Lots of good buzz around the new David Bowie album, The Next Day. Bowie is 66, and if he really has put out a good album at his age, hats off to him. The reviews have been really good. I sampled it on iTunes last night, and I regret to say that my overall impression is that it’s possible to be too damn old to rock and roll.

Some cuts are a lot better than others, but the only one that moved me was the elegiac “Where Are We Now?”, which has a haunting Berlin cabaret feel to it. It sounded good, but it also sounded right for a 66-year-old man. Perhaps I’m reading too much into the album; it would be interesting to know how it sounds to a young person who doesn’t know Bowie’s catalog, and wouldn’t know that he was listening to a retiree-rocker. Still, though Bowie’s voice is far more supple than his co-generationalist Mick Jagger’s, it’s hard for me to get past the idea that all that vocal ferocity is just a pose. Rock is a young man’s game (or a young woman’s, but mostly a young man’s), and I’m just not feeling the anger, the libidinal energy, and the passion of younger Bowie’s work.

And that’s okay! I’m middle aged, and I don’t have the anger, the passion, and the libidinal energy of my younger self. This is normal. If you’re still trying to rock as hard at 66 as you did at 26 and even 36, you’re not maturing. That’s not to say you cannot and should not make great music into old age. It’s just that not every genre is equally suited to one’s maturity. It’s just that Bowie sounds so much more — what’s the word? — credible on the brooding, pensive “Where Are We Now?” than on the harder stuff on the record.

Then again, what do I know. I don’t care nearly as much as I did for rock and roll (versus other musical genres). I simply don’t find it as interesting, which might well account for my judgment of the Bowie album, which everybody but me seems to like. I know I’m too old to rock and roll; I’m not sure if Bowie is, but I think so.

Anyway, what do you think? Is it possible to be too old to rock and roll? Why or why not?