After reading Bill Simmons's recent piece about Eddie Murphy's undervalued status as both a comedian and cultural force, I started thinking about the way we view entertainment icons after certain points in their career. Did we undervalue Murphy because he didn't die young and creatively untarnished? Did we choose to ignore him because, quite simply, he survived?
What does this mean for other entertainers that stick around long enough to - God forbid - get older and slow down, like real people? Does anyone still recognize Ice Cube's lyrical prowess now that he's starring in family comedies and light beer commercials? And can we agree on a way to measure this downturn in affection for our favorite performers?
I may have a solution. Using my Celebrity Value Index (or CVI), we can calculate several factors that play a part in how we write off mercurial talents past a certain shelf life. Result: the lower the CVI number, the more likely we are to take performers for granted. Let's take a look:
CVI = (Number of Peak-Era Seasons*) + (Number of Peak-Era Releases, Awards, or Championships) / (Years Lived Past Age 27) + (Number of Embarrassing Sexual Revelations) + (Number of Post-Peak-Era Releases, Awards, or Championships) x 100
(*Note: I'm counting each individual peak year as a season, as in sports. For the formula to be fair regardless of who's being measured, I think celebrity non-athletes should be subject to this. For example, The Beatles released all of their new, official recordings as an active unit between 1962-70, and while that may be a period of 8 calendar years when counting backward in time, it's actually 9 individual "seasons" of releasing new material; 1962 is one season, 1963 is another season, and on.)
With this formula, Eddie Murphy shoots a mere 36 (devalued). Kurt Cobain, on the other hand, scores an incredible 156 (highly revered).
Here's the breakdown:
EDDIE MURPHY
9 (1981-1989) + 10 (SNL cast member, 48 Hrs, Delirious, Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop, '84 SNL hosting spot, '85 MTV VMAs, Cop II, Raw, Coming to America) = 19
divided by:
23 (he turned 50 in April) + 2 (the tranny incident; Eddie's support of Brett Ratner's gay slur) + 28 (everything after Coming to America; see Simmons's list) = 53
x 100
Total: 36 (rounded up from 35.8)
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KURT COBAIN
5 (1989-1993) + 9 (Bleach, Nevermind, knocking Michael Jackson(!) off the Billboard #1 Album position, '92 Reading Festival "comeback" concert, '92 MTV VMA performance, Incesticide compilation, In Utero, MTV Unplugged concert, Live! Tonight! Sold Out!! video** = 14
divided by:
0 (duh) + 1 (everything we've learned about Courtney Love since Kurt's death) + 9 (MTV Unplugged album/video release, From The Muddy Banks of the Wishkah live album, Nirvana (best of), With The Lights Out, Sliver: The Best of The Box, Journals, Kurt Cobain: About A Son, Live At Reading DVD, Live At The Paramount DVD)***
x100
Total: 156 (rounded up from 155.5)
(**Though it's technically a posthumous release, L!T!SO!! was intended for issue, with Kurt's approval, in 1994. The rest of the band oversaw the final edits following Cobain's death in April of that year.)
(***I realize I'm counting a handful of content associated with Nirvana's peak seasons as post-peak releases, because those items were officially released after Kurt's death; that's why you see the Live at Reading DVD listed here. The audio and some of the video from that 1992 show had been popular in the Nirvana trading community for years, but as far as we know, were not intended for official release during Kurt's lifetime. Live at Reading feels like a nostalgia-driven cash-in, which arguably could have also been released even if Kurt had not taken his own life. Bottom line: with Cobain either alive or dead, it's still a post-peak-era release.)
So where does that leave other legendary performers? Surely Elvis Presley, for all his iconic status, has one of the all-time lowest CVI numbers. Think about it: compared to the number of celebrated singles, TV appearances, and movies in his early career (respectively: "Heartbreak Hotel," his not-entirely-filmed-from-the-waist-up Ed Sullivan Show debut appearance in September '56, and King Creole, to name just a few), his post-Army career is absolutely clogged with inconsistent material and moments. That's 18 seasons (1960-1977) of content to sift through to separate the good from the bad...and that doesn't even take into account the three-and-a-half-decades-worth of compilations, exclusives, and nostalgia releases being sold after Presley's untimely death at age 42.
As if to prove that it's a collective downer to see icons age and/or decline in productivity, Denis Leary infamously proposed a solution to this dilemma. I'll instead offer that both of the following are true: Western society loves to obsess over our heroes' golden years, and, in equal measures, some icons don't always know when to quit. The Celebrity Value Index is, for now, a much cleaner resolution to an ongoing, chicken and egg (or in Elvis's case, peanut butter and banana) question.
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x 100
Total: 36 (rounded up from 35.8)
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KURT COBAIN
5 (1989-1993) + 9 (Bleach, Nevermind, knocking Michael Jackson(!) off the Billboard #1 Album position, '92 Reading Festival "comeback" concert, '92 MTV VMA performance, Incesticide compilation, In Utero, MTV Unplugged concert, Live! Tonight! Sold Out!! video** = 14
divided by:
0 (duh) + 1 (everything we've learned about Courtney Love since Kurt's death) + 9 (MTV Unplugged album/video release, From The Muddy Banks of the Wishkah live album, Nirvana (best of), With The Lights Out, Sliver: The Best of The Box, Journals, Kurt Cobain: About A Son, Live At Reading DVD, Live At The Paramount DVD)***
x100
Total: 156 (rounded up from 155.5)
(**Though it's technically a posthumous release, L!T!SO!! was intended for issue, with Kurt's approval, in 1994. The rest of the band oversaw the final edits following Cobain's death in April of that year.)
(***I realize I'm counting a handful of content associated with Nirvana's peak seasons as post-peak releases, because those items were officially released after Kurt's death; that's why you see the Live at Reading DVD listed here. The audio and some of the video from that 1992 show had been popular in the Nirvana trading community for years, but as far as we know, were not intended for official release during Kurt's lifetime. Live at Reading feels like a nostalgia-driven cash-in, which arguably could have also been released even if Kurt had not taken his own life. Bottom line: with Cobain either alive or dead, it's still a post-peak-era release.)
So where does that leave other legendary performers? Surely Elvis Presley, for all his iconic status, has one of the all-time lowest CVI numbers. Think about it: compared to the number of celebrated singles, TV appearances, and movies in his early career (respectively: "Heartbreak Hotel," his not-entirely-filmed-from-the-waist-up Ed Sullivan Show debut appearance in September '56, and King Creole, to name just a few), his post-Army career is absolutely clogged with inconsistent material and moments. That's 18 seasons (1960-1977) of content to sift through to separate the good from the bad...and that doesn't even take into account the three-and-a-half-decades-worth of compilations, exclusives, and nostalgia releases being sold after Presley's untimely death at age 42.
As if to prove that it's a collective downer to see icons age and/or decline in productivity, Denis Leary infamously proposed a solution to this dilemma. I'll instead offer that both of the following are true: Western society loves to obsess over our heroes' golden years, and, in equal measures, some icons don't always know when to quit. The Celebrity Value Index is, for now, a much cleaner resolution to an ongoing, chicken and egg (or in Elvis's case, peanut butter and banana) question.
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