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Source: Katelyn Mulcahy / Getty / Luka Doncic / Anthony Davis
You know a trade is wild when social media has to check to see if Shams Charania’s account was hacked.
The entire sports world was left stunned last night when ESPN NBA Insider Shams Charania posted a megaton of tweets on X, formerly Twitter, announcing, in a mind-blowing move, that the Dallas Mavericks were sending all-star guard Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers as part of a three-team deal for big man Anthony Davis.
“The Dallas Mavericks are trading Luka Doncic, Maxi Kleber and Markieff Morris to the Los Angeles Lakers for Anthony Davis, Max Christie and a 2029 first-round pick, sources tell ESPN. Three-team deal that includes Utah,” Charania wrote in a post X.
The news came just hours after the Lakers smoked the New York Knicks in the Garden on Saturday night.
Davis did not play, but Max Christie did log minutes in the Lakers victory.
The news was so mindblowing that Charania had to follow up to ensure followers his account was not hacked and that the deal was indeed real.
Charania said the deal was made “in the shadows,” with Anthony Davis and LeBron James not even knowing it was going down.
“This deal materialized in the shadows … LeBron James had no idea this was coming. Anthony Davis had no idea this was coming. I’m told Luka Doncic is still stunned about this trade,” Charania said on ESPN.
LeBron James did chime in, responding to a post on CBS Sports’ official X account that he “had grown frustrated with Anthony Davis,” clapping back at the report, “You a fkn lie!!!”
NBA Players Were Left In Shock
As you can imagine, NBA Xitter, hell, everyone reacted to the news with shock. Luka Doncic is coming off a year that saw his Mavericks reach the NBA Finals, and he was pretty much cemented as the Mavericks guy for the foreseeable future.
Bruh!
You can see more reactions to the news below. This upcoming week will be an interesting one for the NBA.
1. Accurate
3. Also accurate
9. You called it
12. Kendrick Perkins had something to say
18. D-Wade Is A Fan of the chaos
In his autobiography Q, Quincy Jones wrote, “Numbers 2, 6, and 11 are my least-favorite chart positions.” It doesn’t take a Jones-like genius to determine why. Each song that peaks at those ranks, despite a clear vote of public favor, can come with a sliver of disappointment as a song’s creators and performers just miss […]
Following a feel-good performance from Post Malone who sang “Sunflower,” which he called “my only good song,” Sir Lucian Grainge introduced the 2025 Industry Icon, Jody Gerson – but not before acknowledging the tragedy Los Angeles has just endured. “The wildfires this past month have inflicted enormous levels of suffering and loss upon way too many people, including many of our colleagues and artists and songwriters. Let’s take this moment to remind ourselves that, as a community, we must remain united in our resolve to help bring relief to those who have been affected…But even as we begin to recover from this tragedy, we must not fail to celebrate those things in life that deserve celebration. They provide the inspiration for the better future we envision and will build together…So, tonight, it is my privilege, and, indeed, it is my great pleasure, to introduce and celebrate Jody Gerson, a true industry icon who rightly deserves celebration.”
And after sharing just some of her career highlights across the past three decades — during which she’s championed artists including Adele, Bad Bunny, Justin Bieber Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar and more — Gerson herself took to the stage to reflect and rejoice in her many successes, starting with the first time she successfully snuck into this exact party years ago. “When I finally did receive my first official invite to attend, it was a big moment in my career,” she recalled.” I remember it well; It was the year Alicia Keys released her debut album, Songs in A Minor, and, Clive, I was so happy to share in its success with you.” She then shouted out the work she and Keys continue to do together through their foundation, She Is the Music, which increases the number of women working in the music business.
Gerson went on to share that when Harvey Mason Jr. called with the news of her honor, she was “stunned.” She thought back to being a “precocious little girl” who would hang at her father and grandfather’s New Jersey club where everyone from Sinatra to Diana Ross and the Supremes would perform. “I spent a lot of time at the club, often backstage, watching the artists and musicians before they went on stage. I studied them…I saw how my dad dealt with them. I watched everything, missed nothing, and definitely saw more than I should have. After all, it was the 70s…Even at that young age, I knew that I wanted a career in the music business.”
“But I want my impact to reach beyond the boundaries of the music business,” she continued, sharing that she recently joined the board of the non-profit Project Healthy Minds, which makes mental health services more easily accessible. She noted that in conjunction with material losses from the wildfires, “there is an unprecedented toll on the mental health of many who live here. We are anxious. Many of us are depressed and traumatized and we feel out of control. What is happening in Los Angeles now is reflective of what is going on in our country as a whole. We have a mental health crisis that must be dealt with…But by normalizing the pursuit of mental health care, we should applaud iconic artists like Billie Eilish, Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, Chappel Roan and so many more who have helped to lessen the stigma surrounding mental health care and made it ok for many to seek help for the first time.”
Despite all the good Gerson has done for the music community and beyond, she concluded by saying her greatest joy is being a mom. “My mom always said that I could have it all, and I do: An incredible career and a wonderful family.” (Her daughter was later heard saying, “I’m so proud of you.”)
But before stepping off stage, Gerson brought the focus back to the evening’s main mission: to help a hurting community heal. “Music can brighten even our darkest days, and we surely need artists to bring light into the world,” she said. “Now, more than ever.”
We all know that Prince was a musical genius, but at the Recording Academy’s Special Merit Awards on Saturday (Feb. 1), Jimmy Jam, formerly of The Time, told of other keys to Prince’s success – he was willing to outwork anybody and he could be something of a taskmaster. “He had the best work ethic of anybody I ever met,” Jam said flatly.
Jam recalled workshopping The Time’s 1982 hit “777-9311” (which Prince co-wrote with Morris Day). Prince kept giving Jam notes, pushing him to improve various aspects of the performance and choreography. Some might have chafed at all the notes, but Jam took Prince’s tutoring the right way. “What that lesson taught me was that he saw me as better than I saw myself.” Jam added that he has tried to pass that on. “I want to enlighten other people to their greatness.”
Prince was one of seven artists to receive lifetime achievement awards at this year’s ceremony, which was held at its usual home, the Wilshire Ebell Theater in Los Angeles. Lifetime achievement awards also went to The Clash, Frankie Valli, Frankie Beverly, Dr. Bobby Jones, Taj Mahal and Roxanne Shante. The trustees award recipients were Erroll Garner, Glyn Johns and Tania León. Dr. Leo Beranek was the Technical Grammy Award honoree.
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Several people spoke in the Prince tribute – Prince’s niece Rihanna Nelson (accompanied by her daughter and her twin sons, who wore tuxes with tennis shoes); Jam and Jerome Benton of The Time; Andre Cymone and Bobby Z. of Prince’s backing bands; Prince’s longtime manager/attorney L. Londell McMillan, and Charles F. Spicer Jr., a partner in managing Prince’s legacy.
“He was an advocate for artist rights,” McMillan said. “He didn’t put ‘Slave’ on his face just for fun. He wanted to take a stand.”
Bobby Z. said he met Prince when he was 19. “He was one of the most gifted human beings that ever lived; the greatest entertainer that ever lived,” a line that received applause from the audience.
Several awards were presented posthumously. R&B singer Beverly died in September; Prince and Dr. Beranek both died in 2016; Joe Strummer of The Clash died in 2002; and Garner, the composer of the pop standard “Misty,” died in 1977. The Recording Academy has presented trustees awards since 1967 (classical conductor George Solti and his producer John Culshaw were the first recipients). It’s remarkable that it took the academy 48 years to get around to Garner.
Most of the special merit award recipients every year are advanced in age. This year, four are in their 80s. Valli is 90.
Producer/engineer Glyn Johns, 82, joked about that in his acceptance speech. “Having been notified of this award in November, my main objective has to remain alive until today. Well, I made it!,” he said.
Valli made note of how long it took the Recording Academy to get around to him. Valli has never won a Grammy, on his own or in the Four Seasons, which landed their first three No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1962-63. “This has been an incredible evening,” he said. “I don’t know what took so long, but that’s the way it goes.”
Chuck D of Public Enemy (which received a lifetime achievement award in 2020) accepted for The Clash. The rapper marveled at the breadth of talent being honored on the night, singling out jazz pianist Error Garner, rock producer/engineer Glyn Johns and rapper Roxanne Shante. He read an acceptance speech from the surviving members of The Clash, which concluded with their thanks to Chuck D for accepting the award for them. “As you heard our voice, we also heard yours,” a nice example of cross-genre respect.
Shante’s 1985 R&B hit “Roxanne’s Revenge,” an answer record to UTFO’s “Roxanne, Roxanne,” was described as the first rap diss track. Shante is 55, making her the youngest of this year’s honorees. Shante said when she learned of her award, she finally felt she had made it. She said when an artist enters the business, they want three things – a record that gets on the Billboard charts, to get paid for it, and to win a Grammy. Now, she said, she has realized all three goals. Shante also paid her respects to Biz Markie, the “Just a Friend” hitmaker who died in 2021 at age 57. “I lost my hip-hop brother,” she said.
Taj Mahal was accompanied by two of his daughters as he accepted his award. He suggested that his path in music may have been pre-ordained. His parents met at a Chick Webb/Ella Fitzgerald concert at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem in 1937.
Most of the awards were accepted by the recipients, or family members, in the case of the recipients who have died. The award to Frankie Beverly was accepted by his son, Anthony Beverly, and by Ronald “Roame” Lowry, a longtime member of Beverly’s group, Maze. Lowry said that the group’s classic “Before I Let Go” is “the most danceable song about breaking up.”
The award to acoustics expert Dr. Leo Beranek, the Technical Grammy Award honoree, was accepted by his son, Tom Haynes. “My dad accomplished many things, working until he was 87 on concert halls in Japan,” he said. Beranek died in 2016 at age 102.
The academy also presented its music educator of the year award to Adrian L. Maclin of Cordova High School outside Memphis, Tenn., who said when he was a boy his dream was to become an artist and win a Grammy. His path segued into music education and now he has won a Grammy by turning other kids onto music.
The final presentation of the night was the Harry Belafonte Best Song for Social Change Award. This was the third year the award has been presented; the first since it was named in honor of the late singer, actor and activist, whose daughters Gina and Shari Belafonte were present. The award originated as a Special Merit Award but was recategorized as a CEO’s Merit Award.
Iman Jordan, who won for his song “Deliver,” noted that “Nina Simone said that art should reflect the times – and I wasn’t hearing much of that.” He co-wrote the winning song with his father, Roy Gartrell, along with Ariel Loh and Tam Jones.
Many have said that the Special Merit Award ceremony is warmer and more congenial than the following night’s Grammys. But one thing is missing. There are video packages before every presentation, but not a note of live music. If nothing else, the music educator award could include a performance by some of his/her prized pupils, and the winner of the Song for Social Change award could be performed.
Several of this year’s recipients had already received major honors. Prince was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, received a lifetime achievement award at the BET Awards in 2010, and was honored by the Songwriters Hall of Fame in July 2024 (he had been voted in while he was alive, but scheduling the presentation proved difficult).
Valli was voted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (as a member of the Four Seasons) in 1990, followed by The Clash in 2003 and producer Glyn Johns in 2012. Maze featuring Frankie Beverly received a lifetime achievement award at the BET Awards in 2012. León received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2022.
Lifetime Achievement Awards are presented to performers who have made creative contributions of outstanding artistic significance to the field of recording.
Trustees Awards are presented to individuals who have made significant contributions, other than performance, to the field of recording.
Technical Grammy Awards are presented to individuals, companies, organizations or institutions who have made contributions of outstanding technical significance to the recording field.
André 3000, who’s nominated for album of the year at the 2025 Grammy Awards, will not be in attendance at Sunday’s (Feb. 2) ceremony in Los Angeles.
“Unfortunately, I’m not able to attend the GRAMMYs tomorrow but some of the New Blue Sun musicians, friends and supporters will be in attendance,” he wrote in an Instagram post on Saturday (Feb. 1), not giving the reason for his absence.
André’s instrumental album New Blue Sun competes with Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet, Charli XCX’s Brat, Jacob Collier’s Djesse Vol. 4, Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft, Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess and Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department at this year’s awards show. Album of the year is one of the most anticipated honors to be handed out at the Grammys.
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New Blue Sun is also up for the Grammy for best alternative jazz album, and the Outkast member’s “I Swear, I Really Wanted to Make a ‘Rap’ Album But This Is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Me This Time” is nominated for best instrumental composition.
In his statement on Saturday, André added, “Our album was conceived and recorded in Los Angeles with the spirit of openness and creative collaboration. We hope that the rebound of Los Angeles is swift and renewing.”
“Congrats to all the musicians and collaborators being acknowledged,” he said. “Keep playing.”
In November, he commented on his nominations during an interview, saying, “I’m just happy to get paid attention to. The awards are nice because you know at that point more people get to listen and pay attention to what you’re doing, so more than anything, that’s what I love about it.” He also noted he’ll be working on new music in 2025.
The 2025 Grammys will be broadcast live on Feb. 2 from the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, starting at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT. Trevor Noah hosts the 67th annual ceremony.
See his announcement in its entirety below.
Ariana Grande will happily sing Sabrina Carpenter‘s “Espresso,” in case anyone thought otherwise — or at least do a dramatic reading of the lyrics. “This is ‘Espresso’ by Sabrina Carpenter? What is it doing here?” she asks in a video uploaded by W Magazine on Saturday (Feb. 1), where she’s on an interview set and […]
The Weeknd‘s “Red Terror” video sets a disturbing stop-motion scene for the track from Hurry Up Tomorrow, Abel Tesfaye’s new album and the ending to the trilogy that began with Dawn FM and After Hours. A young being experiences an unsettling transformation in what looks like an Upside Down-esque alternate dimension in “Red Terror.” The music video […]
Travis Kelce won’t be attending the 2025 Grammy Awards in Los Angeles to support his girlfriend, Taylor Swift — but he has a pretty good reason.
In the lead-up to the Grammys ceremony at Crypto.com Arena on Sunday (Feb. 2), the Kansas City Chiefs tight end will be practicing with his team ahead of Super Bowl LIX, according to Page Six.
Swift, who will be at the Grammys as a presenter, is nominated in six categories, including the top three — album, record and song of the year. She’s also vying for her fifth album of the year win with The Tortured Poets Department, which topped the Billboard 200 for 17 nonconsecutive weeks.
Meanwhile, Kelce and the Chiefs are gearing up for their Super Bowl matchup against the Philadelphia Eagles on Feb. 9 at New Orleans’ Caesars Superdome. Swift is expected to attend the game, just like she did at last year’s Super Bowl. If the Chiefs win, they’ll become the first NFL team to claim three championships in a row.
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Kendrick Lamar will serve as the halftime performer at the game, where he’ll be joined by SZA.
After the Chiefs’ AFC Championship win over the Buffalo Bills on Jan. 26, Kelce celebrated with his mother, Donna, and Swift on the field. In a video shared by the NFL, Swift marveled, “This is so insane,” as she urged Kelce to take in the scene at K.C.’s Arrowhead Stadium. “This is not a real-life situation.”
This marks the second year Kelce won’t be able to attend the Grammys with Swift. In January 2024, he explained on The Pat McAfee Show, “I wish I could go support Taylor at the Grammys and watch her win every single award that she’s nominated for.” He added, “Unfortunately, I’ve got to get ready for this big ol’ Super Bowl we got in a week.”
Last year, just hours after wrapping up her final Eras tour show in Tokyo, Swift flew to Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas to support Kelce and the Chiefs at Super Bowl LVIII. Following the team’s victory, she and Kelce shared a kiss on the field, and she affectionately watched as he gave a speech to the fans.
Approximately 900 people joined a town hall meeting hosted by Burning Man Project on Saturday (Feb. 1) with the organization’s CEO Marian Goodell, along with other staffers, making myriad announcements regarding the 2025 event, including information regarding a tiered ticketing system with new prices.
The town hall happened after months of fundraising efforts by Burning Man Project — the nonprofit behind the annual gathering in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert and other Burning Man-related initiatives –after it reported a $10 million deficit due, as Goodell explained to Billboard in November, 2024 tickets not selling as forecasted.
The financial issue was compounded when Burning Man 2024 failed to sell out for the first time in many years. In November, Goodell said all ticket tiers saw decreased sales in 2024 and estimated that attendance was down by roughly 4,000. As such, in the latter part of 2024, Burning Man spent months trying to raise $20 million (with 2024’s $10 million deficit added to $10 million the organization typically raises every year) through a subscription program that encouraged Burners from around the world to make monthly donations to Burning Man Project.
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In the Saturday meeting, Goodell noted that the organization did not meet this fundraising goal, although she did not announce how much money was raised. (Goodell did note that a December campaign to raise $3 million was a success, and elaborated on the organization’s financial picture in a recent blog post.) She added that Burning Man Project “did manage to reduce our internal spending and budget by 9%… and will continue to tightly manage operating expenses and capital expenses across the organization.”
Goodell and the team then unveiled a revamped ticketing program, with new and updated price tiers. Tickets for Burning Man 2025 will start at $550, with prices scaling up from there — $650, $750 and $950m and more.
Tickets will be sold in three separate public sales, with the first happening on Feb. 12. Tickets in this sale (dubbed the “Today Sale”) will be $550, $650, $750, $950, $1,500, and $3,000, plus applicable taxes and fees. Registration for this sale opens on Monday (Feb. 3), with the sale offering a limited number of tickets available at each price. The Burning Man site notes that “$550 and $650 tickets are expected to sell quickly.” The meeting did not address how many tickets will be available at each price point.
Since 2022, Burning Man’s main sale tickets cost $575, an increase from $475 in 2019. (Burning Man didn’t officially happen in 2020 or 2021 due to the pandemic.) Therefore, many 2025 main sale tickets will be sold at a higher price than in previous years. In the meeting, Goodell emphasized that making new tiers (with ticket tiers previously offering no tickets between $550 and $1,500) provides more pricing options than ever before and “helps keep ticket prices affordable”
Beyond this first sale, the annual Steward’s Sale will happen on March 5, with these tickets going to camps, art installations, art cars, and groups supporting organizational initiatives having access to attending the event. The Stewards Sale has its own ticket price allotments reserved unrelated to other ticket sales.
Another ticket sale (dubbed the “Tomorrow Sale”) will happen at to be determined date and include ticket tiers based on ticketing availability following the “Today Sale.” A final sale (the annual “OMG sale”) will happen in July and offer any remaining tickets across all the price points.
Meanwhile, two new programs — the “Renaissance Program” and “Resilience Program” — will debut with the goal of bringing networks and groups to Black Rock City and brings people affected by natural disasters and geographical conflict, respectively. More information regarding these programs will be announced in the coming weeks and months.
Goodell alluded to backlash over the recent fundraising campaign among factions of the global Burning Man community, saying that “with the event selling out every year, we [previously] didn’t need to explain that tickets do not cover the event cost and that philanthropy is needed, but the game has changed, and we should have brought you along better on this journey and we appreciate you sticking with us… We are learning and improving, reducing bureaucracy and red tape, and we hope that you see and feel this in how you engage with us and one another.”
The meeting featured presentations from several members from Burning Man Project, with operations director Charlie Dolman explaining several new processes, including an expedited process to acquire the vehicle passes that allow Burners to drive through the event. Burning Man will also issue new “decommodification guidelines” meant to, as Dolman said, address “cultural issues,” along with a more organized ingress and egress system. (In previous years it’s taken some attendees roughly 12 hours to leave the event.)
“Over the last last few months we’ve gotten a lot of feedback from a lot of people, and I just want to say that we’ve heard you, and honestly even when it’s been uncomfortable we’ve kept our eyes and ears open. We want that feedback,” Dolman said, continuing that “in places we’ve overcomplicated things and we’ve made things too bureaucratic maybe, and that’s no fun. That has all been done with good intention… but also it became not fun, so we needed to course correct.”
Later in the presentation, Goodell also noted a new attempt to push back on costs related to the Bureau of Land Management, with fees from the organization typically coming in at $8 million. “I think we’re going to see some improvements in costs with the BLM,” she disclosed.
You could tell the story of Marianne Faithfull, who died Jan. 30 at the age of 78, in three recordings — specifically three versions of “As Tears Go By.” The British singer initially recorded the song, one of the first that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote together, in 1964 as a 17-year-old ingénue. Produced by Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham, who discovered her at a party, the recording is a brisk, breezy slice of chamber-pop and Faithfull’s vocals are all breathy sweep. Faithfull wrote in her 1994 autobiography that Oldham immediately knew it would be a hit, and it reached No. 9 on the UK Singles Chart and No. 22 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Faithfull returned to the song twice more in the studio: First on Strange Weather, the 1987 album she recorded after struggling with drug addiction for much of the ’70s and ’80s, and then again on the 2018 Negative Capability. Especially in this last version, recorded when she was 71, you can hear both how far she travelled and the toll that hard road took on her. Faithfull was, above all, a survivor — of tabloid coverage of a drug bust where she was found wearing only a fur rug, of a heroin addiction that cost her custody of her son, of years living on the street — but she was never made it look easy. Indeed, her genius was to make it sound as hard as it must have been.
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Faithfull, who dated Jagger for years in the late 1960s, began her career as a living symbol of Swinging London, an especially beautiful woman in a scene of beautiful people. She had a glamorous background to match: Her father was a British intelligence officer and her mother was the daughter of an Austrian aristocrat. (She was related to the Austrian nobleman and writer Leopold van Sacher-Masoch, for whom masochism is named, which would have been a great opening line if Faithfull ever needed one.) She was better educated than Jagger, and she introduced him to Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, which inspired the song “Sympathy for the Devil.”
It’s hard to hear that kind of depth on Faithfull’s first recording, “As Tears Go By,” which came out more than a year before the Stones version. Even by 1964 standards, the song sounds remarkably innocent — it’s pop, without a rock sensibility. In her 1994 autobiography, Faithfull describes it a bit disparagingly as “the Europop you might hear on a French jukebox.” The lyrics are downcast — it’s the evening of the day, she’s watching the children play — but her voice sounds too high and pure to give them much feeling.
The following April, in 1965, Faithfull released two albums the same day — a self-titled pop album and the folk-oriented Come My Way. (The latter album didn’t come out in the U.S.) Within a year, she separated from her husband, John Dunbar, and started dating Jagger. (“I slept with three” Rolling Stones, she said later, “and then I decided the lead singer was the best bet.”) The year after that, she was busted at Richards’ estate with Jagger, Richards and others, wearing only a rug and, she writes in her biography, coming down from an acid trip.
After Faithfull broke up with Jagger, in 1970, her life unraveled — she lost custody of her son, attempted suicide, became addicted to heroin and ended up living on the street in London. She tried to return to singing, with a couple of false starts, including recordings from 1971 that eventually came out as Rich Kid Blues and the 1975 and 1976 country tracks released as Dreamin’ My Dreams and then as Faithless. Finally, in 1979, she recorded her masterpiece, Broken English, a mix of off-kilter dance music and rough New Wave with a punk edge. By then, her voice had worn ragged — lower in pitch, rougher in tone, better suited for more sophisticated songs.
Faithfull recorded two more albums before getting clean in the mid-’80s and, on the 1987 album Strange Weather, finding a deep, world-weary voice that stayed with her for the rest of her career. A dark cabaret sensibility ties together the album, which is all covers, from “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” to “Hello Stranger.” She also revisited “As Tears Go By,” which was released as a single but didn’t chart, in a slower, sadder version. On this version, her voice is deeper, the orchestration darker and sparser. Faithfull now sounds like she’s watching the children play from the distance the lyrics imply, looking at their innocence with hers behind her. She could be looking back on herself singing in 1964 (“Doing things I used to do/ They think are new”). It’s an astonishing reinvention of her earlier hit.
Faithfull spent the rest of her career bringing her deep, weathered voice to various kinds of music — standards by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, compositions by writers of her generation, and songs written for her by younger musicians who admired her (including Beck and Jarvis Cocker on Kissin Time and Nick Cave and PJ Harvey on Before the Poison). Finally, on Negative Capability, she revisits a few songs she had already recorded — “A Tears Go By,” as well as Bob Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” (which she had recorded on Rich Kid Blues) and “Witches’ Song” (on Broken English). All three sound slower, almost strained at times, as though they are harder to for Faithfull to sing than they once were. She turns “Witches’ Song,” powerful and incantatory on Broken English, into a dirge, as though she recognized she was no longer the witch she once was. But the most striking difference is in “As Tears Go By.”
Faithfull’s 2018 take on “As Tears Go By” is a lifetime away from her 1964 hit — literally. Her voice, long since worn, now sounds downright weary — as though she’s singing only with great effort. The production, lush in 1964 and sparse in 1987, is minimal but warm, transparent enough to reveal every tremor in her voice. The song, originally light and airy, now sounds almost funereal, as Faithfull’s voice comes close to cracking. It sounds as though she’s revealing more than she intends to — “It is the evening of the day” has a very different meaning at 71 than it does at 17. The children in the song, once so close, are now only visible from a distance. The 17-year-old ingénue is obscured by a lifetime of hard-won accomplishment and regret. This last version of the song is a harder listen, especially for anyone who has heard the other two, and it wasn’t a single, much less a hit. On it, though, Faithfull took ownership of the song, and her history with it, and with it her remarkable legacy.