You know, in the wake of her recent smash hit…

SHE DOESN’T HAVE ONE!

Let’s see, her last big single “Trustfall”… Actually, that’s not her last single, there have been some since, but “Trustfall” made it all the way to #82 on the “Billboard” Hot 100. Which means if you’re a fan of Top Forty, you didn’t hear it.

However, diving a bit deeper, the track did do better in niche formats, it was #15 on AC, #5 on Adult Top 40, #3 on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs and #20 on Mainstream Top 40. How many charts are there? I don’t know, but if you can’t make it on one of them, you’re not in the business.

Or maybe you are.

Let’s see, in 2022… Pink put out two solo singles. One made it all the way to #99 on the Hot 100, the other one didn’t even chart at all.

2021? Her one solo single made it to #74.

2020? No solo singles, but one with Keith Urban, which made it all the way up to #52 on the Hot 100, made it to #10 on the Country Airplay chart, but even that ain’t so great.

2019? One solo single that made it to #49 on the Hot 100.

2018? Three singles, one made it to #90 and two didn’t even chart.

2017? One song at #13.

Pink’s last number one solo track was back in 2010, with “Raise Your Glass.”

Yes, Pink has done features/duets that have done better, but not all of them.

And yes, there’s been airplay in other formats, but…

I’ve got nothing against Pink, other than the fact that she does that damn acrobatic act every damn show, she’s likable. But STADIUMS?

Looking at the above numbers… If it were the past, promoters would be worried about booking her in arenas. Or would proffer a low guarantee, fearful she wouldn’t sell out. But today? STADIUMS!

Chances are you haven’t even been exposed to Pink’s recent music. She got the party started back in 2001, and I’d be stunned if you didn’t know that ubiquitous single, which was all over music television. But now music television is dead. Video is on demand online, and if you don’t want to see it, you never have to. And the power of terrestrial radio? The brain dead, not the active listener, they’re all on streaming services. And it’s the active listener who buys concert tickets. And the bottom line is Pink does have enough active listeners to sell stadiums, and that’s utterly amazing!

Stadium gigs had their heyday in the seventies. Oh, there were some in the eighties, but no one could sell that many tickets. Except for the Stones, Springsteen at the height of “Born in the U.S.A.” Everybody else? It was unfathomable.

And then came the devastation of the internet. Everybody scaled down. The belief was that music was turning into a theatre business, or small arenas. Tickets would sell, and there’d be more acts on the road, but the good old days were gone. But today makes the good old days look like a sideshow!

Hit acts? Stars? They’re getting less of the listening audience than ever before. That’s right, star plays on streaming services are losing market share. You’d think their business would go down, but just the opposite.

Sure Pink has a long career, but when you think of the stadium acts of yore, do you put her in the same category?

And Kenny Chesney started the modern day stadium paradigm, but he always brings insurance, other hit acts, to sell tickets.

But Pink? She’s got Sheryl Crow, who made her bones in the last century, and the well-known acts the Script and KidCutUp. Yes, Pink believes she needs no insurance. Sure, she’s got to fill out the bill, but doesn’t need anyone else to sell tickets. She can do it all by herself.

Taylor Swift? Biggest tour of the year. How many people actually saw it? Bottom line? Never has an act this big been this small. And she’s the biggest one out there!

Morgan Wallen sells out stadiums and he only has a couple of albums. Unheard of in the days of yore.

Welcome to the niche-ification of the music business. Nothing is ubiquitous, you’re not competing against everybody else, but yourself. People have the mindshare and the dollars for you, if they’re interested. Getting them interested might be a heavy lift, but if you do, they’ll lay out dough.

Turns out in a crazy, alienated world, people are more tribal than ever, they need someone to believe in. Ergo Taylor Swift. You might not care, but those who went to the show believe it was a religious experience. You didn’t go to the show, didn’t see the movie, and are unaware of “Cruel Summer,” yet you read the news… Well, who is even reading the news? But if you do, you’d think that Swift was the Stones, when she’s not. Nor the Beatles. And I could make a critical judgment of her music, but that’s not the point. Swift has a diehard core audience. And it’s large, but it’s not everybody.

And everybody has the same iPhone, especially amongst the younger demo, Android is a joke in the U.S., because of peer pressure, if nothing else, you don’t want to proffer a green bubble. (And if you do you’d better be a techie with a good reason to go Android, because otherwise you’re going to be seen as cheap. Yes, your smartphone is more of an indicator of your personality and wealth than your house or car.) But if you go to the show, you can have a unique experience. One that only you can testify about. And no matter how much is on hard drive, the act does speak to the audience, you feel a one to one connection.

And then there’s all those PEOPLE! Normally you’re glued to your device. You’re in contact, but it’s all virtual. At the show you have physical contact, it’s exciting. And you get to memorialize the event via photos. In the old days, maybe you saved a ticket stub, but even if you tried you often misplaced it. But a photo? It’s sitting in the cloud, ready to be shown years down the line, as you wax rhapsodic about the show you went to years before.

The demand is through the roof. Will it sustain? I”m sure there will be ups and downs. And nothing juices the business like new hit acts. But what music provides you can’t get anywhere else, nowhere. In a world of similarity, concerts provide unique.

So if you’re not number one? Don’t let it bother you. No one can reach everybody. The key is to reach somebody. And if you’ve got a tight bond, they’ll come to see you live.

All the old paradigms, poof, they’re gone! Yes, you were in the public’s mind because of continued radio play, continued video play, but now both of those things… Once again, music is an on demand item. How do you create this demand and sustain it?

That’s your job. That’s what you need to be doing online. Don’t play to the “Times,” don’t worry about getting on late night TV or “Entertainment Tonight” (is that still on)? Most of what you do won’t be seen by many. But those you do reach? They’re your army. They’re your apostles. They will spread the word if you make them believe enough, if you bond them to you.

Stadiums? The joke is it’s 50,000 people in a metropolitan area of millions. It’s one baseball game. When the team sells out do they do carthweels in the press, does everybody know about it? No. And baseball lost the plot anyway, it became niche because it couldn’t see the future and adjust for it. Following the dollars, it lost the younger generation.

And baseball can survive quite well as a niche endeavor, but you can miss the World Series, have no idea who played, and be quite satisfied.

And if baseball is niche, think about music! The sky’s the limit, you too can sell out stadiums, if you play long and hard enough. Sure, Pink had the benefit of all those hits decades ago. But today, if you connect with the audience, your fans have the music at their fingertips, they can drill it into their brains to their heart’s content. Everybody knows every word at a Zach Bryan show. Unheard of in the past. Because most people didn’t own the records. They knew the hits. But today everybody can go deep.

Do you know any Zach Bryan songs? Probably not. This ain’t the music business of yore. It’s less about finding your place in the landscape, being aware of what is going on in the rest of the world than focusing on your own little niche, your world.

So are you excited to see Pink in a stadium? Which is a lousy experience, anyway? Probably not. But the point is someone is. Fewer than a million. That’s right, Pink is doing 17 cities. So 17 x 50,000 (and not every stadium holds that many) is 850,000. In a country of 331.9 million. A drop in the bucket. But enough to keep Pink flying private.

Think small, because it’s really big.

You live in your own vertical. Forget the competition, stay the course.

“Trail of the Lost: The Relentless Search to Bring Home the Missing Hikers of the Pacific Crest Trail”: https://tinyurl.com/4h3w5p4f

I was dying to tell you about this but ultimately I found the ending disappointing. Furthermore, the three main cases were scrambled in the pages so sometimes you couldn’t keep the players straight. However, I was struck by the dedication of the searchers, they had PURPOSE!

That’s more important than money. And although there are some people who find purpose in making money, it’s the vast minority. Which is why when you hear the aphorism that money won’t make you happy, believe it. Yes, there’s nothing worse than being broke. And up to a point extra money eases the pain of life. But we all need something to live for. Or we die.

Yes, the scions of famous people. They’ve got everything. But they’re constantly dying before their time. Like Christina Onassis. You think you want to be her, but in truth you want to be anyone but her. Ditto on the child stars. Everybody knows them until they don’t, until they become a joke. And it’s not radically different from child and early twentysomething musical acts. Then again, when done right, the music speaks of their life, it delivers insight for the listeners, but when the songs are written by committee and you’re just a vessel for someone else’s words, ultimately you become laughable yourself. Growing up is hard, which is why so many people refuse to do it. Or, you can take the easy way out, get a job and stick with it and not ask any questions until you retire, gratefully. But a lot of those people live for what happens outside the office, and for that I feel sorry for them. They’re playing it safe, and you only get to live once, and you don’t want to have any regrets.

And the worst thing about purpose is sometimes it runs out. You’re really into something, dedicated to it, and then it ceases being meaningful. This is the curse of the baby boomer in the music industry. They made it, they’ve got a job, but they keep on doing the same thing over and over. I mean at some point, who cares that some nincompoop is number one, who needs to know the new head of promotion, especially when music has never had less power in my lifetime. I’m not saying the music business is suffering, I’m just saying if you want to know which way the wind blows…the odds of a record being your weather vane are minimal. Or you could convince yourself the records have meaning, when in truth, as Bob Dylan said:

“For them that must obey authority

That they do not respect in any degree

Who despise their jobs, their destinies

Speak jealously of them that are free

Do what they do just to be

Nothing more than something they invest in”

Ain’t that the truth. But Bob Dylan doesn’t write this stuff anymore. He doesn’t spew words. Things have changed. And sometimes it’s been interesting and sometimes it hasn’t, but the key is Dylan is trying to make it interesting to himself. Otherwise, why live?

Writing about “A Murder at the End of the World” I spaced mentioning something very important, about the hacking.

Yes, there’s a group of hackers, and they’re working together to try and crack a serial murder case, when the police aren’t interested.

Now “hacker” has got a bad connotation. As the person who pierces the corporate veil and steals information. But in truth, if you’re computer-savvy, you can use these skills for good, like in “A Murder at the End of the World.”

It thrilled me, because these people had purpose. They weren’t worried about fame, or remuneration, they were driven by the cause. And when you’ve got that purpose it’s so great to be alive, you can’t wait to wake up in the morning, to get in front of the computer.

Now in the wake of Cheryl Strayed’s “Wild” the number of people hiking the Pacific Crest Trail has greatly increased. And even though we have so many modern communications methods, there is not cell service everywhere. Then again, if you’ve got an iPhone 14 or later, you’ve got the satellite SOS feature.

In other words, you’re out there alone.

And I’ve lived this life, of camping, hiking, being off the grid, so this book had a pull that was bittersweet. But what blew my mind, was all the volunteers looking for the missing.

Droves of people. Sans compensation. You could call on them and they’d show up. They’d offer to show up. They wanted to help. They wanted to find the people, alive or dead, for closure for their relatives. And they take time from their jobs, they put themselves in harm’s way, they do everything that is not reported in the slurry of news flowing through our devices 24/7. You might ask why they’re doing it, viewing them as chumps, but you’re probably the one who is a chump. All your toys, how happy are they making you? And showing up and being in the right place…

You get to drive. You steer. This is your life. And if you want to live a fulfilled existence, you’ve got to have a purpose, that you pursue to make you feel good on the inside.

And this is so challenging. So many people say they have no idea what to do with their life. They graduate from college and nothing appeals to them. Well, if you start, you’ll find it. That’s the way life is, you stumble into opportunities you never foresaw. But you must be in motion.

And you must know when to jump the tracks. I’m all for dedication, staying the course, but after a while…is it still ringing your bell?

Like I said above, the ending of “Trail of the Lost” is disappointing. For reasons I won’t go into here, not wanting to spoil the book. But it is easy to read and riveting for a long time. A change from formula, whether it be fiction or nonfiction. A change from those books written to sell.

So actually, I’d tell everybody to read half of “A Trail of the Lost,” yet that’s not the way people consume stuff. But still…

It made me think.

Everybody’s lost interest. It’s fallen down the charts. The audience has moved on. If this were a band, the pause in fighting would be perceived as a career misstep, a loss in momentum, something hard to recover from.

You’ve got to agree that Taylor Swift knows how to fight a war. During a pause in the action, with the tour down, she got involved with Travis Kelce. And that death in Brazil, tragic, but it allowed Swift to show compassion. And why isn’t there a call for cancellation of shows and festivals during heat waves? Oh, that’s right, money talks and we’re the living proof, the show must go on!

Kinda like in the wake of the Travis Scott tragedy. He’s back on the road. Supposedly not doing such great business, but that has not dripped into the fawning press coverage, writers have no clue, Travis has been rehabilitated, being contrite, right before our eyes.

People just don’t have the bandwidth, the attention span. Come on, think about Ukraine during another winter? This is just too long, like those three and four hour movies indulgent directors are serving us. Can’t we at least have a bathroom break? No, because this is the way the director wants people to see it, damn your bladder.

And I’m not saying the rabid young left has changed its take, but the “Times” poll said that people are coming to Israel’s side, as in Hamas were bad actors, butchers, on 10/7. In other words, the anti-Israel faction is smaller than we think, although very vocal.

But these anti-Israel voices were silenced by people standing up, or at least impacted by people taking a stand, exactly what musicians refuse to do, they’re scared. Stay silent, that’s what their handlers say. Well, the handlers don’t sport their monikers, and if they were so bright, why don’t they make the music?

The message has seeped out. Hamas are evildoers. And you can be queer in America, bud dead in Gaza. You look stupid if you defend Hamas. And no one likes to look stupid, especially when no one is paying attention.

Of course I’m overstating here, but the fatigue is palpable, the American public needs something new. The Palestinians are never giving up, from the river to the sea, baby. They’re going to fight to the death, they’re already dying, because those damn Jews have got to go.

But the Jews, um, the Israelis, we know they’re different, but in truth antisemitism runs wild, don’t care about their image, they know they’re in a fight for their survival as a people, as a nation. They’re not going to listen to anybody tell them to cool it, because no one ever listens to them. But Bibi is bad, atrocious. True, but you don’t change horses in midstream. And have we looked at ourselves recently, on the verge of authoritarianism? America used to be the model for the world, now a good chunk of the country wants to secede, shut the doors, put a curtain around America, after all we need no one else. Enough with supporting these countries we can’t place on a map. I’m sick of paying taxes for something that does not affect me. As for holding back Putin, he’s a good guy, that’s what Trump says, he’s just misunderstood.

But this is untrue, you say! Doesn’t matter. Truth is irrelevant. It’s emotions all the time. And our emotions say that the intelligent have screwed the underclass. And the underclass are willing to burn it all down to teach them a lesson. Kinda an analogy to Hamas, don’t you think? Yes, the fat cat Republicans are like Lebanon and Egypt and the rest of the Arab countries cheering on the Palestinians, but in truth they want nothing to do with them, they won’t let them migrate across their borders. Keep those taxes on the rich low, the benefits are going to trickle down, I tell you!

In the modern world keeping a story alive is nearly impossible. Trump understands this. This doofus is tweeting, making news, staying in touch with his audience nearly 24/7. And they love it! He’s feeding them fodder, they’re rabid. He’s their hero in a world where there’s very little to believe in.

And the opponents? What a joke. They tell us to trust them. But we don’t trust anybody. And there is a secret police, who come out and stab you if you say anything anti-Biden. He’s visibly too old, he’s factually too old, and what do they tell us? Look at Trump’s age! But then we’ll say everybody ages differently, isn’t that what you told us?

And people can’t even understand this. They’ll think I’m pro-Trump. Because people are no longer educated to think, but to make money. Hell, I’d rather have AI make decisions than those educated in untruths in substandard schools.

Everything is up for grabs, so you’re focused on yourself, preserving what you’ve got. Who’s got time to think about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict? Things aren’t so good in your own life, right in front of you.

Hamas was Billie Eilish. Building her career when no one knew who she was. Eilish didn’t come out of nowhere, nor did BDS, Interscope and management developed Billie Eilish and the Palestinians developed BDS, it just didn’t appear spontaneously. And did you see that Billie likes women? Well, dig deep and I’m not sure that’s true, at least sexually, but the headline implies it.

The headlines, conventional wisdom, tell us the Israelis, the Jews, are rich, smart and invulnerable. People are stunned that they missed the intelligence. But this just shows that they thought Israel and the IDF and the Mossad were all mighty. Based on the past. Things change. But those damn Jews, we know they’re the problem, people have been told that their whole lives. They’re here to replace us. They spread Tucker Carlson’s word in Charlottesville, Elon Musk endorsed the generational trope, and they’re trying to blackmail X, didn’t you hear?

Yes, just like Israel is guilty of colonization and genocide. Even though neither applies. How can you have truth when people don’t even know the definition of words?

And how can you believe in equity when Florida State is denied a slot in the playoffs. They were robbed, just like Lewis Hamilton in 2021, the system, men, not the sport, denied them their place. But life goes on. You’ve just go to eat it.

Can’t they end that damn Israel/Hamas war? Can’t everybody just get along?

Well, I guess not. You’re not out protesting for Black Lives Mattering anymore and after all the brouhaha not much changed, which the Blacks will tell you happens again and again, but they’re equal and not entitled to voting protection and gerrymandering is a right, not a privilege. And if you don’t have power, STFU.

Everybody feels powerless, everybody needs a cause. Swift? Trump? They’re easy to glom on to. They’re American, they’re constantly making news, they’re worried about career management. Israel and Hamas? Man, that’s far away. But the war is more intense now than ever! Aren’t you worried about all the Palestinians who are getting killed? Yeah, I am, but man the airport is overcrowded and I’m thinking about my vacation and gas costs a fortune. But it went down! If a Mercedes-Benz goes down by 10k can most people afford it? Still no. Yet the people driving these Suburbans behind tinted windows, they don’t care about the price of gas, it’s a drop in the bucket. They’re not struggling. And they too are sick of paying taxes. The rich know better, about everything, just like Elon Musk!

Overwhelmed yet?

Welcome to America.

And now you can see why most people have moved on from the conflict in the Middle East, they’ve only got time for that which directly affects them, and the war doesn’t, so it’s not completely forgotten, but it’s in the background now. Shhh… Don’t interrupt me, I’m bingeing “Friends.”

In relative order.

(Note: These are shows I watched in 2023, they may have been released earlier.)

1. “Ferry” – Netflix

2. “War Sailor” – Netflix

3. “Infamy” – Netflix

4. “Silk” – Amazon

5. “The Diplomat” – Netflix

6. “The Bear” – Hulu

7. “The Ex-Wife” – BritBox

8. “Tour de France: Unchained” – Netflix

9. “The Snow Girl” – Netflix

10. “Kohrra” – Netflix

11. “Informer” -Amazon

12. “Black Butterflies” – Netflix

13. “Pure” – Amazon

14. “The Last Word” – Netflix

15. “Nada” – Hulu

16. “New Blood”- BritBox

17. “Thicker Than Water” – Netflix

18. “A Murder at the End of the World” – Hulu

19. “Class Act” – Netflix

20. “The Sixth Commandment” – BritBox

21. “Bosch: Legacy” – Season 2 – freevee

22. “Indian Matchmaking” – Season 3 – Netflix

23. “Jewish Matchmaking” – Netflix

24. “Kleo” – Netflix

25. “Slow Horses” – AppleTV+

26. “Clark” – Netflix

27. “Women At War” – Netflix

28. “Three Pines” – Amazon

29. “Chloe” – Amazon

30. “The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem” –  Season 2 – Netflix