ITT: 80s artists who survived the 90s

ITT: 80s artists who survived the 90s

Starting with easy mode example.

RHCP

they only got famous in the 90's, so that doesn't really count

>Will he survive

These niggers

REM

Thrived is more like it.

Why do bay area rappers never fall off?

Goo Goo Dolls released their first two albums in the 80s.

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Kind of too bad, I've always thought that bands like Men At Work, Tears For Fears and Huey Lewis and The News had a strong repertoire to keep on releasing good albums for decades. However, that's not exactly how it turned out.

not everyone can stay popular forever?

only a few can carry the candle for long periods of time?

their music became stale?

they weren't that good to begin with?

the band broke up?

tons of reasons i'm sure. with taste being so subjective and with music always reinventing itself, i guess it's hard to remain relevant over a long career.

they sure as hell didn't survive 2004!

Came to post these
Also Depeche Mode and The Cure

No offense to her fans, but just on pure talent alone, I have no idea how Madonna is considered an icon while Cyndi Lauper died out in a hurry. And exactly how in the name of rampant space AIDS does Bon Jovi still pack stadiums?

It's called playing the game user

It's a good point. Have always thought CL as a great singer.

The 80s was probably unique in just how much the music of that time was based on image and visuals, one reason why it's not held up that well and why you had to be there to appreciate it. A lot of kids today will look at pics of glam rockers and think "Wow how retarded" without being able to understand how cool and cutting-edge that Def Leppard, Flock of Seagulls, Tears For Fears, or Duran Duran were in their day.

U2

Most 80s bands died out in the 90s for the same reason most 70s bands died in the 80s--they broke up or ran out of ideas or their image and message wasn't cool or relevant anymore.

Men At Work were already falling apart before their third album came out. When it didn't do very well (at least, not compared to the first two), that seemed to finish them off.

Tears For Fears took half a decade to come up with The Seeds Of Love, by which time they'd lost a lot of momentum. Furthermore, the drastic change in sound (although no more drastic than the change between The Hurting and Songs From The Big Chair) alienated many fans, and many considered the album disappointing or perhaps a shameless Beatles rip-off. Roland and Curt split soon after that. Although I thought Elemental was brilliant and a return to classic TFF form, it flopped.

Huey Lewis and the News were just a fluke who happened to be in the right place at the right time, sort of like Hootie and the Blowfish/

>glam rockers
>80s
>tears for fears

er

I think a lot of 80s bands were basically background music for the 80s. Once the 80s went away, which was around 1987 or so oddly enough, so did the bands.

Admittedly the production on 80s music dated like shit. Say, TFF--"Mad World". Still a great song, but the production is just...no. There's a pocket of time in the early 80's where everything sounded like Phil Collins. There was the whole synth craze. I think some bands just didn't know how to write a song without a synth keyboard and a headstockless guitar.

Tears for Fears started taking a stupid long amount of time between albums, then they broke up after 1989. Roland and Curt got back together and made a new album in 94, but nobody cared anymore.

Like some of the others said, those groups (more than a few) were tagged as '80s acts. The changing times left them behind commercially speaking. Some did make great music again, others didn't, it's going to happen to "new" and "great" acts of today too.

Huey Lewis and the News was a real solid band. Sports! And Fore are both great

IMO, 80's music is not much different than current music in one big way: the music was disposable, therefore the bands were disposable. If you cannot adapt to changing times (which requires a lot of brains, talent, and a pretty deep musical set of influences and knowledge), chances are you have a very limited amount of time to milk the cow. Most of the bands from that decade were one-trick ponies, and one-trick ponies don't last.

Cyndi Lauper was really just a gimmick artist with her post-nuclear Pebbles Flintstone outfits and all-over-the-place songs, plus hanging out with pro wrestlers and shit like that.

Tears For Fears were hot on college/alternative radio in the US before they went mainstream.

I don't see how anyone can say the 80s was a bad decade with TFF, Springsteen, U2, the Pixies, Elvis Costello, Replacements, and REM. It's too bad that the moment the phrase "80s music" is uttered that it conjures up nightmares of Poison and Twisted Sister, but that's like saying Nickelback was the entirety of 2000s music.

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Faith No More

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Cyndi Lauper's second album "True Colors" was a letdown, also she's complained that the record industry threw her overboard because she was in her 30s and they thought she wasn't young enough to be an appealing pop star. The lead single from "True Colors" was really just adult contemporary which goes to show she was appealing to soccer moms and not kids.

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The 80's new wave pop stuff was just a cheap, quick attempt to make money off of the true sweat and art of the mid-late 70's synth and punk creative explorations. The mid-late 70's really did generate some neat stuff.

Madonna had an incredible team of pioneers behind her as far as producers, mixers, songwriters, and fashion designers. Her albums were consistently groundbreaking and relevant to their period, each one evolved organically and matured in depth without leaving out the basic pop fundamentals.

Not really sure what happened with Cyndi. I can't see anyway that she would have ever been able to compete with Madonna after True Blue came out. As soon as Madonna's third album came out, that entire generation was hers for good.

Problem is that Madonna in her later career has been a selfish prick who won't go away and so engendered a lot of bad will, which is why it's easy to forget how groundbreaking she was in her prime.

Small World was the downfall of HLATN. Right when they were at the peak of their success, they tried an "experimental" album and never recovered from it.

True.

A band's appearance and music videos were very important in the 80s. A lot of the truly great acts like Talk Talk, Simple Minds, Echo & The Bunnymen, XTC, Shriekback.. were not so much an "act" but makers of great music. Hair metal bands, slick videos, that puke-tastic Hugh Padgham production (which really only "fit" the Stranglers and the Police) and eyeliner made a lot of the music forgettable. While formerly great artists like Bowie and Elton John had become complete jokes in the 80s, the British New Wave was making waves. Some decent bands from others regions didn't make it despite being quite good. Hunters & Collectors (Australia) is a good example. Seriously, crank up their song "Talking To A Stranger", you might like it.

Most of the bands that were just cheap gimmicks/fads died with the 80s, in general the guys who stayed relevant in the 90s were the ones like RHCP, U2, REM, and Sonic Youth that weren't based on a gimmick. That and the rise of hip-hop and grunge in the early 90s resulted in record labels chucking a lot of artists overboard.

Like, why would you conceivably think a band like this was going to remain relevant in the 90s?

Correct. The hairstyles and wardrobes really did date a lot of bands badly. It's no different than a 70s movie where you watch it today and it's hard to get past the wide collars, porno mustaches, and sideburns.

>Madonna reinvented herself
LOLwut. I've never heard a song of hers that wasn't "Club/dance tune" or "Love ballad". Reinventing yourself was perfected, if not invented by Neil Young. He did something different every year.

Since when does Neil Young have any range? He's even more limited than Madonna. Like clockwork, his albums alternate between acoustic record (hailed as a return to "Harvest") and electric record (hailed as a return to Crazy Horse).

I agree that way too many 80s artists were gimmicks based around their image and visuals. But then every decade has its cheap flavor-of-the-month fads and artists who die a quick death once that fad is over.

Not everyone is going to be the Rolling Stones or Bob Dylan who stayed relevant for decades.

I think what he means that in the case of Neil, reinvention meant constantly finding a new audience, that is he never got uncool. Whereas with Madonna, she's always appealed to the same group of people.

>Not everyone is going to be the Rolling Stones or Bob Dylan who stayed relevant for decades

As already mentioned, the 80s produced more than plenty of artists who outlasted that decade by a long time.

U2
REM
The Cure
RHCP
The Smiths
Prince
Sonic Youth
Madonna
Joy Division

Although some of these artists weren't always good or consistent during the 90s, none of them aside from Prince embarrassed themselves to the extent that Neil Young and Bob Dylan did in the 80s.

You don't even need to get to another sentence before I say that she evolved without compromising the basic pop loop.

Holy shit, the English speaking world is so fucked.

>Not everyone is going to be the Rolling Stones or Bob Dylan who stayed relevant for decades

My point taken was quite like that. I was asking why some artists produced a few hits and quickly died off while others stayed relevant for years. Nobody can stay on top forever, but some guys seemed to lose it fast, in fact being completely washed up at a still young age.

came here to post

>Joy Division

Horrible as it might be to say, add Bon Jovi to the list. They were still putting out charting hits into the 2000s.

Good point. Bon Jovi did slip for a while in the 90s but they were generally pretty good at reinventing themselves and like U2 can still fill stadiums while a lot of their contemporaries are reduced to the county fair circuit or being a guest judge on America's Got Talent.

Survived is the proper word for this band and Sonic Youth, they thrived in the 80's and 00's but just kinda coasted through the 90's

Again, a lot of artists are/were based on flavor of the month fads and soon died off. Going back to the 60s, you had artists like Donovan and Iron Butterfly that became irrelevant fast after Altamont. The 70s had lots of artists as well like KC and the Sunshine Band, Rick Derringer, Nazareth, etc who went down the drain in a couple of years.

This. Like what the fuck? New Order didn't survive the 90's, they went down in flames pretty quickly.

I don't see how Neil Young embarrassed himself in the 80s. He was admittedly a bit lost for a few years and trying weird experiments, but he never did anything as cringeworthy as 90s Prince. If anything, Mick Jagger made a bigger ass of himself in the 80s than Neil Young.

>Coil
>Boredoms
>Swans
>Beastie Boys
>The Bad Seeds

Everybody's Rockin' and Landing on Water were major embarrassments and some of the lowest points in Neil's entire career. Trans was easily his most controversial album at the time because he dared use synths and ended up alienating a lot of his old fans in a big way, but history has ultimately proven kinder to that record. Still, a lot of knee-jerk 80s haters understandably recoil at Trans for the same reason they recoil at McCartney II.

Also Mick Jagger's two solo 80s albums were at least passable, sold some, and got airplay. At least he didn't get sued by his record label for making unsellable albums.

As I said, it's a bit unfair to compare veteran artists like Neil Young and Mick Jagger that had been in the business 15-20 years by the time Reagan was president. Having said that, there's plenty of 80s artists who've lasted for decades and plenty of 60s artists who died off after a short time.

Dinosaur Jr? Although like Pantera they weren't relevant until the 90s.

But nobody likes their 90's records, only the 80's

Dinosaur Jr were definitely an 80s band even if they did presage the 90s. I mean, some people think the 80s from a musical standpoint actually began in the Carter years when punk and New Wave swept away dinosaur rock and that the 90s from a musical standpoint began in the late 80s as alternative rock was starting to get big. Bands like U2 definitely sounded a lot different at the end of the 80s than they did at the beginning.

Anyway, Dinosaur Jr were clearly part of the whole mid-80s aesthetic even as they did predict the 90s to an extent.

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For me, it was the musicianship or the human touch of music that was lost in the Eighties. Everything seemed so digital; there was no warmth in the music. All those synthesisers and electric drums just didn't touch me the same way music had in previous years. A lot of the singers were out of tune, most sounded sharp to me. I'm not saying that musicians were not good; I'm saying that the human touch, the musicianship of making music took a back seat to technology.

No way. Their first two albums were great and it's like they fell right off a quality cliff-face.

I kind of agree and a lot of people do hate that plastic, slicked back 80s sound with the warbly synthesizers and drum/vocal reverb everywhere.

To be honest, a lot of the 80s rock/metal has held up better than the pop stuff. To me, the worst and most dated music is Duran Duran, Missing Persons, Spandau Ballet, etc. The production on their albums just sounds so ridiculous today.

I mean the Pixies were late 80's but they were still solid into the 90's.

Anything after that though is a different story.

Not fair, a lot of 80s music still used analog synths and in most cases, bands were still recording on analog tape. Albums which used purely digital recording like Judas Priest--"Turbo" and Dire Straits--"Brothers in Arms" sound much slicker and inorganic. Depeche Mode and New Order recorded everything on tape and don't suffer from this problem.

I never understood the beef over synthesizers. It's a tool/technology just like anything else. I mean, the butthurt over Bob Dylan going electric in 1965 died down after a few months, but 30+ years later people are still acting like 80s synthpop was the worst thing ever.

I would even claim that incorporating that uniquely human touch with exclusively digital methodologies is something that has only relatively recently (i.e.: in the 2000s) been perfected.

They survived the 90s well, but they also slowy killed themselves in the 90s as being a contemporary alternative rock band.
In the 00s they dun goofed.

Easy--Synth Band=Spandau Ballet, Guitar Band=The Pixies.

Guess which one sounds great still and which one sounds like dated tripe.

They're both great groups for their time. A good song is a good song regardless of the production used.

>survived the '80s
>survived the '90s
>survived the '00s
>still going strong

Besides, Spandau Ballet did use guitars. Now, I'm not going to claim that Gary Kemp was in the same league as Eddie Van Halen/Dave Mustaine/John Frusciante/whatever your personal guitar god is, but it's just silly to claim they were only a synth band.

The Stone Roses were the funniest case
Their acclaimed debut released in late. 80s was basically a 90s album and the follow up got crushed by huge break and expectations

I think it's not so much synths that people hate, it's those awful 80s drum sounds. Take for example Don Henley's "Building the Perfect Beast". Snare reverb drums everywhere. Although that album has some good cuts like Boys of Summer and Sunset Grill, I can't imagine them working on an acoustic set. Henley isn't Duran Duran, but there's the difference between synths used naturally and synths being used simply because they were popular at the time.

Again, there's nothing evil or bad about snare reverb, like anything else it's a tool that's only as good or bad as the person doing the production. Joy Division did reverb drums that sounded really good, even a few 60s veterans like Charlie Watts did nice work with it.

Yeah I will never, ever, ever understand this anti-synth attitude amongst so many music fans. It makes absolutely no sense to me.

As for music being dated...I may be alone in this, but I personally don't think any music really sounds "dated." It all just sounds like music to me, whether it be a scratchy old Glenn Miller recording, a '70s disco tune, a '60s soul track or an '80s synthpop song.

Cyndi Lauper just totally dropped off the radar after True Colors while Madonna has (love her or hate her) still continued to remain in the public eye decades after beginning her career.

I remember seeing a Newsweek article from 1985 or so called "Women in Rock" and it talked about Madonna just being a cheap fad and how Cyndi Lauper would be a household name for the next 20-30 years. lyl.

Simon Werner a Disparu, the SYR releases in the 2000s and the In The Fishtank stuff they did is all among Sonic Youth's best stuff.

One of them couldn't make it though the 00s but I like their new singer too. Idk why he gets so much hate

Cornell made it through the 90s but his band didnt, technically, make it to the 00s alive. He did.

The 80s was a time when music got fragmented into scenes, so there was no way there could just be a handful of artists like the Beatles or Led Zeppelin that were the soundtrack for an entire generation.

Totally with you. If somebody comes out today and puts out a killer disco/synthpop/modal jazz record I ain't gonna complain that it sounds dated if it slaps.

Hardly true. 80s rock groups toured as hard as anyone before or since. Even synthpop guys like Duran Duran toured like crazy. Depeche Mode filled up the Rose Bowl in 1988 completely under the radar of the mainstream rock press.

Men At Work were too much of a one trick pony to last very long. Tears For Fears took too long between albums (as someone else said) and Huey Lewis and the News IDK. They must have run out of ideas or something.

Making a good synthpop song requires as much talent as strumming a guitar, yet somehow we're told that it's cheating and you're letting a machine do all the work. Say Depeche Mode...do you think they would have filled up the Rose Bowl if they weren't good songwriters? The synths were merely a means to an end.

Pretty sure Doolittle isn't a 90's album

The 80s had plenty of artists who were flavor of the month fads that died out soon, but so does every decade. I mean, how many disco artists stayed relevant after January 1, 1980? Synths and snare reverb are no more or less a period gimmick than how 60s music used Hammond organs or 70s music used brass ensembles.

Depeche Mode's greatest albums are Violator and Songs Of Devotion, and yes, the addition of guitar (sometimes just acoustic) was the added dimension that kicked the Mode into a higher level of artistry. I mean, Johnny Cash covered Personal Jesus!

IMO the reason synths get a bad rap is the following:

1. A lot of rock groups in the 70s-80s bragged about how they didn't use synths. For example, Queen would put disclaimers on their albums like "No synthesizers used". Paul Stanley said that Kiss's Animalize album was named so because "Too much music these days is made with computers, and to me pressing buttons is no fun." So the message a lot of these guys put out was that synths were uncool and cheating.
2. Most average people's only exposure to synths were the Casio keyboards you saw on display at Sears or Radio Shack which of course were nothing like the expensive professional-grade models used in a studio.
3. Synths aren't very cool/fun/sexy/powerful in a live setting unlike watching John Frusciante orgasm on stage
4. Synths got way too pigeonholed with 80s music in general. The 60s-70s classic rockers snubbed synths as much as disco, and that image is hard to shake off much like how playing a banjo conjures up images of Deliverance.

Off the record, Queen had nothing particularly against synths, they just wanted to let you know that the sfx on their albums were made purely with guitars.

My nigga, Simon Werner a Disparu was their best album since Goodbye 20th Century which makes me happy to have that be their last album because the Eternal was their worst

The 80s went through several phases, the early part of the decade was still heavily punk/post punk sounds and then mid-decade was all the synths/glam rock stuff, and late decade saw the rise of alternative rock.

A line from Stewart Lee's review of Simon Werner a Disparu stuck in my head ever since I read it ages ago: "The sleeve shows a beautiful girl with her back to us, Sonic Youth in a nutshell."

>I have no idea how Madonna is considered an icon while Cyndi Lauper died out in a hurry.
lack of payola, simples as that.


If payola dies, you die