Tune in Saturday October 11th to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

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Lead singer of St. Paul & the Broken Bones.

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/paul-janeway/id1316200737?i=1000730966531

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/44aa011d-ce08-436d-8a46-b472ebecc3de/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-paul-janeway

“The 250 Greatest Songs of the 21st Century So Far”: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/best-songs-of-the-21st-century-1235410452/train-drops-of-jupiter-1235414778/

1

Clickbait.

The only thing all these songs have in common is they were listened to by the arbiters of this list, and probably ONLY by the arbiters of this list.

Let’s be clear here, I’m taking the bait, by commenting. Yet I’m not going to quibble with the choices, BUT THE ENTIRE CONCEPT!

Which is rooted in a paradigm that’s long gone.

Hell, I’d find it more interesting if it was a list of the 250 most listened songs from the 20th century! Seeing what survives!

Anyway, in the sixties, AM radio ruled. A hit was a hit, and if you were a fan of popular music, you knew them all, they were all on your local AM Top Forty station.

And then along came album rock and FM. Suddenly it wasn’t about the single, but the entire body of work. What an act stood for, what they had to say. And in the sixties, the album rockers were still one step removed, off to the side.

But in the seventies, the script flipped. AM became a backwater. Cracks me up when people reference Top Forty hits from the seventies. All the action was on the FM dial, with AOR, which dominated. And so much money came raining down… Because albums cost more than singles and if you were a fan of the album, you were much more likely to buy a ticket to see the act, and then…

Corporate rock and disco came along and imploded the entire marketplace. Let’s be clear, Boston was never corporate rock, and that initial album stands up to this day. But there became a formula, repeated endlessly with little artistic merit. Ditto on disco. There were some great early disco tracks, but then everybody got into the market and released tripe and…

Everything was moribund until MTV came along in the eighties to save the recording industry. It was about single hits once again. Which you could only get by buying the entire album.

The roots of the music took a back seat to how you looked, how good your video was. Those were the price of admission, and if you didn’t tick those boxes, good luck.

And the labels LOVED this system. Because it was clearly defined. If you got on MTV you had a hit, and the new Top Forty stations on the FM dial took their playlist from MTV and with the introduction of the expensive CD, cash was plentiful. That’s an understatement, the labels were rolling in dough, getting the acts to take low royalties on CDs to grow the format and never raising them.

And as rock started to become stale, with the hair bands, hip-hop came along to usurp the crown, being much more earthy and honest than the rock music of the day.

But in the nineties… Rock had a resurgence with indie labels. And this is where the action with rock remains… Off the radar screen. Acts who have an audience, can sell some tickets, but use their records as a blueprint at most. They don’t focus on singles because they know there’s nowhere for them in the singles marketplace. Which was terrestrial radio and is now the Spotify Top 50. Where you’ve got to appeal to a large group, the younger and more undeveloped the better, who will stream your tracks ad infinitum and give the impression that everybody is listening to them.

But they’re not.

2

Now this “Rolling Stone” list does a halfway decent job of cherry-picking from all genres, although there are a lot of touring acts, mostly playing rock-based music, that are not represented. However, unless you’re a fan of the Spotify Top 50, which the major labels are, which the press is, because it’s comprehensible, you’re going to read this list and get PISSED! Because the other genres are only paid lip-service, the listings are far from comprehensive.

If you’re a fan of country music, which is bigger than ever, and has always focused on careers, you’re going to be scratching your head wondering where all your favorites are. Yes, there’s a track by Jason Isbell, more Americana than regular country, and Eric Church…good, but I don’t see any Luke Bryan… “Play It Again” is a better song than at least half of the list, a lot of which is rhythm based, sans melody. But that’s too mainstream for these wanker rankers.

Pick any genre  you want… Metal, Latin… This smorgasbord pays lip service AT BEST! It’s a complete misrepresentation of today’s marketplace. Which is extremely diverse, and rarely comes together.

Morgan Wallen plays stadiums… What has he got in common with Taylor Swift or Beyoncé who plays the same places? NOTHING! Other than hit records in their formats. Sure, there are some people who like them all, but they’re more like the brain dead fans listening to AM hits in the late sixties and seventies when all the action was over on the FM dial.

Let’s go one step further… Today’s music market is INCOMPREHENSIBLE!

In the old, pre-internet days, those in the industry knew every record on the chart. Now that’s impossible, there’s just too much. And sure, a lot of it is crap, but not all of it.

Meanwhile, all this focus on the Spotify Top 50 is doing a disservice to the marketplace in general. Rüfüs Du Soul plays the Rose Bowl… It’d be more interesting if the press made non-fans aware of success in other genres. But it’s Spotify Top 50 all the time.

And the labels kind of like this, because they don’t know how to break a record. Best to have defined formats/genres, so they can aim only for the Spotify Top 50, working the acts signed to their labels and overpaying for that which breaks on social media.

The whole construct is broken. It’s a self-serving circle jerk. The major labels want it to be the way it always was, AND IT’S NOT! It’s kind of like Napster… Who’d want anything but a CD? Why download music? How did that work out! And as far as people not wanting to pay for music…that was because the labels couldn’t adjust their business model to offer what the customer wanted. Daniel Ek did this. And saved the recording industry.

Since we live in a Tower of Babel society, with all of us listening to different music, overriding enemies who touch everybody become the focus. Like Ticketmaster. Like Daniel Ek. As for those complaining that ticket prices are too high…only because everybody wants to pay the freight to go to the show! As for Daniel Ek… I’m still waiting for an explanation why those whose music isn’t listened to should make a living as a result of streaming. That’s a nonstarter… That’s like saying you make bespoke, overpriced potholders and you want to make as much as the mass producer. That doesn’t work in any other industry.

But I don’t want to lose the plot here.

Taylor Swift set a record…based on vinyl, but other than Taylor and her team, who is impressed? Those who don’t listen to her music?

That’s how far we’ve come. The press is for those who don’t care.

Where is all the K-pop on this list? That’s a huge market. You  may not want to listen to it, and that’s fine…but the soundtrack from “KPop Demon Hunters” dominated the marketplace and…

Lists like this do a disservice. They perpetuate a myth. That we’re one cohesive market. The question is how do we GROW the market, which depends on driving people to music in other genres they might enjoy that don’t get the press, are not focused on as we hear endlessly about the Spotify Top 50 and their brand extensions.

Then again, who in the hell is reading “Rolling Stone”? It’s a brand name and nothing more. Almost all of its content is behind a paywall, and most people are not paying.

Then again, that’s one thing Apple News+ (“Rolling Stone” is included) has taught us. That all of the old school media outlets are fighting for attention via clickbait headlines. There’s no there there.

I’d rather hear from TikTok users what their favorites are rather than these self-satisfied “writers.”

Movie critics no longer matter. Rock criticism is dead. What makes you think you can recapture a past glory when the world has changed and no one cares? If I want to take the pulse of America, I go to TikTok. You might not like it, but there’s more truth there than there is in almost all of the remnants of magazines from the last century.

There is good new music. The problem is not that it’s not making enough money, but that potential fans can’t find it.

Hell, you could look at this list and not only hate so much of the hit fodder, but not even recognize, never mind having heard, the entries!

That was impossible in the AM Top Forty mid-sixties and the MTV eighties, but that’s where we are today.

CAN WE AT LEAST ADMIT IT?

Did you catch the Ryder Cup story?

Trump and his minions attended the contest and were so out of control, even a beer was thrown at Rory McIlroy’s wife, that…

McIlroy went nuclear!

He said you had to respect the game, that there was no place for this behavior on the golf course. Furthermore, he rubbed it in the mob’s face by emphasizing that despite all the rabble-rousing, Europe WON!

So what happened?

PGA of America president Don Rea, Jr. apologized.

As for Heather McMahan, the emcee of the event, she apologized too, after inciting the crowd by saying “f*ck you, Rory” into the microphone. Furthermore, she lost her gig.

But it’s just golf.

Or is it?

What I don’t understand about Bondi’s performance in Congress today, is if you look at the record, and the past is prologue, everybody who went the extra mile for Trump, who defended him with their words even though their positions were indefensible, ultimately got f*cked. His personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. And Rudolph Giuliani. And Jenna Ellis lost her law license. You lose your bar membership, good luck trying to earn a living. As for Giuliani, he got sued and lost a lot of what he had.

For WHAT?

Momentary fame?

Everybody is expendable other than Trump himself. Kind of like Fox… Rupert Murdoch taught Tucker Carlson a lesson.

Did you watch any of the hearing today? The Judiciary Committee members were asking questions, and Pam Bondi was interrupting and losing her sh*t. I mean even when she said she refused to answer a question, she did it with attitude, with a sneer. WHY?

She’s an attorney, she knows you can’t get away with this behavior in court.

Now when the Allies liberated France…they killed those who cooperated with the Nazis. Now after all the shenanigans with lawsuits back and forth, I’m almost willing to let everybody slide after Trump’s term, clean the slate and start all over again. Then again, I still can’t rationalize the pardoning of the January 6th rioters. What exactly am I supposed to take from that? That if I’m connected enough the law doesn’t apply to me? That the law is irrelevant if my guy is more powerful than yours? Now that ain’t the America I remember.

The Judiciary Committee is entitled to ask questions. That’s their job. Why should they be excoriated for doing their job?

And if you think while biting back that everybody who doesn’t agree with the president has Trump Derangement Syndrome…

I think it’s the rank and file who voted for him that have that.

Let me see… They’re not rich enough to save any serious  money with the tax cuts. Their health care is going to go up in price. The local  hospital might close. Their business might sink as a result of tariffs…but they still defend Trump.

You can’t defy gravity. Things are not going to turn out well. If it weren’t for all the investment in AI the financial numbers would not look good.

And what do you say when the pollution from fossil fuels shortens your life and causes your relatives’ death? I mean the Marlboro Man died. Sure, you can smoke a pack or two a day and live to be a hundred, but the odds are not good.

Aren’t these the same people who told us just weeks ago that it was about reasonable discourse, that that was the essence of Charlie Kirk? Then what explains Pam Bondi’s performance today? Throwing random digs all the while. Interrupting a relatively calm Adam Schiff and calling him a bad lawyer.

Why does Trump and everybody who surrounds him act like they’re so OPPRESSED! They control the government, with the presidency and two houses of Congress and arguably the Supreme Court and… They can’t stop saying that the problem is the Democrats. Explain that to me, it’s not like the left has any true power.

Then again, if only a Democrat would act like Rory McIlroy and push back.

I mean imagine Pam Bondi giving this performance in high school. When called into the principal’s office, what is she going to do, BARK BACK? She knows better than that. So why doesn’t she know better with the Judiciary Committee? Talk about a persecution complex.

The right thinks they can act like this and there will be no reaction? That everybody will just take it? I mean despite having all the power, they’ve got to stick it in your eye to boot!

There’s a good piece in today’s “Los Angeles Times”:

“As Trump reign implodes, tell MAGA ‘I told you so'”

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2025-10-07/trump-maga-i-told-you-so

The writer’s take is the left should stop pussyfooting around the Republicans. Democrats should stop flagellating themselves over the past election and the ineptitude of their officials and just state the obvious…things aren’t good in America right now, and they’re about to get worse.

But if you don’t say what the right wants to hear, if you don’t toe the line, their minions will come down on you and…what is unfathomable to me is most of these morons who bite back at me each and every day don’t have any money! They’re living from paycheck to paycheck. Man were they snookered.

But we’re supposed to stay quiet for fear of pissing them off.

The Senate Judiciary Committee exists to ask questions. You can be civil or…

What’s going to happen when the left starts to behave just like the right?

Watch out!

P.S. No matter what happens, anything bad will be blamed on Biden and the Democrats.

P.P.S. I mean if I acted this way at the DINNER TABLE, my father would have reached over and hit me. If you act like Bondi did today at the corporation, you lose your job! What lesson is being taught here? And, once again, you can act this way and I can’t? Do you think if you keep saying the problem is Antifa and the woke mob on the left that that will make Democrats cower? It’s a witch hunt, and today the witch flew in on her broom and tried to cast her spell, but…magic is a ruse, and boorishness will get you nowhere.