Postcultural

Jenny Lewis recorded her new album in Nashville with the producer who has helmed some the decade’s most exciting country music, but don’t call “Joy’All” country.

“That’s the thing,” Lewis says over Zoom from her home in Nashville. “It’s not an Americana record. It’s not a country record. It’s got elements of rock-and-roll, rhythm and blues, soul. … I’ve been writing songs like this since the ’90s.”

So instead of thinking of “Joy’All” as the product of a longtime Angelino heading to Music City searching for down-South reinvention, think of it as the next chapter in the same novel that Lewis — who had decamped to Nashville in 2018 with no designs on getting into the city’s idiosyncratic music biz — has been writing for years.

“This is just my life; it’s totally serendipitous,” Lewis says. “Wherever I go, there’s music.”

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While neither born nor raised in D.C., and despite not living here for many years, Ted Leo is always treated like a hometown hero on the city’s stages, from the Black Cat and 9:30 Club to St. Stephen’s Church and Fort Reno.

The singer-songwriter comes by it honestly: Years before he established himself as a punk-rock poet laureate, largely as the creative force behind Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Leo lived in D.C. and fronted Chisel, a key part of the city’s mid-’90s scene.

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Steve Lacy currently has the No. 1 song in the country, “Bad Habit,” a gentle pop earworm that sounds like staring at stars glued to a bedroom ceiling. On Saturday night at a sold-out Fillmore Silver Spring, the audience had to wait until the end of his set to hear it — not that anyone seemed to mind. Youthful yearning is a theme, not just in “Bad Habit” but also in much of the singer-songwriter-producer’s compositions, and it’s one that resonated with a crowd full of Lacy obsessives.

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Lil Nas X is our unlikeliest pop star. After spending his high school years chasing internet virality across social media, a song he recorded during a $20 studio session using a $30 beat would go on to become the longest-reigning Billboard No. 1. With “Old Town Road,” Lil Nas X twanged country tropes over a trap beat, kicked off a yee-haw agenda and launched a pop career off the back of a novelty hit. It’s a little bit like Weird Al becoming Beyoncé after “Eat It.”

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As the mythology goes, Charli XCX began her career at just 14 years old, performing at East London raves on the strength of songs she released on MySpace. On Saturday night at a sold-out Anthem, she returned to her roots and served as master of ceremonies and house mother for a pop-rave extravaganza.

The singer-songwriter, who turned 30 a few days ago, has seen her career take its fair share of twists and turns over the past decade. Across albums and mixtapes, she has worked to evolve and expand the sound of modern pop through icy, synthy balladry, hip-hop-inflected bangers and the extreme, avant-hyperpop style that she helped crystallize.

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What comes next when a musician already has legions of fans,buckets of money,a handful of platinum albums, shelves full of Grammys and even a Pulitzer Prize?

By his own account, Kendrick Lamar was “goin’ through somethin’” for 1,855 days — the time between his last two albums — trying to figure that out. On this year’s “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers,” the answer was introspection and vulnerability. But on Thursday night at Capital One Arena, Lamar turned his most inward album outward, changing the questions just when it seemed like audiences had the answers.

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As the saying goes, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. For Rage Against the Machine, the violence of history’s rhymes has fueled a fire that now burns anew. Thirty years after the band’s debut, more than 20 years since its last studio album and more than 10 years since the iconoclastic four-piece last joined forces, the rock band brought its urgent, sonic manifesto to Capital One Arena on Tuesday. In a concert landscape marked by cash-grab reunions and mirthless anniversary celebrations, Rage — as it did during its heyday — stood above the rest and proved to be as ferocious and felicitous as ever.

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These days, Latin music is an indelible part of pop culture. Look no further than the success of Bad Bunny, the most-streamed artist in the world, and the “Encanto” soundtrack, Disney’s biggest pop smash in years, among countless other examples. In 2022, the idea of having to “cross over” from Spanish to English seems dated, but that was not always the case.

For too long, a close-minded music industry worked to keep music separated by linguistic fiefdom. But thanks to the hard work and undeniable music of artists like Gloria and Emilio Estefan — along with Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, Marc Anthony and Ricky Martin, whom Emilio helped introduce to a wider audience — the American music industry looks and sounds like its residents.

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On Wednesday night at the Anthem, Olivia Rodrigo opened her sold-out show the same way she opened her debut album, “Sour,” with the loud-quiet-loud “Brutal.” The song is a litany of problems and preoccupations rife with feelings of anxiety, inadequacy and self-doubt. Its sneering chorus leads not to a bang but a whimper: “God, it’s brutal out here.”

Judging by the rapturous reaction of the crowd — some younger than the 19-year-old singer-songwriter, most older, and almost entirely female — Rodrigo is onto something. It is brutal out here, even for people who aren’t pop stars dealing with the dual cruelties of teendom and the music business. On a planet ravaged by climate change, a global pandemic, powder-keg wars and the rise of fascism, what is an inability to parallel park but an insult added to injury?

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For years now, Tyler, the Creator has been disproving that adage that you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Since he burst onto the scene as a teenager in the late aughts, spewing slurs and courting controversy alongside his Odd Future crew, the rapper-producer-singer has been constantly reinventing himself. With each successive effort, he’s gotten closer to answering the question: What happens when an enfant terrible grows up?

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