From "One Step Back" New York Times 19 January 1998
"Because so much money is at stake, pop music seems to be about careers. But beneath the surface, perhaps on the level where the money is actually made, pop music is really about a social fact. At any moment, anyone might have something to say that the whole country, even the whole world, might want to hear, and maybe only one such thing. The ruling values of pop music might seems to be situated in the accumulation of fame and riches. They might be found in the way a song can turn your day around and then disappear.
A singer reaches you with a song. He or she has no responsibility to reach you with another one, and you have no responsibility to respond if he or she tries. Heard or overhead, a song--on the radio, in a bar, hummed by someone standing next to you in line--diverts you from the path your day has taken. For an instant, it changes you. But you can forget about it as surely as you may feel shadowed until you hear it again.
Or, rather, you may try to forget about it. You may not be allowed to. A hit song you don't like is an oppressive mystery.....What was Jakob Dylan doing dully offering "One Headlight" until spring turned into fall? It was like watching someone do a jigsaw puzzle with four pieces, over and over again. As omnipresent hit singles go, "One Headlight" was too flat to be more than a mild headache, and of course you could change the station. " (p.217)
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