They’d do boffo at the b.o., but the only people who were interested in a new ABBA album turned out to be in the media.

The media thrives on hype. And it prefers entertainers who already have mindshare. It’s a comeback story, there’s an arc, the reunion, the cutting of the album, the cataloging of their prior work, the character studies, and then the music itself, which no one wants to hear.

Of course people checked out “Voyage” just to see what it sounded like, to see if the magic was still there, but there was no way in hell “Voyage” could be a hit, NO WAY!

First and foremost ABBA is a singles band, and to sell an album they’ve got to have a hit, but it’s absolutely impossible for ABBA to have a hit today, the only way they can conquer the chart is by aligning with a hitmaker du jour, as Elton John has done. But their music is out of touch with today’s scene, youngsters aren’t aware of them and the avenues of mainstream exposure are more limited than ever before. Look at the Spotify Top 50, does ABBA belong there? OF COURSE NOT!

That’s the world we live in. To have a hit you’ve got to make hip-hop or beat-infused music, with the 808 king and melody oftentimes absent. And if this is not your forte, don’t even start, just build a body of work, and build your career on the road.

Yes, the paradigm has flipped. Music is now a live medium, not a recorded one. Of course there are records, but they mean less than ever before, hits reach fewer people than ever before, and no one expects hit music makers to last and they’re only as good as their last hit. Then again, in the modern marketplace you can have a few stiffs and it doesn’t matter, you can still have another hit, which was previously impossible. But today failure instantly disappears. As does greatness too frequently. Yes, you can record a great track and it can stiff. The era of cream rising to the top is over, it ended back in 2012 or so.

As for creating a new hit if you’re not already firmly in the marketplace, having had hits already, it’s going to be very damn SLOW! Think of it this way, hits are oceans, vast and broad. But rivers feed those oceans. And there are a zillion streams dripping into bigger rivers, gaining momentum until they hit the ocean. That journey takes time. Which is why if you’re not aligned with a hitmaker du jour, be prepared to slug it out. Of course there are overnight hits, like Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” but they’re extremely rare. And, Lil Nas X’s hit was the first big TikTok breakout, and that can only be done once. Which is why we only had “In Rainbows”/name your own price once. The first time it’s new, a novelty, a story, after that it’s de rigueur and almost instantly passé.

Acts are out of touch with the marketplace. But those on the other side of the glass understand it, not only the label employees, but the producers, like Max Martin. Max Martin’s career would be toast if he was the act, the market would not accept all his twists and turns, the different kinds of music he made with various different people. The market labels you and it’s nearly impossible to broaden your appeal, to change to do something different, you’re lucky if you’ve hit with what you’ve got.

And, the music is an accessory, promotion for the tour, whereas it used to be vice versa. Don’t think about making money from your recordings, but how you can use those as an element in your marketing plan for your tour. Either you’re in it for the long term or you’re rolling the dice, and the odds are long. It’s nearly impossible to crack the Spotify Top 50 for most genres of music, don’t complain, go the other way. The key is to bond the audience to you, to generate fans. Fans of the act, not fans of the track. People who like a track are not convinced the act is worth paying attention to. But if you have a body of work of a similar caliber, they’re interested.

This isn’t going to change. As for those complaining about the low payouts for recordings on streaming services, the truth is in between the old paradigm and the new, a whole hell of a lot of other product and diversions flooded the market. You used to compete against 5,000 other albums a year, now you compete against 60,000 new tracks a day, as well as the history of recorded music. So attention per product, per album, goes down. Look at TV ratings, they’re the same. And same at Netflix. They aren’t in the ratings business, they’re in the business of getting you to continue to cough up your subscription fee every month. This is how Disney+ faltered. Disney+ appealed to children and “Star Wars” fans, there are only so many of them, so signups this last quarter were anemic. Netflix appeals to EVERYBODY, and its subscription numbers went up beyond expectations. And Netflix not only has a broad swath of genres represented, it’s got a huge number of shows! And the truth is, it’s never clear what will resonate with the audience, which is why you must make a lot of product, no one could foresee “Squid Game” being an international monster. And speaking of international, all those Latin acts, like Bad Bunny, would have previously been ghettoized, they’d find it impossible to conquer the marketplace and sell out arenas and stadiums. But now their target market can be reached, and in addition new people who were unaware of the music previously can be exposed.

You’re alone out there. If you’re depending upon the machine to carry you, you’re delusional. The machine has endless choices, it doesn’t need any specific act, it just needs hit acts, and there are always enough of them.

So, ABBA put out an album to hype their virtual live show. Well, the word got out, but I’m not sure a new album was the way to go. It has now tarnished the act’s image a bit and taken the focus off the live project, where all the potential money is.

So, if you’re a heritage act, forget the Spotify Top 50 unless you tie up with an act with Spotify Top 50 success. And if you want to make money, create/jump on/be first in a new paradigm. The Eagles did this with Walmart, “Long Road Out of Eden” didn’t penetrate radio, it was a sales event that entered millions of the homes of boomers. And today the band rarely plays a track from the double album live. The audience doesn’t want it. And this is depressing, but it’s reality. So, make new music for yourself, to feed the hard core fans, because the hit marketplace is closed to you, CLOSED!

And then you had U2 and Apple. They got paid, although there was huge backlash, the music being driven down the throats of people who didn’t want it. There are people who don’t want to be forced to get vaccinated, and there are people who don’t want U2 on their computer or phone EVER!

But both of the above were sales games. How can you get people to actually listen to your new music?

Well, first don’t make a lot of it. You need to go track by track, trying to have a hit. And you need tie-ins with television and so many other outlets. Still, it’s hard to get anybody but a hard core fan to stream your new music again and again, if for no other reason than there’s so much in the marketplace, they’re fans of what you did, not what you’re doing.

And on one hand this sounds bad, but on the other it sounds good. The truth is there are more live shows than ever before. People are hungering for live music. And sure, there are huge productions set to hard drive that fill arenas, but there are many acts sans production who play live, who evidence humanity, who are doing endless business on the road, and the young acts’ business increases in proportion to the quality of their live show and their recorded music in concert. Which is why metal is thriving but it’s nowhere in the Spotify Top 50, and metal is not the only genre.

ABBA employed a twentieth century plan in a twenty first century world. Maybe you could come back in the aughts, but as far as new music, it had better be the early aughts, when music television still meant something, when VH1 could bang your track.

Now, if you’re a classic rocker planning your comeback/reunion tour, it’s too late, unless you’re a giant, like ABBA, which is not going on the road, or Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, who are not getting back together, they’re the biggest of the big. If you played the Fillmore and sold some records long ago, chances are it’s too expensive for you to tour today, the numbers don’t work. You can go play house concerts, solo, but the costs of production at a bigger building require high ticket prices from an audience that’s starting to stay home, with many on fixed budgets. Elvis’s merch is going down, BECAUSE HIS AUDIENCE IS DYING! And now it’s going to happen with the boomers, and classic rock acts. They were everything, and not long in the future they’ll be nothing.

It won’t go on like this forever, with only young acts in narrow genres owning spots in the Spotify Top 50. The decline of terrestrial radio will broaden acceptance of other genres. But the truth is, youngsters stream most. But as I said above, stream counts are not everything. It turns out if you give an honest show and change it up on a regular basis it doesn’t matter what kind of music you make, you can build an audience and grow. Can you become as rich as a techie or banker? No. But you have more power than they do, because you touch hearts and minds, never underestimate the power of music, because when done right it’s got SOUL!

Paul Carrack wrote and sang the classic “How Long” for his band Ace, and sang “Tempted” for Squeeze and “Silent Running” and “The Living Years” for Mike and the Mechanics. Carrack also played keys on such varied albums as Roxy Music’s “Avalon,” the Pretenders’ “Learning to Crawl” and Elton John’s “Made in England.” He’s part of Eric Clapton’s touring band and is on the road doing solo shows. Listen to how a boy from Sheffield makes a life in music.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/paul-carrack/id1316200737?i=1000542327929

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast?returnFromLogin=1&

https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast


Beat the Grammys in the ratings. And to make the comparison even more interesting, they shared the same producer, Ben Winston!

Variety shows are dead. People don’t want to sit through anything they’re not interested in. NOTHING! So if you’re producing something trying to appeal to everyone, you’re in a death spiral. Hell, Adele’s special is on a pace to eclipse the Oscar ratings! Think about that, one singer beating out a whole host of movie stars. Then again, one musician singing their own material from the heart is more powerful than any actor any day. As I’ve repeated many times previously, movies when done right are larger than life, music when done right is LIFE ITSELF!

But don’t get too excited. Adele only reached 10 million people. In a nation of 330 million. Last February’s Super Bowl reached 96.4 million viewers, and those were the worst ratings since 2007!

In other words, mass is declining. Adele is a unicorn in a field of mice. She’s bigger than everybody else, but not that big.

However, if you know your music special history, ratings are historically AWFUL! U2 had a special on Fox during the height of the band’s success that not only lost the night, but by a huge margin. So, truthfully, Adele’s ratings are a triumph.

In a completely different world.

Yes, network television has never meant less. And it skews old, especially CBS, the network that aired the special.

And all this is not to rain on Adele’s parade, but to put her and her work in context.

Dave Matthews Band and Coldplay were beneficiaries of music television airplay, they were on VH1 just before that paradigm ended, when videos became an on demand item online, and since that time almost no act has been that big, because they no longer have a platform that reaches everyone.

Adele made her bones at the very end of the CD era. She sold ten times what anybody else did when physical still meant something, now it means nothing.

Forget the “Billboard” chart, it’s completely manipulated. And sales and albums are completely meaningless today, today it’s all about streams, CONSUMPTION!

In the old days it was all about selling CDs and not worrying about whether they were listened to. Today you sell nothing and it’s all about getting people to listen to your music over and over again.

But once again, Adele bridges the gap, and she will sell physical product to oldsters who have not yet bought into streaming and hard core fans who will buy vinyl. And both of these formats are very profitable, but today they’re a poor gauge of demand.

But Adele proves that America, the world, yearns for an all-encompassing superstar. No one puts up her numbers, not Drake, not the Weeknd, NOBODY! Which has you wondering not only what makes her so unique, but why labels and marketers are not developing acts closer to her than the niches in the streaming world.

Then again, Adele started at a young age, was the beneficiary of musical education and writes and sings, with a unique, great voice, never mind having a great sense of humor that she displays in an intimate fashion.

So, where is the music education in America? Almost nonexistent. The two biggest names in music are Adele and Max Martin, who both were taught in the school system of their respective countries growing up. And they both paid their dues before emerging on the world market. They were not fourteen year old phenoms pushed by their parents and complicit marketers on a not yet pubescent public. No, the chances of your young teenager being that talented and experienced and worthy of attention are essentially nil.

Also, Adele lives outside the spotlight for years between albums, gathering experiences she can write and sing about, and isn’t interested in the brand extensions so popular amongst the Spotify Top 50.

But I’ve had enough.

Adele’s show at the Greek was one of the two best I’ve seen this century. And it was about music, not production. But this all hands-on-deck overhype has me on backlash, I feel like her new work is being pushed down my throat. And the dirty little secret is “25” was not as good as “21,” and the odds that “30” will be as memorable…

Then again, she took five plus years to make it, so maybe it’s excellent.

All I know is all the marketers, the radio stations, are complicit in jamming her. Will we care in six months?

We’ll know when we see the streaming numbers.

Now maybe the label will succeed in delivering single after single to radio, pumping streaming numbers, but without said singles, good luck.

Then again, the biggest act of the past year was Morgan Wallen, AND HE WAS BANNED FROM THE MARKETPLACE! Proving that at the end of the day it’s about the music and only the music. As for the supposed right wing support driving Wallen’s numbers…they couldn’t do the same for that Aaron Lewis track, and you haven’t heard anything about the “Let’s Go Brandon” tracks in weeks.

So in truth every act is stepping up to bat with each new project, and we’re waiting to see what they hit, what they deliver.

But the world has changed since the paradigm was set in the sixties and seventies, when loyalty to the act superseded the ups and downs of album quality. Adele benefits from this, she could sell tickets without any new music. Then again, ticket costs far outstrip what they once were. It used to be a show, now it’s an EVENT!

So Adele is an anomaly. Breaking all the rules. Pointing to a future where no one else is going. Sure, you can sing on TV, but do you have anything to SAY? And those incessant beats, sans melody, they’re not omnipresent on Adele’s albums either.

But to develop an Adele takes years, and in a music business where no one has ownership, all the execs take a short term view, they sign that which they can promote and sell RIGHT NOW, they may not have their job years down the line.

But we used to have a slew of Adeles. Acts that could sell diamond, i.e. ten million albums, and they all made different music, the business was healthy, what changed? Well, the death of the monoculture. All eyes aren’t on anything these days. But one thing’s for sure, Adele’s got the most of ’em!

YouTube: https://bit.ly/3noLxQh

There were two new artists on the “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” soundtrack, Gerard McMahon and the Ravyns. Neither of their songs are on streaming services. You can buy them at iTunes, but you can’t hear them on Spotify, Amazon or Apple, I checked.

But I know them by heart.

1982… MTV hadn’t truly gotten traction yet. Teen movies were still a thing, we didn’t yet live in the Marvel Universe. And music had recovered from the trough in 1979 when rock tried to kill disco but the end result was they both sank. The early eighties, the Reagan era, were optimistic, sunny. This was when the boomers sold out, when money was plentiful and no one could contemplate the division our country is now experiencing. The sixties were over, the rednecks in the south now had long hair, we all listened to the same music and we all went to see “Fast Times.”

I’d read the book. It was a paperback original. The amazing thing was that Cameron Crowe had truly gone back to high school, sometime thereafter he actually took the SATs, both experiences I’m glad are in the rearview mirror. But the book had a different tone than the movie, it was more like the real high school, which was boring and riddled with factions that had classes as their only thing in common, I didn’t expect the movie to become a comedy classic, but I had to see it immediately when it came out.

And at this late date, “Fast Times” is most famous for Spicoli, Sean Penn’s breakout role, in which he made Vans famous. Funny how he made his bones as a stoner when he’s perceived to be so serious today. Of course he followed “Fast Times” up with the sorely forgotten “At Close Range,” doing which he met Madonna, who delivered one of her best songs, “Live to Tell.” for the soundtrack.

Not that there weren’t other memorable elements of “Fast Times”…most notably the return of our favorite Martian as Mr. Hand and the introduction of Phoebe Cates and Jennifer Jason Leigh. And although this was the peak of his career, Robert Romanus as Damone, the creepy high school ticket scalper, was priceless.

And the soundtrack was put together by Irving Azoff, who coproduced the movie, who was now ensconced at the top of MCA Records but had history with Crowe, as well as the soundtrack field, having performed his magic on “Urban Cowboy,” and once again he filled the grooves with superstar artists playing new material, a previously unheard of feat. It was one thing to assemble oldies, but new tracks? By stars? Impossible!

And Jackson Browne had the hit with “Somebody’s Baby,” which Jackson perceived as too light for one of his own LPs. And although Don Henley provided “Love Rules,” I actually prefer the excommunicated Don Felder’s “Never Surrender,” with its driving beat. But the songs I played most, that I remember most, were by the original acts.

Oh, there was another newbie on the borderline, i.e. Louise Goffin, who’d previously put out two no impact albums on Elektra/Asylum. Her “Uptown Boys” is precious. And the peak of her recording career. Although it was hard to drop the needle and play a song in the middle of a vinyl album side over and over again to feed one’s addiction, vinyl might be fetishized today but never forget the convenience of files, never mind CDs.

But side two started with the Ravyns and Gerard McMahon songs, so I could just go to the turntable and lift the needle almost mindlessly and play them again. And I did.

“Raised On the Radio,” the Ravyns cut, was a very eighties rock track, slick, with a driving beat, recounting the history of rock and roll. As for being raised on the radio, we were, we identified, we didn’t think twice, the song had a great pre-chorus and an almost as memorable chorus, but the only place you heard it was on the soundtrack, but because of licensing issues unless you own the original product from the eighties you’ve probably never experienced it. No one could foresee all the ways to exploit music in the future, this was before contracts demanded all rights in the known and unknown universe, when you had to go back to the acts who got another bite at the apple, i.e. compensation, for allowing their music to be used in these modern ways. As for why the Ravyns and McMahon cuts were not cleared, I’m not sure, then again, why pay for stiffs?

That’s right, neither song was ever played on the radio, never mind being a hit. But as driving as “Raised On the Radio” was, Gerard McMahon’s “The Look in Your Eyes” was slow, verging on dreary if it weren’t so good.

“Sometimes you’re miles away, babe
Every change, babe, you’re like the wind in my heart”

It was the attitude, the very slight sandpaper in Gerard McMahon’s voice, the song had rock gravitas, you felt like he meant it, that he was singing from the heart.

And then there was that run up the scale, that unexpected change:

“I’m sure as I wake up in the morn
There ain’t no one that I think about more”

Ah, young love, when it means more and hurts more, when you’re beyond the puppy love stage and looking for meaning, and wondering how long you should look before you settle down.

And then the melody twists some more, embedding the song in your heart.

“There’s a place downtown where I’ll be waiting
We’ll meet like strangers that we are, there’s a bar”

And then the deal is sealed with the chorus:

“Each time I look in your eyes
When I make love to you, I know there’s one thing true
And I can’t lose you tonight
You mean that much to me, you’re all I ever need”

He’s in the throes of it, what could be better?

The eyes are the window to the soul but they’re also insight into whether somebody is into you. In concert with their smile, their lips, you can tell. This is what we’re all searching for, which we so rarely find. Beyond flirting, beyond hit and run, true connection.

The Ravyns ultimately made an album for MCA that went straight into the dumper. But a few years later, I was hanging at a gig, between acts, and was introduced to this guy and asked him what he did and he laughed and said he was in this band the Ravyns and I said RAISED ON THE RADIO! And he smiled, we locked eyes, connected, but he had the world-weariness of a musician who’d been through the mill, who’d had a brush with fame but had fallen short, but the truth is millions of people knew his song by heart, like me.

As for Gerard McMahon… He’s hung around, but this was his peak. He was a journeyman and there was little room for such a person in the hit music scene of the eighties. It was all about the stars on MTV. And then grunge came along in the nineties and wiped the slate clean, there was no point of entry for acts like this.

And there still isn’t. The building blocks are irrelevant. Even in hit music you can have a song that’s only one chord, and this is not the breakthrough of the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows.” As for those still playing rock, it’s loud and bombastic, it might have more melody than hip-hop, but not much. As for the music of the eighties, they call much of it yacht rock today. Which started out as a put-down but is more and more seen as a badge of honor. Just like the Carpenters were resuscitated by the cognoscenti decades later the softer rock sound, which is often quite dynamic, is regaining credibility, hell I heard Christopher Cross’s “Ride Like the Wind” the other day and it was a revelation, an incisive masterpiece outside of context, outside of his dominance decades ago.

But Christopher Cross had hits. And Gerard McMahon did not. But “The Look in Your Eyes” is a hit to me, I sing it in my mind constantly. Why? I’m not exactly sure, maybe it’s the sweetness of the sound, even though it’s not saccharine, it has a bit of an edge, maybe because it’s something I can identify with, I’m not dangerous, I don’t carry a knife, never mind a gun, I don’t wear a leather jacket, I don’t want to be seen as a poseur, I can only be me, someone who would take “Back in Black” and “Blue” to a desert island. And if there’s a screen, I wouldn’t mind having a copy of “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” for the soundtrack alone.

“And like the fool that won’t die
There’s nothing to explain, girl there ain’t no shame
When I see that look in your eyes”