Portrait of "The Artist" as a Relic of a Bygone Age
Prince – The Artist, the Indecipherable Symbol – belongs in a museum.
Because he’s ancient history.
Granted, many musicians/bands/acts belong in a museum, for who they were and what they represented. Some of them no longer exist in their famous iterations because a member or two died: Queen, Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, the Who. Some because they just broke up: The Beatles, Soundgarden, the Black Crowes. To name a few.
But some – including Prince – deserve their place pre-posthumously – including the Rolling Stones and (in the name of all that’s holy) Michael Jackson.
This is no honor – it is a declaration, a commandment, that you are no longer relevant, culturally or musically. You are the ruins of what you were twenty years ago (Stones, thirty years ago) and retro-fame is not as important or as honorable as fame.
Note: I am refraining from judgment on these bands; my personal taste has nothing to do with this commentary.
But, like other institutions in this world, your time has come and gone, and we have evolved and revolved past you. But we are being force-fed your image – not even your sound, but your image – when you did nothing to deserve it. If you release an album that makes a splash, that people buy because they see you, I can understand that. But when you exist for the sake of your persona, you become Paris Hilton.
Paris. Hilton.
MTV, VH1, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone: We’re lied to enough. Do us a favor and, even occasionally, report what people like, but don’t define it. I’m naive but I’m not stupid – I know this is how media and celebrity work. But these has-beens – talented as they were – are taking up valuable space in the periodicals and cultural consciousness of the moment.
Go away. We won’t have a chance to miss you if you’re not gone. If you live on in memory, congratulations. But if we forget you, maybe you deserve to be forgotten.
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