Tom Petty
What’s the single?
Where’s the single?
You mean it’s not out yet?
One thing about getting old is you get tired of the trick, tired of the publicity, tired of the media empire genuflecting for a star, promoting his latest work in order to achieve an auspicious debut that in today’s modern era is usually forgotten. Every week there’s a new number one. Do you know what it was last week? Furthermore, the paradigm of getting huge first week sales in order to stimulate reorders hearkens back to a day before digital, and I know no one with a dial phone.
What is going on here? How has one of our most thoughtful musicians missed the mark so badly?
I liked what Tom had to say in “Men’s Journal.” The article in the L.A. “Times” wasn’t as good. Jian Ghomeshi did a fabulous podcast. But talking about music is no substitute for the real thing. The reason Tom Petty blew up was because of what came out of the speakers, it was irresistible.
And what I’ve heard so far is not. But it’s only snippets.
And why can I not hear the music when the hype is so big? Today marketing without availability is useless. Ever notice that Steve Jobs almost always finished his product introductions by saying the new item was available TODAY!
Tom, Tom, Tom, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t live in the modern era and operate like we’re living in the past. And you obviously want people to hear the music, you’re not doing your best job here. All you’re doing is informing hard core fans you’ve got a new album, and most of them gave up purchasing your new tunes long ago.
So the hype says your new work is a return to the sound of your first two albums. Sounds great, in theory. Where’s the cut I can immediately click on to verify this? Otherwise, it’s just hot air.
Come on people, especially if you’re an oldster who had success once. We live in a singles world, and if you can’t deliver a single that wows us instantly and makes us want to hear it incessantly, you’re losing. Is it really that hard? You took three years to cut the damn thing. Talk to the major label guys, they won’t let a new act put out an album without a certified hit single.
We’re always ready for greatness. Nothing would thrill me more than to tell you Tom Petty is back. But I don’t know where to start!
The hype just tells me the album is incredible, like I haven’t heard THAT before.
And by writing this I’ll be inundated with the words of fans who believe they know Tom, his innermost thoughts, even though they’ve never been within yards of him, never mind spoken to him, telling me how dare I challenge one of our greatest pop/rock stars!
Give me a break. Are you the same people who say you can’t criticize the President?
But the truth is these people come from a bygone era, where musicians were our leaders, where we hung on every word. But we haven’t had that spirit since 1969, or a few years thereafter.
And why all the frontloading?
Oh, I know, you want to get the word out.
But we live in the Internet era! No one only reads their local paper, if they read that at all. They surf, they either get multiple impressions or you can’t reach them. And there are so many new products that unless yours instantly catches fire, it’s forgotten.
Come on, Sam Smith led with “Stay With Me.” What track are you leading with Tom?
Don’t talk to me about radio formats, in today’s era you need no radio. Release “Free Fallin'” with the same video and it blows up on YouTube. But something’s got to bring me there!
You’ve got to energize the fans, you’ve got to do that through the music! Multiple times a day people e-mail me about acts/tracks. The Petty hype is in full swing, but not a single person has e-mailed me a link, no one knows where to start!
And how about spreading the hype out, keeping yourself in the public eye, giving us multiple bites at your album.
And why is there an album at all? It certainly can’t be so you can play it live, you know better than anyone that people don’t want to hear new music, you can play three or four new cuts and that’s stretching it. And can you blame people, when they pay a hundred dollars a ticket!
It’s not 1977 anymore. And it’s not 1997.
Tom Petty’s got fame. He gets to leverage that.
In the old days, we’d be listening to the radio and hear the new cut and the hype would resonate. But I haven’t listened to FM since 2003, when I got the satellite. And most of Tom’s fans are not rabid about following the music scene, they just want to go to the show and hear their favorites and relive their lives.
Which is why most over the hill acts don’t even cut new material, why bother?
But you Tom, you deplore today’s 70’s style country, you believe you’re current, you believe you’re relevant…then PROVE IT!
P.S. If you’re an antique act I want you to stop bitching about the present, you’re making much more money on the road than your older brothers, ticket prices have far exceeded inflation. Sure, recorded revenue is down, but it’s more than made up for by ducats and sponsorship.
P.P.S. You grew up in the album era, the album is dead, unless it’s a concept. Write the new “Sgt. Pepper,” we’re ready, but even Paul McCartney can’t do that. So woodshed in the studio until you come up with a hit single. Sure, you can work with Max Martin/Dr. Luke, but you don’t have to sell your soul, you can do it alone, if you’ve still got the chops, but the truth is most of you don’t, you’re just not as hungry anymore.
P.P.P.S. We live in an immediate society where no one wants to wait. We read online and we want a link where we can hear the music and only the music just that fast. We don’t want a link to hear the whole damn album previewed on NPR or anywhere else.
P.P.P.P.S. Forget the frontload, that’s for movies, and they’re not doing that well. Your track will only sustain, as will your career, if the story is ongoing, if the track sticks and you follow it up with another one. Every day there’s another product hyped, and every day it’s forgotten. Your challenge is to find something that STICKS!
P.P.P.P.P.S. The Tom Petty hype is superfluous, we don’t need to know more about him, it’s all a front for the fact that he’s got new music. Which we can’t hear!
P.P.P.P.P.P.S. Spoon-feed people, make it easy. Amazon has one click, people should be able to find your music easily everywhere they look. Forget about money, if you can get people to listen and continue to listen, cash will rain down.
P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. First you go to YouTube. Search on “Tom Petty.” You’d have no idea there’s a new album, nothing comes up! If the hype is done right it makes people want to check out the music, which is unhearable, never mind a focus on one specific track. Oldsters, they hate the future but refuse to get with the program.
FINALLY
If you search on Spotify (and in iTunes), you will find one track from the new album, “Fault Lines.” I dare you to listen to it. (Never mind buy it, how stupid a paradigm is that? You want me to pay to discover whether I like something, how quaint, how 1969. The future is charging me for checking it out, and continuing to charge if it’s so good I want to listen to it some more!)
So, the first album starts with “American Girl.” “Breakdown” broke the album wide open.
The second led with “Listen To Her Heart.” Which led with its hook and enraptured you.
Needless to say, “Refugee” exploded out of the speakers, making “Damn The Torpedoes” a gigantic hit.
And “Fault Lines” starts with an endless, pedestrian drum and then a reasonable guitar hook, but the point is for someone whose career was based on the compact single, the intro to “Fault Lines” is so damn long that you’d have to be a diehard fan to wait until Tom starts to sing. Needless to say, “Fault Lines” is not even close to the aforementioned tracks from the initial LPs. Wasn’t anybody home? Couldn’t anybody say no?
“Fault Lines” makes Katy Perry looks like a genius. Luke Bryan too. The game isn’t that hard to understand, grab us by the balls and PULL!
