Kings favorite Lee Cole and the heartbreak track I Don’t Wanna Wait popped on South Africa’s on Spotify’s Viral 50. Spending time between NY and South Africa, the singer-songwriter wrote and recorded the track last summer, shot the video in NJ, and released the track in Feb. The song which is climbing to 200k Spotify streams found itself on thousands of personalized playlists while landing on Apple’s Heartbreak Pop Playlist. I think we are going to see a resurgence in melancholic and heartbreak songs. Lewis Capaldi’s mega hit Someone You Loved exceeded a 1 billion streams.

Hollywood, journalists, and academia heavyweights are making a call to cancel culture. J.K. Rowling, Bari Weiss and Noam Chomsky among others are to sign a open letter calling for an end to cancel culture.

What is cancel culture? You should know because music artists and journalists are living in fear of their livelihood.

Cancel culture refers to the practice of withdrawing support for (canceling) public figures and companies after they have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive. Cancel culture thrives on social media in the form of group shaming.

I’ve been in a circle that was a target for the cancel culture. It wasn’t long ago that we received a flurry of emails questioning our association with an artist who supposably made politically incorrect TikTok videos. I was demanded by a group of people who I didn’t even know to disassociate with the artist or face consequences. Really? Yes..Really.
J.K. Rowling who is known for her Harry Potter fantasy series wrote “This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time,” the letter added. “The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation.”
Obama weighed in on the cancel culture and had this to say:

“I do get a sense sometimes now among certain young people, and this is accelerated by social media — there is this sense sometimes of the way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people, and that’s enough. If I tweet or hashtag about how you didn’t do something right or used the wrong verb, then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself. Did you see how woke I was, I called you out… That’s not activism. That’s not bringing about change. If all you’re doing is casting stones, you’re probably not going to get that far.”

Could the USA ban the Chinese owned app TikTok? It’s in the talks. Like serious talks. This week India banned TikTok and WeChat saying they pose a “threat to sovereignty and integrity.”

The United States is “looking at” banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Other nations have accused TikTok of having ties and being controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.
Labor Senator and former President of the Australian Labor Party Jenny McAllister raised concerns over TikTok, including that the social media platform isn’t entirely transparent about how it approaches Australian privacy laws.
Regardless, many believe TikTok is unsafe and a privacy risk.

Charlie Puth strikes back at the mob after being accused of “advancing” himself by piggybacking off K-pop group BTS.

In return, New Jersey artist Charlie Puth urged BTS fans to back off.

He says, “I don’t usually pay any mind to things like this, but something has to be said. This dangerous, toxic, internet screaming match between ‘fandoms’ has to stop. I’m 28 years old, so it doesn’t really mean anything to me when some person I don’t know writes a nasty message to me…
Puth also said: “What I do know is that 10 years ago, language like this directed towards me would’ve affected me deeply in a very negative way. And I’m thinking about all the other younger kids on twitter seeing stuff like this on a daily basis.”
It may sound cliche, but please be nicer to each other on here. No more screaming about made up nonsense. It does nobody any good. We all need to love each other MORE THAN EVER RIGHT NOW.“

The key to longevity is songs, songs, and more songs. They need to be good songs too. No No..Great Songs! Whether you write them yourself, or somebody else writes them or everybody collaborates, the music biz is all about songs.

That’s what UK hit maker Lewis Capaldi is talking about. If he wants to make money, he needs to write a lot songs.

Lewis notes, “I try and do it every single day, just because I feel like once this is over, I’m going to need some money. And that’s how I make money, from writing songs. I’ve been lucky to do that, to be able to pick up this every day, but it is difficult for sure.”
“I try and do it every day, but this week has been … this is the thing, one week you can do it and you’re like, everything you’re doing is brilliant. You’re like, ‘I feel like The Beatles’, you’re like, ‘This is amazing, everything I touch turns to gold.’ ”
“You can lure yourself into a false sense of security with that, and then the following week you’ll sit down at the piano or pick up the guitar, and you think ‘Here we go again, another hit’. But you’ll play the first note and think ‘Oh my god, I am the worst at this. I am shockingly bad’.