How Usher, Beyoncé, and Taylor Swift Build Their Own Legacies

How Usher, Beyoncé, and Taylor Swift Build Their Own Legacies

At this year’s Super Bowl halftime show, Usher Raymond sang through decades of hits while twirling on roller skates, making a case for himself as one of the great R. & B. artists of our time. The performance illuminates a key aspect of modern pop stardom: the fashioning of one’s legacy in real time. In this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss how musicians’ images take shape independent of their music. They consider “Bob Marley: One Love,” a new bio-pic made with the support of the Marley estate that deliberately smooths the rough edges of the singer’s life. Today’s performers take a more active role in their own reputation management, using high-profile appearances to stake a claim or reinforce their persona. At this year’s Grammy Awards, the question of legacy came to the fore when Jay-Z took issue with the fact that his wife, Beyoncé, has never won the coveted Album of the Year award. But the most indelible moments from the ceremony involved songs from decades prior—a reminder that the music itself is often more enduring than any formal accolade. “Rather than legacy in corporate terms or in institutional terms,” says Fry, there’s also “the legacy of the heart.” Read, watch, and listen with the critics: “Bob Marley: One Love” (2024) “Both Sides Now” by Joni Mitchell, as performed at the 2024 Grammys “If I Ain't Got You” by Alicia Keys Luke Combs’s cover of “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman Twins react to “In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins “Walk the Line” (2005) “You Make Me Wanna . . .” by Usher New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Episoder(141)

Critics’ Cult Classics: Hannah Goldfield on the Food World’s Secret Tastemakers

Critics’ Cult Classics: Hannah Goldfield on the Food World’s Secret Tastemakers

In the second in a series of Critics at Large interview episodes devoted to the topic of cult classics, Naomi Fry talks with the New Yorker staff writer Hannah Goldfield about how that designation app...

13 Aug 39min

Critics’ Cult Classics: Hanif Abdurraqib on Camp Lo’s “Uptown Saturday Night”

Critics’ Cult Classics: Hanif Abdurraqib on Camp Lo’s “Uptown Saturday Night”

When it dropped in January of 1997, Camp Lo’s “Uptown Saturday Night” thrilled some listeners and confounded others. On the first in a series of Critics at Large interview episodes devoted to resurfac...

6 Aug 46min

The Irony and the Ecstasy of Colson Whitehead

The Irony and the Ecstasy of Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead’s ascent in the literary world has seemed, like much of what he does, impressively effortless. Though he’s best known for “The Underground Railroad” and “The Nickel Boys”—both of whic...

30 Jul 50min

The Golden Age of the American Idiot

The Golden Age of the American Idiot

The new game show “Nation’s Dumbest,” flips the classic “Jeopardy!” script on its head. The format: twelve famous-ish contestants are peppered with basic logic and trivia questions. The twist is that ...

23 Jul 52min

Who Owns the Odyssey?

Who Owns the Odyssey?

In its nearly three-thousand-year history, the Odyssey has undergone as many twists and turns as its protagonist does on his journey home to Ithaca. Its origins as oral poetry suggest countless revisi...

16 Jul 50min

An American Playlist

An American Playlist

This week, to commemorate two hundred and fifty years of the American experiment, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz present an American playlist. On this special episode, the hosts ...

2 Jul 59min

From The Political Scene: The Politics of the Big Game

From The Political Scene: The Politics of the Big Game

Critics at Large will be back next week. In the meantime, you can hear Vinson Cunningham and Naomi Fry on a recent episode of The New Yorker’s Political Scene, hosted by Tyler Foggatt, where they cons...

25 Jun 37min

Steven Spielberg’s Blockbusters

Steven Spielberg’s Blockbusters

When “Jaws” hit theatres in 1975, no one—neither the studio executives involved nor the film’s twenty-six-year-old director, Steven Spielberg—was betting on its success. But it dominated at the box of...

18 Jun 55min

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