Music: Why did music drop in quality during the 1980s?

[MoreOrr]

80s >>>>>>> 90s, IMO. I've always found the 90s a bit overrated.

Same here. The mid-90s for me as a music-lover was like the late 70s for me as a hockey fan (all those Canadiens Cups).

 

[Terry Yake]

the 80s was the best decade in music, 90s second

why did many bands already established prior to the 80s see a drop in success during the 80s? i blame synthesizers and the rise of new wave. a lot of these bands changed up their sound to include synth and other new wave elements and the end result wasn't usually that great. especially when compared to the band's older stuff

 

[Acadmus]

80s >>>>>>> 90s, IMO. I've always found the 90s a bit overrated.

Though I love the alternative rock scene of the 90s, it struggled against Gangsta rap and diva pop after 1994 and petered out almost completely after 1997's record company joint decision to refocus their efforts on "safe" acts after the disaster of the hitless R.E.M. album Adventures in Hi-Fi (they'd just gotten a huge 5-album contract and started it with a commercial flop). More than anything that one event all but killed rock music for a decade.

So, all in all, yeah - I have to agree with the assertion that the 80s were much better than the 90s. though the last 3 years of that decade produced a lot of crap. Maybe even the 70s were better than the 90s, and the 60s almost certainly were despite all the crap THAT decade produced as well.

 

[Double-Shift Lasse]

The Police, The Cure, The Cars, Dire Straits, Simple Minds, Judas Priest, Journey.

Here is a cherry-picked list of bands who started releasing music in the 70s and continued into the 80s whose numbers do not drop per rateyourmusic.com.

 

[Acadmus]

The Police, The Cure, The Cars, Dire Straits, Simple Minds, Judas Priest, Journey.

Here is a cherry-picked list of bands who started releasing music in the 70s and continued into the 80s whose numbers do not drop per rateyourmusic.com.

There's various reasons for this, but timing is a big part of it. Most of the bands in the OP start prior to 1975. The Cure were all 15 years old when they formed in '75 and didn't really get much notice until 1980 and blossomed through that decade until peaking in '89 with Disintegration. Journey started in 1973, but didn't hire Steve Perry and change their musical direction based on that move until 1977. The Cars were born in 1976 but like The Police and Simple Minds, which formed in 1977, really saw success after the emergence of New Wave, which was only just starting in 1979, so most people's reference for them is from '79 on. Judas Priest is the only aberration having started in 1969, but they play heavy metal, which is a fringe style that has a relatively small but extremely loyal fanbase that doesn't generally have very broad musical tastes (I'd say a significant majority have tastes that range from hard rock to heavy metal and rap), so I don't think the ratings would be too reliable to judge the album quality for them since the ratings are largely coming from the die-hard fans who think everything new is gold.

These are clearly exceptions to the rule, but not really relevant to the discussion I don't think. These bands hadn't had a chance to burn out by the 80s, and their prime years were actually in that decade. They may actually be exceptions that prove the rule if you look at it - these bands could be key to explaining why the others struggled in the 80s.

 

[Aladyyn]

The Police, The Cure, The Cars, Dire Straits, Simple Minds, Judas Priest, Journey.

Here is a cherry-picked list of bands who started releasing music in the 70s and continued into the 80s whose numbers do not drop per rateyourmusic.com.

If we want to cherry-pick, Judas Priest never surpassed Sad Wings of Destiny, which is a 70s album

 

[Shareefruck]

Though I love the alternative rock scene of the 90s, it struggled against Gangsta rap and diva pop after 1994 and petered out almost completely after 1997's record company joint decision to refocus their efforts on "safe" acts after the disaster of the hitless R.E.M. album Adventures in Hi-Fi (they'd just gotten a huge 5-album contract and started it with a commercial flop). More than anything that one event all but killed rock music for a decade.

So, all in all, yeah - I have to agree with the assertion that the 80s were much better than the 90s. though the last 3 years of that decade produced a lot of crap. Maybe even the 70s were better than the 90s, and the 60s almost certainly were despite all the crap THAT decade produced as well.

Again, I'm not really sure why people feel inclined to factor in how bad the bad stuff is. All I care about is how much great stuff I'm able to draw from the decade.

For me, there's a very steady progression and regression, like this:
40s < 50s < 60s > 70s > 80s > 90s >00s > 10s

 

[MoreOrr]

Again, I'm not really sure why people feel inclined to factor in how bad the bad stuff is. All I care about is how much great stuff I'm able to draw from the decade.

I like that. You focus on the quantity and quality of what you like. But still, if the quantity of what you don't like overwhelms that of what you do like, well then I think you can rightfully say that for you it was a bad period of music. And again, that's how I look at the mid to late 90s (starting about 94),... and extend that to about 2001 or perhaps even to 2004 (though 2002 was a good year).



Sidenote, to everyone in the thread...

Is it just me, or does music generally seem to divide better into mid-decades rather than into pure decades? What I mean, roughly speaking:
65-74
75-84
85-94
95-04
05-14

 

[Xelebes]

I like that. You focus on the quantity and quality of what you like. But still, if the quantity of what you don't like overwhelms that of what you do like, well then I think you can rightfully say that for you it was a bad period of music. And again, that's how I look at the mid to late 90s (starting about 94),... and extend that to about 2001 or perhaps even to 2004 (though 2002 was a good year).



Sidenote, to everyone in the thread...

Is it just me, or does music generally seem to divide better into mid-decades rather than into pure decades? What I mean, roughly speaking:
65-74
75-84
85-94
95-04
05-14

Perhaps an effect from World War II. 1945 was a major transformational year for music with the ballroom tax. It forced music like bebop to overtake swing in terms of small venues. Theatres could continue playing swing because no one was dancing.

 

[Double-Shift Lasse]

If we want to cherry-pick, Judas Priest never surpassed Sad Wings of Destiny, which is a 70s album

Appreciably, or in overall quality of content - as rated by folks who use rateyourmusic.com. Or until 1990's Painkiller. However we want to look at it.

Anyway, and I think you get the point, and Acadmus helps explain it, even if it want's his/her intent. Which is, that this thread uses criteria and data that are both faulty and cherry-picked to reach an unsupportable conclusion.

There's various reasons for this, but timing is a big part of it. Most of the bands in the OP start prior to 1975. The Cure were all 15 years old when they formed in '75 and didn't really get much notice until 1980 and blossomed through that decade until peaking in '89 with Disintegration. Journey started in 1973, but didn't hire Steve Perry and change their musical direction based on that move until 1977. The Cars were born in 1976 but like The Police and Simple Minds, which formed in 1977, really saw success after the emergence of New Wave, which was only just starting in 1979, so most people's reference for them is from '79 on. Judas Priest is the only aberration having started in 1969, but they play heavy metal, which is a fringe style that has a relatively small but extremely loyal fanbase that doesn't generally have very broad musical tastes (I'd say a significant majority have tastes that range from hard rock to heavy metal and rap), so I don't think the ratings would be too reliable to judge the album quality for them since the ratings are largely coming from the die-hard fans who think everything new is gold.

These are clearly exceptions to the rule, but not really relevant to the discussion I don't think. These bands hadn't had a chance to burn out by the 80s, and their prime years were actually in that decade. They may actually be exceptions that prove the rule if you look at it - these bands could be key to explaining why the others struggled in the 80s.

Yes but others have done individual explanations for the acts in the OP. I don't think the criteria in the OP, and the "data" used to support it, have any merit in drawing some broad-brush conclusion.

 

[Shareefruck]

I like that. You focus on the quantity and quality of what you like. But still, if the quantity of what you don't like overwhelms that of what you do like, well then I think you can rightfully say that for you it was a bad period of music. And again, that's how I look at the mid to late 90s (starting about 94),... and extend that to about 2001 or perhaps even to 2004 (though 2002 was a good year).

The problem I see with that is that in reality, the quantity of what you don't like will ALWAYS outnumber the quantity of what you do like by 1000 to 1 in EVERY decade (there's a bottomless pit of bad stuff that we don't know about), so it seems silly to me to dwell on that. The only thing that makes the bad things relevant is when they're heavily marketed and pushed on people, and personally, I don't see why that external factor should affect our opinion about how good decades of music are.To me, judging a decade by the bad stuff that makes it big is more of a comment on how good the public is at listening to music rather than a comment on how good the music is.

I guess I can see the other side of the argument if people are approaching this from the angle of "which decade of music was the most satisfying to live in and experience first hand", though. I guess I lean towards the former because I didn't experience most of these decades first hand, I experienced them over the past decade.

Also, it's a standing the test of time thing. In a hundred years, nobody will know about how bad the bad stuff is, so it's ultimately not going to matter. It's how we currently talk about the best periods of Classical music, for example. I prefer to stay consistent with that.

 

[Aladyyn]

Appreciably, or in overall quality of content - as rated by folks who use rateyourmusic.com. Or until 1990's Painkiller. However we want to look at it.

Anyway, and I think you get the point, and Acadmus helps explain it, even if it want's his/her intent. Which is, that this thread uses criteria and data that are both faulty and cherry-picked to reach an unsupportable conclusion.



Yes but others have done individual explanations for the acts in the OP. I don't think the criteria in the OP, and the "data" used to support it, have any merit in drawing some broad-brush conclusion.

Man, rym sucks for hard rock/metal. Machine Head rated above In Rock, 2 Metallica albums above Rust in Peace, looking at their all time ratings makes me agree that Led Zep are actually overrated .

Not to mention AJFA rated better than Kill Em All.

 

[Stylizer1]

The Truth About Pop Culture:

https://youtu.be/lyLUIXWnrC0

skip to 7:20 to see a good explanation of why music in general has declined in quality.

You get it.

 

[Stylizer1]

 

[Shareefruck]

Sidenote, to everyone in the thread...

Is it just me, or does music generally seem to divide better into mid-decades rather than into pure decades? What I mean, roughly speaking:
65-74
75-84
85-94
95-04
05-14

Yeah, it really does.

 

[Acadmus]

Again, I'm not really sure why people feel inclined to factor in how bad the bad stuff is. All I care about is how much great stuff I'm able to draw from the decade.

For me, there's a very steady progression and regression, like this:
40s < 50s < 60s > 70s > 80s > 90s >00s > 10s

My personal progression would be more akin to:
40s = 50s << 60s = 70s = 80s >= 90s >>> 00s = 10s

This said, the bands I'm enjoying the most lately are from the late 90s and '00s, but still, there weren't that many of them.

But being most honest, there's no entire decade that was great start to finish. The decades look more like this for me (40s excluded, there's not a lot I listen to from that decade):
before 1957 <<<< 1957-1959 = 1960-1963 << 1964-1969 > 1970-1973 << 1974-1979 < 1980-1982 < 1983-1986 >>> 1987-1989 = 1990 << 1991-1995 > 1996-1997 >>>> 1998-1999 = 2000-2004 << 2005-2009 = 2010-2013 >>> 2014-present.

That's not to say there isn't stuff I'm crazy about in the down periods, but there's a lot more I don't like than I do.

 

[Xelebes]

The Truth About Pop Culture:

https://youtu.be/lyLUIXWnrC0

skip to 7:20 to see a good explanation of why music in general has declined in quality.

That went vapid quick.

The reason DJs are so popular is that A) they are consistent and B) they are cheaper to set up. Plus, the guitar hasn't gone through any technological developments in thirty or forty years so (new) rock bands are less interesting to listen to. That hasn't prevented synthrock to continue to plug along and consume a significant portion of the charts.

Also, revenues from music (recording and performance) have been falling while the cost of performance has been climbing. So more often than not taking a risk to put yourself out there has a higher risk of death from exposure. You see the punk bands of the late 70s and early 80s and you have to realise that that period in the music industry was when that industry was most flushed with cash: revenue, declining expenses. The de-industrialisation that was occuring in cities at that time resulted in a lot of empty warehouses that could be repurposed and kept expenses low.

You know where expenses are now low and opinions are expressed loudly? The internet.

 

[Shareefruck]

Paul Joseph Johnson's delivery is so cringe-worthy. I usually like the angry rant thing, but in his case, it's like watching an six year old having a narcissistic power-trip-y bully tantrum or something.

I find that he usually starts off with an agreeable enough premise/sentiment and then ramps up and becomes more and more narrow-minded/irrational in the opposite direction, until you start getting suspicious about what he's actually getting at/where it's coming from.

 

[seventieslord]

The Police, The Cure, The Cars, Dire Straits, Simple Minds, Judas Priest, Journey.

Here is a cherry-picked list of bands who started releasing music in the 70s and continued into the 80s whose numbers do not drop per rateyourmusic.com.

I'd have never chosen The Police for this exercise because they were done by the mid-80s, they didn't have the longevity to properly test. It's true they never dropped in the 80s, but with just two albums before 1980 and none before 1978, they wouldn't have been the greatest example to start with. They're an 80s band, really.

The Cure barely had an album out when 1980 hit. Besides, look when their worst album between 1979 and 1990 was released... 1984.

Dire Straits, see The Police, plus one last album in 1991.

Simple Minds stayed steady throughout the 80s. But they are known as an 80's band, and with good reason. They were not "established" enough by 1980 to meet the criteria I set at the beginning.

Judas Priest - nice example. Though... there's that 1986 dip everyone else saw...

Journey - excellent example. Very steady throughout. Perhaps the lowest standard deviation from album to album I've seen in any artist on that site.

(for the record, nothing was cherrypicked here, I set specific criteria and this was everyone I could think of in 10 minutes who met the criteria)

 

[Double-Shift Lasse]

I'd have never chosen The Police for this exercise because they were done by the mid-80s, they didn't have the longevity to properly test. It's true they never dropped in the 80s, but with just two albums before 1980 and none before 1978, they wouldn't have been the greatest example to start with. They're an 80s band, really.

The Cure barely had an album out when 1980 hit. Besides, look when their worst album between 1979 and 1990 was released... 1984.

Dire Straits, see The Police, plus one last album in 1991.

Simple Minds stayed steady throughout the 80s. But they are known as an 80's band, and with good reason. They were not "established" enough by 1980 to meet the criteria I set at the beginning.

Judas Priest - nice example. Though... there's that 1986 dip everyone else saw...

Journey - excellent example. Very steady throughout. Perhaps the lowest standard deviation from album to album I've seen in any artist on that site.

(for the record, nothing was cherrypicked here, I set specific criteria and this was everyone I could think of in 10 minutes who met the criteria)

It's so funny because after my "scathing" post I went back and re-re-read the OP and realized that you admitted to cherry-picking (what I'm calling cherrypicking is picking only those who fit a pre-established criteria), and that while I thought I knew what your premise was, I was mistaken (as usual).

If your question is, why did these particular bands do their worst work in the 80s, that's a different questions from what I was answering. I think that one's been answered though, broadly enough anyway.

If your question is why do bands who established themselves in the 70s get worse in the 80s, that's where I was going.

Someone (Acadmus?) made a point about how long a band had been at it, and obviously your choices had longer careers before the decade change than the ones I picked. I think that's the simple answer, a hitting of a stride rather than hitting of a wall, and having to do more with the bands than with the decade.

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

The statistical uptick in the 90s could also be down to the decline of vinyl, with all those "Greatest Hits" LPs being replaced by CD compilations like "The Very Best of...", "The Ultimate...", "The Essential...", "The Definitive Collection" etc., which would have been released in the 90s but drawn mainly from those artists' classic years.

Does the survey include compilations?

 

[seventieslord]

The statistical uptick in the 90s could also be down to the decline of vinyl, with all those "Greatest Hits" LPs being replaced by CD compilations like "The Very Best of...", "The Ultimate...", "The Essential...", "The Definitive Collection" etc., which would have been released in the 90s but drawn mainly from those artists' classic years.

Does the survey include compilations?

I was only going by "proper" studio releases, no live, EP or compilations.

 

[Terry Yake]

I like that. You focus on the quantity and quality of what you like. But still, if the quantity of what you don't like overwhelms that of what you do like, well then I think you can rightfully say that for you it was a bad period of music. And again, that's how I look at the mid to late 90s (starting about 94),... and extend that to about 2001 or perhaps even to 2004 (though 2002 was a good year).



Sidenote, to everyone in the thread...

Is it just me, or does music generally seem to divide better into mid-decades rather than into pure decades? What I mean, roughly speaking:
65-74
75-84
85-94
95-04
05-14

i'd agree with that

pop culture of the first few years of any decade are always similar to the prior decade (ex. early 90s were more like the 80s) any change takes a few years to kick in

 

[sdf]

Wow i thought Hotel California is just sweet emotional song, but this is some creepy stuff, oh my god!

 

[zac]

i'd agree with that

pop culture of the first few years of any decade are always similar to the prior decade (ex. early 90s were more like the 80s) any change takes a few years to kick in

I think it's more like every 5 or so years.

1964-1969 (Vietnam counterculture, British invasion, Motown),
1970-1974 (fall of the Beatles/other groups, transition to more mellow music, introduction of funk),
1975-1979 (disco, advent of hard rock), 1980-1985 (new wave, height of pop music, mtv)
1986-1990 (over-produced music from big producers like Reid/Babyface, hair metal, hip-hop becoming mainstream),
1991-1997 (gangsta rap, alternative grunge, r&b groups),
1998-2003 (rise of modernized whiny punk, rise of solo rappers, Timbaland style beats), 2004-2008 (rise of new alt like Arcade Fire, White Stripes, The Strokes, former boy/girl group domination, music truly becomes digital),
2009-now (re-emergence of new-wave influences, massive rise in EDM popularity, Dub step, better accecess to good music through Pandora, Spotify, YouTube)