After listening to James Altucher’s podcast #340 where he interviewed Don McLean, I got to thinking about music. Don McLean is the guy who wrote and sang American Pie. Of course, he’s had other hits but that is the one everybody knows.
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Don is 72 years old and still touring. That is something that should give hope to those of us old, budding artists. However, he made a statement that a person who wants to make it in the music biz needs to do it by age 25 or they “ain’t making it”. He said “young people want a hero”. They need heroes. They want to see people like them close to their age who are making it in the world.
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Don said, “Older people don’t need that stuff. Way older people really don’t need that stuff.”
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Is that true?
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I don’t think so. I don’t think we stop listening to new music as we get older because we stop looking for heroes. We stop listening because new music from new artists is really just the same old stuff covered with shiny new packaging.
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Pop music is like the pointed comment Matthew Mcconaughey said in the movie Dazed and Confusedabout high school girls, “I get older, but they stay the same age.”
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Pop music has the standard topics to cover for each new generation: Love, loss and sex.
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Pop music is disposable and remanufactured for mass consumption. That’s what makes it popular. Unfortunately, it obscures our ability to find new, and old, music out there that could be the new anthem of our age. Whatever age we may be at the time.
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I believe there are many unknown songs and artists just as deserving of being listened to as much as what we are force fed by popular media. We might be able to find those gems in the disposable media landscape of YouTube and Facebook, but those mediums are geared towards quick, viral videos of fluff. Entertaining, they are. Fulfilling creatively, they are not.
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I don’t blame the pop artists. They all have talent and are trying to make a living doing what they love. It is the money machine of the industry that drives the production of the music we hear on the radio. Mass production of cake music. Sweet. Delicious. Made from a musical recipe just like everything that came before it.
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I have aged and I don’t have the same issues as when I was in my teens and twenties. I listen to music from my youth because it triggers within me thoughts and feelings of those times. Some good. Some shitty. I feel younger again for a moment. But I am not that age anymore.
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Is there creative stuff out there that would appeal to me at my age? If so, does it have a chance to reach me through the mire of pop culture?
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My tastes have matured passed the songs that are about love, loss, and sex in the young adult phase of life. If I was exposed to more songs about what it is like to be forty, separated and struggling with parenthood and a new self-identity, then I would totally be listening to that album or radio station.
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I may not be looking for heroes like my younger versions but I still need them. I still want them. And I wouldn’t necessarily call them heroes. Maybe, mentors. Or even more precisely, peers.
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Some bands from my youth from back in the 90’s are still around making new music and touring, perhaps, more so than they were at the height of their popularity back then. Foo Fighters and Green Day to name two. And who I didn’t see in concert until within the past three years.
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The fact they are still producing good music at ages close to 50 years old is a testament that age doesn’t matter for relevancy. It is substance.
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Don stated that if we wanted to see how good songs were made we would have to look back and listen to music before the 1980’s. I don’t think that is accurate. Plenty of good and great songs have been written since then.
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I will agree that good music will stand the test of time and if you to go back to music before the 80’s, you will see that every band and artist after that were influenced by the blues and rock gods of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s.
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Over the years, I have thought about how much music has been made over the decades that has gone unlistened to. We know the hits but that is only the tip of the musical iceberg. Due to the push for the next person to be heard and the next hit song to be played on the airwaves, we miss out on so much.
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And we all have a chance to be heard now. Our voice and art can be put out there much more easily. There are so many of us creatives that want to be heard. I want to be heard; otherwise, I’d write all this in a private journal.
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Hell, I even wrote a post a while back all but asking for people to start a dialogue on my site.
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We scream this through the Internet using social media venues, “Pay attention to me. Listen to me so I can believe that my ideas and voice mean something. Comment below. Give a Like. Copy is link to post on another site you visit.”
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So many of us have things to say and we want someone to listen to and acknowledge our work, so that we feel self-worth.
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Don had a great comment that if we put beautiful stuff in us, we’ll get beautiful stuff out. I believe that goes for a lot of things in life. Good art. Good music. Good thoughts. We reap what we sow. There is a reason for that saying.
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I make my art under the iceberg. There is a lot of art made under here by a lot of people and it is worth checking out. Maybe I’ll check out some of Don McLean’s other songs located under here.
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And here you are. Thanks for stopping by under the iceberg.
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Nate
Life Supernova 