Is Bob Lefsetz as good as he thinks he is? I dunno, man, he is a bit of a twit. In the past two weeks he made demonstrably wrong claims. It is as though he makes the axiom, the axiom is right, and he ignores it when it doesn’t suit his purposes.
There are so many things I agree with Lefsetz about but none of them are musical. When he says big business are shearers and we are sheep, he is completely correct. But when it comes to music, he is consistently wrong.
The first: U2 are playing an Arena tour instead of a Stadium tour because they are afraid of soft ticket sales. In a pigs eye. Last time round U2 played Metlife two separate times (at the start and end of the tour) for multiple dates and and sold em all out and I have no doubt could do the same thing tomorrow. Incidentally, four nights at MSG is the equal of one night at MetLife so I would say without a reasonable doubt that they could have sold out one night in an Arena. It is easy: Bruce, the Stones, McCartney, U2 –they can’t record good or sell a lot of albums anymore. But they can make $750 Million bucks when they tour for a year.
The second: When Lefsetz says Max Martin makes Taylor Swift great, he is being ridiculous. Taylor Swift doesn’t need Max Martin to write good songs, she writes good songs as such. Listen to the demo version of “Blank Space”. The song is finished, it isn’t waiting for a damn thing except the wrapping paper. Swift isn’t Katy Perry and Martin isn’t Dr. Luke. She writes her own material and reduces Max to window dressing but great window dressing. He is like mollie to Skrillex’s brostep: heightens but doesn’t make the experience.
