[HN Gopher] How many artists' careers did the Beatles kill?
___________________________________________________________________
How many artists' careers did the Beatles kill?
Author : dwighttk
Score : 123 points
Date : 2025-03-15 17:05 UTC (5 hours ago)
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| dwighttk wrote:
| 90s were harder on popular artists than the 60s
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| And now, all we have is dance-groups on stage
| solumunus wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| And The Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney and The Who...
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Have a look at something like bandcamp, or a new music
| podcast. There's lots of great stuff out there.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The OP offers a hypothesis: Billboard changed its ratings
| method significantly, and many formerly 'popular' artists
| weren't.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| 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
|
| > 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 wrote:
| Only Paul.
|
| ;-)
| geophile wrote:
| 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, 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
|
| > 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".
| mmooss wrote:
| In film, I think _Breathless_ by Godard may be seen as a
| dividing line, though of course it 's never that simple.
| Exoristos wrote:
| Certainly there were people who spoke similarly to movies and
| radio, like my grandmother. However, the full truth is rather
| sad: Anglo-American speech at the time comprised many
| beautiful and very diverse accents. As media became
| ubiquitous, these began to die off and most seem extinct
| today.
| zoogeny wrote:
| I think this kind of change is maybe more common than we think.
| I mean, when Nirvana showed up and was juxtaposed next to the
| hair metal kind of vibe of the day you had the same weird
| juxtaposition. Or think how weird that 90s vibe of movies like
| the Goonies or Raiders of the Lost Ark feels compared to Marvel
| (so much so that Stranger Things was able to feel nostalgic).
|
| I think of it like fashion. Outfits get slim/tight then the
| next generation comes and fits get roomy/baggy, then then next
| generation comes and they'll get slim/tight. There is a swaying
| back and forth from formal to relaxed, even in politics. Like a
| Boris Johnson in the UK.
|
| I think it can just feel like "the big change" when our own
| generational cohort makes the break. And baby boomers have been
| dominating the conversation for so long, that the particular
| change that happened in the 60s is banged on about so much. In
| fact, in the article the author themselves tries to downplay
| the change that happened in the 90s as a change in how
| billboard ranked artists. I think that is actually partially
| just a desire to see the 60s as exceptional or legendary in a
| way that plays into boomer nostalgia.
| geophile wrote:
| I am a boomer, and I think that these two things are true:
|
| 1) The stuff that happens in your teens is special because of
| your age. That may well explain why I think The Beatles (and
| the music of that era) was so special.
|
| 2) The music from the 60s really was special. There was
| certainly rock and roll well before The Beatles, and it grew
| out of black music, and blues, and can be viewed as nothing
| really new. And yet: it really was a significant break from
| the past in the _global_ adulation for their music and the
| quantum change in tastes that they ushered in.
|
| Not to minimize Nirvana (whose music I love) or metal, or
| anything else, but the musical examples that you cite were
| simply not as globally shattering as The Beatles. They just
| weren't. They were variations within the world of rock and
| roll. The only comparable change I can think of is the rise
| of rap music. Which I cannot stand, but I recognize how it
| changed the world in the same way that The Beatles did.
| solumunus wrote:
| I guess I've never really considered it before but that's
| so true. If you observe mainstream music the influence of
| rap has been absolutely colossal.
| threetonesun wrote:
| Part of the Beatles growth was also the growth of the home
| television. The next generational equivalent was probably
| MTV and Michael Jackson, that spawned the unfathomably
| large, entertainment icon level of pop star. After that it
| was anyone who has used Youtube to get billions of viewers
| without a media companies support.
| zoogeny wrote:
| I love the Beatles and recognize their impact. But to say
| there was rock and roll before the Beatles as if Elvis
| wasn't a massive international thing is downplaying it, as
| if it was this underground phenomenon. The members of the
| Beatles themselves (or the Rolling Stones) all talk about
| what influence Chuck Berry and Elvis were. In fact, from
| the view of "rock'n'roll" I don't think the Beatles
| influence matches Elvis. Their real influence was bigger
| later with their experimentation and studio wizardry.
|
| I was even thinking about the Rat Pack, you know Sinatra,
| Dean Martin, etc. and their antics. The Beatles were very
| much in that lineage. So this idea that they showed up on
| Ed Sullivan and wowed the world with their new nonchalance
| that had never been seen before is not an accurate view of
| the situation.
|
| As you say, two things can be true. The Beatles were
| important and influential and were a defining sound in the
| 60s. And the kind of changes (and relative impact) that
| happened in the 60s have happened many times in the past
| and many times since. It isn't some singular moment in the
| cultural history of humanity.
| abraae wrote:
| "Before Elvis, there was nothing" - John Lennon
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Checking in from Europe. The rise of electronic music was a
| big deal here, it happened in the late 70s to 90s with
| "techno" taking off in the late 80s / early 90s. Electronic
| music in the US has had its ups and downs and has been
| over-commercialized as dubstep and "EDM" in the last 10-15
| years - it will probably be over again at some point. It's
| been a thing constantly for decades on this side of the
| pond. Some people say Kraftwerk was as important as (or
| more so regarding influence on _current_ music) the
| Beatles.
|
| Electronic music also started in the US: Disco, Chicago
| house, Detroit techno - these just didn't take off as much
| or not permanently (Disco).
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's more #1.
|
| I can appreciate the poetry of the Beatles, I feel a
| connection as Irish diaspora, but as music, it does nothing
| for me, and my friends who really loved them picked that up
| from their parents, reinforcing #1!
| twixfel wrote:
| The Beatles and the 60s really were special. You may not
| like their music and that's fine, but that period and
| that band has not been replicated in later decades by
| later generations. What the Beatles achieved in
| particular is arguably unparalleled. If it was mostly #1
| as you say then there'd be a Beatles perhaps every
| decade, but there's not been. There's not even yet been
| another Beatles since the Beatles.
| geophile wrote:
| That is a good point. But there is something else going
| on in addition. Music is a much smaller cultural force
| than it was in the 60s and 70s. Then it was arguably the
| core of all the social changes. That hasn't been true
| since then. Instead there are PCs, cell phones, video
| games, apps. Music matters far less than it used to.
|
| I asked my daughters what music, from their teen years,
| (aughts and tens) would be listened to fifty years later,
| similar to the Beatles, Stones, Zeppelin, etc. They said
| none of their music would be remembered, it's all
| disposable.
| mmooss wrote:
| How do we define the difference?
|
| Like technological and social disruptions, I think usually the
| difference is that the new thing has a different agenda than
| the old - different goals. As a result, the old can't make
| sense of it - by their goals the new thing is obviously
| worthless. To the market-dominating Blackberry phone maker,
| obviously their phone was far superior for email, so why would
| someone in business buy an iPhone?
|
| My working theory is that the new thing 60s rock'n'roll aimed
| for was personal expression. Vaudeville acts weren't expressing
| things about themselves (very much - it's always a matter of
| degree). There was no 'Let It Be' moment, or expressions of
| aggression or deeply felt love. Vaudeville and a lot of the
| pre-Beatles pop music was (very generally) entertainment, not
| so much art. Look at jazz too, going from Ellington to
| Coltrane. Look at the rise of folk music. 50's crooners mocked
| the singing voices of rockers because that was their goal - an
| aesthetically beautiful voice; they perhaps didn't see the
| point of rockers was personal expression.
|
| Again, that's speaking very generally. There were many
| beautiful voices post-Beatles, and there was self-expression
| before them, and the dividing line isn't perfect.
|
| Now it seems to me that we are leaving behind personal
| expression. If true, I think partly it's an outcome of culture
| wars: it's associated with liberalism, so many reject it; and
| real personal expression can be uncomfortable and non-
| conformist, and that's divisive and provocative to many. But I
| am building speculation on speculation.
| johnny22 wrote:
| > Now it seems to me that we are leaving behind personal
| expression.
|
| Are we? Can you expand on that?
| chrisdhoover wrote:
| By 65 the neighborhood teens were all atwitter with the
| Beatles. Its one of my earliest memories. The girls laying
| claim to one Beatle or another. "I like Paul" "I like George!"
| I hadn't heard any of the Beatles songs. My limited musical
| exposure was from church and The Wonderful World of Disney. By
| the late 60's I listened to WPGC and Kasey Kasims countdown.
| Growing older this all became so annoying. The overt loudness.
| The repetition. Seeking solace in alternatives I embraced punk
| and new wave. The thing that cracks me up is hearing the clash
| sing about Supermarkets while in the supermarket. Oh man oh man
| the 2020s are a great time to be alive
| colkassad wrote:
| 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.
| prisenco wrote:
| | _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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| mjb wrote:
| Back in high school, my buddies and I snuck in to a few
| Saron Gas (their pre-Seether name) shows at Roxy's in
| Johannesburg. We were under age, and couldn't afford the
| R20 cover. They were really talented, and put on a great
| show (one of the top club shows I can remember).
| LostMyLogin wrote:
| > The band originally performed under the name Saron Gas
| until 2002, when they moved to the United States and changed
| it to Seether to avoid confusion with the deadly chemical
| known as sarin gas.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seether
| lc9er wrote:
| One of their guitarists came out of my local scene. I shared
| a stage with the guy a number of times. After a few years and
| albums, he left the band and became a teacher. It was one of
| the events that started taking the air out of the rockstar
| dream.
| pfdietz wrote:
| My favorite one hit wonder was The Insiders, "Ghost On the
| Beach". That was 1987, so just before the 90s.
| colkassad wrote:
| I've never heard that one. Thanks for pointing it out. They
| remind me a little of The Connells...check out Scotty's
| Lament and Stone Cold Yesterday with my favorite being Fun &
| Games[1]. I think they were five years too early...I was
| obsessed with them in high school.
|
| Another early one-hit-wonder is from Deee-Lite, "Groove is in
| the Heart" (1990). I still watch the video from time to
| time...the woman can dance like no other.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHFvG0KGcWc
| samstave wrote:
| An interesting thought to think about is how sense of Smell is
| related to memory (from an evolutionary perspective the sense
| of smell-mem link was to ensure we Humans knew when something
| was not OK to ingest)
|
| But in modern times, now you can have smells link or lock
| memories in...
|
| So for you as a line cook - you have a bunch of experiences
| with these songs linked to whatever you were smelling at the
| time which then locked the 'nostalgia' into memory - so now in
| the Reverse RAG situation, you hear a song and your memories of
| those times are really strong.
|
| And to quote the magnanimous Steven Wright:
|
| " _Memories... they 're really the only thing you have to think
| back on_"
| Measter wrote:
| I have a weird second-hand memory by this. Back in the 90s,
| when I was still in school, we were having a bit of a relaxed
| period. My teacher had the radio on and was marking some
| stuff, while we kids were doing whatever.
|
| At one point, while I was talking to him, Stairway to Heaven
| started playing, and he told me that every time he hears that
| song he remembers the taste and smell of a cheeseburger he
| had when he visited the US years before.
|
| Now, every time _I_ hear that song, I think of cheeseburgers.
| samstave wrote:
| Ive noticed in my life;
|
| My brother has an _exceptional_ sense of smell... and he
| had a wonderful memory.
|
| I personally, have a compltely _retarded_sense_ of smell,
| and a poor mem.
|
| I was extremely involved in martial arts (pre-olympic, blah
| blah) and got hit in the nose a lot)
|
| --
|
| I had a photographic mem until I was about ~14 which I
| originally thought of as the first time I smoked pot -- but
| really it was when I started Martial arts...
|
| ((I used to take tests in Biology whereby rather than doing
| the test, I would re-draw the entirety of the chalkboard of
| the class for that test - and not answer a thing)
|
| (I have memories from 6 months old... where a girl named
| Wednesday attempted to smother me in my crib with a pillow)
| ((hippy commune, 1970s, Sanf Francisco -- yes my mom was
| friends with Jim Jones -- I have incredible memories))
|
| but I relegated my mem loss to various things -- but I have
| a REALLY poor sense of smell currently. and a poor mem as
| such.
|
| (However, I can tell you every single passwd Ive ever typed
| into a machine. The first ISP passwd I was given in the
| early 90s by netcom auto gen was "FblQ00Ho" in ~96-ish...
| ((part of my frustration in IT when someone says they cant
| recall they passwd))
|
| We should have a device that provides a scent when someone
| selects a secret - and then have them select the passwd
| induced by the scent.
|
| (I dont give a heck about how nuts the above sounds... its
| real. thats why its called NOSE-To-LOGIA nostalgia. (I love
| dissecting etymology)
|
| --
|
| I wrote the following joke eons ago about photographic mems
| as such:
|
| _" I have a photogenic memory... Whenever I think back on
| myself - I look fantastic"_
| WalterBright wrote:
| > can you believe these guys are unsigned???
|
| I prefer unsigned for guys that don't go negative on me.
| tomcam wrote:
| NICE
| tomcam wrote:
| > Ten different Eddie Vedders with arms wide open
|
| That line needs to go in a song
| ErikAugust wrote:
| "If I was Eddie Vedder Would you like me any better? That's
| it, I quit, I don't Give a shit"
|
| Local H, "Eddie Vedder", 1996
| chrisco255 wrote:
| It's crazy, I heard Mmm Bop the other day and didn't even hate
| it a little bit. It was probably the most annoying song of the
| 90s and yet the nostalgia kept me du bopping right along.
| netcan wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| stwrt0 wrote:
| They didn't write the song, theirs is the most popular version
| of an older folk song
| Freak_NL wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| jhbadger wrote:
| The 50s resurgence actually started in 1969 with the creation
| of Sha Na Na (who even played at Woodstock, weirdly enough).
| Grease was more of a result than a cause of the trend (and Sha
| Na Na actually performed in the movie of the musical as the
| fictional band "Johnny Casino and the Gamblers")
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sha_Na_Na
| fitsumbelay wrote:
| This is the correct answer. It was Sha Na Na not Grease
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> I suppose there are examples of like late '92
|
| Loveless, 4 November 1991
|
| Lazer Guided Melodies, 30 March 1992
|
| Nothing like them since, my ears are open, I'm still waiting.
| Getting old here.
| vessenes wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The article mentions Smells Like Teen Spirit and grunge.
| grujicd wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| >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_.
| ilamont wrote:
| _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) 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/
| mlinksva wrote:
| 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.
| bag_boy wrote:
| 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.
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| domador wrote:
| Your comment is interesting in various ways, but I want to
| focus on the idea that
|
| Legitimate song structure = melody + chorus + bridge
|
| Is there something about such a song structure that is somewhat
| universal or is it just so established in our culture that any
| song that doesn't have those elements sounds... impoverished?
| Are there other, alternative song structures that tend to
| produce satisfying music?
|
| I'm not being dismissive; I'm legitimately interested in
| exploring this idea.
| bc569a80a344f9c wrote:
| Any music theorist would tell you there's no such thing as
| "legitimate song structure". Verse/chorus/bridge is at most
| _common_ (though in no way legitimizing) at a very specific
| time in a very specific culture, there are plenty of
| counterexamples from the last 50 years.
|
| If you're interested in stuff like this, YouTube has
| approachable music theorists making good content. 12Tone is
| quite good.
| nextts wrote:
| Bohemian Rhapsody springs to mind. Most of Pink Floyd's The
| Wall. Yeah lots of famous rock stuff now I think of it. AC/DC
| Led Zeppelin.
|
| Is it cheating to not use pop in the examples?
|
| Takes a lot of effort to break the mold though!
| chupasaurus wrote:
| Making songs out of shorter different parts so they could be
| remembered easier is caused by attention span window, not a
| cultural thing.
| quitit wrote:
| The expansion of ways that we consume media plays a role, but I
| don't think we've lost the sounds of an era, it's just that the
| hooks are now coming from a variety of sources.
|
| "Badger Badger Badger" (and their kin) is likely to evoke a
| particular era in your memory.
|
| In a similar way "Uh-oh uh-oh uh-oh" may possibly evoke a more
| recent era.
| megiddo wrote:
| 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.
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