Off with their new album “Diamond Jubilee”, Cindy Lee is breaking barriers even without her music being available on any of the streaming platforms! “War Pig” – that’s what their website calls the Spotify CEO.
Imagine self-releasing music like the late 2000s with no promotions and none of the music available on the so called streaming platforms. Sounds like a happy fairy tale for 2024, isn’t it? Welcome Patrick Flegel, a.k.a. Cindy Lee with her glamourous persona, who used to burn the stage with her post-punk band Women pre-2010s. In case you want to download their recent album “Diamond Jubilee”, it Is available for fans at a very basic Geocities website designed like an old website of the 90s! And unless you are looking at YouTube, you won’t be able to stream the music on any of the music streaming websites. With no breaks between the tracks, you can however decide to get lost in the melancholic melodies for a couple of hours with YouTube, where they have put out the double album. The album has received the highest score for a new release in the last 4 years.
Cindy Lee is the performance and songwriting project of Canadian musician Patrick Flegel.
“Diamond Jubilee”. Check it out here!
Cindy Lee’s former post-punk band was called Women.
Flegel’s relation with Spotify; a not-so-fan-pleasing attitude either
Flegel does not use social media, no longer sits for interviews and releases records on small labels or alone. They have opted out of social media’s marketing and promotion model entirely. Cindy Lee is a role model to artists for taking their music out of streaming websites. According to them, Spotify is where artists are “begging for a penny a play.” “Where I’m at right now, I feel like goin’ rogue,” Flegel said last year. Besides the free album download link on their website, they have also put up an option suggesting a 30 Canadian dollars donation. “If I can swing it on my own, I’d much rather bet on myself and have total control”, is what this artist behind the drag queen hypnagogic pop project says.
The artist had also planned on a 27-day spring tour. A few days after Pitchfork dropped the review, all the shows were sold out. But unfortunately, after Cindy Lee played at Milwaukee’s Cactus Club on May 3, it was announced that the rest of the tour would be cancelled for personal reasons. Fans speculated a lot of reasons like Lee’s stress over her tension with the music media. 20 years ago, this kind of incident might have been more obvious. Things have not been easy for people like Flegel. Even their website has some hate comments against Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek. Their website reads, “THE CEO OF SPOTIFY IS A THIEF AND A WAR PIG.”
The two albums : Where they started + The journey till “Diamond Jubilee”
After her 2020 album “What’s Tonight to Eternity”, Cindy Lee had made an impression on listeners with the iconic eerie sound. We can definitely tell Flegel’s been working 2024’s “Diamond Jubilee” from that time if not from before. Their idea was a feel-good counter to 2000’s ghostly sound. You can notice the effort they have put in on the breezy sound. One just cannot seem to ignore the vintage feels in the “Diamond Jubilee” album.
“Diamond Jubilee” : The nostalgia is real
You feel a sense of relief when you listen to the soundscape they have painted in the latest album. Loneliness, lost love, some slow dancing amid the fire, the album conveys it all and lives up to the charm. The beautiful guitar work with its tonal variety complements this colorful soundscape. The tracks might take you back to The Ronettes and The Righteous Brothers, bring back some Motown soul or even arouse the fuzzy Velvet Underground energy inside you. Get ready for some sentimental grooves and floating melodies if you are planning to give this a listen, that’s the kind of treat you are in for! Add to that this kind of blog-centric music discovery – you get the perfect nostalgic ride.
Something similar to Lee’s live performances where they perform these songs as a down-‘n-out diva: black beehive wig, gold sequined dress and white New Balance sneakers. Add to all of this a cherry telecaster held without a strap with a sharp tone aimed at your heart, and a bold voice with frequent falsettos. No doubt these are enough to take the experience several notches higher!
Also read: A Timeline for Every Studio Album Produced by The Beatles – Then and Now
Reflections; things to learn from the artist
The question we sometimes ask is if artists like them still prove the irrelevance of music media. Maybe not, maybe in a way, they do. They do so if the industry’s unlimited scalability obsession does not involve the artist. What this proves is that the artist still has a choice to make the art however the artist wishes to. If the artist wants to cancel a tour mid-way not caring about the fans or music media, they have a choice. If they want to take alternate routes to share their music, they have a choice. And maybe that is a start to thinking differently. And sometimes the thought about this kind of freedom is enough to bring a sigh of relief.
