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I hadn't thought about pay phones in a long time until early in the pandemic, when I was listening to the Phoebe Bridgers() song "Kyoto" that includes they lyri

I hadn't thought about pay phones in a long time until early in the pandemic, when I was listening to the Phoebe Bridgers() song "Kyoto" that includes they lyrics "You called me from a payphone / They still got payphones / it cost a dollar a minute" and I realized "holy shit, when was the last time I saw a pay phone?" And I don't know the answer to that question. It might* be a weird one I saw at the end of a bar in a remote pub in Northumberland in the summer of 2019, in an area with dodgy cell service. I have NO idea when I last saw a real Ma Bell style pay phone anywhere. (* Like most middle-aged men, I'm a fan. You laugh (I assume), but there was a definite non-parent adult contingent at her concert here last weekend. It seems weird for a south-of-30 songwriter tied very much to a certain sort of Millennial life to resonate so much outside the most obvious core demographic, but here we are.)

matthewfcarlson 4y ago
Or it could just be that Phoebe Bridgers has great music that everyone can enjoy :)
- ubermonkey 4y ago
  Obviously, I don't dispute this. But for me, in a pre-subscription service world, I doubt I would've found her. What marketing formation for her that existed was kinda lean, and I don't automatically assume that every songwriter is gonna resonate with me. I mostly assume that people far removed from me probably WON'T, especially if the gap is huge. Bridgers is young enough to be my kid, and not in a cheeky "only if I knocked up a girl in high school" way. She's from a part of the country far from me, and works in a style that isn't immediately assumed to be universal. And yet, here I am. I'm kinda fascinated by issues around music discovery, and how they changed in my lifetime. I'm 52. My music-listening life probably started at 10 or 12, so let's just say 12 so it's a nice round 40 years ago. Back then, you were a prisoner of what got played on the radio, but it was also SUPER weird for "adults" -- people my parents' age, typically born immediately before, during, or immediately after WWII -- to listen to popular music at all, and so there wasn't really any in the house. My parents didn't even own a stereo. We had two "top 40" stations in town, but the playlists were not very different (at least they WERE locally programmed, unlike today). Precious little pop music was on TV; unlike today, when bands sometimes get huge exposure by having a song played in a popular show, it just didn't happen for whatever reason back then. (I suspect rights issues and the lack of cross-ownership between TV networks and music firms.) And, obviously, there was no online music. The world of pop music was also MUCH smaller. There was, for one thing, only about 20 years of the form -- probably less. I usually mark the start of modern pop music to 1966, but reasonable people can disagree on the specifics. The point is that the genesis point was sometime in the mid 60s, and we're talking about the early to mid 80s. It was simpler, with fewer subgenres, and next to nothing happening that wasn't part of the big-record-label A&R process. Recording was expensive and required lots of expertise. (Another act that's huge now, Billie Eilish, absolutely wouldn't have happened the way she's happened -- ie, recording her debuts in her childhood bedroom with only her brother as a collaborator. The rise of home recording tech is a whole OTHER world of miracles and wonders.) And, finally, if you wanted to give a new act a try, you pretty much had to buy the record, so it cost money to discover. Contrast that with now. I found Bridgers because I read a profile of her in the New Yorker (in my capacity as a white upper-middle-class tote-bag-owning urban liberal). It was interesting partly because it was the first piece of "COVID-era" journalism I read. The New Yorker, if you're not familiar, is rightly famous for continuing to do the sort of long-form articles that used to be much more common, including in-depth profiles of interesting people. Sometimes they're famous, sometimes they're clearly on their way to being famous (like Bridgers) and sometimes they're scientists or something who will never be household names but who are still doing something very cool. Usually these involve a writer hanging out with the person for several days over several weeks to kinda get to know them & etc, but obviously with COVID that didn't happen, and the way they managed it was interesting to me at the time (lots of Facetime). And it was after reading that that I realized I could just "hey Siri" some Bridgers for no additional incremental cost, and then I found myself playing "Punisher" over and over in a way I almost never have with a record since I was in my 20s. There's something really interesting about how this worked to me. It's so VASTLY different than the world of music was when I was growing up that I'm fascinated by it, and by the "odd" (at least superficially) things that come out of it, like middle aged people finding and loving an act that, 30 years ago, probably wouldn't have been on their radar AT ALL because of her age, gender, and the sort of inevitable pigeonholing that labels would've done.

matthewfcarlson 4y ago

Or it could just be that Phoebe Bridgers has great music that everyone can enjoy :)

ubermonkey 4y ago
Obviously, I don't dispute this. But for me, in a pre-subscription service world, I doubt I would've found her. What marketing formation for her that existed was kinda lean, and I don't automatically assume that every songwriter is gonna resonate with me. I mostly assume that people far removed from me probably WON'T, especially if the gap is huge. Bridgers is young enough to be my kid, and not in a cheeky "only if I knocked up a girl in high school" way. She's from a part of the country far from me, and works in a style that isn't immediately assumed to be universal. And yet, here I am. I'm kinda fascinated by issues around music discovery, and how they changed in my lifetime. I'm 52. My music-listening life probably started at 10 or 12, so let's just say 12 so it's a nice round 40 years ago. Back then, you were a prisoner of what got played on the radio, but it was also SUPER weird for "adults" -- people my parents' age, typically born immediately before, during, or immediately after WWII -- to listen to popular music at all, and so there wasn't really any in the house. My parents didn't even own a stereo. We had two "top 40" stations in town, but the playlists were not very different (at least they WERE locally programmed, unlike today). Precious little pop music was on TV; unlike today, when bands sometimes get huge exposure by having a song played in a popular show, it just didn't happen for whatever reason back then. (I suspect rights issues and the lack of cross-ownership between TV networks and music firms.) And, obviously, there was no online music. The world of pop music was also MUCH smaller. There was, for one thing, only about 20 years of the form -- probably less. I usually mark the start of modern pop music to 1966, but reasonable people can disagree on the specifics. The point is that the genesis point was sometime in the mid 60s, and we're talking about the early to mid 80s. It was simpler, with fewer subgenres, and next to nothing happening that wasn't part of the big-record-label A&R process. Recording was expensive and required lots of expertise. (Another act that's huge now, Billie Eilish, absolutely wouldn't have happened the way she's happened -- ie, recording her debuts in her childhood bedroom with only her brother as a collaborator. The rise of home recording tech is a whole OTHER world of miracles and wonders.) And, finally, if you wanted to give a new act a try, you pretty much had to buy the record, so it cost money to discover. Contrast that with now. I found Bridgers because I read a profile of her in the New Yorker (in my capacity as a white upper-middle-class tote-bag-owning urban liberal). It was interesting partly because it was the first piece of "COVID-era" journalism I read. The New Yorker, if you're not familiar, is rightly famous for continuing to do the sort of long-form articles that used to be much more common, including in-depth profiles of interesting people. Sometimes they're famous, sometimes they're clearly on their way to being famous (like Bridgers) and sometimes they're scientists or something who will never be household names but who are still doing something very cool. Usually these involve a writer hanging out with the person for several days over several weeks to kinda get to know them & etc, but obviously with COVID that didn't happen, and the way they managed it was interesting to me at the time (lots of Facetime). And it was after reading that that I realized I could just "hey Siri" some Bridgers for no additional incremental cost, and then I found myself playing "Punisher" over and over in a way I almost never have with a record since I was in my 20s. There's something really interesting about how this worked to me. It's so VASTLY different than the world of music was when I was growing up that I'm fascinated by it, and by the "odd" (at least superficially) things that come out of it, like middle aged people finding and loving an act that, 30 years ago, probably wouldn't have been on their radar AT ALL because of her age, gender, and the sort of inevitable pigeonholing that labels would've done.