14 ms·

How many artists' careers did the Beatles kill?

213 points by dwighttk 2y ago

dwighttk 2y ago
90s were harder on popular artists than the 60s
- galaxyLogic 2y ago
  And now, all we have is dance-groups on stage
  - solumunus 2y ago
    If you only listen to mainstream music I guess. Whatever you’re looking for is pretty much out there but you won’t find it on the radio.
  - 6stringmerc 2y ago
    And The Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney and The Who…
  - NegativeLatency 2y ago
    Have a look at something like bandcamp, or a new music podcast. There’s lots of great stuff out there.
    - galaxyLogic 2y ago
      Sure, I'm just saying the good stuff USED TO be mainstream. But I'm also getting old I used to get excited about new music I could find but now I'm a bit more "jaded". :-)
- mmooss 2y ago
  The OP offers a hypothesis: Billboard changed its ratings method significantly, and many formerly 'popular' artists weren't.
helsinkiandrew 2y ago
Like Valli in the article it’s perhaps more amazing who has had multiple decade success. In the UK Cliff Richard has topped the charts in every decade since the 1950’s https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Richard https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Richard > He holds the record, with Presley, as the only act to make the UK singles charts in all of its first six decades (1950s–2000s). He has achieved 14 UK No. 1 singles, and is the only singer to have had a No. 1 single in the UK in each of five consecutive decades
MrMcCall 2y ago
Only Paul. ;-)
geophile 2y ago
1964 and The Beatles didn't just mark a change in music. It marked a change in entertainment in general. An episode of This American Life shows this beautifully: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/281/transcript https://www.thisamericanlife.org/281/transcript, look for "Act One, Take My Break Please." This tells the story of a vaudeville comedy act, a husband and wife team, booked on the Ed Sullivan show, on the day that The Beatles made their American debut. They were completely blindsided. They didn't have any comprehension of what was happening until they were in the middle of it. They didn't really get it until later. The story includes an encounter with John, surreal for the juxtaposition of the ordinariness of the interaction, and the symbolism -- these two completely different eras encountering one another without any awareness of what was represented. To push the point too far maybe, what was changing was the very sound of life in the US. You hear these old timey comedians, and they have the rapid fire delivery, the tone of voice, the corny jokes, the style that characterized vaudeville and TV sitcoms. And then you have The Beatles, ushering in something brand new (to the vast majority of Americans). I think it's the same sort of difference you see in movies: Before the mid or late 60s you had this very stylized and artificial way of speaking, often with this weird and phony "mid-Atlantic" accent. And then you had much more realistic movies and ways of speaking, e.g. anything from that era with Jack Nicholson.
- galaxyLogic 2y ago
  I had the same observation about old movies from 50s and 40s. But I just assumed that's the way people spoke in older times, just like they dressed differently.
  - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
    In fact it was notable for not being anyone's native accent! Although it was supposed to capture some of the perceived "classiness" of some British accents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent > According to voice and drama professor Dudley Knight, "its earliest advocates bragged that its chief quality was that no Americans actually spoke it unless educated to do so".
colkassad 2y ago
The spike in one-hit-wonders during the 90s wasn't surprising to me. I had the unenviable position of working as a line cook and construction worker during the 90s and listened to the radio 6+ hours a day. It's actually fun to listen to those hits these days. There are so many songs that I've forgotten about that I would listen to over and over again before they were overtaken by a new hit. Superman, burning beds, seether (whatever that was), bands named after boxes and chairs, ten different Eddie Vedders with arms wide open...listening to them now brings back a lot of memories so it's hard to hate them today as much as I did then. I remember exactly where I was (sitting in the parking lot of a Shoney's in Charlottesville, VA) when I first heard Smells Like Teen Spirit. Typical FM radio before that was hair metal and classic rock. My favorite, though, was Seven Mary Three. I saw them in Virginia Beach in a bar with no air conditioning, it was miserable but they had some seriously catchy tunes. Less then a year later I was painting a high school in Orlando and the song Cumbersome came on the radio with the announcer stating "can you believe these guys are unsigned???". Not too long after they were all over MTV. Second place goes to seeing No Doubt open for a forgotten band in '91. They were incredible. When I heard I'm Just a Girl for the first time on the radio I knew who it was before being told.
- emseetech 2y ago
  | seether (whatever that was) I was about to jump to Veruca Salt's defense, but apparently there was a band called Seether? I must have missed that.
  - colkassad 2y ago
    Thank you for reminding be of the band's name. Hearing that one four times a day was painful. It's stuck in my head now again and I haven't listened to it in twenty years.
  - lazystar 2y ago
    aahhh Seether... loved their song "Remedy", it was on the radio a lot when I was in high school. Saw them live in Portland in 2006, great show.
doobiedowner 2y ago
[flagged]
netcan 2y ago
Slight tangent: Listened to "the song that some claim made Dylan go electric and pushed rock music into a completely new direction." I always liked it. It's profoundly odd that "The Brits," mostly working class youngsters had this impact on american culture, by introducing and merging american themes and styles to americans... by mixing them with other american art memes. Infusing rock n roll with smokey blues vibes. Putting Beat Generation themes into pop. Three years in and you have american musicians mimicking Liverpool lads doing impressions of an american singers' accent. ...and somehow it's not cheesy. That song sounds like authentic americana... at least to me.
- smackeyacky 2y ago
  Brits singing re-packaged "race music" for Americans. Americans did try (see Pat Boone etc) but while the Beatles/Stones/Hermans Hermits dominated it was the rise of Motown that is most intriguing. Black Americans moving north for industrial jobs and having good wages finally put their music on the map. That it was playable on the radio for everybody (unlike the blues) was a masterstroke. If you listen to the Beatles back catalog today it's pretty bad. Motown still sounds fresh.
  - rgmerk 2y ago
    Each to their own but there are plenty of Beatles songs that stand the test of time IMO. Yes, there's plenty of dross, particularly on the early albums, but, say, "Strawberry Fields Forever", or "We Can Work It Out", or "Yesterday"? Superb.
  - twixfel 2y ago
    Rubber Soul onwards are all masterpieces (except maybe Let it Be) and feature among the greatest music written by anyone, ever. You are seriously underrating them just by virtue of the fact that you don't personally enjoy listening to them, which seems silly to me.
    - smackeyacky 2y ago
      Overexposure will do that
Freak_NL 2y ago
I would definitely watch a film about a quartet of highly trained musical hitmen taking out competing acts. Somehow the idea of John acting as a spotter with a pair of binoculars sat on a rooftop next to Ringo with a sniper rifle and giving him a range estimation in a Scouse accent seems… utterly delightful.
fitsumbelay 2y ago
The years that are most consequential to my taste are '77 to '82, where there seemed to be an explosion of high quality output across so many genres - disco/uptempo R&B, funk music, hard rock, progressive jazz, punk rock, reggae, synth pop and electronic music -- some of these being emergent genres. But '76 was a pretty full year for music across genres too, as was '83. And '75, and '74, and '84, and '85 ... There's literally no year that isn't a rabbit hole of very interesting hits, progressions where one thing is going out of fashion while another thing gains attention as it moves from edge to center, marginalia, you name it when it comes to music. I suppose there are examples of like late '92 when grunge blew up beyond reasonable proportions where one could point to a specific time range and place for a sea change like Nirvana and fellow indy rockers triggering Glam Rock/Hair Metal's decline. But those kinds of events are less frequent or at least less consequential and that probably has to do with the average josephine liking a wide range of musical genres, which was very much not the case until maybe the mid to late 90s. Seriously, folks' musical tastes were monosyllabic af Shouts to giving Franky Valli his props. One of my favorites of his songs is a disco groover called "Who Loves You". Interestingly there was a bit of a resurgence in 50's style and culture during the mid '70s, probably due to the movie Grease's and lead Travolta's success
- detourdog 2y ago
  I agree completely something really good started in the '77. That time period is still in heavy rotation for me now even while I discover new to me music.
  - SJC_Hacker 2y ago
    76 was Boston's debut album. Van Halen debut in 78. But it was a fairly slow burn .. rock didn't really resurge into the national consciousness until about 79 ... airwaves were dominated by disco. I think Disco Demolition Night (summer of 79) had something to do with it.
    - fitsumbelay 2y ago
      That first Boston album is butter. Van Halen is a huge band that comes up when I think about that period Id put The Cars and even Cheap Trick in there as an example of rock plus varying levels of New Wave - higher with former, a bit lower for the latter
vessenes 2y ago
You can’t talk about kill rates in the 90s without talking about Nevermind. Well you can but it’s irresponsible. I’d argue nothing successful in rock came out over the next 20 years without somehow relating to nevermind.
- decimalenough 2y ago
  The article mentions Smells Like Teen Spirit and grunge.
- grujicd 2y ago
  Nevermind was among 7 albums released within 44 days: Metallica, Metallica Pearl Jam, Ten Guns N’ Roses, Use Your Illusion I Guns N’ Roses, Use Your Illusion II Red Hot Chili Peppers, Blood Sugar Sex Magik Soundgarden, Badmotorfinger Nirvana, Nevermind
- leptons 2y ago
  >I’d argue nothing successful in rock came out over the next 20 years without somehow relating to nevermind. You'll have to define what constitutes "rock", and what you mean by "came out" - just any "rock" album, or only new "rock" bands. You also have to define what "successful" means, to have this argument. Let's also not forget that in the late 1990's the world of music changed with Napster and music sharing, so "successful" in the 20 years after Nevermind came out may not be the same kind of "successful" in 1990 since people were often downloading music. I personally had no interest in Nirvana, but enjoyed "rock" music from many other bands. Cobain just came off as too depressing a figure, even when he was alive - and so I just didn't connect with their music at all.
- progmetaldev 2y ago
  Nirvana were influenced by some large bands that are still around to this day, like The Melvins. Nirvana just happened to have tweaked their sound and been in the right place at the right time. I do enjoy Nirvana, but bands like The Melvins have a far large catalog, and there were quite a few other bands that influenced Nirvana that kept going. Nirvana did often shout out these other bands, but people were too hooked on MTV back then, and weren't as willing to look up the bands they would mention.
ilamont 2y ago
The fact that Valli topped the charts again in 1978 with “Grease” still boggles my mind. Not if you were living through the 1950s nostalgia revival which was going strong at the time and lingered through the early 80s. It was on TV (Happy Days and Sha Na Na), the movies (American Graffiti, Porky's) and a bunch of retro musical acts (The Stray Cats) or retro projects by established artists returning to the music they grew up with (Robert Plant's The Honeydrippers). The sound of rock music undoubtedly changed between the beginning and middle of the 1960s. But by looking at the Billboard Hot 100, we can see if that change in sound was being made by a fleet of new groups or a bunch of older acts adapting. This methodology leaves out a lot of bands, and not just the long tail that never cracked the top 100. There are MANY locally popular bands that never broke out nationally and therefore never made it to the Billboard Hot 100. There were also bands doing types of music that never charted particularly well yet were influential in their own way. For a sampling of this, go to the MIT/WMBR archives (https://wmbr.org/cgi-bin/arch https://wmbr.org/cgi-bin/arch) and listen to "Lost and Found" which highlights a lot of these types of music. Or search for things like "60s garage bands" "60s funk" etc. on YouTube. The author also mentions the 1991 change to the Billboard methodology which really calls into doubt a some of the "hits" that came before. In a nutshell, music charts in the United States were based on a sample of self-reported sales from record store managers. You can imagine the bias and BS that went on with those numbers. Then there was manipulation further up the funnel. Record companies weren't supposed to give outright cash payments to DJs (wink wink) but there were many other ways of exerting influence on influential media gatekeepers. Some of the influence was obvious. Picking artists that had the "right" look. Promoting "safe" artists. Forcing hitmaker producers on new and established artists. Selective access and backroom benefits for powerful DJs and music journalists and other influencers. Ignoring, sidelining, or co-opting trends bubbling up from the underground, from proto-metal in the late 60s to punk in the 70s to rap in the 80s. As soon as Soundscan was implemented, there was an immediate realignment, with rap and grunge and techno and country storming the pop charts. Background on the 1991 Soundscan change is here, if anyone is interested: https://ultimateclassicrock.com/billboard-soundscan/ https://ultimateclassicrock.com/billboard-soundscan/
mlinksva 2y ago
This article is asking whether a new kind of pop star ends the pop careers of existing pop stars. Seems unclear clear from the top 40 hits data used, but I enjoyed the exploration and would enjoy reading more in depth exploration of the question with more data. I guess a simplistic relevance survival rate change analysis akin to top 40 hits before/after a shock must've been done for companies or individual careers where the shock is say a new general purpose technology or shift including the one happening now around LLMs. I'm having deja vu while commenting, there is a non-superficial literature on just this focused on adaptation and adoption as important factors if I recall correctly; I'd need to ask a LLM for specifics or rack my brain for longer, the piece that immediately comes to mind is at a different looking at a different scale, Jeff Ding's writing on such shocks and geopolitical power. Anyway, I guess such a literature focused on entertainer survival given shocks must exist, and might help explore which ones matter; the Beatles or any specific megastar might just be the froth; I presume that's the case. Based on the title I was expecting a different question (entirely due to my presumptions such as mentioned above, nothing wrong with the title or article), namely how many star careers does a megastar career end or preclude, and on down to the impact of stars (mega to small) on amateurs. It's possible that stars are positive sum when considering consumers or even that they are positive sum for smaller producers (increasing overall demand, including demand to create as an amateur) though I'm skeptical of the latter given attention is finite. I'm way more sanguine about the positive sumness of megastars where demand is insatiable (e.g., not limited by attention) such as for non-attention-based (e.g., media/entertainment) technology, but I'd love to read serious analysis of this either way.
- mlinksva 2y ago
  Missing "not" in front of "media/entertainment" in last sentence.
bag_boy 2y ago
The careers they really affected were artists who signed to Apple. George Harrison tried his best at producing, but he just didn’t have it. Doris Troy’s album under Apple has very little soul. Too bad John and Paul didn’t care enough to consistently produce other artists.
- bloomingeek 2y ago
  I still love the Beatles, but I still lament the breakup. Of course it was their lives to live, but all that talent together was other worldly.
  - bigstrat2003 2y ago
    I've come to appreciate when artists hang it up in their prime, though. It's very hard to be consistently good forever (I'm not sure I can name anyone who was), and I would much rather think back on an artist's work and say "man I wish he did more of that" than "man he should've gave it up ages ago". For example, Calvin and Hobbes vs Garfield in the world of comics. I would love to have more C&H of the same quality, but I'm grateful it never became boring and forgettable like Garfield did.
DidYaWipe 2y ago
Any discussion of charts after about 2000, and certainly today, seems irrelevant. Music delivery is so segregated into niches (with charts catering to each) that "pop" charts don't reflect a generation's tastes the way they used to. It's sad that we no longer have soundtracks for eras the way we did. Look at movies set during various decades; you know the time period from the songs being played. After 2000 or so... that's over. Even if you play period-correct music, it will not evoke memories across anywhere near as much of the audience as it would have for previous generations. Back in the day, on a road trip with friends, you could have an assorted-music tape where people would know and rock out to every song. Today not so much. Or... you'd be playing the same tape from the '80s to 20-somethings now and they'd still know the songs. There's a reason '80s music enjoyed such a resurgence among young people: Much of today's popular music sucks ass. It sucks both from a creative standpoint (lacking even legitimate song structure, like melody, chorus, & bridge) and from a technical standpoint (being dynamically compressed into a wall of noise).
- ant6n 2y ago
  Occasionally a song will bubble up to be known by many people. For example Gangnam style. But I can’t think of anything else.
  - tokioyoyo 2y ago
    That was pre-siloed internet era. Those were still golden days of internet, because everyone was seeing the same “trends” and there was some alignment. Think of ice bucket challenge, planking, and etc. The stuff I see nowadays is very different from what you see, despite using the same platforms. It’s sad, because it’s not even just internet, it’s all types of media. No more Game of Thrones discussions at work on Mondays, because almost everyone watching it. No more songs that almost everyone knows. And the list keeps going on. Basically algorithms catering to every taste, rather than some humans being the curators. I understand the negative sides of it as well, but talking to my nephews… things don’t look that fun even for them.
    - progmetaldev 2y ago
megiddo 2y ago
Apocryphal story time: Had a family friend who was in a kicking oompah bad in the early 60s. They thought there was going to be a surge in this market, and were getting some pretty big gigs. The saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show and promptly quit for different careers.
agha_450 2y ago
[flagged]
mmaunder 2y ago
I think the graph showing the pct of artists who never had a hit again is interesting given that it peaks in the early 90s. I've heard the grunge era described by record industry folks as a freight train that no one saw coming.
Nemi 2y ago
The article posits that the beatles and the nineties were BAD for artists, ruining careers and making them one-hit-wonders (where presumably they would have had more than one hit?). I would argue that it was GREAT for artists and the reason there are so many one hit wonders is that those times opened up and created public appetite for new music. Those artists (who he argues would have had more than one hit) I argue would not have had ANY hits as they never would have gotten airplay to begin with. How many artists did the Beatles kill? Maybe a better question is – How many artists did the Beatles help produce?
- joe_the_user 2y ago
  Absolutely, Even more, googling, I get about 100k working musicians currently in the US. It should be obvious that most of those aren't hit-producers for major labels and things likely weren't that different back in the 1960s. Back in the day, they were live performers, teachers and performers in radio-orchestras. Presently they are live performers, teachers, session musicians , and composers-of-themes for movie, TV-shows, commercials, video games and so-forth.

213 points by dwighttk 2y ago

dwighttk 2y ago

90s were harder on popular artists than the 60s

galaxyLogic 2y ago
And now, all we have is dance-groups on stage
- solumunus 2y ago
  If you only listen to mainstream music I guess. Whatever you’re looking for is pretty much out there but you won’t find it on the radio.
- 6stringmerc 2y ago
  And The Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney and The Who…
- NegativeLatency 2y ago
  Have a look at something like bandcamp, or a new music podcast. There’s lots of great stuff out there.
  - galaxyLogic 2y ago
    Sure, I'm just saying the good stuff USED TO be mainstream. But I'm also getting old I used to get excited about new music I could find but now I'm a bit more "jaded". :-)
mmooss 2y ago
The OP offers a hypothesis: Billboard changed its ratings method significantly, and many formerly 'popular' artists weren't.

helsinkiandrew 2y ago

Like Valli in the article it’s perhaps more amazing who has had multiple decade success. In the UK Cliff Richard has topped the charts in every decade since the 1950’s https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Richard https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Richard > He holds the record, with Presley, as the only act to make the UK singles charts in all of its first six decades (1950s–2000s). He has achieved 14 UK No. 1 singles, and is the only singer to have had a No. 1 single in the UK in each of five consecutive decades

MrMcCall 2y ago

Only Paul. ;-)

geophile 2y ago

1964 and The Beatles didn't just mark a change in music. It marked a change in entertainment in general. An episode of This American Life shows this beautifully: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/281/transcript https://www.thisamericanlife.org/281/transcript, look for "Act One, Take My Break Please." This tells the story of a vaudeville comedy act, a husband and wife team, booked on the Ed Sullivan show, on the day that The Beatles made their American debut. They were completely blindsided. They didn't have any comprehension of what was happening until they were in the middle of it. They didn't really get it until later. The story includes an encounter with John, surreal for the juxtaposition of the ordinariness of the interaction, and the symbolism -- these two completely different eras encountering one another without any awareness of what was represented. To push the point too far maybe, what was changing was the very sound of life in the US. You hear these old timey comedians, and they have the rapid fire delivery, the tone of voice, the corny jokes, the style that characterized vaudeville and TV sitcoms. And then you have The Beatles, ushering in something brand new (to the vast majority of Americans). I think it's the same sort of difference you see in movies: Before the mid or late 60s you had this very stylized and artificial way of speaking, often with this weird and phony "mid-Atlantic" accent. And then you had much more realistic movies and ways of speaking, e.g. anything from that era with Jack Nicholson.

galaxyLogic 2y ago
I had the same observation about old movies from 50s and 40s. But I just assumed that's the way people spoke in older times, just like they dressed differently.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  In fact it was notable for not being anyone's native accent! Although it was supposed to capture some of the perceived "classiness" of some British accents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent > According to voice and drama professor Dudley Knight, "its earliest advocates bragged that its chief quality was that no Americans actually spoke it unless educated to do so".

colkassad 2y ago

The spike in one-hit-wonders during the 90s wasn't surprising to me. I had the unenviable position of working as a line cook and construction worker during the 90s and listened to the radio 6+ hours a day. It's actually fun to listen to those hits these days. There are so many songs that I've forgotten about that I would listen to over and over again before they were overtaken by a new hit. Superman, burning beds, seether (whatever that was), bands named after boxes and chairs, ten different Eddie Vedders with arms wide open...listening to them now brings back a lot of memories so it's hard to hate them today as much as I did then. I remember exactly where I was (sitting in the parking lot of a Shoney's in Charlottesville, VA) when I first heard Smells Like Teen Spirit. Typical FM radio before that was hair metal and classic rock. My favorite, though, was Seven Mary Three. I saw them in Virginia Beach in a bar with no air conditioning, it was miserable but they had some seriously catchy tunes. Less then a year later I was painting a high school in Orlando and the song Cumbersome came on the radio with the announcer stating "can you believe these guys are unsigned???". Not too long after they were all over MTV. Second place goes to seeing No Doubt open for a forgotten band in '91. They were incredible. When I heard I'm Just a Girl for the first time on the radio I knew who it was before being told.

emseetech 2y ago
| seether (whatever that was) I was about to jump to Veruca Salt's defense, but apparently there was a band called Seether? I must have missed that.
- colkassad 2y ago
  Thank you for reminding be of the band's name. Hearing that one four times a day was painful. It's stuck in my head now again and I haven't listened to it in twenty years.
- lazystar 2y ago
  aahhh Seether... loved their song "Remedy", it was on the radio a lot when I was in high school. Saw them live in Portland in 2006, great show.

doobiedowner 2y ago

[flagged]

netcan 2y ago

Slight tangent: Listened to "the song that some claim made Dylan go electric and pushed rock music into a completely new direction." I always liked it. It's profoundly odd that "The Brits," mostly working class youngsters had this impact on american culture, by introducing and merging american themes and styles to americans... by mixing them with other american art memes. Infusing rock n roll with smokey blues vibes. Putting Beat Generation themes into pop. Three years in and you have american musicians mimicking Liverpool lads doing impressions of an american singers' accent. ...and somehow it's not cheesy. That song sounds like authentic americana... at least to me.

smackeyacky 2y ago
Brits singing re-packaged "race music" for Americans. Americans did try (see Pat Boone etc) but while the Beatles/Stones/Hermans Hermits dominated it was the rise of Motown that is most intriguing. Black Americans moving north for industrial jobs and having good wages finally put their music on the map. That it was playable on the radio for everybody (unlike the blues) was a masterstroke. If you listen to the Beatles back catalog today it's pretty bad. Motown still sounds fresh.
- rgmerk 2y ago
  Each to their own but there are plenty of Beatles songs that stand the test of time IMO. Yes, there's plenty of dross, particularly on the early albums, but, say, "Strawberry Fields Forever", or "We Can Work It Out", or "Yesterday"? Superb.
- twixfel 2y ago
  Rubber Soul onwards are all masterpieces (except maybe Let it Be) and feature among the greatest music written by anyone, ever. You are seriously underrating them just by virtue of the fact that you don't personally enjoy listening to them, which seems silly to me.
  - smackeyacky 2y ago
    Overexposure will do that

Freak_NL 2y ago

I would definitely watch a film about a quartet of highly trained musical hitmen taking out competing acts. Somehow the idea of John acting as a spotter with a pair of binoculars sat on a rooftop next to Ringo with a sniper rifle and giving him a range estimation in a Scouse accent seems… utterly delightful.

fitsumbelay 2y ago

The years that are most consequential to my taste are '77 to '82, where there seemed to be an explosion of high quality output across so many genres - disco/uptempo R&B, funk music, hard rock, progressive jazz, punk rock, reggae, synth pop and electronic music -- some of these being emergent genres. But '76 was a pretty full year for music across genres too, as was '83. And '75, and '74, and '84, and '85 ... There's literally no year that isn't a rabbit hole of very interesting hits, progressions where one thing is going out of fashion while another thing gains attention as it moves from edge to center, marginalia, you name it when it comes to music. I suppose there are examples of like late '92 when grunge blew up beyond reasonable proportions where one could point to a specific time range and place for a sea change like Nirvana and fellow indy rockers triggering Glam Rock/Hair Metal's decline. But those kinds of events are less frequent or at least less consequential and that probably has to do with the average josephine liking a wide range of musical genres, which was very much not the case until maybe the mid to late 90s. Seriously, folks' musical tastes were monosyllabic af Shouts to giving Franky Valli his props. One of my favorites of his songs is a disco groover called "Who Loves You". Interestingly there was a bit of a resurgence in 50's style and culture during the mid '70s, probably due to the movie Grease's and lead Travolta's success

detourdog 2y ago
I agree completely something really good started in the '77. That time period is still in heavy rotation for me now even while I discover new to me music.
- SJC_Hacker 2y ago
  76 was Boston's debut album. Van Halen debut in 78. But it was a fairly slow burn .. rock didn't really resurge into the national consciousness until about 79 ... airwaves were dominated by disco. I think Disco Demolition Night (summer of 79) had something to do with it.
  - fitsumbelay 2y ago
    That first Boston album is butter. Van Halen is a huge band that comes up when I think about that period Id put The Cars and even Cheap Trick in there as an example of rock plus varying levels of New Wave - higher with former, a bit lower for the latter

vessenes 2y ago

You can’t talk about kill rates in the 90s without talking about Nevermind. Well you can but it’s irresponsible. I’d argue nothing successful in rock came out over the next 20 years without somehow relating to nevermind.

decimalenough 2y ago
The article mentions Smells Like Teen Spirit and grunge.
grujicd 2y ago
Nevermind was among 7 albums released within 44 days: Metallica, Metallica Pearl Jam, Ten Guns N’ Roses, Use Your Illusion I Guns N’ Roses, Use Your Illusion II Red Hot Chili Peppers, Blood Sugar Sex Magik Soundgarden, Badmotorfinger Nirvana, Nevermind
leptons 2y ago
>I’d argue nothing successful in rock came out over the next 20 years without somehow relating to nevermind. You'll have to define what constitutes "rock", and what you mean by "came out" - just any "rock" album, or only new "rock" bands. You also have to define what "successful" means, to have this argument. Let's also not forget that in the late 1990's the world of music changed with Napster and music sharing, so "successful" in the 20 years after Nevermind came out may not be the same kind of "successful" in 1990 since people were often downloading music. I personally had no interest in Nirvana, but enjoyed "rock" music from many other bands. Cobain just came off as too depressing a figure, even when he was alive - and so I just didn't connect with their music at all.
progmetaldev 2y ago
Nirvana were influenced by some large bands that are still around to this day, like The Melvins. Nirvana just happened to have tweaked their sound and been in the right place at the right time. I do enjoy Nirvana, but bands like The Melvins have a far large catalog, and there were quite a few other bands that influenced Nirvana that kept going. Nirvana did often shout out these other bands, but people were too hooked on MTV back then, and weren't as willing to look up the bands they would mention.

ilamont 2y ago

The fact that Valli topped the charts again in 1978 with “Grease” still boggles my mind. Not if you were living through the 1950s nostalgia revival which was going strong at the time and lingered through the early 80s. It was on TV (Happy Days and Sha Na Na), the movies (American Graffiti, Porky's) and a bunch of retro musical acts (The Stray Cats) or retro projects by established artists returning to the music they grew up with (Robert Plant's The Honeydrippers). The sound of rock music undoubtedly changed between the beginning and middle of the 1960s. But by looking at the Billboard Hot 100, we can see if that change in sound was being made by a fleet of new groups or a bunch of older acts adapting. This methodology leaves out a lot of bands, and not just the long tail that never cracked the top 100. There are MANY locally popular bands that never broke out nationally and therefore never made it to the Billboard Hot 100. There were also bands doing types of music that never charted particularly well yet were influential in their own way. For a sampling of this, go to the MIT/WMBR archives (https://wmbr.org/cgi-bin/arch https://wmbr.org/cgi-bin/arch) and listen to "Lost and Found" which highlights a lot of these types of music. Or search for things like "60s garage bands" "60s funk" etc. on YouTube. The author also mentions the 1991 change to the Billboard methodology which really calls into doubt a some of the "hits" that came before. In a nutshell, music charts in the United States were based on a sample of self-reported sales from record store managers. You can imagine the bias and BS that went on with those numbers. Then there was manipulation further up the funnel. Record companies weren't supposed to give outright cash payments to DJs (wink wink) but there were many other ways of exerting influence on influential media gatekeepers. Some of the influence was obvious. Picking artists that had the "right" look. Promoting "safe" artists. Forcing hitmaker producers on new and established artists. Selective access and backroom benefits for powerful DJs and music journalists and other influencers. Ignoring, sidelining, or co-opting trends bubbling up from the underground, from proto-metal in the late 60s to punk in the 70s to rap in the 80s. As soon as Soundscan was implemented, there was an immediate realignment, with rap and grunge and techno and country storming the pop charts. Background on the 1991 Soundscan change is here, if anyone is interested: https://ultimateclassicrock.com/billboard-soundscan/ https://ultimateclassicrock.com/billboard-soundscan/

mlinksva 2y ago

This article is asking whether a new kind of pop star ends the pop careers of existing pop stars. Seems unclear clear from the top 40 hits data used, but I enjoyed the exploration and would enjoy reading more in depth exploration of the question with more data. I guess a simplistic relevance survival rate change analysis akin to top 40 hits before/after a shock must've been done for companies or individual careers where the shock is say a new general purpose technology or shift including the one happening now around LLMs. I'm having deja vu while commenting, there is a non-superficial literature on just this focused on adaptation and adoption as important factors if I recall correctly; I'd need to ask a LLM for specifics or rack my brain for longer, the piece that immediately comes to mind is at a different looking at a different scale, Jeff Ding's writing on such shocks and geopolitical power. Anyway, I guess such a literature focused on entertainer survival given shocks must exist, and might help explore which ones matter; the Beatles or any specific megastar might just be the froth; I presume that's the case. Based on the title I was expecting a different question (entirely due to my presumptions such as mentioned above, nothing wrong with the title or article), namely how many star careers does a megastar career end or preclude, and on down to the impact of stars (mega to small) on amateurs. It's possible that stars are positive sum when considering consumers or even that they are positive sum for smaller producers (increasing overall demand, including demand to create as an amateur) though I'm skeptical of the latter given attention is finite. I'm way more sanguine about the positive sumness of megastars where demand is insatiable (e.g., not limited by attention) such as for non-attention-based (e.g., media/entertainment) technology, but I'd love to read serious analysis of this either way.

mlinksva 2y ago
Missing "not" in front of "media/entertainment" in last sentence.

bag_boy 2y ago

The careers they really affected were artists who signed to Apple. George Harrison tried his best at producing, but he just didn’t have it. Doris Troy’s album under Apple has very little soul. Too bad John and Paul didn’t care enough to consistently produce other artists.

bloomingeek 2y ago
I still love the Beatles, but I still lament the breakup. Of course it was their lives to live, but all that talent together was other worldly.
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  I've come to appreciate when artists hang it up in their prime, though. It's very hard to be consistently good forever (I'm not sure I can name anyone who was), and I would much rather think back on an artist's work and say "man I wish he did more of that" than "man he should've gave it up ages ago". For example, Calvin and Hobbes vs Garfield in the world of comics. I would love to have more C&H of the same quality, but I'm grateful it never became boring and forgettable like Garfield did.

DidYaWipe 2y ago

Any discussion of charts after about 2000, and certainly today, seems irrelevant. Music delivery is so segregated into niches (with charts catering to each) that "pop" charts don't reflect a generation's tastes the way they used to. It's sad that we no longer have soundtracks for eras the way we did. Look at movies set during various decades; you know the time period from the songs being played. After 2000 or so... that's over. Even if you play period-correct music, it will not evoke memories across anywhere near as much of the audience as it would have for previous generations. Back in the day, on a road trip with friends, you could have an assorted-music tape where people would know and rock out to every song. Today not so much. Or... you'd be playing the same tape from the '80s to 20-somethings now and they'd still know the songs. There's a reason '80s music enjoyed such a resurgence among young people: Much of today's popular music sucks ass. It sucks both from a creative standpoint (lacking even legitimate song structure, like melody, chorus, & bridge) and from a technical standpoint (being dynamically compressed into a wall of noise).

ant6n 2y ago
Occasionally a song will bubble up to be known by many people. For example Gangnam style. But I can’t think of anything else.
- tokioyoyo 2y ago
  That was pre-siloed internet era. Those were still golden days of internet, because everyone was seeing the same “trends” and there was some alignment. Think of ice bucket challenge, planking, and etc. The stuff I see nowadays is very different from what you see, despite using the same platforms. It’s sad, because it’s not even just internet, it’s all types of media. No more Game of Thrones discussions at work on Mondays, because almost everyone watching it. No more songs that almost everyone knows. And the list keeps going on. Basically algorithms catering to every taste, rather than some humans being the curators. I understand the negative sides of it as well, but talking to my nephews… things don’t look that fun even for them.
  - progmetaldev 2y ago

megiddo 2y ago

Apocryphal story time: Had a family friend who was in a kicking oompah bad in the early 60s. They thought there was going to be a surge in this market, and were getting some pretty big gigs. The saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show and promptly quit for different careers.

agha_450 2y ago

[flagged]

mmaunder 2y ago

I think the graph showing the pct of artists who never had a hit again is interesting given that it peaks in the early 90s. I've heard the grunge era described by record industry folks as a freight train that no one saw coming.

Nemi 2y ago

The article posits that the beatles and the nineties were BAD for artists, ruining careers and making them one-hit-wonders (where presumably they would have had more than one hit?). I would argue that it was GREAT for artists and the reason there are so many one hit wonders is that those times opened up and created public appetite for new music. Those artists (who he argues would have had more than one hit) I argue would not have had ANY hits as they never would have gotten airplay to begin with. How many artists did the Beatles kill? Maybe a better question is – How many artists did the Beatles help produce?

joe_the_user 2y ago
Absolutely, Even more, googling, I get about 100k working musicians currently in the US. It should be obvious that most of those aren't hit-producers for major labels and things likely weren't that different back in the 1960s. Back in the day, they were live performers, teachers and performers in radio-orchestras. Presently they are live performers, teachers, session musicians , and composers-of-themes for movie, TV-shows, commercials, video games and so-forth.