The Mysterious Shine of Twilight Pop Stars

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- I have a cousin for whom there are no irrelevant music acts, just artists and bands most people don't pay attention to anymore.

Edwin McCain hasn't had a hit single since 1999's "I Could Not Ask For More" (which country singer Sara Evans made a hit of her own in 2001) and hasn't been signed to a major label since his 2001 release Far From Over. Yet my cousin still attends his shows regularly and speaks highly of the five original albums McCain has produced since.

My sister and I often joke about my cousin's penchant for these minor recordings by largely forgotten bands like Dishwalla and Better Than Ezra. But I'm starting to suspect my sibling and I are the freaks in this exchange.

John Fogerty is closing South By Southwest this year and, in May, is releasing Wrote a Song for Everyone -- a duets album featuring Foo Fighters, Jennifer Hudson, Kid Rock and My Morning Jacket helping him out on Creedence Clearwater Revival and solo songs. Yet the man released an album of new original songs as recently as 2007 and, by the end of 2013, will have released four albums within the last decade. Basically, if you stopped caring at "Centerfield" back in 1985, you've missed a whole lot of Fogerty -- which includes a collaboration with Bruce Springsteen on a cover of "When Will I Be Loved" on 2009's The Blue Ridge Rangers Rides Again.

Yet the world doesn't stop for the release of a John Fogerty album the way it does when Bruce Springsteen puts out a new album or when David Bowie's The Next Day -- his first album of new material in a decade -- becomes a cultural event and a reflection on the zeitgeist. That doesn't stop faded music stars' worlds from turning, though.