\n<\/p>\n
W<\/span>hen the comedian Marc Maron announced he would soon end his pioneering interview podcast WTF \u2013 famed over nearly 16 years for hosting fellow comedians, wider celebrities and even Barack Obama (when he was more president than content creator) in his garage \u2013 he said something you don\u2019t often hear: \u201cIt\u2019s OK for things to end.\u201d<\/p>\n In the time of the relentless scroll, culture often feels like it is drowning in cynical money grabs, nostalgia, franchises and \u201cIP rentierism\u201d. Bands, TV shows and film concepts are either never-ending or ever-repeating. It was refreshing, then, to see something stop in such a poised manner rather than descend into irrelevance and indifference. Maron gave no major reason for quitting beyond that he and his producer were a bit burnt out and it was the right moment. \u201cI don\u2019t think we live in a time where people of my generation and slightly older know how to move on from anything or stop,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Regardless of the manner of the ending, though, there is often an urge to return \u2013 be it out of financial need, creative desire, sheer boredom or some sense of unfinished business. Maron\u2019s guest when the departure was announced was the comedian John Mulaney, who responded: \u201cIf you miss it and you want to come back \u2026 just come back,\u201d he said. \u201cI sometimes feel bad for people that feel trapped by their finale.\u201d<\/p>\n No one is really keeping score of the comings and goings, though for a long time I think I was overly invested. I wanted to resist the plethora of reunions, particularly in music and TV, that have littered the last two decades. There has been a deadening sense of stagnation. More directly, the comebacks could often be dispiriting: a group of tired-faced older people vainly chasing their shadows to cash a cheque.<\/p>\n But as Mulaney suggested, the comeback offers new possibilities. And even if it falls flat, intrigue abounds. I asked a few friends what they made of the Sex and the City reboot, And Just Like That, which, now in its third season, elicits unusual responses. They all say it is absolutely terrible, a shadow of its former self, and yet perplexingly compelling. They are watching every new episode. Many reunion audiences, meanwhile, just want to relive the magic \u2013 or experience it for the first time. It\u2019s hard to quibble with the sentiment.<\/p>\n Even the most fervent Britpop idealist doesn\u2019t think Liam and Noel Gallagher revived Oasis because the brothers missed spending time together. As many pointed out, the starting pistol for the band\u2019s reunion might have been fired when Noel announced his divorce in January 2023. There is a lot of money to be made in their tour. Though, given the price gouging, a little bit too much money. But as the mass singalongs and pints-in-the-air hysteria at their first gigs in Cardiff last week showed, there is a huge amount of fun to be had in communing together, singing along to songs that, while 30-odd years old, remain timeless.<\/p>\n My own resolve about comebacks softened sometime after LCD Soundsystem returned in 2016. James Murphy\u2019s group had initially disbanded in 2011 with a grand farewell concert at Madison Square Garden (the moment was preserved in a lavish documentary). For a band so self-reflexive and studied in its references, a \u201chell freezes over\u201d reunion tour was probably inevitable. But the speed at which this was happening \u2013 only five years! \u2013 seemed cynical, almost insulting. It looked like a blot on what they had previously achieved.<\/p>\n Reluctantly I went to one of their 2017 reunion shows, and well, it was great. What I realised was that being overly precious about reunions and revivals was ultimately pointless: the whole rhythm of how they came, went and then came back again was a bit of an artificial construct anyway. If new shows give lots of fans a chance to see them play and provide pleasure, there\u2019s nothing wrong with that.<\/p>\n LCD Soundsystem released a \u201ccomeback\u201d album in 2017. It\u2019s fine. There is a handful of strong songs on it, but their vital moment had passed. <\/em>However, the idea of tarnishing an earlier legacy is somewhat arbitrary \u2013 one great piece of art doesn\u2019t necessarily get diminished because a later related piece of art isn\u2019t at the same level. I have no interest in watching a second of the Frasier revival that emerged in 2023, somehow including Nick Lyndhurst. It has now been cancelled, but regardless, it couldn\u2019t spoil any Channel 4 morning commune with the original series of Seattle\u2019s finest radio psychotherapist (itself, of course, a spin-off from Cheers).<\/p>\n Often when a band returns, their new music sounds like some required throat-clearing to help justify further tours. I was surprised then to find I loved Pulp\u2019s recent comeback single, Spike Island. It was a track of wit and invention that stood comfortably alongside their best work. The ensuing album More stands up to repeated listens too. A well-timed revival can offer something new.<\/p>\n And yet I remain drawn to the elegant and elongated pause. By all accounts Maron has no intention of retiring, with various projects on the boil beyond his podcast. But there is a certain grace in calmly walking away from the work that defined you. The once-behemoth alt-rock band REM amicably called it a day in 2011 after a series of albums with diminishing returns. It\u2019s striking how absent the band are from culture now, given how big they were just a few decades earlier. Amid constant rounds of 80s and 90s nostalgia, surely there have been some lucrative reunion tour offers. Yet aside from the occasional interview and impromptu performance, there has been nothing.<\/p>\n For me, the group\u2019s frontman, Michael Stipe, has had one of the great post-band semi-retirements. If Instagram is a guide \u2013 and that platform is an entirely accurate representation of life \u2013 he seems to have spent the last decade doing assorted creative projects, some political activism, visiting friends\u2019 art shows around the world and generally just having a lovely old time (although he did delete all his posts in early 2025). Granted, there\u2019s been a more vexed attempt to make a solo album, long in gestation. But he\u2019s a model of the form \u2013 if you can afford it, of course.<\/p>\n Perhaps the key isn\u2019t whether you return or not \u2013 it\u2019s knowing when to pause when you\u2019ve run out of creative energy, space or time. The audience can decide on the rest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When the comedian Marc Maron announced he would soon end his pioneering interview podcast WTF \u2013 famed over nearly 16 years for hosting fellow comedians, wider celebrities and even Barack Obama (when he was more president than content creator) in his garage \u2013 he said something you don\u2019t often hear: \u201cIt\u2019s OK for things to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10701,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[3153,3782,3706,3582,3783,3225,3781,286],"class_list":{"0":"post-10700","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-art","9":"tag-artists","10":"tag-comeback","11":"tag-larry","12":"tag-pause","13":"tag-ryan","14":"tag-staging","15":"tag-time"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10700\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}