I don't think that I would want good artists to stop making music. Even if they release a **** album or 9, there's still room for redemption. Sometimes this redemption does fall by the wayside in light of 9 bad albums, but it's still great when an artist rises from his rocker and puts out something incredible. One example of this is Captain Beefheart, my favourite artist. He released four albums in a row that are not up to his level of greatness, but then he went on to release three albums that stack up to his earlier work, or even outdo it (apart from Trout Mask Replica, his last album Ice Cream for Crow is my favourite of his).
There's always the curse of good tunes being lost with youth that some artists experience, but the notion of redemption gives me enough reason to wait out a bad run of albums.
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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.
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