“Morning Stars Mournings Hush” is currently sitting at #7 on the !earshot Canadian National Folk/Roots/Blues Chart (for the week of February 10, 2026). Bring on the fireworks! Only got a cherry bomb? Let’s go! Anyone packing some prosecco? I’m ready for “pop, fizz, clink!”
All joking aside, if you’re an independent songwriter like me, getting your album into the top ten on a national radio chart is actually a noteworthy event that’s going straight into my EPK! I would still play songs even if no one listened and no one cared, but, when they do listen and they do care, and they play my songs on their radio shows, I am really grateful for that!
Cynicism about foraging a life in music might be at an all time high, especially amongst musicians. But can you can’t blame musicians for feeling that way? The prevailing narrative in the media about the music business is all gloom and doom! Honestly, can we all collectively agree to stop posting our Spotify royalty statements please? One more of those and it’s going be like, time for Hara-kiri!
Like so many things in contemporary life, the music business has been become very data driven. Opportunities abound, if you have the stats! By stats I’m talking about likes, followers, streaming numbers, monthly listeners and by god, radio chart position – all contemporary musicians know this. It’s a source of a kind of boundless and infinite collective grief. If you were making records before social media was a thing, you might even feel totally lost in this new paradigm for upward mobility in music.
One of my fave Canadian songwriters Ryan Boldt of “Deep Dark Woods” put it like this: “Back then there was touring and MySpace to earn an audience. Now you’re supposed to claw for attention by posting into this festering hell or something like that.” Ha! I had to laugh! I have felt that, as have most musicians when they sit down to make an IG reel to get word out about their next show or release.
I hear a lot of my musician pals opine about the superficiality of musicians and music on their social media feeds. Trust me, I get it and I feel that too sometimes – especially about my own posts! It can be very tiresome. But if you’re a musician, is it really an option to just wish it didn’t matter, wish things were different, wish it was only about the music, and not participate at all? I mean no one is forcing us to post, right? Musicians don’t have to post on social media and I know many who have simply checked out of this aspect of things. And I can respect that. Last I heard, you can still make records, put up posters, give out handbills, do radio interviews and play live shows without social media right?
The way I see it, it’s okay to dream of a better world while still living in (and participating) in the world as it is. I learned a long time ago that there was a certain game to be played in order to open doors as a musician, but that doesn’t mean that being a musician is all a superficial and meaningless game. For lack of a better analogy, this so called “game” is merely the means to an end that exists in parallel to the transcendent act of creating music. And I am obviously by no means above playing this game, to a certain degree. It doesn’t make playing music less fulfilling or diminish the soul nourishing quality of playing songs, which is an end in itself. Nothing can ever taint or ruin the unselfconscious joy that comes from simply being in the moment as your voice or guitar hangs in the air like smoke before vanishing into oblivion. Nothing can diminish “all the feels” we get as we play together with other musicians, totally synchronized in spirit, time and space, riding a wave of euphoria and literally making something out of nothing. And where does a song go when it is over? The moment is gone but the after effects remain.