Happy birthday Mr. Kanye West, 32 years old today. He was recently quoted as: “I look at our current superstars like legends in the making. Like Justin [Timberlake] is the new [Michael Jackson], Beyonce's the new Tina Turner, [Lady] Gaga's Madonna, Jay[-Z] is [Frank] Sinatra ... [Lil] Wayne is [Jimmy] Hendrix, Thom Yorke is Roger Waters, these are the champions and should be documented as such…” I assume he was speaking in all capitol letters.
The point he was making, I suppose, was that we’re entering a new golden age of pop, and by association, an age of big. This got me thinking about the last golden age of pop, the 1980s, and the pop wasteland that followed, the 90s, when genres ruled. The former produced megastars, the latter, Cobainian anti-heroes.
We were missing something, for all those garage rock years. Where was the scale? Where was the pageantry? Explosions, fireworks, Jon Bon Jovi flying around on wires. A show was just that, a show. Maybe it’s just one of my many nostalgias for a past I never lived, but I welcome the new megastardom and its accompanying scale and inevitable megalomania. I’m just waiting for Kanye’s rock opera. (rap opera?)
No comments:
Post a Comment