Artists whose peak period was middle-age

Leonard Cohen

looooool m@tt

Bill Dixon -- made his first record at 37, his last (yet to be released) at 84.

nick cave i don't know if you can say peak but abbatoir blues/lyre of orpheus and then the grinderman stuff i like about as much as anything he's done.

I think I'm in the minority of thinking late period Fugazi rules and pwns so to me Ian Mackaye

OH SHIT

Duh - Robert Pollard! he was 35 when propeller came out!

Tom Waits

it's looking like E-40 might be the world's first rapper where this is true

surely Frank Sinatra ?

good one

ooh yeah Pollard, he is a strange case. he always seemed so out of place with his 90s indie rock peers, like he was the Breeders' drunk uncle or something

Dieter Meier was already 35 when Yello released their first album, and their peak period wasn't until a few years after that.

It's pretty hard to think of female pop/rock singers for whom this would be true. Debbie Harry and Grace Jones almost make it.

Not sure if Can counts, since they were already in their 30's when they formed the band.

Yo La Tengo were a lot better in their 30's than in their 20's.

Moondog

Susan Boyle

Oh yeah, and I would argue that Meshell Ndegeocello's peak period started in 2003 with Comfort Woman, and hasn't ended yet. She was born in 1968.

Scott Walker

OTM. Not that I ain't a massive fan of the numbered albums, but SW is the first thing I thought of when i saw thread title.

this is a pretty idiosyncratic list of people so far

bill withers

Go-Betweens.

The drummer from Spirit was 85 when their debut came out.

weren't The Damned kinda old or at least some of them?

tonetta

Jeez, is anything over 30 middle aged now?

lee hazlewood

Trish Keenan was 35 when Broadcast released their second album (Haha Sound).

Pet Shop Boys

Marianne Faithfull
Lucinda Williams

Ivor Cutler

serge gainsbourg

he was 40 when he made "je t'aime moi non plus" and 43 when he made "melody nelson".

you would think that electronic music producers would improve with age, since it's a craft that benefits from knowledge and experience, but it doesn't seem to work that way. proof that ideas trump craft, i guess.

Lucinda Williams and Tom Waits are spot-on choices.

I don't expect a lot of people to agree, but I like the new Dinosaur Jr. stuff better than their 80s records.

surely Frank Sinatra ?

Arguably, Johnny Cash

No 35-year-olds pls, that is not middle aged unless we're talking about the 19th century or earlier.

agree that a lot of these nominees are more of the "older than their peers" but not necessarily middle-aged variety. My initial inclination was to make the cut-off 40-60, tbh

sometimes I think Eminence Front is the best Who song

but 1982 was def not their peak period

LOL no

I know we're spread out all over the globe, but the Median age in the U.S. Is 36.8 as an example.

Good lord, unless you're in Japan where everyone's 100, 35 is pretty damn close to middle age!

does Sting count?

Radiohead

this is just an interesting phenomenon to me. the tendency to burn out/give up/lose interest prior to reaching the age of 40 seems really strong across the musical landscape (lol at one point I had a drummer who insisted that "nobody over 40 made any good music". he also thought the golden age of popular music was from 1992 to 2000 or so). Not sure what to attribute this to really - obviously part of it is market forces (in general, younger people have more time/money/more of their personality invested in music) and some of that gets built into aesthetics ("if it's too loud, you're too OLD", "rock/hip hop is for pissing off your parents", etc.), and part of it just seems a natural tendency for people to get tired/bored/bitter, particularly if commercial success has been elusive.

seems like jazz and country are (or at least were) more amenable to the aging process than other genres

In the case of early country music, a lot of acts spent 10 or 20 years performing and broadcasting in their home states/counties so that they were pretty advanced in age by the time they achieved national fame. I think that's part of the reason why the genre came to be dominated by middle-aged performers. a more obvious factor is the tradition of paying respect to wise, experienced elders, which guarantees certain country stars a fanbase at an age when many pop stars are inclined to retire. I know this has more to do with commercial peak than artistic peak, but there's often a correlation between the two.

anyways, I can think of a bunch of country ppl who recorded their best work after the age of 35:

Hank Snow
Charlie Rich
Kitty Wells
Dolly Parton
Bob Wills
Porter Wagoner
Buck Owens
Johnny Cash
Loretta Lynn
Uncle Dave Macon
AP & Sara Carter
The Osborne Brothers
Hazel Dickens
Doc Watson

etc.

yeah agree with yr assessment on country there. although I dunno if this:

a more obvious factor is the tradition of paying respect to wise, experienced elders, which guarantees certain country stars a fanbase at an age when many pop stars are inclined to retire.

is still in place in current country. seems like it applies more to previous generations, but I could be wrong (will defer to xhuxh lol)

Fennesz.

s still in place in current country. seems like it applies more to previous generations, but I could be wrong (will defer to xhuxh lol)

Alan Jackson (52), George Strait (58), Garth Brooks (49), and Toby Keith (49) have all had huge hits in the past few years, so I'd say the trend is alive and well. otoh a lot of purists feel that none of those guys are fit to floss with Merle Haggard's butthair, so maybe it's too early to tell if the country stars of the baby boomer generation will ever be treated with the same degree of reference as their forebears.

Toby Keith is the only one of those I would say is anywhere close to his peak period

this thread needs xhuxk asap, my guess is that he'll rep Kid Rock.

Tina Turner

Ella Fitzgerald, probably lots of other jazz women

Yeah I argued for Peggy Lee upthread, her run between "Fever" at age 37 and "Is That All There Is?" at 49 is for me her most fun period to listen to and also when she took the most chances

Vi Subversa was 42 when she founded the Poison Girls

https://www.discogs.com/artist/420468-Vi-Subversa

Gyorgy Ligeti

38 for Atmosphères, probably the start of his peak period

Laurie Anderson?

Lou Reed

Kim Gordon was 42 when Washing Machine was released, many people think SY peaked after that

The majority of Moondog's recording career was between the ages of 37 and 55, and the most famous stuff is all from his 50s.

many people think SY peaked after that

Is this actually true?

hi!

to my ears they released with a couple of mediocre exceptions a string of wonderful albums through 2006 but

GBV?

I do like the latter day albums and, maybe especially, a lot of the SYR stuff! I just don't think of "post-1995" as Sonic Youth's peak period.

Alex Harvey was 33 when The Sensational Alex Harvey Band was formed, which seemed really old for a rock star at the time.

I think Bill Callahan's best work was done as Bill Callahan, and Woke on a Whaleheart came out when he was already 41. Even the best Smog material (imo) was done in his 30s.

Yeah, tbf, even Sonic Youth's 80s work was done when Gordon was in her 30s; the band name was always ironic.

It would be an easy argument to make that Celia Cruz peaked after age 35 or even after 40

Bill Frisell: mid-30s during downtown NYC days, 37 when he moved to Seattle, over 40 by the time of Have a Little Faith. Some of my favourite work of his might actually be post-middle age!

Duke Ellington was in his early 40s when he composed/released a string of masterworks ("Take The 'A' Train," "Cotton Tail," "Harlem Air Shaft," "Jack The Bear," "Ko-Ko," "Concerto For Cootie," etc. etc.).

And he was in his late 60s when he started a series of brilliant suites (The Far East Suite, The Latin American Suite, The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse, New Orleans Suite).

Wow I didn’t realise Kim Gordon was 66! I would have guessed at a minimum five years younger.

Sorry, should correct the above to co-composed -- Billy Strayhorn was either the sole composer or a collaborator with Duke on many of the '40s pieces.

xp

Duke is a good one.

Nels Cline was in his 50s when he made my favourite albums of his, probably past middle age when he made Macroscope.

personally i'm planning to peak around 43

― adult music person (Jordan), Tuesday, March 29, 2011 4:27 PM (eight years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Still on track for this

Pauline Oliveros fits in here for sure

Steve Reich was 39 when Music for 18 Musicians premiered. I think this is common for classical and jazz artists in the contemporary era.

Lucette Bourdin was a visual artist who released her first ambient album in 2005, when she was 51... Then, in following 7 years, she released something like 25 albums, most of which are excellent. Sadly, she died in 2012, but it was an amazing burst of music from someone who had never made (commercial) recordings at all in her first fifty years.