The Six That Should Be Seven

The Six That Should Be Seven is the headline Jonah Berg chose for his Rolling Stone article about Daisy Jones and The Six. More than a memorable description of an expanded lineup, it states the article’s central claim: Daisy was already integral to the band’s sound and identity, whether or not its established name acknowledged her. The phrase gives that argument a compact, provocative form—and turns an internal change in membership into a public question about who belongs.

The Headline’s Argument

Berg arrived at the headline while writing the article, before he had finished it. His judgment was that the combination of Daisy and Billy Dunne made the band original and first-rate: Daisy’s solo album, in his view, did not compare with what The Six was doing, while The Six without Daisy was not close to what it became with her. He therefore described Daisy not as a guest or an embellishment, but as an integral, necessary, inescapable part of the group. The headline distills that assessment into a contradiction that is also a proposition: the band is called The Six, but its best form requires seven.

That wording matters because it addresses both music and membership. It does not merely count the people onstage. It argues that the group’s identity has changed through its collaboration with Daisy, while its name and history still carry the shape of an earlier formation. The phrase makes the mismatch visible. Its implied answer is that the number in the name no longer adequately describes the band that listeners are encountering.

Reactions and the Question of Belonging

Daisy saw the article before it appeared because Rod Reyes brought it to the band. She was excited when she read the headline and loved it. For her, the phrase publicly recognized a place in the group that the band’s music had already made meaningful. The response also contrasts with the uncertainty surrounding the band’s actual decision to invite her in: after landing, the other members told Eddie Loving they were going to ask Daisy to join, and he was stunned that no one had asked him. Daisy, meanwhile, caught Rod’s eye while the band members were huddled together; his wink told her what was happening.

Billy’s reaction to the headline was notably different. Rod recalled that Billy took the paper and responded, “Are you fucking kidding me?” Billy’s own recollection repeats the question. The reaction registers resistance to the headline’s implication, though it does not establish every reason for his objection. In his account of Daisy, he describes her presence as giving him energy and stirring something in him, but says that hatred felt more comfortable than the alternatives. Set beside Berg’s claim that their combination defined the band, Billy’s response exposes the personal tension beneath the public argument: Daisy’s importance could be musically undeniable and still difficult for him to accept without qualification.

The headline’s claim and the band’s decision to make Daisy a member are connected, but the account does not say that the article caused the invitation. Billy says he spoke with Teddy Price and then told Rod to tell Daisy she was in. Afterward he went straight home to his family. The article names the significance of Daisy’s place; the later decision gives that place formal standing. The distinction keeps the phrase from being only a prediction: it also frames a transition from being indispensable in practice to being admitted as a member.

From Band Identity to Public Image

The headline appeared with a cover image that made the band’s new configuration visible. Rod described a clear shot of the group onstage: Billy and Daisy singing into the same microphone, Graham Dunne and Karen Karen looking at each other, the others playing, and audience members holding up lighters in the foreground. The image presented a collective performance, while the words above it insisted that the collective had outgrown its original count. Warren Rhodes remembered the cover as a singular milestone: even amid the many events that could become ordinary as the band rose, appearing on Rolling Stone remained extraordinary.

The phrase’s significance is distinct from the later design of the Aurora album cover, but that image develops a related tension between the group and its members. Photographer Freddie Mendoza recalled capturing Billy and Daisy looking at each other while the rest of the group looked toward the camera. Another selected image framed their torsos against a clear blue sky, with Daisy’s pocket containing what appeared to Mendoza to be a vial. These later photographs do not repeat Berg’s headline; rather, they show how the band’s public image could focus on the charged pairing at its center while still presenting a larger group. The phrase had already supplied a verbal frame for that contradiction: The Six as a band, and Daisy as someone the band could not be understood without.

Reception and Lasting Meaning

The headline’s reach extended beyond the immediate band dispute. Elaine Chang, writing about Daisy’s cultural significance, recalled the Rolling Stone cover as defining for teenagers in the late 1970s. She emphasized Daisy’s self-possession in the image, reading her confidence and presentation of her body as being on her own terms rather than arranged to please Billy or the viewer. Chang said that the cover was why, as a young girl, she fell in love with Daisy Jones. Her account concerns the image rather than Berg’s wording, but it shows how the cover helped make Daisy’s presence a cultural statement as well as a musical one.

Later, Daisy accepting the Grammy for Record of the Year offered another public image of her command: her hair disheveled, bangles reaching her elbows, and a thin cream silk slip dress, while she appeared confident in her talent and in control of the band. That moment does not restate the headline, but it fits the transformation the phrase first made legible. Daisy was not simply the seventh body added to an intact group; she became central to how the group was heard and seen. The headline endures as a concise expression of that change—and of the friction between recognizing someone’s indispensable contribution and accepting the consequences of their belonging.