In pop stardom thereâs only one inevitable in life, since theyâve worked out how to avoid taxes. And death isnât all that bad either. Everyone reveals that they secretly thought you you were brilliant all along, youâre guaranteed a magazine cover or two every five years and, for 10 golden minutes, youâll finally trend.
If thereâs a downside itâs that, in career terms, youâll often be suddenly and unexpectedly removed from the decision-making process. Just at the moment when your currency has never been higher and demand for your music is at its peak, itâll fall entirely to a third cousin you last spoke to in 1973 to decide what your next album will consist of. And if weâve learned anything from the ragbag of posthumous albums over the decades, theyâll simply hack your laptop, grab the first bunch of demos out of your ‘For Mercyâs Sake Never Release This’ file, whack your moodiest in memoriam photo on it and call it âThe Real Meâ. Then they’ll chuck it at the charts and get on with contesting the changes to your will leaving everything to your guru.
It will be some comfort to fans and family of Soundcloud rapper 6 Dogs â aka Chase Amick â who died aged just 21 in January, that heâd completed work on his forthcoming third album before his death and will thus be spared the indignities of the average posthumous release. âThe albums is as Chase intended it to be,â an Instagram statement read, and there can be no greater send-off for an act than a rounded arrival point to their artistic journey. Some of the greatest albums of all time emerged from beneath such clouds of tragedy â Bowieâs ‘Blackstar’, Joy Divisionâs ‘Closer’, Notorious B.I.G.âs ‘Life After Death’. Most posthumous releases, however, only serve to diminish an artist and dishonour their legacy, and often seem to exist simply to wring out any remaining value in their name.
Death being such a notoriously unpredictable blind date, theyâre usually half-recorded albums cobbled up into full release with raw demos or unreleased tracks recorded live. Handled with all the caution of a creative sarcophagus, theyâre made to sound as if the actâs regular collaborators think the deceased genius probably might have wanted them to sound, negating any chance of a final fuck-conformity swerve into cosmic rhumba and delivering whatâs basically a half-baked self-pastiche, like pretty much any Woody Allen film this century.
Little heed is ever given to the fact that if a demo or recording is languishing unreleased, itâs generally because the artist didnât want anyone to hear it. Princeâs legendary Purple Vault might not be so much a treasure trove as a containment facility for his most toxic waste, and opening such chambers risks releasing the musical equivalent of the end of Raiders Of The Lost Ark.
The result is a plethora of legends tarnished after theyâre gone. John Lennon could have bowed out on the revitalised âDouble Fantasyâ if he hadnât been too famous not to see his follow-up rehearsals and rough takes tarted up for 1983âs âMilk And Honeyâ. Amy Winehouse and Juice WRLD left canons too scant to avoid being artificially padded posthumously, but while âLionessâ and âLegends Never Dieâ (respectively) bristled with raw talent, they lacked the personal focus that made âBack To Blackâ and âDeath Race For Loveâ such riveting disciple gatherers. Even a record as great as Jeff Buckleyâs âSketches For My Sweetheart The Drunkâ came with a mild sense of anticlimax, too unfinished to live up to the promises of âGraceâ.
Thereâs a natural demand to hear what a lost legend was working on next, of course, and the internet gives us the perfect opportunity to release half-recorded albums and demos for what they are, without primping and packaging them into a façade of a finished product. But how can an artist ensure that, the second theyâre loving angels instead, their mercurial canon isnât laced into concrete boots and dropped off a pier in darkness for the insurance?
Preparation is the key. You could either make every record assuming you wonât survive to see the reviews, or you can start working on your posthumous album now. Just tuck a solid song or two aside from each album session from this point on and use them to air regrets, bury hatchets, make final wishes that canât be refused or tell your bandmates what you really think of them. Leave them all in a folder on your laptop called ‘Bitcoin Stash’ to make sure someone opens it.
Then, at the first inkling of a persistent cough, start a comprehensive reissue campaign to clear the backlog of shonky demos â and your legacy is secured. Not for you the indignities of Michael Jacksonâs âXscapeâ.
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