Was there ever a more horrifying form of music than 70s-80s butt/soft rock?

Was there ever a more horrifying form of music than 70s-80s butt/soft rock?

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yes

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late 00s mainstream "hipster indie" influx

Easy listening

So horrific that society as a whole tries to forget it's existence.

Horrorcore

nu-male spotted

indie folk

Limp Bizkit were far worse desu.

Whatever the fuck Imagine Dragons play

These bands will never get any respect because critics like Christgau wrote the history of what music is and isn't "cool".

Limp Bizkit are top-tier party music.

I'm pretty sure Journey were never respected by anyone with a serious interest in music. Have you ever heard any artist cite them as an influence? Despite their differences, punks and stoners were in pretty universal agreement as to the shittiness of bands like that.

Spoiler that shit, OP. This is a SFW board.

You are obvs too young to understand the appeal of those bands, kiddo.

Folk punk

Don't you have a Justin Bieber video on Youtube to complain about?

the redpill is that arena rock is simply boomer music boiled down to its purest, most perfect form. It's the same genre as all that hippie music, only slicker.

I thought boomers were into the Beatles and shit like that.

don't you say a goddamn thing about jeff porcaro you cunt Toto is fantastic

Africa is a good song

I don't get where the corporate rock tag comes from. Every major artist back then was signed to big labels like Columbia, Warner, Elektra, Atlantic, etc.

they are my guilty pleasure.
Well, not really guilty about it. Easily more enjoyable than the radio music of any other era.

it's catchy as fuck
youtube.com/watch?v=wJzNZ1c5C9c
youtube.com/watch?v=raNGeq3_DtM
youtube.com/watch?v=6dOwHzCHfgA

>Easily more enjoyable than the radio music of any other era.

Admittedly, neither REO or Foreigner have any songs as nauseating as Don't Stop Believin'.

While this is true, there were however a number of bands that were blatantly created by record labels out of veteran session musicians that made super-slick, precise-sounding arena rock and sugary ballads aimed at AM play. REO Speedwagon don't really fit this description because they were a Midwestern act who started in the late 60s and toured for years and years before becoming nationally successful; they did eventually sell out hard, but in of themselves they were not a manufactured band.

On the other hand, Journey were the definition of a manufactured group. Columbia got them together in 1974 with the usual veteran session musicians, except that they didn't go along with the script and made two albums of jazz fusion/prog that sold about five copies, so Columbia chewed them out and forced them to take Steve Perry.

Foreigner were also a manufactured band made of veteran session musicians. So were Toto.

well, at least better than following eras.

Early 70s glam with sweet, slade and stuff was great for example

So being a success in pop music makes you corporate? By this logic any rock band who made money for the big record companies are "corporate rock." This seems like a useless definition.

"Corporate rock" is a pejorative term, not a genre. Ask the people who throw the term around, what they mean by it. They are probably punk/alt fans throwing stones at established acts. If Miller Genuine Draft is sponsoring your stadium tour, then you open yourself up to the "corporate rock" label. It has nothing to do with any particular band, but a way of doing business.

kek

What even is 'easy listening'

I legit don't know

Someone post examples pls

youtube.com/watch?v=sticXkHxZC4

Check out Merzbow.

It's not hard to figure out. Black Sabbath, Bowie, or Genesis couldn't possibly have been invented by an A&R guy. Corporate rock happened when the industry figured out how they could harness this strange new rock and roll thing and shape it into manufactured Muzak. Thus, Styx, Boston, Toto, and Foreigner, as well as once-respectable bands like Jefferson Airplane selling out massively. And then Phil Collins turned into Andy Williams.

Even David Bowie said that his pop/commercial move in the 80s was a mistake.

A couple of weeks ago I was listening to Pick of the Pops on Radio 2 (for the benefit of those outside the UK, it's a radio show playing songs from the Top 30s of bygone years). The year in question was 1974 or 1975, the chart was littered with post-glam bubblegum pap and the crowning glory was Kenny's "Fancy Pants" and I remember thinking "Bloody hell, this is the very reason punk started."

By the late 80s, it had definitely become a well-oiled machine, but the term was first coined for Journey. By the time of Departure and Escape, they'd become a huge, well-oiled money machine, to the point that Mick Jagger even spent two or three weeks on their tour, taking notes and receiving lessons.

France or Belgium's scenes weren't doing any better as far as pop was concerned...
It's little wonder that punk's official start (it's been acknowledged by almost everyone from almost day one) was at France's Mont De Marsan's festival in September '76.

rap rock
trap rap
indie rock
shoegaze
crunkcore
electroclash
brostep
post-grunge
emocore
twee folk
EDM
bling rap
millenial RnB
tektonik
pop punk
post-2000 pop

All that shit is unarguably much worse than 70s/80s buttrock

These are all abortions and I'm glad people pointed them out.

Yeah it had a negative connotation and was supposed to refer to how these bands were manufactured product and not "real" artists. One important element of the 'corporate rock' designation was the general anonymity of the bands involved, with a lack of well-defined individual personalities: Chicago, Styx, REO, and Toto certainly were among them.

Of course the critics also condemned most AOR hard rock/metal/progressive rock as well for being disconnected and self-indulgent. This meant that bands like Yes, ELP, Rainbow, Judas Priest, etc were lumped into the same circle of Hell as Foreigner.

Shoegaze? Seriously? We all know the album, but a genre is a whole isn't worse than all of the others you've mentioned.

Punk's reaction was not to the progressive rock of the early 1970s, it was to corporate rock of the mid-'70s, which was inclusive of what some of the '70s progressive bands were perceived to have become (for some, I guess, Dark Side of the Moon will always be corporate rock).

As a whole*

And one of most important punk bands in a supposed musical revolution was a manufactured one as well.

I thought it had more to do with the 60s rockers like the Stones and The Who being washed up and out of touch with what the kids were feeling.

no, but it's about as bad as emocore.

There's really only one correct answer to this: Corporate rock was used to describe the bands otherwise known as arena rock or AOR. Foreigner, Asia, Journey, Boston. It was a derogatory term, and incorrect as well. It was based on the slightly conspiratorial thought tradition of the hippies that if you dealt with The Man you were under his spell. The idea was that corporate rock bands "sold their soul" for success, and that the strategies and even the music of these bands were cooked up by committee in boardrooms to maximize profits.

It's an incredibly offensive line of thought. Nobody forced Journey to start making hit singles. The label may have encouraged them to get a lead singer and streamline their sound, but bands like Foreigner and Journey were making the music they wanted to make in the 80s. It was where they were at. They wanted success, they had families to support and mortgages to pay, and they had all paid their dues playing challenging music in underpaid gigs during the late 60s and early 70s. Their careers followed a logical and understandable trajectory. The difference between them and many other bands of the era was that they were incredibly successful at that 80s transition, so of course all the hatred towards The Man and all the jealousy of success got directed at them.

To be fair, besides Loveless and a handful of other albums, the genre consists of landifll bands with a female vocalist who has a "dreamy" voice.

Late 1990s Nu-Metal/Rap-Rock. Objectivily the worst. the worst offender Limp Bisket

Black Sabbath never did this; they had one hit single by accident and backed away from it. There were many other bands who occasionally dabbled in a radio hit or two but never made it their primary focus.

But putting that aside, while REO Speedwagon definitely did sell out for radio play, other corporate rock bands like Journey and Bread were invented from whole cloth by record labels. Especially Journey--there was one Columbia suit who referred to them as "a floor in the company offices". There was about as much artistic sincerity there as Ariana Grande.

Desmond Child = Antichrist.

There's really only one correct answer to this: Corporate rock was used to describe the bands otherwise known as arena rock or AOR. Foreigner, Asia, Journey, Boston. It was a derogatory term, and incorrect as well.

The term was only used against Journey, Foreigner, Boston, Asia, and Styx - maybe along with a couple of others. They happened to be the bands that were huge from 1977 to 83 and played in arenas. I'm not sure if Asia was called corporate rock since a little later and the term "supergroup" started.

And this.

Corporate rock is what happens when skilled musicians sit down, try to figure out what will sell in the millions, and then set out to make themselves millionaires. It is pandering to the masses, it is soulless, it is contrived hit-making. There's nothing wrong with it as a business philosophy...but it isn't anything I want to listen to.

And there's a lot of it out there.

There's no sense making a list, because that would just piss off fans of the aforementioned hits.

'corporate rock' is basically just rock for females.

I think there is a huge difference between Ahmet Ertegun taking a chance on Yes or Led Zeppelin early on, and what eventually happened by the mid-70s (that led Floyd to write "Have a Cigar" in 1975), and even worse by the 80s when everything became prepackaged for MTV consumption. There is quite a huge difference from what was allowed to be released early on, like Yes with Tales from Topographic Oceans or Jethro Tull releasing two consecutive albums without any singles, than what the actual definition of what "Corporate Rock" was considered by the late 70s (a definition many posters have agreed on as those bands, like REO, Foreigner, Boston, Journey, Styx, Toto, etc., who began churning out marketable "product" rather than music).

"One thing that did happen during the '60s was some music of an unusual or experimental nature did get recorded or did get released. Now look at who the executives were in those companies at those times. Not hip young guys. These were cigar-chomping old guys who looked at the product that came and said, ‘I don’t know. Who knows what it is. Record it. Stick it out. If it sells, alright.’ We were better off with those guys than we are now with the supposedly hip young executives who are making the decisions of what people should see and hear in the marketplace. The young guys are more conservative and more dangerous to the art form than the old guys with the cigars ever were. Next thing you know [the hip young executive has] got his feet on the desk and he’s saying, ‘Well we can't take a chance on this because that’s not what the kids really want and I know.’ And they got that attitude. And the day you get rid of that attitude and get back to ‘Who knows. Take a chance.’ That entrepreneurial spirit where even if you don’t like or understand what the record is that’s coming in the door, the person who is in the executive chair may not be the final arbiter of taste of the entire population."

He's kind of right but he misses the point that record labels signed bands like the Doors and Jefferson Airplane because they had young hipsters telling the 50 year old cigar-chomping record execs that these bands were what the kids wanted to hear.

Journey is almost as bad as the Eagles. Styx at least had a few good songs. (Actually, so did Journey, on their first album)

My uncle worked for a small chain record store in the 70s and he said that the promotional push for Boston's S/T was massive and way bigger than anything he'd seen before. They were deluged with posters, mobiles, cardboard props, etc. Piles of promotional material literally months before the album was even released. He said nobody else at the store, and they were a pretty musically-savvy bunch, knew what the fuck Boston was except a city in Massachusetts. Accompanying letters strongly advised them as to how and where to best display the stuff and fairly soon the store had more promotional material on display than for any album they'd ever stocked. He said the district manager paid a visit to make sure the promotional material was put up properly and that Epic reps were also going to show up to make sure everything was displayed properly.

It wasn't long before customers were asking about the album and asking about the release date, without knowing a single thing about the band or its music. Now that's the definition of corporate rock.

According to Herbie Herbert, Journey's original manager, he said they were trying to create a "journey" so to speak and he conceived of giving every album those Firebird Trans Am covers and titles like Infinity, Escape, Departure, Frontiers to suggest a continuous journey even though there's nothing in the music along those lines. The effect was that anyone who saw the albums in the rack at a record store would instantly know it was a Journey album. When Frontiers came out, Steve Perry insisted on a completely different cover from the previous Stanley Mouse ones.

17 million copies of Boston were sold in the U.S. (25 million world wide) while almost 12 million copies of The Wall sold.

Boston's debut album was also the first and fastest to reach 1 million copies and did so within weeks of being released in the summer of 1976. One reason beyond people liking the album (of course) and more marketing is that that is when FM radio was more popular.

post grunge

This is ridiculous and ingenious at the same time. I wish those people taught economics and marketing at some universities.

One point about Boston:

Tom Scholz was not trying to make "corporate rock" , at least not to start with, and maybe not ever. He liked hard rock, liked pop music, and saw no reason why the two couldn't coexist. He also owned his own studio, which let him be as obsessive as he liked, and used that both to create the "Boston Sound", with guitars and voices overdubbed into huge quasi-string-sections and quasi-choirs, and to then record it with a polish, slickness, and audio perfectionism previously only found in disco. And the result of that became one of the building blocks of "corporate rock".

The suits then seized upon that as the next step in rock, as the missing link: yes, it was hard rock, but it was hard rock every bit as professionally written, played, and recorded as disco. They promoted the hell out of it, signed similar bands, and encouraged existing bands to copy Boston. But I don't think Tom Scholz ever intended to make soulless "product" - Boston was simply the kind of music he liked - and his unprofessionalism in taking a decade or so to write and record each follow-up bears that out.

Heavy rock with pop hooks was always a guaranteed seller so Epic knew a hit when they saw it.

winrar