February 10, 2007
From the desk of Jane Galt:Good question
Scott Adams asks:
Have you ever wondered why great musicians can’t keep cranking out hits every year? Consider Neal Diamond, for example. He wrote and recorded some of the greatest songs ever. But then the hits stopped coming, despite the fact that his talent probably improved with experience.He’s not alone. That’s the normal pattern. Most musicians have their time, and then it’s over. How do you explain it?
Lots of great artists such as the Rolling Stones continue to draw huge crowds. But they don’t produce number one hits anymore. And the most popular songs in their concerts are the hits from the past. Do the Rolling Stones have less talent than they did when they were in their twenties? It seems unlikely.
Leaving aside the Neal Diamond thing, it's a good point. It's also true of physicists, mathemeticians, many novelists, and most poets. Call it the "lump of creativity" problem. That's why I'm holding off writing my great novel until at least my fifties.
Here's the less interesting musical question I was pondering last night: on their third album, how come Hem put all the songs that suck at the beginning? I almost stopped listening by song four, which would have been a mistake.
Posted by Jane Galt at February 10, 2007 11:46 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links"); ?>I've heard at least one poet say that they got less creative as they got older. More knowledge or skill doesn't always lead to more creativity.
The question is, can you reverse it. There are some nootropics like hydergine which claim to be able to, by acting on the gabanergic system. I've tried them and they seem to have a moderate effect, but it also tended to make my thoughts a little more random (like they seemed to be when I was younger. Though I'm not so old now.) But it's hard to objectivly judge my own work.
If you consider that most musicians struggle for years before making it big, when they get their break they have a catalog of songs they've been working on for years. That might carry them for a few albums, then suddenly they've used up their life's work so to speak, and they have to write 12 songs in a couple of months for all the albums going forward.
At least that is my theory as to why my favorite records by just about every rock artist in my collection is their early stuff.
Jane,
In light of such age limitations, don't you think that novel should be written ASAP?
Posted by: Yancey Ward on February 10, 2007 1:16 PMThis is an interesting article relevant to the idea of a "lump of creativity". It mentions Mark Twain and Alfred Hitchcock as examples of artists who did important work late in their careers.
I'd argue Beethoven is an example of a musician who continuously improved, though he may be the exception that proves the rule. A musician's talent wouldn't necessarily improve with age, but their skill would. I just have a picture of an older artist improving their work through disciplined introspection. And that would seem to fit more with classical music than rock and roll.
Posted by: dorkafork on February 10, 2007 1:27 PMArtists stop having hits because styles change and they don't.
Posted by: Larry on February 10, 2007 1:31 PMBach. Any of the Strausses.
I think there's a selection bias in the sample.
Posted by: Charlie (Colorado) on February 10, 2007 1:40 PMPerhaps part of the problem is that if an artists settles into a style, they run out of new things to do with it. Some of my favorite long-running artists are the ones who experimented with a wide range of sounds, because they're clearly having fun with the experience rather than trying to crank out another variation on where they've already been.
Posted by: anony-mouse on February 10, 2007 1:45 PMI think it may have to do with the financial situation of the artist. If the musician is starving, then she must produce something salable and thus perceived as high-quality to the market. Once an artist has made her millions on that hit CD, she is more free to produce what she wants, as opposed to what we want. And what she wants often doesn't sound so good.
Posted by: Carter on February 10, 2007 2:17 PMDavid Galenson, at U. Chicago, is the seminal source on this question, and in fact someone (could it be his RA?) runs a whole blog on this topic alone, namely the age profile of achievement. Wish I could remember the link. Great novels can be written in old age because they do not require blockbuster innovation but rather refinement of technique.
Posted by: Tyler Cowen on February 10, 2007 2:17 PMIt's Neil Diamond, folks. There was a "Neal Diamond" who lived down the street from my wife's parents when he she was growing up, and she once hung up the phone on him, thinking that his call was a prank!
Posted by: RMc on February 10, 2007 3:13 PMSlate had a good article on this by a mathematician named Jordan Ellenberg a few years ago.
It was specifically about Grisha Perelman*, who at the time was submitting his proof of the hundred-odd-year-old Poincaré Conjecture.
In most people's minds, a 40-year-old man is as likely to be a productive mathematician as he is to be a major league center fielder or an interesting rock musician. Mathematical progress is supposed to occur not through decades of experience and toil but all at once, in a numinous blaze, to a born genius.
If anything, really prolific mathmatical geniuses are getting older, just because the amount of background material keeps growing. Ellenberg closes by noting that Poincaré was 50 years old and in the middle of the most productive phase of his career when he formulated his conjecture.
I don't know much about Mr. Diamond or his music, but I've always thought that most of the music acts out there with hordes of screaming fans are reenacting the Beatles-on-Ed-Sullivan cultural script, which emphasizes the youth, subversiveness, and culural similarity of the performers to the audience.
Conversely, some of my jazz-playing friends tell me that Muzak, Inc. employs most of the world's most technically gifted jazz musicians.**
* Whose subsequent eccentricities have removed all doubt that he is in fact a genius of the first rank.
** I have to admit that my sources spend about 90% of their waking hours stoned off their gourds, so this might be bunk. But the larger point remains: how many musical geniuses can you name?
Posted by: John Deszyck on February 10, 2007 3:25 PM Jane,
A good read on this subject(composers) is "Melancholy Elephants",by Spider Robinson.Also,although it's not the rule,Feymann and Bardeen both cranked out Nobel level work late in their career.
And,althoughiI'm ashamed of it,my ex-who is much too young to remember Neil as a finctioning hit maker was always rendered mushy by his songs.I used that information -and the magic aphrodisiac alcohol-to good effect on her
I thought about this a while ago, and the answer I came to was this: art is a crapshoot. There is no general way to know, in advance, whether your artwork will be regarded as good or not. If there were, we could program computers to consistently produce better stuff. No one, not even art experts, knows why a given work is good or not. As an expert why the Mona Lisa is so much better than art from the same time. There is no concrete answer.
Therefore, we should not expect the success of an artist's (n+1)th album to have any correlation with the success of the nth album. Unlike mutual fund managers (at the end of their careers anyway), artists are judged by their best work, not their average work.
Posted by: Person on February 10, 2007 3:55 PMA few thoughts.
Capacity. Perhaps some creative people have so much to say and no more. Just as a carton of eggs empties.
Subject. The genius comes to a topic that has no potential and is stopped cold. Classical geometry was tried for centuries to trisect an angle. False proofs abounded. Finally algebra proved it could not be done.
Burnout. Intense concentration seems sometimes to lead to nightmares and mental problems. But only for some. The sufferer may just stop or coast as a defense.
Distraction. The more valuable your thoughts are the more people want to share in them. Awards, conferences, mentoring, and celebrity take time away from new work.
Posted by: K on February 10, 2007 3:59 PMWith regards to the arts, your question seems to assume that popularity has to do with quality and creativity but I suspect that the connection is with trendiness or fashionability instead. For example, the reason why few contemporary musicians have longevity as hitmakers is probably because tastes change. It must be very difficult to keep on top of what sounds are currently popular and then to adapt your output to match.
With scientists and the like, I think that the culprit may be the fact that induction is a form of creativity. Human minds tend to become increasing set in their thought patterns as we age and so we are less likely to make such leaps of intuition as make for exceptional hypotheses.
As to Hem, which album or albums are referring to? I loved every track on Rabbit Songs but haven't liked any of their later cds nearly as well.
Posted by: Jay on February 10, 2007 4:42 PMClassical geometry was tried for centuries to trisect an angle. False proofs abounded. Finally algebra proved it could not be done.
Algebra proved that it could not be done with an unmarked straightedge, perhaps, but it is geometrically possible:
http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/docs/forum/angtri/
Posted by: anony-mouse on February 10, 2007 6:36 PMI don't think that lump of creativity arguement is right. In fact, I think its an example of attribution bias.
Two things are going on:
One: The creativity process is composed of both talent and luck. When luck hits it hits. There is no reason to expect it to hit again. So it would be rare to see a consistent stream of hits from anything but the greatest of talents.
Two: Creativity and especially academic creativity often represent a single insight or realization or style.
For example if you chase through Ronald Coase's career you see that his major insight that cutting deals matter. The firm is important because it helps us cut deals. Externalities exist because we fail to cut deals, etc.
Paul Krugman's realization was that Dixit-Stiglitz can explain why different places, be they cities or nations are different.
Posted by: Karl Smith on February 10, 2007 8:30 PMSurely I'm not the only one wondering why drinking Dewar's is risible but believing that Neil Diamond wrote and recorded some of the greatest songs ever is not?
Posted by: Paul Zrimsek on February 10, 2007 9:40 PMMusic comes from within a person. I don't how mystically or non-mystically you interpret that statement, as it works for me either way.
Every musician is a finite person. Eventually, they run out of music they can write. Eventually, every composer is stuck writing music that sounds pretty much like what they already wrote, in undefinable ways. I have a number of composers that I really like, but quite a few of them are clearly ending up in this scenario.
(Some people seem to have only one song in them. The Dave Matthews Band leaps to mind. My wife has several of their CDs and I can barely tell any of their songs apart.)
I believe that if a musician directly tried to get out of their comfort zone after twenty years, they might be able to escape this, but few seem motivated enough to try. Another possibility is collaboration with someone with a very different way of thinking, but this is hard for composition, which is among the most solitary of all creative pursuits. (Ironic, considering how the rest of music tends to be among the least solitary.)
Posted by: Jeremy Bowers on February 10, 2007 9:54 PM"Surely I'm not the only one wondering why drinking Dewar's is risible but believing that Neil Diamond wrote and recorded some of the greatest songs ever is not?"
This should be the comment of the week.
Posted by: Brian Engler on February 11, 2007 12:17 AMI think many artists (especially rock musicians) have a limited number of ideas which they exhaust quite rapidly.
Posted by: Steve M on February 11, 2007 3:42 AMCreative period for most artist is in their 40's and 50's. Young people lack experience, and older people generally loses their faculty. That's essentially how the human brain is wired. People tend to lose their creative powers once they age past 60's.
If you're doing creative work, start in your 40's and try to ride it out as long as you can.
U2 keep cranking out the hits. Michelangelo never had a dull moment. Beethoven got better as he got older. It's better to start earlier in my opinion, and get the embarrassing mistakes out of the way. Many artists and writers created a lot of rubbish before the gems arrived. As Charles Murray pointed out in Human Accomplishment, creating great art requires endless trial and error labour. Michelangelo would destroy beautiful sculptures if they contained a minor fault, and would start over. I would not advise anybody to wait until their fifties to write a book or something. Life experience is overrated, hard work is more important.
Posted by: adrian on February 11, 2007 7:49 AMSurvivor bias?
Musicians who would have done their best work in their 50's are less likely to remain in the business into their 50's.
Posted by: Scott Wood on February 11, 2007 7:51 AMI think that, as far as music is concerned, that I agree with several of the previous posters - if you want to "keep cranking out hits" you need to change with musical taste. Madonna is an extreme example of this, as well as U2 (they sound a LOT different now) and even Aerosmith.
Posted by: Doug on February 11, 2007 10:22 AMMaking fun of Neil Diamond is shooting fish in a barrel. With a howitzer.
Posted by: Jane Galt on February 11, 2007 10:40 AMI'd like to agree on the making fun of Neil Diamond thing, except that he's about a hundred times better than the crap that gets passed off as music nowadays. Which is not to say that I particularly like Neil Diamond; merely that music today is so very, very crappy.
As for artists and genius, Vivaldi was for centuries regarded as a minor composer of little note until he was "discovered" in the second half of the twentieth century. Now his Four Seasons is one of the most popular pieces of classical music in the world. It seems unlikely that Vivaldi finally found his artistic genius long after his death.
Rather, works of "genius" in the arts are dependent on the public's changing tastes and fashions. I'd say it's mainly a matter of luck that an artist's style happens to match what the public wants, and as the public's taste changes there's no reason to expect lightning to strike twice.
Posted by: DRB on February 11, 2007 11:19 AMThe example of this I always think of is Stevie Wonder. While some of the production is dated, his songwriting was amazing. I think a lot of his classic songs would be hits if they were first releasd today. And, while not as prolific as he once was, he's still creating new music.
Yet his new music doesn't even register. Why is that? My best guess is that it's not the quality of music, it's that popular music is for the young and music create for (and from) your parent's generation can't be popular. Alternatively, the generation that grew up with it doesn't want to hear new stuff, they want nostalgia.
In other words, it's not that the artist stagnates, it's that (with rare exceptions) the fans don't grow with the artist.
Posted by: SG on February 11, 2007 11:30 AMNeil Diamond: "... recorded some of the greatest songs ever."
The Rolling Stones: "... great artists ..."
Assuming this isn't satire, I volunteer to send Mr. Adams a CD or two of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington -- or even better, Mozart or Bach. Referring to these popsters as "great" is an abasement of the language.
Countless classical and jazz greats were churning out great music on their deathbeds. (Granted, the jazz lifestyle might have had an influence ...) Perhaps this "lump of creativity" issue only applies to those wanting to generate "hits." Or those who confuse greatness with popularity.
A quote from Star Trek comes to mind:
Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. You can't simply say, "Today I will be brilliant."
--James T. Kirk, speaking to Dr. McCoy about Dr. Richard Daystrom in "The Ultimate Computer."
Posted by: M. Scott Eiland on February 11, 2007 1:58 PMThe Economist ran a story on a related topic some years back. Without specific regard to talent, statistics show that the number of male musical performers tracks quite well to sex drive - in other words, writing/performing is a way to try to impress the opposite sex.
I don't think it's the artists, I think it's the culture. Many artists do what they do better as they get older, but that perfect moment when what they are offering resonates with the transient tastes of the public passes. That, and the new stuff they produce is, necessarily, similar to what they've already done before, so it simply cannot sound new and fresh in the same way. And then first major album by many musicians contains all the best stuff they've come up with over many years of playing in obscurity. In that way, it's kind of a 'greatest hits' package before the fact. But albums to follow have to be written from scratch in a much shorter period of time.
I have many albums done by both 'has beens' after their peak and relatively unknown 'never beens' that are incredibly good. It's amazing (and depressing) how much fantastic little-known music there is out there.
I have no interest in making fun of Neil Diamond, who did a number of decent songs. People who think those decent songs were some of the greatest ever, on the other hand, are pretty amusing.
Posted by: Paul Zrimsek on February 11, 2007 11:13 PMMy explanation is the simplest one that accounts for all of the data.
Posted by: Person on February 12, 2007 12:10 AMAssuming this isn't satire, I volunteer to send Mr. Adams a CD or two of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington -- or even better, Mozart or Bach. Referring to these popsters as "great" is an abasement of the language.
Snif, snif. "My art's better than your art, nyah, nyah, nyaahhhh!"
Neil Diamond is probably the most important American songwriter between the Tin Pan Alley days and Prince.
Yes, Prince. Everyone raved at his Super Bowl show, but, having seen the guy several times in concert, I thought it was fairly ordinary...by Prince standards, that is. Meaning that he was only better than 95% of the music out there, rather than 100%.
Posted by: RMc on February 12, 2007 7:33 AMWith science and mathematics, I wonder if there isn't a cultural bias. I come from science, so I can't speak directly about mathematics.
Most of the heavy lifting in science gets done by graduate students and post docs. While the primary investigator gets all of the kudos, and in many cases does a lot of important mental work, all the grunt work and a big portion of the tactical decision making is done by underlings.
A PI can make waves (and thus get big $$ grants) by a.) producing novel science, which is most important to him or her at the early stage of their career or b.) producing great scientists to follow in the PI's wake.
This is a pretty skeletal and perhaps weak model, but given it, how much incentive would there be to find oldsters with talent?
Another factor that occurs to me is the front-end selection process. Either you get over the tenure hurdle or you don't, so there is some selection bias there, too- if you were going to be a great scientist in middle age, but only mediocre or passable as a youngster, you might never get the chance to shine later.
And in many non-academic science careers, the best get shuttled into management.
Posted by: Dave Eaton on February 12, 2007 9:53 AMI think nostalgia plays a role in this phenomenon. Many musicians do change and grow as they age, but most of their fans are aging with them. The hard-core fans are buying the new albums, but more casual fans only have the older ones, or even just the best-of albums. They want to hear the stuff they know, stuff they loved when they were young.
Larry also makes a good point about changing styles. Some performers are able to reinvent themselves. (Cher and Madonna come to mind.) I admire that talent, but it's quite different from musical talent.
Posted by: sprite on February 12, 2007 10:22 AMThe older you get the more you "loose touch" with whats going on in the mainstream.
Posted by: getting old on February 12, 2007 11:48 AMNeil Diamond is probably the most important American songwriter between the Tin Pan Alley days and Prince.
Hmmm. Define "important" -- in your context -- please. Evocative? Emotional? Poetic? Neil runs roughshod over, say, Billy Strayhorn?
Snif, snif. "My art's better than your art, nyah, nyah, nyaahhhh!"
Well, yes (ahem), it is. Since we're discussing "greatness" (or I thought we were) come off the playground into the classroom. What original contributions, precisely, have Mr. Diamond or Prince contributed to music and songwriting -- that, say, outstrip the artists I named?
I really am curious. When it comes to music I don't take terms like "greatness" or "importance" lightly ...
Posted by: Valjean on February 12, 2007 12:14 PMNeil Diamond is probably the most important American songwriter between the Tin Pan Alley days and Prince.
Um. I'd suggest that you might consider Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and Willie Nelson as contenders for that title.
One of my favorite artists is Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys. I admire him because he was always trying to top himself (and the Beatles) with a new and better sound that no one had heard before (at least in pop music).
The flip side of that is the pressure he put on himself to constantly achieve new and loftier heights in pop music innovation drove him into a massive nervous breakdown, whereupon he gave up trying anymore.
But we'll aleays have Pet Sounds, and he finally released Smile a few years ago. Heaven.
Posted by: Paul on February 12, 2007 5:34 PMBetween Tin Pan Alley and Prince there were some pretty spectacular songwriters working on Broadway, it seems to me.
Posted by: Chester White on February 13, 2007 1:04 AMThe relation the artist has to an audience seems to take precedence at a certain point, as the artist tries to keep a career going. This perhaps limits intuitive, inductive leaps; audience expectations begin to dictate certain moves: catering to an established style or breaking with it rebelliously or "selling out" by assimilating trends and so on. A previous body of work also looms over new work like a preponderance of evidence that constrains what conclusions can be drawn about the new piece, limiting how creative it's perceived to be.
Posted by: Rob on February 14, 2007 11:18 AMCould it be that they were just lucky? Old people don't generally have pop hits. The ones who got lucky and had a hit get the fans that stick around. Maybe past performance doesn't mean future results as much as we'd expect. They got lucky, fans are nostalgic for their lucky hits but that's it.
Posted by: Pat on February 14, 2007 9:35 PMSnif, snif. "My art's better than your art, nyah, nyah, nyaahhhh!"
Well, yes (ahem), it is. Since we're discussing "greatness" (or I thought we were) come off the playground into the classroom.
Music valjean likes: good, mature.
Music everybody else likes: bad, immature.
Got it. This is the main reason why I don't care much for jazz: because its defenders tend to be self-important twits.
Neil Diamond is probably the most important American songwriter between the Tin Pan Alley days and Prince.
Um. I'd suggest that you might consider Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and Willie Nelson as contenders for that title.
Point taken, and Brian Wilson is certainly a contender, too.
I'm actually not much of a Diamond fan, but the man's written and preformed so many good/popular songs, songs that still get played today, that he's tough to ignore as a cultural touchstone.
Still, all the people mentioned above and dwarfed in comparison to Lennon/McCartney. The Beatles music will still be popular a thousand years from now.
Could it be that they were just lucky? Old people don't generally have pop hits. The ones who got lucky and had a hit get the fans that stick around. Maybe past performance doesn't mean future results as much as we'd expect. They got lucky, fans are nostalgic for their lucky hits but that's it.
I already proposed that answer, Pat.
Posted by: Person on February 15, 2007 2:58 PM