Why do artists become less successful?

Paul McCartney’s career might hold the answer

Paul and Linda McCartney (Credit: Jim Summaria)

It remains one of the sharpest, happiest memories from my childhood. Sitting in the front seat¹ of my father’s maroon, four-door saloon, staring out at North London’s bluish-grey suburban skies, listening to The Beatles.

The electrifying chords and wild scream that signal the start of Revolution can still marshal the hair on the back of my neck to stand on end. The crashing orchestral section that punctuates A Day in the Life (and whose denouement filled my 10-year-old self with secret dread) can still fire adrenaline and cortisol through my veins.

Not every Beatles song was a masterpiece (and, frankly, I agree with John Lennon’s alleged dismal view of Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, whose lyrics began to confer something worse than meaninglessness after I was compelled to perform it at school). Still, thanks to my Dad, I remain a committed McCartneyist.

Paul McCartney and George Harrison (Credit: VARA)

I am not unique in my ability to recite the words and hum the melody to Hey Jude, Let It Be or She’s Leaving Home. Yet I would struggle to do the same for many post-Beatles McCartney song. Notable exceptions include Maybe I’m Amazed — yet even that was written prior to the breakup of the band. Meanwhile, Live and Let Die was given a longer shelf life thanks to its association with the James Bond film of the same name.

I acknowledge the part my ignorance plays. There are plenty of devoted Wings fans out there and I’m not looking to yuck anyone’s yum. But it is scarcely controversial to suggest that the McCartney of today, or the 2000s, or 1980s, was not the prolific composer of classics that he was in the 1960s. That is the way of creativity. Artists hit their peak — which can last anywhere from one-hit wonder to a decade or more — before declining. But why?

I ask this partly because, for reasons too tedious to dwell on, I cannot get McCartney’s 1980 synth single, Temporary Secretary, out of my head. Click below at your own risk.

It is not that the song is bad. Indeed, to some, Temporary Secretary is a cult classic. But it does not obscure the wider point about cultural and commercial decline. Presumably McCartney’s talent did not decline over time. Is it that he, like other artists, ran out of ideas? Perhaps he was just as good, but the audience was no longer as open to his output. Like many marriages, did the relationship simply runs its course?

I’d long wondered how this worked. But it took a conversation between — of all professions — two economists to really make me focus on these questions. Speaking to Tyler Cowen on his podcast, Scott Sumner mused:

Susan Sontag said something to the effect of, “Are artistic masterpieces still possible?” Then she said, “Or are we not receptive to the possibility of future masterpieces?” Is the problem they’re not being produced, or that we’re no longer receptive to them? I think it is somewhat of an open question. You can consume so much of any art form, or multiple art forms, that you become a bit jaded.

There is also technological change to contend with. This is true in music but even more so in a sport such as tennis. John McEnroe dominated the early 1980s through his unrivalled wizardry with the wooden racket. But as wood gave way to graphite, McEnroe fell out of step, like a star of silent cinema eclipsed in the era of the talkies.

The science fiction writer² Arthur C. Clarke famously said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” The same could be said of creativity. And when that magic leaves the artist — whether through age, time, or saturation — it is as if the spell is broken. What remains are the records and relics: proof that the magic was once real, even if it is no longer being conjured.

1. The car had airbags, and the deal was I could sit in the front if I didn’t tell my mum.

2. Clarke’s Wikipedia entry describes him as a “ science fiction writer, science writer, futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host” which is pretty epic.