The clock is ticking. Last Thursday, the cash balance of the Ministry of Finance rose six years low less than $39 billion. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen now thinks the government will have no more money on June 5.
Why music stars can’t say no to the ‘private’
Private gigs — “privates,” in music industry jargon — seem to be popping up everywhere from charity galas in Manhattan to luxury hotel openings in the Persian Gulf. Funded by the ultra-rich and corporate, these intimate, star-studded performances are off limits to the general public.
The privateer has become a reliable moneymaker for chart-topping artists and well-pasted artists alike, writes Evan Osnos in an entertaining, f-bombs filled article in The New Yorker which opens with Flo Rida, the rapper, playing a bar mitzvah in Lincolnshire, an affluent Chicago suburb.
For years, the private world has been dominated by aging crooners, a category delicately known as “nostalgic artists.” Jacqueline Sabec, an entertainment attorney in San Francisco who has negotiated many private gigs, told me, “Artists used to say no to this because they just weren’t cool.”
But the doubts have drastically diminished. In January, Beyoncé did her first show in over four years — not in a stadium of screaming fans, but in a new hotel in Dubai, reportedly earning $24 million for an hour-long set.
Few today refuse the money to do privately, with Jennifer Lopez, Maroon 5 and Eric Clapton all agreeing. Even younger performers don’t fear any stigma from what an agent said ends up being a situation where “it’s a convention or a party, and you just happen to be making noise on one end of it.”
But some continue to resist, Mr. Osnos writes, including Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift and, “for reasons no one can quite explain,” AC/DC.