Nearly All Great Rock and Pop Music is Made by (Very!) Young People
Back in 1989, I saw the Rolling Stones at Shea Stadium.
I was 23 years old and remember marveling at how spry these aging rockers were. Look at Mick, running around that stage like a young man! And Keith, giving us the full Guitar God treatment, despite surely suffering arthritic hips and failing eyesight. I recall making snarky jokes about senility and dentures and retirement homes.
They were 46 years old.
In 2024, I saw the Rolling Stones at Met Life Stadium. Mick could still run around the stage, though with more offstage breaks. And Keith, well, he did have to sit down a few times, but still, they played a whole damn concert, and it was pretty good!
They were 81 years old.
More remarkably, they were touring to promote a new album, Hackney Diamonds, which topped the charts in 20 countries.
It’s all very impressive.
But seeing these geriatric rockers putting out albums and touring the world got me thinking. Even though Hackney Diamonds is a good album...and I hate to be ungracious here....but, see, here’s the thing…I would bet my CD collection that not a single song on that album will occupy a place in fans’ hearts the way their hits from the 60s and 70s did.
In fact, I don’t think a single song they made in the 80s*, 90s, 00s, and 10s, will replace Satisfaction, Gimme Shelter, Angie, Sympathy for the Devil, and dozens more in their fans’ hearts. The Rolling Stones produced an incredible body of work in their 20s and 30s and then…very little that connected with fans after that.
* Yes, Tattoo You came out in 1981, but most of those songs, including Start Me Up, were outtakes from the 70s.
And it’s not just the Stones.
The Beatles recorded Abbey Road, their 12th and final album, in 1969. The oldest Beatle, Ringo Starr, was 29. The youngest, George Harrison, was 26! The Fab 4 would go on to record some memorable music as solo musicians in the 70s and 80s (their 30s and 40s), but you won’t meet many people who say they prefer their solo work (including Paul McCartney).
With few exceptions, the most important, influential, and beloved music of the rock and pop era has been produced by artists in their 20s and 30s - and mostly their 20s.
One would think that artists in their 40s and 50s, with the benefit of experience and wisdom, would continue to produce great work – maybe even better work. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Before we get into theorizing the why, let’s first prove that assertion.
Hope I Die Before I Get Old
Is it true that most great music is made by people in their 20s? I did a numerical analysis because, really, what’s more rock and roll than a numerical analysis?
Here’s my methodology:
- I took the Top 100 albums from Rolling Stone magazine’s Top 500 Albums list
- This list isn’t perfect, but perfection is unattainable in a subjective ranking. Most will agree RS is a pretty good arbiter
- It’s the most recent list (2023), which is much more diverse in genre, time span, race, and gender than previous lists. I don’t think this had a significant impact on the age data
- I calculated the average age of the artist(s) primarily responsible for the creation of the album
- For solo artists, this was easy. For example, Stevie Wonder was 23 when he made Innervisions.
- For bands, I took some license. I included all of the Beatles’ ages at the time of each one of their albums and averaged them. But for the Beach Boys, I just used Brian Wilson. This was partly laziness and partly rationalized by the fact that if I included all of the Beach Boys’ ages and divided by the number of Beach Boys, it would be pretty much the same number.
- I eliminated 3 albums that were collections recorded over a long period of time, and difficult to pin down by age (James Brown’s Star Time; Chuck Berry’s The Great Twenty-Eight; and Bob Marley’s Legend). I replaced them with albums 101-103 from the larger Top 500 list.
- I sorted by age
[The full list is at the bottom of this post]
How many of the top 100 albums would you guess were released by people in their 20s? I'll give you a hint. It's about the same number as the years Mick and Keith have been alive. Eighty of the top 100 albums were released by people in their 20s!
And released is a key word, because another half dozen (including Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours) were released by artists who were, or averaged, 30 years old. Meaning they likely were still in their 20s when writing and recording. So, 86% of the Top 100 albums were written and recorded by people in their 20s.
But it gets better.
45 were made by artists 25 and under! Albums released by artists 25 and under include Are You Experienced, Thriller, Master of Puppets, Red, Nevermind, Straight Outta Compton, and Led Zeppelin IV*. The Beatles and Bob Dylan had two each on the list before they got to 25.
* And therefore, though not on the list, Zep I, II, and III.
Okay now, let’s look at these 14 albums recorded by people over 30. What can we glean from them?
First of all, many of them were barely over 30; 12 of the 14 were by artists between the ages of 31 and 35. If you're keeping track, 98 of the Top 100 albums were made by artists 35 and under. I mean, wow.
Of these, most aren't rock and roll, or artists one would hear on rock radio. It’s a mix of jazz (two from Miles Davis and one from John Coltrane), country (Lucinda Williams), reggae (Bob Marley), hip-hop (Kanye and Jay-Z), and a pair from Beyonce’ (a genre unto herself).
The only two albums made on the list by rock or pop artists in their 30s are Blood on the Tracks and Automatic for the People. Bob Dylan and the members of R.E.M. averaged 34. But these artists had very strongly established themselves in their 20s. These are both considered later, mature works.
Only two albums on this were made by artists over 40 - and neither are over 45. One is the aforementioned Miles Davis. And from the world of rock and pop only one of the albums is made by an artist over 40. Care to guess who it was?
Paul Simon was 45 years old when he released Graceland.
What About Other Art Forms?
Maybe this whole 20s thing isn’t exclusive to rock and pop music, but relative to all modern art forms. So, some more data analysis!
Film
Besides popular music, the other great 20th century art form is film. The American Film Institute is famous for its AFI 100 – the greatest movies ever made. How old were the artists – in this case the directors – behind these films? Let’s dig into the data.
The average age of the directors of these masterpieces is 43.
Only 5 of them were directed by people in their 20s.
None were 25 or under. In fact, four of them were in their late 20s.
And of the five in their 20s:
• Steven Spielberg was 29 when he directed Jaws; but he has four other films on the list, all directed between age 35 and 52
• George Lucas was 29 when he directed American Graffiti. But I'm confident the movie he directed at 33 will be the lead on his obituary
Which gives us Orson Welles’ (26) Citizen Kane, M. Night Shyamalan’s (29) The Sixth Sense, and Stanley Donen’s (28) Singin’ in the Rain, which he co-directed with 40-year-old Gene Kelly.
Novels
What about fiction? The novel, unlike rock music and film, isn’t a 20th century innovation. But unlike painting, sculpture, playwriting, and poetry, it is an art form that doesn't have ancient roots. So, perhaps, a useful comp for rock and pop.
In this case I used Modern Library’s list of the Best 100 Novels of the 20th Century.
There are certainly more young people on this list than the film directors list. This makes sense, since a film is a large enterprise costing millions of dollars and involving dozens if not hundreds of people, while anyone with a laptop and imagination can write a novel. Heck, you don’t even need a laptop.
Still, the authors behind the Modern Library 100 are definitely older than our rock’n’rollers.
Fourteen are in their 20s, nearly triple the film directors, but well below the eighty rock and rollers.
And nine of the fourteen are 29. The only book by someone under 25 is The Heart is Lonely Hunter, written by 23-year-old Carson McCullers.
I know I’ve thrown a lot of numbers at you. So let’s look at this handy chart comparing the ages of the creators behind the RS100 (music), ML100 (novels), and AFI100 (films).
When I'm 64
You might be thinking, well, okay, but that’s just 100 albums. Surely, there are a bunch of great albums by rock and pop artists in their 40s, 50s, and 60s.
Really? Can you name any?
Okay, I'll try.
As it happens, some of my favorite artists made some great music in their 40s.
Tom Petty’s Wildflowers is a beloved album, released at age 44, that does indeed seem to capture the wisdom gained through the years.
Van Morrison had an extraordinary run between his 41st and 47th birthday. He released No Guru No Method No Teacher, Poetic Champions Compose, Irish Heartbeat, Avalon Sunset, Enlightenment*, and Hymns To the Silence . Great stuff, but most would agree that his mid-20s run (from Brown Eyed Girl and Astral Weeks to Moondance and Tupelo Honey) was God-tier work.
* Hopefully someone will remember that I'd like Avalon of the Heart, off Enlightenment, played at my funeral
Billy Joel released River of Dreams, his last album, when he was 44. I like that album, but I doubt many Joel fans can name a song besides the title track.
Bruce Springsteen was 52 when he made The Rising. It was a critical and commercial success but few fans of The Boss (and none of his casual fans) would rank it with Born to Run (26) or Darkness on the Edge of Town (29).
Bob Dylan continues to release critically acclaimed albums into his 80s, but except for the song Love Sick appearing in a Victoria’s Secret commercial, I’m not sure much of it reached the mainstream.
You’ll notice all of these folks are solo artists, or close enough. Its even harder for bands to continue to produce, since they a) have to stay together and b) have to be able to create together.
U2 is an exception, perhaps, releasing All That You Can’t Leave Behind, mostly recorded while its members were 39. It is difficult to think of any artist at that age opening an album with a 1-2-3 punch as good as Beautiful Day, Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of, and Elevation. But again – would many rank this album over War, The Unforgettable Fire, The Joshua Tree, and Achtung Baby - all recorded before any of their members turned 30?
What Does It All Mean?
See, here's where I'm stymied.
The ideal FreeTime piece does 3 things:
- Make an (original, hopefully!) observation
- Prove the observation is true
- Explain the observation
But I don’t have an explanation that's truly satisfying.
Maybe rock and pop music is as much athletic as artistic. Just as great athletes have their prime in their 20s and 30s, maybe great rock music does. But the issue seems to be the intellectual act of songwriting, not the physical act of performing, which the Stones and Bruce, among others, have continued to do at a high level even beyond their 50s.
Maybe it's Freudian. I'm not sure how many rock and roll songs are about sex, but I think the answer is...all of them?
Maybe I'm asking the wrong question. Maybe the question isn't, why do musicians in their 40s and 50s release so little; but rather, why are 20-something artists routinely creating masterpieces?
I don't know.
But I think perhaps the answer lies somewhere in the song "Against the Wind".
Bob Seger was lamenting his lost youth and the burdens of adulthood. He's got so much more to think about, deadlines and commitments. He spoke of how he's older now, but still running against the wind*.
* When he wrote these world-weary lyrics, he was 35
And in the very first verse, he may have put his finger on why rock and roll is created by the young, with his now-immortal line:
"I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then."
Maybe experience and wisdom are the worst things for creating great rock music.
Bob Seger had a few more hits in him. In fact he had a #1 hit at the age of 42 with the song Shakedown from the Beverly Hills Cop II soundtrack.
But Against the Wind was his last great album.
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