So I’m locked in traffic listening to Jelly Roll tell Howard Stern about his new song “I Am Not Okay,” a sentiment many feel but do not admit, and then Mr. Roll sings it with the band and I’m blown away. At first I wonder if it’s a recording, or whether there are hard drives involved. But there’s a full band and with a voice this good, no wonder he’s a star.
Mainstream media is picking up on the Balkanization in music. Took too long, but now the truth is evident:
“Why Pop Music Is So ‘Meh’ Right Now – New releases by Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Ariana Grande, Dua Lipa were supposed to be huge. Instead, they have fallen short of past works.”
Free link: https://t.ly/bJo46
In other words, despite the onslaught of hype the acts they tell us are so big, are not. The “Wall Street Journal” is blaming it on quality, but no matter how good your record is, you can’t reach everybody:
“But today, with the world awash in content, TikTok rewriting labels’ playbooks and listeners burrowing deeper into their own personalized niches, even avid pop fans don’t recognize what’s in the Billboard top 10. In such a decentralized market, pop stars face fierce competition. Disappointing albums, in turn, can hurt concert sales. It all adds up to music executives across genres seeming to wield less power over the star-making machinery than ever.”
Uh-oh, with Lucian Grainge and the rest of the honchos tailoring their businesses for Wall Street this is bad news. They keep telling the Street everything is going up, up, up, but it appears there’s a hole in the bucket. Sure, their catalogs are blue chip revenue machines, but having focused on a handful of tentpole artists, they’re missing the mark just like the movie studios. Turns out everybody doesn’t want the same thing, and despite the constant press hoopla, there isn’t even consensus that these “hits” are any good. Furthermore, as we’ve learned in the past, if you’re a hit-based artist, you’re dependent upon hits, when they dry up, so do your ticket sales. Turns out in music the tortoise caring most about the music, oftentimes written alone without committee, have hard core fans who will keep them alive through thick and thin, whereas those with the ink do not, at least not in prodigious numbers.
Think about this… Tours are being canceled and now records too. In other words, most of the public is just not interested.
As for the WSJ’s argument that the music isn’t that good… People have been denying this throughout the twenty first century, but that is the truth. I’m not saying there’s not good stuff out there, but that which captures the zeitgeist, that which gets everybody talking, doesn’t exist. Not in a major way, at least.
What has happened here is we’ve lived through the MTV era and the advent of the internet and the post-Covid blip, and now what? Now that people are more discerning, and are leaving the house less immune to hype.
Contrary to what complaining artists are telling us, distribution has been figured out, better than in any other entertainment vertical. It’s the software we’ve got a problem with, i.e. music. The tools of creation are in the hands of the proletariat, distribution costs are de minimis, it’s no longer a rigged system, do people really want to listen to your music?
An even bigger question is whether the era of dominant superstars and hits is history. Or whether the new model is something more like Zach Bryan, who bubbled up from the bottom, who made it on songs first and foremost, garnered a core audience and then grew, who performs sans trappings, who is selling authenticity.
And Jelly Roll is selling something similar.
Zach Bryan is a hell of a lot more serious. And Jelly Roll has been caught up in the machine in a way that Bryan, an anti-star, has not. But could it be that Jelly’s success is well-deserved? That Mr. Roll has learned something in his thirty nine years that the youngsters populating the hit parade have not? Roll is breaking the rules. And we love nothing more. Older, obese man with a sweet voice sings songs that resonate and…
People rally around him.
2
Let’s be clear, Jelly Roll is operating in a controlled market, the last one that means anything, country radio. The playlist is defined and acolytes still listen, which is not the case in other genres. And that gives acts a leg up.
Then again, Morgan Wallen is the biggest act in America.
People hate when I say this. They’ve got a million beefs. But if you look at the statistics, it’s Wallen all the way. Not only does he make albums that stay in the Top Ten for a year, he sells out stadiums and has hit after hit after hit.
Which you can hear if you’d just play the damn record. Yes, he’s got that southern accent, but you accepted Tom Petty, didn’t you? Yes, he used the “N-word” and threw a chair off the rooftop…as for the latter, my inbox is filled with people calling that rock star behavior, de rigueur in the seventies. My point here is, does Morgan Wallen deserve to be cancelled? There was pushback against DEI, against woke and now they’ve come for cancellation. We all make mistakes. When did this one strike and you’re out culture become dominant? You can’t learn a lesson, you can’t improve? And those who say no change can be made cause an equal reaction on the other side. Which is why you’ve got Bill Burr saying there is no more cancellation, and Jerry Seinfeld saying essentially the same thing. It’s kind of like the supposed ubiquitous hitmakers in the “Wall Street Journal” article…the press is out of touch with the people.
But my point with Wallen is you can sing along. Good luck singing along with most of the Spotify Top 50. Never mind that so many of those acts can’t really sing.
But Jelly Roll can.
“I am not okay
I’m barely gettin’ by
I’m losin’ track of days
And losin’ sleep at night
I am not okay
I’m hangin’ on the rails
So if I say I am fine
Just know I’ve learned to hide it well”
Ain’t that America? Certainly male America. Internalize your feelings, don’t share weakness, but this guy is speaking his truth, which is yours.
“I know I can’t be the only one
Who’s holdin’ on for dear life”
Bode Miller and filmmaker Brett Rapkin have a new movie, “The Paradise Paradox,” about suicide in the mountains: https://t.ly/mcNVw
And the “New York Times” just printed a story about the epidemic of suicides in Montana:
“She’s Fighting to Save America’s ‘Last Best Place’ From Suicide – Montana’s suicide rate has been the highest in the U.S. for the past three years. Most of the deaths involved firearms. But suicide rarely registers in the national debate over guns.”
Meanwhile, the Spotify Top 50 artists tell us how fabulous their lives are. They focus on petty beefs. You can possibly like these songs, but you can’t relate. But you can relate to “I Am Not Okay.”
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So I’m listening to Jelly Roll on Stern and he comes across as likable. With a sense of humor. And not stupid.
He’s led a hard life, like the country artists of yore. He’s been to jail. And he’s putting it all down in song.
Isn’t this what we’re looking for? Didn’t John Lennon tell us to give him some truth? That’s what we’re all looking for in this phony, sold-out culture. The only antidote is art, but artists have abdicated this power, along with the labels who proffer them. Like the movie studios, they’re so busy making and promoting music that supposedly resonates with all that it ultimately resonates with few. What do you expect when the songs are massaged ad infinitum? With rewrites and remixes… So busy trying to make sure they’re a hit that if there was ever any lightning in the bottle, it’s now been extinguished.
We are now in a new era. And when the media says so before the industry, you know you’re in trouble. The old paradigm is dead. The era of ubiquitous hits anointed by few and known by many is done.
This does not mean you can’t have a career, even sell out large venues and make a lot of dough. Because what we’ve got now is passionate fan bases. That’s what you want, people who bleed for you, who live for you, and forget the rest. Stay true to your vision.
It’s all gone. The multi-single album with tracks spread out over years. The three-four year album cycle. A stiff killing your career (it just gets lost in the miasma of product). There are new rules, the game’s been eviscerated, but the players keep on playing, and they’re not winning.
Could I use some additional lyrics in Jelly Roll’s “I Am Not Okay”? Some more insight? That would be good. But he’s not Bob Dylan, who comes along once in a generation. But not only can Jelly Roll sing, he can write changes, he can create a song, a formula that’s been lost to many in this one chord world.
You should listen to the Jelly Roll interview on Howard Stern.
And you can see the segment I listened to and referenced above here: https://t.ly/1eUyA
Spotify: https://t.ly/c7AqJ
YouTube: https://shorturl.at/e9cCG
