Pop music
The return of the has-beens
Marcus Berkmann
When is someone so washed up that they actually qualify as washed up? It's hard to tell these days. Consider these recent events.
• An ancient heavy-metal singer and his family are the subjects of a reality TV series in the US. Though he hasn't made a decent record in decades, and is now a little old man with a stoop, the ancient heavymetal singer becomes a far greater star than ever before. His talent-free daughter is given a record contract and starts having hits; his porky teenage son, who wears ridiculous glasses and may be plucking his eyebrows, is said to be considering his options. Other former celebrities queue up to have reality TV series made about them too.
• Back in the UK, yet another reality TV series features a previously forgotten minor member of a long defunct boyband. While his former bandmates have progressed to megastardom and the territories beyond, this forgotten one released one weedy solo album, bought a farm and retired into private life. Now aged 30, he has lank hair and a weedy Lancashire accent. He wins the reality TV series by a landslide.
• Meanwhile, a former teenybop star of the early 1970s makes possibly his 87th concerted comeback attempt, with a primetime TV show and innumerable promotional appearances. Though 44, he looks absurdly youthful; no one can tell whether he's had it all lifted, woven and/or dyed. He remains a devout Mormon. He is just as useless as ever. And yet he is greeted with shrieks of adoration from generations of former fans. The husbands and partners of these former fans shake their heads in mute despair and stomp out to the pub.
Actually, once you've started this little game, you can't stop.
• A hugely popular broad-shouldered diva, who won't sing one note when 4,593 will do, is signed for $80 million by a record company. Unfortunately, just before her first album in the deal is released, she suffers a nervous breakdown and is committed to Barmpot Towers. The album stiffs, an accompanying film is seen by eight people worldwide and the record company gives the diva 528 million to go away. Her career is generally thought to be over. But a year later she reappears on another label with another album, pretending that nothing untoward happened. The whole world goes along with her, and the broad-shouldered diva is hugely popular once more.
• A sexpot pop star of the early 1980s sees her career decline. She is over 30, she is uninterested in plastic surgery, she has small children. So she retires from the fray. For something to do, she takes up gardening. She enjoys it. She acquires qualifications. News leaks out that a former sexpot pop star of the early 1980s is now a sexpot gardener. She is instantly offered columns on newspapers and weekly television appearances, and becomes a star all over again • Two old crooners from the 1950s stare retirement in the face. Most of their contemporaries are long dead. One has an incongruous grey curly wig perched on top of his head. The other plays a lot of golf. Their music is so out of fashion even they probably don't listen to it any more. Then some young club DJs, searching for something so out of fashion that it could feasibly become fashionable once more, start playing their music. It becomes fashionable once more. People start buying these old Radio Two staples on CD. The golf-playing crooner has a top ten hit with a song he first sang 30 years before. He records a duet with a young British lovely. The one with the wig has marketing dollars lavished upon his new recordings, and plays the Glastonbury festival. Whether this is ironic celebrity or the real thing doesn't matter. By dint of surviving, these two old wrecks become just as famous as they had ever been.
• A furious old drummer from a progressive rock group of the 1970s, having become a world-famous solo star in the 1980s, retreats into domestic bliss in Switzerland with his 17th wife. The world breathes again. He releases big-band recordings. No one notices. He composes a mushy soundtrack to a Disney cartoon. People block their ears. Now enraged beyond all reason, the furious drummer launches a widespread charm offensive and appears on all daytime chat shows to promote his rotten new record. And still no one buys it. Maybe there is some justice in the world after all.
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