Flirtation with greatness

It must really suck to one day be great at something, only to discover the next day that that greatness has deserted you. Take Rivers Cuomo, for example, or Noel Gallagher. Both, essentially, wrote two brilliant albums each, for Weezer and Oasis respectively, to begin the lives of the two bands. Yet the third efforts of both writers disappointed, as did all subsequent releases. In fact you might go as far to say that all Weezer and Oasis albums, with the exceptions of each band's initial two, are shit, and both bands are surviving on the critical success of their earliest works. Now despite both writers' claims preceding the release of each new album that that forthcoming album would at least match their best work thus far, one finds it hard to imagine that they really believe that. They do not need to be told by the music press that they have got it wrong. They haven't even got it wrong. They've just lied. Because they know that, whatever greatness they once had, whatever inherent ability that they had to write brilliant pop songs, has now gone. Even they can't put their fingers on what it was, they just know that it's no longer there. They probably spend months in preparation for the release of each album, trying to write material at least close to being as strong as the stuff on their first two albums, before admitting defeat, realising that they'll never do it again, and resorting to releasing something distinctly average, only to be slated by music journalists for forcing us all to wait years for something that really wasn't worth waiting for at all. I wonder what's worse: knowing that you're no longer as great as you once were, and that you probably never will be, or having everyone else think it?