EVENTUALLY almost all musicians become unbearable, self-obsessed wankers. But with some you can chart the exact moment it happened. Here are six who took a one-way trip up their own anus.
Chris Martin – 2003
We can chart Chris’s demise to his 2003 marriage to nutjob vag candle hawker Gwyneth Paltrow. Until then Chris had been pootling along with drab singles and the odd not-instantly-forgettable song like The Scientist or Yellow. Then suddenly he was naming his kids after fruit and veg and attempting to tour with net zero carbon emissions, which isn’t massively rock and roll. Now he’s divorced, and two words prove he was lost forever in his rectum: consciously uncoupling.
Prince – 1993
He may be a pop icon, but Prince entered the land of his own farts in 1993 when he changed his name to a symbol. You know, the one the one that doesn’t appear on the QWERTY keyboard. He reverted back after the millennium but then disappointed us again by croaking aged 57 and denying us a lucrative reunion world tour where we might have found out if he really did have some ribs removed so he could you-know-what to himself.
Sam Smith – 2016
Up until 2016, Sam was a plucky little Brit upstart with impressive pipes. But then he won an Oscar for a generic Bond theme and immediately claimed to be the first openly gay person ever to do so. Then he quit social media, presumably after a billion people sent him photos of Elton John winning for The Lion King. Since then Sam’s become increasingly ‘outspoken’, ie. annoying, and arrived at the BRITS dressed as a hybrid between a black bin bag and an inflatable animal from a kid’s fourth birthday party.
Lady Gaga – 2010
Gaga had arrived like a benign bomb blast on the pop scene with absolute bangers like Poker Face and Bad Romance. But after years of genuine toil to become famous, success instantly went to her head. Within two years she turned up to awards in The Meat Dress, which must have f**king stunk if out-of-date Danepak is anything to go by. It started ‘a conversation’ in the media, but no one was sure what about. Soon after she arrived at the Grammys in a giant ‘egg’. She claims she’d spent the previous three days inside it, ‘preparing for her performance’. Give us strength.
Bono – 2014
Bono has been a figure of fun for decades now. The sunglasses indoors, the ever-present ‘peace sign’, the complicated offshore tax arrangements. And wailing ‘Well tonight thank God it’s them instead of you’ in every shop at Christmas. But he’s never managed to annoy so many people at once as in 2014, when U2 had the audacity to stick the album Songs of Innocence on every new iPhone. Maybe he thought it would bag them 500 million new fans. But no, it just made even more people realise he’s taken up permanent residence in his bumhole.
Madonna – 2000
Another musician who found love and lost their mind. Madonna got hitched to mockney millionaire Guy Ritchie in 2000 and hasn’t released a decent album since. She instantly donned a bad British accent, flat cap and Barbour gear, if you can bear to remember that. They say she’s the queen of reinvention, but looking like a member of the landed gentry who’s completely insane from inbreeding and reduced to burning their paintings to heat their stately home wasn’t the most appealing change of image.
