In addition to being well respected and relevant into their final stage of life, You very rarely see any musicians over 60 being at the forefront of their scene while you see many hyping 90yrs old Cormack or 80 something Scorsese new projects
Why writers and filmmakers peaks much later compared to musicians?
That’s only true for pop musicians. Look at classical or jazz for musicians that put out their best work later in their lives
This. It has to do with who the audience is and that for pop and rock music the appearance of the musician is as important if not more so than the music itself
You've got one, OP. Use it.
>You very rarely see any [pop] musicians over 60 being at the forefront of their scene
Commercial disposble ephemera. Rolling Stone and Queen Boomers doing their zombie tours to similarly decrepit audience is about who's sitting on assets like dragons hatching their gold piles more so than quality. fpbp
A Pynchon's precipitous cognitive and literary decline from Mason & Dixon to Bleeding Edge as counterexample. That and McCarthy had been working on his last two for a long time, and isn't necessarily the product of his twilight years.
>"there are no great novelists under 40" -- some b***h from Mississippi
More or less.
It is definitely not that common for filmmakers, or even writers.
My general rule of thumb is 20 years since career start for rock bands and film directors as the fruitful and relevant period.
Usually most rock bands after that have cringe trying to stay relevant period, and after that 'frick it, we'll just play the hits' or 'frick it, we don't have to be relevant and we'll do what we want.'
Think the stones, yes, moody blues, dylan, u2 and countless others. For classic rock it is almost always: 60/70s peak material, 80s cringe attempts at staying relevant, 90s and onward somewhat critically acclaimed stuff that does not try hard and no one cares that much about.
It is less predictable for directors, but there often is a direct moment when one can say the director started becoming out of touch and culturally irrelevant.
>It is less predictable for directors, but there often is a direct moment when one can say the director started becoming out of touch and culturally irrelevant.
Most famous great directors maintained their prime until their death/old age. The current best active director imo is Lee Chang dong and he's 70
The mountain goats are still putting out good music imo
>Why writers and filmmakers peaks much later compared to musicians?
They don't. All artistic endeavour is a compromise between the energy & creativity of youth and the wisdom and experience of age, which means the sweet spot is usually thirties-forties. (Poets generally do their best work younger than novelists — presumably poetry needs the energy and creativity more than the wisdom and experience. Plenty of novelists wrote great stuff in their fifties / sixties, but not so many poets. Startling literary precocity — Chatterton or Rimbaud, say — is almost always poetic.)
When it comes to musicians, precocious instrumentalists are thick on the ground (all those three-year-old violinists, etc), but it's much less of a thing with composers. Mendelssohn wrote some of his best pieces quite young, but he was more lightweight in general. He didn't need time to mature, because he didn't mature very much. All Mozart's best stuff is from the last few years of his life. (Of course this wasn't exactly old — early thirties.) Schubert the same. Beethoven peaked in his late forties / early fifties (the end of his life). Bach had a long period of high-quality output (from about age 25-65) but he didn't really peak until his thirties (Book 1 of the Well-Tempered Clavier was published when he was 37). Wagner definitely took time to get into his stride — he was 52 when Tristan & Isolde was first performed.
Regarding writers, experience and maturity give you a perspective of things that translates well to writing fiction. The best writers always have a personal unique view of the world that they're able to translate into their worlds.
While there's young folks who already have said vision, it's one of those things that usually gets better (molded, tempered, tested) with age and experience.
Regarding musicians, I beleive you mean mostly pop music from the mid 20th century and onwards. Most of that music is aimed at youngsters and teenagers and none want to idolize people who are their parents' age.
As a side note, many of the great hits of the 50's and up to this day have actually been composed and produced by people much older than the musicians who played them and got fame because of them.
Music is more self-destructive. Professional musicians are deaf by their 60s. Professional writers always have glasses to fall back on.
>musicians
Did you forget about classical composers, jazz and folk musicians and singer-songwriters, you moron?
>Professional musicians are deaf by their 60s
That didn't stop Beethoven.
those are learned things that you develop your whole life, you're smarter and have more life experience at 50 than at 20. music is largely a visceral thing, you are much more emotional and virile at a younger age
Because music has no content and literature does. This is explained by Hegel
>Music, for example, which is concerned only with the completely indeterminate movement of the inner spirit and with sounds as if they were feeling without thought, needs to have little or no spiritual material present in consciousness. Therefore musical talent announces itself in most cases very early in youth, when the head is empty and the heart little moved, and it may sometimes attain a very considerable height before spirit and life have experience of themselves. Often enough, after all, we have seen very great virtuosity in musical composition and performance accompanied by remarkable barrenness of spirit and character.
>In poetry, on the other hand, it is quite different. In it all depends on the presentation, full of content and thought, of man, of his deeper interests, and of the powers that move him; and therefore the spirit and heart must be richly and deeply educated by life, experience, and reflection before genius can bring into being anything mature, of sterling worth, and complete in itself. The first productions of Goethe and Schiller are of an immaturity, yes even of a crudity and barbarity, that can be terrifying. It is this phenomenon, that in most of these attempts there is an overwhelming mass of elements through and through prosaic, partly cold and flat, which principally tells against the common opinion that inspiration is bound up with the fire and time of youth. It was only in their manhood that these two geniuses, our national poets, the first, we may say, to give poetical works to our country, endowed us with works deep, substantial, the product of true inspiration, and no less perfectly finished in form; just as it was only in old age that Homer was inspired and produced his ever undying songs.
okay but lyrics
and yes most pop lyrics suck but there are many musicians especially "singer-songwriter" types who do write excellent poetical lyrics
The greatest musician ever Bob Dylan peaked in his 60s
Ew bad taste
Because those are pop culture media bullshit. Most of the time they’re manufactured people.
Because all that music is "youthful" in essence. It burns out eventually, just like youth itself.
Young people feel emotions more intensely and express that we'll. Older people are wiser and have deeper things to say. It makes sense that musicians peak much younger than writers.
Not true. Old people feel more deeply.
Young people are more exuberant and have a stronger desire to express and share in popular culture.
Great musicians burn out quickly, The 4 greatest singer/songwriters of the last 50 years (Robbie Basho, Nick Drake, Townes Van Zandt and Jason Molina) were either dead or addicted to hard drugs before hitting their 30s. It's probably the kind of art that's the hardest on your soul
>The 4 greatest singer/songwriters of the last 50 years (Robbie Basho, Nick Drake, Townes Van Zandt and Jason Molina)
Very wrong.
Love me Townes but calling that moron a genius is laughable. Dude was injecting malk into his balls because he couldnt coom anymore.
It depends on the music. A 23-year-old couldn’t compose Mass in B minor, but a 64-year-old probably couldn’t make Astral Weeks, because one is a deep, mature masterwork of experience and technique and the other is a youthful outpouring of energy and passion
>tfw i just found out Van Morrison did Astral Weeks at 23
i'm glad i gave up music bros, holy shit how did he fricking do it? It's one of the most spiritual albums i've ever heard
Astral Weeks, while still being a good example of youthful energy and intuition over calculation, Van showed so much maturity beyond his years it’s actually incredible
well it is because of music being targeted toward a younger audience. There is a very good section in the Closing of the American Mind where the author talks about music and the advent of rock and roll. He described music in the intellectual's life as something he partakes in before he begins to enjoy poetry. Now, no one enjoys poetry anymore, but people enjoy music. Yet, the older person rarely enjoys new music. They mostly listen to what they listened to in their youth (I am speaking in generalities of course. I am 31 and find new music I like all the time). What is ironic is that an older musician has much more to say than a younger one. Who do you think knows more about heart break? An emo 22 year old whose girlfriend of two years cheated on him? Or a forty year old whose wife filed for divorce after 10 years of marraige? Obviously the 40 year old. Music has a bit of specific flavor and novelty that no other media shares. And I think this is the reason why. You know the emo kid can express his feelings in the newave of Zoomer core, a specific niche orchestration of instruments and sounds that only the young person can endure. If you compare to McCormic, anyone of any age can read and enjoy his work. If they can read they can get it
Because pop music is totally different from narrative art forms like literature and cinema. It’s more powerful but it’s hardly profound at all. Technical ability is the most important aspect of being a good musician and that ability eroded over time, meanwhile narrative artists get better with age because they obtain more knowledge and skill
>You very rarely see any musicians over 60 being at the forefront of their scene
The pop music industry (including rock music when it was relevant) is largely aimed at young people and teenagers, so of course the artists pushed by the industry are young too. In other genres aimed at different age groups your thesis falls apart. And with pop music generally the actual "artists" are the producers, which tend to be older men. The teeny bopper is basically just the face for a brand.
>old Cormack or 80 something Scorsese new projects
Because they are legendary artists that have an exceptional track record that continued even in their old age, so of course they are singled out for the hype by the media.
Nevertheless, it will be rare to find a good writer or filmmaker that can create enduring works of art if he doesn't have enough experience and intellect to write stories and characters, to create metaphors, etc. Whereas in pop/rock music you just need to know how to make basic ass music (can be learned in a few years specially if starting young) to create memorable enough tunes.
>And with pop music generally the actual "artists" are the producers
This is one thing I really don’t understand about pop music. Why are singers credited as the “artists” when they don’t actually create anything? And why are musicians referred to as “artists” by default if this is the case? Maybe it’s just an American thing. It’s like giving an actor all the credit for starring in a movie directed by a big filmmaker. Pop music is synonymous with art in our culture and it makes no sense at all considering most musicians don’t even produce their own shit
Musicians traditionally have been artists. They interpret compositions. Same with actors. They have a creative role to play.
this, Frank Sinatra is honestly more "artistic" than any dime a dozen rock or pop act of his era
mainstream pop music is written by boomers still, the artists just sing stuff other people write for them. max martin is over 50