ITT: 60s-70s artists who put out quality material in the 80s

ITT: 60s-70s artists who put out quality material in the 80s

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I'll do you one better.
His best album WAS in the 80s.

Fight me

90% of his 80's stuff is the worst of his entire career.

King Crimson

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Not him but OP never said ALL the 80s output had to be quality.

Scary Monsters alone was a very strong album.

Are you the same guy who always reps this album on Sup Forums?
Not judging, just curious. It's an unusual album to pop up here so often.

Lou Reed

Michael Jackson

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Harder Mode: 60s and 70s artists that did some of their best work in the 90s or later

Yeah. I am.
It's a good ass album, my man.

This is easily one of the best albums of the 80s

The 80s was a difficult time for many veterans, the MTV era made good looks and sex appeal a lot more important and many artists just weren't photogenic. Pretty much anything associated with the hippie era/culture was completely uncool.

Some artists like Neil Young just said fuck it and did whatever they felt like. Some of his fans accepted it and went along for the ride, others maintained that Rust Never Sleeps was the end. Others like America and the Beach Boys never bothered changing their sound and slowly became dadrock.

Bruce's 80's output is all great.

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Speaking as someone old enough to remember the 80s, 60s-70s classic rock was still widely played on FM radio but nobody gave a shit about whatever new albums the Stones, Dylan, Beach Boys or The Who had out. Hot Rocks was all the Rolling Stones anyone needed.

Was gonna post this, I'm your man may honestly be my fav album of his

both

I think of Kate as an 80's artist.

God bless Neil Young for this album. After Trans, the label demanded that he make another rock and roll album.

So he did.

Talking Heads, Devo, Dead Kennedys, etc :—)

well, sure, except for Some Girls, which was huge, and Tattoo You, which was even huger.

Stationary Traveller is beautiful

Some Girls came out in the 70s though and Tattoo You was just a wrapper for a hit single, same as It's Hard.

YOU SHUT YOUR WHORE MOUTH!!!

Neil had the most bizarre 80's run, literally got sued by his manager for making un-marketable albums.

Lou had several great underrated albums in the 80's, Blue Mask, Legendary Hearts, New Sensations and New York.

Those early 80s albums like Tattoo You, It's Hard, and McCartney II were pretty much the last time those 60s veterans were still considered as current artists instead of dadrock.

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Neil Young started and ended the 80s very strong but mid-decade was just like wtf.

Not even that. He got sued for making albums that weren't consistent with his career. Basically, they tried to sue him because he wasn't being "Neil Young" enough. Bizarre as fuck, and he never backed down from it and won out in the end.

Artists run out of ideas and suffer from middle age burnout. Also past a certain point, if you try to adapt to current sounds, your old fans will call you a sellout while the kids will roll their eyes at the 40 year old trying to act like he's 19.

It gets more and more beautiful the older he gets
youtube.com/watch?v=lNS2PczHoqw

Paul Simon had a great one with Graceland BUT he also released very few albums, just three during the 80s one of which was a soundtrack, so he didn't waste his time and energy on useless albums.

For comparison, Bob Dylan was completely lost and didn't know what to do, but for some reason the albums kept on coming. He had eight albums in ten years, at least 5-6 of which were useless.

>mid-decade was just like wtf.
see

Would Dire Straits and Tom Petty count? They both hit it big in the mid to late 70s but had monster, monster runs in the 80s.

Scott walker

David Bowie and Yes made awful transitions into the 80's outside of Scary Monsters (I'm on the fence with Drama).

Both happen to be my favorite "groups". Along with the instruments being substituted and augmented by the electronic sounds and engineering board manipulations, the aesthetics were awful with the mullets, pants tucked in boots and rolled up suit jacket sleeves that seemed to be commensurate with the music. 90125 added acapella that sounded less natural than the Yes 70's harmonies. In addition, they added Trevor Horn, a very capable guitarist. Yet, what was missing was the jazzy sounds a la Django Rheinhardt of Steve Howe and his Bachian chords. Rabin, for me, sounded too heavy/metallish with his riffs. In the meantime, juxtapose Scary Monsters with the subsequent Let's Dance, Blue Jean and Time Machine band ( meh ), I feel that Bowie's transition wasn't great either. On the other hand, I agree 100% with Zphage, above, that King Crimson made a phenomenal transition into the 80's by adding Adrian Belew and Tony Levin. Discipline, Beat and Three of a Perfect Pair sounded modern but were balanced well with the African beats and interwoven guitars.

Almost everyone had a quality comeback in the late 80s.

Rush did well in the 80s however this was maybe helped by how they'd been a niche AOR band in the 70s and not a mainstream stadium rock act. Also the fact that Permanent Waves came out on January 1, 1980.

I think Led Zeppelin made a smart decision by splitting. There's no reason to think they wouldn't have embarrassed themselves in a horrible way during the 80s.

The Beach Boys have to be the worst example of a 60s band who completely lost it in the 80s. Queen were a 70s band whose 80s output was different but still interesting.

Both bands have been accused unfairly of jumping on the bandwagon, whatever that means. Otherwise they'd have been accused of staying in a rut. Actually the Beach Boys have been accused of both. You can't win it seems.

The 80s gets a bad rap in general. Some of this is deserved but the era still produced some great music.

Actually a lot of the material those veterans were putting out wasn't bad...in a live setting where it was liberated from the disgusting 80s studio aesthetic.

McCartney didn't have a /great/ 80s but he didn't have as bad of one as many of his contemporaries did.

tom waits

The Who, after coming out with Who Are You, which was their answer of sorts to punk rock, entered the 80s with the so-so Face Dances and then It's Hard, which proved beyond all reasonable doubt that they couldn't transition into the 80s and so Pete Townshend emphatically declared that they were done making new albums, and in all honesty Empty Glass was better than anything The Who put out as a band during this time.

Roxy Music's string of terrific 70s albums led to their 1982 masterpiece Avalon. Avalon defined that early 80s cool soft rock sound. Bryan Ferry continued on in the 80s with some really outstanding solo records, the 80s was obviously a comfortable fit for Mr. Ferry.

Genesis was full steam ahead both before and after Gabriel departed. They put out some fine prog albums after Gabriel left, in particular Wind & Wuthering. Their transition to shorter, more radio friendly pop songs turned them into the hugely successful band they ultimately became in the 80s. Hard to argue with that kind of success.

King Crimson. I don't think many other guys from their era handled the Reagan years as well as them.

I think Journey had a smidgen of success with their 80s synth approach. Aerosmith and Van Halen also did OK kinda riding the Hair Band wave.

The 80s were mostly charming to me because a lot of older musicians were able to land on top 40. Old guys like Bill Medley (of the Righteous Brothers) and the Beach Boys even had hit singles. I'm pretty sure there are strict legal age restrictions for male pop stars nowadays- but I may be mistaken.

ZZ Top were great in the 70s but I don't like their 80s stuff at all.

Ditto Van Halen and The Police.

WRONG

There are none. The 80's was a shit decade for absolutely everyone.

>ZZ Top were great in the 70s but I don't like their 80s stuff at all.
Like I said, a lot of people don't like the production on Eliminator, but those songs in a live setting fit perfectly with their older material.
>Ditto Van Halen and The Police
I don't think groups who came out in the late 70s should count since they were still fresh, current bands when the 80s started. Big difference between them and guys like Paul McCartney who had been in the business damn near 20 years at that point.

I was thinking guys from the 60s-early 70s. Guys who had been around long enough to be associated with the hippie era were the ones who had a difficult time with the 80s.

Fair enough although quite a few bands who were less than ten years old fell off a cliff in the early 80s like Aerosmith, Heart, and Cheap Trick.

The Police are generally considered an 80s band although their first album came out in 1979.

Heart definitely struggled for a while before Desmond Child turned them into MTV pop rock garbage with professional song doctors (and believe me, Ann and Nancy Wilson hated doing it but they had no choice).

And incidentally, Heart's S/T album is better than its reputation suggests. Yeah it has that awful mid-80s production, but the songwriting is solid. Bad Animals and Brigade (ok that one came out in 1990 but is still an 80s record for all intents and purposes) are much spottier.

I would argue that there was a bigger change in the music landscape between 1981-83 than there was between 1979-81. During 79-81, most music out still had that late 70s New Wave aesthetic which had completely given way to MTV synth cheese/giant drums by 1983.

CSNY--American Dream was pretty fucking bad. To quote one reviewer, "A truly horrendous album that will take hold of your soul and reduce you to a squat, troll-like creature, like Gollum, or Stephen Stills. It's hard to pick a low point, but 'Shadowland' has got to be one of the worst songs I've ever heard. There's some comedy to be found here, but try to avoid this if you have any respect for anyone involved."

DESU I think it could have been ok if the album were trimmed down to a reasonable length, say 35 minutes instead of almost an hour.

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First thing that pops in my head is "We Built This City on Rock And Roll" by Starship. One of the worst songs of all time.

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Grace Slick had pretty much mentally checked out by that time; she's admitted that by the Reagan years, she was only still in it for the money and of course she retired from performing at the end of the decade.

Literally everything McCartney and Clapton put out in the 80s makes me wince.

Not many 60s guys remained vital in the 80s. Neil Young had some great ones but also quite a few duds. Eric Clapton became so incredibly boring.

Grateful Dead?

Lyl I'm not going to pretend Go To Heaven and In The Dark were great albums.

Go To Heaven is one of their best studio works. The cover is pretty bad I admit, but the songs are great. And the Dead never really were a 60s band, they were constantly evolving.

Bob Dylan's Empire Burlesque, Knocked Out Loaded, and Down in the Groove. To be fair, the 80s are responsible only for the first one. The other two are simply bad albums.

What? Of course the Dead were a 60s band. Also GTH came out in the spring of 1980, it's still a 70s album for all intents and purposes.

The Hollies--What Goes Around. Yeech.

well uhhh

most of them

A lot of good artists just did not translate well into the 80s. You can't make somebody into something they're not. It's always a struggle to stay relevant to your audience, but there were a lot of bad records made by bands and artists that did not stay true to their mission.

I've only heard four of these. I have to say that, yes, 'American Dream' is one of the worst records I've ever heard. 'Landing on Water' isn't that bad; as seed_drill says, there are a few decent songs hidden under the typical 80s production; and I think 'Go to Heaven' and 'Dog Eat Dog' are pretty good.

Are you just posting over and over again

One thing you notice is how all of these albums were dropped from their respective bands' live setlists in a hurry. I don't think Paul McCartney is in the habit of playing anything from Pipes of Peace or Press to Play live.

???

Yeah I agree. 80s Beach Boys is pretty fucking bad, Love You definitely should have been the end.

They were a lot better in the 70's but they released their biggest mainstream hit in the 80's, so guess that counts.

Tina motherfucking Turner

New Wave had a good run for a bit and music critics like Christgau pushed it as hard they could, but after Hi Infidelity and Back in Black became the top selling rock albums of 1980-81, it became obvious that New Wave was never going to be mainstream or displace buttrock anytime soon.

But New Wave ruled in the 80's.

You have to understand that New Wave was primarily a thing for urban hipsters (of which Christgau was one); there was a huge amount of corn-fed goobers in the American heartland that REO Speedwagon connected to better.

I thought Dog Eat Dog was a pretty solid effort by Joni Mitchell, in fact the most rocking album she ever did and the lyrics are great as well.

>it became obvious that New Wave was never going to be mainstream or displace buttrock

It did though, New Wave was everywhere in the 80's. It got much more radioplay then hair metal.

Lets Dance was at least fun, dont know why it gets so much flak when the rest of his 80s was worse except SMSC

Joe Cocker had his biggest hit in the 80s but he was mostly pretty lost.

The S/T from 1986 is a good example--he sounds washed up, even with the modest success of "You Can Leave Your Hat On". The 80s production does him no favors and songs like "From A to Z" and "Don't Drink The Water" are also lousy.

Jackson Browne--Lives in the Balance. I know Browne is pretty political, but this album is too much even for me. Even if I completely agreed with him, he has the subtly of a sledgehammer and I'd rather just watch CNN if I wanted that shit. The next album World In Motion is more of the same but the album after that I'm Alive was a definite improvement.

pic related but for the 90s/2000s as opposed to the 80s.

god bless that woman. ever see the biopic about her and ike? apparently both parties report it isn't too accurate but it's worth a watch.

My dad said he remembered Browne doing an interview on a call-in radio show and some caller starts ripping into him for forcing his beliefs down the audience's throat. He said "Well, I feel I have a moral obligation to say what I think even if it's not popular." Although you can admire his tenacity to an extent, you also have to agree that he was more pushy with his politics than most people would find necessary.

forgot pic

That's a great post, and I know with Browne there is always going to be politics mentioned on his albums, and he had always struck a balance for me until those two I mentioned. But I can see his point too, I know he is passionate and really wants to get his message out, but I think he got his point across better on albums like Lawyers In Love and Time The Conqueror.

"Shelter Me" is his attempt at Springsteen rock. 1987's "Unchain My Heart" was better.

Press To Play is not a bad album, either. It's cluttered, ill-focused, lacking distinctive melodies, and riddled with production excesses, but it's a brave and fascinating record, too, with unusual lyrics and sonic landscapes. Paul's commercial decline in earnest began here, but the record shows him moving out of pop-maven territory into the earliest beginnings Fireman mode and it's a marked improvement over his prior two albums, which were just wrappers for hit singles.

Let's dance was a quality album.

King Crimson
James Taylor (not great albums, but not embarrassing either)
Richard Thompson (if he counts as a 60s artist)

>Richard Thompson (if he counts as a 60s artist)
I suppose he gets in on a technicality. If so, he had a great 80s... A solid run of solo albums that have all aged well, and of course one of the best records of the decade (Shoot Out The Lights) with Linda.

By that criteria, Robert Plant had a decent decade too. Principle of Moments is easily one of his best solo albums.

Plant's 80s output is almost underrated, aside from Now and Zen which is horribly dated and cheesy. It seemed like a good idea at the time; he got completely consumed by 80s studio tech, sort of like David Byrne but without the tongue-in-cheek irony that made it work.

Heaven Knows was cool though.

How about John Lennon's "Just Like Starting Over". An astonishingly lightweight song compared to what he was doing ten years earlier.