Melody of youth: Scott Walker in 1984, his tuneful days long behind him. Photograph: Brian Rasic / Rex Features
Did anyone see the brilliant Scott Walker documentary 30 Century Man on BBC4 a few weeks back? A veritable masterclass in how to move from Ready Steady Go to slapping pieces of meat in three not-so-easy steps. Watching it, I was struck most by his almost pathological refusal to wrap that big, bold baritone of his around anything remotely resembling a recognisable melody. And so I started to wonder: is the songwriter's pure, unaffected, instinctive pursuit of melody essentially a young person's game?
Granted, Walker's wanderings onto the musical equivalent of Lear's blasted heath are an extreme example, but it's true that the first thing to fall by the wayside in the career path of most artists are the tunes. Oasis, Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, REM, David Bowie, Radiohead, Kate Bush, Prince, Morrissey, Paul Weller, Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon - to name but a few - have all been struggling to come up with anything likely to make the milkman whistle for years and years. If there are one or two killer tunes on a new album by an old warhorse we can consider ourselves mighty lucky.
On one level the explanation is simple: as artists become more successful they're permitted to pursue their most fanciful impulses, which almost never means writing snappier, more memorable tunes. They may become more musically "sophisticated" - whatever that means - they may burrow into interesting and experimental nooks and crannies, they might indulge their desire to make grandiose art statements, or branch into ballet and opera. But they seem to regard the three-minute pop classic with just a little disdain.
Can it be true, then, that the humble pop song is just an expedient stepping stone to loftier ambitions? No, I suspect the withering of the melodic instinct is more intrinsic than that. There's something about a great pop melody that fits with the way the young throw themselves into the world: with a vigorous, unexpressed urgency that simply has to be released. When it is spent, most usually over the course of the first few albums, the force seems much harder to subsequently summon up at will.
Alternatively, maybe all this is simply an illusion and the problem really lies with us. All musicians face the unassailable problem that everything they write will be compared - almost always unfavourably - against all that has gone before, not only in terms of their own output but also the whole sweep of popular music: the chances of writing a truly arresting melody becomes slimmer and slimmer as each day passes.
You might well have laughed at poor old Macca as he plonked his way through the pretty dismal Dance Tonight at the Brits, but at least it showed a tacit understanding of the fact that writing a memorable, insistent tune remains the Holy Grail for popular musicians, whatever their age. Can you name a songwriter who has become more tuneful, more lean and snappy, as they've aged? As the exception to prove the rule, I nominate Nick Lowe.
