Certainly no shockers here but it scratched an itch I didn't know I had; wondering about the whereabouts of some of the artists that filled my youth. It was this type of thing that really spoke to me and helped me identify how we relate the capitalist side of the business with our own worth.

From Paul from S Club 7 and Robbie Williams to Shaun Ryder and Tim Burgess and everyone in between, Duerden leaves no stone unturned in unearthing what happens when the lights go down on a career in pop music. Whereas we do hear how Dennis Seaton from Musical Youth still performs live sometimes (and, perhaps having learned from that Big Train sketch, is happy to repeatedly play the hit) alongside a day job as Chair of the Ladder Association Training Committee ("When it's right to use a ladder, use the ladder, and get trained to use it safely. Exit Stage Left goes into the lives of those who’ve hit the top, in particular how they fare after that peak has inevitably been reached. We’re very good at self-deception bullshit, and we all have our blind spots, but the trick is not to walk away from, but rather to walk towards our weaknesses.And at least that's not outright inaccurate in the same way as, say, the caricature of glossy, issue-averse eighties pop he feels obliged to trace out one more time, just so as to better contrast Billy Bragg. I got two novels out on the same library trip as this, both of which I abandoned before they even merited a place on my Abandoned shelf, because we so clearly weren't gelling. I'm fascinated with the lifecycle of popular musicians - because after that first amazing album, what comes next?

He's the New York Times Best-Selling author of three books about the Artist's Life; " Steal Like an Artist," " Keep Going," and " Show Your Work. But for all that I could easily have worn out a red pen on this crap, the one thing you can say for Duerden's style is that it's clear and quick to read, and the key question here is interesting: what do pop stars do once fame moves on? David Quantick 'Duerden finds fascinating layers of humanity, pathos, humour and wisdom in equal measure.A former primetime television personality, his outdated style has seen him relegated to the scrapheap. By covering their successful histories and the artist filling in how their lives have gone since, it certainly made a worthwhile read. It’s a question that almost every performer faces in an industry that fetishises youth: is it better to burn out or just fade away? During CeeLo Green's chapter, the author makes a point to state Green's non contest plea in legal action from an accused rape.

This book strips back the idea of glamour in the music industry as any band or artist who attains a bit of attention is put to work like a mule for the time that it lasts, be that months, years or decades. What is rarely written about (and it is something that applies to all careers) is what happens to the pop star when their moment in the spotlight is over? The closest the book comes to any kind of conclusion is that nobody ever entirely leaves music behind, not forever, which I'm not so sure about; Mark Hollis, say, gave the impression that even if he hadn't died far too young, he was finished, and I suspect there's a selection bias in who was up for chatting to someone writing a music book.So we see what happened to members of So Solid Crew, Blue and perhaps most telling S Club 7, where one of the group’s member Paul Cattermole talks about his time in a pop juggernaut as a dark time (although the lucrative sold-out that the ensemble will undertake later in 2023 probably goes some way to alleviate his pain).

It's breezily written and sometimes very funny (I particularly enjoyed the wry recounting of Leo Sayer's words of wisdom). Most of these musicians seem to be British centric and from genres I'm not interested in like punk/alternative.Exit Stage Left: The Curious Afterlife of Pop Stars by Nick Duerden is an entertaining look at what happens to pop stars after the hits stop coming. We live in a culture obsessed by the notion of fame - the heedless pursuit of it; the almost obligatory subsequent fallout. I also think that by narrowing the focus of "Pop", the author builds a narrative that im not sure is true in that things discussed in interviews need to tie directly back into what it means to be a "pop star" or part of the "pop" scene.