15 minutes

One of Andy Warhol's most famous predictions was that at some point in the future, everybody will be famous for 15 minutes. It was such a famous prediction that the term "15 minutes of fame" became part of the lexicon. I have only 2 things to say about this. Firstly it is an accurate prediction and secondly it has already happened.

I am mostly familiar with Western pop so I don't really know, but somewhere in 1998, there was the death of the phenomenon of the superstar. It used to be that every year there would be some new big names in pop music. I think that it's stopped. To be sure, there are still superstars like Britney Spears, Christina, Justin Timberlake. But has there been a band that became a cultural phenomenon, like how U2, REM, Guns and Roses, Bjork, Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins were the big stars of the 90s? I can't name any. Maybe Coldplay, but they aren't huge like the 90s stars.

Maybe that's why we have the 80s revival, perhaps we miss those simpler times when it was just Michael / Madonna / Bruce / Prince. Maybe we miss those certainties where there were very few who joined the club of those who had put out a record, and the stars were really stars. When people were famous for long enough to evolve in the public's eye, in the limelight, into something that had a personality, who could leave his unique mark on the cultural consciousness. Think about Elvis' hipshake. John Lennon's glasses. Madonna's pointed bra. Freddie Mercury's moustache. Even more minor stars left their mark - Slash's top hat. Kurt Cobain's eye shadow. Thom Yorke's squint. Liam Gallagher's eyebrows.

What can you say about Reuben Studdard other than he looks like Barry White? Or Clay Aitken other than he looks like Barry Manilow?

When the ground is not that fertile, like maybe in a temperate forest, you could have large entities dominating the landscape, like maybe a mighty oak tree, or maybe a lion on a Savannah. But when the landscape is conducive for anything and everything to sprout out from every crevice, then you get something like a rainforest, where there are so many things cluttering up the area that you can't point to any conceivable landmarks.

It could be true that the music scene is more fertile than it ever was, that people are releasing astonishing stuff that passes unnoticed because it's there for oh so short a time. But there's this lack of a sense that you're sharing music with others - I mean share in the sense of enjoying it together, rather than P2P downloading. There's this lack of commonality, sense of rootedness, that what you're listening to is actually a cultural norm.

Everything is disposable, and therefore nothing is of value. We could have the old stars doing their revival tours, like how we held Singfest last week, and we managed to get the Pet Shop Boys and Cyndi Lauper down to Fort Canning. And the old stars will still be the biggest names today because they came from a day and age where it was still possible to be a big star. Today? I haven't even heard The Libertines or White Stripe or whoever it is was famous during all those 15 minute intervals that make up the 21st century.