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‘What a brutal business’: pop stars on life after the spotlight moves on
- fosk 5y agoFrom a psychological standpoint, what does "falling back to Earth mean"? Is it the sudden lack of public recognition? Is it the sudden lack of energy that feeds the personal narcissistic trait? Is it acceptance of defeat because the artistic viewpoint wasn't able to evolve with the times, therefore feeling "deprecated"? Ultimately, if the goal of an artist is to feel great in the eyes of others, is it the sudden lack of purpose? Shouldn't an artist that believes in their own art, be happy in the good and bad times, since their artistic output is all they need to find purpose?
- jayski 5y agoThese people for the most part arent actual artists. They're great looking narcissists - who can sorta sing. A real artist creates art whether its recognized or not, for the love of creating it.
- watwut 5y agoEven artists themselves don't use that definition - and they debate "what is art" a lot. It is highly ideological and emotional definition and relies on mythology.
- pvaldes 5y agoRoisin Murphy fits perfectly in your definition of artist. In full gaga mode years before Lady Gaga. Moloko was much more known in Europe than in US, probably. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GY9DWIfpwc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GY9DWIfpwc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvaWPm6WQPs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvaWPm6WQPs
- TheOtherHobbes 5y agoIf you read the article you'll see that most of them do carry on - and it was the carrying on with limited interest in popular appeal that crashed their headliner careers. So in practice it means you get a lot of respect and money, and suddenly you don't. It would be not unlike going from FAANG veep or CEO to sudden unemployment. With no one calling. Except that you're less likely to have a financial cushion.
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- RikNieu 5y agoAnd then there's Dave Grohl. Not quite popular anymore but rocking harder than even with creative new songs.
- oneoff786 5y agoDave Grohl still sells out large venues. He’s still pretty popular.
- daenz 5y agoHe's popular among a core group of ageing followers... his die hard fans (and yes, there are a lot of them). But he's not popular in the sense that he's the new "it."
- watwut 5y agoAging followers are as much followers as young ones. It is not lesser to create for older people and stuff that appeals to them. Just like with art for any other minority.
- daenz 5y agoI didn't say it was lesser. I said it's different than being the new "it." There's "popular" and then there's "society thinks this is the cutting edge of culture - popular." Dave Grohl is the first one.
- jleyank 5y agoNot the first. Maybe the first one recently. The old fart from Liverpool and his mates sorta roto-rootered culture and defined “it” for a while. Phil Collins, unfortunately, was the face of pop music in the 80’s. So “average bloke” was a popular look I guess. Chops as a drummer and grew up playing complex music but neither made the big bux. He paid the price for it it seems but survived.
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- DubiousPusher 5y agoI find so many things objectionable in this article that they are three-stoogesing my cerebral cortex and I find it impossible to write about just any one of them.
- daenz 5y ago>She launched a short-lived solo career, record label and clothing line, but her “brand” appeared in terminal decline. So she started her own booking agency, with herself as the sole employee, calling up clubs across the country masquerading as the personal assistant to one Lisa Maffia, formerly of So Solid Crew, now an international solo star and occasional fashion designer. Her PA, “Celine”, was tasked with asking clubs’ management if they’d be interested in a personal appearance. “The bookings came in almost immediately,” Maffia beams. “I hustle. Never been afraid to hustle.” That's some startup hustle!
- ethbr0 5y agoIn her case, pivot hustle. But respect for not letting superstar pride get in the way of making a subsequent living.
- burnoutgal 5y agoA remarkable thing about these stories is that many artists end up enjoying lavish lifestyles while they're popular, but having no money (and going on the dole) when their success wanes. The record industry absolutely encourages this boom and bust lifestyle by advancing money and then withholding royalties until an artist is "recouped", which almost never happens thanks to some fun accounting tricks. The result is young people who come from modest means, are showered with cash, and recieved no financial planning advice. They're also a magnet for people trying to get a cut of the money - people who will encourage them to pursue a lifestyle of excess.
- daenz 5y ago>The record industry absolutely encourages this boom and bust lifestyle It's part of the overall appeal, and that says something about human nature. We like to see the reckless brilliant star careening into the stratosphere, knowing full well that it is unsustainable. It's the human embodiment of life and overabundant success.
- soupfordummies 5y agoGotta spend the money and ball out because it’s part of the look and the “brand”. You often see this in a different manner with pro athletes, sadly.
- kraussvonespy 5y agoOne can draw a very similar arc for lottery winners too. Most of them are broke and vagrant after ~2 years of luxury. There's no planning for tomorrow. The people most drawn to lotteries (and perhaps those drawn to the limelight too) are those that have the worst life and money skills. I think we all know people who live the feast or famine lifestyle of cruises and new TVs when the tax refund comes followed by 11 months of scraping by and complaining about their money situation.
- ardit33 5y agoSource? From what I see, is that 70% spend their money after 5 years, but don't just become 'homeless' / destitute. This seems some kind of overblown myth. The other study I found: "Statistically, 1% of lottery winners in the Florida study went bankrupt annually (Source: https://www.creditdonkey.com/lottery-winner-statistics.html https://www.creditdonkey.com/lottery-winner-statistics.html)"
- boh 5y agoThe writer calling pop stars "heroes" for continuing to live despite no longer being famous is a bit of stretch. Pop stardom is a marketing fueled, collective delusion that we snap out of when the money dries up. These people are ultimately made from same mundane cloth as everyone else, it's the advertising that's special. Believing the hype at the height of fame is the depressing part, not having to live a "normal" life.
- smitty1e 5y agoThis sort of fame--irrespective of medium--is a mountain top experience. Little grows, much less, survives, at altitude. The physical and spiritual maintenance routines of anyone in 'the biz' is of great interest. "Limelight" you know: https://youtu.be/ZiRuj2_czzw https://youtu.be/ZiRuj2_czzw But check out "Headlong Flight": "Some days were dark \ I wish that I could live it all again \ Some nights were bright \ I wish that I could live it all again!" https://youtu.be/EA-yqCCbTF4 https://youtu.be/EA-yqCCbTF4 #RIPNeilPeart
- stemlord 5y agoI feel the same, and people will misinterpret this outlook as jealousy, which of course, I often feel but try to be conscientious about, when really it's frustration that we endorse a system that plays so unfairly to the huge population of talent in our society who not only do not receive this kind of success but are fully impoverished. It's severely unbalanced and I believe it hinders our creativity as a whole.
- jonathanfoster 5y agoIf you liked this article, check out the Joe Rogan podcast with Jewel[1]. She talks a lot about her rise to stardom and how she was able to maintain creative freedom with good financial decisions. This is far from a happy ending though. Jewel is an incredibly fascinating person. I highly recommend checking this one out. [1] https://open.spotify.com/episode/2TRBNGScfO2K3RWRIYJedJ?si=R-wMdzXfQaSFQ9s_V67RNw https://open.spotify.com/episode/2TRBNGScfO2K3RWRIYJedJ?si=R...
- spookthesunset 5y agoI wish I had the time to invest in watching / listening to a 3 hour interview… I wish there was a highlights version or something that was maybe 45 minutes at most.
- 1123581321 5y agoSkip 30 minutes in and listen to it sped up, and you should experience enough of it in 45 minutes.
- beebeepka 5y agoI sat through a 3 hour interview with Carmack. Guy is not a bad host, though I've listened to many, many Carmack speeches so I might be biased.
- jonathanfoster 5y agoHere’s a 15 min clip about her record deal [1]. TL;DR: She didn’t take a big advance even though she was broke and ended up making a lot more money from residuals. Things get really interesting when she talks about how her mom stole all her money and now she’s basically starting over (in the original link). [1] https://youtu.be/DTGtC7FC4oI https://youtu.be/DTGtC7FC4oI
- draw_down 5y ago
- ethbr0 5y agoPop is fundamentally the artiface of perfection. Which is the reason middle aged+ pop stars are rare: boundless confidence in your own greatness cannot coexist with an actual human being's history. We make mistakes. We fuck up relationships. We fuck up our bodies. We fuck up job opportunities. Nobody is perfect. Yet that's what the market has always wanted to buy, so that's what the industry has manufactured and sold.
- jleyank 5y agoBrian cox turned boy band keyboards into success as a particle physicist and bbc presenter of note. Another Brian took the breakup of his band in stride, finished his degree and kept on playing. Now, with the degree, he can get into fun, interesting places he was denied as a musician. What is it about Brian’s? Quite a life it seems.
- marc_io 5y ago>×Why do they all come back? Perhaps because nothing else compares. It must be nice to be quite so loudly loved. I'm amused by the use of the word “loved” here. It looks a lot more like adulation than anything else. It's often not psychologically healthy to have millions of strangers validating your persona, which is only part of any human being.
- DoreenMichele 5y agoThe article is sort of annoying with asking repeatedly why go back? People tend to do something related to earlier success. Starting over from scratch wastes years of experience. It's only worth beating your head against that wall if going back is simply too horrifying to contemplate, like when people successfully leave behind criminal careers. Even then they sometimes build on prior experience, like the guys that stopped being thieves and made a TV show about security and would break into homes and businesses on camera. Edited because: Autocorrupt struck again.
- JKCalhoun 5y agoIt was annoying to me as well. Artists "art". Most can't help it, whether famous or not. Of course they'll keep being creative. (Some turn to writing or other creative outlets, however.) I'm more saddened though by the artists that didn't become huge pop stars but perhaps should have. My examples: The Embarrassment, The Doleful Lions, The Muffs, Paul Brill, Grandaddy, The Wrens, ... I could go on and I'm sure others have their own personal favorites. Oh, did The Pixies ever make it? Or did they just inspire the pop stars of the 90's as they faded away?*
- DoreenMichele 5y agoI'm a writer. I write because I must. It doesn't adequately pay my bills. I'm still trying to sort that piece out which is complicated because wherever you go, there you are. So while people can do studies showing that in the aggregate, X trait is associated with Y outcome, I can't readily take my own self or life apart in that manner to sort cause and effect.
- mikelevins 5y agoI wrote a blog post entitled "Art is not optional" (https://mikelevins.github.io/posts/2021-01-04-art-is-not-optional/ https://mikelevins.github.io/posts/2021-01-04-art-is-not-opt...) that is in part about this: I don't think people usually choose to be artists. I think they mostly just are, like it or not. In terms of personality psychology, they're "creatives"--that is, people that score extremely high in trait openness. Like you, I write because I must. I don't choose to write. It just happens. I can choose whether or not to put pen to paper or finger to keyboard, but I can't choose not to create the stuff that I write. If I'm stuck somewhere with no writing utensils, I write anyway, constructing stories and lyrics and essays and explanations in my head, storing it up as best I can for when I can write it all down. It isn't even mostly in words. Most of my thoughts are visual-spatial, and only get translated into words when I have writing utensils. I make pictures, too, and songs, and software. Similarly, I don't decide to do it or choose to do it; it just happens all the time, like it or not. If I don't have any tools to work with, that doesn't make it stop. It just makes it inconvenient, and it means that a large amount of what I create is likely to be lost before I can get it transcribed. I don't lose it all. The especially memorable bits stick, which means that doing without tools for transcription has benefits. It filters out the less memorable stuff. My openness score is in something like 97th percentile, so somewhere around 97 out of every 100 randomly-chosen people score lower. Most people are not in my situation. More generally, highly-creative people are in the minority. But I think you can recognize them if you look. They're the ones who are always compulsively creating stuff. The other topic of the blog post is a claim that, not only is art not optional for artists, it's not optional for the human species, either. I don't know why art is necessary for us, but if it wasn't, then we wouldn't find it everywhere we find modern humans for all of our existence. Art seems to be older than fire, and every culture has it (so far as I know). I don't know what we need it for, and I'm not sure anyone else does, either, but apparently we need it for something.
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- JackFr 5y agoI would argue Viv Albertine is more famous for inspiring the Clash song “Train in Vain” after breaking up with Mick Jones more than for her work with the Slits.
- moomin 5y agoThe biggest problem I have with this article is that it seems to believe the attraction of a musical career is the adulation of fans, despite several artists fairly clearly making big life decisions to avoid it. I’m not saying that isn’t what motivates some, but it’s worth considering that maybe, they do it because they love making music.