Those early January \u201cI haven\u2019t taken a shit since last year\u201d jokes have reached a new low: the return of an artist after his\u2014to quote the actual press release\u2014\u201cwidely discussed retirement announcement last December.\u201d So\u2026last month. You mean last month. That\u2019s not a retirement; that\u2019s barely a smoke break.<\/p>\n
Much to the relief of a certain gaggle of terminally online tweens, straight-to-TikTok artist bbno$ (pronounced \u201cbaby no money\u201d) is finally back from his protracted sabbatical of roughly 28 days, bringing a new song (\u201cdiamonds are forever\u201d) with him. Honestly, this isn\u2019t much of a surprise, considering I was skeptical of his \u201cgoodbye\u201d post the second I read it: retiring is one thing; saying you\u2019re retiring because you, newly defeated, want to give your 14 million monthly listeners what they\u2019ve been supposedly clamoring for (a world without your music in it) is another. <\/p>\n
It was all very 2014 \u201cstreaks DHMU\u201d Snapchat story-coded\u2014and an obvious publicity stunt, to boot. I mean, isn\u2019t his entire online persona just memes? Why did anybody take this seriously? Apparently, some<\/a> outlets<\/a> did, which, like\u2026really? Either way, the fact remains that bbno$ announced on December 8 that he \u201cmade the incredibly difficult decision to stop making music for the foreseeable future.\u201d As it turns out, he can\u2019t see a future longer than four weeks. A rather near-sighted crystal ball, that.<\/p>\n I really don\u2019t have much against bbno$ himself\u2014his music isn\u2019t great but it accomplishes its purpose, which is to create viral TikTok trends. So good for him, I guess. But I will say: I have grown sick and tired of retirement announcements being used as marketing ploys. Over the past few decades, it feels like artists have increasingly started announcing \u201cretirements\u201d the way YouTubers post \u201cleaving the internet\u201d videos. Jay-Z \u201cretired\u201d in 2003 and has since released multiple albums and toured the world. Barbra Streisand has been on so many farewell tours they may as well be a genre. Phil Collins\u2019s \u201cFirst Farewell Tour\u201d in 2004 was followed by more music with Genesis and beyond. Even Ozzy Osbourne\u2019s \u201cno more tours\u201d era came with an asterisk the size of a stadium. <\/p>\n In other words, bbno$ is far from the first artist to pull this kind of stunt. The difference, though, is that most acts usually wait at least a little longer than a month to come back. Have some dignity, man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Those early January \u201cI haven\u2019t taken a shit since last year\u201d jokes have reached a new low: the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,46,409],"class_list":{"0":"post-235719","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}