I am heartened by the attention being given to Prince upon his untimely passing. I was 13 when Elvis died and it was not treated as a big deal on this level. (Of course, that was not an age of 24/7 media saturation. The death of John Lennon three years later was different; that was treated more like a political assassination than like a typical music-industry death.)
The world of culture — of art, books, music, cinema — is, ultimately, more important than the world of politics. They used to say that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of mankind. Not so unacknowledged, not any more.
I remember in 1984, I confided to everyone who would listen my youthful enthusiasm for the notion that Prince was the Mozart of our time, and my belief that his music would last a long, long time. Nobody agreed with me. I make no great claims for my prescience; after all, who knows what the judgment of future generations will be? In the America of 2516, our era might be remembered chiefly as the Age of Miley, or of Kenny G. I say only this, that my prediction looks more plausible today than it did 32 years ago.
R.I.P.
(NB. No diss intended of Miley Cyrus or Kenny G. They do good work in their genres, and I have enjoyed some of it. I use them merely as examples of performers today’s “cool kids” don’t like.)
UPDATE: The death of Elvis has been named as a turning point in media coverage of the death of prominent musicians, and of nonpolitical news generally. In a fascinating article, Union University broadcast-journalism professor Steven Beverly makes the case that modern “celebrity journalism” dates to that event. ABC made the bold decision to begin its evening newscast with a seven-minute segment on Elvis – but CBS didn’t make Elvis the lead story at all. As an early-teens Elvis fan, I thought the coverage was inadequate to the moment. It’s reasonable to believe that the higher ratings for more-extensive Elvis coverage encouraged the shift of priorities of which we see the culmination today.
UPDATE #2: I confess that I bridle at the lumping in of all arts-related stuff into the catchall phrase of “celebrity journalism.” In the most famous definition, a “celebrity” is “someone who’s famous for being famous.” But those of us who love, e.g., Elvis, don’t love him because he was famous, but rather because of what he himself loved – music – and all the beautiful performances that that passion inspired him to create. “Celebrity journalism” is about the fact that Elvis had substance-abuse problems, relationship problems, all kinds of problems; in other words, it’s basically gossip, and all gossip, about everybody, is pretty much the same. What’s not the same – what we should be grateful for, what matters – is the work, what the person did to make the world a better and happier place. Any jackass can pop pills or have sex scandals; but not everybody can create an eternal “Heartbreak Hotel,” “American Trilogy,” “Suspicious Minds” – or “Little Red Corvette” and (good heavens, one of the most beautiful songs ever written) “Nothing Compares 2 U.”