A hit is not a plan

A young songwriter in Beirut uploads a new track every Friday. He records in his bedroom in Hamra, mixes on a laptop, and posts the song the moment it is finished. He is good. People who hear him say so, and they are not just being kind.

Somewhere in the back of his mind is the picture so many people carry now: one song catches, a huge number of strangers hear it, and from then on the music pays the rent.

A generation ago, nobody in his position could have imagined that. The tools to make and release a song now cost almost nothing, and it feels as though a living is close enough to touch.

But popular has a definition, and it is unkind. A hit is something most people are listening to at once, so there is only ever room for a few. Meanwhile the number of people making songs keeps climbing, because making them has become easy. Put those two facts together and the outcome is settled before anyone presses record: nearly everyone who tries will not have a hit, however hard they work.

That is the part we prefer not to hear. We like to believe that care, craft and real ability are enough, and that the ones who break through earned it. Some did. Many equally gifted people did not, because attention does not arrive in proportion to quality. It lands where it lands.

So his talent is real, and so is the arithmetic. One does not cancel the other.

The door is open to every one of us. What is on the other side was never promised to anyone.