“The Biggest Hits on Spotify Right Now Are a Blast From the Past – From Gen Z to Boomers, listeners across generations are increasingly embracing throwbacks”

https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/music/spotify-streaming-hits-nostalgia-old-972818d5

Apple News+: https://apple.news/AwwVLXJvzStGa8lsYCnjWtw

Are the old songs just better or in today’s fragmented world is it just harder to reach the masses with new material.

Want to be positively stunned?

“In 2019 and 2020, over 90% of the songs on its Global Top 50 had been released in the last two years. That fell to 68.8% in the first four months of 2026, the company said. May 11 was a stunner: Seven of the top 10 songs on the platform were more than two years old.”

And:

“Still, its latest (Luminate) report indicates that the portion of 13 to 24-year-olds who say they primarily listen to songs from the 2020s has dropped from 55% in 2021 to 44% in 2025. The share of that group who are drawn most to tracks from the 1990s or earlier rose from 18% to 25%.”

So what is going on here, does the new music suck and the public knows it or is it just harder to break new tracks?

I’d go with the former.

Today’s music is either blatantly commercial or niche. Even those brought up in the MTV eighties would find the Spotify Top 50 bland, sans edge, unless it’s obvious and manipulative. There’s a whole music industrial complex feeding this fading beast and it is out of touch with the public’s desires.

The data does not lie.

Then again, the promotional system is broken. With TV nearly meaningless and active listeners not partaking of terrestrial radio, how do you reach listeners?

Via TikTok… But the dirty little secret of TikTok is music is background, not foreground. The music is subsidiary to the antics/performance of the influencer/creator, inherently making music a second class citizen.

Let’s be clear, old hits are just that, they’re established, they’ve run the gauntlet and survived, the detritus has been stripped away. The fire hose of new product, which has not gone through this winnowing process, is overwhelming and ultimately incomprehensible. This is something the music industry could address, but chooses not to in a world where every label is looking for an edge, gaming the system, they do not want a level playing field. Labels want to promote their product and their product only, they don’t believe in consensus, it’s every label for itself.

Otherwise, the three majors and a consortium of indies could get Spotify and the other DSPs to feature only a handful of tracks a week, from one to five, and only five if they’re in different genres. So every week, let’s say on Friday, when new music is released, subscribers would go to the homepage page and check out the new music for two reasons:

1. It’s been anointed.

2. Since everyone is listening to these same songs, they can talk about them, whether they feel positively or negatively about them.

And there can be a continuation chart. Which of the weekly songs survive and thrive.

Having said that, the labels have to decide if they really want to be in the new music business. Right now, their catalogs are driving profits, and investors just can’t fathom the investment, the costs required for new music for so little return. New music is sexy, old music is bank.

So either you’ve got to turn into an oldies enterprise or…

You’ve got to change the new music formula completely.

You’ve got to produce more music in more genres and stick with it.

Right now the major labels only put out a tiny sliver of the new music they used to, and it’s only in genres that are blatantly commercial, otherwise the lift is too heavy. So you get pop and hip-hop and anything that is not inherently commercial is pushed aside. But this business was built on the seemingly uncommercial that turned mass, sometimes over two to five albums, it took a while for the music to percolate in the marketplace, for the audience to cotton to it, for the acts to grow.

That commitment is out the window.

But you know what genre is burgeoning?

Country.

Today’s country music is the rock of the seventies, and one thing is for sure, there’s a huge demand for it. What is called rock today has no appeal to the masses. It’s noisy with less than palatable vocals and it appeals to a tranche of the audience, but never seems to grow larger.

In other words, if you’re looking for rock to come back, forget it.

But country can get bigger.

Country is played on stringed instruments, i.e. guitars, and it has traditional song structure and even the lowliest of the hits have somewhat relatable lyrics. The formula is easy, but seemingly everybody outside the sphere pooh-poohs it. In other words, verses, choruses, bridges, changes, melodies…the building blocks of popular music for over a hundred years.

But not in the Spotify Top 50.

Not that all new music has to be country, but…

Do not expect the masses to cotton to acts that have bad vocals. There are a lot of acts that do decent touring numbers but can never achieve mass because unlike in the old days, the singers can’t.

On the other hand, we’ve got decent singers who can’t write. And believability is core to success. Once the public perceived the performers were writing from the heart, their innermost feelings, music blew up in the album era of the late sixties. Today’s pop landscape is akin to the pre-Beatle pop dreck. There was a marketplace, but it didn’t drive the culture.

Which brings me to the fact that those in new music production are too hip for the room. They think they know better. They’ve got contempt for the average listener unless they’re playing to them with lowest common denominator dreck.

So…

Expect this trend to continue. Taylor Swift went pop but country Morgan Wallen gets more streams. How come no one can acknowledge this? And both do stadium business.

Hip-hop is fading.

And whereas the voices of yore had character, today’s are interchangeable.

This is a real problem, expect the trend to continue. And to deny it and refuse to address it is to have one’s head in the sand.

I don’t expect any action, because that would require self-examination by those involved, which they’re not wont to do.

I’d say the major labels’ new music production is ready for disruption, but that’s already happened. They don’t develop new acts, they just try to capitalize on those that have already had success online.

This is an industry whose head is so far up its own self-satisfied ass that it refuses to change, as music loses its perch as the most powerful entertainment medium.

Want to know which way the wind blows?

Go on Tiktok, or watch Netflix.

Ignore the fact that slim genres have vocal audiences, like K-pop. That’s niche. We haven’t had broad since Adele. Who is so big, she can afford to spend years away from the marketplace, whereas for most acts, if they’re not in your face 24/7, they’re instantly forgotten. We need more acts like Adele, who float above the scene.

But we do have Chris Stapleton.

You may not find Morgan Wallen appealing, but Stapleton is both successful and appealing, everyone in Nashville agrees that Chris is the king. So why aren’t there more Stapletons? Because great artists are born, not made. They have a viewpoint, that they hone. But in most pop the focus is on every younger performers, it’s utterly laughable.

There is a way out of this mess, but it would require turning around the Titanic.

But since I don’t see that happening, expect more and more ancient hits to resurface, to have more mindshare amongst the youth than the new material produced just for them.

Luminate report: https://luminatedata.com/reports/retro-revival-2026/

Legendary concert promoter Jim Koplik is the president of Connecticut and the Upstate New York Region for Live Nation.

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/jim-koplik/id1316200737?i=1000771141122

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/ef619747-2be9-4dfa-97e5-dd32fe513567/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-jim-koplik

We’ve seen this movie before. Back in the nineties, with Bob Morgado and the Warner Music Group. A man with no expertise in music single-handedly destroyed the company. But it was even worse, he ultimately fired his co-conspirator Doug Morris, who went on with Edgar Bronfman, Jr.’s money to create Universal Music, which still dominates the marketplace today. As for Warner? It was sold for bupkes in the wake of the AOL merger and it has never regained its market power or share, never mind its gravitas.

Mo Ostin was the most respected executive in the music business, the one acts wanted to work with. He spoke artist, CBS spoke money. CBS would squeeze every last dollar out of your album, sacrificing credibility and career longevity, whereas Mo would leave some money on the table, believing by not burning out your name, by not alienating core fans, you’d have a longer, and ultimately more lucrative, career.

So once Mo and Lenny were gone, who wanted to sign with Warner? And why? The company’s whole philosophy changed. From committing to artist development to throwing it against the wall for one album and seeing if it stuck, and if it did not, the act was dropped.

The Warner label is a shadow of itself. As for Atlantic, it was always about hits, that was Doug’s forte, checking retail action and capitalizing on it. But now… What, they went through Lyor, then his protégé Julie Greenwald and now another man who knows nothing about music, Robert Kyncl, brought Elliott Grainge on board to make the trains run on time, the SON of Lucian Grainge, who runs Universal, and someone with not much of a track record.

Kind of like Nick Bilton, but that’s even worse. At least Elliott’s been working in music, whereas Bilton has absolutely no experience in television news. Then again, anybody can do it, right?

All those dues paid by the “60 Minutes” staff, they’re worthless. You can’t plot experience on a spreadsheet, so it’s superfluous.

Let’s start with Bari Weiss.

No, let’s start with the Ellison’s Paramount Skydance/Warner Bros. Discovery merger. How do you get it approved?

Well, it’s a pay to play administration. And that’s what everybody’s been doing, from the lawyers to Tim Cook to… They say their hands are tied, if they don’t cozy up to Trump their businesses will take a hit. And one thing is for sure, in America it’s all about mazuma, i.e. the dollars. The stock market is king, isn’t that what Trump keeps telling us?

But the funny little thing is the law firms that didn’t settle, that fought the extortion, won in court. As for those who paid up…many of their star attorneys bolted, and it’s now much harder to recruit new associates. Who wants to work for an outfit with no backbone? It’s bad enough you’re doing drudge work, you need to believe in it.

So Bari Weiss…

Got to give her credit. She built an entire career on speaking truth to the “New York Times.” To what degree she was right is ultimately irrelevant, the key here is the “Times” did not see it coming, the “Times” was so busy bending over backwards to appease the woke, abiding by left wing ideology, that the Grey Lady was ripe for attack. The right wing had been attacking the “Times” for years, but now that one of the “Times”‘s own had revolted and bolted, that was red meat that could be grabbed on to.

As for Weiss…as depicted so accurately in the “New York” magazine piece, she leveraged the blowback to get money from all those with a buck who were afraid of their own disruption, by either Trump or the left. Weiss was a networker. She climbed the ladder. And the Ellisons are neophytes and they gave her the news gig, believing it would appease Trump.

But when you work in an organization…

Weiss never played nice, doesn’t seem to know how. There’s a skill in managing people, especially when they’re smart people with an audience. Morgado didn’t know how to manage Mo, who moved on. And the end result was those searching for a deal were less inclined to sign with Warner. Despite the rise of the techies, most business is not comprised of zeros and ones, soft skills are very important, and Weiss does not possess them.

And staying on the music tip…remember Andrew Lack and the rootkit crisis? I mean how hard could music be, someone in news could take over and triumph, right? No, Lack left with his tail between his legs, he couldn’t read public sentiment.

Nor can Weiss and Bilton.

One thing is for sure, “60 Minutes” is toast. Done. Kaput. It takes decades to build a brand, but it can be eviscerated overnight. “60 Minutes” was built on trust, and now that’s gone. As well as the talent.

As for Scott Pelley…Weiss and Bilton are saying that Pelley doesn’t know how to behave, that he didn’t comport himself with dignity, they expected him to roll over just like Putin did with Ukraine. But Zelensky and the public proved Putin wrong. Do they really think viewers are so brain dead as to overlook this crisis?

Warner and Atlantic have been permanently crippled, and Elektra is now an imprint at best. There’s been no coming back, over DECADES!

One more thing, Weiss has no public fans, and CBS is a public facing business. She can charm the fat cats, but not the hoi polloi. That’s just how out of touch she is.

As for Pelley… How far are you pushed before you revolt?

That’s not only the question at “60 Minutes,” but in America at large. Are we ripe for an Arab Spring moment?

But shy of that, even the Republicans revolted against Trump’s slush fund. You can push the people only so far.

As for the intermediaries, the fourth estate, the news industrial complex…

I used to rely on the L.A. “Times” recommendations to help me decide how to vote. They no longer publish them, for fear of pissing off Trump and other Republicans, leaving me with less information to make my decisions.

As for the “Washington Post,” the Op-Ed page is now bizarroland. The exact opposite of the previous viewpoint. You had some guy railing that California should lower the new automobile purchase tax rate to compete with Montana’s and…it was fascinating to read the comments. Almost no one agreed, they all said that the issue wasn’t California’s levy, but about closing the loophole. And I bet most of you don’t even know what I’m talking about, but the bottom line is the wealthy don’t want to pay taxes on their Ferraris, so they register them in Montana, even though they’re driving in Beverly Hills. As for closing loopholes…isn’t this what Trump said he was going to do? Yeah, right.

So, Scott Pelley is standing up for all of us. And unlike Tim Apple and the rest of the weasels, he’s calling it as he sees it:

“For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them. Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done. Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.”

As for today’s firing, Pelley contradicted Weiss’s version:

“Bari Weiss knows what she said is not true. In the meeting on Tuesday, in which I was effectively fired, there was no effort of any kind to ‘find a way back,’ as Weiss said in the editorial meeting.”

They call this speaking truth to power, something today’s musical acts are afraid to do, even though music’s explosion in the sixties was based on this. Pelley is willing to put it all on the line, i.e. HIS JOB!

Are you willing to put your job on the line? Seemingly no one in America is willing to put their job on the line. If anything, their job can’t be eliminated, things have to stay the same, technology schmechnology.

As for Weiss… She’s employing the Trump playbook, lie and stonewall. But he’s a protected President and Weiss serves at the will of the Ellisons. Just like Trump is only loyal to himself, everybody else is expendable, Weiss is too stupid to realize the buck does not stop with her, that she’s turning herself into a pariah, believing that the intelligentsia she has cottoned to has her back. Yeah, right, how unsophisticated can you be?

As for you and me…

We have power, it’s just a matter of whether we exercise it.

ABC took Kimmel off the air and people started canceling their Disney subscriptions and they brought him back. Now action is not as clear cut in this case, but people can definitely stop watching CBS, the only show that was necessary viewing was “60 Minutes.”

As for Pelley…

He could be toxic. If this was a year ago, probably no one would hire him, for fear of Trump blowback. I think he’ll wind up somewhere, but let’s be clear…

Pelley is Curt Flood. Who ruined his career to stand up for what was right.

We’ve been living in the land of money and expedience for so long that doing what is right is almost never considered, especially if there is a potential cost. You’ve just go to look at the Republicans in Congress. Cross Trump and you lose your job. But why are you entitled to that job anyway? You don’t serve at the will of Trump, but the PEOPLE!

The tide has turned in the last week. The removal of Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center, the quashing of the slush fund, and what is Trump doing? He’s doubling down! He’s refusing to abide by the court’s decision and return tariff money, he’s now cracking down on Brazil, levying taxes on the country… What will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back?

There may never be one. That’s how somnambulant and afraid people are. Which is why we depend on people like Scott Pelley to show the way.

How do you lose power?

Very slowly and then overnight.

Am I optimistic, no. But one thing is for sure, we need credible news outlets which operate at arm’s length from institutions, who are willing to call balls and strikes as they see them.

We just lost another one.

And there are very few left.

And it’s all playing out right in front of us.

Who thought it would come to this in America.

It was hard getting into another book after “London Falling.” We’re searching for excellence in a world of me-too. And even though we all use the same language, the same alphabet, certain artists rise above. Then again, how many people creating deserve the term “artist”?

That’s one thing that struck me in “So Old, So Young,” the musical references. Mindless tripe like Justin Timberlake. This is the music of the millennials. Oh, Timberlake is more talented than most, but compared to even the lowliest of the classic rockers… And don’t fault me for being myopic, that rock savant known as Barry Manilow had this to say in the “Los Angeles Times” after lamenting modern pop has no melody:

“But the way they’re writing songs these days is not the way I know how to write songs. They don’t do a verse, a chorus, a bridge, a chorus, a big ending. To me, when I listen, the songs feel like run-on sentences.”

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2026-05-27/barry-manilow-cancer-las-vegas-new-album-bette-midler-dionne-warwick

And there you have it.

Anyway, “So Old, So Young” employs the classic formula of friends go to college together and then their lives are delineated as the years go by. The first book I read in this genre was actually nonfiction, 1977’s “Loose Change” by Sara Davidson. You get wrapped up in the women’s world and…

That’s why I reserved “So Old, So Young” at the library. The “New York Times” review said:

“Grant Ginder’s ‘So Old, So Young,’ about friends who met at the University of Pennsylvania navigating careers and families, while drifting apart over the course of almost two decades…”

I’m a sucker for this stuff. Maybe because as time goes by you change, or you don’t. But the truth is despite so many doing their best to hang on, we all evolve. And this is described so well in “So Old, So Young.”

“Things would change little by little, until they didn’t recognize each other at all.”

I reconnected with my best friend from high school a couple of years back, we hadn’t seen each other in decades, and although we still communicated, we couldn’t connect, we’d taken different paths, turned into different people.

“There was always the chance that they would both realize that the people they had turned into were totally incompatible with the versions of themselves that they remembered—that what they had been chasing wasn’t actually each other, but the way they used to feel when they were together.”

It was a time and place, and you have vivid memories, but that path reached an end, the feeling can never be recaptured.

“They were never going to stop growing up. Why was that so hard to accept?”

I see this constantly amongst my fellow baby boomers, who dress as teenagers to go see bands they loved when they were still in high school. They feel if they just believe nothing has changed, that will be the case. Yet that is delusional.

“They were going to lose parts of themselves that they had thought were irreplaceable, only to find that they didn’t miss them at all.”

This is what growing up looks like. You’re confronted with this when you run into people you used to know, or even your parents, who think your interests have remained the same, even though you’ve moved on. It’s okay to get old. It’s scary, but you get to learn new things, change your behavior, everybody says they want to stay young, not me, I think of all the mistakes I made back then…I know why I committed them, but with what I know now I can play the game of life so much better.

“Because staying young forever wasn’t just impossible—it was exhausting. No one was meant to shoulder that amount of possibility for very long.”

You’ve got to let go. Realize you’ve made your choices and you can’t go back to the beginning. That’s for young people. You can adjust, but you’ll never be twenty five again, thank god.

So what we’ve got in “So Old, So Young,” is a group of just graduated college buddies who are now living in apartments in New York, starting their careers.

One is rich enough to work at a gallery, but it’s funny, as time goes by, others make much more money, her standard of living is not as high as it was when she was supported by her automobile dealership owning father.

And then there is Richie, who is out, and Adam who is not. It’s still a struggle for many, even if your parents accept you, do they really? Do people now treat you differently?

And then there’s the romantic connection… This is extremely well done, especially from the viewpoint of a guy, when you realize the woman who is talking to you likes you, is maybe even infatuated with you. It’s rare, but it happens.

So they get jobs and lose them and are confronted with life choices. Can you leave the city for your boyfriend’s new job? And if you don’t, will you regret it, possibly forever? Most of the people from the past…if you actually connect with them, you don’t want to be with them, oftentimes it’s a fantasy, but not always.

So years go by and the group keeps reconnecting. There are weddings, birthday parties… Are you invited? Are you part of the core group? And if you’re not, can you weasel your way in?

And then there’s the issue of your significant other…you may love them, but will your longtime friends? And will said significant other read the tea leaves and adjust their behavior to fit in? So many can’t, and this ends up severing relationships.

And life evolves. You’re on a fast career path and then you get fired.

You like to imbibe and have fun, but does the liquor take over your life to your detriment?

And are children part of the plan?

The best sequence in the book is when the singles go into the suburbs for a birthday party for their friend’s new friends and children…

Even better is what is said which should not be.

The beginning of the book is confusing. Too many names and backstories to keep track of. But if you stay with it, you start to read the identities, but even better you get hooked into the behavior of the individuals.

And then there’s the big blow-up. Based on people saying what they should not, behaving as they should not. You’ve been there, you’re so frustrated with the behavior of your so-called best friend that you let loose with invective that puts a stake in the heart of the relationship. And this is no longer college, everybody can retreat into their lives with their new friends.

And then there are the people you couldn’t tolerate who ultimately become your besties.

It’s all in “So Old, So Young.”

This is not highbrow work, but it is ultimately fulfilling, because when it all starts to gel about forty percent through you get hooked because you’ve been there, you have old friends and new ones, you’ve been growing up, how do you handle it?

I won’t quite call “So Old, So Young” a beach read, it’s more than that. But you might want to crack it out in the sun this summer.

Then again, you become involved in its world. You can discuss what happens with your fellow readers thereafter, but it’s what you feel when you’re reading it…

Growing up is the same for every generation, it’s only the details that change. The methods of communication, i.e. today’s constant connection via the smartphone, and Uber and…everybody’s so networked today, which is why when you fall out with someone it’s so glaring.

Not everybody is going to like this book, not everybody is going to get past the beginning, but you know if this is the kind of book that appeals to you. Ultimately, it’s only people and how they navigate life that is interesting. This is what fiction does best. We’re flooded with headlines of the antics of people both famous and not, but what we are almost never exposed to is the inner dialogue of these people, and everybody has one. Then again, so many deny it, it’s too painful to accept their faux pas and the fact that they’ve grown up and are now different.

I had to stay up late last night to finish “So Old, So Young,” and I know some of you will have to too.