A BILLION STREAMS AND NO FANS

A chart-topping jazz album! Loads of streams! Just one problem: The success might not be real.

- BY KATE KNIBBS

The odds are so bad it’s criminal. But on a late spring evening in Louisville, Kentucky, Mike Smith and Jonathan Hay were having that rare golden moment when everything clicks. Smith was on guitar. Hay was fiddling with the drum machine and keyboard. Dudes were grooving. Holed up in Hay’s living room, surrounded by chordophones and production gizmos, the two musicians were hoping that their first album as a jazz duo would finally win them the attention they’d been chasing for years. ¶ It was 2017. The men, then in their forties, were longtime collaborators and business partners—though they made an odd couple. Smith owned a string of medical clinics and wore tight shirts over his meticulously maintained muscles. He lived in a sprawling house in the suburbs of Charlotte, North Carolina, with his wife and six kids. He’d judged on a reality TV show and written a self-help book. Hay—larger, softer, comfy in sweatsuits and Crocs—lived in an apartment and was dating a stripper. He loved weed. He’d hustled as a music publicist for years; by reputation he was best known in the industry for promoting a nuclear rumor that Rihanna had hooked up with Jay-Z. He’d recently, on an impulse, had sleeves tattooed on his arms. To avoid annoying his health-nut friend, he’d sneak into his bedroom to vape.

Smith and Hay finished their album and called it Jazz. That fall, they released it on all the usual places— Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal—and as a physical album. Alas, it failed to take off. Smith and Hay weren’t total nobodies; a few songs they had coproduced for other artists years earlier had gotten some buzz. So the two men decided to retool Jazz and release an updated version, adding new songs.

Jazz (Deluxe) came out in January 2018. Right away, it shot up the Billboard chart and hit No. 1. Hay was elated. At last, real, measurable success had arrived.