"For all the hype about the endurance of boomer bands like the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, and Pink Floyd, who toured arenas and stadiums for years and years, their actual hitmaking periods were considerably shorter-maybe a dozen years each when they could reliably get new songs on the radio and the charts. The Eagles generated virtually all of their hits from 1972 to 1980. Fleetwood Mac scored their core set of Buckingham-Nicks-era pop hits from 1976 through 1988."
"On the radio and on the current pop charts, they won't go away. The marquee names born in the 1980s who broke through in the 2000s are each pushing a decade and a half to two decades of hitmaking apiece, with no signs of slowing down. Beyoncé, born in 1981, is now more than 20 years into a solo career studded with Hot 100 No. 1s, from " Crazy in Love" to " Texas Hold 'Em" (and that doesn't include her Destiny's Child years)."
Boomer-era bands often toured for decades but produced most of their hits within comparatively brief, roughly dozen-year windows of reliable radio and chart success. The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, and Pink Floyd generated their core hits between the early 1970s and late 1980s, then continued touring those same songs. Millennial megastars born in the 1980s have extended active hitmaking into spans of 15 to 20 years and still release new, charting material. Artists such as Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Drake, Kendrick Lamar, and Taylor Swift exemplify prolonged commercial peaks and sustained audience engagement.
Read at Slate Magazine
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