Great music in the last decade with male lead singers that are over fifty years old

[koganbot]

Tom creates a graph that shows a long-term trend upward in the percentage of UK singles with a female lead. This is a crude measure (number ones aren't necessarily representative of what's on singles as a whole, and singles aren't necessarily representative of what's popular among music consumers, etc.) and Tom makes no great claims for the chart. But the trend is striking.

Interesting parallel here, though, is that this graph comes close to matching the trends in my taste for contemporary music, with my late '80s veering wildly towards the women (thanks to postdisco and freestyle, and the decline in the quality of postpunk) and the mid to late '00s going even more wildly female (thanks to r&b and teenpop stealing my heart from hip-hop) - but my number is way higher than 50%. Not that during the decades of this graph I was even hearing much of what was #1 in the UK or having exposure to all the main popular styles there. And it isn't as if stuff that was pushing my listening - e.g., freestyle - was pushing British listening. Just that my trend seemed to be happening at the same time as the British chart trend, which is towards music fronted by women and girls.

Tom didn't graph by age, but I suspect that most of the women are young women, though I wouldn't have any idea if the average age would have changed much over the decades. (I'd guess that there are fewer older women, bringing the average age down, but that's a wild guess, my hardly knowing the performers much less the data.)

But anyway, it's disturbing to me how few good songs now are fronted by males (obviously that's comparative, since e.g. The-Dream will likely make my album's list this year)(but I'm not even sure how good a front man he is, just a maker of good music). Just as disturbing is the lack of great music that's fronted by people of any sex over forty. I hope that's not true in the cultures and genres I don't know much about.

So here's a question for you. What male singers over the age of fifty or acts fronted by a male singer over the age of fifty have made great popular music in the last decade? It's got to be a singer (not just a producer or instrumentalist or arranger) and the greatness has to be in the last decade (so not someone formerly great who's carrying on OK). I say "popular music" real loosely, and actually you can list any man whether his music is popular or not. I'll put my own answer in the comments.

Also am curious about your trends, and your speculations as to the reasons behind them.

Comments

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Tom Jones' album of duets, Reload, juuust about qualifies but I wouldn't call it great (but definitely popular).

Bob Dylan's last two albums are great but not really popular. Johnny Cash's cover of 'Hurt' covers both bases, though.

[koganbot]

Well by "popular" I mean "popular music" not "big sellers," but the last three Dylan albums all cracked the top ten, the last two at number one.

[hipsterdetritus.livejournal.com]

"popular" being a relative term:

-Al Green's cover of "You Are So Beautiful" is pretty breathtaking, and I've heard some of the unreleased stuff he did during sessions with the Roots that's astounding.

-A good amount of Warren Zevon's stuff in his last few albums is high-quality; I'm a fan of "My Shit's Fucked Up" amongst others.

-Lee Fields' new album is pretty damn good, though I still think he's at his best verbally sparring/harmonizing with Sharon Jones. They really need to do an Otis/Carla-type album.

[koganbot]

xpost (and I thank you for your posts)

First in my mind is Willie Nelson, 'cause I love whole hunks of Moment Of Forever from last year, though there's blah on it, too. I'd say most of what I've heard of his this decade has barely gotten beyond so-what, with bits of greatness and then on this album more than just bits, and I'm not at all complete in my listening to Willie, either old or new. Actually, until recently I thought he was an overrated bore; obviously I was wrong. Subject for further research.

Merle Haggard "Wishing All These Old Things Were New." Haven't heard the album it was from, though many say it's great and a few retort that it's overrated. This song is sure great, older and slower than "Mama Tried" and "Sing Me Back Home" etc., but in their league. Other stuff I heard on a later LP was thoughtful and I respected it; subject for further research.

Bob Dylan Love And Theft. Damned if I know what I think of this, still. Most of the songs have a slow haze that I find discomfitting, as if sentiment were out baking in the dirt along with his gobbled croak of an old voice. But it's a potent... something. Honestly, I have yet to sit down and try to make something of the lyrics. A couple of rockers knock down the walls. Also love one of the muddy blues on Modern Times. Subject for further research.

The Rolling Stones "It Won't Take Long." An utter grinding motherfucker of a song, with shifting restless lyrics that are as unsettled as the lyrics on "Heart Of Stone." Jagger's voice lacks the old potency 'cause he turned off his killer instinct back around 1972, so it doesn't grab me by the throat, but as a dark little groove it could stand with 'most anything on Exile. About half of what's left on A Bigger Bang is pretty good too.

Bobby Bare "Are You Sincere?" Voice cracked, arrangements overblown, audacious, he pulls off maybe two-thirds of this absurd album (The Moon Was Blue), don't know if I want to hear another like it, but it reached me far more than the better known comebacks by Dolly and Loretta.

Gene Watson ...Sings: Straight ahead bread-and-butter country just as it might have sounded twenty years ago, seems comfortable in its place (though being country it's never altogether comfortable), nothing jumping out to say "extroardinary" but I love listening. Barely know a thing about this guy, my knowledge of any country that's not recent being rather meager.

Wouldn't call it great, but I liked a T. Graham Brown LP I heard from a few years back. And that's all I can think of. I hope a bunch spring to my mind that are currently not in it. I've not heard any of this decade's David Thomas/Pere Ubu/Rocket From The Tombs; there's a Leonard Cohen album that went in one ear and out the other that garnered great praise and that I ought to try again. I never did like Nick Cave and Tom Waits all that much, so if they're doing great stuff I didn't listen (actually a friend played me a couple of recent Nick Cave tracks that I thought were OK).

The market's not supporting older performers, so plenty could be great that are not making it to record, and my ears have gone along with the market by not really searching what has made it to record but not into the top 40 or the r&b and hip-hop grapevine, so my ignorance is self-perpetuating. But I really get the sense that the music vocabulary may not be working for people my age and older (I'm 55), that it gets us through but it's not a living thing, though I sure hope that that's not true of my written vocabulary.

[koganbot]

I wouldn't ever have called John Waite great, but haven't heard much of his output so maybe I'm wrong, and his album from a couple of years ago on Rounder had some strong moments, includes a rousing version of "Highway 61 Revisited," gut-blues instrumentation and his high pop-rock voice feeling far from dated. (Not that "dated" is necessarily bad, mind you.)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I would rep for the Leonard Cohen album in question, which I think is top three for his career.

With skyecaptain in that African pop guys seem to continue consistent (Youssou N'Dour is 50 this year). But then I suspect I'm not the best person for this question because I usually don't agree that artists do less interesting work as they get older. So maybe devoted Afropop fans think N'Dour or Khaled or Baaba Maal have utterly gone to seed, I wouldn't know. XD;

One for the over-50s ladies who are as good as they were: Linda Thompson. (I can probably think of more folk artists if I tried.)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I'll go to bat for several David Byrne things from this decade, including a lot of Grown Backwards. His singing voice has improved dramatically in this decade.

I put Randy Newman's latest album in my top ten from last year, and I like a lot of his soundtrack work. And if Dolly Parton were a man, she'd count!

How 'bout artists over 50 NEW in the decade?

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Last year's Al Green, "Lay It Down," was wonderful, tons of new standards, including the title track.

Is Morrissey over fifty yet? He's done some good-not-just-OK stuff this decade.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Also not a man, but Sharon Jones should count toward a Ladies Over 50 total. Otis Taylor's album from this year is probably the only one by an artist over 50 that's getting any serious consideration for my Top Ten at the moment, though I didn't dislike the Dylan album or the one by John Doe from X or even the weird-ass Iggy Pop solo album in which he sings the original French of "Autumn Leaves" (terribly) twice in what seem to be identical bookend tracks with slightly different sax solos.

I bet you could find a lot of male artists over 50 in African pop, but I know nothing about it. Of my extremely limited selections from this year, Amadou and Mariam are both over 50, and Cheb Khaled of the Jukebox track I liked is pushing 50, still getting away with calling himself "Young Khaled"!

[koganbot]

Really? I thought he'd long since been just "Khaled."

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

New Order! Peter Hook's in his sixties isn't he?

Not sure about wimmins- how old's Lauper these days?

[koganbot]

Yup, Lauper would count (and "Into The Nightlife" is greatness) except she's not a guy. She's seven months older than I am.

[anthonyeaston.livejournal.com]

it is mostly a country game isn't it?

(kris kristofferson, johnny cash, bob dylan's last two, robert plant and alison kraus (ok that's half), the one porter wagoner did before he died, levon helm, glenn campbell, the bruce springsteen revival post devils and dust, maybe steve earle)

greatness and popularity might vary

[anthonyeaston.livejournal.com]

and obv willie, and randy travis who is 50 this year, and has had a bit of an uptick, esp. 3 Wooden Crosses, which I think is a masterpeice, and not sure it could have been done before he was in his late 40s.

[anthonyeaston.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Wooden_Crosses

first no. 1 since 94

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I thought Tom Waits' 2002 albums, Alice and Blood Money, were really good, esp the former.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Was Waits 50 when those came out? I'd definitely list those two, but probably not the ones after that.

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

Tom waits (60 this year) and Solomon Burke (now 69) are both on the shortlist I've already composed for 2002 track nominations. And yes to some of Frank's country suggestions - Willie, Merle, Bobby Bare. Maybe Neil Young (now 63) too.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Glen Campbell's cover of "These Days" (from earlier this year or last year) is beautiful.

Neil Young - increasingly hit and miss now, but when he hits...

[sm-woods.livejournal.com]

Question just makes me realize how ageist I really am when it comes to this stuff. If I listened to more country -- which I'd like to if I had time -- I'd have more of an answer. But more strictly speaking in the realm of "pop" I'm virtually stumped. Two minor exceptions would be Dylan (I think the recent records are good, tho' not great; much prefer the two folk records he made in the '90s), and Neil Tennant, who turned 50 in 2004 and has put his voice on a half dozen or so good-enough-for-me (but again, not great) PSB tunes since.

[sm-woods.livejournal.com]

But anyway, it's disturbing to me how few good songs now are fronted by males

I share the opinion but am not disturbed by it. If I pull together a Top 100 songs of the decade, I'm certain the balance will be something like 70-30 female to male, possibly higher. I've no problem with this.

[sm-woods.livejournal.com]

Shouldn't have spoke so soon: I just remembered how much I loved the last Scritti Politti album. Green Gartside turned 50 in '05. One of the reasons I liked the record so much is because his voice retained his ethereal disco-ness in middle age, even if his music didn't.

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

A few who I don't believe have been mentioned:

-- Rick Springfield (b. 1949): Maybe the only over 50 artist I can think of who actually seemed to improve in the '00s. Which are to say that Shock/Denial/Anger/Acceptance (2004) and Venus In Overdrive (2008) are the best albums I've ever heard from him. Though, to be fair, I can't claim to have heard all of his previous ones (even from the '80s, when he peaked commercially.)

-- ZZ Top (all 3 b. 1949) Since Afterburner in 1985 they generally, to my ears, retreated to a more stodgy blues-rock purism. But Mescalero from 2003 was a big exception -- the goofiest, weirdest, most fun album they made since Eliminator if not El Loco, and one of the decade's best hard rock albums: Being obsessed with Mexico seems to help.

-- Ted Nugent (b. 1948) Total fascist douchebag, obviously, and not above releasing two (pretty good) live albums in a row, but his last couple of studios have been more consistently entertaining than anybody would have a right to expect -- especially Love Grenade from 2007, and I know other people who swear by 2002's Craveman.

-- Rose Tattoo (old Aussie bar-fight rockers, formed in 1976, so they probably qualify, even if not all of them surived the decade): Blood Brothers was one of my favorite albums of 2008, and I'm also a fan of 2002's Pain and 2000's live 25 To Life.

-- Deep Purple (membership varies, but they're all pretty old I think): One great, highly idiosyncratic, and surprisingly replayable '00s album (Bananas from 2003), one real good one (Rapture Of The Deep from 2005). I also like Ian Gillan's solo One Eye To Morocco from this year and the band's Abandon from 1998, fwiw.

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

And actually, come to think of it, I might also put the Kentucky Headhunters in the over-50s-who-actually-got-better-in-the-'00s category along with Springfield, especially if I'm allowed to also include Greg Martin's spinoff bands the Mighty Jeremiahs and Rufus Huff. Not sure off hand how old he (and the rest of the band) are, but he supposedly first formed Itchy Brother (the band that evolved into the Headhunters) with Fred and Richard Young (both still in the band) way back in 1968. And I'd say their cover of "Big Boss Man" definitely qualifies as great music, as well might several of the new tracks on 2003's Soul and 2006's late-career comp Flying Under The Radar.

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

Lindsey Buckingham. (Although I think his unreleased pre-Fleetwood-Mac-sans-Christine album Gift of Screws was better as a single album than it was as a bunch of tracks cannibalized and spread out over one Mac and two solo albums. Compare the unreleased solo "Peacekeeper" to Fleetwood Mac's "Peacekeeper.")

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

ALSO PRETTY GOOD, AT VERY LEAST, AND AT LEAST A COUPLE ARE PROBABLY BETTER THAN THAT:

FAUST - C’est Com…Com…Complique (2009 - has a shot at my top ten, believe it or not, just because I play it a lot in the background)
MAC MCANALLY - Down By The River (2009 - b. 1957 -- out next week on Toby Keith's Show Dog label; this could grow on me actually, but I can already tell I like it a lot)
CHEAP TRICK - The Latest (2009)
SAXON - Into The Labyrinth (2009)
GEORGE BRIGMAN - Rags In Skull (2007, b. c. 1956) Baltimore proto-punk crazy; he's got an older album in Stairway if you're curious.
RICHARD THOMPSON - Sweet Warrior (2007, b. 1949) I hadn't liked any albums I heard by him since the early '80s, but I liked this one
RONNIE MILSAP - My Life (2006, b. 1945) -- Album is good; "Something Dry" is great, one of the decade's loveliest country songs
STEVE KUHN -- Promises Kept (2006) and Quiereme Mucho (225) (b. 1938) -- I'm not even going to try to figure out which other jazz guys belong on this list; there are way better people to do that. Probably a lot.
ART ENSEMBLE OF CHICAGO - The Meeting (2003) See, there's another one
THE LIZARDS -- Self-released hard rock/heavy boogie band from NYC; they've put out consistently good albums --sometimes covers, sometimes originals. Not sure of all their ages, but for a while their singer was John Garner from early '70s metal pioneers Sir Lord Baltimore (whose comeback album a couple years ago I also heard good things about but never heard; ditto the Uriah Heep album I didn't hear last year.)
THE BRAIN SURGEONS -- Another self-released NYC old-school hard rock band, weirder and more eccentric and often hilarious, featuring old Blue Oyster Cult drummer Al Bouchard and his wife Deborah Frost of rock criticism fame. Their best '00s album I heard was Beach Party in 2003, but I've liked others by them too.
THE BIZARROS -- Old Cleveland art-punks; Can’t Fight Your Way Up Town From Here (2004) was good.
CHARLIE HADEN - Nocture (2001; b. 1937)
GILBERTO GIL AND MILTON NASCIMENTO - Gil & Milton (2000; both b. 1942)

A FEW GALS (besides Dolly and Loretta, whose albums turned to be not what they at first seemed cracked up to be):

Girlschool (Legacy, 2008)
Labelle (Back To Now, 2008)
Heart (Jupiter's Darling, 2006 -- their best album in decades, and they do have old men not just old women in the band fwiw)

I don't doubt there are others I'm not thinking of right now, who will come to mind soon. One area that might be really worth investigating is Southern Chitlin Circuit Soul (or "Blues," as they still call it in the south), where most of the biggest names have died off, but B-level guys (some of whom may well be over 50 -- Mel Waiters or Bobby Rush or Sir Charles Jones? I dunno) seem to still be doing good work on the circuit. I hear good-to-great songs on the radio down here all the time. But I don't know who sings most of them, and I haven't heard many full albums in the genre -- only compilations.

Also, I haven't had much use for Robert Plant's '00s stuff, but lots of other people clearly did. So maybe there's something there.

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Man, I really hate how italics get screwed up for eternity here if you misplace just one bracket or backslash, which I inevitably do, especially when I get long-winded. Oh well.

Anyway, just realized that those jazz records maybe don't have male "singers," since they mostly tend to be instrumental. And I'm not jazz expert anyway. But whatever...

Speaking of which, I also like Bley/Sheppard/Swallow/Billy Drummond's The Lost Chords from 2004. Not going to look up all of their ages, but Carla Bley was born in 1936 and Steve Swallow in 1940.

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Clearly most of my nominations veer toward certain genres (old-school hard rock, country, jazz, weirdo art punk) that seem more accomodating to middle aged people than, say, teen-pop or hip-hop or commercial r&b or extreme metal -- I'd guess African (and regional Mexican?) musics and Southern Soul (and folk?)would meet that criteria as well. Which may just be circular reasoning, come to think of it. So here's a related question: Who was the oldest hip-hip artist to make great music in the '00s? (You can do it with teen-pop, too, but I'm really interested in hip-hop, where artists have never really seemed to age well. Though I bet there are critics out there who would vouch for the current work of, say, Chuck D or maybe KRS-One or Rakim or somebody. All of whom I'm skeptical about, but then again, I was sort of skeptical about all of those guys in the first place, so what do I know?)

[koganbot]

LL has had a couple of very good tracks, the names of which I'm not remembering, and I think they were produced by Timbaland. But LL isn't 50 for another nine years. Also - a feature of my question - I'm not asking for people over 50 who've created great music in the last decade but people over 50 who've sung or rapped on it - of course there can be a correlation. But e.g. Clif Magness has produced stuff that I consider great pop/teenpop such as Kelly Clarkson's "Low" and "Hear Me" and Avril Lavigne's "Unwanted" and "Mobile," was in mid to late 40s when he did them but is over 50 now so he'd count except I'm asking for singers.

So I'm at least somewhat asking about whose voices and mugs are welcome on the best stuff and whose voices and mugs inspire the best stuff, but some of the gatekeepers and some of the inspired may well be over 50 even when the lead singer is a young shoot.

I've had no trouble figuring out what you mean even with the italics screw-ups, but if the screw-ups bother you, you can always check in advance what your post will look like by ticking "Check spelling and preview" before clicking "Post Comment," and then, when it takes you to the spell check, clicking on "Preview." I suspect you won't want to bother.

[(Anonymous)]

Does metal count as "popular music"? Cause metal is plenty popular, and Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and Motörhead have all put out great records in the past few years (Bruce Dickinson will be 51 in a week, Rob Halford is 57 and Lemmy is 100). Also, the new AC/DC has some terrific songs on it (the tracks actually released as singles are not the best tracks on the album) and Brian Johnson is 61.

Latin music's got a fair amount of old dudes still rippin' it up: the guys in Los Tigres del Norte have got to be in their late fifties at this point, and Vicente Fernández puts out a studio album just about every two years. It's ranchero music, so the songs all sound pretty much the same, but that also means it's really hard to screw up, and he never does anyway - he's the king of that stuff.

That's all I got for now.

Phil Freeman

[koganbot]

Does metal count as "popular music"?

It sure does, and it's a genre I've not been up on... well, ever, really, but not much in the last 18 years.

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Posted this link on a couple of ILM threads (which is where Phil found it too, I assume); a few responses are below (though I should say that I personally thought the last couple Ian Hunter albums were competent at best, and same for the Heaven and Hell album. And I've never had much use for Hitchcock or Henry):

New Heaven and Hell record, if not great, is pretty damn good considering.

― If you think drum machines have no soul, you've never met my wife (J3ff T.), Thursday, 30 July 2009 16:36

Don't have time this morning to go through that link, but what I've heard of those last two Ian Hunter records sounds really good to me; don't know how popular sales wise.

― Such A Hilbily (Dan Peterson), Thursday, 30 July 2009 16:36

I was thinking of Ian Hunter as well. Also, though not fitting on this thread but relevant to Kogan's question, the last two Robyn Hitchcock & Venus 3 albums are probably the best things he's done in twenty years. Joe Henry is 50 next year and doing his best work; Wino is 48 so nearly eligible.

― EZ Snappin, Thursday, 30 July 2009 16:56

Well, El Gran Combo comes to mind immediately (though technically speaking they aren't fronted by any one individual vocalist--that duty rotate between two or three individuals).

This decade has been a bit grim, for salsa at least, and maybe for some related genres.

― _Rockist__Scientist_, Thursday, 30 July 2009 16:11

Salseros and Arabs

[(Anonymous)]

I went home and look at my salsa collection, and came up with a few more ideas. Oops, I was going to say Gilberto Santa Rosa, but he's only a couple years older than me (and not yet fifty).

El Gran Combo:
Me Libere
Viva Puente
El Matrimonio
Arroz Con Habichuela
No Te Detengas A Pensar

Andy Montanez:
En Mi Puertorro
Se Le Ve
[also based on the quality of his live performance the one time I saw him back in 2003]

Maybe Jose Alberto:
Quiero Salsa
I can’t really think of any other great tracks. Possibly some of his appearances here and there on other people’s projects (he shows up as an important voice on more than one Celia Cruz tribute)

Mohammed Abdo (Saudi Arabia). Live in Kuwait 2001 is my favorite of his releases that I’ve heard (I’m sure I’ve only heard a small percentage of them) from the last decade. This song was a big hit from the 90s, so I don't know when this concert was recorded, though it sounds to me more recent than that (I don't think he was into this trap drums crap back then). I was trying to find something that would make his poppy side more obvious, because sometimes the context is more straight up folkloric/classical:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLcB1pozNsQ&feature=PlayList&p=E12E35CB8569AA80&index=2

Maybe Nour Mhanna (Syria) esp. Layali Nour (though this may veer too close to classical music for you to count it). But then, for that matter, Sabah Fakhri could be considered popular as well as classical. (Musically, his work sticks more closely to classical traditions, while Nour Mhanna does some things that are straight up pop, as well as that Layali Nour which is close to the classical framework but with obvious modern popular touches. At least as far as I can discern as a non-musician and non-Arab.)

--Rockist Scientist

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

More. I really want to hear this Quatro album now.

Lemmy in Motorhead, Phil Mogg of UFO. Not all of their albums have been good, but some of them
have been so. Mogg has been a consistantly good hard rock singer.

At least one Status Quo record in the past couple of years has been good, which drags in Francis Rossi and Rich Parfitt.

Suzi Quatro was over 50 when she did Back to the Drive which was a good album.

― Gorge, Thursday, 30 July 2009

Quatro only excluded because not white male, obviously.

― Gorge, Thursday, 30 July 2009