You don't need a half-wit music critic to tell you it's been a remarkable year for America, one historians will be discussing and researching for centuries to come. War, financial collapse, politics, technology: All have been dinner-table topics for many Americans. Racial barriers in 2008 were demolished by a Midwestern black man, and gender barriers were hurdled by an Arkansan and an Alaskan.

Democracy has a few awesome new dance moves rolling into the Obama presidency, and it'll be a feast for the wonks to break 'em down. It's for those wonks that we've done some number crunching. When future pointy-headed academics are scouring data in attempts to better understand America in 2008, might it not be instructive to offer a snapshot of a different sort, one that attempts to explain the People and their mindset from a quasistatistical/analytical ethnomusicosociological perspective? 
Specifically, let's address the population in a head and/or heart space it cares deeply about: through its music.

How does it sing and dance? Who does this singing? Who best moves our collective booty and tugs at our heartstrings? I've been crunching Billboard album and singles chart data in order to better understand Who We Are in 2008. I've compiled information on every artist who cracked the Top 10 album chart and the Hot 100 singles chart this year. I've researched each artist and tallied the lot of them based on a number of factors, including gender, ethnicity, nationality, state of origin (if American) and record label. I've then analyzed these numbers. What follows are some conclusions.

(Note to Nate Silver: I'm a lowly music journalist who can add, subtract, multiply, divide, and use a calculator, but not much else. Let this serve as a springboard. Margin of error: 4 percent. Results reflect chart positions up to and including the Dec. 6 issue of Billboard.)




I'm taking a temporary hiatus from this BLOG. No more teenage kicks for me. Well, at least for a couple weeks (or months) until I sort some stuff out.

In the meantime, I hope this compilation of internet snacks from Weezer's new video "Pork & Beans" tides you over until my (inevitable?) return:

And if you're wondering, just what "Pork & Beans" is about, let me take a go...

Unlike in previous campaign seasons, the fervor of the music community has been clear and unconflicted in 2008 -- and that fervor has been attached to a single funny name: Obama. If you remember the 2004 election, the pro-Kerry campaign eventually drew a luminescent orchestra of supporters -- Michael Stipe, Conor Oberst and even Bruce Springsteen, an artist who had long maintained a policy of political neutrality, even if it was obvious which side of the fence his personal politics fell.

Problem was, these musicians weren't so much pro-Kerry as they were anti-Bush, and it made their efforts on Kerry's behalf ring a bit false. At the end of the day, those efforts didn't work -- perhaps a subtle indictment of how false passion is often not worth the trouble it takes to rouse it.

It's been funny this year, then, to see artists like Arcade Fire, Ti$a (a member of LA's own Sa-Ra Creative Partners), and now The Decembrists to come out so definitively on Obama's behalf.

More funny still: Obama is a bigger pop star than all of them combined.

If you need proof, let me point you toward this long, thoughtful, well-analyzed Pitchfork news post, Conservative Critics Raise Stink Over Decemberists/Barack Obama Rally. The text is a rebuttal to conservative pundits who have been trying to rationalize the record-breaking crowd of 75,000 who showed up to an Obama campaign rally in Portland on May 18th. The pundits are claiming that the rock concert aspect of the rally somehow explains those huge numbers. (Obama's previous audience record was 35,000.) Nice try, but -- as the Pitchfork story points out -- The Decemberists probably haven't played for more than 5,000 or so people ever, outside of the occasional festival gig.

Point being: Maybe Obama should follow in the footsteps of Scarlett Johansson and release a pop CD? That could definitely solve some of the music industry's ailments -- at least during week of release until everyone gave mp3 copies to their friends.

And no, by the headline to this post, I am not trying to make a politically inappropriate comment about the likelihood of Obama being our first African-American political candidate.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out a second video after the jump.

It doesn't take particular genius to state that the market for recorded music is in the midst of some bizarro transitions right now. We all know the way things are trending -- CD sales are down! The major record labels don't know how to deal with it! The concert & festival business is getting stronger! Indie record labels seem to be doing alright!

Please note that none of these trends, in isolation, help us figure out what the music industry should be doing to fix itself. Most music businesspeople are too busy counting their money to see beyond the next record release and tour cycle. Journalists should be better at telling us what these trends mean for the future -- but that'd require more insight than most journalists can summon. Reporters are alright with factual things, but tend to suck when it comes to having prescient opinions. To make another simile between campaign reporting and music business reporting, neither Obama nor McCain were the media's consensus favorites to become presidential nominees.

Yes, reporters are just that bad at reading the zeitgeist.

That said, I've run across two BLOG entries of late which quickly and incisively explain the changes in the United States' recorded music market. Note that neither BLOG involves hyperventilating commentary on the implosion of the biz. They merely recite FACTS -- something that reporters are undeniably good at uncovering. (Certainly better than me.)

After I've laid out these FACTS, I'll provide some of my own pragmatic & romantic analysis. I'd like to think I'm on to something.

Facts & statistics drawn from "How Apple Is Preparing for an iPod Slump" in the New York Times Bits blog:
iPod sales volume is static...but revenues are up.
- The number of iPods sold in the quarter grew only 1 percent from the same quarter a year ago.
- Sales of the higher priced Touch model helped Apple increase its revenue from iPods by 8 percent to $1.8 billion in the quarter, even though volume was only up 1 percent.

Apple is dominating the music field...because music is *still* a killer app:
- It sold $881 million worth of music and accessories in the last quarter, a 35 percent increase from a year ago. This makes it the largest music retailer in the country, and puts it on track to outpace the entire revenue estimated for the Warner Music Group.
- Success with the iPod seems to be helping Apple sell computers. They sold 2.3 million Macs in the quarter for $3.5 billion, an increase of 51 percent by units and 54 percent by dollars.

The New York Times conclusion: "Apple’s computer sales have been growing 2 to 3 times as fast as the overall market. But this quarter the company says it grew 3.5 times faster than the PC market overall."

Now for some facts & statistics drawn from "RIAA Releases 2007 Year-End Shipment Statistics" in Coolfer.
CDs are dying...but vinyl is showing notable strength
- CD shipments (net) dropped 17.5% while the dollar value of those shipments dropped 20.5%.
- The LP/EP category (vinyl records) saw shipments increase 36.6% with a 46.2% increase in dollar value. (Note the absolute insanity of this statistic. We'll hear more about this in my commentary.)

Subscriptions are static and mobile is not the holy grail.
- Subscriptions to music services (using a weighted annual average) increased a mere 0.7% while their dollar value dropped 2.6%.
- Mobile increased only 14.6% by units and by 13.6% by dollar value. Mobile includes master ringtones, ringbacks, music videos, full track downloads and "other mobile."

I have two reads on this data, one that is cut & dried and pragmatic, a second that is more romantic and has to do with what it all means, man.

First the pragmatism: CDs are kind of fucked, but so are radical new models of music consumption. These new business models -- mobile, subscriptions -- continue to be non-starters. Apparently few people want to get music delivered to their cell phone or have the entire cosmic jukebox available a mouse click away via a subscription (Rhapsody, et. al) -- especially if everything's going to disappear after they stop paying up. I remain somewhat optimistic that Apple might be able to sell people on subscriptions -- and there is increasing buzz that that their iTunes movie rental service was a tester for doing the same in music-- but short of that, rental & subscriptions seem fairly dead in the water.

Meanwhile, vinyl is seeing far larger percentage increases in sales than mobile and subscription services. To understand the enormity of this, realize the difference in the constituency supporting vinyl vs. the constituency supporting mobile & subscriptions. Vinyl is a format with near zero visibility, a format which the major labels actively tried to kill, a format championed mostly by word of mouth marketing among hardcore music heads (teenagers discovering punk rock or hip-hop; indie kids addicted to Insound and mom'n'pop retail; sad old single guys obsessed with getting records they already own on 180 gram vinyl; DJs). Meanwhile, subscriptions are being championed by companies who are devoting millions of ad dollars and other promotional efforts to explain and sell the public on their efforts, trying to get exclusive tracks from big name mainstream artists, et. al.

Now the romantic analysis: The key to selling music is still not about convenience, price, or practicality. It is about obsession and possession and most of all object fetish. People still love music -- and not just live concerts. They like recorded music, too, and the ownership thereof. The more "special" the object the more they like it and the more their willing to pay -- doesn't matter if it's a relatively high-priced iPhone or iPod touch, or a hard to store, hard to ship, completely inconvenient but lovely to look at piece of vinyl. (If it comes with download codes to put that album on that iPod, all the better.)

Whether people can articulate it or not, the buying public continues to enjoy having the ability to hold music in their hand and know that it's not going anywhere. (And actually, as someone who manages three separate record labels, I'm constantly asking around about people's music consumption habits and most people I run into *do* articulate the fact that they like to possess music -- even if the breadth of their holdings have increased exponentially in recent years, in part, thanks to piracy and sideloading.)

Proof of people's affection for the recorded music object is all over these statistics. Look at the halo effect the incredible product design and user interface of the iPod seems to be having on other Apple products. Sure Apple's consumer friendly technology has something to do with this, but my gut is tha "look and feel" is what draws many people to first own and obsess over Apple products.)

Further, you can look at the stats on vinyl's one-third growth in sales volume compared to the almost 50% growth in dollar value. This seems to indicate people are paying *more* money per unit for higher quality vinyl or at least fancier packaging that is bringing with it higher prices. All the major consumer electronics companies trying to introduce new, higher fidelity audio formats should study this vinyl statistic carefully. Blueray, DVD audio, 5:1 surround sound gigaprojectors, super CD audio players -- oh fuck it, I lose track of all the names! To all of these consumer electronics companies, I say, "Stop worrying so much about audio quality, focus more on nice printing dumbass." People seem to be digging a generations old format that's been virtually unchanged for decades -- and it's all because it's pretty, not because it's convenient, sounds particularly pristine, or because it's new.

(In case you care, yes, these BLOGs I'm quoting from are from late April. I don't exist on BLOGtime, and the statistics in them are just as valid now as they were one month ago. We would all do well to take the long view on the music market.)

After the jump, I tell you how to keep track of future statistics & music industry moves on a daily basis.

Last week I was in London -- sighting Bjork at a crowded Battles/Dirty Projectors/Fuck Buttons gig at the Astoria

...getting my first introduction to Union Chapel in the Islington section of town, one of the loveliest venues I ever have seen...

...and, finally, checking out Explosions in the Sky's ATP in Minehead, on England's West Coast. There, Animal Collective were my overwhelming favorite with their loud as fuck, beat-heavy, ecstatic set. I heard a rumor while over there that their upcoming record -- slated for January 2009 -- was done in collaboration with a notable hip-hop producer. If the ATP concert's take on the Animal Collective sound indicates what direction they're going in, well, start getting excited now.

(All above images via Flickr.)

Anyway, it was a fun fucking weekend, and -- despite the fact that I saw mostly American bands -- a kind of topper to my increasing fascination with all things having to do with British music, a fascination that's been very evident in my contributions to this here blog -- be it in pieces about the iconic crusty punk band Crass, top-dog graphic designer Peter Saville, or a possibly-destined-for-obscurity new group such as These New Puritans.

This UK kick that I'm on is a huge about face for me. When I was growing up I was a complete anti-Anglophile, obsessed with the Amerindie scene as defined by labels such as SST, Dischord, K, and Touch & Go. The music I loved was amateurish, working class, and unsophisticated. That's what I liked about it. Those aforementioned record labels offered a portrait of Americans trying our best to make art in a country quite inhospitable to expression. By comparison, British music always sounded like it was made by people that had gone to art colleges, grew up posh, and were overly cognizant of the history of English literature. To sum up the difference, I think British music seemed like it was overly beholden to the past, to history, to the bank of past knowledge; American music sounded free, and like it had its eyes on the future. When I was younger, I loved the ahistorical qualities of Amerindie; now that I'm older, I've begun to understand the merits of music that has an awareness of a larger cultural sphere...

Anyway, even my digressions are starting to digress. What I'd like to present to you right here is a quote that shows not all British people are beholden to the past. I especially like how it wraps up in a bow my increasingly UK-friendly orientation (Damien Hirst) with a quotation from a prototypical American original, one who is currently experiencing a burst of activity (Tom Waits). I like it even more because it then pulls in references to an evergreen UK pop group (The Beatles) and concludes with some vast overarching statements about the nature of life today (which appeals to pretentious assholes like yours truly).

The quote is from On the Way to Work, a 2002 book which presents Hirst's artistic autobiography by way of a series of interviews with novelist Gordon Burn.

Here we go:

Gordon Burn: When I read this quote from Tom Waits I thought of you: "Most of us expect artists to do irresponsible things, to be out of control. Somehow we believe that if you're way down there, you're going to bring something back up for us, and we won't have to make the trip. This is part of the tradition with artists; the problem with that is that you will have people who will write you a ticket to go to hell. Go to hell with gasoline drawers on and bring me back some chicken chow mein while you're at it."

Damien Hirst: Love it.

Gordon Burn: Then he says this: "The fact is that everybody who starts doing this to a certain extent develops some kind of a persona or image in order to survive. Otherwise it's very dangerous to go out there. It's much safer to approach this with some kid of persona or image in order to survive. Because if it's not a ventriloquist act, if it's just you, then it's really scary."

Damien Hirst: I was born with a persona. Tom Waits can say that because he's older. I'm of a generation where a persona goes without saying. It's just in your toolbag when you're born. It's just part of my make-up. I've never questioned it. It's like everybody I know. You get it in your kitbag.

I'm a chameleon. That's my joy. I lie and change my mind and make things up. I'm a snake; I'm an eel; I'm a chameleon. And that's not slippery. It's truthful, to change like that.

In that area, the best thing that's ever come out of Britain, or anywhere, is the Beatles. It's a massive lesson for everyone. It's the most inspiring thing. To watch them publicly grow up in a very real arena of publicity and fame and success and everything... To see them publicly, before everybody, go through that... I was born in those years. That's what I do.

Gordon Burn: You were too young to witness it in real time. You were only born in 1965.

Damien Hirst: Fuck real time. This is even better. It's not like being there, 'cause you can't see it when you're there. I was right at the perfect point, in between that and punk, to be able to look at it from the distance you need. If you say to me, "What kind of music do you like?, I go, "The Beatles." Full stop. But if you ask the people who were there, they go, "Well, the Beatles just did ballads, and they did country 'n' western, and they took rock 'n' roll and they took black music and r&b..."

They took every fucking kind of music. They took everything they wanted. They took the lot. They just took the lot. To me, that's the Beatles. They're not country 'n' western. They're not r&b. They're the Beatles. They just went and got everything they wanted and they're pure to themselves and they did it.

After the jump, Damien Hirst starts to digress in a way awesomer fashion than I ever do.

A few nights ago I caught a late night re-broadcast on CNN about the NY Philharmonic's "historic" (read: trying too hard) concert in Pyongyang, North Korea. It struggled to explain -- through various melodramatic story lines -- how this was a moment for Art. But I kept wondering if it was actually just a moment for The Arts?

To understand the difference, I ask that you read this wonderful essay just posted by critic, musician and arts consultant Greg Sandow on a BLOG for this year's National Performing Arts Convention in Denver, CO. (The convention kicks off in early June.)

It's a bit long-winded but remember this is a BLOG not a formal printed essay -- there is a difference -- and that this is a point that has to be hammered into the brains of arts presenters and classical music aficionados in much the same way that you might struggle to explain punk rock to your grandparents.

So why am I telling this story? To introduce my thought that art and the arts aren't the same thing. Art is an activity, sometimes sublime, and also the result of that activity. By now we know - or certainly we ought to know -- that it might be found anywhere, in vacant lots, in silence and graffiti, in overheard remarks (see the poetry of Jonathan Williams, an advocate of outsider art, who died not long ago), and in popular culture. The arts, by contrast, are a set of interest groups, whose claim to glory (and to funding) is that they speak for art, which is only partly true. They don't speak for all art, and when someone speaking for the arts - by which I mean for the interest groups - says that only the arts can offer meaning in our society, we've strayed so far from reality that we might as well be jumping off a cliff. Especially if we're looking for a younger audience!

Here's an example. Dana Gioa, the chairman of the NEA, gave a widely circulated commencement speech at Stamford, in which (among much else) he longed for the good old days, when art was in its glory, and opera singers like Robert Merrill could be heard on network TV. But Robert Merrill didn't have a brain in his head. I can say this affectionately, because I love opera, and Merrill can ravish me with his voice. But he had nothing to say in his singing (something that certainly was noticed back in the day), and to imagine that putting him on TV brings art in all its glory to an audience of millions is really pretty funny. Contrast what happens now, when we have pop stars like Bruce Springsteen, who write their own words and music (something Robert Merrill couldn't do), who sing about serious things, who both reflect profound things in our culture, and influence them (see for example the book about Springsteen - Springsteen's America: The People Listening, a Poet Singing -- by Robert Coles, one of our most profound and literate psychologists). And who go on 60 Minutes, talking about society and politics, in a completely serious, compelling way. Is that a step backward? I'd call it a big step forward, at least if you want art to mean something, and to help form both our consciousness and our reality.

But wait! How can Springsteen be an artist, if he's a pop musician, and therefore (horror! horror!) commercial? To me that question is based on a misunderstanding both of commerce and of art. Or at least of the history of art. My field is classical music, and you can't study its history without noticing that many great musicians of the past were commercial, including many of the great composers, or maybe even most of them. I've just been reading a lively little book - Liszt: My Travelling Circus Life, by David Lee Allsobrook -- about one of the greatest pianists of the 19th century, Franz Liszt, and his two tours of England in the 1840s. He made those tours purely for money, flacked for a piano manufacturer, whose pianos he endorsed, and packed his programs with popular opera arias and comical songs, all to please an audience that would have run away from more serious music, by the likes of Mozart or Beethoven.

...

... Why was commerce, for an artist, OK in past centuries, but bad in this one? Someone's going to say that our culture has degenerated, but I don't buy it. Things were better in the days of slavery? Should we look back with admiration at an age when women were their husbands' property, just because people (or so we think) liked better music then? Picasso knew exactly how to sell himself. Should we condemn his art?

...

... Orchestras and opera companies, not to mention big classical record labels and classical radio stations, are terrified of their audience. They're afraid to program things that their audience won't like. Yes, they do it sometimes, but they always know that some large part of their audience might not like anything new or adventurous - and that it would be commercial (that word again) suicide for them to do too much of that.

After the jump, more proof that Art can be found in the places you'd least expect!

It's been a bad month or two for music industry reporters at America's major daily newspapers. You probably remember the LA Times' retraction of Chuck Phillips' story on P. Diddy's responsibility for Tupac's shooting death. Now, the New York Times has cut beat reporter Jeff Leeds.

There's a few weird aspects of this. First there's the fact that firing your music biz reporter at this moment in time is a bit like firing your campaign trail reporter during an election year. Leeds has been a consistently solid reporter on the industry as evinced by this archive of his writing. Second, only four years ago -- granted, a lifetime in newspaper land -- the NY Times snatched Leeds from the LA Times in what was considered a large scale effort to make in-roads on west coast audiences. Oh let's reminisce with this 2004 post from our buddy in BLOGging, Nikki Finke.

In the past week, the NYT captured three other high-profile entertainment/culture writers from the LAT — film critic Manohla Dargis, music business writer Jeff Leeds and architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff. Already in the dumps over parent company Tribune Co.–ordered layoffs, the LAT newsroom was in a bunker mentality anticipating the dampening effect the NYT’s body snatching would have on its Pulitzer-pumped national prestige. And someone needs to argue with the LAT’s bean counters that the year-old controversial subscription model for its online Calendar coverage may be sending at least some of its superstar scribblers into the arms of the enemy.

The latest NYT moves on the LAT are part of a carefully thought-out campaign to make circulation inroads in the West and gain even more exposure in Hollywood. This does not come as a surprise to the LAT staff, either.

As one Calendar source rues, “We’d always heard that once it got its act together [post-Raines] The New York Times was coming to get us.”

So wha' happen? Leeds was a consistently great reporter on this beat for the LA Times. I'll admit I've noticed his pieces less in recent years. But is this because my news reading has increasingly transitioned to the web; because he just hasn't been getting his pieces published; or because he's lost his stuff?

There's been a fair amount of blogging activity about this. (Here's pieces from Finke & TheDailySwarm.) But there's been few explanations as to why?

Anyhoo, with Leeds gone readers have few reasons now to go anywhere else but Coolfer & TheDailySwarm for their daily hit of music industry factage.

Previously:
- Newsflash: LA Times ruins P. Diddy's weekend
- Chuck Phillips should not resign from being a reporter, but it would be fantastic if the LA Times resigned from being a newspaper

Hello internet users. In about 10 minutes I will be co-DJing with my friend Brian Long on his long-running internet radio show Infinite Eargasm. That is 2pm-4pm EDT, 11am-1pm Pacific. I have just drunk a single glass of red wine and am such a lightweight that the world is starting to spin just a tad slower than it usually does. In other words, this show could be extremely entertaining.

You can hear us by clicking here and then clicking somewhere else on that page. (It's the internet, lots of clicking!)

I expect to be, erm, spinning an admixture of contemporary classical music, old obscure hardcore tracks, and various other sad sad songs -- the emphasis being the flow between them, how to get from point A to point Z.

I'll try to post a playlist in this space after we're done DJing.

You've probably already seen this:

...it seemed a good moment to share it again, though, because it's a meme that has legs. Check out the new video for R&B singer Erykah Badu. (Annoyingly it's is not embeddable but you can view it by clicking over to YouTube.)

Why do album covers stick with us so deep in memory, as indelible as old photos of family and friends, if not more so? Well, this phenomenon popped into my head as I was reading Designed by Peter Saville, a book about the British designer most renown for his work with the post-punk scene of the early 80s (Joy Division, Factory Records, and OMD). As his reputation grew he began to do more and more straight ahead pop projects -- including Wham! -- and this work remains somewhat less appreciated by the hipster cognesceti. But there's no good reason for that, really. Take, for example, the cover he designed for Peter Gabriel -- a piece which, to my mind, pioneers an entirely new sub-genre of graphics: erotic typography. (A detail of Saville's cover for Gabriel's So appears to the right of this text. Note the masterful use of two different fonts side-by-side, the "S" and the "o" caught in a push/pull relation as compelling & tense as a pair of foiled lovers.)

In the early 90s, Saville and one of his partners -- partnership & collaboration being a major part of his practice -- spent a few years in Los Angeles where he produced work like that pictured to the left of this text. While he was in LA, he worked for my uncle for a brief spell. Eventually, Saville was fire because of his disdain for corporate clients; his disinclination to work during banker's hours (or even a designer's more lax 11am-to-9pm schedule); and, finally, his gross inability to fit into any kind of standard workplace environment. (I believe he was caught fucking in his office.)

In any case, I guess we should be thankful for Saville's inability to grow up. Because he is a designer who remained young -- his imagination fired by desire and interest rather than pragmatism and professionalism -- his portfolio never went to shit. It's something most of us can only aspire to. This Q&A from the book gets at his philosophy & understanding of why record cover designs can be so unique, so memorable, so poweful.

Peter Saville: On a trip to London in the early seventies, I bought a pack of soap flakes from the Biba shop -- they were packaged in art deco dark brown and beige. I thought "Why don't supermarkets sell groovy-looking soap flakes?" It was about positioning the product in the context of lifestyle. The first opportunities that came to us were a Buzzcocks cover for Malcolm, and a clothes shop for me.

Christopher Wilson: Of all the badly designed products you saw around you, surely many of them -- such as soap flakes -- looked generally worse than the average record cover?

Peter Saville: Yes, they did. But you don't get much work to do when you're young, because you haven't learned how to do it yet. You certainly aren't given the soap flakes. You're given simple, disposable things to design for other young people

...

This is the most important point pertaining to my work: Malcolm and I, and to some extent Neville, were granted an autonomous zone within pop because it didn't matter. Records were not sold the way soap flakes were sold, so we were given opportunity.

But we got to do that work in service of another work -- the music inside. It was made by young people, on its way to other young people, and into their hearts and minds. That's the key thing. A soap flakes box was never addressed to hearts and minds. But pop music, and particularly subcultural pop music, is a delivery system which goes straight there. It's the single biggest influence on teenagers. Those covers could have been posters or postcards, and a few people might have quite liked them. But without the music it would not have gone to the hearts and minds of hundreds of thousands people.

I don't know if I've ever read a better articulation of why records (covers & all) are so important to me, and why I hope they survive into the digital age. Wouldn't we all be a little bit less with images like these in our lives?

After the jump, a few more words from Mr. Saville...

Oh, wow, bummer, I just found out I missed the event of the century. Don't you hate it when you miss a celebration of such massive import?

If anyone wants to take me up on my suggestion in this post's headline you can email any documentary evidence to me c/o this here BLOG. Or, better yet, make a fawning YouTube style video to your moment of fecal glory.

A reminder of how special this will make you feel, as quoted verbatim from the Diddy's viddy:
If you are what you say you are,
A superstar
Gonna have no fear
The crowd is here