Of course, the truth is, Prince is not a vital force in today's music, nor are his two celebrated contemporaries. True, nobody who can bring a record company to its knees or rewrite the rules of concert promotion the way Madonna has, or who has risen from the ashes to have the biggest-grossing tour of the year and play the Super Bowl the way Prince has, can fairly be called a has-been. Yet none of the three artists turning 50 exerts any real creative importance over the music scene any more. Jackson doesn't make records and he doesn't tour.
Prince's shows are the very highest-class nostalgia - terrific, but certainly not anything new. The same is true of his recordings: the new stuff sounds like the old stuff. As for Michigan's most famous alumna, people don't come to Madonna shows to hear new songs; they come to see Madonna.
Unlike pathetic has-beens who peddle their musty wares from one provincial town to the next, Madonna and Prince play in huge venues and command huge ticket prices. But musically, the shows are the same as the shows Joe Cocker and the Lovin' Spoonful and the survivors of Yes are doing these days. They're oldies' shows.
Nobody associated with popular music ever wants to believe that it is first, last and foremost a business, much less that it is a business in which the same rules apply as in any other sphere of economic activity. In real life, middle-aged people cling to their high-paying jobs for as long as possible, resenting the younger employees nipping at their heels, all the while reassuring themselves that the youngsters can't get the job done the way they can. This sounds like every middle-aged rock star who ever lived, every former headliner who once played the Hollywood Bowl and is now playing small clubs in Norway and the cultural center in Amiens. Nobody ever gives up a good job, with a nice salary and benefits and lots of prestige just because younger people think that they're out of step with the times or because they've stopped being cool. People in their 50s and 60s have more important things to do than worry about being cool.
Decades ago, critics wondered out loud how Jagger was possibly going to be able to keep a straight face singing Street Fighting Man when he had reached 30. Then they wondered how he would do it at 40. There was a general consensus that Jagger was starting to look a bit silly exhorting his fans to man the barricades at age 50, but now that he is well past 60 and the Stones have just finished another record-smashing three-year tour, it is no longer pertinent or relevant to ask how a near-septuagenarian can continue to strut and fret his two hours upon the stage the way he does, singing about revolutions that didn't happen, social upheavals that never occurred. A long, long time ago, Jagger made it clear that he was not giving up his job, not only because of the money and the adulation, but because the evidence seemed to suggest that, even though it was indeed only rock 'n' roll, he rather liked it. Prince and Madonna probably feel the same way: as long as the crowds keep coming, as long as they keep cheering, and as long as they keep paying, we're going to keep going out on the road. What Michael Jackson is thinking is anybody's guess.
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