poptimists | Academy of Pop: exam season

Or alternatively, "If your splitting up doesn't get you a slot on the six o clock news, you left it too late."

It is the lot of many a pop star to fade away I ph34r.

i think it is important for adolescents to believe this, because it kick-starts their ambition and drive and gets them out of the plypen and into real life. it is also important that they stop believing this by the time they stop being a teenager.

in terms of popstar careers it is better to retire before you go shit (basement jaxx are this month's exhibit a) - there should probably be an age limit, and only special cases like madge would be permitted to pass it.

But Madge has turned to shit and back to good so many times that she'd have fallen foul of that rule years ago!

She's never turned to shit! Ever! Evita was er less good but even that period gave us the Miami Mix of 'Don't Cry For Me Argentina'.

PS are you going to give me Body Language 2 back at Lovelife tonight?

i think they turn to shit bcz they internalised that rule as a teen! stars who rose before the years of the invention of teen (viz.sinatra) didn't hit catastrophic declines

of course the "write yr own material" rule hits some foax, as they only have one good song in em

What about if you are still performing but not releasing stuff?

Case Study 1: I saw Desmond Dekker twice in recent years before he finally popped his clogs last month. I was born years after he released anything decent but I still got to see him in a hot sweaty 100 Club playing all the classics.

Case Study 2: Sister Sledge at Glastonbury 2004 were absolutely amazing. Again, nothing brilliant by them since 1985, a few remixes aside. However James Brown at Glastonbury that same year was a wheezing, shuffling toupeed mess who was over-reliant on his backing band (I'd seen him play a much better gig at the Hammersmith Apollo earlier that year). However both acts still played Greatest Hits Sets to a good crowd reception.

Case Study 3: The Fall. Still churning out fairly decent music 25 years on, showing no signs of 'fading away' just yet. Reluctant to play old songs but they still put on a good show. However The Fall are a rare exception in that MES doesn't seem to give two short sh1ts about his fans, let alone record companies/the public and as such doesn't conform to the generalised pop model.

I think Prince sort of fits this category - I don't think he's released a really good album for over a decade now, but his live shows are still as electric as ever (and he mostly plays old stuff). I'm happy for him to keep releasing the shit as long as it keeps him touring.

With composers (its all pop to me) there is a split -- many really find their 'voice' when they get older.

~~There is no question after the instruction "answer the following question". 0/10. See Me.~~

Most people so far are equating "fade away" with "go shit", which is at least arguable. It also assumes the judgement of shitness is a universally shared one which, as we have seen already with the example of Madonna, is not the case. In fact in most cases, it is only the people who thought [x] was any good in the first place who are likely to hold an opinion on the relative merits of [x]'s subsequent career. Since this is unlikely to constitute a representative sample of the world's population, said opinion must by definition also be unrepresentative and therefore unreliable.

Most people are also interpreting "better" as meaning "better for me, the listener". Again, this relies on a subjective assessment and is therefore unreliable. Moreover, some - e.g. economists - would also (or instead) look at it from the perspective of the artist, composer or record company. The determining factor would be commercial viability. If the records still sell, then logically it is better for these persons that the artist does not burn out but rather keeps on producing. One should also not discount "brand loyalty": people who'll buy and pretend to like any old crap under a given brand name (hello Belle and Sebastian fans).

Then again, if the "burn out" is spectacular enough that a death (or mental illness, cf. Syd) is involved, it might be possible that the romantic sensibilities of the consumer might be aroused. This can of course be exploited through appropriate marketing. One needn't even go this far. Simply withdrawing a product (or source of production) can - if withheld for a sufficiently long period of time - generate myths and rumours about its worth/desirability that could easily outstrip how it would have been valued if always available. Examples: (non-musical) the director's cut of "The Magnificent Ambersons; (musical) the follow-up to Loveless.

In short, life sucks.

It's better to give up before you stop enjoying it, than to carry on just in case.

(bopkids)

This has always struck me as the key point. It's three decades since the Stones made a great record, but they got into this because they enjoyed playing music, so why would they resist large sums of money to keep doing it? And why should they? Those of us who don't want to hear pensioners knocking out Satisfaction for the 10,000th time aren't obliged to pay attention. I do wish people who are obviously never going to make anything more I want to hear would fade far enough into the background that I can completely ignore them, which doesn't always happen, but the imposition is generally small. I also wish I weren't the kind of fool who can't resist buying past-their-prime albums by acts I loved when I see them cheap, but that's my problem.

the ideology of "only the young have talent" -- which the stones OF ALL PEOPLE know is perfectly false, given their early heroes -- lets them totally off the hook, of course: no one expects them to ever be good again, so they don't need to try

interesting exception: p.townshend -- not that his records are much cop lately, but he doesn't seem to have let himself off his OWN hook (despite "hope i die before i get old" etc)

by contrast, in blues and jazz -- and classic soul if not present-day R&B -- as well as composed music, the prizing of the getting of experience and wisdom (technically as much as anything else) remains the default position

i dont know how this fits in, but churning out on satisfaction...the rolling stones may not have done anything great in the last three decades, but that one song, has given us hundreds of different ways of looking at something that is just basic blues...

in the last 4 years, there have been two radically different, complex, and new ways of looking at satisfaction, in cat power and britney, covers that continue to add to the corpus of these texts.

so my question is, what happens when a text refuses to fade away?

Academy of Pop: exam season

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Exceptions to the rule

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