser kind of popping that bubble and giving a really damning portrait of addiction as, I mean, not even as an enemy, as a bad friend. And, you know, you get a gospel choir coming in on that one.

It feels a little over the top in some ways. But it's also, it's kind of fitting for the sort of like fire and brimstone rhetoric that he's slinging in this one. Here's my head in my bed when I'm dreaming. You try to be my friend, but you're blowing slow. Oh, and now I ain't scared of telling you where you can go. Because I know you're nothing but a lie. Here's where, I guess, I will have to cop to a certain amount of, like, you know, critical distance that doesn't get me there.

because I am aware of how incredibly powerful and affirming a message like this can be to anyone who has struggled personally, right, with addiction and, you know, and with such like tremendous difficulty. But I'm not inside of it, you know. And so for me, looking at the way that Jelly Roll mobilizes. all of these forces in support of this narrative, I have to work to get there. You know what I mean? Yeah. I'm a little bit, not suspicious,

but he's just hitting that hammer, hammer, hammer. While we were preparing for this episode, I read a review of one of his shows, you know, because he's already out on the beautifully broken tour. Right. And he played Pittsburgh recently, and the reviewer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette quoted some of his crowd banter.

He says, tonight will be a night of healing. Tonight will be a night of therapy. Tonight will be a night of love. You know, so you have to imagine the roar of the crowd. For sure. In response to those prompts. But to me, I'm thinking, like, is this a megachurch vibe? Is it a, you know, like what?

So, I mean, I don't want to be uncharitable or cynical, but I also, like, have to sort of look at this and say, well, he's got a good stick. He spoke to David Barquezzi at the New York Times recently, who asked him about how he sees this album sort of moving his story forward. And he was like, I don't really think I'm thinking about next steps yet. Like, it's, you know, I've been famous for like 24 months, and I have this platform right now. And so I'm going to use it for as long as I can, since it doesn't feel like it's a guarantee that I'll stick around. He also said, I might come intern for you. which you know right in the spot that's um yeah that's that's uh it's a good distillation of of uh of his charm i am not okay i'm barely getting by i'm losing track of days

losing sleep at night i am not okay i'm hanging on the rails so if i see That is the album beautifully broken by Jelly Roll. And jumping from Tennessee over to California now, let's check in with the Linda Lindas and their album No Obligation. Falling down is but now I can't stop. Wait it out soon everyone will be gone. It's the that I could never... So, Nate, I'm going to guess that you first heard about the Linda Lindos the way that I did.

They had a major viral moment a couple of years ago playing a song in the LA Public Library called Racist Sexist Boy. Did you have a racist sexist boy moment? Oh, I sure did. Yeah. And, you know, I have two daughters. One is a newly minted teenager and the other is close. So, yeah, I mean, the first thing I did after seeing this video was to show them.

Yeah. Like, look, isn't this cool? I don't want to be patronizing, but like that video was so wholesome. Yeah. You know? And, and, you know, that's kind of, I'm sure that that is like something that they have worked hard to sort of shed. Like, they don't want to be patted on the head for their musical output. And I think this album is a really, it's a great rejoinder to anybody who has that impulse.

It feels like a leap forward to me. So this is actually their second full-length album. And the four members are Lucia de la Garza and her sister, Mila de la Garza, Eloise Wang, and Bella Salazar. They are, I think, in high school, middle school, and maybe one of them just out of high school. This first track, No Obligation, is pretty like flattening right out of the gate. If you heard racist, sexist boy and wondered if they had more where that came from,

this is kind of your answer. Right, the idea of like teenage punk, and it's not nihilism, but it's definitely like rejection of like any kind of orthodoxy, any kind of like societal expectation, like whatever you got. Like we are not having whatever you've got, you know? I feel like in terms of attitude and musical style, like this song is just like two middle fingers raised with your tongue sticking out. Yeah. Like, kicking over a trash can.

The songwriting on this album, I was really struck by, like, how sophisticated the lyrical turns are. These songs are mostly not slogans. You know, like, they get into some narrative. They reveal complex perspective, you know. I'm thinking about one song called Once Upon a Time. Yeah. And maybe let's hear the beginning. of that.

Those lyrics are, I think it's funny how much you think you're right. Yeah. I'm laughing at you from very deep inside. I'm good at being angry. I'm good. And so there's like a lot going on in that interpersonal relationship. Yeah. I also have written down for this one, Phaser's on stun.

Yeah. That's good. It just sounds incredible. Yeah. And, you know, that song title, Once Upon a Time is obviously there's so much like connotation there. You know, it's thinking about like storybook ideals and like the way that we

narrativize good and evil, you know? I think there's a line in there. Like, why do I have to pick aside, you know, or something like that? And so this idea that like we, we tell these stories and like it's never as simple or as clear cut as we say it is. I'm so excited for this.

And we're not the only ones who think so. Mila was wearing a bikini kill t-shirt in the racist sexist boy video. And Kathleen Hannah has been giving them a lot of support. They have played in arenas at this point. They've opened for Green Day. There's a lot of momentum they've been able to find. That is no obligation by the Linda Lindos. In our second segment, three very, very different angles on the shape of jazz right now.

That's coming up after the break. up after the break. It's New Music Friday for October 11th, Nate, I'm going to hand you the keys. What do you got for me? I'm talking about Samara Joy, who you may know because she won Best New Artist at the 2023 Grammy Awards. Right, right. And, you know, not to state the obvious, but that is not a very common thing for a jazz

singer. No. And she really is a jazz singer. Someone who loves the tradition, you know, even though she herself really sort of discovered jazz singing in college, she has just been like on a tear ever since. She is still 24 years old. And this is her fourth album on Verve. It's called Portrait. The thing that really impresses me about it is that we've now seen enough from Samara to know

that she has like crazy gospel chops and R&B chops. And she really, like this is the moment in many careers where, you know, she has received this certain level of platform and fame. And you could easily envision like the pivot at this moment. This would be the crossover. Yeah, like now I'm going to make my pop record. Now I'm going to like, you know, team up with a, you know, with a hip hop producer or whatever, you know. And instead,

She is putting out what I think is in some ways the most jazz literate album of her career so far. She's just saying, this is who I am, this is the music I love, like, we're good. I'm glad that you queued up, you stepped out of a dream. After the single was dropped, she issued a challenge on social media for anybody who wants to to sing this like tricky instrumental passage where she's scathing. adding a line along with the horns. Sort of duetting with the horns. It's, it's, yeah, it's so crazy to listen to.

And so she actually released, like, sheet music for this passage. And she said, this is one of my favorite parts to sing. Like, why don't you post yourself singing or playing this, you know? And a bunch of people took her up on that. And it was really cool to see her, like, signal boosting all these folks who were like, you know, like, yeah, I'll accept that challenge, you know. You were going to try to describe her to somebody who hadn't heard her before, and you wanted to give them, you know, a reference set for the kind of jazz or the era of jazz or a particular singer or two.

Is there anybody that you would name? Probably the first name that comes to mind is Sarah Vaughn. It's definitely like a mid-century, you know, sort of the heyday of like the Great American Songbook as expressed through jazz vocals. Jazz as pop music. But we've seen a lot of examples of. jazz singers and even pop singers gussying up the Great American Songbook, you know, by which I mean songs by

George and Iwa Gershwin and Cole Porter and Irving Berlin, et cetera, et cetera. She doesn't really do that. She's much more interested in taking the jazz standards that jazz musicians know and, you know, either singing lyrics that have been written for them or writing her own lyrics. It's songs by people like

the late bebop piano great Barry Harris, who was an actual mentor to her. You know, and there's one track on here that I think perfectly illustrates this process, which is her version of reincarnation of a love bird. And this is a composition by the bassist Charles Mingus. It's very well known by jazz fans. It's not that often played,

and it's almost never performed by a singer. So she wrote lyrics to the song. And so she speaks to both the general listener and the jazz connoisseur. But sure as dark as the moon. Swift as together. Well, that is the album Portrait by Samara Joy. We're going to jump over to what is technically another jazz vocal album. Although, Nate, I don't know that you'd accuse these artists.

of having the same goal in mind. Right, right. It was just funny to call it a jazz vocal album because that is on a technicality that is true, but I think nobody would contemplate this album in that way. This is Blue's Blood, the latest from alto saxophonist and composer Emmanuel Wilkins, who hails from Philadelphia and now lives in New York.

He made his debut album on Blue Note. In the depths of the pandemic four years ago, But even before that, if you were in the know, you knew that he was one to watch. He's such a riveting improviser. Blue's Blood is his third album for Blue Note. And it comes on the heels of the seventh hand, which I put at the top of my 22 best albums list, got a ton of acclaim. So, you know, it's interesting to think about, you know, progression. You know, how do you follow up an incredibly acclaimed album?

Well, this does represent a pivot. You know, for one thing, as we said, there are vocalists on this record. There's four of them, in fact. One is the Indian American singer Ganavia. And then we also have June McDume, Yaw Agamon, and as a featured guest, Cecil McLaren Salvant. And the other thing is, Blues Blood is a concept album.

I think you could call it a song cycle. It's about Black Pain and it's about American injustice and it kind of gets you at a place where you're not cogitating that you're just kind of like feeling.

You told me that Michelle and Day Geocello was involved in the production which having spent a lot of time earlier this year listening to her album No More Water, her James Baldwin tribute, made so much sense to me. I think that you could even put those two albums next to each other as like companion pieces this year. Yeah, I mean, you know, the source of inspiration for Michelle was for his centennial. And the ideas that James Baldwin, you know, worked through and kind of reframed. through his writing, and in some ways through his life,

that's all super relevant here. There's a beautiful song on this album that Cecile sings called Dark Eyes. And it's just, it's so gorgeous. It's really like about, like, looking in the mirror and seeing the faces of your family, you know, like seeing your mother in your face, you know, seeing, and all of the stories and history that that visage can carry. Far out, I still hear softly that never fade in my mind. Can we talk about afterlife residence time?

As far as I can tell, there is a section of the song where it is as though Cecile and June McDume are essentially trading fours. They're like alternating sung stanzas with one another, which if nothing else is a pretty great showcase for the unique qualities of their voices, with McDoom being a little bit recessed, a little bit more sort of full-bodied, like hanging out a little bit lower in the frequency spectrum,

and Cecile's voice being a little bit more airy and floating on top. And then Ghanavia steps in, and the whole form of the song kind of mutates around her. She kind of has that effect on things every time she shows up on this record. It's like when Galadriel shows up in the Lord of the Rings movie, and everybody just kind of shuts up and listens. I was thinking of it in terms of like when the moon finally comes out from behind the clouds or something.

Yeah, yeah. It's like, I have to mention, Dawood, that I saw a performance of this piece of Blue's Blood. Wow. At the winter jazz fest in January. In addition to all the vocalists and the band, Emmanuel had a performance artist, center stage, chopping onions and I think celery and carrots. What? With a stock pot.

And then making gumbo. Literally, like, over the course of the performance, cut the vegetables, simmered them in the stockpot, made a gumbo. you could smell the cooking smells like wafting through the room and developing complexity as the performance went on. And it was clear that this was a fundamental part of his vision for this piece. Speaking of albums with a lot going on, boy, oh boy, I don't know if I'm ready for this one. You may know Elucid from his work in the hip-hop super super. group Armand Hammer, his new solo album is called Revelator. Nate, I want to start with the opening track The World is Dog.

It's like a little bit of a tone setter in terms of what you're in for with this record. The first thing that comes to mind, I guess, is the bomb squad. The kind of production that the bomb squad did for public enemy and for Ice Cube, where everything just feels like it is coming at you. and it is like covered in static, you know, the feeling of like passing through the guts of like a low-res sampler and picking up all of this noise and gunk. And then chopped so roughly that the source material becomes almost totally obscured. To say nothing of the vocal performance, which is, you know, if you come from a certain understanding of hip-hop as a traditionalist, is going to throw you a little bit with its relationship to rhythm. It's so dense. It's so dense.

It's so dense, like you're in the next room from where eventually. It's so dense, like you're in the next room from where there's some factory stuff happening. You live next door to like the eraserhead factory. Exactly, exactly. We should say the producer here is John Nellon. And his credits include recent work with Nick Hakeem and Samfa. I really perked up when I saw that bassist Luke Stewart is all over this album. Talk about Luke Stewart.

Yeah, well, it's a really instructive name to drop here because Luke is. is the bassist and, you know, really the de facto band leader of a band we love, irreversible entanglements. Right. And that's another band that is unrelenting, you know, both sonically and lyrically. Elucid is, like, reaching very thoughtfully towards this radical tradition. He sort of mentions the black arts movement and talks about, you know, people like Amirir Baraka and Audra Lord and Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez. These are poets of, you know, the Black American experience and especially of a kind of

political resistance. Yeah. And all of that feels really important. The track we should go out on is in the shadow of if. The music on this song feels to me like it had to travel down like a 30-foot tunnel to reach me. There's like these watery chords and this sort of like R&B. bass, and it's all sort of, it feels very atmospheric, but then the vocals feel almost like

they're inside of your head. And a common thing on this record in his music in general is that his voice is doubled, but the double is imprecise, right? It's like, it's a note of, it's two like notably different performances being smashed together. It reminds me of the effect of the effect that you'll sometimes see used in movies to know that there is something wrong with the character, to let you know that, like, this person has been possessed by spirits or been body snatched. We kind of set this up as, like, part of a group of jazz-related albums, and we haven't really made that connection. here yet, but what you just described sonically is at least in part influenced by what Miles Davis was up to in the mid-1970s. You know, like the Get Up With It era, the Agarta era, when like he was done playing nice, he was done having like a clear, bright sound with a background.

Like, it was more about, like, this kind of weird, viscous, scary-sounding tapestry. Yeah. And, you know, like, this is the most ungratiating music of Miles Davis's career, and I feel like that is a choice. A moment to pause never goes on sale. Gotta be, got to be, got to be, got to be, got to be. I won't be. Gotta be, gotta be, gotta be, gotta be I don't got me

I was 20 years behind in the head faces changed by how it felt and how it feels doesn't Real lover black steel in the hour of submission In search of a place to land taking my chance without a reminder Purple rain wild greens unkempt I'm in search of a place where our blood don't precede us Lined up by hate born from fear ain't enough stepping careful in the world That bears repeating, untouching, I keep my eyes peeled.

I keep my eyes peeled. And the shadow of if, taking my chance without a reminder. And the shadow of if taking my chance without a reminder. And the shadow of if taking my chance without a reminder, and the shadow of if taking my chance without a reminder. That is Revelator by the rapper Lucid. There are a ton more records out today that we don't have time. to talk about in full. New albums today from Chatpile, Dawes, Field Music, Holly McVee,

Jenny Scheinman, a live acoustic compilation from Steve Earle, and to take us to break, the full-length debut at long last of Glorilla. You may recall when this rapper came screaming out of Memphis in 2022 with the song FNF, the number one pick on NPR Music's list of 100 best songs of that year. And it really kind of planted a fresh flag for Crunk and reminded us that regional scenes and sounds are still such a huge part of the story of hip-hop. Glorilla's new album is called Glorious. You must not know what you just thought. Me and my beats go naughty.

Give a fuck about this party. We're going to step on shit regardless. Keep my corner to swipe that beach and now the spirit to charge. Making music. Bring on beaches. I'd be really much. After the break, Brat Summer might be over, but we have got some unfinished business on the topic of artists revisiting their catalog to turn their old.

work inside out. That's after this. Welcome back lean, dress so fresh and so clean. Welcome back to New Music Friday. Nate, we've got a musical we've got kind of a musical doppelganger in our headphones right now. This is obviously 360 by Charlie XX.X. and yet it is also quite obviously not. One of the major releases that's out today that we didn't get to talk about in our main segment is,

and this is a mouthful, brat and it's completely different, but also still brat. This is billed as a remix album, but not remixes in the traditional, like, DJ sense. It's rather in, like, the modern sense where she's invited this all-star cast of famous collaborators. We're hearing here from Robin and Young Lean, the Swedish rapper, and the record also has appearances from Lord and Boni Bair, Tenache, Billy Elish, Julian Casablancus, to add their own verses and spins on these existing songs in ways that kind of morph the original meaning. Now, why do this? Obviously, there's a cynical answer, you know, to, like, extend the life and the chart presence of these songs.

We, you know, it's, we can call that like the Old Town Road effect. but it can also be a way to play in some sandboxes that you don't always get to, no? Definitely. I think it's such a, in this moment, the way that we listen, why would you not do this? Yeah. You know, these songs exist in the world. Like, it's time to kind of like open the side door, you know, and let in some fresh energy, you know, and let go of the sort of proprietary.

carry whatever you have about them because it's not effacing the original article. One thing that you pointed out to me that I think is a real big part of this, and Charlie's leaning on it a little bit less, is like code switching, in particular genre code switching, getting to sort of pivot away from the thing that you're best known for doing and using this familiar work of yours as sort of the Trojan horse to get there. Because I usually have at least one foot planted in jazz

I've seen a lot of this because so much is about the expression and how you say something. And I should also point out that jazz like country especially and folk music like this is a music where

the big names and the major artists generally have like 40, 50, 60 year careers, you know, or longer even. And so you do end up having this kind of like reinvention. You know, I think about how Bob Dylan, you know, goes out on tour. And there's like a cottage industry devoted to like, like not only what songs of his own, you know, what is he playing, but like how is he playing this song? You know, like if he's doing, you know, something from like the blonde on blonde area.

or even like, you know, the times they are changing, like, but he's doing it as like a polka or something, you know? I mean, boy, oh boy. There's another artist I think of who, you know, is a contemporary of Bob's, and this is the great Joni Mitchell. Shout out to our friend Anne Powers, whose book writes about this very thing. But, you know, I often think about the moment in the very early 2000s. It might have been the year 2000, when she released the album, Both Sides Now, featuring an orchestra, you know, conducted and orchestrated by Vince Mendoza. And it was, you know, on one level, like, maybe squint at it from a distance.

And it's like, oh, this is the sort of, she's kind of doing the grand old, like, you know, refurbishing and reupholstering of this catalog. Yeah. But it was so much tougher and gutsy. year than that. The best example is the title track, both sides now, which of course is a song that she wrote as a very young artist, kind of thinking about perspective. Like she was young, but she was singing about being even younger and also singing about like growing older. And, you know, this is a song that time travels already. But to hear her perform it, you know, at that stage in her career

with this deeper, smokier voice, so much more experience in it. And to, you know, to sing a line like, you know, something's lost and something's gained and living every day. You know, like, I mean, it was kind of astonishing to me. And it changed how I hear the song in any context. This is a question that comes out of this is when a piece of music is refiltered through a, new arrangement. And we should say we're focusing this time specifically on when the original artist makes this choice, because the conversation gets a lot bigger when we're talking about covers. But when an artist decides to take up one of their own old works and filter it through

a new arrangement or a new style, can it locate something that is maybe true to its essence in a way that the original, you know, couldn't have it at the time. You brought up Lionel Richie and All-Star Country album, Tuskegee, which I want to say was from 2012 or 13, reminding people that, you know, whatever context they came to know him from, he is a guy from Alabama, and he wanted to, you know, take the opportunity to sort of return home in a way. And so he's got, you know, it's him and like, the version of hello is him and Jennifer Nettles from Sugarland duetting over it. Both you and I were pretty surprised listening that one and being like, wow, this is kind of good.

It doesn't feel like a stunt. Oh, not at all. These songs really do work as country songs. He comes from this like sturdy songwriting tradition that is not so different from the one, you know, over on Music Row, you know. The essence of these songs, the substance of these songs. I mean, sail on. Like, how is that not a country song, right? You know?

I suppose there's an elephant in the room, something that has been happening for 15 plus years in our own backyard. And that is tiny desk concerts and they're ill. These, you know, live sessions where people take the opportunity to really, you know, reinvent a song. whether by necessity, like in that series early days, when there was a single stereo microphone and, you know, people would just bring acoustic guitars and bang on their guitar cases and stuff like that, or out of a sense of sort of renewed vision and, you know, wanting to really awaken people to the other dimensions that might exist inside of a song. Tiny Desk, I think even more powerfully than MTV Unplugged, is a series. that thrives on restrictions and and sort of like practical logistical considerations

yeah right and what have you seen that sort of fits with this conversation you know like a song that felt like oh this version actually is like is is is better or like truer in some way than the one I know from the album you're asking both the best and worst person to ask this question because I for a very, very long time, my desk was the one directly across from the tiny desk. But for that exact reason, you know, there were a lot of times where I was just like I was on deadline and I would have to just work through it, which is silly and an insane privilege and I'm sorry to even be saying it. I just, I, there's like one too many times where I was just like the Sun Ra Orchestra is seeing the back of my head now. I feel so goofy.

But, I mean, look, I mean, there are some of these classics that you probably don't need me to tell you because, you know, they've been acknowledged as such. Like, the turn of events that led to juvenile standing behind that desk with, you know, John Batiste playing the melody line from Back That Aze up on a melodica was pretty incredible. T-Pain is probably you know like number one that's sort of like exhibit A

just you know somebody having the idea Right that you know understanding that like A he can really sing B like

auto tune as a you know as an artistic tool is sort of misunderstood and C he's just kind of like you know funny and affable and seeing him put into a you know a vulnerable place

that idea of like the, like, what's behind all of the scaffolding that is a part of your, your public presentation. Like, that was the power of the T-Pain thing, right? It's like, he's so known for the mediation of the technology of Autotune. I mean, sometimes these things go awkwardly. Like, you mentioned MTV Unplugged. It's, you know, they figured out how to do a hip-hop eventually. You and I are both fans of the JZ unplugged that he did with the roots around the

the blueprint era. But about 10 years before that, L.L. Cool J did what I think was the first hip-hop unplugged session. And it's weird. It's fine. It's actually a lot of fun to see him, you know,

get into it. But it is, you know, a hallmark of these kinds of sessions for a long time was just like the worst direct acoustic guitar tone you could imagine. So it is, it's him with a bunch of acoustic instruments

and he's sort of stalking back. and forth on stage shirtless in a leather kangal hat and finding his way through, Mama Said, Knock You Out. I don't feel compelled to listen to it on its own, but the visual of it is kind of incredible. No doubt did one where they revealed that the song, Ex-Girlfriend from the Return of Saturn was originally like a slow sort of like acoustic lament and played a little bit of it like that. And it sounds incredible. And so, you know, part of the fun of this, too, is sort of seeing the strings a little bit, like understanding a little bit of the process of how songs that, you know, up to this point might have only ever reached you as a totally produced and constructed phenomenon, you know, how these things start out as just, you know, guitar and voice.

Well, so here's an interesting inversion of that, right? we've been talking about the stripping down as the new version. So here's the opposite. The first time that Herbie Hancock recorded his tune Watermelon Man. It was on his very first album taken off in 1962. And it had, you know, it was the first track on Side A. And it's an acoustic, you know, basically a hardbop record. A blue note.

acoustic jazz vibe. Skip Ahead, that's one of the songs that breaks out on his album, Headhunters. Right, yeah. You know, just over a decade later. And he's completely reinvented not only the sonic dimensions of the tune, but like the vamp itself,

rolling cadence. Now it's like really, really, aggressively syncopated, so it feels like a strut, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure there are people who have a favorite between these two versions. But, you know, I can say that Herbie has played the Headhunter's version of Watermelon Man on tour for more than 40 years. Very rarely has he revisited the previous version. So you could argue that, like, the song found its true calling as this jazz funk anthem.

Folks, that is it for this week's new music Friday. Next week, Japan Druids, bid the world sianara, plus new music from Boni Vair, Kylie Minogue, Joy Aladikun, and more. In the meantime, you can send your feedback on today's episode to all songs at npr.org. Leave us a review wherever you get your podcast. Subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org slash music newsletter. And remember, you can get this show sponsor-free

and support our work by joining NPR Music Plus. Go to plus.npr.npr.org. NPR Music or search for NPR Music and Apple Podcasts to sign up. Today's episode was produced by Simon Rentner. Our editor is Jacob Gans. I'm Daiw Tyler Amin. And I'm Nate Chenin. Come back next week for more new music Friday.

Until then, happy listening.