Whole Lotta Love!

This is a post about pop music; what is the difference between pop music and popular music? Pop Music is a certain genre and popular music is any music that's popular. Music has influenced my life more than anything else and it still does but since about 1999 I don't know too much.

It was supposed to be 1968 which was the end of pop music as we know it with All You Need is Love by The Beatles when they sang it on the world TV link.

I can't remember who wrote the book and the documentary film which said 1968 was the peak but he certainly had a point.

Over the years since then there have been some wonderful records with great intros: Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin, Hotel California by The Eagles and Baker Street by Gerry Rafferty to name but three.

Today the number one hit single in Britain is by someone called Smith and it has one second of intro. The last (so called) number one had one second of intro too. Intro short for introduction, by the way, just as app is short for application. That will probably be a question on University Challenge in 30 years.

The reason for this is that to be number one in the charts they count streaming; with streaming it doesn't matter how long you listen to the song for, it all counts. So these artists are just cutting the intro altogether.

Now I have quite a few songs on iTunes, Spotify and the rest of the streaming services and nobody ever told me to cut down the intro – maybe because they don't care. But it says something, doesn't it, when you realise that something which most music lovers held dear has now gone.

Streaming doesn't pay much in any case; I get one cent per stream. Before streaming I used to get 99 cents per sale and with all the on line outlets, even then, it mounted up. But the most I ever got paid was about $500 per month for a ring tone. They used my intro.

I get paid every time someone plays one of my songs on YouTube but that is collected by my publishers and that takes about two or three months.

Whilst I am having a moan – here we go:

The Bridge is a tiny piece of music that bridges two themes etc. In God Save the Queen it is the bit that goes da da da da da da.

For some reason the Americans called the middle 8 the bridge.

The other moan – there is one lyric to a song. You can't say you like the lyrics of Summertime Blues as there is only one lyric.

So I've had my say – and if you want to give me one cent click on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGJLQ6Ut_4A