Read and discuss:

 

WHERE HAVE ALL THE SUPERSTARS GONE?

By Mark Ellen 30/03/2007

 

WHEN I was a teenager you couldn't move for superstars. They were everywhere in the 70s. Great monoliths casting their shadows across the musical landscape.

 

You had homegrown legends like Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, growling sexual predators who traumatised parents.

 

You had cartoon giants like Elton John who had a pair of spectacles with windscreen-wipers on them, and Rod Stewart with his hair like a pineapple.

 

There were pyrotechnic wizards like Daltrey and Townshend and Plant and Page, and mystic minstrels like Van Morrison. You had stylised crooners like David Bowie and Bryan Ferry and if you thought about even the drummer from The Beatles for too long you'd have to go and have a lie-down.

 

Across the Atlantic there were creatures even more exotic as they were Americans and thus possessed of extra mystery.

 

Windswept troubadours like Joni Mitchell and Neil Young. Princes Of Darkness like Lou Reed. Cosmic folkprophets like Bob Dylan. Some even had the decency to die at the age of 27 - Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin - thus rocketing their status into the stratosphere of immortality.

 

They were superstars on an unprecedented level. Anyone 10 years older would say they'd never reach the heights of Elvis, but to us Elvis was a fading movie star.

 

You couldn't imagine how any future stars could outrank these legends of the first two decades of rock 'n' roll. And you still can't, because they haven't.

 

What the hell happened? We sat through punk waiting for a new Bowie - and what did we get? An army of footsoldiers like The Damned, the Sex Pistols and The Stranglers who only produced one star between them - John Lydon.

 

But he became a caricature who retired from music and now maintains his celebrity through reality shows and swearing on TV. Only Paul Weller has survived with sufficient cachet to close the Brits.

 

And what of the 80s? Simon Le Bon, Boy George, Gary Kemp, Phil Oakey, Kim Wilde, Suggs - none has been able to develop any permanence.

 

Madonna has a position but it's cold and distant. Sting comes close but his earnest jazz-edged musings as a solo act have made him less charismatic than as part of the reformed Police.

 

The 90s was an improvement but not by much. We got Liam Gallagher and Ian Brown, though both are dented by appearing to have bought the book that explains what's expected of a star and studied every page. So here we are in 2007 facing an unavoidable truth - we've only produced two top-grade, rock legends in the past 30 years.

 

One is a super-charged singer, lyricist and political activist with the advantage of coming from Ireland - making him seem an independent spirit to Europeans and part of a romantic fatherland for many Americans.

 

And yesterday's receipt of his honorary knighthood won't dent his charisma. He's Bono.

 

The other is a sexually ambiguous matinee idol whose every song title is an art statement and whose every opinion sounds as if broadcast from a universe free from the irritations endured by us mortals. He's Morrissey.

 

I've edited music magazines for the past 25 years and I can tell you only these two currently tick all four boxes that define a true mass-market superstar. They sell concert tickets, they sell merchandise, they sell records and they sell magazines.

 

And the reason we've produced only two is the massmarket is disappearing.

 

In the 70s, rock broadly divided in two - massmarket acts who filled the charts, and "the underground" - progressive rock hippies, folk hobbits, low-level operators playing electronic music.

 

Now the underground is taking over and the megastores subdivide into hundreds of tiny categories - Nu Rave, Hi-NRG, alt-country, dubstep, grebo - all self-contained republics with their own scaled-down legends.

 

And because these music stores offer huge catalogues from the past no one is in a hurry to get to the Next Big Thing - they're still exploring the Last Big Thing from 40 years ago.

 

To a teenager today, "new" doesn't mean recent, it means "new to me". If you're discovering Hendrix or Nirvana, the Arctic Monkeys can wait. You'll get around to them later. Their music will never be deleted and you'll always be able to see them on YouTube.

 

Lily Allen, Mika, Robbie Williams, KT Tunstall - none will reach the status of the old superstars. They'll just carve out a living as biggish fish in smaller ponds.

 

The stars of the 60s and 70s had a novelty which rock music can no longer supply.

 

They were moving forward without maps. They were ploughing their own furrows. The relationships they forged with their following were so intense that new generations can still feel the heat.

 

There's one last reason why it's hard to find a new Mick or Keith or Macca or Dylan or Bowie or Elton, Lou Reed or Joni Mitchell.

 

The old ones are all still here.

 

MARK Ellen is the editor of The Word magazine whose 50th issue is on sale now.

 

features@mirror.co.uk

Full Truth :D

 

They are NO legends nowadays. :(

Mika, Robbie...give them time! and I don´t think Morrisey is big outside the UK!

I think Anastacia will be a legend because of her voice: seems to be black because it sounds deep,powerful,... and her life...fighting against Breast Cancer and surviving...fighting against Chron Disease and having anorexia...thanks God she healthy now :D so she should be a legend ^_^

I think Robbie is the closest thing we have to a legend now... pop careers don't have the duration they used to have.

I think Madge is still a superstar. I think having less these days is a good thing as it means everybody has more chance for success instead of some people failing and the 'superstars' being guaranteed success and sales.

The music scene has been diversifying since the 1970s, the result being that more and more acts get a chance to be heard and have their 5 minutes of success.

 

British Hit Singles once wrote in a mid-90s edition that since the the early 80s only a handful of superstars had appeared on the music scene to have anything resembling global success, George Michael, Madonna, a revitalised Michael Jackson and the then-most recent Mariah Carey. Since then fame has been even more fleeting and often limited to one or two countries. Oasis never really did much more than have one highly successful album outside the UK and much of what sells in the US has passed the UK (and elsewhere) by.

 

I don't agree with the observation made about Morrissey, he may have been vital in the UK in the period around the mid-80s but his career had been in seemingly permanent decline until "You Are The Quarry"

erm... prince??? michael jackson??? jamiroquai??

Jamiroquai has not sold enough records to be considered a superstar. MJ has faded from superstar status as hes not had a hit album for ages and ages and same with Prince - people like Mariah outsell them these days. Possibly the last true superstars were Cher and Spice Girls, at the end of the 90s, and Shania Twain - they all had MEGA sales.

Rihanna will be :heart:

 

 

 

 

... Kidding -_-

 

Erm, I think Robbie Williams, Girls Aloud to some extent and Will Young are considered superstars

Only in Britain for GA and Will Young though, and a superstar has to be global, right?

Mark Ellen = the Full truth.

 

The main reason for this is the lack of mystery about an artist. This is the age of multi-media, with hundreds of TV channels, and the internet where information is freely available to find out through a ridiculously high amount of different mediums.

 

There was no such thing as (the social cancer that is) Reality TV even back in the 1980s.

 

For example look at Britain's biggest Star of the last 15 years Robbie Williams, he has done countless intervews, made countless documentaries or TV specials. Therefore, it is not that much of an event when he does a TV show.

 

Today's Popstars are just too freely available to their audience, because the Music Business has become LESS about the art or creativity of the MUSIC and more & MORE about the BUSINESS, the Records (which are less experimental and much more formulaic), Tour & Merchandise Sales; while being able to present themselves effectively on TV & Radio shows when they have new material out, etc.

 

The likes of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Kate Bush or David Bowie never did those sort of things and when they did it was a major event. But the reason why they were so successful was because their MUSIC was GREAT, not the marketing, image or hype.

 

However I do think there has been one ICONIC act within the last 15 years: Radiohead. But that is because they have been hugely successful by making great music without resulting to selling themselves out appearing on the likes of Parkinson, David Letterman, MTV :Making The Video, etc.

I agree that multiple interviews etc make stars less mysterious and therefore they are not catapulted to super status, but i think this is a good thing - the more people see their fave acts on tv etc, the more you can get to like them etc, its a good thing. And I think Coldplay are possibly the biggest British superstars of noughties so far..

Natasha Bedingfield will be :smoke:

Hmmm I agree about Natasha actually, she's doing really good in the US and obv in the UK and Europe, so she definetly has the potential to be one unlike her brother :kink:

Did this article come from the Mirror?

 

That is so strange, because I read this feature "Where Have All The Superstars Gone" a couple of months ago in The Times, I still have the double page spread.

 

This is not only a pinch of the same article its also been changed to reflect this journalist personal views.

 

Okay that could be said about the original article but it didn't come across as a personal reflection of preferance, because that original article was based on statistics.

 

No matter, but if it is of any interest that feature highlights Robbie as the only UK act today as a confirmed superstar alongside Madonna with each of those acts being probably the last of their kind. Superstars.

 

 

 

 

Oh and surely global superstars include Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake and Kelly Clarkson [well... she may not be there just yet]

Christina Aguilera!!

maybe.... :wub:

I care not for any of them anyway.

I have my own superstars who are susperstars for me not because they're around for years or sell millions of records - because they have an impact on my life.

 

 

I think Anastacia will be a legend because of her voice: seems to be black because it sounds deep,powerful,... and her life...fighting against Breast Cancer and surviving...fighting against Chron Disease and having anorexia...thanks God she healthy now :D so she should be a legend ^_^

 

But well, Mariah, Celine, Whitney all had "the voice" and were worlwide sucessful, yet none of them had been considered "legends" by the criteria of this article´s author, so Anastacia won´t. And also, diseases don´t make anyone more legendary.

 

I don´t understand the criteria this author has used. Like Kurt Cobain and Axl Roses were not legends, but Morrisey is????