ABSTRACT
It would seem something of a cliche to observe that celebrities live on for as long as they embody what their fans think they represent, and that death is no barrier to their perceived status as 'gods'. Popular music has always venerated personality, and it is apparent that nostalgia continues to exert a strong presence, as evidenced in the increasing number of Golden Oldies in the album charts, television programmes celebrating 'the best' and musicals that capitalize on past glories. Death, however, takes many forms, and the killing fields of popular music are scattered with the ghosts of young hopefuls who had been promised the stars but found instead that they were simply the fodder for an unscrupulous and voracious monster that thrives on one-hit wonders. In a world increasingly dominated by instant celebrity, success and rejection pivot on the whim of a capricious public whose appetites have been whetted by the ideology of individualism and consumption. Image, style and fashion invite both desire and identification (Gledhill, 1991; Goodwin, 1993) but, above all, it is the intimacies of an individual's personal life that exert such a fatal fascination. The national psyche, it seems, has been nurtured on sadism and sensationalism. The earlier fascination with watching public executions as entertainment is metaphorically realized through reality-pop television and shows such as The X-Factor (2004, UK). What is all too often forgotten, as contestants are subjected to the scrutiny of a mediasavvy audience, is that fame comes at a price. It can, as John Lennon so tellingly wrote, leave you 'crippled inside'.
