Jaan Uhelszki was senior editor at “Creem” and is the co-writer of the new documentary on the legendary music magazine. Listen to hear tales of Lester Bangs, her appearance on stage with KISS, how Ronnie Van Zant predicted his death and how Cameron Crowe inspired the arc of the film. Jaan’s got stories, and she tells them!
I’d never heard of this woman before today. But right now she’s got the #1 track on iTunes… WHO?
So I started Googling, so far it’s just the country outlets with the story, not even “Billboard” has run one, HitsDailyDouble is silent…but Priscilla Block’s song “Just About Over You” is charting ahead of Harry Styles’s “Watermelon Sugar,” Billie Eilish’s “my future”…EVERYTHING!
So, the story is she broke on TikTok. With this song called “Thick Thighs.”
It’s not on the lyric sites. You see if you’re not part of the big ecosystem it’s like you don’t even exist. Hell, a friend of mine e-mailed me that he had dinner (outdoors) with friends and their 13 year old daughter and she had no clue who Rihanna and Cardi B were, her musical favorites were all TIKTOK ARTISTS!
In other words, when you’re chasing the mainstream, when you’re looking to become a diversified brand, are you missing the target? It all comes down to music, if you’re not releasing it regularly, you’re forgotten, not part of the discussion, replaced by something else. This is what the oldsters don’t understand, ALMOST NOTHING LASTS! No book, no movie, no music…it either sticks or it doesn’t, and in a world where what happens in the morning is old hat by the afternoon, not even part of the news, if you’re not coming up to bat frequently, you’ve already lost the game. This is reality, don’t shoot the messenger…shoot all those web-surfers not beholden to systems, going where the action is…isn’t this how Napster happened in the first place?
So, the song “Thick Thighs,” Priscilla’s breakthrough, the one that made inroads on TikTok, contains these lyrics:
I can’t be the only one who likes extra fries over exercise
I never eat the produce that I buy, so why even try
You can’t spell diet without ‘die’
I’ve been eating carbs since ’95
And I’ve heard thick thighs save lives
Now wait a minute here… Aren’t the venerated models ten feet tall and skinny as a rail? Don’t the women who design and market these clothes fast, seeming to eat on alternate days at best? Doesn’t the media fat-shame on a regular basis? SO WHY IS PRISCILLA BLOCK RESONATING? Because she’s speaking to the people. And come on, a song entitled “Thick Thighs,” that’s a natural if you’re on TikTok (and if you’re worried about privacy, sign in with Sign in With Apple and lie about your age, you’re covered, at least to a greater degree than if you signed up directly).
Now this “Country Now” article:
Who is Priscilla Block? What You Need To Know About The Viral Sensation
says Priscilla has no label, but I got e-mail from a guy who says he’s aligned on the label side, who knows. But if you go to Priscilla’s homepage and click on “Representation” all you get is a Gmail address.
Now to be honest, I can’t say I heard “Thick Thighs” as an instant smash. Maybe it’s the mix. The lyrics don’t stick out as much as I believe they should. Who knows, but it’s resonating with the TikTok audience. If you click through, you will find that there are 108 videos using the song, never mind how many times each has been viewed:
But how did everyone know about the new song, “Just About Over You”?
Well, Priscilla has been teasing it on Instagram, revealing her honest life, not posturing like the so-called “influencers.”
But really, it’s her videos on TikTok that are rallying her fan base.
So, on 7/14, Priscilla uploads a video of her singing a song she wrote yesterday, i.e. “Just About Over You.”
Unlike those competing on TV singing shows, SHE WROTE IT!
And then Priscilla posted the following day that the song has gotten 230,000 views in less than 24 hours, and she’s singing the song again and she writes…
Engaging with the audience directly, not via the intermediaries, not only not the press, but not the playlists either. Then, on 7/17 Priscilla says “The fact that I wrote this song 4 days ago…y’all are insane! Should I record it???”
Do you see the difference between this and the Spotify complainers? Block is singing the hook of the song, which is catchy, over and over again in all these clips and now… She’s got the number one song on iTunes!
Oh yeah, what does that mean? Is she atop the Spotify Top 50, what does Mediabase say?
Yes, sales don’t mean what they used to, but they do show an active fan base…Block is a queen where it counts, online, on TikTok…
I recommend listening to “Just About Over You” via this lyric video, made not by an official company, a member of Priscilla’s team, but a fan, ergo the usage errors:
The best line is:
I don’t scroll through the past anymore ’cause I don’t care
SCROLL! That’s what we do these days, that’s what we ALL do these days, scroll on our phones. But the Spotify-haters living in the old world are so busy writing platitudes detached from real people that they don’t resonate.
“Just About Over You” is the classic story. It’s over, you put on your best look, try and feel good in your skin and clothes, go out to start over and…you run into them. If this hasn’t happened to you, you’ve never had a significant other, or have never left the house.
And if you listen to “Just About Over You” it competes with the rest of what’s on the country hit parade, a ton of it dreck with execrable lyrics, and the mention of Block’s ex’s truck does make me wince, but that’s the only offense, and as I say, most of what’s on the hit parade is even further compromised.
And how come Priscilla Block understands a hit chorus when all those complaining they can’t make it in music don’t?
What happens now?
Maybe it’ll be over soon. After all, there’s not a concomitant explosion of listens on Spotify or YouTube…but maybe that’s not where the audience is anyway. They live on TikTok. And Priscilla Block proves if you just think it’s mindless videos, that is untrue, TikTok is a community, where the active music audience resides.
The success of Priscilla Block is exciting. And that’s something that has been rare in the music business for so long, we get a marketing buildup, stories everywhere, whereas by connecting directly with the audience with authentic songs Priscilla Block has resonated. WOW!
Sometimes there’s no room for you in the conventional business.
If you look at the Spotify Top 50, if you check out the execs at the big three major labels, you may scratch your head and ask yourself WHAT IS THIS AND WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? It’s like the mainstream recording business is heading straight for a cliff, at a hundred miles an hour, as if the rest of the world does not exist, as if in a world where we’re overloaded with choice we only want a limited number of offerings in music. You can listen to all the hit playlists, even country, click through, and if you’re lucky you’ll find a track or two that resonates, and then you’ll pull up Joe Bonamassa’s “Why Does It Take So Long To Say Goodbye” and find it lands directly in the pocket.
Gary Moore was a journeyman. But his LP “Still Got The Blues” was released in America on the new Virgin label Charisma and Phil Quartararo, its majordomo, got the title track airplay. Forget the charts, they rarely reflect reality, if you listened to rock radio in 1990, you know “Still Got The Blues,” it wasn’t that it sounded new, just that it sounded so right. Moore had been kicking around for years, most notably as a member of Thin Lizzy, but that act’s hit days were far behind it, and Phil Lynott died in 1986. In other words, it was Phil Q who made the track a hit.
No one is making Joe Bonamassa’s track “Why Does It Take So Long To Say Goodbye” a hit. Joe’s a self-contained business. With a push would this track break? It’s not quite as good as “Still The Blues,” but it’s close, and I haven’t heard anything just like it in a while. Yes, blues rock, the sound that emanated from the U.K. when the music of the Mississippi Delta mixed with electric guitars and experimentation, envelope-pushing, is essentially dead. Clapton is lionized, oldsters still debate the best guitarist of all time, but it’s an echo chamber at best, no one outside of those involved seems to care. Rock is dead on the radio. But it lives on the road. Which is where Bonamassa makes his bread, he averages 2,759 tickets per gig, for an average gross of $319,754, which is a tidy sum, especially when you do it all yourself.
Joe Bonamassa has been building his audience for decades. While those on the Spotify Top 50 come and go, he remains, under the radar, with little press, but those who know and care support him, he’s a star to them. But so far outsiders have scratched their heads, because Joe was quite definitely a great guitar player, but the songs and the vocals didn’t quite measure up. But now comes “Why Does It Take So Long To Say Goodbye.”
I’m not sure this resonates with the younger generation, after all it hasn’t even been exposed to this music. Then again, a lot of them have, out of the speakers of their parents’ cars, their stereos. Especially the children of baby boomers. And Led Zeppelin is forever. And sure, Great Van Fleet sounds like Led Zeppelin, its lead singer emulates Robert Plant, but that’s not the sound of Joe Bonamassa, Bonamassa sounds closer to the first Zeppelin album, to what came before, closer to Jeff Beck than Jimmy Page. And “Why Does It Take So Long To Say Goodbye” swings.
But it is generic. You’re not going to listen to it and see it as a breakthrough, but it will wake up your ears, because it’s the lost sound that used to resonate with you so. And the guitar-playing is what is absent from all records today and even the lyrics resonate, especially when you learn they’re based on the end of Bonamassa’s five year relationship.
“Why Does It Take So Long To Say Goodbye” doesn’t fit on Active Rock. That format is for harder-edged bands a few generations removed from Black Sabbath, as in if you haven’t been following the scene, don’t know the history, chances are you’ll find the cacophonous sound anathema.
And Triple-A leans meaningful. It’s not about playing so much as songwriting, although its playlist is broader than Active Rock, but it champions acts like Phoebe Bridgers, who appeals more to your intellect than your heart, never mind your genitalia.
So, there’s nowhere for “Why Does It Take So Long To Say Goodbye” in today’s recorded music business. It’s a square peg in a round hole. But in this case, the peg is quite large and the hole is not as big as gatekeepers think it is.
Begging the question if Bonamassa got a push, would he break through. There’s a good case he would! It would be more of a press story than a radio one, because the fans of this kind of music still pay attention to the press. And it could be cool to go see Joe Bonamassa, but then at some point he’d be yesterday’s news, he’d lose his label, thrown on the scrapheap as a has-been. But by doing it himself, by hiding in plain sight, Joe Bonamassa continues to build a career that will last as long as he wants it to. And never forget, people love to own something, and it’s only the youngsters who love to own number one, and they abandon it when the next thing comes along or they get older.
“Why Does It Take So Long To Say Goodbye” is timeless, just like the blues. A sound that here’s forever. Trends come and go. But people will still be playing blues rock. Just check out the School of Rock, this sound dominates. And rock is not like jazz, it is a bigger tent, and is earthy without snootiness and requires no studying, no knowledge to understand and get.
Is this a trend? Is Joe Bonamassa leading a charge back to blues rock? I don’t think so. But the trend of doing it all by yourself, building for the ages as opposed to today, that’s something that is gonna grow, because despite the barriers to entry having been torn down the road to stardom goes through channels narrower than ever before, leaving too many genres of music out, in an age where you are not dependent on the system to build a career. Bonamassa is a harbinger. In a world where the road is more important than the studio, where feeling is more important than the penumbra, where the world still hungers for music that is not background, for the dance floor, for a video game, for a commercial, but is positively primary, up close and personal.
P.S. Check out the YouTube video above, although canned, when you see Bonamassa bend the notes your body tightens, your eyes narrow, you’re caught up in the feeling you know so well, the feeling of music pushing you to that place where it’s the only thing that exists and you feel alive and well.
Bob,
You make some good observations, as usual. But also as usual, there’s a lot more to the story. Richard Gottehrer was the perfect producer, and had the foresight to make a classic album in terms of production. When a Go-Go’s song is heard in 2020 there’s no telltale gated snare drum or cheesy synths to date it right back to 1981. More than anything, he agreed to make the album for $40k, which was the entirety of the budget. When we went over, he kicked in his own money to finish. And Mike Chapman did want to produce the Go-Go’s when we had access to the sort of budget he’d require, and signed on for a 4th album. But we were already on fire—and not in the good way.
And Our Lips are Sealed, I agree, what a perfect song. Never tire of playing it. Released June 12, 1981—but it took 6 months, until the week of Dec 12 to get to #20, where it stayed for a little over a week before heading down. Kudos to IRS and Michael Plen in particular who didn’t give up and worked that single without all the clout and money other labels could throw behind a record.
Starting in August, MTV added the video. So while MTV certainly played a big part in breaking the band, beaming a bunch of cool, fun gals into peoples living rooms—there were so many other working pieces.
Namely the 5 of us. We never stopped. Day in, day out, press, phoners, radio, sound check, show. Every single town we played, we visited the radio stations, smiled and took pics, did their station IDs and answered the questions and yukked it up at the morning jock jokes.
And when playlist adds from big radio program directors were announced in that Quarterback Flash or whatever it was called each Friday, nada. No Go-Go’s.College DJs played the single, DJs at big stations with some power to slip in a few singles of their own choosing, like Oedipus in Boston for one example—they played a role in us being heard. A November Saturday Night Live appearance catapulted us, even though we were half blotto in the performance. Opening for the Police in arenas helped us, just like Miles Copeland knew it would.
But there was also the timing. The timing always plays a part! The magic part. It’s just a synchronicity. In1981 the recession was just getting started, AIDS too, as well as Iran-Contra. There was an unease and uncertainty for a lot of people in this country, that things might be getting bad, and the Go-Go’s were uplifting. The right band at the right time.
Lucky for us, we had another strong single to follow up “Our Lips Are Sealed.†And after that, “Vacation†pushed the band down the road a little further.
And just as all those elements were relevant and important to the success, there was no big single reason it fell apart. I think you can put all the “usual suspect†reasons of substance & alcohol abuse, rampant egos, and income inequality, under one big umbrella of just being immature, undeveloped humans without much capacity for communicating or compassion. Oh well.
I’ve gotten close to a hundred of messages, emails, texts and phone calls since the Go-Go’s film aired on Showtime. It’s amazing to me what a wide swath of reactions I’m hearing. People wistful, people who didn’t know the back story. People inspired, people proud to have been there, people who want to tell me what the band meant to them. People who gripe about what was left out. People from similar heyday bands that got triggered being reminded of a band in-fighting. People who noticed things that shouldn’t have gotten past QC. It’s been mind-blowing.
I really like that you point out that the fact we were women wasn’t a cause for the difficulties. I get sick of that tired old catfighting bitchy trope, and always point out all the guys in bands who have similar issues. From Creedence to Guns n Roses, it’s hard to be in a band. But what makes the Go-Go’s endurance special is that we always, no matter what, overcome grudges, resentments, betrayals, hurts and disagreements.
And it’s not to cash in on the “oldies circuit.â€It’s because there is a bond that was forged by growing up together all while experiencing something extraordinary.
We (the present day Go-Go’s) don’t expect to have hits. And anyone in their 60’s realizes that chasing relevance might be time better spent nurturing contentment. But everyone wants to be recognized for their contributions, and we did contribute. We always knew we did. We’ve heard it all along, from adults who found inspiration, solace and hope when they were kids and adolescents seeing the Go-Go’s. We’ve heard it from a litany of musicians and artists that surprised even us.
I hope the film brings some of the respect and recognition that has eluded this band!Kathy Valentine
_________________________________________
Subject: Buffett here-not Warren
Hey Bob
How are you? Just read your piece on Mac, and I too know that Mississippi shy boy thing is not fake. Also as a fellow Mississippian, but from the bayous of Pascagoula, not the “nawth†part of the stage, I just wanted you to take comfort in the fact, that those of us from Mississippi, still can’t figure it out. As you might know, I have been a shameless promoter of Mac for a long time, and really wanted to thank you for the portrait you paint of one of the most talented writers and solo performers that I have ever met, who also happens to be one of my closest friends. That is why I chased him down and made him join the Coral Reefer Band. If I am Captain Kirk, then Mac is Spock, and Mike Utley is Dr McCoy, as we travel the musical universe together. I have to confess, I have not heard a single song on the album yet, because Mac hasn’t sent me one ha ha. I guess I better order one on Mailboat and sit back and dig it like you did, as the hurricane passes over Sag Harbor this afternoon. I will be in the studio to listen to the vinyl ref of “Life on the Flip Side†and will dove tail right into Mac’s. Then I can talk about it after listening to it, if you need me too. Stay safe and I will be back in LA for a week at the end of September, and will check in with you then, and maybe we can grab a covid cocktail.
Fins Up
Jimmy
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