Members Folder Posted July 21, 2012 Members Share Posted July 21, 2012 While I was in the bookstore tonight they were playing a CD of what I would catorgorise as really cheesy, insipid, dance music. I thought the lead vocals sounded familiar so I went and asked who it was and was told it was the new Maroon 5 CD. When Maroon 5 first came out I thought they were a pretty good band that wrote and performed some pretty decent pop rock songs. I bought their first CD and saw them in concert in 2005. I thought they were good musicians and it was what I would consider a traditional rock concert with lots of guitar solos, Hammond B3 organ and live vocals. The music I heard tonight sounded very synth heavy with a techno bass drum on every song. The vocals sounded heavily processed. Everything seemed like it was digitally sequenced and I don't even think I heard a single guitar part. If I had not recognised the singers voice there's no way I would have ever thought it was the Maroon 5 that I saw perform. I got to thinking about artists who cheesed out during their careers. Some people might say sold out but I think of selling out as deliberate. Stevie Wonder went from "Higher Ground" and "Living for the City" to "Part Time Lover" and "I Just Called to Say I Love You" in the 80's. Rod Stewart went from "The Jeff Beck Group", "the Faces" and "Every Picture Tells a Story" to a lot of cheesy 80's and 90's pop. Chicago went from "I'm a Man", "25 or 6 to 4" and jazz rock fusion to "Your the Inspiration" and other 80's pop cheese. Elton John went from "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" and "Madman Across the Water" to his "80's cheese period. Of course one man's cheese is another man's steak and I'm sure a lot of stuff that I like other people would consider limburger (especially early seventies pop records) But who are some artists that you think have cheesed out during their career and have any of them cheesed out and then gone back to making what you would consider credible music? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members sventvkg Posted July 21, 2012 Members Share Posted July 21, 2012 Maroon 5 sold out and blows now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rasputin1963 Posted July 21, 2012 Members Share Posted July 21, 2012 BORN IN THE USA was Springsteen's bid for MTV teenybop stardom. David Bowie was really an outre', risque', kinda underground act in the early 70's. When he cleaned up his act, married Iman, and did "Let's dance" on MTV, would you say that this was just a canny self-redefinition... or a sellout? Genesis also was artsy and kinda dark/underground in the early 70's... Then we had all that Phil Collins MOR crap in the 80's. How 'bout Lionel Ritchie leaving the Commodores? I will attract some flak here, but I think a lot of Macca & Wings stuff was bubblegum {censored}e that drove me up the wall in the 70's. Blondie went from being a dangerous CBGB's act... to doing "The Tide Is High". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Ed A. Posted July 21, 2012 Members Share Posted July 21, 2012 Emerson, Lake & Palmer went from "Brain Salad Surgery" to "Love Beach"Yes went from "Close to the Edge" to "90125"The Rolling Stones went from "Sticky Fingers" to "Some Girls"The Who went from "Tommy" to "The Who By Numbers"Jefferson Airplane became Jefferson Starship and went from "White Rabbit" to "We Built This City On Rock & Roll" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rasputin1963 Posted July 21, 2012 Members Share Posted July 21, 2012 Remember SIMPLE MINDS...? Their stuff, in the early 80's, was just my pride and joy... they were dark, and hardly anyone Stateside knew them. Then they got onto THE BREAKFAST CLUB soundtrack. Oy. On a similar note, I remember how New Order's 12" dance single "Blue Monday" was played in clubs in the 80's. It was a really dark, underground, weird, druggy record that I adored. Today there are "family" FM stations here in San Antonio that playlist it-- the whole damned 12" single!!--- for soccer moms and their SUV'd toddlers... in between cuts by Whitney Houston and Huey Lewis. WTF? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Mark L Posted July 21, 2012 Members Share Posted July 21, 2012 The cheese course is always the last After that you leave the restaurant Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members philbo Posted July 21, 2012 Members Share Posted July 21, 2012 I can't say much bad stuff about this; anybody making a living from music is doing better at it than I am... That said, The BeeGees actually made pretty decent music till they inhaled too much helium one night and made that disco album. I still cringe when I hear it, and always will, I think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members A. Einstein Posted July 21, 2012 Members Share Posted July 21, 2012 For some artists comes the day where they decide either to earn money with their hobby, or look for a job in a bureau Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members JeffLearman Posted July 21, 2012 Members Share Posted July 21, 2012 The cheese course is always the last After that you leave the restaurant Hah! Only, for many artists, it's the longest period. I don't think Stevie "cheesed out". I think he just wasn't up to topping his incredible earlier work. Imagine trying to follow Innerversions! Nearly every song on that is a hit. Who can sustain that kind of genius? Even Albert Einstein didn't have any big hits after the general theory of relativity. But the rest of the OP's list I have to agree to. Even though I still liked EJ's work in his cheesy period, I can't deny the obvious dairy influence. I might even lump Sir Paul in the lot. But I still have immense respect for these two, as well as Bruce Springsteen. David Bowie is a bit of an exception, as usual. Yeah, he definitely went pop on Let's Dance, but really: he re-invented himself with just about every album. He even said himself that he was always looking for "his voice" and it changed dramatically throughout all those years. And wasn't Modern Love on Let's Dance? That was a great tune in his tradition of innovation and riding outside the herd. Looking at it from an artist's point of view, it has to be incredibly hard to resist the pressure to deliver what the multitudes want. I suspect in a lot of cases, when artists are cheesing out, they're often not even deliberately suppressing their artistic instincts, but rather, they're responding to popular feedback. I bet it's a very hard signal to ignore! And of course, there's pressure from the business end, which is also hard to ignore (but would be more of the case of ignoring artistic instincts than being swept up in the mania). Here's another example, which illustrates my point: Stefani Germanotta. Very talented singer/songwriter, quite good on piano, and totally ignored by the world. Act II: Lady Gaga. A bit popular, I'd say. Did she "cheese out"? Well, I prefer her work as Stefani. But I think she actually really loves being Lady Gaga, and thoroughly loves the kind of performance art she presents. And I'd venture that the feedback of the crowd helps reinforce that. It sure would for me! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted July 21, 2012 Members Share Posted July 21, 2012 [current/former Maroon 5 fans, brace up...] I'm 'happy' to say I thought Maroon 5 were some of worst dreck I ever heard right from the top. I wouldn't have liked their simpering, wimp rock even if it hadn't been for the hideously tuned vocals -- but their exceptionally clumsy use of tuning was the sewage frosting on the cake. That said, I do get the arc from personal fave to personal pariah -- and Folder's other examples all work for me, except that I'd already stopped listening to most of those artists before his negative examples kicked in. But I HAD really liked some aspects of all of them.* But the downward arc is the same (and where I know the examples he cites, they certainly would have pushed me over the edge had I not already been long off it). For me, one of the truly bitterest of these meteoric descents would have to be Rod Stewart. I liked him with Jeff Beck, but I thought his first few albums as a solo and with the Faces were really sharp. Fine writing, fine playing, well-chosen covers. Stewart's patented singing. But by mid-decade his cooing that drivel about "spread your wings and let me come inside." For gawsh sake, what treacly, insipid crap. * In fact, only days ago, was just thinking about "Madman Across the Water" and had to put it on. Enigmatic lyrics, perhaps, but really sold by the music. I'd almost say a great song, in its cryptic way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted July 21, 2012 Members Share Posted July 21, 2012 I can't say much bad stuff about this; anybody making a living from music is doing better at it than I am... That said,The BeeGees actually made pretty decent music till they inhaled too much helium one night and made that disco album. I still cringe when I hear it, and always will, I think.I'm a BIG fan of Horizontal and some of their other early stuff. But that album, particularly, slays me. I mean, it's a weird album. The quavery voices, the cryptic lyrics. It was supposed to be their Sgt. Pepper's I read at the time. And, strangely, they actually had some hits. That said, that album already had a song that I feared revealed their future: the song "Massachusetts" would become a big hit but struck me as just stupid and sappy. I couldn't believe it was on the same album. You may have put the song out of your mind, it has the deathless phrase, "The night the lights went out in Massachusetts." It's an execution song, but that alone couldn't save it from the goopy mass of strings and the irritating melody and melodramatic lyrics. I've puzzled over how I can like most of the album so much and yet hate that song so vehemently. One of life's mysteries. FWIW, while the whole '78 disco revival (it seemed to be dying out here, but what was really happening, I realized, was that the 'cool' disco scene of the early and mid-decade had merely moved to what I at the time called the K-Mart phase of cultural dispersion, where Joe and Jane Sixpack finally 'get it' -- or at least buy it) pretty much alienated me from the club scene (except to take advantage of various happy hours while keeping my dance-crazy GF off my back), a lot of the late 80s disco music -- as opposed to the R&B and funk that I'd been dancing to in discos a few years earlier -- struck me as lacking the sex and energy of my favorite dance music. Still... I sort of had to admit that "Night Fever" and "Stayin' Alive" were catchy. It wasn't until the mid 90s when a friend asked me to do a club music version of "Stayin' ALive" and loaned me a Bee Gees songbook that I realized how incredibly stoopid the lyrics are. Oh heavens. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Bookumdano2 Posted July 21, 2012 Members Share Posted July 21, 2012 I'd have to be standing face to face with someone while they explained their latest musical move. That's about the only way I can understand if it was for the money. Which I wouldn't hold against them... I do understand circus people. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members A. Einstein Posted July 21, 2012 Members Share Posted July 21, 2012 Btw, in case you have songs, or even an album as sappy or more sappy then Maroon 5, licence it to us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Mark L Posted July 21, 2012 Members Share Posted July 21, 2012 Btw, in case you have songs, or even an album as sappy or more sappy then Maroon 5, licence it to us. I already have! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members A. Einstein Posted July 21, 2012 Members Share Posted July 21, 2012 I already have! Damit, read paragraph Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Mark L Posted July 21, 2012 Members Share Posted July 21, 2012 Oops Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members A. Einstein Posted July 21, 2012 Members Share Posted July 21, 2012 Oops I believe you !!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Vito Corleone Posted July 21, 2012 Members Share Posted July 21, 2012 I prefer "90125" to "Close To The Edge". I think "Some Girls" is as strong as "Sticky Fingers", just in a different direction. For some other acts, it's cheese or nothing at all. Chicago, Starship and Heart all went ultra-cheese in the 80s---largely with songs they didn't write and records they didn't produce that, had they not recorded them, someone else would have and which would have sounded nearly exactly the same, but I'm pretty sure they all preferred that to the later careers many of their 60s/70s contemporaries had. Blood, Sweat and Tears or Hot Tuna anyone? Others like Elton and Stevie definately lost their songwriting mojo in the 80s, but at least were still writing their own stuff. In Elton's case, I put a lot of the decline on Bernie Taupin's shoulders. I think some of Elton's melodies were as strong as ever, but "I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues" isn't exactly "Madman Across The Water". And he was the guy responsible for "We Built This City On Rock and Roll"..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Mark L Posted July 21, 2012 Members Share Posted July 21, 2012 I prefer "90125" to "Close To The Edge" Yes, you did just type that! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Vito Corleone Posted July 21, 2012 Members Share Posted July 21, 2012 Yes, you did just type that! Just typing "Close To The Edge" puts me to sleep. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members John Bartus Posted July 21, 2012 Members Share Posted July 21, 2012 BORN IN THE USA was Springsteen's bid for MTV teenybop stardom. Yeah... songs about Viet Nam vets who are trying to deal with post-war problems and can't find work really resonate with the teen bubblegum set... I kinda agree with you about the rest. Phil Collins' Face Value (with "In The Air Tonight"), however, was a good album inspired by the breakup of his marriage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Mark L Posted July 21, 2012 Members Share Posted July 21, 2012 Just typing "Close To The Edge" puts me to sleep. These are indeed sad, sad times Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members John Bartus Posted July 21, 2012 Members Share Posted July 21, 2012 Yes went from "Close to the Edge" to "90125" The Rolling Stones went from "Sticky Fingers" to "Some Girls" Jefferson Airplane became Jefferson Starship and went from "White Rabbit" to "We Built This City On Rock & Roll" 90125 was a good album with some killer musical moments that didn't necessarily include "Owner of a Lonely Heart." Some Girls has become a Stones' classic -- not their best, but certainly not their worst. And some of the Marty Balin Starship stuff was okay in my book. That "City," however, should never have been built. BTW -- did you know that Bob Dylan co-wrote Michael Bolton's hit song "Steel Bars"? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Vito Corleone Posted July 21, 2012 Members Share Posted July 21, 2012 People are too quick to dismiss 80s Genesis because of the Collins' ballads. But there was still plenty of long, drawn-out prog-rock tunes during that period as well with some of Tony Banks' best work. [video=youtube;5ILxVQwmbAs] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Vito Corleone Posted July 21, 2012 Members Share Posted July 21, 2012 90125 was a good album with some killer musical moments that didn't necessarily include "Owner of a Lonely Heart." [video=youtube;7N3VLRfNiAY] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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