Disruption

The two biggest stories in America today are AI and the Sphere, and neither were in the public consciousness a year ago.

Oh that's not right Bob, what about Taylor Swift, and Gaza?

Well, the Israeli/Arab conflict is always simmering, it's always in the news. As for Taylor Swift...

This is not a new story. Successful musical artist goes on the road to massive sell-out audiences playing their hits. In this case, a retrospective of their entire career.

Don't get me wrong, Taylor Swift is an original. But her tour looked backward. Yes, the massive outpouring of love from female fans was noticeable, but it was not DISRUPTIVE! The media was just reporting a story it saw, there was no harbinger of where we're going. Because the media never knows, but Washington, D.C. and most industries are just as bad.

If you've been following the news, and maybe you haven't, in the last twenty four hours the "New York Times" has released polls saying that Biden is losing the popular vote and an incredible number of people believe he's too old for the job.

It's not like we didn't know this a year ago. It was hiding in plain sight. But the usual suspects mired in the past believed it didn't matter. They had power and they were not going to let it go.

Meanwhile, on the other side they've got the disrupter in chief, Donald Trump. The only thing is he disrupted the political landscape back in 2016, there's been nothing new since, just a doubling-down of insanity.

Not that America doesn't rally behind the insane. Hell, Kanye just released a chart-topping album.

But in all businesses, in politics, you need to look forward, to the horizon, to the hoi polloi, if for no other reason than everybody has the tools to disrupt you at their fingertips, oftentimes for free, they call it the internet.

Look at TV singing shows... They were a novelty twenty years ago. Kelly Clarkson became a star. But no one since. Because the public has seen the movie. As a matter of fact, the young, who usually start trends, have tuned out of singing competitions completely. It's the old people who are watching on network TV. Meanwhile, youngsters don't even own a television set, they've got their phone and their laptop, and sure they might have a subscription to a streaming service (oftentimes their parents'), but network, cable, are as foreign to them as Frank Zappa was to our parents back in the sixties. Want an example? Viacom/Paramount+ continued to put their money behind MTV, a youth juggernaut of the last century that is meaningless today. You don't succeed unless you retool for the future.

So if you're a young musical artist singing the hits of today on YouTube and TikTok thinking you're going to make it, you're plain wrong. Good voices are a dime a dozen. It's always about the songwriting. Believe me, Bob Dylan never sounded like an opera singer, never mind Roy Orbison, Paul McCartney or even B.J. Thomas. No, Dylan was an outsider, with an outside perspective, he took roots and combined them in a new way that was perfect for the era. Dylan didn't follow the youthquake, he caused it. And when everybody else caught on, he stopped writing political songs, he'd been there and done that. Furthermore, his 1970 album "New Morning" presaged the back to the land movement of the seventies, and "Blood on the Tracks" was evidence of the personal focus/Me Decade seventies.

So we've got major labels tightening the belt, not wanting to risk the new and disruptive. Their idea of disruptive is an act with a thirty second song on TikTok, and we know those acts are almost always fads. Hell, the music business has oftentimes focused on fads, but they've never been responsible for great leaps forward financially, never mind artistically, they're moments in time.

Now the Democratic party knew Joe Biden was perceived as too old years ago. But the brass decided to do nothing. He's President, on top of the world, he's got the chair, let someone try to steal it, push him out of it.

Brilliant thinking by those who believe history is all that matters.

Meanwhile, the Republicans lost control of their party to Trump. Who continues to foster losers. Trump's endorsement... Oftentimes means you're going to lose. Someone could have stood up to Trump, corporate leaders, elected officials, but the wimps in the party decided to fall in line. And if you didn't, they turned their backs and made you walk the plank, i.e. Liz Cheney. You stay on the team or you're excised.

Now if you've got a losing sports team, they fire the manager, they get new players. Hell, the Patriots just got rid of Bill Belichick, something had to give. But not in the Republican party, they've got a losing hand and they keep on playing it. Sure, Trump could win the presidential election. And that might mean not only the end of Democracy, but the end of the Republican party. But no one is blowing the whistle, no one is complaining.

And on the Democratic side, all we've got is people like Lawrence O'Donnell explaining why we can't have an open convention, with some hooey about the past, about the way the party works. But that would assume that disruption never happens.

Now remember, disruption always starts off to the side, off the map, and is usually pooh-poohed by those in control, if they're aware of it at all. And at first, the disruptive force is imperfect, disorganized, but then the disruptive force gets it together and dominates.

This is the story of Donald Trump. The Democrats were too stupid to realize Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate, irrelevant of whether she'd make a good president.

And the Republicans have done a phenomenal job of labeling Biden old and senile. And just like Hillary before him, Joe has done a piss-poor job of countering these accusatory claims. Biden could start making public appearances, being available, but his handlers are afraid this will evidence stumbles and gaffes that will prove the point.

Meanwhile, this is all playing out in public.

The Republicans are putting all their faith and support behind a loser and the Democrats are rerunning "Weekend at Bernie's." And we can all see it but no one will acknowledge it. Talk about the Emperor's New Clothes.

I don't know what will happen. I lived through 1968 when Johnson surprised us by dropping out of the race at the end of March.

I also know that sh*t happens. Both Trump and Biden could have a health event before November. They're both aged, the odds are not good.

But I do know if you want to play the game and win you always come from the outside, you do what is unexpected.

The reason no candidate could win against Trump in the primaries is because they were all mini-Trumps. There was no real alternative.

Got to give Gavin Newsom credit. He went after DeSantis, he tackled national issues. Does that mean America wants Newsom to be president? I'm unsure about that, because the Republicans have spent years demonizing California.

But back in 2008 the barely known Barack Obama won selling hope.

That's not what Joe Biden is selling, he's selling fear, that you've got to vote for him because you don't want the other guy.

As a matter of fact, that's what the Republicans are selling too, fear of the other party.

But someone going outside the usual lane, with a plan, for progress... They're not the candidate.

We're looking for revolutionary music. Something new and different that we not only want to listen to, but we want to tell everybody about.

Now there is a world of different sounds on the road. And their success can be quantified, by the number of tickets acts can sell.

As for recordings, online... Sure, there are statistics, but oftentimes they're ginned-up, it's unclear if there truly is a fan base. And there are so many competitors that it's overwhelming.

Not live.

So if you want to make it...

Stop saying you can sing like Mariah Carey. Music is about conception, always has been. You don't need to be the greatest singer or songwriter you just have to have a new idea and express it. Sure, it takes longer than ever to make it, but you've got to accept that.

America craves the new and different. The past with a twist. Something wholly new.

Which is why "Squid Game" was so popular. Whatever you think of "Tiger King" we'd never seen anything like that before. Or even "Love on the Spectrum"...autistic people as stars?

But in politics and music, it's the same old same old.

Sure, there's a music business. But despite those in it talking about fandom, reciting statistics, music doesn't drive the culture. If you want to know which way the wind blows, you don't listen to a record.

And that's easy to change. And it doesn't even cost much. You've just go to think different.

Steve Jobs came back to a company that he got fired from, threw out the old operating system, slimmed the product line, refined others' products into new hit items, i.e. the iPod, and Apple became the most valuable company in the world.

And it was done in plain sight.

Sleeker packaging. Easier operation. To this day the complaint about the iPhone by the cognoscenti is it's too easy to use, it can't be customized enough. But Jobs was smart enough to know that the masses wanted usability first.

And the public does not want Biden or Trump.

And the public is hungering for sounds unlike those in the Spotify Top 50.

But those in control are resting on their laurels, doubling down on the aged past, just waiting to be disrupted.


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