Hairstyle similar to a bowl cut / SUN 7-19-26 / Whitesmith's material / Judge of diamond value? / Person providing a sworn account / One-named singer with the 1994 hit "You Gotta Be" / Strauss opera inspired by a Sophocles tragedy / Britain's most prestigious military decoration / Block someone's passage, say / 2000 Christina Aguilera #1 hit

Constructor: Michael Lieberman

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

[31D: "Star Wars" character Kylo ___]

THEME: "Raising Capital" — theme answers (running Across) jog upward for a stretch before returning to their normal eastward direction—that upward stretch spells out a world capital each time: 

Theme answers:

• THANKS A MILLION (25A: "I really, really appreciate it!") (Lima)
• MAIL-IN REBATE (28A: After-the-fact discount) (Bern)
• VICTORIA CROSS (69A: Britain's most prestigious military decoration) (Cairo)
• DROOLS OVER (71A: Fantasizes about) (Oslo)
• ERECT A BARRIER (73A: Block someone's passage, say) (Rabat)
• HOME MORTGAGE (110A: Bank offering for a property buyer) (Rome)
• "WHAT A GIRL WANTS" (112A: 2000 Christina Aguilera #1 hit) (Riga)

Word of the Day: EDGAR (3D: Hairstyle similar to a bowl cut) —

The Edgar cut, otherwise known as the Edgar or the Edgar haircut, is a hairstyle often associated with Latino culture. In the 2010s and 2020s, the haircut became popular with members of Generation Z and Millennials. The haircut first became popular in US border states in the Southwest, such as Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. The haircut has been compared to a bowl cut, a similar haircut with a straight fringe. // The Edgar hairstyle is usually characterized as the front hair having straight fringes, or bangs, along with the sides tapered. The hairstyle can be worn with any hair texture, including more wavy and curly hair. The Edgar hairstyle is most prominent among young Latinos. // The origin for the name Edgar is unconfirmed, although it is often misattributed to having been named after former Seattle Mariners baseball player Edgar Martínez in early 2019. // The hairstyle is associated with the takuaches, members of a Mexican-American subculture of truck enthusiasts, and sometimes called the 'takuache cut' as a result.. The hairstyle has been found to have similarities to the hairstyles of Indigenous tribes such as the Jumano. The haircut is famously slangily called the "cuh" in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, after the song Cuh 956 by Dagobeat. (wikipedia)

• • •

You're not really "raising capital," so much as raising the part of a phrase that, backwards, spells a capital, but I suppose that it's all OK, since the "raised" part reads correctly as a Down answer. It would be much harder to appreciate the "capital" part of it all if you had to read the capital upside-down. Anyway, this theme was mildly entertaining. I enjoyed remembering four- and five-letter world capitals, and piecing together the winding theme answers that contained them. Well, most of them. I did not particularly enjoy ERECT A BARRIER, which is giving off extreme EAT A SANDWICH vibes. Truly the worst, most contrived themer of the lot. But the others are all solid, even fun. OK, no one's ever going to describe HOME MORTGAGE as "fun," but THANKS A MILLION and DROOLS OVER have good (if messy) energy, and "WHAT A GIRL WANTS"—that's inspired. My favorite of the lot, by far. Man, I loved that song. Also "Genie in a Bottle" (same album, so same time period). Reminds me very, very much of my first year here in Binghamton. Huge hit. Catchy in a way I found hard to deny. I would love to be able to say I'm more a "Big Poppa" guy than a "WHAT A GIRL WANTS" guy, but I would be lying (I do like "Big Poppa," I just didn't listen to it with any regularity) (I also missed the Wu-Tang Clan entirely, somehow. What the f--- was I doing in the '90s??? Besides taking forever to write my dissertation, I mean? Huge hip-hop knowledge gap, sadly).

The fill today ... IT'S OK. Not sparkling, but not terrible either. I only DEEP SIGHed a couple of times. At ERECT A BARRIER, obviously. Also at DECLARANT (!?). Needed every cross to get that one. Yesterday, A FORTIRIORI, today DECLARANT. Yeesh. [Grimace]. Easy on the legalese, guys. Also did not love STEEPENS, as clued (80A: Gets more expensive). I know that "steep" is slang for "expensive," but when you put "steep" into verb form ... it really doesn't work. Can't imagine it. Ear rejects it. But beyond that, no real ugly spots. Maybe a bit more crosswordese than I'd like (SKEE IONIA ISO OHO SCH VSO OWS EMS ENT ULNAE etc. etc. AND ON AND ON), but then there's enough longer and livelier stuff to keep the puzzle from being a total drag. PLEADS OUT, NUTCRACKERS, "GET A GRIP!," stuff like that. There's nothing terribly obscure here today. Just a couple of pop culture items that are bound to throw many if not most solvers off balance. Firstly, DES'REE ... is there an accent on her name? ... no, spelled it right the first time, yay me. I would not call her a household name, but she sure has a name that's built for crosswords. If you were alive and near a radio at all in the mid-'90s, you definitely heard "You Gotta Be," though there's a good chance you never knew the name of the artist. Well, now you know.

It's also possible that you knew the band Mötley Crüe but had no idea what the lead singer's name is. That seems reasonable. I somehow knew he was Vince Neil, though I think I misspelled it at first today (NEAL). Continuing our musical odyssey, there's also the Psychedelic FURS—I was just looking at the Pretty in Pink soundtrack earlier today (that is, Saturday). They sang the title song. Also "Love My Way," which may be the only other song I can name by them. Oh, wait, no—they also sang "The Ghost in You," which is terrific.

Besides DECLARANT, the only thing I really didn't know was the EDGAR haircut (see Word of the Day, above). The theme was pretty easy to uncover. Once you hit the [See title] and [—] clues, and the theme answers don't seem to fit in their allotted spaces, you know something's up. [See title] makes things fairly obvious—part of the answer goes up ... probably spells out a capital. I actually thought the "capital" might be monetary (LIRE? EURO?), and like I said, at first I thought the "capital" would literally go up, from bottom to top, not top to bottom—but all this stuff sorted itself out in fairly short order. 

Bullets:

• 65A: Judge of diamond value? (AARON) — this is AARON Judge of the New York Yankees, 8-time All-Star and 3-time AL MVP winner. He played college ball for the Fresno State Bulldogs. This is of interest only to people who grew up in Fresno (i.e. me). 
• 55A: Actress Shirley of "The Apartment" (MACLAINE) — fun fact: The Apartment is my favorite movie. I mean, I hate to choose among my precious babies, but if I had to choose, then The Apartment wins (also in the mix: Cleo from 5 to 7, Chinatown, Killer of Sheep, and Rear Window)

• 79A: Brand seen on the U.S. World Cup jerseys (NIKE) — today, the World Cup concludes with the championship match between Spain and Argentina. Yesterday's third-place match between France and England, I didn't watch, but based on the absolutely insane score (England won 6-4), it doesn't seem like anyone was really trying, at least not defensively, yeesh. 10 goals combined??? That's the most of the tournament, the most since Germany beat Curaçao 7-1 in the Group Stage (first round). Expect the Spain-Argentina match to be a much, much lower-scoring affair, especially as Spain has conceded just one goal the entire tournament.
• 5D: Strauss opera inspired by a Sophocles tragedy (ELEKTRA) — I'm never sure if it's ELEKTRA or ELECTRA. Apparently it's both. Wikipedia's entry is for "Electra" ("also spelt Elektra"). The record label is ELEKTRA. "K" seems Greekier, but if you went with "C" there, that's a reasonable "mistake."

• 16D: Whitesmith's material (TIN) — I've not heard the term "whitesmith" before, though TIN wasn't hard to infer (blacksmiths work with metal ... three-letter metal ... tada). 

"A whitesmith is a metalworker who does finishing work on iron and steel such as filing, lathing, burnishing or polishing. The term also refers to a person who works with "white" or light-coloured metals, and is sometimes used as a synonym for tinsmith. Whitesmithing developed as a speciality of blacksmithing in the 1700s, when extra time was given to filing and polishing certain products." (wikipedia)

• 45D: Classic Italian appetizer (BRUSCHETTA) — after trying to make PROSCIUTTO work here for a second, I got enough crosses to figure this one out. The "CH" in BRUSCHETTA is hard, like the "K" in ELEKTRA. Broo-SKET-uh. You can pronounce it "sh." Lots of people do. Lots of wrong people. Or, you can pronounce it like this, which is my new favorite variation:

That's all for today. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)