The more I listen, write and read, the more I see those acts as a compulsion. There’s an emotional undercurrent that threads together generations of music lovers, and particularly journalists. We’re tethered to the tumultuously evolving industry by a shared reverence. It’s an elusive definition we dance around, hoping to uncover a definition for the all-consuming feeling between the lines of a review or interview. Within his 2025 memoir, The Uncool, Cameron Crowe finally gives it a name: the ting. Borrowed from his late sister Cathy Crowe’s favourite childhood book, The Fairy Doll, this absurd, abstract label lit up recognition in my body of a young music devotee. The ting is a feeling that, for all its gravity, resists explanation – too simultaneously expansive and delicate to define.
From time to time, though, its magic can be encapsulated. “It’s all happening” whispered countless iconic voices throughout The Uncool, a tale of the music devotee who grew from a wannabe teenage reporter to the Oscar-winning writer-director of Almost Famous. The conspiratorial mantra feels as fleeting across the pages as the dizzying rock craze of the 1970s that it pays homage to. It hums with an effervescent ting that rings through to this very moment. Though Crowe’s book captures a bygone era of music journalism, that particular phrase glints with the unwavering emotion that compels generation after generation to indulge in the ever-changing industry.
At just 15, Crowe became Rolling Stone's then-youngest-ever contributor, and The Uncool is a dazzling encapsulation of that vibrant era. It's filled with poetically romantic anecdotes – as you’d expect from someone who spent his formative years orbiting great wordsmiths. Each encounter is revered rightfully as sacred, from Joni Mitchell to the Eagles and David Bowie, whom Crowe shadowed for 18 months, when he was still a teenager. His retellings sing with an almost absurd impossibility in conjunction with today’s industry, leaving the lingering question: could today’s ‘uncool’ seek to achieve this dream?
It’s easy to point out that his 1970s glam-rock dreamscape can’t be replicated. Unfortunately, it’s less so to avoid the all-too-familiar droning, doomsday claims that condemn art and its criticism as ‘dead’ in today’s political and economic spheres. Truthfully, though, music journalism has been unignorably, irreversibly distorted by the digital age. As well as birthing an increasingly saturated market, today’s internet culture dilutes the myth and legend behind any such modern artist that could’ve fit in Crowe’s world. Arguably, obsessive reporting and documentation has lost the edge of gratifying purpose. Gone are the days, mostly, when journalists could let eager-eared fans in on secrets with a wink; there’s a lessened charm in pulling back a curtain which phone screen lights already shine through. The intoxication of hushed hiatus and secretive pseudonyms lie trapped, somewhere between The Uncool’s pages and the tour buses it was conceived on. Meanwhile, stan Twitter and content-hungry paparazzi leave little room for enigmas. For the most part, we can no longer reap Crowe’s same thrill; sheer ambition doesn’t seem to overcome artistic elusiveness with the same electricity when our musical treasure troves are already wedged open by algorithms and advertisements.
Though, as the old paths of raging print press and glittering groupies have eroded, countless more have been paved. The 'uncool’ still devotedly hammer away for the chance to loudly revere the artistry they adore. For all our qualms, the internet has ushered in an accessibility which transforms people’s ability to answer to the impassioned call of the ting. Never has it been easier; one swipe sees the song you hold as gospel projected for hundreds to see on an Instagram story. As the greats, like Crowe himself, wailed about "the day Rolling Stone died", new dot-com publications rose daily. Not only did this beget new greats, like Pitchfork, whose famed ratings launched countless household names, but it saw them sail alongside amateur sites. Arguably, people have a greater access to pour their loving ting into discourse, and curate community spaces to do so, than ever before. Rolling Stone may no longer sit atop millions of coffee tables, but online spaces like Substack mean that people don’t have to fight through prestige to engage with the media and participate in the commentary they adore. In particular, recent years have seen an influx of non-profit publications, begun and run by young amateurs. An ‘uncool’ teen able to break through the noise and voice their devotion is no longer an anomaly.
All of this is to say that the framework may evolve, expand, and shrink, but the feeling never does. The ting finds a way, a thrumming yet immovable core. It’s as persistent as the songs that get stuck in your head and make your heart swell with that very feeling. Days after his sister’s unexpected passing, Crowe’s father collected two Beach Boys singles she had ordered: ‘California Girls’ and ‘Don’t Worry Baby’. Crowe interpreted the songs as a final message from her, sparking a ting that reverberates in songs found etched in late grandparents’ diaries and the attic-resigned records from parents’ teen years. Where Crowe’s dad stayed up to tape him a rock special is where mine demands playlists. It’s in the twinkle of humour as I send him old Springsteen and Randy Newman – the attempt to put him in touch with the eras he lived through that I never did. It’s a thrill that, if you feel it, is truly impossible not to wax hopelessly poetic about.
I’d surmise this ting is what Crowe was chasing all along, something larger than his own, self-deprecating uncoolness. The true fuel behind his fictional ‘Almost Famous’ tour bus was not what filled the tank, but the moment they came together, singing ‘Tiny Dancer’. Be it what drove him from his first concert to the director’s chair, or what inspired me to write this article, the ting is an undeniable, romantic impulse. It’s everlasting, threaded throughout music’s history – as time can’t change something that can’t be defined.
Evie Johnson
Image: 'The Uncool' Official Book Cover