A person holding a cat

The Struggle Of Waiting For Your Favorite Artist To Release New Music

Baby Yoda has been all the rage lately.

The memes are popping up everywhere, but if it’s all lost on you, Baby Yoda is a character from The Mandalorian on the new streaming platform Disney+. It just dethroned Stranger Things as the most popular streaming show in the world. And, if you don’t have Disney+, you should get it. You got your Disney, your Star Wars, your Nat Geo, what else do you need?

Anyways, back to Margo.

Margo Price shared this meme the other day, and as a recording artist, you definitely understand it. But even if you’re a fan, you understand it too. In fact, if you’re a die hard fan, you know it all too well.

As a fan, let me know if this sounds familiar:

You go to see your favorite artist perform one night and they debut a brand new song that they just wrote. You immediately fall in love, and the second you get home you scramble to YouTube trying to figure out what this new song is. You find pretty much nothing. It was the first time you ever heard it, probably the first time they ever played it, and now you’re just hoping somebody in the crowd filmed it. They did, with their shitty potato of a phone and for the next 6 months you watch that same low-quality video day after day after day. And then another one pops up on YouTube a few weeks later and it’s a little better, but this time, favorite artist says it’ll be on their next album that they’ll be recording next spring.

Spring? WHAT THE FUCK!

Spring finally comes and they share a few behind-the-scenes pics to their Instagram of the recording process. You’re getting closer to finally hearing the studio quality version of the song you fell in love with nearly a year ago, but then said favorite artist goes on tour for 6 weeks, taking a break from recording. Back in the studio again and you see an Instagram story pic of this piece of paper with a bunch of 1s and 4s and 5s on it, which is all foreign to you, but most importantly, it has the title of your new favorite song, that isn’t that new anymore (at least to you) at the top of the chart. It’s happening.

Finally, it’s November and favorite artist is on the red carpet at the CMA Awards or some other (probably better) awards show and somebody sticks a microphone in their face asking when the new album is coming out and they say “it’s finished, so very soon.” And you know that could actually mean soon or that could just mean int he next year or two because this isn’t your first rodeo, but either way… it’s finished, hallelujah.

But now, they have to tease it, tease it some more, build the hype, finally announce it, and then create a detailed plan to release the album brick by brick to perfectly coincide with the announcement of a new tour. They release a lead single, release another song every month for the next 6 months and then finally, two and a half years from that night, the night when you were standing there in the crowd and fell in love, there it is, Track 7, you new favorite song.

You listen to it over and over and over and over again for the next 2-4, maybe 6 weeks tops, and by then, they’re coming back to town. You stand in the crowd, hear another brand new song and repeat the entire process. That is life as a country music fan.

Who heard it?

A beer bottle on a dock

STAY ENTERTAINED

A RIFF ON WHAT COUNTRY IS REALLY ABOUT

A beer bottle on a dock