Thursday, Feb 3, 2022 • 44min
Inside the Neil Young vs. Joe Rogan Battle
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How did a 76-year-old rock legend rattle a giant corporation? We look into Neil Young's crusade, with Andy Greene joining host Brian Hiatt. Plus: a debate over whether CDs deserve a comeback, with Rob Sheffield and Brittany Spanos
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Brian Hiatt
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Rob Sheffield
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Transcript
Verified
Brian Hiatt
00:00
Hey, I'm Brian Hiatt and this is
Rolling Stone
Music Now. There is so much to talk about today, we're going to start by talking about the Neil Young
versus Joe Rogan
versus Spotify
situation.Share
00:14
Now it's not just
Neil Young
and then Joni Mitchell
pulling their music from Spotify
, India Arie has followed in their footsteps. She's concerned about what she sees as Joe Rogan's
racially charged language as well as unsatisfied with Spotify's
payouts to artists. And Crosby
, Stills
and Nash
have also joined the boycott.Share
00:31
After we played my conversation with Andy Greene, we're going to talk about the weird CD revival with
Rob Sheffield
and Brittany Spanos decides really deserve to come back? I don't really think so, but Rob
and Brittany do. But let's get straight to my conversation with Andy Greene so much has happened so quickly between Neil Young
, Spotify
and Joe Rogan
.Share
00:50
But to recap
Joe Rogan
very popular podcast on Spotify
kind of their marquee name. He has a big contract with him to exclusively host his podcast. He had a bunch of episodes where he talks about the Covid 19 vaccines
. I think it's fair to say that he is at least edging towards the territory of becoming a skeptic of the Covid 19 vaccines
. I think that's probably an understatement.Share
01:11
I think many of his fans would say he's just someone who asked questions. But in this particular case, it does appear that he's beginning at least to adopt a definite point of view. And he's had some guests who were out liners from the scientific consensus and it's prompted many to describe him as propagating misinformation on the show.
Share
01:28
There were some doctors and other professionals who signed a petition to
Spotify
, noting that he was propagating misinformation. Rolling Stone
broke that news and then Neil Young
became aware of this and made a dramatic move. He put out a statement on his website that said Spotify
, you can have me or Joe Rogan
, you can't have both because of what he saw as vaccine misinformation.Share
01:45
It should be noted that
Neil Young
is someone who had polio, he had polio before, there was a vaccine for polio and I'm sure that affected his thinking as a lot of people pointed out now when Neil Young
made this statement what happened was first, a lot of people mocked him for this, right Andy described the most negative reaction you saw early on, because there was a lot of that a lot of reaction I saw was extremely negative.Share
Andy Greene
02:07
A lot of right wingers. We're like, what happened to the hippie notion of challenging authority. That's like you've sold out
Neil
this is so on '60 so anti hippie, not your establishment. That was a big reaction. And some people said, I think this is a better critique that Neil
is a against GMOs
and those in his in his argument is pretty anti science, I would argue and wrong, I would argue.Share
02:32
So they threw that at him, but it was largely that he was trying to censor
Joe Rogan
, you know, that he was against the First Amendment
, he was trying to silence his speech and that was the argument that was often thrown out.Share
Brian Hiatt
02:43
So I think there was another big strain in the critiques which is "LOL
Neil Young
, you're old and irrelevant".Share
02:50
It was a large strain in the critiques and it just shows how politically driven all these things have become all of a sudden
Neil Young
who was quite a mainstream thing to like among certain generations, suddenly among people who obviously were of the age and taste to like Neil Young
, suddenly we're pretending that no one likes new young and whatever, like Neil Young
, right?Share
Andy Greene
03:10
But I think to lots of people that they even thought much about
Neil Young
in the past 30 years, he sort of became like a cult artist in a way and he hasn't had a real mainstream moment since he like played with Pearl Jam
at the VMAs
in '93 or something. He's been kind of off the grid has been working constantly touring all the time, but just kind of playing to his fans. So to normalize out there that don't really pay much attention, they presumed that he was dead or something or just a complete relic of the past and a joke. So to see him again, I think was kind of shocking for some people.Share
Brian Hiatt
03:42
Yeah, ironically, I mean this is something we discussed that I feel that
Neil
had paid insufficient attention to the duties of sort of legacy building, image building and doing the kind of documentaries and other things that would have kept him in the public eye, but also made sure that younger people knew about exactly what he did and what he stood for.Share
04:02
And it turned out all of that was it was almost wiped away by this single thing he did that suddenly made him the most relevant artist on on earth for a week or so.
Share
Andy Greene
04:12
It's the most press he's gotten. I can't even remember the last time that
Neil Young
, he's been in the news this much. I mean, God, it might be like the 70s or something when this much conversation was around Neil Young
and it's just because he had the audacity and the balls to stand up to Joe Rogan
to stand up to Spotify
to be the first person to say, look, I am out of here if this stuff continues.Share
Brian Hiatt
04:38
I think the other thing I saw and I tweeted about this was the right wing right wing and also people who are vaccine skeptics and also
Joe Rogan
fans, I won't pigeonholes just as bribing people. But there was this thing of like you foolish old man, how dare you even imagine that they would choose you over Joe Rogan
.Share
04:56
And to me that was a fundamental misunderstanding of when someone takes a stand based on principle and never of course even kneel as you know what, however in touch or out of touch with reality he maybe, I'm sure he never for one second expected
Spotify
to literally be like, oh Mr Young
of course we choose you were banishing our biggest star, Joe Rogan
. No, it was a principled stand. And the fact that people who literally didn't seem to understand the concept was incredible.Share
Andy Greene
05:23
Yeah. I think
Neil
was hoping to start a movement. He didn't think that he alone was going to get Rogan
off Spotify
, but he was just saying, look, I don't want my music on the same platform that's spreading misinformation about the vaccine and that's not censorship, that's not censorship in the least.Share
05:41
It's just saying that I don't want to be a part of the same thing as this. So I'm taking my stuff away and if that's a violation of the
First Amendment
, I don't know what is I mean, that's just crazy.Share
Brian Hiatt
05:51
But what happened, it was unclear at first if it would lead to anything, then
Joni Mitchell
whose name carries a different clout than people might understand joining the crusade. His old friend, Joni Mitchell
, Joni
fellow Canadian. She stopped by the tonight's the night session and jam with crazy horse. She's a longstanding pal, Joni
joined the cause and Joni
is someone who carries weight with young people, it's a different kind of thing. Honestly.Share
Andy Greene
06:17
Yeah, it was a real get because Joni has a sort of coolness that
Neil
has lacked for a long time and her statement was pretty powerful. And then David Crosby
tweeted, he was like, look, I wish I had the power to take my stuff off of Spotify
it. I sold my publishing, it's out of my hands. And I think a lot of his of peers of Neil
are in the same position that if they wanted to do this, they couldn't do it. And even Neil
who sold half of the rights to his publishing, he had to get permission from the people who brought his publishing and from the label.Share
06:49
And that's pretty tough. He pulled it off, but because he's
Neil
and he won't take no for an answer. But I think lots of other people who may want to do this are realizing that they can't do it.Share
Brian Hiatt
06:59
And you know, we should mention
Nils Lofgren
may not carry commercial cloud, but it was I thought really sweet and admirable that he jumped on board and said he was doing it in solidarity with Neil
. I was kind of touched by that. But then what happened despite all the kind of mockery of these quote unquote old quote unquote relevant artists.Share
07:18
That was all it took for
Spotify
to announce that they're actually putting basically markers on the controversial episodes, they're introducing them by explaining that they're outside of the scientific consensus. And Joe Rogan
himself in a mildly bizarre instagram video basically said he was fine with it and basically kind of a little bit seemed to backtrack, he was suddenly emphasizing again that he's just asking questions.Share
07:43
He was saying that he needs to do more with getting people who are less controversial right after the people who are very controversial. It seemed to me like there was a little bit of blinking on the part of both
Spotify
and and Joe Rogan
, which is, It's pretty interesting considering that from two artists over 70 years old, much derided for these stances. It seems like they affected some change here.Share
Andy Greene
08:04
It was smart of
Rogan
to seem contrite to not apologize, but to admit maybe he could have handled things a bit differently and it shows that Neil
, he really brought about a change and I think perhaps Rogan
the future before bringing on some quack doctor to say crazy shit, he's going to think twice is how I think to himself, is it worth it to rile it everybody up to give a platform to this person and he might stop himself.Share
08:33
And that's the accomplishment. And he praised
Neil Young
, he said that he was a big fan of Neal's, that he worked security at a show. He played at the Great Woods Amphitheater in 1986. He said that he liked Joni Mitchell
and he loves her song Chuck E's in Love, but he was thinking of course about Rickie Lee Jones
... So he was a bit off there.Share
Brian Hiatt
08:50
But it is funny that for all the
Rogan
fans who are saying that like no one's heard of Neil Young
, no one likes Neil Young
and then from Rogan
himself to be like, I've always loved Neil Young
, it's just an interesting kind of reality check there.Share
Break
Brian Hiatt
10:03
And of course, as you know. Well, since you once interviewed him about this, a major major
Neil Young
fan is Donald Trump
himself, huge fan.Share
Andy Greene
10:12
Yeah, it's a really weird thing, but I saw
Neil
a ton in concert in the city in the past 20 years and in the mid aughts I saw trump there three different times. I go to the show in about five minutes before show time I see Trump
walk down the aisle and setting the answer in the front row, I sort of couldn't believe it. So I called him up at trump tower back in L eight and we talked about it and so it's sort of weird that these people love Neil
Young trump and Neil
Young both vocally pro vaccine.Share
Brian Hiatt
10:42
They have so much in common.
Share
10:43
But it's definitely been interesting to watch. I think if anything, I think that
Spotify
moved because it also there are trending topics about quitting Spotify
, that's not what you want, if you're if you're a big company and on top of that it was starting to raise people's concerns about artist payouts and that kind of thing and suddenly it's suddenly people's eyes suddenly were on them. And I don't think that that's what you want, if you know...Share
Andy Greene
11:10
No, it was a much brighter spotlight than they've had in a long time on the less than great aspects of the of their business model and it happened to coincide, it was the same month or the same week really that the stock market was dipping down for almost everybody. And their stock was going way down to.
Share
Brian Hiatt
11:26
But but let's be clear that was of course really badly mis reported by a lot of the press.
Share
Andy Greene
11:31
No, it was just happened to be a bad week for the entire market.
Share
Brian Hiatt
11:36
And so to...
Share
11:38
And people were like, you know,
Spotify
crashes in wake of new young comments. Like that's the ultimate... I would teach that in journalism school as the thing about causation and causality, like...Share
Andy Greene
11:48
Despite all of that, I'm sure
Spotify
was having a rough week and they had a lot of incentive to just try and put out this fire. Try and give artists a reason to not follow Neil
because, you know, it's often been said that they can withstand Neil
if they lost Adele or something.Share
12:05
You know, of a huge artists quit. It might start a snowball effect. I doubt it. There's so much money at stake and the labels are invested in
Spotify
, but I think they wanted this to just stop.Share
Brian Hiatt
12:18
I think there's something, there's something heartening about just seeing that, you know,
Joni Mitchell,
Neil Young
. I mean obviously Neil
is hardly a stereotypical hippie, he he's that weird guy who's sort of a hippie and a hippie puncher when it comes to Crosby
stills and Nash
, he has a weird relationship to the whole thing.Share
12:34
But let's face it, he is an old hippie and
Joni Mitchell
and to see that sort of that boomer hippie idealism actually yield something positive here in 2022. I find a bit of a heartwarming narrative.Share
Andy Greene
12:49
Yeah, because their story started together in 1965. It's been woven in this weird fabric for all of these decades and this is sort of a great last chapter that they worked together in their old age to kind of take down
Spotify
in a weird way.Share
13:02
You know, I mean I didn't take it down but they cause some real change, you know, I use
Spotify
still, you know, I'm just saying that they brought about real change and I don't think anybody thought that the two of them that were working together that they could make this much news And caused this much of a wave.Share
13:22
And it would be hard to imagine that if you told me that like 10 days ago, but it happened right and without one young artist coming aboard, it didn't matter.
Share
Brian Hiatt
13:31
The last gasp of boomer political power turns out to be this is the last chapter in that history book. And look for
Neil
... listen Neil
has taken some bizarre stances over the years, he has gone down rabbit holes that were not for for ones that you'll forgive the totally mixed metaphor.Share
13:53
The thing is when you speak out and become a public figure again, the first thing they do especially now is find the worst thing you ever said and they found the worst thing you ever said, which is something absolutely horrible about it in in the in the eighties. I think what people should understand without ever excuse me.
Share
14:12
It's a horrible thing he said is he was going through something truly agonizing in his personal life. His son was disabled and they were doing a 15 hour a day experimental program with him that was sapping all of his energy and and all this time and wreaking havoc with his emotions. And and he said that from that state. I think it's fair to say.
Share
Andy Greene
14:37
Yeah, it's extremely out of character. It was one horrible sentence and a bad interview. There's no excuse for it. But it's very out of character. If you want a real view of his politics ladies, you should listen to rocking in the free world or he takes on
George H. W. Bush
and the republicans with real venom. And I think that's more consistent with him.Share
Brian Hiatt
14:59
And I always thought that his his doing the title track for the movie Philadelphia was an unspoken apology for all that. And he donated all the money from that to his charities. And I think in fact, I don't think it's it's not much of a stretch to realize that that's exactly, it's not much of a stretch to realize that that's exactly what that was.
Share
15:16
So yes, that was horrible. It also is I think fair, as you mentioned for people to point to his, he did an album called the Monsanto Years, right?
Share
Andy Greene
15:27
It's a good, it's a good record, musically. I like a lot of those songs, but he has this belief that
GMOs
are poisoning us and there's no scientific basis to this whatsoever feed the world, could change the world for the good. It could end hunger at some point. And he's just stubborn and wrong about this.Share
Brian Hiatt
15:56
So he unfortunately has a history of propagating scientific misinformation and props to the people who who got him on that. Because that that's that's very damn thing. You should probably look into that and apologize for putting that out. Just in general.
Share
16:11
People who aren't scientists probably shouldn't take strong stands on science that are contrary to expert opinion because you will end up, you're embarrassing yourself. He has benefited in the past from taking strong stands. One example is the whole this note's for you thing and maybe you can take us back to that.
Share
Andy Greene
16:27
So, in the mid 80s it was really common for the biggest pop stars to being commercials for products and to sing songs about the products. I mean, it was a whole it was a whole new level. They didn't even see much. Now.
Share
16:41
It would be
Madonna
, it would be Eric Clapton,
would be David Bowie
, be Tina Turner
, be Michael Jackson
and I'll be singing about Pepsi
or something. It was kind of crazy.Share
16:50
And then in 1988 there's a song and video by
Neil Young
. It's called this note's for you where he just skewers them ain't seen for coke.Share
17:04
I mean it's a vicious mockery of Whitney Houston and
Eric Clapton
and all these people that were making that were being commercials and when he gave it to MTV
, they won't air it. You know, they claim that they were worried about copyright stuff, but they were really worried about about angering all of the biggest artists. Then after all this controversy, they both showed it and gave him video of the year for it.Share
Brian Hiatt
17:25
And that was the first time he and
Eric Clapton
were vocally on different sides of an issue.Share
Andy Greene
17:30
It's super funny if you watched the star of the video on
Youtube
, it's just him making so much fun of Eric Clapton
and his beer commercial. It's like a shot for shot parody of thing. It's hysterical.Share
Brian Hiatt
17:41
You know, I had completely forgotten. But one time when I interviewed
Eric Clapton
in the past 10 years, somehow we got to talking about pono and stuff and he was making fun of Neil
. He said after those loud concerts, there's no way on earth Neil
can hear the difference between anything just completely mocking the entire thing and maybe there's longstanding beef between them. I love that.Share
Andy Greene
18:04
If you think back to their history, there's not a lot of times they've given together, it was
The Last Waltz
and it was Bobfest in 92 and that's about it. They've stayed apart for a very long time.Share
Brian Hiatt
18:16
I think it would be worth very briefly. You know, I think there's people who are young and are hearing about new young for the first time through this and I think he comes off as pretty cool and I think maybe maybe they would want to get into him. Maybe they don't want to check out his music.
Share
18:34
Let's in a couple of minutes where it's an interesting question, where would one start with
Neil Young
? I mean, Harvest is the default answer.Share
Andy Greene
18:45
Yeah, I think Harvest. I think Harvest is the gateway drug for a lot of people. It's been 50 years. Exactly. I think there's something about putting that on hearing those songs the first time. It's very accessible. It's very warm.
Share
Brian Hiatt
18:58
It epitomizes if you want to know what analog warmth is in sort of a recording and and weirdly across just even the songwriting, just like warm acoustic music, like that is an exact example. It's sort of and it's actually explains why he's fought so hard to get high fidelity because what he wants is to be able to have that kind of warmth on the record.
Share
Andy Greene
19:29
If you start with that, then maybe do
Rust Never Sleeps
because that's the other side of him that's sort of the godfather of grunge Neil
.Share
19:39
I love Zuma, but I think
Rust Never Sleeps
is better for a newcomer. Zuma... Zuma is incredibly great. I would actually jump all the way to Ragged Glory
.Share
Brian Hiatt
19:59
I feel he's one of those artists who contained an infinity within his catalog.
Share
Andy Greene
20:06
It's a bottomless pit because in the mid-70s alone, he wrote so many great songs in a short time period that they're still coming out now. It's been 50 years and there's still new songs that no one's ever heard out of that time period. So it's like him and
Dylan
are just an endless well of songs.Share
Brian Hiatt
20:23
And I guess I just wanted to get across why this move, This current move really was in character for
Neil
. This is a guy who, when the world wanted him to veer right, he veered left every time. And this is why he isn't seen the way that Crosby
stills and Nash
, who of course he played with adding the why to them.Share
20:44
This is why he hasn't seen the way that they are. He was the one guy from the sixties who survived to the punk era and was still seeing this cool. He's the one guy who became the quote unquote godfather of grunge and was on
MTV
playing with Pearl Jam
. It's because of this contrary Niss him, which could be very frustrating to deal with this, someone who dealt with him.Share
Andy Greene
21:03
But As soon as he establishes a sound, he just drops it because the song, heart of gold was like the biggest single of 1972. It was an enormous, enormous hit. And his follow up was a live album that sounded nothing like it.
Share
Brian Hiatt
21:19
And then
Tonight's The Night
which was even more, which is even less like, you know, he has always veered away from the working formula, which is so rare.Share
21:29
Famously he spoke of being in the middle of the road with with Harvest and with a
Heart of Gold
and he veered into the ditch and that was a lot of what his seventies was.Share
21:40
And by the way there's supposed ditch albums or some of the greatest music ever made. I'd like to stay in the ditch forever. This is also the only guy who made such weird music in the eighties that he was sued by his own record label for essentially not sounding enough like himself, which is still the only lawsuit of its kind in the entire history of the recording industry.
Share
Andy Greene
22:00
It's absolutely incredible. And his whole 80s became about fucking with
David Geffen
, it was just insane. Who was David Geffen
. And he makes Trans, which is almost like a Kraftwerk album at times with a vocoder where you can even hear his vocals and then they told him to do a quote rock and roll record.Share
22:20
So he made a rockabilly record just to fuck with them, like a fifties, rockabilly thing. And he spent a year on tour with the comb his hair and the poodle skirt, backup singers. He did a whole tour and album to funk with
David Geffen
and then he made a country record and then he made a blues record this on a pretty short time period.Share
Brian Hiatt
22:39
He really is a singular figure in music history and it shows that if you conduct yourself with enough integrity, decade after decade, you can be in your seventies and and make an impact like this, which says a lot, but I do wish that, you know, didn't get a thing where someone makes a political statement that people don't like, and suddenly they have to pretend they never liked him. That that that bums me out, It's silly.
Share
Andy Greene
23:05
I saw one conservative, I think a congressman, he tweeted out that
Kid Rock's
music is a lot better than Neil Young's
music and even a lot of right wing pundits, they responded and just said, look, dude, that that's fucking crazy, Like I like Kid Rock's
politics, but that's a step too far even for us.Share
Brian Hiatt
23:25
You know, it's true. Eventually. I think that's that's where that line of thinking leads you as you end up making statements that are, you know, you end up just listening to kid rock, but
Neil Young
, you know, this is a nice capper to his legacy. I'm sure he must be wondering why this has gotten roughly 400,000 times the attention that any of his albums have gotten in the last decade.Share
23:49
It's sort of a bummer is a super hardcore fan to see this, the thing that they care about when he goes, and when he goes on tour and plays like the best concert I've ever seen in my life and nobody cares, I'm not sure even I expected, it seemed like a big deal to me, wrangling social media might have ironically helped build this into a bigger deal than it would have been because they got so mad about it and the more they screamed that he's totally irrelevant and no one knows who it was, it just, it just brought it up.
Share
24:17
But they were, they were quote tweeting the
Rolling Stone
article hundreds of times saying how irrelevant and how stupid Neil Young
is. I think that's what happened.Share
Andy Greene
24:25
Yeah, I think that's true.
Share
Brian Hiatt
24:27
But I guess what I would say is someone made a brilliant point, which is that if
Neil Young
wants to reduce Joe Rogan's
reach, he actually should encourage him to stay on Spotify
because before Spotify
, paying him for an exclusive deal, he was open to everyone that you can have a free Spotify
account, but you do have to have a Spotify
account, so it, it greatly reduced his reach.Share
24:49
So actually actually
Neil
should be totally pro Joe Rogan
and Spotify
and in fact just encourage him to possibly go on a smaller platform, but but he should not want him deep platform.Share
Andy Greene
24:59
Yeah, I don't think he's seen the chess board here with that many pieces in advance, but he should encourage him to like be an equity or something and now, you know, CD sales were up last year.
Share
Brian Hiatt
25:12
A lot of it was because almost all of it was because of
Adele
, Taylor Swift
and BTS
. But nonetheless weirdly CD sales were up after many, many years of decline.Share
25:22
Now. Our friend
Rob Sheffield
is a big CD fan. He wrote an article praising the CD for Rolling
Stone. com that a lot of people liked. I liked it very much but deeply disagreed with it. I thought it'd be fun to talk to rob and Brittany about our old friend, the compact disc rob. What is it that you love about? CDs.Share
Rob Sheffield
25:39
There's so much to love about CDs. Physical media is up for music across the board. You know vinyl boomed much more than CDs did last year. CDs are still far behind vinyl.
Share
25:52
It's obviously not sustainable because of the vinyl shortage, the PVC shortage, the Suez Canal. A lot of people are releasing an album then waiting 18 months to two years to release their album because it's not cost effective to release it without vinyl. And just the backlog for vinyl is so insane.
Share
26:10
So I think the love that people are finding and and the love that is growing for physical music and physical media. I think it's long overdue and I think it's happening and I think CDs are a crucial part of it. You know I love all music formats. I love tapes, I love records but CDs are something.
Share
Brian Hiatt
26:29
I thought you loved tapes more.
Share
Rob Sheffield
26:32
I I do. It's like choosing favorite kinds of pasta or something like that. But you know you have your favorites but you love them all. I love I love cassette tapes, that's probably what I listen to most.
Share
26:43
Not I think of it you know, CDs, they had a role in music history that the time when CDs were the dominant format was also the time that people bought the most music. And you can't really argue that's a coincidence or at least I wouldn't argue. That's a coincidence. CDs are very good for music that requires you to invest some time and concentrate. You can't click away from it when you get distracted.
Share
27:09
It's much longer than a side of vinyl. You know vinyl you're getting up to change sides every every 20 minutes. The old joke about how listening to vinyl is, it's like diapers you have to keep changing it and changing it every few minutes. And with CDs there there you look at the impact of CDs on music history, they're very very kind to music that takes time and concentration. And that's something CDs are particularly excellent for.
Share
Brian Hiatt
27:40
Brittany, when was the last thing I played a cd?
Share
Brittany Spanos
27:41
I think the last one to play a CD was last holiday season. I wasn't home for this holiday season. But yeah the last one I was home for. I was playing CDs. I have hundreds of CDs that I bought over the course of my childhood in 10 years in college. I was very devoted to buying CDs.
Share
27:59
I did not have a cassette tapes. They were kind of like on the out by the time that I was forming my own music taste. And I didn't have any vinyl records until like I was like 25 CDs stayed in my childhood home. My mom has moved from there. She found the CD case I had lost it for many years.
Share
28:15
It is now back in my possession and I also still have all the jewel cases so it's undetermined if I'm just bringing the giant binder with me or the jewel cases but something will be relocated to New York soon. Just in time for the cd come back. I cannot have all mine now. That's what I call music CDs.
Share
Brian Hiatt
28:32
It's interesting when when
Rob
writes about it or talks about it. I can almost I I start to see his side but I hate CDs. Never liked him and he gets at it in one paragraph of the story. There was a lot about the physicality of the format that is extremely annoying.Share
28:47
I found personally that they scratched really easily. I know that some people that never was a problem for them. I I found that and when it scratched didn't scratch like vinyl where you know there was a scratch but you maybe could clean it or maybe it would just skip in one place it would ruin the CD. And that happened pretty frequently.
Share
29:04
I hated the thing the little notch that you put the CD in when when it was a plastic jewel box and that little naci thing that you attach to CD too. I would find those things broke all the time... I hated that too. Perhaps I did not treat them with the care and respect they deserved.
Share
29:18
But that was the thing that that that drove me insane. I hated that portable CD player skipped so much even if the CD wasn't scratched. I I certainly listened to a ton of music on CD like everyone else who was alive but I just I just never warmed to the form.
Share
29:31
And then the other thing I would say is that CDs aren't really a format right there actually just a shell for a file that you can access in different ways you can when you stream music in CD quality as you can do on apple music and entitle you're getting something that is basically on a bit by bit level identical to a CD.
Share
29:52
And so that's the thing I feel like it's sort of like the file on the cd has to sort of just breakthrough of its physical form, you still have it but it doesn't need to be encased in that little silver thing. I had pre
iPod
Mp3 players that's how eager I was to get on.Share
30:07
And I had this horrible pre
iPod
mp3 players just trying to break free of the cd I guess Bernie, do you see, is there a movement of a foot two? I do see on TikTok a thing where kids would be like, my aunt gave me her CDs.Share
30:23
And it will be the kids were into the nineties
Smashing Pumpkins
and Nirvana unplugged just sort of the nineties starter kit and they really treasure that. Is that a thing where people are using that and also finding that a way to cherish the music more Rob
suggests? Pay more attention to it?Share
Brittany Spanos
30:38
I think of course there's like such an early aughts nostalgia, right? And CDs are so tied to that like you know there there is that that very specific era. Um but I can see why it appeals to both artists and fans right now. I think fans, you know, they in the effort to get their artists to number one, which is very important to like certain sects of a lot of fandoms.
Share
31:01
A lot of big fandoms like they realized that that is still a pretty weighted part of how getting to number one is calculated and more and more artists are now using CDs. As a way to give bonus content. There are three bonus tracks on the
Adele
album that are not on any streaming services that you cannot listen to unless someone has pulled it or put it on YouTube
.Share
31:21
There are tracks that are still not available. There are tracks on physical versions of
Folklore
and Evermore
that were not available unless you bought the physical version of those albums. And I think that really matters. I think artists really desire to make something that's really cohesive and make an album and a CD is a really great way to listen to it.Share
31:38
You can just really sit through. It takes a lot of effort to skip. And my favorite part was like the liner notes on a cd like
Taylor
very famously did a lot of little easter eggs in the liner notes of CDs where the lyrics and you know they kind of built up certain things. I had certain messages attached to each song.Share
31:53
I miss hidden tracks. I hope that makes it come back. Hidden tracks on a CD. It just doesn't hit the same on digital. I like the surprise of not knowing how long I have to wait until there's like a random track at the end of it. And I think there's a lot of experiences that more and more artists I think are craving to have from their albums that CDs can really offer. And I can see that becoming a very appealing way of inviting listeners in and again like you said it is meant to be digital. You can easily transfer that to your computer...
Share
Brian Hiatt
32:24
That in between era of getting cds and ripping them is something we don't think about as much anymore. Like just that... awkward stepping stone era and it is true, as
Rob
pointed out early on Mp3 sounded terrible. They were people who were doing it at at 128, which you know, introduced all sorts of horrendous artifacts.Share
32:45
I have a theory that that helped push down the commercial peak of rock bands because nothing sounded worse in low bit rate Mp3's than than rock bands because it did horrible things to the cymbals and to ride cymbals and two hi-hats, they sounded... like if there's a drummer hitting, it sounded like actual garbage and admittedly some of the mainstream rock circa 2003 sounded like garbage.
Share
33:09
Anyway, the pristine sonics of, you know,
Hoobastank
or whatever, we're probably not worth much anyway, but I do think, I do think, sorry, rob put, I as I was saying, I once interviewed a Hoobastank
and very delightful persons... They were, I apologize to Hoobastank
, there wasShare
Rob Sheffield
33:25
Here nobody is criticizing
Hoobastank
.Share
Brian Hiatt
33:28
That they are beyond criticism. So I do think there were weird there's weird consequences and the things we haven't figured out, I do, it should be noted that, you know, like for example,
Neil Young
never really seemed to realize that Mp3s and streaming moved way beyond the early Mp3s and they started a million times better and eventually it got to, you know what you were buying.Share
33:48
Eventually even before streaming on the
iTunes Store
sounded pretty good. It may not have sounded as good as the uncompressed cd but it sounded pretty good but there were a few years there where people got used to listening to music that sounded like pure garbage, there's no doubt about it, but Rob
you're gonna say something...Share
Rob Sheffield
34:02
No, it's just that the, well probably about hubristic just because you know, the the last last time, you know, CD sales went up, it was the
Hoobastank
era which was also you know the twist era and Ashlee Simpson
era, it was 2004 and for CDs... You know as Brittany's put it just so so eloquently, you know, CDs are full of surprises. You know, there's you know, hmm, I wonder why the last track is 17 minutes long when it seems to be over after three minutes.Share
34:33
Of course the CD booklets, you know, some artists, if you're streaming a
Missy Elliott
CD, you're getting you know, half the experience because a Missy Elliott
CD came with, you know, a little book her thank you was alone were worth the price of the album.Share
34:48
And just in general physical media, I mean even when you're streaming, you're listening, it's still physical media, you're listening on an object whether it's a phone or a laptop. You know, it's there's a cumbersome nous in every kind of object that you used to listen to music and CDs have an efficiency that I admire. They haven't off the grid quality that I really like.
Share
35:11
I like that I'm not being tracked or counted or measured or gauged. I like that I'm not being researched. I not that I like that I'm not interacting with any algorithm at all. It's just me and my [...] CD and I'm playing you know my favorites [...] songs over and over. That's between me and [...] and the
Discman
. Discman
tell no tales.Share
Brian Hiatt
35:34
It's funny when you there's something physically evocative about everything we're talking about and you literally evoked this [...] promo CD that I got God knows how many years ago that I remember feeling guilty that I didn't like it as much as people like you told me that I should. So I think it might have been a later later era so maybe maybe I was excused.
Share
35:53
But I mean all that's true. I will say I'm hopeful about new things evolving. I've been in my house, we've been listening to a lot of music on the through an
Apple TV
connected through speakers with with the screen on and what it does is it it shows the lyrics and it ends up being a very immersive experience and that's new that's a really interesting pathway to music back as an immersive thing.Share
Brittany Spanos
36:19
Again a communal thing too like I feel like all forms of physical media, like, I mean, I think specifically about the act of buying CD is like, you know, people were waiting in line during this peak era during it's called, we're just going to call the
Hoobastank
era, I'm no longer calling the early two thousands it is now the hoover stinky and during that era, you know, the act of waiting in line of going to Tower Records
, even just like going to a Target and being in the seedy section, like places where you can just, you can literally buy CDs next to like wet and wild lip gloss, like it was just kind of like, you can do all of this at once.Share
36:53
And I mean, I remember just like the absolute fervor of trying to, to buy
No Strings Attached
the week that it came out. Like it was such a big deal to get it that very first week and to have it and to own it and to like literally be able to bring it to school the next day, um you know, and talk with your classmates about it and you know, mixed CDs, the physicality of that.Share
37:14
That like, I think, you know, there's such a process of decorating the actor, you can decorate a blank CD and you can put markers on it and make it beautiful and make it look the way you want to for whoever you're giving it to, it's kind of nice to be like we're exchanging CDs, I'm physically giving you the cd and of course that's why vinyl, which is the missing part of this.
Share
Brian Hiatt
37:33
I think that's why vinyl has become such a big deal for people. I want to bring it back to the insignia strings attached because that was the peak of the CD era and...
Share
Rob Sheffield
37:42
That was peak CD. That was They sold 2.4 million in one week, which is the most CDs, I mean that is the pinnacle of CD-dom.
Share
Brian Hiatt
37:53
And I was I was at an in store. I'm looking at an
MTV
news article I wrote on March 21st 2000 when NSYNC
did a an in store appearance at the Virgin Megastore
, across the street from the MTV Studios
and there were just fans lined up outside on barricades, screaming for each member screaming a lot more for Justin
than the other members, a lot less for lands apparently.Share
38:18
And I do miss that. I miss the in stores. I miss at the time I also saw like
Eminem
do a similar in store like that same year. And also just that feeling when you walked into a Virgin Megastore surrounded by the physical manifestations of I mean you can go to a record store, but it was like these places were huge with billions of CDs everywhere.Share
38:42
Just the lifeblood of a thriving physical media industry and you know, of course
Napster
already existed at that point. That's at that instinct moment. And it was kind of looming over it and it and it was like a building tidal wave that splashed over it.Share
Brittany Spanos
38:59
Waiting in line for a CD at midnight. I mean, that's just like such a was such a fun thing to do. Like that was like so much. That was just such a great joyful experience.
Share
Rob Sheffield
39:09
Just also like the cheesy ploys developed to actually sell you these particular physical objects. Remember the
Katy Perry
album that you could buy with a pizza if you ordered a pizza from a certain nationwide pizza chain and you just added a few extra bucks.Share
39:26
They would deliver the
Katy Perry
city with your pizza. Like stuff like that. I love stuff like that. You know, and people are still ordering pizzas. You know, like who... who wouldn't throw in an extra couple of bucks to get, you know, a CD with your pizza to listen to.Share
Brian Hiatt
39:42
And that's our show for today.
Rolling Stone
Music Now we'll be back next week. We're always on Sirius XM's volume channel 106, but we are a podcast, download us as a podcast.Share
39:54
Subscribe to us as a podcast wherever you get your podcast. Yes, that includes Spotify and Apple Podcasts and many other places and do leave us a nice review on Apple Podcast if you can. That's always appreciated. But as always, thanks for listening and we will see you next week.
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Andy Greene
Brian Hiatt
Brittany Spanos
Rob Sheffield