Julian Lennon’s heartache exposes the plight of the musical nepo baby

The son of John Lennon was upset after late-night hosts declined to invite him onto their shows to plug his latest album. Roisin O’Connor says he should be grateful that music is arguably the only entertainment industry where success demands real talent

Poor Julian Lennon. In a recent interview, the son of complete unknowns John Lennon and Cynthia Powell revealed his heartbreak over the reception to Jude, his 2022 album. “The idea was to hit a couple of the American late-night TV shows and the likes of Graham Norton and Jools Holland, but sadly nobody would have me on, so that was a bit of a letdown,” he told The Observer.

Lennon had, he said, been “amazed” at how great he and his band sounded during rehearsals in Los Angeles. Clearly he thought others would be, too.

Except, what has Lennon done to deserve our attention – apart from being the son of someone very, very famous? If he were anyone else, the 61-year-old's track record of so-so albums with meagre chart success wouldn’t earn a second glance from even the most sympathetic of late-night hosts.

Lennon would have a better case to gripe about his late-night snub if the music itself was truly excellent. The best most critics could muster about his debut album Valotte, though, was that it was “tasteful”. Writing for The Village Voice, esteemed critic Robert Christgau condemned it as “bland professional pop of little distinction…with no discernible reason for being”. It fared decently in the charts and (definitely nothing to do with his surname) nabbed him a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist.

Over the years, though, it has become increasingly apparent that even the most avid of Beatles fans have struggled to support Lennon’s musical aspirations. His second and third didn’t fare any better in the charts. The fourth, 1991’s Help Yourself, managed to spawn a top 10 single in the UK (“Saltwater”). Then there was Photograph Smile, accompanied by a music video featuring a Beatles parody band (not cringe at all) and 2011’s Everything Changes, which The Telegraph described in its two-star review as a “lethargically paced exercise in dogmatic, sub-Imagine agonising about how terrible the world is”.

It speaks to Lennon’s sense of entitlement that he felt he deserved a spot on Jimmy Kimmel or Graham Norton simply for releasing an album. He might not have noticed, but the month his record came out (September 2022) happened to be one of the busiest for new music in recent memory – with Slipknot, Bjork, Kelsea Ballerini, Billy Idol, Suede, Rina Sawayama, The Proclaimers, Noah Cyrus, Marcus Mumford, Robbie Williams, Ozzy Osbourne, John Legend and countless more vying for listeners’ (and the media’s) attention.

Julian Lennon was upset at the apathetic response to his most recent album (Getty Images for Red Sea IFF)

Were he not the son of a Beatle, with those same album sales and mediocre reviews, would he expect the red carpet to be rolled out? And no matter how much he insists he’s done things under his own steam – can he really say, with complete certainty, that renowned producer Phil Ramone wasn’t swayed by his surname into producing his first two records? The one whose credits at the time included Burt Bacharach, Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra, BB King, Franki Valli, James Taylor and Barbra Streisand?

In music, the progeny rarely outdoes the parent, unless their talent enables them to do so. Rufus Wainwright’s precocious, baroque pop stylings, for instance, caused his father – folk artist Loudon Wainwright III – to admit his jealousy of both Rufus and his sisters, Martha and Lucy, in his entertaining memoir Liner Notes. Enrique Iglesias went under a different name so he would know he’d been signed to a record label on his own merit, not because of his father, Latin pop king Julio Iglesias. Diehard Gracie Abrams fans are still in the comments sections expressing their astonishment upon learning that, yes, her father is the JJ Abrams.

Pop singer Gracie Abrams is behind hits including her No 1 UK single ‘That’s So True’ (Press image)

Compare Abrams’ upwards trajectory to the downwards one of Buzzy Lee, aka Sasha Spielberg. Daddy dutifully cast her in a number of his films – The Terminal, Munich, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – but his name hasn’t been enough to get her music career off the ground. Ditto Ben Platt – the son of film and theatre producer Marc Platt – managed to land successive roles in The Sound of Music, The Book of Mormon, Dear Evan Hansen and the Pitch Perfect films. When it comes to music, though, he has struggled to gain any kind of momentum – his latest album, 2024’s sickly-sweet Honeymind, failed to chart at all.

Perhaps there’s something in how audiences find comfort in seeing celebrity offspring onscreen or on a catwalk – of Gene Gallagher showing off his, well, good genes, or Lily-Rose Depp haunted not only by Nosferatu, but by the DNA of her ludicrously attractive parents. In the authenticity-obsessed world of music, however, sounding like an echo of your parents is more of a turn-off. Why listen to Julian when you could listen to John?

Really, Lennon should be grateful. He’s spent decades insisting he wants to step out from under his famous father’s shadow – in the music industry, there’s really only so far you can go before people realise you’re really not that talented. Just look at Chet Hanks, whose “White Boy Summer” was over before it began. Different from film or TV, where you can hide behind clever writing, brilliant co-stars or great lighting; music demands that you step onto a stage, look into the whites of people’s eyes and prove that you truly deserve to be there. After so many decades, Lennon might have to just let it be.