I feel this. When I reached 55, out of work, I tried getting a real job. For the next ten years I sent out resumes expecting little and getting less. Now I'm 70 and a musician in a couple of bands. Many great musicians have been able to perform at a very high level into their mid-80s and beyond. Tony Bennett just hung it up at 95. Pianist Eubie Blake performed at 100. I'm very grateful I have a career path as a senior, since corporate America has no use for the likes of me.

Paul - this is one of my pet peeves. I only have a few dozen articles on Medium, but I have written about fundraising emails not once, but twice. Fortunately they have a distinctive look that's easy to spot in a millisecond so I can delete them.

As a 70-year-old, I know nothing of this girl. But there's a universality to this story that kept me reading your excellent article. I do think, though, that there are going to continue to be outliers that go against the algorithms to break through.

I agree with Sayer in that there's no point in making a cover if all you do is swap out your voice with theirs. His Beatle covers are certainly creative. Brings to mind an arrangement my old cover band did of the Beatles' "She Loves You" as a smoldering soul ballad in the vein of Tower of Power's "You're Still a Young Man."

Another sobering read. I think I will celebrate the 4th by taking my dog for a walk and breathing fresh air while there is still fresh air to breathe.

You havd articulated everything I have felt about popular music in this century. It started with Pro Tools, the audio software that allowed musicians to "fix" mistakes. i believe that fixing a mediocre take is not the best way to create a memorable track. Before Pro Tools, most of the solos committed to vinyl (usually) were magical takes, where the player was truly "in the moment." Everything since, such as Auto-Tune, has further degraded the magic.

The most heinous modern musical technique I've noticed (and hated) is when the producers take whole sections of music (with multiple instruments) and cut them up so that they swell on every beat. It's like the sound of sausage being made.