Sophomore Slumping

I have recently been thinking about Studio 60, one of my favorite new shows of the season. You see, the show is generally getting trashed by everyone from the critics to the online forum-crawlers. Its creator, Aaron Sorkin, seems to be struggling to follow up The West Wing.

There are many things I could say about what might be wrong with Studio 60, but I'm just going to share some wisdom from the creator of Dilbert, Scott Adams:

Have you ever wondered why great musicians can’t keep cranking out hits every year? Consider Neal Diamond, for example. He wrote and recorded some of the greatest songs ever. But then the hits stopped coming, despite the fact that his talent probably improved with experience.

He’s not alone. That’s the normal pattern. Most musicians have their time, and then it’s over. How do you explain it?

Lots of great artists such as the Rolling Stones continue to draw huge crowds. But they don’t produce number one hits anymore. And the most popular songs in their concerts are the hits from the past. Do the Rolling Stones have less talent than they did when they were in their twenties? It seems unlikely.

One explanation is that the public’s musical tastes change while the musicians stay the same. But the drop-off in popularity always seems too abrupt for that explanation.

Another explanation is that the musicians stop taking drugs and their creativity dries up. But that doesn’t explain all the musicians who never took drugs, or never stopped.

There’s also a hungriness factor. Before the musicians hit it big, they have more motivation and fewer distractions. That probably counts for some of it. But you’d expect their experience to compensate.

Some of it is surely because youth can connect with youth better than geriatrics can connect with youth. But getting old is gradual, and the drop-off in appeal is sudden.

I think I discovered the main problem several years ago when I experimented with introducing a new comic strip called Plop.

Read on at Adams' site...