Do Artists Need to Age With Their Audience?

As those of you who follow my Twitter know, I'm currently in upstate New York for my family's annual get-together later this evening. Taking full advantage of a little break from work and school, I'm going through some of the stuff that I've accumulated in the last few months. Amongst them, I finally completed Nick Hornby's newest book Juliet, Naked (it was a Christmas present) while listening to Weezer's newest album "Hurley". In doing both at the same time, it seems that each are appealing to their fans in different ways and it brings the following question to my head: Do artists need to age with their audiences?

Nick Hornby, whose book High Fidelity (and the subsequent movie) is amongst my favorites, spoke to me when I first found it just after college. The book, which tells the story of a late-20's hipster trying to figure out why his relationships have all gone bad spoke to me as my college girlfriend moved on to bigger-and-better things leaving me behind. In this book, a middle-aged English woman enters into an online flirtation with an aging reculisve American singer. So, in the 15 or so years since High Fidelity came out, the character's he writes about have aged roughly 15 years with him. And I ate the book up because I could still relate to its themes and characters as I've also aged with them.

Then, you go to "Hurley". I've been a Weezer fan since I first heard "Buddy Holly" playing on the old WKRO back in high school (back before they sold out and went country). "Hurley" seems to try recreating the themes and sounds of the Blue Album, though like High Fidelity, it came out nearly 15 years ago. And, while there are a few catchy songs, I'm just not that into it. What's funny is that this follows up last year's Red Album which I did enjoy, but that was because it seemed to have a mix of both the poppy Blue Album-style stuff with some more mature songs of Rivers talking about his wife and new baby.

There's just, to me, something off-putting about seeing someone write or perform something that seems no longer in their element. For ages, I hated Green Day for singing songs about life in high school though each of the guys looked like they were in their 30's, but Green Day also makes an apt example for my point. "American Idiot", which is a more mature and poignant album, I loved but many die-hard Green Day fans hated. So, does maturing as an artist alienate their fans, or do their fans appreciate that the group they started following 15 years ago because they could identify with them in their current lives still appreciate their music/literature, because they use themes that they still can identify with? Is their a difference between the two media - where readers are more accepting while music fans aren't? Just throwing it out there.

Random Stuff

• As Microsoft has decided to discontinue Windows Live Spaces, I have taken down my old blog over there. As I haven't been contributing much to my blog lately anyways, and for the last few months have been posting identical posts on both, not much will be lost. But, now Blogger is the official home of AOwL.com. Yes Google, you might want to consider having shirts made up.
• While also in my "non-school related" reading kick, I was also able to finish up John Booth's Collect All 21. I picked up the book, a collection of all the author's Star Wars related memories, following Star Wars Celebration V (speaking of which, I never uploaded the pictures from my camera... I will soon and post them here). Anyways, the book is great for the Star Wars fan like me as each of the stories is relatable. Even though Booth was at the age to see Star Wars in theaters (I guess I did too, technically. My mom took me to see it at the drive-in theater in Daytona. I'm somewhat hazy on the experience, though, as I was just 2 months-old), some of the stories about seeing the movies - especially Jedi and the prequels, which I was a little older for - I totally remember and can identify with. So, if you're a fan, it's cheap and fun and I'd recommend picking it up.
• Finally, another hand for Google, for finally allowing the non-"Coversation View" option for Gmail. I have been jumping between three e-mail addresses for the last few years because none offered a reading experience I enjoyed. My primary problem with Gmail was that, with Conversation View, it was so hard to find the message I was looking for. If an e-mail was sent out to a large group and out of 15 responses, you could have 14 just respond with OK or something while the 15th had something to add, but you'd never be able to find it without going through all of the others because it was such a pain to delete them. Gmail is finally a usable product for me. I think more love should go to whoever the new Gmail product manager is who's asking for these updates. Remember when you couldn't even delete anything in Gmail, and their response was "You have so much space, you don't need to delete things"? I appreciate the new features that Gmail offers, but I more appreciate that they make them optional now using the Labs feature instead of forcing them on you.