An Icon You Never Thought Of (But You Should)

Let's talk music. I worked in radio for 20 years and can tell you the music business is hard. The average shelf life of a good artist is five albums- generally 7 or 8 years. You can count the number of bands and/or musicians from a generation who last more than ten years (not including the hangers-on who move to the oldies tours) at probably less than 20, the number who last more than 20 years can be counted on perhaps two hands. For my generation, the short list includes Elton John, Billy Joel, Clapton, Rod Stewart, Santana, Springsteen and little else (the Rolling Stones was the generation before me). For the next generation, we're talking the likes of Madonna, Bon Jovi, U2 and Michael Jackson (for better or worse).

That's pretty rarefied air. So it was with great surprise that, while I was listening to tunes on my iPod the other day, I realized there is another musical artist getting ready to enter his 25th year of putting out albums. And yet, even the most die-hard pop music fan might not come up with his name if they were asked. In fact, he's coming up on 25 years of making albums without hit singles on them. Some radio play yes, but hit singles, no. 25 years tells you a couple of things- first, he must be a good musician and second, he must be a pretty decent song-writer. This guy is both of those things but rarely gets credit for it. In fact, you should really listen to his stuff carefully and discover just how talented musically he really is. So, just shy of a quarter century in the music business, I would like to seriously honor him and submit that he is an icon in his own right, fit to share that status with the U2's, Stones and McCartney's of the world- I give you..... Weird Al Yankovic!