The inner fan boy/girl in us was all a’tremble when we learned that someone at The New York Times had written an article about Carly Rae Jepsen and her monster summer hit “Call Me Maybe.” What juicy bits of gossip had the Times dug up? What dirt? Would she reveal whom the song is about? Would she offer any dating tips? Would she tell us what Justin’s really like?

Well, in our excitement we forgot this is the stodgy old New York Times. Turns out the article was about the music business, and how the success of “Call Me Maybe” represents a new paradigm for making a song a hit, driven as it was by Twitter and YouTube exposure. Yawn. Motherfuckin’ yaaaawn.

Listen, we’re social media people. We spend lots of time on the web, and this just doesn’t seem like news to us.

The article is accurate: Carly Rae’s song was just a minor Canadian hit until Justin Beiber and his friends did a lip-syncing video that went viral. Which in turn spawned other viral videos. Which in their turn made the original song and video blow up something fierce.

It’s just that this kind of thing has been going on for a while, though admittedly not on this scale. The main difference here is that radio picked up the song based on the Internet exposure, not the other way around.

We fully approve of this development, and we celebrate the democratizing effects of the interwebs. But we also kind of miss the good old days, when crafting the “song of the summer” involved midnight writing sessions in Laurel Canyon, out-of-their-head producers throwing chairs around studios on the Sunset Strip, and label execs snorting coke out of a stripper’s belly-button while trying to decide which DJ will get the most payola. God, what an innocent time that was!

Read the article here.

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