Will we ever have hits like this again?

U2 released its “Days of Ash” EP on February 18th. The publicity had more impact than the music. There are six songs. Two have barely broken three million streams on Spotify, four are in the one million range, and one doesn’t even break the seven figure threshold. It’s like it doesn’t even exist. U2, one of the biggest bands in the world, with more name recognition than almost all of the acts in the Spotify Top 50, can’t get its music listened to. However the act can sell tickets. Based on its hits of yore and a reputation for unique, dynamic, stage shows.

Is this the future?

I was talking to Pat Monahan of Train. He’s a humble guy, but I told him that more people probably know “Drops of Jupiter” than any Taylor Swift song.

Of course the Swifties are going to go nuclear. But that’s not my point. The point is you just can’t reach everybody anymore.

Then again, does the music deserve that attention?

Sure, there are mediocre classic rock hits. Stuff that a youngster might listen to once and then shrug their shoulders. However, there is “Stairway to Heaven” and “Sweet Home Alabama,” time bombs just waiting to explode in future generations’ brains.

Then again, today’s music has changed. It’s harder, busier, reflective of the age we live in, which is hard. The American Dream has never been less achievable in my lifetime. People are frustrated, they need music that mimics their feelings, or is complete escapism. The younger generation loves to dance, DJs and EDM are a culture unto themselves, a significant one, that can draw more people to a live show than most of the aforementioned Spotify Top 50. But the thing about classic rock is it killed dancing. That went out with the twist and the swim and the hully gully. Classic rock demanded respect, attention, you bought the best stereo you could afford to get closer to the tunes, you wanted to get inside them. Today you listen to bass-heavy dreck via tiny earphones, a far cry from the holy grail of yesteryear, when sound was important.

So what changed?

First and foremost there was money. MTV made you famous around the world and double the price CDs threw off more cash. And with visibility you could now have brand extensions. Used to be the cash from being an artist was enough, more than enough. But it’s not that remuneration went down, it’s just that other verticals paid better, finance and tech, and the best and the brightest pursued those. Leaving us with lower common denominator creators in popular music.

People hate when I put anything from today’s scene down. Because they’re such believers.

Despite all the hype about the return of BTS, the dirty little secret is the passion, the mania, is not as big as they’d have you think:

“Why the BTS Comeback Concert Was a ‘Disaster’ for Some Businesses – The turnout for the K-pop titans’ show was much lower than projected by officials, hitting the bottom line of some restaurants. Shares in the group’s management company also fell.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/world/asia/bts-concert-seoul-turnout-hybe-shares.html

It’s in the news, but there is too much news. Such that the truth frequently doesn’t reach the public…it’s not only politics, but popular culture too.

As for BTS… Wouldn’t Frank Zappa call them “dancing fools”? I’ve got nothing against the act, but please don’t tell me to take them seriously, it’s pablum for a subset of the public, a twist on New Kids on the Block.

But I was going to write about “Summer Breeze.”

Do today’s younger generations know “Summer Breeze”?

Now if we go back to Spotify, we see that “Summe Breeze” has 321 million streams. Which is prodigious, but not close to the multi-billion numbers of young acts. But are these numbers distortions? Are the same people listening to this new material over and over again, bumping up the totals?

I mean would people listen to “Summer Breeze” on endless repeat?

Probably not. They’d get a hankering to hear it and pull it up on Spotify.

However, “Summer Breeze” is in the ether, unlike so much of the billion stream club. Meaning it is played on radio, in restaurants, you hear it. “Summer Breeze” is forever, almost all of today’s music is transient.

Of course, of course, a lot of the old stuff was banged into our heads on terrestrial radio, and not all of it was superior. I mean “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!”?

Now Seals and Crofts was not a highly respected act, with rock roots and gravitas. Then again, they did peak in the singer-songwriter/soft rock seventies, which were led by James Tayalor and Carole King. People were open to this sound.

But Seals and Crofts were journeymen. And Bahá?ís. I knew this not only because I followed the rock press like it was delivered from God, but because the people in the next dorm room over were into the band, and exploring that faith.

But never forget, Seals and Crofts were on Warner Brothers. And if it was on Warner Brothers, it deserved attention, there was a reason the band was signed.

And then came “Summer Breeze.”

This was not one of today’s numbers built on one chord, based on a beat, there was a lot going on in the track. The haunting guitar intro, drawing you in, telling you this was serious. And once you were paying attention, there was a melodic construct and…

“See the curtains hangin’ in the window

In the evening on a Friday night

A little light a-shinin’ through the window

Lets me know everything’s all right”

These were not nonsense lyrics filling up space, rather the words set a place, you had a vision, you knew exactly what they were singing about, you were THERE!

And then comes the piece-de-resistance:

“Summer breeze makes me feel fine

Blowin’ through the jasmine in my mind”

And the stinging guitar after the chorus, that’s the special sauce, that’s what puts the record over the top, embeds it in your brain.

In other words, there’s a lot going on in the song. Because the song was everything. There was no dancing, no perfume…

So as soon as you hear “Summer Breeze,” it takes you away. You could be in a group of hundreds, thousands, and you’d be having a personal experience. What I remember most is driving in Westport, CT just before Christmas in the eighties and hearing it on the radio. It was one of those days where the weather vacillated between snow and rain, quite gray, but that song, it took me away, to a place of gentleness, possibilities.

Now Dash Crofts died, and I used to be able to tell them apart, but that was a long time ago… I couldn’t have told you which one he was until I saw the pictures in the obits.

But what truly stunned me was how old he was. He was born in 1938. Almost all of our rock heroes were born in the forties. The Beatles in the early forties. Crofts had been around.

And you read about his peripatetic life in said obits, leaving Texas to play with the Champs, but it is all superseded by “Summer Breeze.”

I hear “Diamond Girl” too much on SiriusXM’s Bridge, it was always B-material to me, I mean how do you reach the heights of “Summer Breeze” once again?

Seals and Crofts couldn’t. But I did like “Get Closer” and “We May Never Pass This Way (Again).” And they never did pass this way again. By 1980, the act was over, expired. But as hard as Elton John tries to stay atop the mountain, most people burn out. They get there once, and it doesn’t have the same meaning thereafter… Being rich and famous doesn’t make most people happy, that comes down to people…family, friends.

But they had this song. And even though I’ve just written about it for paragraphs, truly it is not something you can describe. “Summer Breeze” makes you feel something, an entire movie unspools in your brain, it makes you remember when. I’m not even sure these are the goals of today’s music.

We lived through a peak. At least I did. But these songs remain, some of them are forever.

And one of them is “Summer Breeze.”

The men who made it…the song has transcended them. Now they’re both gone. You could study their history, but it’s not that interesting or unique. But the song is. How did they come up with it? How did they lay it down in the studio? Well, we’re never really gonna know, because the principals are all dead. Except for Louie Shelton, a legendary studio guitarist who became a producer and masterminded the creation of “Summer Breeze.”

But still, online you can see videos of people telling you how they did it, but really no one can articulate it. It was inspiration, something they felt, running on instinct. And you couldn’t reach this peak on a regular basis, but when you did…

It makes you feel fine…

Blowin’ through the jasmine in your mind.