You can’t have a contrary opinion. Let me restate that…you can’t VERBALIZE a contrary opinion. You’re supposed to adhere to the orthodoxy of your tribe, or else you become a pariah. You can’t say that Biden is old if you’re a Democrat. You can’t say you support Israel in Gaza if you’re a Democrat. This […]

Today the “New York Times” said that the Luminate/”Billboard” chart was manipulated: “Swift made ‘Tortured Poets’ available in four variants across physical formats, each with an extra track; these were also sold in special editions from Swift’s website with autographs and collectibles like magnets and engraved bookmarks. Eilish, who has complained about artists’ excessive marketing […]

It comes from the internal, not the external. It comes from the identity of the performer, not the penumbra. Which is why it’s much harder to create loyalty with a song written by committee using the producer and mixer du jour. It may sound like a previous hit, it may fit on the Spotify Top […]

We’re here for a hundredth birthday concert for Henry Mancini. L’Aquila is somewhere between one and two hours from Rome, depending on the traffic. It’s in the Apennine mountains. (You remember them from elementary school, right? Well, I remembered they were in Italy, but I couldn’t have picked them out on a map, nor did […]