The Curse Of Fame

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I read a (rather poorly-written) comment piece about Amy Winehouse's Mercury Awards appearance yesterday. Apparently her performance was 'electric' and it was generally agreed that somehow over the last year, Amy had transformed from a talented soul singer from Camden into an International Megastar Icon!!1!1.

"Every generation needs its Kurt Cobain!" wailed the writer, gnashing his teeth and already writing the poor lass off for lost.

Well, does it? Do we need self-destructive pop icons like Cobain/Hendrix/Sid Vicious? If Amy is the latest victim of rock'n'roll, then who will be next?

Comments

Sort of related

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/05424a5e-5a4b-11dc-9bcd-0000779fd2ac.html

This research has been ridiculed more than once this week by Radcliffe and Maconie on R2. Partly because of the dodgy science. But mainly they seemed to be arguing that shorter life expectancy is "a price worth paying" because without the druqks and other excesses these people wouldn't have created the music they did.

Re: Sort of related

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Is 'druqks + musician' an easier combination to live with/cover up/still make money from than 'druqks + some other job'? It has definitely been noted that *particular* druqks are absolutely detrimental to writing good music, whilst others may be more, ahem, inspiring. The latter seem to be in the less addictive category, obv.