"I think I finally found my hallelujah"
That's about the fifth hook in a song that's only three minutes and nine seconds long. There's the "Uh-hah," the handclap/percussion, the keyboard, the staccato singing and and then...we've got this distorted vocal with a ton of other stuff under it, which ends with the track dropping down the roller coaster hill into an explosion of mirth.
And this track is a FAILURE!
Felice is addicted to Sirius XM's Blend. She keeps telling me about the tracks she hears, she's an expert on modern pop, listening to this music station with no commercials.
Terrestrial radio comes last. Unless you're a superstar it could take a year for your track to hit the commercial airwaves, you get started on Spotify on Sirius XM on YouTube...
And all of them are light years ahead of regular radio.
Read how "7 Years" got started on Spotify, how the service peppered it in playlists, this article will be the most informative thing you encounter all day:
musically.com/2016/03/23/7-years-streaming-lukas-graham/ So, sometime last year Felice starts testifying about this track "Honey, I'm Good" by Andy Grammer. I've heard of neither, the track nor the act. But Felice was right, "Honey, I'm Good" turned into a monster. The official video has 57 million views on YouTube, the lyric video another 28 million and..."Honey, I'm Good" has 91 million streams on Spotify.
You'd think "Good To Be Alive (Hallelujah)" would get an instant pass, go straight to the top of the chart.
But that's not how it works anymore. Sure, Bieber and Beyonce get that kind of treatment, but everybody else isn't as good as their last hit, they're almost starting all over! Needing to prove themselves, that's how tough the competition is.
"Good To Be Alive (Hallelujah)" only lived on the Hot 100 for three weeks, peaked at #62 and is presently off the chart.
But Mediabase is what truly counts, and there we see "Good To Be Alive (Hallelujah)" ensconced at number 24 on AC. Moving down from number 23.
Then again, how much attention do we want to pay to terrestrial radio? Lukas Graham's "7 Years" is still moving up the AC chart, it's at number 20 this week, it's higher on Top 40, but "7 Years" is still at only number 13, despite being number 3 on the Spotify chart with 855,404 daily plays, 240,927,322 cumulative plays and 49,913,742 views of the official clip on YouTube.
Does terrestrial radio still matter?
As the victory lap, as the way to reach those out of touch, who are not really listening, satellite and Spotify and YouTube are where the action is, the revolution is happening, Les Moonves gets it, selling CBS Radio, but the rest of the old farts believe the old format is forever.
They're wrong, it no longer rules.
So I'm driving to dinner Tuesday night and I hear Felice's cut, the Andy Grammer one she can't stop testifying about, "Good To Be Alive (Hallelujah)," and I get it intellectually, but it doesn't penetrate my brain and body completely.
BUT THEN I HEAR IT AGAIN!
Repetition, that's what makes hits, never forget it. And if people can't sit through your track once, never mind want to play it again, you're dead.
Sorry. Andy Grammer gets it, you don't.
And Felice has no desire to hear anything but Andy Grammer's hits. The performer has four tracks on Spotify with double digit million streams and then...the numbers go down, down down, way into the single digit millions. That's the world we live in, one of hits only, that's how cutthroat it is.
"I've been grinding so long, been trying this shit for years
And I got nothing to show, just climbing this rope right here
And if there's a man upstairs, he kept bringing me rain
But I've been sending up prayers and something's changed"
The target audience, young people who still have their optimism intact, are worried things won't work out, but they still believe they will.
"I think I finally found my hallelujah
I've been waiting for this moment all my life
Now all my dreams are coming true, yeah
I've been waiting for this moment"
We've all been here, maybe it's a long anticipated, long desired victory. Maybe it's just a serendipitous moment, when you smile and think things are pretty damn good.
"Feels good to be alive right about now"
These are the moments we all live for, this is how you feel when you hear this song, it's inspirational, it rides shotgun, it squeezes out all the negativity, allows you to be your best self.
And you wonder why people want to dance to this stuff, sing along with it...in a world with so many challenges. The popsters give their audience what they're looking for, hope and inspiration. Sure, there's room for Joni Mitchell introspection, but we haven't got anybody providing that, at least not on a quality level.
"I was dead in the water, nobody wanted me
I was old news, I went cold as cold could be
But I kept throwing on coal, trying to make that fire burn
Sometimes you gotta get scars to get what you deserve"
Come on, you're sitting at home, lying on your bed in your parents' house, feeling down and out, and then you hear this track and you tell yourself...GODDAMN, I CAN WIN!
Now "Good To Be Alive (Hallelujah)" has only 6,246,634 streams on Spotify.
And the official video only has 3,153,311 views on YouTube.
And you wonder why you can't get paid! This guy had a gigantic hit and he's still struggling, and you have five figures of YouTube views, maybe six, and you think you should be rich! Never mind how much money was spent on this video.
Yes, you need money to make it in the pop world.
And you've got to social network up a storm.
And then you just might have a chance.
This is the major league. Too many are playing in the minors and not even realizing it! "Good To Be Alive (Hallelujah)" is a top ten record in every era prior to the internet, where all records are competing against all others, and if it's a second listen track you can't compete with the first.
Still...
If you listen to Sirius XM you'd be convinced "Good To Be Alive (Hallelujah)" is a smash, they play it constantly. I just listened to it twenty times in a row on Spotify, it makes me feel good. Maybe it's got a chart life in its future.
But even if it doesn't, it lives on in the minds of those who heard it.
And Andy Grammer has to go back to the salt mines.
Welcome to 2016.
Spotify:
goo.gl/310KSKåå
YouTube:
goo.gl/j7bS5W--
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