Whenever my daughter wants to hear a song by one of her “faves” or see an image, all she has to do is turn on the computer. Music videos, like those that built Michael into a huge star during the early glory days of MTV, are just a click away. She can check out all these songs without opening her little purse. She can also print images of the stars and post them in her room next to the large posters she gets from magazines.
Can you imagine if Michael had that kind of exposure in his day? Or, for that matter, a group like the Beatles, or someone like Elvis? If they were such mega-watt stars in the days of no technology, what would they be today? Of course, when I said that, my daughter replied something like, “Dad, they’d be just one of all the rest now.”
Ah, the truth out of the mouth of my pre-teen. She hit on something absolutely right: there is nothing extraordinary about any of these new stars because they are seemingly manufactured from the same mold, Disney or otherwise. Now, my not understanding their appeal may reveal my age here, but I do not see how any of these people will ever be big stars twenty years from now, and maybe, come to think of it, not even ten years from now.
The next new star is just a video or a song away. Miley meet Selena meet Demi meet whoever is next. One week it's Katy Perry and the next Lady Gaga and then maybe Lord Timberlake or Prince Eminem might come back for a spell. It doesn’t seem like anything substantial or even close to everlasting; perhaps these days we cannot expect that, or maybe no one wants it anymore.
People’s tastes are more fickle than ever. I remember lots of one-hit wonders in my day, but that seemed to be par for the course in the fairways to fame and misfortune. The old bands I liked are either gone or reconstituted to a point of really not being those old bands I used to go to see at Madison Square Garden or Nassau Coliseum.
Article comments
1 - Jon Sobel
Well said. I had that Farrah poster too... I agree that few if any of these new stars will stand the test of time - mass audiences such as existed in the 60s and 70s don't exist anymore. I wrote about it here.
2 - Joanne Huspek
What's even sadder is that music these days is less about art and more about business. I see the current crop as commodities, and perhaps it's the big stars like MJ who made that possible.
By the way, great old posters can be had at Amoeba Records. Looking at them makes me nostalgic about the good old days.
3 - Victor Lana
Thanks for the comments, Jon and Joanne.
I wish I still had those old posters. I still have the one of the Beatles, but that's all I have left.
4 - Ruvy
I'm older than the lot of you commenting here. I never had a poster of any kind on my wall. The closest I ever got to a poster was a huge map of Israel and the blue and white flag of this country on my apartment wall in the Bronx - in 1971.
My two sons had, between them, one single poster on the wall - one of Bruce Lee, a gift from a French immigrant in 2001 when we lived in a 3 room apartment in an absorption center in the Armon haNetziv neighborhood of Jerusalem. No posters grace their walls today.
My older son is bothered by music - he takes after his mother that way - who has to be in a mood to listen to her favorites. My younger son likes some of the hip-hop trash out there but for the most part, he likes the same kind of music I do. His MP4 player is loaded with Billy Joel, Dire Straits, Queen, the Eagles, with scattered songs from Kansas, and a number of tunes from Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Louie Armstrong....
It is really strange to say that. If I had liked the music of someone my sister's age (she's 21 years older than me), stuff like the Ink Spots, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, that is what I would have been like if I had my younger son's tastes. And I would have been viewed as weird by everyone around me.
We Baby Boomers have had a poisonous effect on America - forcing everyone to march to our tunes - and Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett were part of this poisonous trend.
But they are dead. And soon, we Baby Boomers will be, too.
5 - Victor Lana
Hey, Ruvy, I always love your comments, but this one (especially the last sentence) really depressed me.
6 - Ruvy
Victor,
You think it depressed you? I put "we" in that sentence - I'm part of that "we" and have, more and more, the sense of how long I do NOT have to hang around. My father, z"l, died when he was 68 - for me that is one decade away.
We were discussing this subject this evening, my younger son and I. My conclusion was that by the time Billy Joel was pumping out hits, everything he was producing was based on stuff thirty years oldor older. He is the one who readily admits that there is nothing creative on the music scene. He tells me this. And he is exposed to more than I am - three different cultures at least, in Israel.
"It's such a drag gettin' old."
7 - Cindy
"What a drag it is gettin' old."
I don't know. I think I feel sort of fine with getting old. Sure I miss some good times and wish I had known then what I know now. But I just realized I am pretty comfortable with who I am at this moment. Hard to beat that--youth alone wouldn't be worth it.