The exciting part of my job is that I get to speak to musicians – about any and everything they or I choose – every day. But my favourite part is that we get to dissect the music.

Whether it’s talking about the actual instruments used or the beats or the synths or the vocal syncopation or the lyrical content, there are no boundaries when people feel that they are in a space where they are safe enough to share.

Or that someone actually – gasp! – listened to their music.

So I am always puzzled when managers and publicists and other people who play support roles in the life of an artist approach me to speak to a musician but don’t actually care whether we speak about the music or not.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to talk to artists about breasts and beheadings or about pretending to be painters in order to stay in apartheid-era Camps Bay. But most times, those conversations did not come about because the artist has released any music. That will be because of an upcoming gig, a milestone or even just for the fun of it.

But when the artist does release an album, I want to talk to them about how those songs came to be. I want to pick at specific nuances, ideas, personal revelations and everything that really hearing the music conjures up. That often makes for the better story.

I’ve been asked to make time for an international artist whose music I enjoy. He is dropping his album in a little bit and is going to sit down face-to-face with various members of the media. Great. So can we hear the music in advance so we have some dope stuff to ask him? No.

And that’s just today.

I get this request for international and local artists on the regular. I don’t understand why you would NOT want your artist to speak about this body of work they likely slaved over – especially if it is or is going to touch people’s ears and hearts. Why not schedule media/promo time for when the relevant people have engaged with the music?

I don’t care who your artist be loving, who they wanna be hugging. I don’t care about their fashion sense. I don’t even care about what brands the artist is aligned with. I especially don’t care to prioritise that over the actual music your artist has made.

I know it’s a new age and people don’t read because they have gossip TV shows and tabloids to feed their celeb culture obsession and blah blah blah. But that’s not everybody! The absolute best thing about my job is that we get to keep the music in music journalism. Please don’t rob us of that too.