ITT: 80s artists who survived the 90s

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