Others enthusiastically agreed, only to later bail out. So what’s it like, I wondered, to still be doing this “job” at 35, and 52, and beyond? What’s it like to have released your debut album to a global roar, and your 12th to barely a whisper? Why the continued compulsion to create at all, to demand yet more adulation? Frankly, what’s the point? Do I unashamedly want to still be one of the biggest artists in the world? Yeah, I do Robbie WilliamsĪnd so, armed with a batch of potentially indelicate questions – because who likes to discuss failure? – I began to reach out to musicians from various genres and eras, those who hadn’t died young, but were still here, still working, to ask them what it was like in the margins.Ī great many never bothered to respond. Despite his enduring success, Dylan has suggested he couldn’t write the songs he wrote in his 20s in his later years, at least not in the same way or with the same instinct, largely because, after that early momentum has fizzled out, things settle down into simply the thing that you do, with all the humdrum ennui associated with that. A songwriter once told me, citing Bob Dylan, that “artists tend to write their best songs between the ages of 23 and 27”. Like sportsmen and women, they peak early.

They dared to dream, and then went out and made that dream come true.īut falling back down to earth, in this business, is an inescapable certainty. Artists may not always be the best people to operate the heavy machinery of adulthood, but they remain tenacious, driven and inspirational. But then perhaps all pop stars are? They’re fascinating individuals, compelling and gifted, not short of self-confidence and, yes, occasionally a little odd, too.

Rock Star by Su Williams