Why Old Stars Dominate Pop Culture (Podcast)
As time permits, I’m doing more interviews on a range of subjects—offering hot (or cold) takes on everything from how to pursue a creative career to the Barbie movie.
This evening I’ll discuss the petition to give Duke Ellington the 1965 Pulitzer Prize with Shahidha Bari on BBC 4's show Front Row during the 7 P.M. hour (London time).
And this morning, my in-depth discussion with Derek Thompson of The Atlantic ‘dropped’ (what a charming word). We focused on why old stars are so dominant in popular culture.
Here’s a link to the podcast:
If you want to listen without going through Spotify, you should be able to do it at this link.
The Honest Broker is a reader-supported guide to music, books, and culture. Both paid and free subscriptions are available. If you want to support my work, the best way is by taking out a paid subscription.
Postscript: To be honest, the Barbie verdict was just a short exchange. If I recall correctly, it went like this:
INTERVIEWER: You’re very critical of movie reboots and remakes, but don’t the best artistic works of the past deserve to be celebrated and renewed?
TED: Well, yeah . . . but we’re talking the Barbie movie here.
Coming soon: The third (and final) installment of my “Gnarly Frank Zappa” essay; 20 predictions for the music industry in 10 years; and a big announcement about an exciting new extra for subscribers to The Honest Broker.
I listened to the entire show. Fascinating topic, the disruption of how any art gets onto the screens we stare at and the speakers we listen to, every day.
Another interesting facet will be how blockchain technology, specifically NFTs, will empower artists to plug their art into a distribution channel that is exclusive, yet widely available to integrate, and which shepherds the art through the distribution value chain, even unto the point of resale.
Yes, NFTs are suffering through the end stage of the early age of piracy and negative environmental impacts, but once this age has passed into an age of regulation, commercialization, and de-carbonization, the future might be very bright indeed for these musicians to retain more control and profit from their art.
Excellent conversation, Ted. I finally cleared up some budget to subscribe to this Substack.
I enjoyed the podcast and have many thoughts, but only one for now. I was in radio programming in the 60s and 70s and it was that industry that led the record business into the data-driven world. Initially, many top 40 stations just played whatever Billboard or Cash Box threw at them. Later, some started surveying local record sales in order to make their playlists a better reflection of reality (which in theory would lead to higher ratings and more advertising). Then in the early 70s stations began plugging their request lines and tabulating the most-requested songs, which often diverged from what the retail sales numbers were showing.
Finally, in the late 70s, stations began random telephone surveys in which snippets of songs were played down the line for respondents, who were asked to rate them. When PCs came along in the 80s, software was developed to schedule music, taking any choice out of the hands of the air talent. All of this, naturally, was accompanied by complaints about the homogenization of playlists, avoidance of new music, etc. The point is that the record labels were forced to develop real data because the radio programmers grew to demand it.
One of the great discoveries during this period was something mentioned in the podcast, that listeners kept liking songs long long after the DJs were sick of them. There was even a name for former #1s that were kept in moderate rotation for months and months: recurrents.