The July issue of Mojo profiled singer/songwriter Rickie Lee Jones, who debuted in 1979 with a Top 5 album and the hit single “Chuck E.’s In Love” but soon after suffered an emotional meltdown from which her career never quite recovered.
Jones flamed out, but her songs endure
I swear one of the Cosmic Big Reveals will include chapters on:
1) How the Muse Works (but would never call what she does “Work”)
2) The Why of One Hit Wonders (Cypress Roots of the Soul)
and
3) Why “Career” vis-a-vis Artistry, is a Fictitious Expectation Reified by Exceedingly Illusory Systems of Capitalism, Predictability, Order and Control (Cross-Referenced with the chapter on Why there is more Art in Financial Markets than there is Art in our Schools).
Feh. The worse the economy gets, the more ignorant people seem to be about how the Arts are the Answer. Who, at this point, actually has a “career” to speak of (in the traditional sense)? What at this point, qualifies as a “career” – transferable skills? Personal resilience and reinvention? F the old paradigms. Is kinda the point.
I’d heard it put a little differently, that she had chosen a different road than one of slavery to the hit machine. So what, I guess. I’ll never be able to write songs like that.
“Jukebox that goes ‘doink, doink’.”
So what, I guess. I’ll never be able to write songs like that.
that she had chosen a different road than one of slavery to the hit machine.
——
Busker hears clink clank.