The first time it was appropriate to use the names Michael Jackson and Jarvis Cocker in the same sentence occurred in 1996, when the fey, gangly front man of the band Pulp hijacked the stage during an I-Am-Christ-Arisen display from the Crackpot King of Pop at a British awards show. That incident earned Mr. Cocker Read More
As Boy George never sang but ably demonstrated, every chameleon runs the risk of shedding one skin too many. Performers skilled in image manipulation face an eternally uncertain future: What if the next phase is the one that causes the audience to run screaming for the hills? Michael Jackson and Prince are the most momentous Read More
There was a time when Artistic Overreach was a dreaded but inevitable stage of a performer’s career trajectory. Hot on the heels of a colossal mainstream success, a singer or group would respond to the yearning within them to rip up the hit blueprint and leap into the abyss. Thus would follow concept albums, monstrous, Read More
Every dog derided as hopelessly uncool in one decade has its day somewhere down the line. Look at the entities that have blossomed under the light of recent reappraisal. Disco? Cool. The Bee Gees? Cool. Burt Bacharach? Cool. Kiss? Cool. Fleetwood Mac? Cool. Such belated iconography is invariably intended ironically but has the effect of Read More
It’s been a good month for Malcolm McLaren. After almost a decade of stillborn projects, he suddenly owns pieces of the music publishing rights on two American No. 1 albums. Samples of songs with which he was at best tenuously involved give him composition credits on Mariah Carey’s Butterfly and Janet Jackson’s The Velvet Rope Read More
Oprah Winfrey launched the 12th season of her afternoon talk show recently, allaying fears that she might be retiring from the talk circuit with the announcement that she would be wielding a microphone at least until 1999; that way, she could use the medium to do good. Then she sat down and interrogated Mariah Carey Read More
