Five years after Whitney Houston’s untimely death, two new documentaries have evaluated her role as a black pop star packaged for white audiences. Coupled, they present conflicting perspectives on an artist whose personal trials eclipsed her professional triumphs.

One, “Whitney: Can I Be Me,” centers on Houston herself, who experienced a meteoric rise to fame at the untaught age of 22. The other, “Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives,” intersperses the singer’s biography throughout its hagiographic account of the titular record executive’s career. Both premiered at the recently wrapped Tribeca Film Festival, where it was jarring to see the documentaries’ clashing viewpoints within days of each other. 

Whereas “Whitney: Can I Be Me” is critical of the way industry moguls engineered Houston’s image, “Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives” presents a fawning portrait of its subject as the foreman of Houston’s success. 

“Can I Be Me” touts Houston as the first black woman to debut atop the pop charts. Read critically, that’s a euphemism for the effort by Davis and his Arista Records team to make her palatable for white America. As the documentary tells it, Arista didn’t want a female James Brown. The label aimed to bury the New Jersey native’s “hood” upbringing and make her “classy,” according to members of the singer’s entourage. She was a pop princess.

Davis gave her songs like “Greatest Love of All,” “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)” and “How Will I Know” ― polite bangers that targeted mainstream Top 40 over the less lucrative R&B market. Even though Houston’s hits saw significant airtime on R&B radio, her manicured image angered a portion of the black community, as evidenced by the 1989 Soul Train Awards crowd booing Houston during the presentation of Best R&B/Urban Contemporary Single.

“You’re not black enough for them,” the seven-time Grammy winner later said in an interview, recounting her detractors’ complaints. “You’re not R&B enough. You’re very pop. The white audience has taken you away from them.” 

Across her first two albums, Arista apparently vetoed anything too “black-sounding.” The Soul Train Awards episode became a turning point for Houston, who decided she wanted her next record to be edgier. “That moment was devastating,” saxophonist and collaborator Kirk Whalum says in the film. “I don’t think she ever recovered. When the boxes are ticked on why she perished, that was a big one.”

In “Soundtrack of Our Lives,” Davis, who signed Houston when she was 19, purports to have encouraged the transition she sought. Davis claims an integral role in her rebranding, recognizing that hip-hop was infiltrating music in the early ‘90s. For his part, Davis was hip to the trend, acquiring Babyface and L.A. Reid’s LaFace Records (which housed TLC, Usher and Goodie Mob) in 1989 and Puff Daddy’s Bad Boys Records (Notorious B.I.G., Mase, Faith Evans) in 1993.

But “Can I Be Me” doesn’t make it sound so seamless: Whalum says Houston’s tactic was to avoid making “another Clive Davis record” chasing white acceptance. It was almost an act of rebellion.

When HuffPost sat down with “Can I Be Me” co-director Nick Broomfield on the morning of the movie’s Tribeca premiere, he maintained that Houston’s 1990 album, “I’m Your Baby Tonight,” wasn’t the direction Davis wanted. (Davis was interviewed for “Can I Be Me” but wouldn’t sign the accompanying release form. He declined our interview request.)

At the time, because record labels were segregated, black artists “crossing over” to the pop charts required strategy. Arista brought in Doug Daniels, whose title was “VP of black music,” to help Houston appeal to non-white audiences. The singer’s associates stress she was clueless as to how much the label manipulated her image in the early days of her career.

“The notion of crossover artists was like crossing the color barrier,” Broomfield said. “It was an enormous thing. She was very carefully manufactured to make this transition.”

The title track on “I’m Your Baby Tonight,” while still tame, had a certain bite to it, and the music video featured a leather-jacket-clad Houston riding a motorcycle. Ostensibly proving Davis’ point that so-called urban records didn’t sell as well, “Tonight” failed to match the success of Houston’s first two albums. Despite producing two major pop hits (”I’m Your Baby Tonight” and “All the Man That I Need”), it peaked at No. 3, unable to knock Vanilla Ice’s debut from the top spot. Houston didn’t release another studio album for eight years, instead focusing on a movie career.

It’s possible there’s truth to Davis’ summation in “Soundtrack of Our Lives” and the Houston camp’s perspectives in “Can I Be Me.” Record labels are gigantic entities, and they often wield heavy hands over artists’ images. And anyway, Davis has admitted he didn’t do enough to court black audiences: “Frankly, I was color-blind, and perhaps a little naïve in that I didn’t try to find pure R&B songs that only black-oriented stations could claim for their own,” he wrote in his 2013 autobiography, which serves as the documentary’s source material. Houston was Davis’ signature artist, and the two remained fiercely loyal. The night of Houston’s drug-related drowning, she was scheduled to attend Davis’ annual pre-Grammy bash. 

We’ll never know precisely how much Arista’s supervision affected Houston. Regardless, “Can I Be Me” and “Soundtrack of Our Lives” encapsulate the complicated roles pop stars play in our lives ― or, more specifically, the roles record conglomerates play in how we consume pop stars’ lives. Houston was signed at an impressionable age, only to have her career dictated by older, white, male millionaires. While Houston’s upbringing has roots in drugs and domestic violence, it’s now clear that the manipulation of her racial identity contributed to her waning self-esteem. 

“From just talking to some of those executives at Arista who were involved in that creation, you realize that she was very manufactured, and she paid a massive price for it,” Broomfield said. “They were slightly guilty. I think she was so young. She looked like a young doe. She had no idea what she was in for.”

Whitney: Can I Be Me” airs on Showtime in August. Apple Music acquired the rights to “Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives,” but no release date has been set.

type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related… + articlesList=58f8aeafe4b0cb086d7e6c2d,589a4051e4b09bd304be8861,57bf5a7de4b02673444f44f6

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

After nearly losing his mother to breast cancer, a Mexican teen decided to invent something to help women detect the disease during its early stages. 

“When I was 13 years old, my mother was diagnosed for the second time with breast cancer,” Julián Ríos Cantú said in a company video for his new invention. “The tumor went from having the dimensions of a grain of rice to that of a golf ball in less than six months. The diagnosis came too late and my mother lost both of her breasts and, almost, her life.” 

This experienced pushed the now 18-year-old entrepreneur to design Eva, an auto-exploration bra that helps women detect breast cancer early on. Ríos Cantú is currently the CEO and co-founder of Higia Technologies, a company he established with three close friends when he was 17.

On Saturday, the breast cancer detection bra won the top prize at the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards finals competition, which hosted 56 student entrepreneurs from 56 countries. 

Eva uses tactile sensors to map the surface of the breast and monitor texture, color and temperature. The invention was designed particularly for women who have a genetic predisposition to breast cancer, and users can use a mobile or desktop app to review their condition. 

“What happens is we take all that data and store it,” Ríos Cantú said in an interview with El Universal. “When there is a tumor in the breast there is more blood, more heat, so there are changes in temperature and in texture. We will tell you, ‘in this quadrant there are drastic changes in temperature’ and our software specializes in caring for that area. If we see a persistent change, we will recommend that you go to the doctor.”

“Why a bra? Because it allows us to keep the breasts in the same position and it doesn’t have to be used more than one hour every week,” he added.

The entrepreneur’s invention is only a prototype, and he estimates it’ll be two years before it will be certified for use, according to the Mexican newspaper.

The American Cancer Society estimates 41,070 women will die of breast cancer in the United States this year.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

An intrepid photographer who has launched a million dreams (and perhaps a few thousand careers) in graffiti and Street Art with her photography that captured crucial and seminal aspects of our culture that others overlooked.

That is just one way of seeing this brand new collection of images by Martha Cooper that is spread across one wall featuring artists at work, sometimes intimately. Here is where you see 102 individual shots of artists at work, a stunning testament to the range of art-making techniques that are practiced in the public realm, as well as a testament to the passion and curiosity of the woman behind the lens.

For Ms. Cooper’s first solo photography show in New York, Steven Kasher Gallery is featuring 30 new editions of her legendary street art photographs, the ones that have burned themselves into the collective memory of New York and of our streets in the 1970s and 1980s. While her photographs in the 1984 seminal “Subway Art” and her early Hip Hop street shots may be what she is most known for by artists and collectors and fans in cities around the world to which she travels, the new exhibit also contains more than a foreshadowing into the vast collection of important images she has not shown to us.

Clearly she could fill her own museum with the ephemera she has collected as well; the books, clothing articles, black books, stickers, personal drawings that capture her eye and invoke a conversation that happened in the street, under ground, in the train yards. Some of the ephemera is here in a vitrine, much too small to contain everything – for additional context and perhaps to burnish the “living legend” Street Cred that one gains by sticking in the trenches with artists over many decades.

This week during the installation of the show Ms. Cooper also shared with us the valuable history that illustrates the significance of some of the pieces.

Of a 1982 vest painted by graffiti writer Caine1, she explains that shortly after he made the vest for her he was shot – and the photo of the train with the skyline is a memorial to him. A photo spread of a train painted by graffiti writer Spin from that same year is accompanied by the original sketch he did for it in carefully drawn bold letters aimed at the New York Mayor who made war against graffiti, “Dump Koch”. The Keith Haring drawing and dedication in her note book we recognize because she brought it with her to the Haring exhibit dinner at the Brooklyn Museum a few years ago, occasionally bringing it out to show to other guests. Next to it a photo of Martha as a small child, camera in hand, the daughter of a photographer and camera store owner in Baltimore. These are objects and memories that have great meaning to her, and to many others who will see this collection.

This is not a retrospective but it is the first time a New York gallery has dedicated a serious solo show to a photographer whose work has received numerous tributes throughout the world, including the dedication of a new library in her name in the Urban Nation museum in Berlin opening this September. In many ways it is remarkable that aside from the Museum of The City of New York no major museum in New York has recognized the invaluable contributions her professional life’s work has made to the city, let alone to the history of graffiti, hip hop, Street Art, photography, popular culture.

As appreciable as the well-mounted collection here is, it is a small, potent sampling of Cooper’s careers as a photographer, documentarian, ethnographer, preservationist, and reporter worldwide over a half century of travel and investigation. Without these images, crucial information about the creators, techniques and culture of graffiti and Street Art and the culture of art in the streets would be unknown. Yet she’s eager to share more of her many excursions of study into other cultures and subcultures, like traditional tattooing in Japan, and a project comparing two neighborhoods in Baltimore and Southwest Township, South Africa, and a uniquely artful recycling program in Brazil. Even the simple practices of city kids at play has often captured her attention and she has documented it for decades.

The last few years have been a whirlwind of global travel for Ms. Cooper, including trips to nearly every continent for Street Art festivals, graffiti jams, museum and gallery exhibitions, and special events in her honor – she even gave a TED talk in Vienna recently. Taking a moment to cool her heels back in NYC, this show gives us a glimpse into the outstanding and valuable historical archives that Ms. Cooper is turning her attention to these days.

“This show is important to me at this time because I’m at a point in my life where I want to shoot less and organize my archives more,” she tells us. “I’ve been a professional photographer since 1968, almost 50 years. Exhibits help me think about how my work fits together. I want people to see me as a photographer first, not only a documenter of graffiti and hip hop.”

“Having a show at a gallery that specializes in photography helps accomplish this goal. Although I was never interested in being a fine art photographer, I’m happy and somewhat surprised to see that my photographs have a collectible value.” Modest about her talents as usual, even Martha appears to not realize the value of her contribution to so many and so much of the culture.

BSA: Is this your first solo exhibition in NYC?
Martha Cooper: Not really. I had a solo Street Play exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York in 1980, I had a lot of exhibits that Akim Walta organized when Hip Hop Files came out in 2004. I also had the NYCasitas show in East Harlem last year, and there have been others. However it’s my first solo exhibition in NYC at a photography gallery.

BSA: Is this sort of a retrospective?
MC: Again–not really. Although there are photos from 1970 (tattoo) to 2016, there are major projects that this exhibit doesn’t include–for example all the documentation I did for City Lore, or in Baltimore. My archive contains many, many more topics and projects than are included in this exhibit so I don’t want to call it a retrospective. This show is heavy on graffiti and street art with a couple of photos each from Tokyo Tattoo and New York State of Mind.

Martha Cooper
Exhibition: April 20th – June 3rd, 2017
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 20th, 6-8PM

Steven Kasher Gallery
515 West 26th Street, NYC

____________________

Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!

A version of this article is also posted on Brooklyn Street Art here.

Read all posts by Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo on The Huffington Post HERE.

See new photos and read scintillating interviews every day on BrooklynStreetArt.com

Follow us on Instagram @bkstreetart

See our TUMBLR page

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Just one week after its three-episode premiere, Hulu’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” has already been renewed for a second season, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The outlet notes that the show is Hulu’s most-streamed premiere to date; and it’s been a critical success, too, racking up a 92 percent rating on Metacritic.

In an interview with HuffPost last week, showrunner Bruce Miller said that the story’s themes, though timeless, were sure to resonate with contemporary viewers. He said the show will lead fans to “appreciate the freedoms that we have, and see little ways that they’re chipped away and what that can lead to.”

In addition to its at least two-season run, the show has Elisabeth Moss signed on for a five-to-seven-year contract, a commitment she made with the condition of working as a producer, with a say in casting decisions.

So, how will a multi-season adaptation of a single novel play out? On a panel at the Tribeca Film Festival, Miller noted that while one of the book’s merits is its close focus on Offred’s personal story, that also means there’s room to explore the world beyond her perspective.

“I wanted to know what happens next,” he said of the novel’s abrupt ending. “The end of the book is quite a mystery, so I get to make it up.”

It bodes well for future seasons that Atwood has been involved with Hulu’s take on her story, even appearing as a shadow-shrouded disciplinarian in one scene.

And, there have been possible hints at a sequel to the book, although this might be no more than wishful thinking on the part of her many avid fans.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Over the past 24 hours, the internet has collectively spent way too much time debating which celebrities were the best and worst dressed at Monday’s 2017 Met Gala. 

While stars like Gigi Hadid and Kylie Jenner got flak for their not-so-Comme des Garçons-inspired looks, no one was more underdressed for the occasion than Russian performance artist Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich, who showed up nude inside a glass box. 

Around 8:30 p.m. ET, Pavlov-Andreevich (in box) was dragged out of the trunk of a car and placed on the floor of the highly exclusive affair, his six-foot-two frame obscured only by the condensation clouding up box’s glass panels. Immediately, Met Gala partygoers were confused, uncomfortable and a little giggly. 

It was not long before police showed up and requested Pavlov-Andreevich leave his box. When the artist refused, firefighters cut him free from his enclosure and promptly arrested him on charges of public lewdness, obstructing governmental administration, criminal trespassing and disorderly conduct, according to NBC New York.

In a Facebook post from the artist’s account, his friends kept interested parties updated with Pavlov-Andreevich’s whereabouts, eventually alerting followers that he was released from custody and scheduled for a court hearing on June 5. The box, the post added, was “arrested,” as well. 

Pavlov-Andreevich has pulled stunts like this before ― at least four times before, to be precise. Showing up places naked in a box is an ongoing guerrilla performance piece the artist has dubbed “Foundling.” And yes, he is represented by a gallery. 

Previous sites of “Foundling” happenings include the Venice Biennale, the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, Christie’s Vanity Fair party in London and the São Paulo Biennale. So rest assured, this artist gets around. Accounts of all four prior performances are documented in full on his website. 

See the whole thing go down in this video below, shared on Pavlov-Andreevich’s Facebook. 

H/T artnet News.

type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related… + articlesList=5908be33e4b02655f841498f,590880a4e4b0bb2d08717880,5907d215e4b0bb2d0870bc16,5907ca54e4b05c397681b825,57bda8b1e4b0b51733a6cbdc,59080a16e4b05c397681ecfd

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

We’ll take “Veritable TV Institutions” for $600, Alex.

It almost seems silly that nightly game shows “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy!” must deal with such mundane trivialities as contracts. The shows, and their hosts, seem to exist in a bubble unaffected by such human concerns as the passage of time.

But alas, they must, and trivia buffs and word nerds can rest easy for now: Deadline reported Tuesday that Alex Trebek, Pat Sajak and Vanna White have renewed their contracts, ensuring the three will continue their reign on “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune,” respectively, through 2020.

The renewal will make the 2019–20 season the 36th year for “Jeopardy!” and the 37th for “Wheel” in their current versions. In short: That’s a whole lot of on-screen guessing over the years.

Here’s how our favorite hosts looked around their shows’ early years.

And here are our game show pals now.

They haven’t aged a day, TBH. 

With 33 Emmys under its belt, “Jeopardy!” holds the record for most wins by a TV game show, while “Wheel of Fortune” regularly pulls in the highest viewers of any show on television, averaging 10.2 million a week.

Other than offering viewers a regular opportunity to shout things at their television screens, the two shows keep us coming back with contestants’ epic “Streetcar Naked Desire” fails and sneakily lewd gestures — and “Jeopardy!” host Trebek’s unparalleled rapping skills.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

In Ivanka Trump’s new book Women Who Work, the current First Daughter quotes a melange of inspirational platitudes meant to motivate her readers into “architecting” their own success.

She, of course, didn’t write those statements. She borrowed them from more established self-help gurus and acclaimed authors like Sheryl Sandberg, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Friedrich Nietzsche, Anne-Marie Slaughter, David Brooks, Oprah, Socrates, Stephen Covey, Simon Sinek and ― skipping countless other entrepreneurs, activists and all around inspiring people to get to the pertinent part ― Jane Goodall.

“What you do makes a difference,” Goodall’s quote reads, “and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”

How does Goodall feel about being lumped into to a coterie of Trump-approved sages? We’d say… skeptical.

The renowned primatologist and UN Messenger of Peace told CNN that she was not aware that Trump would be quoting her, but that she “sincerely” hopes Trump “will take the full import of my words to heart. She is in a position to do much good or terrible harm.”

Goodall then took the opportunity to call out the Trump administration’s hostile stance toward protected wildlife and lands:

Legislation that was passed by previous governments to protect wildlife such as the Endangered Species Act, create national monuments and other clean air and water legislation have all been jeopardized by this administration. I hope that Ms. Trump will stand with us to value and cherish our natural world and protect this planet for future generations.

In the past, Goodall has been even more blunt.

“In many ways the performances of Donald Trump remind me of male chimpanzees and their dominance rituals,” she told The Atlantic. “In order to impress rivals, males seeking to rise in the dominance hierarchy perform spectacular displays: stamping, slapping the ground, dragging branches, throwing rocks.”

“The more vigorous and imaginative the display, the faster the individual is likely to rise in the hierarchy,” she added, “and the longer he is likely to maintain that position.”

Trump’s critics have been quick to jump on her perceived hypocrisy ― whether it’s related to libraries, art, Syria or equal pay. You can read more of the savage reviews of her new book here.

type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related… + articlesList=58ecdfdfe4b0df7e20456221,59075ac9e4b0bb2d086fd899,58f4c2b4e4b0b9e9848d001f,585c27aae4b0de3a08f49aa1,5907a3f8e4b05c3976819069

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Mother’s Day can be a difficult holiday for people who have experienced loss, but a new ad from American Greetings is shedding light on the ways people honor those who are gone.

Titled “Tattoo,” the Mother’s Day video follows a young woman’s experience getting her first tattoo and the special meaning behind it.

The ad is part of American Greetings’ “Give Meaning” campaign and “spotlights the special people in our lives who have passed, but never leave our heart.”

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Despite Tina Fey, Mindy Kaling, Amy Poehler, Jessica Williams, Maya Rudolph, Amy Schumer, Ellen DeGeneres, Melissa McCarthy, Sarah Silverman, Tracee Ellis Ross, Kate McKinnon, and many more, some men think you can’t be hilarious and also have boobs. So when I started doing stand-up in 2008, comedy club bookers and established comics shared a tip: Dress down so the focus stays on the jokes. No skirts allowed (short ones read video vixen; long ones suggested sister wife). No clingy shirts or deep Vs because: boobs. No LBDs or high heels. I took the advice to heart, striving mightily to forget everything I’d picked up from fashion magazines and present myself instead as a walking fashion don’t. At my early gigs, I dressed all in black, like I was about to bust a Bob Fosse move in a dinner theater rendition of Chicago. My standard getup was some variation of jeans, sneakers, vest, and button-down. I was like an alien arriving on Planet Slay Me: “I come in peace. I’m wearing Chuck Taylors. Give me a chance, dude.”

Thanks to another “rule” about women not being “girly,” I avoided jokes that revolved around dating, periods, feminism, and sex (unless at my expense). Every time I had a good set, I worried that a male comic might get mad. (This happens a lot.) I deflected compliments from audience members.

Then I turned 30. It struck me: I was living in New York City. I’d found my calling. I could afford Netflix and Hulu. I was killing it at my shows and parlaying my comedy into acting gigs and writing jobs. Not once had someone commented, “Oh, wait. Now that I notice you’re a woman, every bit you’ve ever performed retroactively sucks. You tricked me into thinking you were a guy by wearing jeans.” I was on fire. Didn’t I deserve to look hot on stage?

I began overhauling my work wardrobe to mirror what I wore in real life. Boho maxi and body-hugging sweater dresses with Louboutins or thigh-high boots. Leather miniskirts and skintight jeans that made no excuses for my butt. (I eat a lot of bread to maintain that tush!) If I was going for greatness, I couldn’t keep hiding—from my true style or my best material. I retooled my act and started drawing on breakups with guys, awkward moments in interracial dating, and funky female grooming habits. I got used to standing Os, and I stopped worrying about whether anyone would resent me for them.

I recently performed braless in a tiny tank top and jeans. Granted, I’m only a 34A, so not that big a deal, but I did devote five minutes’ worth of jokes to it, probably because I was a little self-conscious. #ImAWorkInProgress. No one in the audience seemed to fixate on the fact that my boobs were roaming free like loose blueberries in the bottom of a Whole Foods shopping cart. They only cared that—like all the women before me—I made them laugh.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Signs warning against the use of flash photography were plastered on almost every door at the Beacon Theatre Tuesday night, as Ryan Adams was set to take the stage for his first New York City show on his extensive Prisoner tour.

Adams has Meniere’s disease, an inner ear disorder that can cause a range of symptoms including vertigo, nausea and hearing loss. Flashing lights lead the singer to experience imbalance and can perhaps cause seizures, so a tour manager once again reminded the sold-out crowd to turn off their cameras’ flashes before his set began. 

Not only did this make Adams’ experience better, it changed the entire vibe of the show for the audience ― in the best way possible.

The stage was decorated with old-school TV monitors of all sizes, huge Fender speakers and stuffed tigers. A Tiffany-style lamp sat near the piano with a coat rack close by. The mood was intimate, as Adams would sing some of the more somber songs off his new album “Prisoner,” a combination of “breakup” tunes which he says are associated with the end of his marriage to Mandy Moore and the desire to move on.  

The audience stood and cheered while he opened the night with his rock ballad “Do You Still Love Me?” There were no flashes, no cameras in your face. Adams’ fans were actually taking in the moment rather than documenting every second of it ― a welcome change in the current tech-crazy world we live in.

The rest of the show was equally as personal, with people singing along to the lyrics of “To Be Young (Is to Be Sad, Is to Be High),” “Gimme Something Good,” and “New York, New York,” which Adams performed solo with a guitar and harmonica. (Lots of girls, and guys for that matter, “woo’d.” And “ooh’d” and “ahh’d.”)

Adams has a way of hooking you in while barely speaking. He’s not the type of artist who’s going to talk to the crowd after every single song, cracking jokes while explaining why or how he wrote something like “Come Pick Me Up.” Yes, he throws out some one-liners here and there ― and introduces his backing band in an entertaining bit ― but clearly it’s all about the music, atmosphere and set list for him.

Although Tuesday night didn’t include a performance of any of his “1989” covers ― “Welcome To New York” would’ve been a nice addition, no? ― or his gloomy radio single “To Be Without You,” the artist made sure to give his NYC fans what they wanted: pure Ryan Adams, lyrical storytelling through that rugged, emotive voice. 

Amen, man. 

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.