Well, I managed to stick my big dumb old white guy foot in it again.

An article in "The Atlantic" entitled "The Growing Gender Divide, Three Minutes At A Time," spotlighted the work of singer/songwriter Sabrina Carpenter, one of a growing list of female singer/songwriters who have overtaken the "air waves" recently.

Of course, to us elders this is nothing new. We saw a giant bloom of female singer/songwriters during the 60s and 70s. Some (but certainly not all) including Janis Ian, Judee Sill, Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, Laura Nyro and the legendary Carole King. I mentioned some of these artists in a comment and got the response that this was now the younger artists time to shine.

Sigh...

Every generation should be able to claim some music as its own and likewise some artists. But the hubris of younger people that insist that they "invented" something that a lot of us know has been here for a while..my teeth get on edge.

In respect to all of the younger singer/songwriters, none of them would exist without the "confessional works" of Joni Mitchell, Janis Ian and Laura Nyro. Ask any current singer who their influences are and those names will continually pop up because THEY invented the "confessional" genre, along with the now mandatory piece where the artist sits at a white grand piano and soulfully plays a song consisting of four chords and no bridge.

What can I say? Songwriting was taken a lot more seriously 60 years ago.

And I know how this sounds. An old (white) guy complaining about how the music he grew up with was so much better and how nothing produced now could ever replace it.

Well, nothing will. Those memories and the excitement of hearing some of these artists perform for the first time are unique to my generation. Sorry the younger folks missed out. And the newer stuff will take some time to find an emotional place in our hearts.

However, there is quality work being produced now. How could there not be? I've already rhapsodized about Taylor Swift and Billie Ellish. I was pleased to see that artists like Ms. Carpenter (whose work stands out as both retro and futuristic), Chappell Roan, Olivia Rodrigo and so many others either write or co-write all their tunes. I may have a problem with the specific musical formats they use, but, if it's a solidly built song, I'm in.

What frankly concerns me is the weight an artist's political stance or how they identify themselves plays in their acceptance by an audience. That wasn't always the case. In our day, artists were pretty much accepted as who they presented themselves to be. That all changed with David Bowie and Annie Lennox. Their androgynous appearances may have raised fans' eyebrows, but, in the end, it didn't matter. If you had already connected with an artist based on their artistic expression, you went along for the rest of the ride. Social media has made these concerns almost as important as the music and that's wrong. All art has to be considered for its own sake and not necessarily the particulars of its creators. After all, bad people often make great art.

Nate Jones, writing for "The Vulture," opined that Chappell Roan got too famous too fast and couldn't deal with the pressure. Fame, as David Bowie once wrote, does change a person. How they handle it determines their longevity in the field of endeavor they've chosen.

We've seen freak outs before. Axl Rose was famous for them. Gene Simmons of KISS walked out of an interview with Terry Gross. Jimi Hendrix walked off the stage at Madison Square Garden claiming he just didn't "feel it." The interaction between an artist and their audience is often crucial to a great gig. Larry David, when he was doing standup, would often walk out, tell one joke and, if he didn't get the response he wanted, would not finish his set.

Fame does weird things to a soul. The constant pressures and demands for your time, your energy, your artistry can wear a person out. Most artists today, like Adele, know when to take a break, assured that her fans will still be there when they return. Fame, if you're not careful, will mess you up so badly (as it did for artists such as Amy Winehouse and the Gallagher brothers from Oasis) that you wind up losing everything you worked for and, in some cases, it's too late to start again.

I hope that younger artists learn longevity lessons from their elders. I hope they look at a career like Joni Mitchell's, starting with her fresh-faced rise in Canada to a string of hits as well as lovers, to her enshrinement as the Queen Of Tell All Songwriting, to her recent illness and recovery. What a wild ride! Nevertheless, she persisted.

Some would say that's the price you pay for creating great art. I think it's the price you pay for living. Every one of us has bad years and good days, terrible emotional pitfalls and moments of extraordinary grace. It's up to us to use the good we've experienced in our lives to stay strong and support others and use the bad as life lessons and perhaps teach through example.