Musicians who keep a-changin'

Musicians who keep a-changin'

By: Prospero

Taken From: The Economist

“JUDAS!” cried a voice from the crowd.  The catcall came as Bob Dylan was tuning his electric guitar at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, England on the evening of May 17th 1966, 50 years ago today. Devoted fans of Mr Dylan, dismayed that the “voice of a generation” seemed to be eschewing the acoustic, political folk music of his early albums for capricious rock tunes, had been jeering his electric guitars since they first appeared onstage at the Newport Folk Festival a year before.  Throughout his World Tour in 1966, the opening acoustic portions of Mr Dylan’s concerts were met with cheers—while the sight of a Fender Telecaster led to mass walkouts. Responding to his Mancunian heckler, in a moment which has passed into musical folklore, Mr Dylan told his band to play the opening chords of “Like a Rolling Stone” “fucking loud”. Half a century later, he is still grumbling about it.

Folk enthusiasts may not have liked it, but Mr Dylan’s change in artistic direction was a sage piece of career planning. Before 1965 none of his albums had gone past 20th place on the American charts. The number-one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 had been occupied by the peppy chords of The Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand”, the twanging arpeggios of The Animals’ “The House of the Rising Sun”, the pulsing bass notes of The Beach Boys’ “I Get Around” and the stonking riff of The Rolling Stones’ “(Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”. There was little doubt that Mr Dylan’s lyrics and melodies were good enough to prosper commercially: The Byrds’ cover of his song “Mr Tambourine Man”, rendered with jangling electric guitars, went to number one in June 1965. But he hadn’t been playing them the way that most people wanted to hear them. That same month, Mr Dylan wrote “Like a Rolling Stone”, which became his first hit single, reaching number two in America. Meanwhile, the three albums that he released in 1965 and 1966, each of which featured electric guitar, all made it into the top ten in both America and Britain.

Mr Dylan’s motivations may not have been entirely sales-driven, but he did what any shrewd businessman would do: assess the performance of his most successful rivals, and innovate accordingly. This strategy has served many musicians well, allowing them to prolong their careers. Neil Young is one such. In the seven years after he released “Harvest”, a gentle harmonica-infused album that topped the American charts in 1972, Mr Young’s sales plummeted. By 1979, Americans were buying the soundtracks to “Grease” and “Saturday Night Fever”, while the Clash and the Sex Pistols had caught the ears of British listeners. Mr Young borrowed the raw sound of the latter for his album “Rust Never Sleeps”: the title alluded to his slowly decaying career, and its format mirrored Bob Dylan’s 1966 concerts, beginning with folk and finishing with grungy rock. The final track name-checked Johnny Rotten and influenced a young Kurt Cobain. The record became Mr Young’s first to sell more than 1m copies since “Harvest”.

The pattern has been often repeated. David Bowie, ever the innovator, reinvented himself with the pop rhythms of “Let’s Dance” in 1983, his first top-ten record in America in nearly a decade. U2 also experimented with dance music in the 1990s, continuing their string of number-one albums with “Zooropa” and “Pop”. In recent years, Coldplay have been able to outlast the many other British artists who produced similar tunes in the early 2000s (see chart), largely thanks to their incorporation of electronic elements. Listening to the club-friendly beats of their recent singles, you might struggle to recognise the band that was once famous for piano ballads. But such innovation has allowed them to collaborate with the likes of Beyoncé and Rihanna and play the Super Bowl halftime show. Taylor Swift has enjoyed a similarly successful transition into pop stardom: none of her contemporaries in the mid-2000s country scene are able to muster platinum-selling albums a decade later (see chart). It is likely that Ms Swift’s career would have followed a similar downward trajectory were she still strumming an acoustic guitar.

The data suggest that most musicians experience a natural decay in sales over time. Occasionally an artist will come up with a magic formula which can be repeated for decades, without suffering in the charts: fans have yet to tire of The Rolling Stones’ lively blues rock or Bruce Springsteen’s gritty Americana, and the same may prove true for Adele’s songs of unrequited love. Likewise, not all innovation is commercially motivated or desirable. Groups like Pink Floyd and The Beatles experimented out of artistic curiosity. Second-hand record stores are full of forgotten concept albums. 

 

But for most bands that persist with a particular sound, commercial success is only ever a fleeting phenomenon. In music, as in other markets, those who thrive in the long-term are often the ones who adapt best to fluctuations in demand—while those that fail to innovate end up complete unknowns.