Yellowstone, The Silver Screen and Brad Paisley
Kevin Costner is a man who needs no introduction. An acting icon, he has been a leading man in high profiles films since the 1980’s. In 2014, he put out a movie called Draft Day. It was another entry in the long line of Kevin Costner sports movies. He has had tremendous success in that subgenre going back to Bull Durham in the 1980s, For The Love of the Game in the 1990s and he has started many more iconic sports movies.
It was clear to many that the name Kevin Costner did not have the cachet at the box office. The movie flopped. It barely broke even. It's fair to say Kevin Costner wasn't at his peak any longer. He was older, the sex appeal not there like it wasthirty years prior. Essentially, he no longer fit the role of the leading man. The romance with Jennifer Garner seemed contrived and unrealistic. Perhaps an actor in his low fifties can still fit the bill of a slightly older guy looking for love, but at a certain point it stops working. Costner was 59 years old at the time of the film. No one cares about the love life of a guy who will be collecting his social security checks before the end of the decade.
Costner soon executed a pivot and announced that he was going to be working on a western TV show. Kevin Costner has a long history with Westerns. He grew up loving the genre and he has starred in and produced numerous Westerns throughout his career. He hasn't been closely associated with the genre in the way that a Clint Eastwood did, but he clearly had a passion for the genre. Costner embraced the small screen and became the leading character of the hit western TV show Yellowstone. Its success has been dominant even in today's fractured media landscape. It rebounded Costner’s image as a pop culture figure and has added a whole new chapter in his career.
I think one of the big reasons behind this success is because Costner has such a passion for the material. There’s a big difference in the feeling you get watching a late career actor mailing it in kind of like Bruce Willis’ last 15 years versus when someone has a genuine passion and feel for the project. It results in a vitality and sense of liveliness coming through in the performance. The combination of that passion along with the realization that he was no longer a movie star level leading man allowed Costner to make this incredibly successful pivot to TV and place his career back in the spotlight.
The musical equivalent of this would be someone who came up young and displayed a remarkable amount of talent, audience appeal, and success for an extended period of time. Someone who was relatively successful up to and maybe even past the standard expiration date but now is sputtering and could use a refresh.
Brad Paisley was a chart topping artist for nearly 20 years. So much has happened in the past few years, that it may even come to a surprise that he has tremendously underperformed on the charts for about 5 years now. It seems he’s in that holding pattern that a lot of late career artists end up where they are continuously looking for that hit single to launch the next album. The album that will continue their success usually doesn't come. I think this is Brad Paisley‘s Draft Day era. It is possible that his upcoming mainstream album will do OK but even if it did, it'd very clearly be a shadow of the previous highs. That is at best. At worst, it just wouldn’t work. Usually it doesn't. Too much trend chasing usually furthers the artist from his signature sound and you end up with Clay Walker rapping over synthetic snap tracks and that's no good.
Perhap what would work and maybe more artists should go in this direction, is to be willing to take a step back from the focus on commercial success and mainstream radio play. Realize that a lot of your appeal is based on what has already took place over the last twenty years and not whatever further albums are coming down the pipe. An established artist almost never has a second coming, storming in the scene like a senior Luke Combs and ripping up the circuit. Realize that, and instead of half heartedly trying to play the game once more, take a step back and focus on producing a project that you have particular sense of enjoyment from. Do the Costner. Lower your stakes and invest passion and emotion. You've earned this and it can have a much better payoff.
There are a few examples out there of artists choosing to buck the standard expectations and pursuing something they personally appreciated. Some are mid career, some are late. A mid career pivot is an expression of dissatisfaction with having to play the rat race. Carving out a little time and passion towards something that they find particular enjoyment in. It can come at a detriment because it elongates the album cycle which can bump you down a few notches in the public eye. For instance Carrie Underwood, Josh Turner, etc. We have discussed prior on the blog, Kenny Chesney’s 2005 album Be As You Are, and that easily fits into thismodel. Dierks Bentley is an artist who has actually done this many times. In a way, the oscillating between social currency building mainstream appealing material and frustration induced individual passion projects- whether that be the bluegrassy Up On The Ridge or the 90s country parody album Hot Country Knights- Dierks has emerged as the modern day blueprint for this mid-career model.
There is historical precedence for this as well. You may not realize this, but the famous Marty Robbins Gunfighter songs album fits into this paradigm. These days we associate Robbins with this album as his defining project, but at the time he was more of a pop country singer who had a passion for Western music. It was considered to be a separate but related style of music at the time and had been quite popular in the 1940s, but was already on its way out by 1959 when Robbins released Gunfighter Songs and launched himself into a higher stratosphere of stardom.
There are also late career examples which is when an artist realizes they can no longer play the young man’s game of radio. Instead of doing the Toby Keith (wasting the last 10 years turning out vaguely mainstream sounding records in the hope of successfully recapturing an audience that dropped him remarkably quickly after his last great hurrah of Red Solo Cup), use this opportunity to put out the music you want to. Ronnie Dune’s post Brooks and Dunn struggled after the initial popularity of his first album. He released a fantastic cover project in Re-Dunn and the 90s country throwback to his heyday in 100 Proof Neon that has restored the lustre to his legacy.
John Anderson is a perfect example of this. One of the better releases in the past few years was his excellent Years. About five years previous he had the superb Goldmine. Both were released independently with no commercial ambitions. The albums were stronger for that. I prefer the former over the latter, but they are both exemplary demonstrations of Anderson’s artistic perspective.
Obviously, the number one example would be Johnny Cash and the American recordings. There’s not a lot to unpack there. They are iconic for good reason. I may go through some of these albums, one by one or not, but I think that there’s a lot to be said for those albums knowing precisely where Cash's place was in the hierarchy, his career trajectory and adjusting accordingly. Putting out solemn reflective music hits differently from an elderly statesman. Covers of older hits reflect on an older age in a different light when the one singing is one of the last standing from that older era. Covers of contemporaneous material have a much different feel when sung by a man old enough to be a grandpa amd infused with the weary tone of a man who has seen the circle a life a few times too many. An urgency and fire was unlocked in Cash and those recordings are the ultimate testament to the power of passion and understanding.
I guess this is all a call on Brad Paisley to acknowledge that in spite of his massive success in the past, he is no longer hanging with fellow middle age exceptions Keith Urban and Kenny Chesney’s that still compete on the charts with the youngsters. Who knows, maybe a smaller scale, high passion project becomes the next Yellowstone and launches a whole new era in his career.
FIN
Joe
Postscript: Since I started writing this, Brad announced a change of labels, announced a new album with a renewed focus on personal and serious content, and released a song featuring President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine. There’s a lot to unpack there, and I guess all I can say is that I am intrigued greatly by the direction the post 50 years old Brad Paisley decides to take.