I just heard Sheryl Crow’s "If It Makes You Happy" on XM’s Top Tracks.  It reminded me how her new album is a stiff.  Because it has no HITS!

Now should Sheryl Crow be castigated for creating no hits?  Is this a human flaw?  No, I give her props for making the music she wanted.  However, I do castigate her for the hype of said record, wherein she said her previous lame album, "C’mon, C’mon", was made under duress, that she capitulated and gave the label what it wanted.

What does Interscope want?  HITS!

You know a hit.  It’s a catchy track.  That can be used in advertisements, as bumpers on TV, that can be played at the ballpark.

What blew up the music business was the changed definition of a hit.  Suddenly, an album track that was spun on FM radio was a hit.  Like "Stairway To Heaven".  A track that was too long and of too undefined a structure to fit within the AM radio hit paradigm.

What’s a hit today?

Something that is on everybody’s hard drive.

What is on people’s hard drives?  Oftentimes music that the major label hasn’t even RELEASED!  Like this duet between Sheryl and the Allman Brothers of "Midnight Rider" I’m listening to at this very moment.

It’s now about careers.  Creating a body of work that resonates with the public.  But, the major label wants HITS!  And, if you create a hit, you end up turning off the act’s core audience.  Because usually there hasn’t been a long enough career to cement the band/fan relationship.

So, here we see the opposing forces at work.  The label wants a hit and the act wants to pursue its musical dream.  You have Clive Davis telling you to work with a song doctor, to add catchy elements, and you wonder what this septuagenarian knows about YOUR music.  Why HE’S such an expert.

And by the old standards, very few tracks make it as hits anyway.  Because of the fracturing of society.  Not enough eyeballs/ears are exposed to the same stuff on a regular basis.  I guarantee you TENS OF MILLIONS of people have never heard Mariah Carey’s big hit, "We Belong Together".  But there wasn’t a soul alive who didn’t hear "Satisfaction" in the summer of ’65.

Not that Sheryl Crow didn’t promote this new album "Wildflower" like it wasn’t a hit.  She played the Dallas Cowboys’ Thanksgiving Day game.  She did incredible rounds of press.  But obviously it didn’t work.  Because the album didn’t sell.  Because the people you’re appealing to with this extravaganza of hype only respond to the hit.  And without a hit, they don’t buy.  And the true fan…he’s puking.  As you focus your attention on garnering the attention of people who don’t care while HE was devoted to you.

Satiate fan devotion.  Give the fan exactly what he wants.  More tunes.

But the label wants FEWER tunes.  They say it confuses the marketplace.  Hell, they even tell radio WHICH TRACK TO PLAY!  Sending that track and that track only.

But, with the fragmented listening landscape, unless you’re on Top Forty, and Top Forty is almost purely urban, you can’t reach enough people to go platinum.  And thus you didn’t have a hit.  And thus your label hates you, or ignores you.  So, why don’t you add a rapper.  Get one of the hip-hop producers to add beats.  Play the game why don’t you, we need HITS!

Hits mean less than ever before.  And, a traditional hit may not even burnish your career, might even hurt it.  So, ask yourself, the game the major label wants to play, is it working FOR YOU??