Paul McCartney has posted a touching tribute to the late great John Mayall. Mayall, a huge influence on every British rock and blues musician, died this week at age 90. When I was a kid, reading the real Rolling Stone, Mayall was a constant — and revered. McCartney says: “he became a mentor and would educate me on a lot of the blues guitarists playing at the time.”

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One big surprise last night at Billy Joel’s finale residency show at Madison Square Garden: he didn’t include his new 2024 song, “Turn the Lights Back On.’

Billy seems to have turned the lights back off.

The Piano Man hasn’t performed his new song in his last three shows, not since June 8th at the Garden.

“Turn the Lights Back On” was introduced to great fanfare this past winner. It was Billy’s first new song in 30 years, written by Freddie Wexler as kind of a Joel tribute.

The single went right to the top of the charts, and Billy featured it on his NBC TV special. Everyone loved hearing Billy Joel singing something new, but “Lights” felt a lot like it came from AI.

That Billy didn’t sing it at his final Garden show seems very meaningful. The show had 26 numbers including two we don’t hear all the time — “Zanzibar” (my favorite), and “This is the Time,” which is never heard but Joel said it was requested by his wife, Alexis. The show ran almost three hours, so “Lights” could have been done.

Is the new song old news? I guess we’ll see when Billy hits the road this fall in shows featuring Sting, Rod Stewart, and Chris Isaak.

It’s a case of Korean pop vs. K Pop.

The new album from Stray Kids, a Korean pop group, soundly thrashed the new release this week from Jimin, a singer from K Pop’s supergroup BTS.

Jimin and BTS are part of the whole Hybe hype, now run by Scooter Braun. BTS fans — and Jimin’s — regularly ballot stuff iTunes so it appears their acts are swamping the charts.

But Stray Kids, which has rival management, just does their thing. And they came out on top big time this week.

Stray Kids’ “Ate” sold a total of 225,000 — most of which came pure album sales and downloads.

Jimin’s “Muse” sold jut 94,000 copies — again, most of them were from physical albums and downloads.

The two South Korean acts finished first and second this week, knocking Eminem’s “Death of Slim Shady” to number 3 and 81,000 copies.

Several new releases hit the top 50 this week including “Glass Animals” and Childish Gambino, each with around 36,000 copies total.

How did K Pop get so popular? They’re boy bands, fashioned a decade or more after the American fads. Their releases don’t last long in the charts, they’re more of pop-up pop phenomenon.

Meantime, solo US pop boy wonder Shawn Mendes seems like he’s ready to drop his first album in four years. Mendes, who took a mental health break from his career at age 25, may be going back to his original singer songwriter roots. That’s what he was like when we met him 7 or 8 years ago.

Will his fans show up? Stay tuned…