Does pop music need a retirement age?

Boston Globe

15-07-2025

Cyndi Lauper performed during the Global Citizen festival on Sept. 25, 2021, in New York.
STEFAN JEREMIAH/Associated Press
If this is Lauper's last tour, she's the rare legacy artist to leave behind the rigors of the road. Like Congress, the presidency, and the Supreme Court, pop music has no retirement age. And for better or worse, artists in their 70s, 80s, and beyond keep touring and flogging their oldies for fans who just don't know how to let go.
Get The Gavel
A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr.
Enter Email
Sign Up
Then again, neither do the performers.
Advertisement
Last week,
During the first part of that tour in 2022, McCartney played two sold-out shows at Fenway Park. In his
Advertisement
For devoted fans, the intangible essence that makes a particular artist distinctive can obscure the inevitable ravages of time, even to the artist themselves.
A few years ago I went to a concert featuring two groups whose commercial peak came in the 1980s. One of the bands, a British duo, sounded fantastic, as if no time had passed. Not so with the lead singer of the other group who, at 70, didn't seem to notice that once easily accessible notes were now well beyond his reach.
But for older performers it can be more than octaves that are no longer within their range. Last year, social media was inundated with clips of singer
'I absolutely love what I do,' Valli wrote. 'And I know we put on a great show because our fans are still coming out in force and the show still rocks.'
Others recognize when it's time for their last encore. Plagued with health problems,
In May, Osbourne told
Advertisement
For many artists, the fans who've stayed with them for decades are family, too, and they can't imagine walking away despite fragile health or advanced age.
Excess, not age, was Elvis Presley's problem, and it led to his death at 42. In an 'E! True Hollywood Story' about
But his fans didn't care.
'His audience accepted him,' Jerry Weintraub, a legendary concert promoter and film producer, said in the episode. 'When they saw him on the stage and they saw him at 300 pounds, they saw the Elvis from 20 years before. They couldn't see [the physical changes].'
Remembering aging artists as young and dynamic is also a vital link to our own younger and more dynamic selves. That's part of what music alone uniquely does. A riff or a chorus whisks an audience back to that original moment of revelation. Gleefully screaming out the lyrics of a favorite song played live in concert erases today and its woes and revives all those yesterdays full of possibilities.
I felt that the first time I saw Lauper in concert on an unseasonably raw spring day in 2004, two decades after her breakthrough album, 'She's So Unusual.' She stood on the arms of a seat in the middle of the audience and belted out 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun' — in the same venue where she'll play on Thursday.
It's understandable why many musicians shun retirement — few things can replace the rapture of an adoring audience. But there's a lot to be said for those who walking off the stage too early rather than too late when neither the singer nor the song remain the same.
Advertisement
Renée Graham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at