Taylor Swift, Mona Lisa, Beyonce.
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Andrew Dias Nobreafp via Getty Images; Thomas Coexafp via Getty Images; Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Recording Academy./.
why Mona Lisa What is the most famous painting in the world? Why did the Beatles the beatles?
Or, to put it another way, if there was just one person in the world today who knew The Beatles’ entire discography, would performing those songs make that person a star?
That’s actually the plot of the 2019 movie yesterdayThis is one of many hypotheses that behavioral economist Cass Sunstein explores in his latest book. How to Become Famous: The Lost Einstein, the Forgotten Superstar, and the Birth of the BeatlesIn the book, Sunstein identifies several components of fame.
He spoke Taking everything into consideration Host Ari Shapiro shares how talent plays a big role, but it’s not the only thing.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Interview highlights
Cass Sunstein: It’s really wonderful to have champions. The Beatles had champions. Jane Austen had champions. Bob Dylan had champions. William Blake, one of the great poets who was completely ignored for a long time after his death and then resurrected, had champions. And that’s important.
Having a network of people who think, “You’re amazing. I’m going to support you and be your team,” is really important. If you’re prolific, that really helps. If you can create a chain of enthusiasm, you can The Beatles, or at least Herman’s Hermits.
Joan Baez and Bob Dylan performed at a civil rights rally in Washington, DC in 1963.
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Roland Sherman/National Archives/Newsmaker
Ari Shapiro: You mention Bob Dylan, and in the chapter about him you also mention a singer I’d never heard of before, which is the crux of the chapter: her name is Connie Converse.
Some would argue that Connie Converse was just as talented and a great songwriter as Bob Dylan, so what does the fact that Bob Dylan is a household name and Connie Converse is a household name say about what makes celebrities famous?
Sunstein: So Connie Converse is a bit like John Keats, in that she failed in her lifetime but became iconic much later, and she’s on a path to becoming a potential icon.
Connie Converse — How Sad, How Lovely
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She was writing folk songs before Bob Dylan, when folk songs were just repetitions of old songs. So why didn’t she make it? Why did Dylan make it? He ended up in a cafe in Greenwich Village by chance. She didn’t get there. Partly because he was persistent, partly because he was lucky. He got a major critique in 2000. The New York Times Early on, few people received such a review from Robert Shelton.
He also met a very famous record producer who said, “Let’s give this young man a chance.”
That was John Hammond. When Dylan’s first record didn’t sell very well, it was called “Hammond’s Folly,” because he signed a shabby guy like Bob Dylan who wasn’t selling very many records, and Hammond wouldn’t give up.
In short, Bob Dylan might have been consigned to the dustbin of history if it hadn’t been for someone saying, “This man has betrayed my trust multiple times, but I believe in him.”
Shapiro: Several chapters talk about two people with similar talents, one of whom became famous and the other didn’t. But there is an interesting example of someone who became super famous in one country and was practically unknown in his country of birth: the singer Sixto Rodriguez, who won an Academy Award in 2012 for a documentary about him. The film is called “The Wonderful World.” I’m looking for Sugarman.
So was this American singer-songwriter, unknown in his native Detroit, a sort of South African Elvis?
The story of Sixto Rodriguez Searching for Sugarman.
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Sunstein: Absolutely. Sixto Rodriguez was a very talented singer-songwriter, but after a few attempts he gave up and became a construction worker. He had a family and a pretty good life, but he wasn’t involved in pop music.
In South Africa, he didn’t know it, but he was Elvis, Dylan, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles..
Why did he have such phenomenal success in some places, but such a flop at home? The intuition would be, “He resonated with South African culture, but not with American culture.” It’s a good intuition, but it’s almost certainly wrong. He got the break in South Africa that Taylor Swift got in the United States.
Shapiro: To be clear, you’re not arguing that talent is irrelevant, you’re arguing that there isn’t enough talent.
Sunstein: Absolutely. Today, you can find at least two books in an airport claiming to have five keys to success or fame. But these books are technically nonsense. [number of] There is probably a very high percentage of people who have these five characteristics and yet are not successful: they were hard-working, they had unhappy childhoods, they were extremely talented, or they were poor.
Therefore, the idea that they are causal factors in success cannot be proven by the fact that they are correlated with the success of a certain number of people.
Muhammad Ali training with a speed bag in 1966.
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Shapiro: So for every Muhammad Ali, Taylor Swift, Beyonce, and Albert Einstein of the world, who knows how many people out there have the potential to not become a Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Muhammad Ali, or Einstein? What is your message to them?
Sunstein: You hit the nail on the head, and I confess I didn’t hit the nail on the head until much later. And I was interested in the sources of success of great people, not the sources of their failure. And there are people all around us, people we pass on the street, who in some way have the potential to be great, but they don’t even know it.
Shapiro: Do you see it as an exciting possibility or a heartbreaking tragedy that there could be 10 people around us who are as talented as Taylor Swift but never get a chance?
Sunstein: It’s both. And it’s heartbreaking to think that there is extraordinary potential out there, and that by God’s grace some people can use their talents to become famous, while others don’t have God’s grace. And yet we raise our eyebrows in gratitude when we pass those who seem to have failed.
