Anybody can be famous. Many people can have success on the chart and sell tickets. But can they move the cultural needle? That is the question. That is where music has abdicated its power.

Hip-hop. The sound of the streets. As popular as it was, the true breakthrough moment was the L.A. riots in the wake of the Rodney King verdict. That’s when white people realized everything that N.W.A. and Ice-T were saying about the police was true.

But you don’t have to be political to have impact.

Two examples:

1. Steely Dan’s “Aja.”

It was the same two guys, but the sound was completely different. Nothing on “The Royal Scam” prepared the audience for the jazz-influenced “Aja,” with its extended tunes. On paper, a disastrous career move. In reality, although sounding completely different from everything in the rock marketplace, the audience embraced “Aja,” because it hungered for something new, an alternative to the corporate rock pablum that was being purveyed.

2. Joe Jackson’s “Night and Day”

The rap on Joe was he was an imitation of Elvis Costello, even though his initial album, “Look Sharp,” didn’t sound the same and had unique messages that resonated with the public. Is she really going out with him? We haven’t had that sensibility here since at least the eighties. Today everybody’s a winner, no one’s a nerd…unless they’re embracing nerd culture, which is a joke, it’s just another way of saying “Look, I’m cool!”

Anyway, repeating the same formula to less artistic and commercial success, Jackson put out “Jumpin’ Jive,” which the audience embraced, albeit not to the level of what had come before, but the audience believed acts were artists with something to say, and if they said it listeners should pay attention. Today the script is flipped. The track is oftentimes more important than the act, and how can you believe the singer has something to say when the song is written by committee?

Then Joe jumps even further from the beaten path. “Night and Day” was cool and jazz-influenced, when AOR radio was becoming calcified and MTV was starting to break through with one hit English wonders, which it filtered between bombastic acts from the previous decades who’d made videos to satiate the European market with its tight radio playlists. “Night and Day” sounded like nothing else on the radio, but it resonated with the public which demanded to hear it.

3. “Avalon”

Was a commercial failure in America upon its release in 1982. Roxy Music broke up once again thereafter. There were no singles. It was smooth when music was turning more edgy. It sounded like nothing else. If even confounded Roxy Music fans. But if you gave it a few spins, you entered a world unlike any other. The music set your mind free. When someone came to visit you put it on to spread the word. Instead of going for obvious commercial success, Roxy Music created an album that became a standard, that has lasted forever. It’s just waiting there, like a land mine, ready to be discovered by younger generations.

Today the paradigm is different. The end goals are primary. I.e. fame and money.

Another thing lacking is the basics. As in education. I’m talking book-learning, not learning how to play your instrument. Today college is seen as a glorified trade school, if you don’t get a gig upon graduation, the entire experience wasn’t worth it. But in the days of yore, college was about expanding your mind, so you could put two and two together in a different way.

As for high school… Music and art have been excised and they’re teaching to the text. They’re smoothing off the rough edges in public schools…in private schools, except for the long established elites, coloring outside the borders has never been tolerated.

As for learning your instrument at Berklee… There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but pop music is about the brain, not the fingers. It’s not about rote repetition, but thinking about how to come up with new ideas, or putting the old ones together in a new and different way. Which is why schools like Berklee very rarely produce stars. Because they don’t have what the public is looking for. The public is looking for something different, something inspirational.

So if you’re starting out today…

1. Consume culture voraciously. Read the news, watch TV and TikTok…you can’t reflect life back upon the masses with insight unless you’ve got experience. Which is why youngsters under the age of fifteen make worthless music, they have nothing to say.

2. Read. Songs have lyrics. To make them interesting, you must have a basis in the written word.

3. Attend the best college you can get into. Not for status, because at the elite level it’s not about the material but analyzing the material. You won’t be helped by business and economic classes, probably not the sciences either. Everything the talking heads deride today is the basis of art that impacts and changes the culture. Talking Heads went to the Rhode Island School of Design… Doesn’t this make you a chump, you can’t make a living as a visual artist, right? Same deal with studying art history and English and… These are the students who change the world.

4. Art trumps money. Your job is not to sidle up to money, but to speak truth to it. And that’s when people bond to you, when they can resonate with your position. As soon as you start parading your riches you’ve lost the plot. This was different in the days of yore because musicians were not supposed to have this much wealth and power, and then they achieved it, it was a middle finger to the man.

5. You have to be able to say no. If you say yes to everything, you have no backbone.

6. Credibility. It takes a lifetime to build it, one false move to eviscerate it. If it doesn’t feel right, you shouldn’t do it.

There’s plenty of time to make it, you don’t have to be young anymore…look at Chris Stapleton, and he’s not the only one.

Just because the press gloms on to money, talking about grosses and ticket sale numbers, don’t fall for this trap. They do this because those are quantifiable, cultural impact is not.

You have to go down the road less taken. You have to be willing to fail. Odds are you’re going to fail. But these are the people who change the world.

If you’re complaining you haven’t made it, you probably don’t deserve to. Furthermore, it’s impossible to find a superstar who didn’t have doubts, who didn’t think of quitting. Deep inside you know if you’re truly worthy, this century is about the false front, don’t fall for it. It is called “popular music,” which means if it’s not popular… Yes, the music needs to be popular. So if some academic approves of it and no one else resonates, you’re doing it wrong. 

There is no roadmap. Your goal is not success so much as to change people’s lives, make them think.

It’s too big a challenge for most people making music today.