I wanted to hate it on principle. Because she gets more press than I believe she deserves. So her father was Johnny Cash, so she’s big on Twitter…

But if you remember the way it used to be when you put on a record in your own private world and no longer felt so alone, CHECK THIS OUT!

Credit her husband, producer John Leventhal, who worked his magic most famously on Shawn Colvin’s debut, still my favorite album of the nineties, even though it was released at the tail end of 1989.

Start right at the beginning, with “A Feather’s Not A Bird.”

Now I’m gonna tell you, it’s not about the lyrics. It’s about the SOUND, like all great music. I’m not saying the words are bad or irrelevant, but first and foremost you’ve got to feel it, which I did, almost immediately.

It’s the swampy sound.

You remember the swamp, right? Where there’s no cell signal and you’re living by your wits? That’s how music used to be, before everybody was addicted to their mobile and kids called their parents multiple times a day and no one was ever alone. But that’s what music is…a one on one experience, just you and what’s coming in your ears…and this is so PLEASING!

I appreciate that it starts off with a guitar figure unrepresentative of what comes next, because it sounds like someone’s tuning up, preparing, and then they lock onto the groove almost IMMEDIATELY!

Come on. You almost have a hard time not moving, grooving along to the sound. And it keeps getting better, with all the stringed instruments tweaking…and then the chorus is actually understated, like everything important, it’s got an almost sexy feel, and the instruments coming out of it…just make you feel better and better.

And that’s music. It’s hard to explain. It’s not about being in your face so much as sneaking up on you, entering your orifice when you least expect it and changing your life.

Yes, you can listen to the Top Forty hits and they’ll change nothing. You can bump your ass, you can even sing along, but they’re soulless. Like Katy Perry’s “Roar”… Who wants to hear a woman/child talk about her power when the truth is that’s not how life is at all, life is lonely, with more questions than answers, and we don’t need music to make us either feel inferior or to charge us up but to…ride shotgun.

This is not supposed to happen. Everybody sitting on the sidelines bitching about the new era keeps stating you can’t do this. That there’s not enough money and streaming sound quality sucks and rather than marching forward they’re giving up. And here’s someone who hasn’t had a hit for decades delivering something so right…

And you’ll get it. Because they put the best track right up front.

And not every track is exquisite, but check out “The Long Way Home,” which has got a feel that sounds like a combo of midsixties England and Tennessee and is so haunting. You’re almost afraid to get out from under the covers. The music is almost scary, in that way the greatest stuff does, it touches your soul.

Everybody’s swinging for the fences, nobody’s bunting.

But you remember the bunt… The unexpected effort, which changes the whole game when it works.

Rosanne can sing, John and his cohorts can play. This is no indie effort that requires you to peer through a scrim to get. It’s something if you’ve got a few lines in your face you’re gonna completely understand, something you’re gonna want to hear, especially when you’re alone on a Sunday afternoon.

And I’ll credit the press campaign for getting me to pay attention.

But I did not expect to get immediately hooked.

More like this please.

Rhinofy-The Rosanne Cash Album

He gave himself seven months.

Not Steve Barnett, but Sam Smith. That’s where I was, at Steve’s house, at a small luncheon introducing Sam.

Sure, they played the music in the background, but I already had the album. I enjoyed talking to Rodney Jerkins.

What’s strange about show business is everybody’s two-dimensional until you meet them. Oh, you think you know them but you don’t. Furthermore, who you think is a prick is not and vice versa.

So how much do I have in common with Mr. Jerkins?

Not much!

But it turns out he’s from Atlantic City. And my family used to vacation in Ventnor. Furthermore, we’re both transplants and laughing about it. I mean we’re talking on the phone to our families on the east coast and they’re complaining about the cold and it’s eighty degrees out here and I’m reminded of nothing so much as Sam Kinison’s routine about starving Africans. “Don’t send food, send LUGGAGE! They’ve got to MOVE!”

As it is, many east coasters are moving to Florida, the state is bulging with those who used to come to CA, the nutjobs who believe if they just change their surroundings their lives will work. They stopped coming to California when the economy turned sour, when they realized Florida was so much closer, but now Governor Moonbeam has saved the state and California is burgeoning but most people are focused on the shenanigans in FLA. You know, where the Republicans are fighting the Democrats and under the rubric of “personal freedom” the whole state is in transition. Whereas in California, it’s only Democrats, the grid has been unlocked and we’re moving forward with electric cars, more money for schools and mistakes are being made, but once again, the west coast is the country’s beacon. Not that it gets much press. Because the whole nation is controlled by the loonies who want more guns, fewer taxes and more “freedom” as they tell us how to live our lives.

That’s right, I’m a LIBERAL! The whole damn state is liberal. And we’re pulling away from the rest of you like Dave Edmunds crawling from the wreckage into a brand new car. We’ve got tech, and we’ve got music. We’ve got Capitol Records! The building may have been sold in an effort to ensure honchos got their bonuses, but there’s a whole new team ensconced in the Tower, with Steve Barnett reporting to fellow left coast transplant Lucian Grainge. We live in a Universal world. And if you don’t think that’s true, tell me about Warner’s market share and what septuagenarian Doug Morris’s plan is for the future.

THERE IS NO PLAN!

It’s business as usual. Spend and have hits.

And I’ll agree, that’s the essence, but it’s the penumbra that’ll kill you.

So Barnett makes a deal for Sam Smith, already signed to a Universal label in the U.K. And gets Rodney Jerkins to remix the single, adding some horns, some churchy elements.

And I find myself spending an hour in the hills, overlooking the Basin from downtown to the beach, having lunch outside on January 24th thinking there’s no place I’d rather be.

And after Steve gives an introduction, I get into it with Mr. Smith.

He’s been trying to make it since puberty. It’s all he ever wanted. He went through nearly ten managers. Some have posted old tracks on iTunes today. And while he’s scrubbing toilets at the bar, he’s thinking if it doesn’t happen in seven months, he’s done.

But he finds a new manager. He gets hooked up with Disclosure. And these new people tell him…he can do it his way. Honesty rules.

It’s so funny to encounter someone at the advent. Someone who’s not American, who doesn’t focus first and foremost on the trappings, but rather the music.

The project is gonna live or die on Sam Smith’s talent. Remember that? When music wasn’t made by committee?

Then again, everybody who remembers that era is much older than Sam Smith, who had no idea what “Tumbleweed Connection” was.

Kind of like my conversation with Peter Mensch last night. He was wondering why Q Prime doesn’t get recognized for its achievements, why people don’t consider it to be the best management company extant.

BECAUSE WE’RE SIXTY PETER! AND DEF LEPPARD WAS DECADES AGO!

I’m not saying that Q Prime hasn’t done much since, they’ve done plenty, but although old men, and it is mostly men, run this business, it’s driven by the efforts of youngsters, who grew up in a connected world and know the Beatles and the hits of yesteryear, but whose knowledge only goes so deep, because there isn’t enough much time.

So Sam Smith is still wet behind the ears. He’s only been to New York, L.A. and Las Vegas, the last of which did not fit his fancy. He’s just starting to learn, he’s just starting to be influenced.

And it’s all about the influences. And the risks.

Yes, he was due in the studio the next day with Linda Perry and debated whether to stay out late and tie one on or to hunker down and go to bed early.

Sam did the former. And then wrote about it!

Because that’s what we want. Honesty. Not contemplated, but as Bryan Adams used to put it, straight from the heart. Once you start to second guess yourself you’re done. You’ve got to be willing to ride the razor’s edge.

In other words, if you’re not willing to fail, you’re never going to win.

Too much, too soon.

We expected him to be a decrepit has-been in middle age, addicted to his drugs and his faded fame, but we didn’t expect him to flame out quite this quickly.

Blame us. The music industry. We preyed on this naif and wanted to believe we could profit yet not be responsible.

But you can’t have it both ways.

Kind of like Kurt Cobain. The cash cow should have been taken off the road. But who’s gonna do that?

Kind of like Chuck Lorre and Charlie Sheen. Portrayed as an impetuous dictator, at this late date who do you believe was at fault? Lorre was willing to walk from his star, music business people are not.

Scooter could have fired Bieber, but then how would he get all that Wall Street money?

Even worse, what if Justin Bieber had run over some innocent bystander in his Lamborghini? Never mind kill a passenger.

That’s entirely possible, just ask Vince Neil. But that was back before everybody had a cell phone camera and privacy was out the window, before we knew everything about you and your fame was based on YouTube views as opposed to the machinations of power brokers.

Then there are the tattoos. What I find funny about ink is you do it to rebel, to establish your personal identity. But if this is so, why don’t you leave yourself clean?

But that’s America, where everybody’s a follower, gossip rules and the real powers are never outed.

Come on.

There was the fiction that Justin Bieber was talented, that he was gonna last forever.

But even I didn’t think he’d crash and burn this fast, it’s just too much of a cliche. It’s like Amy Winehouse dancing to her death. You can’t save some people, but do you have to lionize them?

At least Amy Winehouse had talent. But Bieber is a flash in the pan receptacle of all that’s wrong with the younger generation and the Internet hustlers, where a beautiful body and an airy head are trumped up while those who gain an education or drop out and learn how to code run circles around the entertainment idiots.

Sure, rock stars have been O.D.’ing since the term was coined.

But at least those people stood for something, even if their deaths were useless. What does a “musician” stand for today?

What we’ve got here is a nitwit from north of the border believing he’s got urban cred and living like a renegade who’s above the law. If we put it in a movie it wouldn’t sell, because everybody would say it’s too cliche.

But the cliche is the music industry wants to milk these people while accepting no responsibility. Everybody’s an independent contractor but they don’t get to own their albums. Does the label insist their charges have health care, open IRAs? Of course not. The acts are fungible entities here today and gone tomorrow and the laugh is on us, because we keep buying the product again and again and again.

Justin Bieber is no better than the housemates from “The Jersey Shore.” He can sing a bit, but he’s famous first and foremost for his exposure. And as he grows up, he’s no longer cute and we don’t want to pay attention.

Isn’t it funny that Scooter calls his operation “Schoolboy Records.”

Lou Pearlman made his acts famous too, but you never saw Justin Timberlake getting arrested.

But this is the way we like it.

In an era where all the movies feature comic book heroes, we’re addicted to the real life flick, wherein a nobody from Canada gains overnight stardom and self-destructs.

And they remake the film for every generation.

That’s right, Justin Bieber is no different from New Kids On The Block.

But now we’re all watching the movie 24/7 on the Internet.

What’s next, ten or twenty or a hundred bucks a year to watch the travails of a wannabe?

Oh, that’s right. We call that “The Voice.” Or “American Idol.”

Pray for Justin Bieber.

He needs it.

Who’s gonna win the Grammy?

I don’t give a shit.

To think that the Grammys mean anything is to misunderstand the impact of the show. Your appearance could impact your career, a victory is barely more than meaningless. Come on, who won last year? The year before?

So I don’t get caught up in the Grammy run-up. It’s manufactured hype for an organization that needs to sell a TV show and a media that fawns over everything involving personalities/stars, and moves on the very next day.

And while I’m at it, why is LL Cool J the host? The faded rapper has the stage presence of a gnat and the charisma of a doorknob. Couldn’t they get someone with a personality, like Kevin Hart? Who could at least crack a few jokes between making fun of the lines he must read from the teleprompter?

But that’s what the Grammys are all about, playing it safe. If risk was involved, they’d be hosted by Katt Williams and there’d be GoPros backstage documenting the acts shooting up.

Furthermore, only with hindsight can we see what matters. Tom Waits matters more than almost everybody who won in his heyday of the mid to late seventies, and he’s still making notable music today. Then again, unlike everybody else from his generation, never mind those wet behind the ears, he’s not on the endorsement/sponsorship gravy train, begging corporations to sell out. Yes, they should have a trade show astride the awards show, wherein the acts flog themselves to the highest bidder.

But if Mark Cuban asks me to appear on his network…I’m gonna. Because this is a relationship business and Mark returns e-mails in a minute and is always lifting rocks to see what’s next. Imagine if he ran the Grammys, the man who gave the middle finger to the NBA…

So I drive downtown, get in the makeup chair and when the camera starts to roll, I’m a bloviating fool. I’m second-guessing the situation, trying to figure out who will win while stating who should.

But on the end of the dais is a guy from Pittsburgh who couldn’t be less rock and roll if he got a neck tattoo, and by the end of the program he’d convinced me he was right.

This was John Dick. Of CivicScience. A polling firm.

And he wasn’t borderline autistic, like Nate Silver. He radiated no nerd cred. And he kept talking about the numbers to the point where I had to get into it with him, WHO CARES WHAT THE PUBLIC HAS TO SAY!

And then Mr. Dick explained his methodology.

He trolls for people on PerezHilton. He gets them to answer the question of the day, and then places a cookie on their computer, tracking them as they move about the web. Sounds scary, doesn’t it? Welcome to the twenty first century!

But what Mr. Dick and his team of Carnegie Mellon technicians is looking for is…the ability of those he tracks to get it right. That’s the science. And last year he predicted five out of the six big Grammy winners. He was eighty percent at the Oscars. And before Nate Silver and the 2012 election, I’d pooh-pooh Mr. Dick and his numbers, but the geeks have inherited the earth and gut reactions might feel good, but can be totally wrong.

Don’t get me wrong, the gut is key to art. And research will tell you where you’ve been as opposed to where you’re going. But if you want to play the game as opposed to just pontificating, today you have to look at the numbers.

It got to the point where I was less interested in what I had to say than Mr. Dick’s conclusions.

And here they are:

Best New Artist: Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

Best Pop Duo/Group Performance: “Blurred Lines”

Best Rap Album: Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

Best Rock Album: Kings Of Leon

Best Country Album: Taylor Swift

Song of the Year: “Royals”

Record of the Year: “Royals”

Album of the Year: Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

Now if “Royals” wins, I’ll be thrilled. Kind of like when “Annie Hall” won Best Picture, Lorde DESERVES IT!

But now I’m speaking from personal opinion, and emotion. Science?

There are rules as to who can vote for what.

But while I’m busy handicapping, Mr. Dick is being cold and calculating. And if you’re interested in who’s gonna win, and as I stated above, I’m not, then…what he says counts.

We’ll see on Sunday night.

I disagreed with so many of his predictions. But the more he delineated his methodology, the more I became convinced. Because unlike so many Americans, never mind people in the music business, I believe in science. And data.

And so does Mark Cuban.

That’s right, while the rest of the Grammy penumbra is just regurgitating the inane hype, Mr. Cuban decided to go left field, to produce a whole show demonstrating that data delivers.

And if it does…

Expect this to become a big part of the story next year.

Neil Portnow will wake up and embrace it. If he’s smart. Because we’re more interested in the line than who’s really gonna win.

So we see the wheel turn once again. We see those who are educated and willing to take risks employing a new perspective and triumphing.

And you’ve got people like me speaking from the gut, wondering…am I wrong?

P.S. Here are a couple of clips. My makeup makes me look like I’m from Mars, having been too heavily irradiated by the sun. And I don’t think I give a revelatory performance, but if you want to see me in action, here I am:

“Who Should Win the GRAMMY for Best Rap Album of the Year?”

“Who Should Win the GRAMMY for Best Country Album?”