who is Bob Lefsetz?

lefsetz says some silly inelegantly-expressed things but he doesn't strike me as a bad person. popism was a not so thinly-veiled attack on boomers so let's not head for our fainting couches when a boomer gets ticked off.

are you a boomer yourself

And you were fans of certain acts and bought their new albums without hearing them first. But then you listened to FM radio to find out what else was great. That was the culture, you needed to know, the country ran on music, maybe the entire world. The musicians were testing limits, pushing the envelope, and then it all imploded. It was a golden era and you only know this if you lived through it and most people did not and get it all wrong.

This feels to me like someone who judges the current state of literature by what books are sold in his supermarket

Based on what I saw in said section yesterday in Walgreens, it's a lot of shirtless cowboys.

But I like Cormac McCarthy

how does this guy make his money

first they came for the boomers and i did nothing, for i was not a boomer

how does this guy make his money

Doesn't he give expensive speeches to tech executives and corporate scumbags older than himself who want to feel clued-in?

I wonder if he gets a percentage of the streaming money for “Fuck Like A Beast”

Sanneh was born in 1976, if he wants to write about hip-hop, fine

sanneh's next article: why hiphop exposes all previous genres (and their fans) to be the assholes that they are.

There’s “out of touch Boomer,” and then there’s “telling a Black music critic he should stick to hip hop.”

are you a boomer yourself

i guess? 63? old enough to think that deliberately misreading his (admittedly silly) comment on age as being about race is disingenuous.

ok boomer

the rap against ageism

I just finished the Sanneh book. It's good, and it's nothing if not well-researched. It's about more than just one generation's perception of rock 'n' roll, which may be what throws Lefsetz. Also, it's explicitly about the evolution of the major genres from 1970 on so it's not trying to tell the whole history of rock 'n' roll (although there's some backtracking to provide relevant context).

Not being that familiar with Lefsetz's schtick, I would be curious when exactly in his opinion "it all imploded."

when exactly in his opinion "it all imploded."

When they stopped playing Doobie Brothers deep tracks on the radio.

the exact moment he crossed the 50% baldness threshold

When he caught WRKI I95 NOT playing three Led Zeppelin sings in a row without a commercial break on “Get the Led Out Monday.”

it's important to remember who the real victim is here!

So this ignorant punk uses the N-Word. He's so dumb and uninformed that he doesn't realize only Black people can utter it, like Dave Chappelle at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. But Wallen, like the rest of young America, has listened to a zillion rap songs, he's invested in the culture, because hip-hop is American culture, but since he's living in the boonies he doesn't know how to behave, what he can say or what he can't. It's not like he used the N-Word as a put-down, in fact it was as a term of endearment. That doesn't justify its use, but the penalty here far outweighs the crime.

i think i'd like to start an online harassment campaign to get this fucking dunce to just shut up. I'VE HAD ENOUGH DAMMIT.

lefsetz can't be canceled because nobody knows what the hell he does

that's what i mean, i don't want him to be "CANCELLED" or whatever — just stop talking, friend. we're all tired of it.

nobody knows what the hell he does

Professional Cloud Yeller At-er

in that case, maybe he can be canceled by a lightning bolt

yes, there are record stores, selling vinyl, catering to the diehards, but the truth is the masses have moved on to streaming, on demand, and there are always Luddites and fetishists keeping the old game alive. Hell, people ride HORSES!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKFaGDrOfrI

it's amazing how his big insight is "streaming is popular" and he just keeps repeating it forever

And the biggest star to die is John Madden. Bigger than the passing of Harry Reid. And you know why...BECAUSE HE WAS HONEST!

i've written about a dozen different responses to that and have deleted all of them because i think it's reached a point where i don't understand the joke anymore. legitimately confused here.

but i mean . . . okay, sure. get 'em, lef!

When was the last time we had a "Squid Game" in the music business...GNARLS BARKLEY?

Put this man out to pasture

A similar dynamic is at play when comparing BTS’ Butter with Adele’s Easy on Me. Easy on Me was the cultural moment, with the massive initial wave of listening soon dropping off, while Butter was a cultural movement, which sustained throughout the first 6 days of release at pretty much the same level. Adele was Bond, while BTS was Squid Game – perhaps no coincidence that their nationalities match too.

https://musicindustryblog.wordpress.com/2021/10/25/adele-is-bond-and-bts-is-squid-game%EF%BF%BC/

The letter is interesting because he makes an interesting observation but just absolutely whiffs on the follow-up and clearly has no metric for anything beyond "people I talk to on the internet"

Like if the numbers/cultural impact reveals anything, it's how much the "conversation" is — and always has been — driven by the likes and whims of middlebrow white people

Easy on Me is 10 on the US Spotify Top 50 US and 6 on Top 50 Global

Butter isn't on either chart

Lefsetz should stick to rapping.

I need Lefsetz to get into NFTs. I need this to live

I just got a Mellow Leffy NFT

https://media.wired.com/photos/5a9f4096afa4b44b413e5695/master/pass/mf_lefsetz_f.jpg

omg

OK, years of giving him shit, so going to just say this one on Neil Young, Rogan, and disinformation is good, despite

So we're supposed to give Rogan a pass because there are worse offenders? How do we stop the insanity? Where's Susan Powter when we need her!

Awards shows are dead. Come up with something different. I could give and have given multiple ideas, but the Grammy organization doesn't listen

lol

but the Grammy organization doesn't listen

OMG TELL ME ABOUT IT LEF ON THE FUCKEN MARK MAN!!

(is how I imagine the average Lefsetz reader responds)

this might less be lefsetz than the wsj article that inspired his latest screed, but this is just blatantly untrue.

2019's most streamed act, Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road," garnered in excess of one billion streams.

"Roddy Ricch's "The Box" was the biggest streaming track of 2020, with 920 million streams.

As for last year's biggest smash, Dua Lipa's "Levitating," it was streamed a grand total of 627 million times.

the original song has 516 million streams on spotify, sure, but the dababy-featuring remix (the one that spent all that time on the charts) has 1.3 billion streams on spotify alone

facts don't care bout yr feelins, lef

(also thank you to those dedicated folks who actually read his ramblings and post highlights here. you have a patience for bullshit that is truly admirable.)

this is the wsj paragraph he got the info from...

Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” became the most streamed song of 2019 by raking in more than one billion on-demand audio streams—a milestone no other song has managed to achieve, according to Luminate Data, formerly Nielsen Music. The top single in 2020, Roddy Ricch’s “The Box,” garnered 920 million on-demand audio streams; Dua Lipa’s “Levitating” hit 627 million in 2021.

...which suggests luminate/nielsen is to blame for that whopper. though it isn't 100 percent clear, since the luminate attribution is in the first sentence and the whopper is in the second sentence. for whatever that's worth.

levitating came out in 2020 originally, so maybe they're just counting 2021 streams?

it would've made more sense to pick a song originally released in 2021, idk

Lil Nas X has two 2021 songs that broke a billion streams, but maybe Lef never heard them