I was thinking the other day about this while talking to a friend about Rod Stewart, who went from fronting the Faces to disco and now this awful, pandering "American Songbook" garbage. But is he really the worst offender? After all, the Faces were playing the style of music that was popular at the time, so it's not too surprising that Stewart followed the trends of popularity, even if it led him to record garbage like "Love Touch." So, what band or artist has had the biggest shift from radical or innovative to pandering and popular? I'm not a fan of Genesis in any of their incarnations, but they seem to me to have had the biggest shift.
The Police The Clash - before you flame me for this one, think "Combat Rock" Jefferson Airplane/Starship
I can't quite agree on The Clash, even if I think that album is one of their weaker ones. The funk and hip-hop they explore on that album was still fairly out of the mainstream at the time. The Police isn't a bad answer, especially if you include Sting's solo career. Good suggestion!
You have to be good to sell out. I saw her in concert a few years ago and she was just plain horrible.
Genesis had a fairly significant personnel change that accounts for some of the shift. With Peter Gabriel gone, the sellout was inevitable. You think Mike Rutherford was going to keep Phil Collins from going 'mersh?
I've never liked her either, but at least that first album was indie rock without much hope for commerical appeal. The newest stuff sounds like Britney Spears.
She is not great live, but to go from Exile in Guyville (which is in my top 5 albums of all time) to the dreck she released last year is one of the biggest dissapointments of my life.
Combat Rock? The album that has Innoculated City, Straight To Hell and Rock The Casbah?? Are you confusing "becoming popular" with "making a choice to pander to the lowest common denominator?" And I wouldn't say U2 is a "sellout". They've never been afraid of fame, and I don't feel they ever made a choice to do what was popular (I remember quite a few puzzled faces on the masses when they first heard the opening riffs from the Fly come through the speakers). They've pretty much always put out what they wanted, and it's hardly their fault if it sold millions.
Paul McCartney. Considering what the Beatles were and his contribution, to what his solo career became...I don't think anyone comes even close. Could you see John Lennon doing duets ala "The Girl Is Mine," or "Ebony And Ivory?"
Paul, though, was the most pop-oriented member of the Beatles. While Lennon was doing Happiness is a Warm Gun on The White Album, Paul is doing Martha My Dear. He always has been this way so he really never sold out than just gave into his real intentions as a performer.
Yea, but he also did "Helter Skelter" But really, Paul went from sappy brilliance to just sappy. His only crime is getting old and losing a bit of edge. But there is little to no excuse for The Girl Is Mine and Ebony And Ivory.
No way-I aint buying that. It's one thing to be the "pop" side of an innovative songwriting team; another to write absolute garbage and pander to Top 40. Or to put in another way, you can be pop-oriented and still have an edge. He lost his and decided to churn out banal crap.
Agreed. The confusion of these two things drives me crazy. Everybody's ready to turn on a band when everybody else finds out about them. Ridiculous. The problem wit U2 is that they suck now. Plain and simple. Bono was a much better rock star before he decided he was a rock star.
The only reason he had any edge is because he had Lennon looking over his shoulder. Competition can do that. If you want to see how far his tallents went down in a short period of time, compare the last two Beatle albums to the first two solo Paul albums. Without the edge, he slipped into total insipid writing. That being said, he has done some good stuff solo (I put "Jet" as one of the best singles of the '70s) and I can appreciate his tallent, but he never was the edgy Beatle, despite writing Helter Skelter.
Oh, while I'm in rant mode Stevie-"I Just Called To Say I Love You"-Wonder...what happened? And growing old can't explain all of this.
I just recalled one of the more inept attempts to sell out: does anyone remember when Corrosion of Conformity decided that they were going to be a Southern rock band?
I Saw Her Standing There. Hmmmmmm. A cutting edge song if I ever heard one. The most radical bit was rhyming 'there'/'compare', owing to the fact that the Beatles are Scousers. No. McCartney started out doing pop music. His influences were popular artists. He became more innovative, but never the equal of Lennon in how far off the beaten track. Look at Eleanor Rigby. This is close to music hall stuff. What/which Paul McCartney are you talking about?
We just differ on this-I don't think that's a fair description of how the Beatles created-Paul was equally innovative. George Martin often spoke about how the John="edge" is something of a myth.