What is the reason why some musicians grow worse over time, while others remain consistent or improve?

What is the reason why some musicians grow worse over time, while others remain consistent or improve?

Is it due to some sort of innate talent, or is it a state of mind/personailty kind of deal?

don't worry, you;'ll get a definitive answer and not just a bunch of assholes arguing and not answering your question in this thread, surely

Piero Scaruffi thinks that a first album tends to be the best because it's a greatest hits of all their formative years, while they tend not to take as much time on later releases.

"Everyone has a finite number of good songs in them and I'm not an exception. Paul McCartney, one of the finest songwriters of the 20th century, has written nothing but manure for over 25 years. Rock stars over the age of 30 do not produce important material."

>why do things either change or stay the same
I wonder, OP

Everyone has one album in them. After that the majority of people are done, they have said everything interesting they had to say.

>why do some musicians grow worse, ... remain consistent or improve
What other option is there? You literally named every possible situation.

>What is the reason why some musicians grow worse over time, while others remain consistent or improve?
first couple releases was shit they been sitting on 4 years that they could finally articulate. afterwards is the post-orgasms.

This is often true. Cheap Trick, B-52s. R.E.M. and Tom Waits to an extent although both reinvented themselves in their mid periods.

there is no bad music if you're deaf

That's not true. But considering Noel's limited music taste I'm sure it applies to everything he listens to.

Creativity peaks from the age of 16-25 from an empirical standpoint

>Paul Simon

look at it this way.

MUSICIAN A drinks himself into oblivion, works a shit job his whole life, never finds his way out of the mire, becomes embittered, ruins his family.

MUSICIAN B takes the punches growing up, learns from the experience, builds himself into a force to be reckoned with, and dominates everyone.

now, which musician are you more a fan of based on these FACTS?

Always wondered this about Kozelek

Sometimes genius strikes for no reason and leaves.

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that when someone is young, when their experiences are new, and when they are at their respective peak of existentialism, they will create their best work. When people get older trivial "love" no longer interests or excites them, and they stop making good music.. It's kinda like how after the first year or two of wagging your dick it becomes boring and feels like a chore rather than a hobby.

What the fuck are you driving at mate

Some people were never really in music for the music. Cuomo just wants to be a relevant rock star again, he doesn't care about making anything honest or high quality as long as people think he's cool and in touch with the young people again.

Some people have one idea and run it into the ground, other people don't. Creativity is just about materialising ideas.

Musicians don't get into music to make money for the most part (let's just put pure pop music aside). It's a passion project. Also a tiny fraction of musicians/bands are good enough to get noticed and even put out a widely distributed album, so 1st album quality will almost always be very high. After an artist is established there isn't much monetary/motivational difference in making another great album or absolute dogshit.

I think it's that some artists don't want to "fuck with the formula" as it were. As you pointed out, Weezer made two great albums but are distinct from one another (one more power pop the other more emo) then made a decades worth of mediocre pop rock.
But take someone like Ween for example. They were always changing their sound for better or worse and their discography is looked at more fondly for it.

troo for Jay-z

Why does he wear the hat?

Because it’s clear that some musicians were only good because they nailed a certain vibe/niche and had the youthful energy to keep it going, while other bands actually had the technical skill to keep it going after the initial hype wave wore off.

Sometimes bands just have huge creative conflicts and never recover, a la Pink Floyd.

I'd love to know what happened to Tori

She started making music as equally plastic as the multiple surgeries she's gotten in the past 15 years.

I feel like a lot of musicians finally drop a knockout record, and hit the big time.

Now that they're "there," they don't feel as they have to try so hard because what they release will be popular anyways.

She likes to blame her descent on being an aging woman in music but it doesn't seem to be a prob for her contemporaries

A?
B would probably end up as a session musician whilst A would be far more likely to be relevant.

For Rivers, it was probably the blowback on Pinkerton fucked up his confidence in his music. Everything afterwards has varied in quality and has never had quite the same song structure or adventurousness to it as Blue and Pinkerton did.

As for general musicians, I feel over confidence and lack of humility can result in an artist getting lazy or too comfortable in their own abilities to push themselves anymore. Especially if they're paraded as "legendary", no one bothers to tell them their music is getting bad, so they never correct themselves.

Radiohead's been putting out decent stuff so late into their career because they're so eternally self-conscious on the other hand, so i can't say for certain.

are you implying rivers cuomo is worse over time? he's solid as fuck right now

The creative peak for most musicians seems to be 25-35.

Nas also, definitely

Damn this is probably true, it doesn't sound good though. Still their first two are classics, I liked the White album also.