Episode 72

Welcome to Songs That Don’t Suck, with your host, Mark Bradbourne.

Welcome to Songs That Don’t Suck. I am indeed Mark. I am indeed your host. And every week, over 700,000 songs are released to streaming platforms. I listen to a few hundred each week, trying to find the ones that don’t suck. I appreciate you checking out the podcast, as always, and I hope you find a few songs to add to your playlists. Now, before we get into the new music, there’s a couple of news articles that I have some thoughts on, so buckle up.

Two related news topics. The first is something you’re probably aware of, but Live Nation got hacked. More than half a million user records were stolen, so customer data, including their name, address, phone number, and partial credit card numbers were allegedly stolen by a hacking group. Now, these folks are currently either ransoming the data back to Live Nation, and I think it’s like a half million dollars that they’re after, but it’s also been reported that it’s already for sale on the dark web. Don’t know what to believe, because Live Nation hasn’t made a public statement, but they have made a statement to their stakeholders, the folks who own their stock. Live Nation said, and I quote, the incident is not expected to have a material impact on its overall business operations or financial condition. Well, thank Christ for that. They won’t be affected. We’d hate for that to happen. Oh, but they are trying to mitigate the risks for the half a million users whose data was leaked. So, but fear not, stakeholders. We’re fine.

Now, at this point, it is worth pointing out that Live Nation just had their most profitable quarter ever. And they stated that they’re expected to see this to be their best year ever. But more on that in the next article. Now, as consumers, we have to remain vigilant, right? If you have bad password practices and you reuse passwords or your passwords are simple, why don’t you go ahead and change those? Keep an eye out on your credit reports. And if you have a credit card that offers free monitoring of your personal information, take advantage of that.

Hopefully, some of this crap will finally break up this monopoly that Live Nation and Ticketmaster have. I went out and looked at the stats. Over 70% of the tickets sold at large venues are sold through Ticketmaster. And no other company in the industry has more than a 14% of that market share. Maybe, maybe if we had a little bit more competition, we’d see some of these bullshit fees come down because the fees certainly aren’t paying for data security now, are they? And maybe some of the stuff that’s happening in the next news article wouldn’t happen so frequently.

The next news piece has to do with artists canceling giant arena tours. You may have noticed that the Black Keys canceled their entire arena tour. Jennifer Lopez also canceled the tail end of her tour because of low ticket sales. Now, it is rumored that the Black Keys canceled their dates because of the low ticket sales as well, but we don’t know, nobody has kind of come forth and said that. But my guess is that artists are maybe overestimating their popularity or it could be high ticket prices because I know paying over $200 for nosebleed seats wasn’t going to happen as much as I want to see the Black Keys. And I think that I’m not alone in this. I think these high costs, high fees are finally breaking the consumer. And we’re basically saying, you know what, I can stay at home and listen to the album. I’m good. Now the Black Keys made a statement saying they’re reconfiguring their tour to make it more in line with what they did in Europe, which was smaller venues because it’s a better fan experience.

Well, no shit, small and medium venues are the best way to see live acts. It always has been. It always will be. But you don’t schedule a full arena tour and then suddenly go, you know what, I don’t think the fans are going to enjoy this. You got slapped with the reality that you’re past your peak of popularity. But to be fair, there’s no way to really say face in that regard. You sure as hell aren’t going to admit the truth that your ticket sales sucked. You just kind of hope that your management is giving you good advice before you do something like that. And then you actually take that good advice.

Now small and medium venues seem to be doing okay. I know that I’ve gone to a bunch of shows here in Cleveland and they’ve all sold really well. The tickets have all been like 50 bucks or less. And the one really interesting thing that I found in this news article was they’re saying that the high streaming numbers don’t necessarily lead to live show success. Shocker, right? Usually bands built a big following before they, you know, have sell millions and millions of records. But it just goes to show if you want a sustainable career in music, you got to put in the work. You got to be on the road. You got to sweat it out on stage. The thing about viral, viral music, viral stuff doesn’t last. You know, it just, it works through the system and then you’re healthy again.

Now, speaking of sweating it out on stage, my favorite new band, the Bites, rolled through Cleveland again. It’s the fourth time I’ve seen them in less than a year and they’re still fantastic. The really interesting thing was if you remember three episodes ago, I think it was, they were opening for Sebastian Bach and there was a line to meet the Bites that was really, really long. And the line was still there when Sebastian Bach got on stage. At the show here at the Winchester in Cleveland, I saw a couple of the ladies who were part of that group who stayed in line after Sebastian had started his show and got to talk to them a little bit, which was interesting, but yeah, they were like, we wanted to really come see them again. Sadly, they got jammed onto this bill last minute and they only got to play like six songs, like 25 minutes, but still fantastic. It’s still good to see the boys and they’re heading to the UK in September and October opening for Dead Daisies. If you’re in the UK, go check them out. I really, really promise you, you were going to enjoy their show. But I will say that every audience that they’re getting in front of, it’s the same thing. It’s the same reaction. People are excited about it and I love watching this firsthand. It’s fantastic.

All right, let’s get into the new music. There are three artists this week who are repeat visitors. I got one new one, but the repeat visitors, it’s been a while, so let’s check in with them.

The first song this week is Alchemy from Johnnyswim. Now, I’ve been waiting for this song to be released for a while and I’m glad that we finally have some new recorded music from Johnnyswim. And Abner has promised that there will be more soonish. Now, I remember last fall, Jenna had gone to see Johnnyswim in Cincinnati and they played this song live and she was blown away by it. She shared a video off from YouTube with me that someone had taken and I got a feel for the song, but I didn’t feel like the overall quality of what was recorded was fantastic. So I gave it a cursory listen and then I decided to wait until it was recorded and released officially. And honestly, I figured it would have been a few months ago, but here we are. Amanda and Abner write beautiful love songs. They always have, and I feel like they always will. There is really no escaping it. The song has just haunting lyrics, very deep, emotional stuff, beautiful orchestration, and their voices. I mean, alone, their voices are magnificent. Together, honestly, they harmonize so well, it’s just magic. The song itself, as I listen to it, it’s like movie quality, right? It’s a main love song worthy from a very emotional romance, like if this song was like 25 seconds longer and sad, it could be the backdrop of the four minutes from up where they talk about the Carl and Ellie’s relationship where there’s like no dialogue. It’s just it’s that beautiful. It’s that moving. So check out Alchemy from Johnnyswim.

The second song this week is Every 1’s a Winner by Byron’s Brigades. The absolute first song that popped into my mind when I was listening to this was Kiss and their disco-tinged song I Was Made for Loving You. And then I was like, well, it could also be Ace Freely’s Back in the New York Groove. It’s got that really tasty retro feel going on. The cover art has a disco ball, so anything less, honestly, would be a little bit disappointing. This is one of those songs that’s just a great tune for summer. It’s it’s just got a great tempo. The lyrics are a little bit nonsensical, but you know what? Who cares? It’s it’s just a good listen. So go give Byron’s Brigades and Everyone’s a Winner a listen. I think you’ll enjoy it.

The third song this week is My Fault by Shaboozey and it features Noah Cyrus. Shaboozey is apparently fairly well known, ranked number 128 in the world on Spotify. But not to me. I didn’t have a damn clue who he was. But once I went to his profile and listened to his most popular song, then I knew who he was. Or rather, I’d heard the viral song from social media. He sits in this really interesting place between country and hip hop. This track features Noah Cyrus, who was on the podcast previously with a track of her own called Everybody Needs Somebody. It was a duet with Vance Joy. Their two voices have very different signature sounds, but they work really well together in this duet. Overall, pretty simple song. The composition is very, you know, it lyrically it’s heartbreaking. It’s just it’s one of those songs. It’s like it’s catchy, but it’s just sad. It’s good, right? If you are on social media, you’ve probably heard his viral hit. And now when you hear this, you’ll be able to put the artist to the art. I know that I did.

The fourth song this week is Beautiful by Overpass. The last time I had Overpass on the podcast, it was their song Right Time. This new song is an acoustic version of a single they put out in November of last year, so later in the year. And I’m honestly a sucker for when artists put out unplugged albums. I feel like it’s easy to create music with today’s tools and technology. It’s really easy to edit stuff and auto-pitch and all that stuff. But an unplugged recording is raw. The change in the production, the stripping down to the bare bones of how songs are written, that takes talent. So I really appreciate Unplugged Version. This version, I kind of went back and listened to the original. The Unplugged Version is a touch slower, which really works. Both versions are great. The Electric Version, the Full Version, has a great drum track, which is obviously missing for the Unplugged Version, but the Unplugged Version has this great cello accompaniment, which it’s tasty. This version feels a little bit like early Radiohead, like the Benz and High and Dry, like that era. And maybe even really early Coldplay. Like if you’re a deep Coldplay fan, you’ll be familiar with their EP Brothers and Sisters that came out before Parachutes. Good stuff. So, check out Overpass. They put out this whole Unplugged EP. I think you’ll enjoy it.

All right, that’s it for this week. Not too bad, right? As always, please spread the word to your fellow music fans. Follow the show on social media, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, and Threads. We’ve got the website, songsthatdontsuck. net. You can send me messages through there. You can recommend artists to me that you’ve found, that you might think I like. And then, as always, in the podcast, in the show notes, there are links to all the music that I talk about. And it’s a service called Songwhip, and it literally goes to all the platforms. So no matter where you listen to music, you will find it. So, by all means, check out those links. Support these artists and… Thanks for listening. Until next week, keep searching for and listening to songs that don’t suck.