Sir Elton John recently took shots at the crop of musicians that blew up in the post-MTV era during a recent public appearance.
The 70-year-old pop icon delivered the remarks during an appearance with his songwriter Bernie Taupin and director Spike Lee at the Cannes Film Festival, as the Daily Mail reports.
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Donning and all black suit and purple-tinted shades, Elton commented on the authenticity of the artists who seemed to just be famous because of their music videos.
“We were before the MTV generation, and I’m glad we were because we were real artists,” he said. “The MTV generation brought along a lot of people who were great but a lot of people who just made videos. So a lot of the artistry went out of the music.”
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While John may be discouraged about the music that followed his heyday, he’s much more upbeat about the direction visual and interactive creativity is headed.
The “Candle In The Wind” singer has been working on the YouTube film competition The Cut. They were at Cannes to premiere the winning submissions of the show, which are all music videos for three of John’s biggest songs: “Rocket Man,” “Bennie and the Jets” and “Tiny Dancer.”
“The future of creativity is clearly collaborative, fusing art and technology and it’s been fantastic to open up our work to the next generation of creative talent and to share that process with the world on YouTube,” he said. “I’ve been moved and amazed by these re-imaginings of our songs and pretty humbled by the process overall.”
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John also took some time to touch on his health and future plans over the weekend. Music fans were concerned about his health after he was forced to cancel multiple concerts due to a bacterial infection.
“I’m not finished yet,” he told The Sun. “I’m more interested in keeping going. I have so much more to do.”
