One of the premises of his new book, “Rock Star: The Making of Musical Icons From Elvis to Springsteen” (Johns Hopkins University Press, $29.95) is that the “star-maker machinery behind the popular song” of Joni Mitchell's “Free Man in Paris” has been irrevocably changed, and, in many ways, lost.
4 comments:
This article poses an interesting question to our current youth generation in how we appreciate and look to musicians and artists. This article really connected with me because I am currently taking a section of Interpretaiton and Argument based on David Byrne's "How Music Works". In this class, we talk about a lot of the same themes addressed in the article. Why I think that Shumway is right in his argument is because he has such a range of "rock stars" varying in all types of music. It is possible there may be fewer rock stars because rock has now taken a back seat to pop and hip-hop/rap, so I think it may be important for him to note that as well.
I can certainly see the idea that Rock is fading out of popularity, however I dont think it's a good thing to characterize the genre as "past its time" or anything of that nature. Yes, pop music has taken over as the most popular form of music, currently. However, as we see all throughout music history, things come back and fade in and out of popularity as tastes change. Generations get bored of a particular genre and the music industry responds to that demand. Even pop music itself has completely transformed in the past decade. I wouldn't be surprised to see Rock be reborn in some time.
This is quite interesting on what defines a ‘Rock Star’. Seems like there are many avenues that define the rock star. It would be interesting to see what the books says about rock stars and exactly how he defines them. Then how each of the artist in his book met that definition.
I am curious to know if the definition came first or did the ‘Rock Stars’.
The statements at the end of the article about how many of the musicians today he would consider more as entertainers I would agree with those statements.
Idol, Artist, Musicians, Entertainers, Rock Star and many other names to describe people that influence our lives in different ways. One should be aware no matter what.
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