Sure, interesting find, but that letter doesn't kill anything for me. A guy hating his biggest hit after the hundredth take is pretty normal, not proof he was a hack. Most artists get sick of their most famous songs, that's just the job. If anything, it shows he was a working musician who knew the difference between a fun single and the bigger stuff he cared about, not a mythic figure, but also not a fraud.

Funny you say "isn't that kinda the point of gossip" because I actually think that's exactly where we get tricked. The whole point of gossip is that it's messy and unplanned, like real life. But a controlled leak is basically a press release in a trench coat. It's got a clean narrative arc, the "fan" posts at convenient times, and every single detail lines up too neatly. I fell for one myself back when some rapper "accidentally" left a USB in a studio bathroom. Turns out the whole thing was timed to drop right before a tour announcement, and the USB was literally just a promo card. So I get the frustration, but I don't think that's a reason to feel dumb. I think it's a reason to get better at spotting the perfect timing, because real leaks are usually sloppy and random. That's the tell, not the content itself.