People are buying "Soldier Of Love" because they’re planning on playing it.

This is not Susan Boyle hysteria, a media-fed frenzy where people want to belong to a cult, to something, to feel human, to belong.

It’s not even a holiday gift item.  Sure, "Soldier Of Love"’s release coincided with Valentine’s Day, but its sales have sustained. Because people want to hear the music.

Judge it if you will.  Equate it with Grover Washington, Jr.’s "Winelight".  But what a concept, buying a complete album so you can spin the thing again and again.

That paradigm hasn’t ruled since the seventies, before MTV triumphed and Top Forty on the FM band surged.  It became all about the hit.  Sade is not selling a hit, she’s selling a sound, an aural experience.  Not necessarily a concert experience, although some of her record-buying audience would surely want to see her live, but a lounging in the living room, a long drive enveloped by the sound listening experience.

This is much harder to sell than a hit.

You sell a hit by pounding it into people’s heads.  By publicizing not only the record, but the act’s visage.  You’ve got to get on the bandwagon, this is the latest and the greatest!

But most people don’t want the latest and the greatest when it comes to music.  They want something that’s established, something that they’ve got a relationship with.  Isn’t it interesting that today’s "stars" have to start over with each successive record and the classic rock dinosaurs can tour to large audiences ad infinitum?

Hell, go to the show.  At the classic show, you can remember your whole life.  At the show of the flavor of the moment…there’s only the moment.

So, labels trump up a hit, and are then pissed when people don’t want to buy the whole album.  Why?  That’s like saying if I liked the pepper in the grocery store, I must buy the cookies and the toilet paper too.  One has almost nothing to do with the other.  A hit is inherently unique, sui generis.  Whereas an album is a continuous sound.  The hit is the orgasm, the album is the lovemaking. Orgasms are great, but if that’s all there is…

Which is why if you’re in the business of hits, you should only release hits, you should possess no fantasy that anybody wants more than the hit.  And if you’re selling albums, you must be selling a listening experience.  And believe me, eighty minutes of your musings is usually more akin to torture than an enjoyable listening experience.

You’ve got to stand for something.  You’ve got to be good.

It amazes me not at all that Sade is selling.  Because she’s selling romance.  What is Britney Spears selling…train-wreck?

There’s a constant blaming of the audience.  Whereas the purveyors must first look at themselves.  Both artists and labels.  They should ask themselves why people should buy their music.  What’s the old cliche, if you don’t stand for anything, you stand for nothing at all?

If your live show is hit after hit, you’re reliant on more hits.  Or spectacle.  Like Madonna.  That’s not about music. And even U2 is no longer about music, otherwise they wouldn’t be utilizing that claw and playing to a hundred thousand.  That’s spectacle.  And evidence that U2 has lost the plot is how shitty their new album sold.  People don’t want to play "No Line On The Horizon" because they don’t think they need it, because they don’t think it’s any different from what came before.  Artists can take risks, like U2 did with "Achtung Baby", or else the audience just wants what came before.  Hell, give Coldplay props for working with Brian Eno…  At least they were TRYING something different!

But, you tell me, Sade is no different!

But she was never about hits.  U2 has become beholden to hits in the last ten years.  Whereas Sade is more like a posh resort, that you don’t want to change.  That you’d like to visit again and again.  And believe me, there’s more money in creating a fine destination than opening up another fast food outlet next to McDonald’s and Subway.  But that’s what the modern labels do… Create me-too product, expecting the public to lap it up.  But most people don’t think fast food is that great…it’s got its devotees, but most people pooh-pooh it, would rather save up for a fine restaurant or cook at home.  Just like most people would rather buy and listen to Sade than the complete opus of some nitwit like Ke$ha.  I mean how long can you use a hula-hoop?

But Sade has been doing it for a long time.  Longer than many of today’s hyped artists have been alive.  Hell, she’s been at the label longer than most executives.  We want careers, we want people to follow, we want to invest our time.  But we don’t want to waste our time.  Which is why the music business is in such dire straits.  Tell me again why I should go to the local club to hear that lame act that has a desire to make it but plays mediocre, at best, music?

Sade’s audience is enamored with her, not a track.  People have to believe in you.  You might have a hit with Max Martin or Timbaland, but no one thinks it’s about you, which is why if you’re lucky you can get a gig at 7-11 thereafter, or get into a good graduate school.

Sade’s audience did not forget her.  Even though she had not only not been jammed down their throats, but seemed to have completely disappeared.  They were just dormant, like daffodils, waiting for spring.  This is the antithesis of the "what have you done for me lately" ethos.  The press talks about comebacks for acts that haven’t even been gone a year.  Pitchfork decries and derides the second album before most people have even digested the first.  As if life were about a moment instead of years.

So it all comes down to the music.  Not the marketing, not the train-wreck.  Good music does sell itself.  And the litmus test is whether you want to play it.  If I want to hear your music again and again, you’re a winner.  If not, you’re a loser.  If I only want to hear your track, then you’re like the fruitcake at Christmas…a fixture on the oldies circuit if you’re lucky, mocked by most.

So set about creating a sound.  And releasing no music before its time.  Unless, maybe like Lil Wayne, the sheer plethora of output is your calling card, people enjoy watching you woodshed.  And make no mistake, Lil’ Wayne is an artist with a lifespan, whose fans want to play all his music.  All that free music…it only worked if people listened to it.  And they did.

Listening…  What a concept.

Our business has come down solely to selling.  And that’s why it’s in the dumper.