Saoirse Ronan is that good in this movie.

I know, I know, “Brooklyn” came out last year, was trumped-up as being Oscar-worthy, might have been nominated and even won, but I’ve given up on the Academy Awards, what was once a ritual can now be skipped, whether African-Americans are nominated or not, because movies have jumped the shark, they’re two-dimensional features made for worldwide consumption whose grosses are trotted out as if the money made was equal to quality, but it’s not.

But, the overhype of “Brooklyn” did turn me off.

Like the inane “For Consideration” ads in the New York and Los Angeles “Times” for TV shows for Emmys. Yes, the Emmys are more significant than the Oscars, even if winning doesn’t yet carry the same gravitas, but these ads are a colossal waste of money by a tone-deaf industry propping up a newspaper business that needs to get a grip. Can we cut this self-congratulatory crap and just donate the money to charity, or make more indie films like “Brooklyn”?

It’s slow.

Yup kids, it doesn’t grip you from the outset. Beautifully shot, but I’m watching on an iPad. An Air2, so the image is sharp, but not only is it tiny, I’m not in a darkened room, I’m not taken away.

But…

Eilis has no future in Ireland. There’s no work. So her sister petitions the church to make a place for her in America.

Eilis is played by Saoirse Ronan. And it’s only over time that her beauty is revealed. And this picture would benefit if she were less attractive and her boyfriend too, but that’s not what sells the fantasy. But I’m sitting there asking myself, why would such a pretty woman want to be involved with a plumber?

But that doesn’t undercut the movie.

She’s unsure and she’s homesick and… Too many people don’t cut the apron strings today. Used to be, when I grew up, in the good old days, when you’d walk ten miles to school in the snow, uphill both ways, your parents would send you off to summer camp, you’d go away to college, you’d have no cell phone, and you’d have to find your own way.

Doing your work and making friends along the way.

That’s the essence of life, building your network, which supports you. A skill that too few are good at, they get older and relationships fray and they’re all alone. That’s the epidemic ripping apart America, loneliness.

But two-thirds of the way through this movie, when Eilis returns to Ireland…

Tension. It’s what makes a film, and there’s tension here. Eilis has finally adjusted to New York, she’s finally happy, she’s happier than she’s ever been in her life.

But the old country people are not interested, they want to return her to what once was, for their own purposes.

Being independent is such a challenge. For all the hogwash about parents being their children’s best friends, the underbelly is disapproval and disappointment when they go their own way, which they do less. It’s your one and only life, can you make yourself happy?

It’s much more difficult to do than you think. The first step is the hardest, letting go of the rope, walking the wire without a net, so many are afraid. And those behind them don’t want them to make the journey. Your friends don’t want you to spread your wings and fly, they’re afraid you’re gonna leave them behind.

But the old people are small with their petty wants and desires and offenses, you’ve outgrown them, they don’t want to come along, they want to stay where they are.

And with a little perspective you can see the downsides of where you once were. Eilis is loving being back in Ireland until…

That’s why I moved to Los Angeles, for the anonymity. That’s what’s lacking in today’s society, when everybody can track you online you can’t breathe, when every movement is scrutinized, you become inhibited. And it’s not only the rank and file, but the famous too. That woman in Fifth Harmony being shamed on Twitter, Justin Bieber being hated on Instagram. You’re just living your life…

Or maybe you’re not, maybe you’re bragging.

But the whole world has turned into high school, and that sucks.

The truth is life is about the interior. We focus on the exterior, what we wear, what we drive, our job, all the trappings. But inner desires, wants, angst, that’s what we depend upon art to reveal, because oftentimes we’re too uptight to talk about it, if we can even find words. That’s what’s wrong with the comic book movies, they may have plot, but there’s no truth, and we’re looking for truth. And when Eilis goes back to Ireland and now finds it appealing…

It’s a conundrum. Is every situation in life fungible? Is there one true soul mate, one way of living your life that will make you happy, or are their multiple roads to the destination? And when you’re young, it’s all brand new, you keep asking the questions. And when you’re old, you’re too set in your ways to change, so you live through art, your hopes and dreams are embodied therein.

When Eilis is back in Ireland and is torn between two lovers…

You’ll ache, you’ll identify, you’ll have no idea how it’s going to turn out. Do you embrace the tried and true, family and location, or do you strike out on your own for something better and stay there?

I don’t know.

But I do know this question is expertly asked in “Brooklyn.”

It’s on HBO Go. I suggest firing it up late at night, when it’s only you and your brain rattling around the room. You’ll watch it and you’ll see your life.

Because all of our lives are the same, all the questions similar, we’re all struggling, we’re all presented with choices.

And you’ve got to make ’em.

However hard it might be to come to a decision.

But one thing’s for sure, do what’s right in your heart.

It may not work out, but you’ll have fewer regrets.

And that’s what life is about, not victories, but avoiding regrets. You want to feel that you played the game to your fullest, it’s not about trophies and awards, but experiences and joy, feeling fully alive.

I felt fully alive watching “Brooklyn.”

I came to hear “I Took A Pill In Ibiza,” but I got so much more! It was the most meaningful gig in memory, I couldn’t play the radio on the way home, I was numb, I was basking in the experience.

I didn’t expect this, when we spoke in the green room…he wasn’t completely forthcoming, he was answering my questions but hesitantly, with a smile on his face, I thought this was somewhat contemptuous, but it turns out that’s his speaking style, and when he was interviewed I was positively enraptured!

It was like those old Q&A’s in “Rolling Stone,” back when the musicians had something to say, Mike Posner has something to say, which is so strange, because so many of today’s stars are just front people for middle-aged men, but Posner not only wrote his own hits, he’s got a brain, he thought about it all, sitting there you’d be inspired to be a musician, techies build edifices for money, artists explore the mind.

Mike’s manager said Mike liked to work. He’s opening for Selena Gomez and Nick Jonas and he had a free night and…

Mike said that he takes his band to gigs so they can learn. Springsteen taught him you don’t need the trappings, the music can be enough, and Guns N’ Roses taught him about energy, he used to walk on stage slowly and build from there, now he runs on stage adrenalized, on a tear. As for maintaining the energy, he’s only got forty minutes!

So, he’s been doing it since he was eight, he’s twenty eight now. Had some hits and then the label wouldn’t put out his second record and he sold the songs to others and suddenly he was a has-been. To be on the wrong end of stardom at such a young age, it hurts, because Posner does it for the approval, he’s not proud of it, but it’s true, and one negative review eclipses twenty good ones. Yes, he checks the socials. He does a poem in his show, he loves reading how it changes attendees’ lives, but there’s always one writer who says it ruined a good evening. Huh?

Podcasts give him inspiration. Especially two Tim Ferriss episodes. One featuring a woman whose name I don’t remember, she said you can only be the best you, which means you have to pursue your own artistic vision, not someone else’s, because only you can give this gift to the world. Made sense to me, inspired me.

And when he was down and out he went to Burning Man. He debated whether to bring his guitar, ultimately decided to, but didn’t want to brag in a society based on pure identity. But one day he went off to play songs for people, it’s his gift, what he’s got to give. And people were stunned, they told him to keep at it, he had a chance, and this was already after multiple hits!

Mike laughed.

Then again, he’s not recognizable.

How did he get so smart?

Turns out he graduated from Duke, stayed in school and finished his degree after getting a record deal, a great antidote to the tech wankers who say education is irrelevant. It might be, but finishing things is not, life is about character.

And the presentation started off with Mike at the piano playing “Buried In Detroit,” from his 2016 album, “At Night, Alone.” And he said the album format was irrelevant, a construct for a dead world. You can only surpass the limits if you throw off aged constrictions.

And then came the interview segment. And, once you got used to his rhythm, the way he hesitates before he speaks, you hang on every word. He talks about his parents, his teachers, stuff he’s not proud of and stuff he is.

And then he strung on his guitar once again and with a keyboard player gave a full concert, kept adding numbers, because he was having such a good time. Two highlights were a song about Miley Cyrus and “Be As You Are.”

The Miley Cyrus song is not on the new album. It’s a war story, about going overseas and getting your legs blown off and…everyone’s either humming “Party In The U.S.A.” or singing it or it’s playing in the background and by time the protagonist gets back to Atlanta he no longer wants to hear it and no longer wants to see anybody. It was like 1962 all over again, the hootenanny era. Mike encapsulated the horror of the war in a song, more people need to hear it.

“Be As You Are” is a winner. The key is the words of wisdom from his mother:

There are moments when you fall to the ground
But you are stronger than you feel you are now
You don’t always have to speak so loud, no
Just be as you are
Life is not always a comfortable ride
Everybody’s got scars that they hide
And everybody plays the fool sometimes, yeah
Just be as you are

Mike grew up a hip-hop kid, but it’s the sing-songy melody that puts this over the top.

And the assembled multitude was singing along. The younger generation, the two hundred or so who were there in attendance, they need this music to make sense of a world that’s so confusing.

And I love listening to records, but seeing Mike Posner live is a transcendent experience, it’s authentic, it’s one human being connecting with another, that’s the magic of live performance, something that cannot be replicated, can’t be sold via VR, no, you have to be there.

And I was there, last night, at the edge of my seat.

And then Mike had us all stand, singing our parts and…

It started to dawn on me, he wasn’t gonna play it. Time was sliding by, far beyond the allotted window, he was gonna be a jerk, leaving us hungry for what we came for, I finally understood the audience perspective, a hard core fan is interested in the album cuts, but the others paying the fee, they need to hear the hit.

And just when it seemed it was over, he did, play the hit, that is.

I took a pill in Ibiza
To show Avicii I was cool

Most haven’t been to the Balearics, few know Avicii, almost no one has taken a pill in his presence, but Mike felt…the experience was universal, we can relate.

But you don’t wanna be high like me
Never really knowing why like me
You don’t wanna step off that roller coaster and be all alone

Beware of achieving your dream, you think it’ll make your life work, but it’s a good chance it’ll ruin it.

I’m just a singer who already blew his shot
I get along with old timers
‘Cause my name’s a reminder of a pop song people forgot

A has-been. You don’t think it’ll happen to you, then your notable work is in the rearview mirror.

“I Took A Pill In Ibiza” resonates because of its truth, nothing conveys the human experience more than music, when it’s done right, and Mike Posner was doing it right last night.

Brought tears to my eyes. What could be better than singing along to a song you know by heart, one that resonates, one that means so much to you.

It’s what I live for, it makes life complete.

P.S. If you’re out of the loop, and today so many are, after riding the top of the Spotify chart for so long, “I Took A Pill In Ibiza” is still number 48 on the Spotify chart, it was played 340,515 times yesterday, 583,372,214 times in its lifespan, never mind 515,179,767 views on YouTube. That’s the Seeb remix, the EDM edition. The acoustic iteration has 17,006,905 streams on Spotify, “I Took A Pill In Ibiza” just might be the song of the year, shows how far honesty and serendipity will get you.

“I Took A Pill In Ibiza” – Seeb Remix

“I Took A Pill In Ibiza” – acoustic

“Be As You Are”

Richard Griffiths ran Epic in the U.S.

Harry Magee ran A&M in the U.K.

Together they run a Modest! Management, most famous for handling One Direction.

But they also manage Five Seconds Of Summer, whose success they built on the back of 1D.

And now they’re building Hey Violet on the back of 5SOS. Jessarae too.

Hey Violet used to be known as Cherri Bomb. They were punk/power popsters signed to Hollywood Records, genius on paper, a band for fans of the same age, barely pubescent, with Disney synergy, but Cherri Bomb failed in the marketplace, the band reformed as Hey Violet and Richard and Harry took them on.

I was not impressed.

The two Lovelis sisters, the singer and the drummer, were incredibly cute. It’s just that they were a great garage band, running on enthusiasm more than quality.

But they were working it hard. All over the social networks. Doing pop-up live shows for fans. Of which there was a loyal number, after all supporting 5SOS you get recognition.

My initial exposure to Hey Violet was at Wembley Arena last June, 2015. I saw them about six months later at the Troubadour, in their hometown of Los Angeles. The fans were adoring, they knew every word, but you would not be impressed.

But neither were the brass.

It was agreed the material was not there yet, and this was a big problem.

This is why so many can’t do it alone, why there’s still a need for the major label, for the experience of those involved.

So last night I took my life in my hands and journeyed to Echo Park. Beyond the lake featured in “Chinatown” I parked by the homeless and walked by a mini-mart out of Guadalajara as opposed to the Westside and wondered…when I walked back after the gig would it be safe? You wanted to lock the doors and keep up your speed in the seventies. But now Silver Lake is so hip… I’m not sure. But the derelicts and denizens lounging around had my wits about me.

As for the gig itself…

I had to wait in line. Jessarae started to play. But the guy taking names was barely literate and everybody in front of me had a story, why they were entitled to get in. I’m getting frustrated, what am I doing here, I’m too old for this!

But when I got inside I was confronted with one guy with a guitar singing his songs, and he was GOOD! You can tell. Because few are, good, that is. It’s like porn, to paraphrase the Supreme Court, you know it when you hear it! Jessarae is American but he moved to London and got connected with Richard and Harry through Kobalt and they signed him, put him on the road with 5SOS, and… I got it.

But then it was time for Hey Violet.

Now a couple of weeks back, I got an unsolicited e-mail, from an adult, who pointed me to Hey Violet’s cut “Brand New Moves,” he said he liked it. Which is completely weird, this music is for teenyboppers and how would he have even stumbled upon them?

But I checked it out.

I was stunned. IT WAS A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SOUND! It took a while to hit the change, but when it did, I said to myself…this is a hit or close to it.

Turns out the track was written with Julian Bunetta, who worked with 1D.

And I’d be lying if I told you Hey Violet nailed this track last night.

And I’m listening to their old stuff, the little girls are cheering, but then they say they’re gonna play some new stuff, stuff they’ve never played before.

Snooze, right?

But no, these were the killers! All three! They played an acoustic song written in the desert that had alienation stamped all over it, you know, the kind teenagers identify with, the kind they spin incessantly in their bedrooms.

But the songs were not the only revelation.

The other was Rena Lovelis.

She was no longer a teen running on enthusiasm, she was of age, legal, she was eighteen, and now she was slinking and slithering evidencing sexuality and…

Suddenly I realized I was watching Debbie Harry, just a bunch of decades younger.

All those gigs, all that experience, she’d BLOSSOMED! She now owned the stage, she was not playing to the audience, she was LEADING IT!

I knew this girl, not very different from your next door neighbor, albeit world-weary, but now…she was a STAR!

I was stunned.

Now I’m not saying that Hey Violet’s records will immediately light up the Top Ten. I’m not saying the music is so original you’ll be floored. I’m just saying that Richard and Harry took an unformed blob and polished it into something salable, the transition was astounding, what I thought had little chance, something that was running solely on data, socials and the rest of the internet crap, was now on the cusp of a breakthrough!

And the new music sounds nothing like what came before. Adolescents pogoing to poppy nonsense is out the window. The new tracks are denser, more ethereal, more produced. You’d wonder if the fan base would be alienated, but the truth is the fan base is so small that…they’ll come along with the new music just to say they were there first and…it’s about the mass, you can’t be so loyal to your tiny starter fans that you can’t take a left turn, that you can’t grow.

Now the best of the new tracks is “Pure.” I’ll link to it below. Put your professional hat on, listen as a business exercise, I don’t care if you like it or not but whether you can recognize its quality and its workability.

After that you can listen to “Brand New Moves.”

That acoustic song from the desert is not on Spotify.

But those old songs that didn’t register, you can check them out, to see the difference, the growth. I’ll link to their most played song on Spotify, from the previous EP, “I Can Feel It,” which is closer to Warped Tour than Bowery Ballroom.

So, Richard and Harry are leveraging their experience and their success to give a new act its best shot.

And you wonder why you can’t break through.

A few people are so talented, so fully-realized, that they don’t need any assistance. But they’re few and far between. The rest need help. There’s nothing original about Hey Violet, but they’ve got a fan base built on the back of 5SOS, they’ve got A level material, they’ve got a shot.

Without Richard and Harry they’d just be wannabes.

“Pure” – Spotify

“Brand New Moves” – Spotify

“I Can Feel It” – Spotify

“Fix” was number one on Mediabase.

But it was nowhere to be found on Spotify’s “Hot Country” playlist, which includes fifty one songs and is three hours and nine minutes long.

I’d never heard it, “Fix” that is. A cut by newcomer Chris Lane that resembles your preconception of country not a whit. It’s closer to yacht rock than twang, and I mean that in a good way. How was I supposed to know?

You see Mediabase charts what’s being played on the radio.

And Spotify… Is its own unique world.

And the loser is you and me. Because we don’t feel like we belong. I’m looking for some comprehension amidst the chaos. I want to know the temperature of the industry.

I’m never gonna listen to terrestrial radio, never ever, just too many commercials.

So, I catch my country on Sirius and Spotify, but they don’t necessarily play the same tracks either.

And this discrepancy is played out over all formats.

And then we’ve got the inane “Billboard” chart which meshes sales with streams and promotes albums to the point that Epic constructed a fake album just to chart, really:

“Epic Records Whips Up Hit Album Out of Thin Air (and Online Streams)”

Talk about manipulating the media.

The casual observer thinks what rules “Billboard” rules for real. But that’s oftentimes untrue. First and foremost, we live in an era of singles, not albums. Then again, are acts putting out long albums trying to game streaming services?:

“Albums are getting unbearably long in 2016 – and bull**** new streaming rules are to blame”

Not only do I want to feel I can detect the pulse, I want to be able to converse with my brethren in a world where we’ve got so few talking points to begin with.

Here are the new rules…

SINGLE CHARTS RULE

Forget albums, the public already did, except for hard core fans and they’re only a fraction of the business.

SEPARATE SALES FROM STREAMS

I’d say to forget sales all together, but if there are two charts for a while that’s o.k., they sold mono and stereo albums side by side for a couple of years. But the truth is it won’t be long before streaming is absolutely everything. And, you can’t get credit for an album sale by streaming only a few cuts from an LP, that’s ridiculous. Singles only, pure numbers.

METRICS

Is it airplay, streams or..?

The most played charts on streaming services are oftentimes dominated by oldies. Yet, it’s new blood that keeps the business alive. It’s a conundrum which goes unaddressed. Maybe we just need to label one playlist NEW! And if something is six months old it can’t qualify, “Billboard” used to kick aged albums off its chart… And the sooner we kick old stuff off the faster we can grow new stuff.

GENRES AND MASHUP

Yup, multiple charts for pop, country, hip-hop, rock and…
And then another for EVERYTHING! So people can see what’s truly popular.

Ironically, streaming has made the problem worse. With its endless playlists. The truth is terrestrial radio is dying, so the Mediabase chart might be supplanted by Spotify’s in time. But not yet. Can Spotify at least include the Mediabase chart in its playlists? So I can feel like I know what’s going on?

“Fix” on Spotify

“Fix” on Vevo