Getting better all the time

So Paul McCartney won a Classical Brit for Best Album last night. His Ecce Cor Meum inspired much critical bitching (he didn’t orchestrate it himself, he wrote vocal lines that were impossible for choirboys to sing, wasn’t Lennon the talented one anyway, etc.). But it won over the shadowy judging panel of the British Recording Industry Trust and Sir Paul walked away with another trophy for his groaning mantelpiece.

Fair play to him. It did get me thinking, though. The quality of McCartney's musical output is generally acknowledged to have diminished as he has moved into middle age. Almost all prominent classical composers, on the other hand, have got better and better as they got older. There’s rarely a sense of a talent burnt out within a few years, and often the last testaments of composers are their most innovative work. Beethoven’s Late Quartets. Verdi’s Falstaff. Wagner’s Parsifal. The incredible story of Janacek who suddenly found success in his sixties as he created some exquisite quartets, and some exquisitely painful operas.

But not one pop musician has anything like this progressive trajectory. Think of the greats and there’s not one whose best work has been in his or her later years. Not The Beatles, not Prince, not Dylan, not Madonna. Even those who just write rather than perform (and who you’d think might be immune from the modern quest for youth and novelty) seem to lose their muse as they age – witness Burt Bacharach. Any ideas why? Is classical music more about the craft than the inspiration? Or does pop music bring such worldly rewards that successful artists just can’t be bothered any more?