From Elton John's nappies to Morris Day bickering with Prince: Why I love music memoirs
The best thing I can say for the Grammys - arguably the televised awards show that's least representative of the quality of the art it purports to celebrate - is that watching the Grammys has become an annual reminder of how little music we share. We don't all hear the same songs. We don't all recognize the same musicians. We don't even buy music anymore. Which is why artists tour all the time now, their vacations are splashed across social media accounts and selling-out to corporations no longer carries a stigma.
Their currency is no longer their music but themselves, their reputations, their failures, their schedules, their lifestyles, their personal tragedies, their self-doubt - their stories.
It's why, in the past few months alone, I have learned that Elton John wears an adult diaper onstage and during his 2017 Las Vegas residency, while "walking across the stage, basking in the crowd's applause and punching the air, I was also, unbeknown to the audience, copiously urinating." Or that Alicia Keys doesn't get along with her dad and refers to him as "Craig." Or that Liz Phair, harboring a sore throat, once tried to blow off a Chicago holiday show then settled for faking her way through a Jason Mraz duet.
Remember the old music video for "Last Christmas" by Wham!? Production was a drunken bacchanal, leading to naked steeplechase through the halls of a Swiss hotel.
I know this because, judging simply by the sheer volume of pop star autobiographies recently released or arriving shortly, we live in the
