So I'm sitting here listening to the Crosby, Stills & Nash box set that Sarah got for me used from McKay's in Centreville. I'm now on disc 4, which mostly has group and solo stuff from the late 70s, the 80s, and the early 90s. Listening to some of this stuff, I again have to wonder what happens to certain artists. There seem to be few artists who can consistently produce good work over a long period of time. I don't know why artists feel their music has to "evolve" or something. I know music and musical tastes change with time. I know that music production today is different than it was when CS&N started. But why does it seem that most of the time, when musical artists evolve, it ends up sucking? U2, Elton John, Sting... the list goes on. The only group I can think of that really DID evolve and turned into something so much better than they originally were is the Beatles. Not that I hate their early stuff, but how can anyone compare that to Sgt. Pepper or the White Album? I know that taste in music is subjective and maybe someone out there actually likes Sting more than The Police, but this just seems to be a widespread, bizarre phenomenon. Maybe this condition is caused by the creative well running dry. If so and I were someone like Sting or Bono, I'd just give up on music instead of convincing myself that the crap I'm churning out is remotely good and oh so much more mature than what I was doing before.
At least The Cure has never let me down.