Goodbye 2016! You may have taken away some of our heroes – Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen, George Michael…but you sure did replace them. Bollywood spawn Farhan Akhtar rocks on and has discovered the northeast. Woah! Rumour has it that he’s our own Prince (peace be upon him). Farhan can act, produce, pay hard-earned money to be on magazine covers, play three chords, crowd surf and even auto-tune his voice…all by himself (and a little help from the best in the business)!

Put him on the cover of Rolling Stone already, goddamn it. Oh wait!

I read about some TV show called The Stage entering its second year. I even tried watching it. It’s got nervous singers on one side and a bench full of judgemental people on the other. The kind of show that celebrates tears and fears. One pair of eyes on the panel belongs to the biggest artist-ripoff-scam record label in the country. And for some reason, this judge relentlessly boasts of being part of a metal outfit called Brahma in every interview. I wouldn’t do that if I were him. Neither would you. Here’s why:

I also read that Vishal Dadlani has finally made a call between politics and Bollywood. He chose the latter. Wait a minute! What about us aam aadmi, bro? You promised us deliverance and free wifi. You have disappeared into the Delhi smog…along with that kickass band called Pentagram.

Leaving us with Monica Dogra – the sole saviour of the LGBT community. So what if she couldn’t raise half a crore for a video that would have finally saved homosexuals from daily prejudice? She has a brand new video out. It has her getting off with a fellow lady musician. In your face, critics haters! I read somewhere – “Much ado will be made about the fact that a same-sex couple are in this video being unabashedly sexual (which is so REAL), and that makes us sad.” Full points to the journalist for this dark prophecy. I did see a scuffle outside my bank the other day.

I also read on my Facebook feed that this year everyone’s beloved yellow bastard Chris Martin sang Vande Mataram to a crowd that took personal loans to watch him do that. My eyes welled up with the image of all that flag waving but it was really just my tinnitus acting up. In the same piece I read about the sensational new popstar on the scene – the new Birla scion – Ananya. “At 22, not just does she have three startups but she also has a single out,” Vogue told me. And she’s already shared a stage with Coldplay and AR Rahman. They didn’t mention the industry on hire. Where cash can make you an overnight star.

Let’s face it. If you thought the contemporary music scene can not be built on an organically grown fan base, you were as right as this fine piece of journalism about music festivals being unsustainable. Things get only much louder with heavy corporate investment, PR agencies and some good old circle jerking. Become the system you set out to change. Keep talking about something called “the scene” but also tell them that clients haven’t got budgets.

It’s almost 2017. Get your act together. Say yes to armchair journalism. Say yes to supporting independent artistes (yeah, yeah… but keep doing it, ok?). Say yes to voting yourself number one because there are no charts to corroborate it. Say yes to corporates hijacking the narrative with half-baked documentaries and webzines that push their own agenda.
Say yes to food from strangers, they might have drugs in them. Use the “Unfollow but remain friends” option on Facebook liberally. Say yes to shameless plugging. Get the new menwhopause album – Neon Delhi. Say what?