Media. Music. Business. Life.

#RIP Tommy Page

In its own unforgiving but meaningful way, life has taught that people I love or have loved, enjoy or have enjoyed, or even been people I’ve been challenged by and only later realized how that challenge made me better… these people leave my life, often unexpectedly. All I can find in these moments is acceptance. And some moments to reflect deeply on time shared.

Tommy Page left this world last night. I’ll set aside the unresolved, and focus instead on what was. Because the latter was pretty entertaining.

Tommy and I shared an important chapter, I think, in both of our lives. Lisa Howard was the publisher of Billboard while I was Editorial Director, and Lisa hired this crazily high energy guy I had never met before to drive advertising sales and partnerships for the magazine. And when Lisa eventually moved on, Tommy took over as publisher of Billboard and became my partner in crime.

Tommy and I surely had our differences, mostly in style, as any professional partnership does. But he loved Billboard. Put Billboard before his own needs. Worked his damned hardest for Billboard. That was my bar for respecting a colleague, and Tommy flew past it. Anyone who knew him or worked with him will tell you that if Tommy Page lacked for anything, it wasn’t enthusiasm for the task at hand.

I don’t know how long Tommy and I ran Billboard; I went through 13 different bosses and 6 ownership structures in 8+ years there, so the dates and eras blur now, into a mostly happy continuum of music, talented people and surreal moments, mixed with a lot of long hours and travel. But I want to say it was a couple of years.

I have two memories I want to share in this moment. They are the first two that came to mind when I heard the news. And I think each says something about Tommy I’d like to remember.

The first was connected to one of the very best memories of my time at Billboard. We relaunched Billboard magazine in January of 2013; this was part of our evolution from being a pure trade brand to one with elements for music fans to enjoy. We needed the perfect artist to grace the relaunch issue—someone with a story that would intrigue fans and the industry alike. Someone who, on their own, had the gravitas and credibility to carry a relaunch issue. To say I was overjoyed when Prince agreed to do it is an understatement.

It will not surprise you, educated reader, that Prince had a lot to say about the music business. The man who once held out on his Warner contract and appeared in public with the word “Slave” on his face to protest his relationship to his record label showed little signs of mellowing as he aged, at least on this topic.

Billboard’s longtime R&B writer Gail Mitchell flew to Minneapolis and was granted access to Paisley Park. We knew Prince allowed no recordings, but Gail was caught off guard when Prince told her she also couldn’t take written notes, because “that’s pretty much the same as recording.” Gail eventually filed the story and we edited it and got it on page as time was expiring with our printer.

Now, we never published anything with the goal of making the subject happy, per se. But if you could print a great story and the subject liked it anyway, that was always a good feeling. And this was Prince, an idol of mine since childhood. His manager called after it ran to request a bunch of copies and to let me know that Prince loved it and may want to speak to me at some point about the music business and ways Billboard could help bring about more positive change. We shipped a bunch of issues to Minnesota, and I didn’t give it another thought. It took us two months of phone calls and planning to almost not make the Prince cover story happen. I didn’t expect anyone would ever take the time to make the logistics line up for a casual conversation.

Except that they did.

Two or three weeks later it was Grammy week. This was 2013 and Prince wore a hood and carried a cane and basically was peak Prince as he came out to present the Grammy for Record of the Year to Gotye and Kimbra. Tommy and I were in the audience. Billboard had a nice little afterparty that night,and I remember telling Tommy I was going to head to my hotel and take a nap, and would be by the Billboard party later. Grammy week was exhausting; I think I’d gotten a few hours of sleep the previous couple of days.

No sooner had I dumped my suit on the floor and drifted off did my phone start blowing up. Tommy was texting me.

“Bill”

“BILL”

“Where are you???”

“Need you here now!”

“Prince coming. Wants to talk to you.”

This got me out of bed.

Fast forward 45 minutes and I’m on the roof of some chi chi hotel rooftop. Pool, torchlights, cabana, the works. Our dear friend Marcie Allen, who throws the best parties, period, was organizing this one, and led me to a cabana in the back where we were instructed to wait until Prince arrived.

This story is already too long, so I’ll save the details of what went down for another time. But suffice it to say, Prince showed up. He came straight to the cabana, still with his sparkly cane from the Grammy stage. And after a sliver of pleasantries, got straight into explaining why the record business was still unforgivably corrupt, and why Billboard needed to be doing more to stop it. I pushed back. I wanted Prince to consider the possibility that because of his actions and the actions of others who dared fight the system, that the balance of power had shifted and was continuing to shift to the artist. I wanted him to consider the possibility that his justified anger might be keeping him from taking some small amount of satisfaction or pride that his efforts were showing signs of paying off.

It was a respectful but certainly intense back-and-forth. At some point, about 20 or 30 minutes in, Prince started quoting scripture to make his points. As he and I went toe to toe, I could see Tommy watching, head swiveling as Prince and I parried, getting increasingly concerned with what it meant to be arguing with our iconic party guest.

Now, Tommy and I have never discussed this night, and I know from a post he made about it when Prince died that he remembers it a little bit differently than I do. But his account and mine agree on this point: Tommy hated to see anyone unhappy, and so Tommy, perhaps misreading intensity for anger, wanted to lighten the mood. And, after a few of his attempts to insert humor were only briefly acknowledged, Tommy seized his opportunity the next time there was a pause.

“You have really incredible skin, Prince. What kind of lotion do you use?”

Prince Rogers Nelson crooked his head at Tommy, stood up on his cane, and said “With that…” and like a purple wisp of smoke, was gone as suddenly as he came.

Now to be honest, in that moment, I kinda wanted to pound Tommy. But the truth is, the conversation had run its course. And really, a back-and-forth that surreal deserved an ending equally so. And of course, in retrospect, Tommy just wanted everyone to be happy. To be enjoying the party. This was quintessential Tommy.

The other memory is much more personal and less Prince-like, though it does involve bright colors.

Billboard has a big Latin music conference and awards show each April in Miami. And setting aside all the very real strategic reasons why this was an important week for Billboard, it was also just about as much fun as a person can legally have and still call it “work.” Dancing to Latin music every night, and partying with the Latin music business and fans was always a real highlight of my year.

The thing about Miami, though, is that people treat “formal” differently down there. If you wear a grey suit, you stick out. Linens, pastels… these were a requirement. And for those that know me, linens and pastels aren’t exactly a staple of my wardrobe.  Tommy loved fashion, and loved to talk fashion with me. I think he got a kick out of a straight guy who had a POV. Tommy decided he and I were going shopping on our first day in Miami, and that he was going to Miami-fy me.

There’s not much more to share than that, although I’m sure if you could have seen me and Tommy, bouncing around South Beach with all the muscle boys in Zara Man and Banana Republic, you’d have smiled. Tommy running up to me with skinny ties. Tommy getting other sharp-looking men to gather and share opinions when I came out of a dressing room. Tommy just being genuinely blissful in that moment to shop, to share time with a friend… to help me. I got some nice compliments when I wore the slightly-shiny, sky blue suit and the tie that Tommy picked out to the Latin Music Awards, and Tommy beamed like a proud parent. We’d laugh about that shopping trip for years to come.

Now the years have stopped coming for my relationship with Tommy. And I’m sad, tearing up, really, selfishly thinking about things I didn’t get to tell him, and then thinking, with broken heart, about those he’s left behind who need him in more profound ways.

The older I get the more I see how life is exclusively about our experiences with other people and the world around us. Tommy and I shared a wild chapter full of parties and laughter, airplanes and restaurants, hard work and music, oh so much wonderful, blessed music, and a goddamned unparalleled team at Billboard that worked harder and better than anyone had a right to expect. I write this for those loved ones, and I write for Tommy. I accept that you’re gone now. I’m so appreciative we had the time we did. And I miss you, man.

Taken from "In Conversation With Ta-Nehisi Coates: The Case For Reparations"

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On “Angela Cheng,” Lady Gaga, and the Culpability of Media

My hope was that I’d never have to address the legitimacy or even the existence of “Angela Cheng.” But I got a call today from a BuzzFeed editor who led me to believe that they were moving ahead with a story about “Cheng” that included me, with or without my participation. I always refrained from engaging with this issue because I didn’t want to bring it more attention. But since it appears that will be happening now anyway, I’ll reluctantly post what I know. My hope is that, to the extent people will talk about this bizarre little tempest in a music industry teapot, this post will provide some facts to color the discussion.

I’m not sure when I first became aware of “Cheng.” It was sometime last year, when I was still working as the Editorial Director of Billboard. I’m reasonably certain “Cheng” first crossed my radar because of a small handful of folks on Twitter, asking me if I’d seen articles she was publishing on the user-generated “news” site, Examiner.com.

At that time, it seemed to me, almost all of the articles under the Cheng byline, as well as those by another “reporter,” “Sabrina O’Connor,” had two things in common: they seemed to me to be laser-focused on disparaging Lady Gaga, and they seemed to me to regularly misrepresent facts and details. Occasionally they would pull in Billboard or even me, personally, with ungrounded and wholly untrue accusations that somehow Billboard or I was receiving favor from Gaga’s camp to better represent her or her chart positions. From my perspective, the notion was so ridiculous and the source so not credible that I ignored it. Eventually, however, as Twitter questions persisted, and as other media outlets started repeating certain details from the Examiner.com stories—more on that in a bit—I reached out to some friends at Examiner.com’s parent company, AEG (the giant tour promoter). I explained that many of these stories appeared to contain libel and/or defamation, and gave them a handful of offending examples. AEG said they’d have someone look into the matter, and very shortly thereafter—and very much to AEG’s and the Examiner’s credit—the stories disappeared from the site. At some time after that, “Cheng” appeared to stop contributing to Examiner.com.

All of this would be fine and well and water under the bridge, except for two nagging problems.

One was that the “work” of “Cheng” and “O’Connor” appeared to me to create a lasting, negative smear on the campaign for Lady Gaga’s current album, Artpop.

On November 17, 2013, “Sabrina O'Connor” posted a story on Examiner.com that claimed Lady Gaga’s Interscope label had spent $25 million to promote her album Artpop which had been released 11 days earlier. 

Within days that number had been repeated in seemingly any outlet that could credibly cover such a matter: Business Week. New York magazine. Business Insider. A couple of weeks later, the New York Post published a razor-sharp hatchet job on Gaga, once again, floating the $25 million figure. 

(Credit where it’s due: the only outlet I could find that called bullshit, and did it the very next day, was Roger Friedman at Showbiz 411.)

This appears to be echo chamber reporting at its worst. I have to wonder if any of the aforementioned outlets could provide independent reporting or confirmation of this $25 million figure. Most of them appeared to simply use the sensational $25 million as click bait, while disclaiming in the fine print that it was “according to examiner.com”, and linking to the source. It’s an ugly gut check for a content farming industry that was once known as journalism. But the truth is, for many outlets and at some times, it doesn’t seem to matter what’s verifiable. If it’s sexy and you can blame it on a different media outlet if it turns out not to be true, fire up the CMS! New York mag, seemingly warned about the tenuous original sourcing after its story was live, went so far as to append an update to their initial post, noting that “This news was originally reported by a source that is not verifiable, so file this news under ‘quite possibly fictional gossip.’ In fact, disregard it entirely”–but left the $25 million figure in their headline. It seemed to me that the number became an albatross of Gaga’s Artpop campaign. As Artpop sales and singles did not perform up to the standards of Gaga’s previous releases, the $25 million was held up again and again to show just how high the expectations were that had been missed—to, ultimately unfairly, define a failure.

It was this realization that led me to make a few phone calls. After all, maybe I was wrong: maybe “Cheng” and “O’Connor” were just hard-working journalists in modern times, using new, user-generated platforms that were availed to them to create impactful work.

Now, I must say, I have no idea if there really is an Angela Cheng or a Sabrina O’Connor. This is what I know: In Cheng’s bio on Examiner.com, which I can no longer find on site, she listed herself as “a recent Communication Media Studies graduate of the University of Oklahoma,” and “the school  newspaper’s pop music writer.”

But a University of Oklahoma representative told me on the phone in January that there had been no “Angela Cheng” to enroll or graduate within any timeframe that could reasonably be construed as “recent.” Similarly, no one at the school paper, the Oklahoma Daily could find any record of an Angela Cheng contributing. “Sabrina O’Connor,” meanwhile, represented herself in her Examiner.com bio as “a recent journalism graduate of Cal State Long Beach” and “a pop music writer for the university and local city newspapers.”

Again, a school official told me there was no record to support the notion of enrollment or matriculation of a student by that name. And again, no one at the Daily 49er—Cal State’s student paper—was able to find evidence of a contributor by that name. As well, the photographer who had taken the picture that Cheng was using to identify herself publically shared that the image was being used without his permission.

So who is Angela Cheng? I have no idea, nor do I have the time or the inclination to report it out. There is no shortage of internet rumors regarding high-profile bloggers with an axe to grind against Lady Gaga. But I’d be no better than what I’m decrying if I named names on such flimsy support.

All of this leads back to the second dynamic in this whole scenario that remains eating at me: the ease at which the lie accomplishes the truth. No one I’ve spoken with in or around Gaga’s camp or in the music business as a whole—and I have a decent source or two, trust—believes there was a $25 million dollar marketing budget on Gaga’s Artpop campaign. And yet suddenly, there it is, like wildfire, spreading in too many pop-culture outlets to be ignored. What can Gaga do? Ignore it and let people believe? Deny it and legitimize the claims of a person who may or may not exist? It’s a shit choice.

And to a much lesser extent, it’s the choice I’m now faced with. You see, in the BuzzFeed editor’s first communication to me, he proposed, “I’m working on a story about a few online music critics including one in particular named Angela Cheng…There were some rumors flying around at the time you left Billboard that you were being fired over trying to help Lady Gaga’s chart positions, was there any truth to those rumors?”

So here I am, having to answer a reporter with a powerful platform behind him, because a person that I don’t believe to exist (“Angela Cheng”) posited what I know to be unfounded nonsense about my moving on from Billboard.

The only real lesson I can take away from this is that it’s better to be the platform than the person trusting the platform. This is why I decided to post all of this, after all this time. No, I wasn’t fired from Billboard for any sort of shenanigans—I wasn’t fired at all. To be clear, during the time I worked for Billboard, the amazing team of people I worked with and for built a consumer music brand where one hadn’t existed, grew a social following from zero to the millions, brought the Billboard Music Awards back to TV with ABC, grew traffic to Billboard.com by about 6X and won prestigious awards for our site relaunch and redesigned magazine. In early January, the company that owns Billboard re-structured some of its media holdings and formed a new company out of Billboard and the Hollywood Reporter. Janice Min, who had been having an incredible run of success as the editorial director of the Hollywood Reporter, was promoted to oversee both properties, and I was moved into an entrepreneurial role with the company, working on some new projects. This is not scandalous, but just an old-fashioned thing called the truth. As the above can attest, sometimes it’s stranger than fiction. You just need to be very, very careful about where you choose to read it. 

 

 

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Further Thoughts on Lady Gaga And ArtPop That Are Too Long For Twitter

A handful of Gaga fans and others who seem to randomly enjoy theatrics have regularly misconstrued level, critical thinking as Gaga attacks. I will say, the thing I do regret is taking to Twitter once and chiding Gaga about tweeting a link that went to a playlist of her video on repeat in order to influence play counts and charts; at that moment I hadn’t yet realized it was something a few other artists were doing/had done. Nor did I fully realize that YouTube’s spam detection eliminated suspicious plays.
The truth is, I’m a fan of Lady Gaga’s. I caught her show at Radio City back in the day, and I think two different tours at the Garden. She has a strong voice, a great persona for performance and at times has demonstrated a penchant for writing viciously catchy and fun pop songs. I’ve listened to everything she’s released and generally really respect her for having the will and resolve to follow her own muse. She makes pop interesting in a way that few other stars have the cajones (or desire) to think about. And lately it has been painful to watch media big and small hyperinflate every drama, real (the album isn’t her strongest work, indecision around single choices, personnel changes in her camp) or imagined (that ridiculous, fabricated $25 million ArtPop marketing number; possibly the notion that her tour isn’t selling as well).
But just because many in media are misrepresenting details or piling on doesn’t mean I can’t honestly think - and share my opinion - that this album doesn’t represent her strongest work. You can say that she doesn’t care about her songs charting and that her fans don’t care either, and if that’s true that’s totally cool. There’s lots of different ways to have a career in music these days, and certainly, there are options besides being a globally successful pop star. But “charting” is just a scorecard of popularity, of commercial success. Her last two albums haven’t had hits the way her first two did. That doesn’t mean she won’t have albums again one day that galvanize mass audiences wherever they may be. But generally, if the hits don’t keep coming, the audiences at the shows start to dwindle. The budgets shrink. The productions shrink with the budgets, and that would be a shame, because her productions are pretty stunning usually.
Again, none of this is a forgone conclusion. Gaga still has lots of fans. And I have to believe the songwriter with a knack for delivering number one hits is still in there, and will rise again. When I Tweeted, in response to a question, that I thought maybe she should take a break, it’s partly because I’m tired of watching media pillorize her for taking the same risks that they used to cheer. And it’s partly because I don’t think the songs on this album are going to connect in a big way. And the more she keeps releasing big expensive videos and songs that don’t chart or dont chart well, the more the perception of failure grows (fair or not) and the deeper the hole is that she’ll need to dig from next time.
And of course there will be a next time. Acts like Weezer and Pink had been written off as “over” by media before returning to even greater heights. After she released “4” to middling sales and then was accused of taking too long to release another album, Beyoncé was all but pronounced as dead by a grumbling media - some just weeks before she rocked the pop universe with her surprise iTunes album. And lord knows, if Mariah could return from the Glitter era, we’ve learned anything is possible.
So yes, as I said on Twitter, if I was her manager, I’d recommend she reconsider making additional substantial expenditure on the songs on Artpop. Maybe release a new song or two, or commission some remixes if you need to generate some new excitement around the tour. Focus on creating an amazing tour. And then let people miss you for a little while, while you go find your creative muse and create a new album of your best work. That’s not me hating. That’s me pulling for Gaga. The pop world is way better with her in it.