Hideaway
This is a hit!
Last night I listened to the Spotify Top 50, to be more specific, “Today’s Top Hits,” hand-curated for your listening pleasure.
Sunday I listened to “Top Tracks in the United States” and almost barfed. So much was imitative of everything else, like all the producers were living in an echo chamber.
But “Today’s Top Hits” had this, Kiesza’s “Hideaway.”
Now the very first cut I heard on “Today’s Top Hits” was by Imagine Dragons, entitled “Battle Cry,” and I was astounded by how good it was. What came after…
You’ve got to understand. Baby boomers are history. Done. Gone. Kaput. As is classic rock. Sure, the acts live on, on the road, but the younger generation driving the new music business does not employ them as their frame of reference.
And all the deep niche people e-mailing me abhor the hits.
But if you’re under twenty, that’s the focus.
In other words, in an incomprehensible, cacophonous world, we all gravitate to reference points, that which rises to the top, that which everybody else listens to. Which is why so many of the tracks sound the same. Because it’s the same producers. And what today’s youngsters treasure most is fame. Money comes thereafter. And you don’t become famous making music that cannot get on the radio, that most people don’t want to listen to.
So we live in a pop world. And I wish people would try to expand the format, but outlets are suspicious of something new and…
We’ve got too many drum machines, too many beats oldsters would find less than infectious, and then you find something like Kiesza’s “Hideaway.”
It was the tenth song on the playlist, and it exploded into my ears, I was stopped in my tracks, WHAT IS THIS?
It’s the vocal. And it turns out this is truly Kiesza, all her tracks feature this sound, which is a good thing.
And my initial point is you can hear a hit. They’re rare. But they’re what we’re looking for. We want to uncover them. We want to listen to them. Over and over and over again.
And the weakest part of this track is the bass beats.
But Kiesza herself is an absolute KILLER!
Doing some research, I find I’m behind the curve. “Hideaway” went number one in the U.K. The video has nearly thirty million views. The only one out of the loop is me. And U.S. radio. But that won’t be for long. Because “Hideaway” can’t be denied, because of Kiesza herself.
Go down the rabbit hole and you discover the video was done in one take. And I discovered “Hideaway” through my ears, but I clicked through. And I was BLOWN AWAY! The clip had the offhandedness of the early Madonna work. Sure, it was choreographed, but Kiesza seemed to be having so much fun, seemed to need it so much, that I was sold.
Because this is the way it is today. Everybody’s a star. At least in their own mind. And if they’ve got the goods, they employ all media to get their message across. ‘N Sync’s moves were too studied, as if a mistake would get them fired, whereas the dancing in this clip is just imperfect enough to evidence LIFE!
So I clicked through to the Haddaway cover, and found out Kiesza maintained the same magic.
And then I went to the new Soundcloud clip, and although I wasn’t sure it was a hit, I did get it.
So what I’m saying here is while oldsters lament the loss of albums, while oldsters are bitching they can’t get paid, youngsters don’t care about any of that, they got the memo, they know it’s all about the track, that you’ve got to hook people with that and then dribble out another single, that the album, if it comes at all, is last, just a financial cleanup effort. Youngsters are all about surfing the now.
And, once again, the now is a pop world. Even country is pop. It’s where the ears are. And if you don’t care about attention, if you don’t care about fame, if you don’t care about money, stay in your niche. But the action is in pop.
