Musicians who dominated the 70s & 80s

I was huge. HUGE! Then you make one little video to show off your dance moves and it gets taken all away!

What happened? Oldness.

Elton actually wasn't that big in the 1980s, at least not for a while. He crashed and burned in the late 1970s and then did a terrible disco album in 1979 or some really late date.

I guess he did have "Too Low for Zero" and then that album with "Nikita" and stuff on it, so it's not like he disappeared completely, but I don't think you can say he dominated in the 1980s.

What happened? He lost his motherfucking mind, THAT'S what happened. Bitch cray.

Billy Joel stopped putting out albums after '93, but I'd hardly say his popularity faltered. He still sells out at the Garden pretty much faster than anyone, and still holds the record there for most sold out concerts. Still hugely popular.

Phil Collins didn't have a career until the 80s but he was never as BIG as the first two anyway.

Same reason Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra fell out of favor. Tastes change, kids decide their parents tastes suck, and the media machine always wants new blood to promote. Also certain artists reach a point where they no longer really need to release albums anymore (which aren't money makers anyway), and can just tour on their old hits. They may run out of creative ideas, like Billy Joel, or they just get so used to being praised that they no longer are able to filter the good from the crap, so they release anything, like Prince.

There is a theory that Paul McCartney died, and the imposter Faul showed up. I think that happened to Elton John. The 1970s Elton who wrote songs with Bernie Taupin was ok, then he became this thing - bad music, fat and Rush Limbaugh wedding and babies.

Phil Collins was huge. Only dummies bought his music and they moved on to the next dumb thing. Or stopped buying music and just keep playing him at home.

You sound incoherent R7.

Crosby and Sinatra sang standards written by others and kept performing and recording until they died.

r3, Elton John had a top 40 hit in every year of the 1980s, including 7 top 10s:

"Little Jeannie" - #3, 1980

"I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues" - #4, 1983

"Sad Songs (Say So Much)" - #5, 1984

"Nikita" - #7, 1985

"That's What Friends Are For" (with Dionne Warwick, Gladys Night and Stevie Wonder) - #1, 1986

"Candle in the Wind (Live)" - #6, 1987

"I Don't Want To Go On With You Like That" - #2, 1988

Chicago: top 10 hits throughout the 70s and 80s, including three #1s, but their last top 40 hit was in 1991.

Kinda stretching it, R10. The only 1980 Top 40 hit was "Little Jeannie" which came from an album that still hasn't gone Platinum after 35 years. The only 1981 Top 40 hit was his "I Saw Her Standing There" duet with Lennon which only charted because of the assassination, and then only made it to 40 for one week.

As I said, you can't really make a case for him DOMINATING the 1980s. He dominated the 1970s, not the 1980s.

Pop and rock music is usually most interesting, if it is interesting, in the first 10 years of an artist's success. That's how it works for me. Yeah some get better with age, or keep up the quality, or the innovation. Generally it's rarely insouciant, compelling, exciting, slap dash, amusing, etc, after they blow their first couple of great wads.

Death of the easy listening genre and adult alternative.

Excellent point R14/ In the 1990s easy listening was considered Kenny G. and Michael Bolton which aside from being terrible was mercilessly ridiculed and made people embarrassed to admit they like easy listening.

Queen! They were huge in the 70s and 80s (maybe not that much in America, but they were the biggest band in the rest of the world). But their story is a little different. Freddie died in 1991. Who knows what would have happened if he were still alive.

Hall and Oates deserve a mention.

[quote] Excellent point [R14]/ In the 1990s easy listening was considered Kenny G. and Michael Bolton which aside from being terrible was mercilessly ridiculed and made people embarrassed to admit they like easy listening.

"Adult contemporary" jumped the shark when record companies decided it would be cheaper to use synthesizers instead of whole orchestras.

Elton had those Lion King hits in the 90s

I won a bleeding Oscar for "Can You Feel The Love Tonight?", mate!

The AC chart today is dominated by pop-dance tunes. Does anybody do ballads anymore?

[quote] The AC chart today is dominated by pop-dance tunes. Does anybody do ballads anymore?

Michael Bublé, but the autotune on some of his tracks is painfully obvious.

Don't forget about me!

Olivia was pretty dominant in the 70s and 80s (two different genres) then married the gay guy and had a kid and that was it....she's doing pretty well in Las Vegas right now...bless her little heart

Queen.

Yeah one minute Olivia is one of the biggest stars on the planet and the next she's gone.

Art Sullivan. He isn't known in America but he was successful in the 70's.

Heart

Stevie Wonder

Whatever happened to Helen Reddy? Anne Murray? Rick Astley?

R30: Helen and Anne did [italic]Family Guy[/italic] voice cameos, and Helen did a comeback tour a few years ago that seems to have come to a close. Rick took rick-rolling as far as he could in the US, and I think he still performs in the UK.

Hall & Oates!

You can also add Michael Jackson to that list. His success in the 90s wasn't impressive at all, but due to legal issues he only released 2 albums that decade and a remix album.

He only had 6 top 10 singles in the 90s and 2 multi platinum albums.

Compared to say Madonna, who shared the 80s with Jackson, but continued to have huge success in the 90s, 15 top 10 singles and 7 multi platinum albums in the 90s and the #4 overall selling artist of the 90s worldwide

Madonna was also among the top 5 selling acts worldwide of the 2000s believe it or not and the second biggest selling female artist of the 2000s behind Britney Spears.

And Michael Jackson was MIA on the charts for much of the 2000s until his death in 2009

"Compared to say Madonna, who shared the 80s with Jackson, but continued to have huge success in the 90s, 15 top 10 singles and 7 multi platinum albums in the 90s and the #4 overall selling artist of the 90s worldwide"

She just released more singles and albums than he did, period.

Lionel Richie, Billy Ocean, Barry Manilow, Neil Diamond, Toto, Air Supply, Bee Gees, Jackson Browne, Chicago, Doobie Brothers, the Eagles, Bob Seger, Styx

R34 that's what I basically said, due to Jackson ' s legal issues and drug problems.

All 7 of Madonna's albums in the 90s, 3 studio, 2 greatest hits and 2 soundtracks went multi platinum

While Jackson released 3 albums 1 studio, 1 greatest hits and studio album combo and 1 remix album. All but the remix album went multi platinum.

Kool and the gang had a lot of 80s hits, practically two or three every year from 80 to 87

ABBA

How quickly they forget.

Duran Duran. HUGE in the early to mid 80s. Then faded to nothing. Had a brief resurgence in 1993 with "Ordinary World". Then faded again. And now they're back with "Paper Gods".

Sheena Easton

Eclectic mix there, R35. Some good examples but some that don't seem to count. Maybe I'm overthinking this but it seems like lots of these guys weren't dominating both decades at all. Manilow was pure 1970s, as were the Bee Gees. Diamond was 1960s-1970s, then crashed and burned by 1980. Don't even get me started on Toto and Air Supply. They all might as well have been dead by the 1990s.

One that hasn't been mentioned yet is Fleetwood Mac.

I'll add Journey to the mix.

Hall and Oates is a good one So many singles in the 80s, then.....gone.

R44 I don't care what anyone says, I still love me some Hall & Oates

[quote]One that hasn't been mentioned yet is Fleetwood Mac.

Not a great example, really. Fleetwood Mac was indeed huge in the 70s and 80s, but after reuniting in 1997 they were right back at it, and had a huge hit single and won a Grammy for the live version of "Silver Springs." And they still sell out arenas every time they tour.

[ABBA]

Not fair. They broke up in like 1983, after releasing what was possibly their best album, the under-appreciated "The Visitors."

As an example of keeping on after the heyday and just getting sadder, I'd cite Diana Ross, Van Halen and the Moody Blues

Guns n Roses

Mötley Crüe

Metallica

Guns N Roses had some big hits in the early 90s

Metallica had its biggest success in the 90s

r46, ABBA fits the criteria stated in the OP.

[quote]after reuniting in 1997

Point taken. I didn't realize Fleetwood Mac reunited that early on.

Rap killed pop music and people don't know how to write good songs anymore.

R51, are you for real? Taylor Swift is the biggest artist around. Most of the big artists now are female pop stars like Rihanna, Katy, Adele, etc.

How about that fat pig Linda Ronstadt? She's been done for a while.

Am I the only one who can't stand Michael Bublé and his music?

Right R34, and people BOUGHT them.

Prince was a megastar in the 80's - Purple Rain was one of the best selling albums of the decade (and a hit movie). By the 90's he had returned to being more of a cult artist, just as he was before Purple Rain. His last mainstream hits were off of Diamonds and Pearls which was released in 1991.

"By the 90's he had returned to being more of a cult artist, just as he was before Purple Rain." In other words, people stopped buying his music.

Prince, Mötley Crüe, Metallica & Guns N' Roses weren't around in the 70s.

Am I misunderstanding the OP? [bold]Musicians who dominated the 70s & 80s but saw their popularity falter in the 1990s.[/bold]

Dominated in the 70s [italic]and[/italic] the 80s successively, just the or 70s or only the 80s?

You must be a blast at parties R58.

Yes

Todd Rungren

Carly Simon

Billy Idol

Joni Mitchell

Laura Branigan

Styx

Cat Stevens

Crosby, Stills, and Nash

Moody Blues (as previously stated)

Rush

Duran Duran (as also previously mention)

Van Morrison (iconic)

Electric Light Orchestra

Boston

Men At Work (Australian Band)

Enya (Irish singer)

We broke up and got back together. It can be done.

I wouldn't say that Heart dominated the '70s. As a matter of fact, I think the only Top 10 hit they had in the '70s was "Magic Man" and the only song that was on any of the year-end Top 100 charts was "Barracuda".

They were more popular in the latter half of the '80s, but at that point, they had become completely packaged, they didn't write their own songs, etc. "Alone" is as '80s commercial pop radio as it gets.

After the '90s, well, Ann was 40, and they just weren't as appealing as they had been in the '80s.

But I have to give kudos to Ann for, being in her '60s, still singing all of her songs in their original key. Her voice isn't quite as vibrant as it was in her youth, but she's still hitting the notes, so she must be doing something right.

Led Zeppelin didn't have too many chartings, either, but they were huge in the 70s. Ditto Metallica in the 80s

R63, Led Zepellin had diamond albums.

R64 - Led Zeppelin's last studio album was released in 1979. By the 80's they were a mainstay of album rock radio (the kind that had a playlist of a dozen early seventies albums), beyond that they were remembered for little more than the song that inspired countless white trash prom themes. Ask anyone who never had a mullet and a pair of Zubaz to name a LZ song other than Stairway to Heaven and you'll get nothing but blank looks.

R51 I wonder if it's that or if musicians are just less talented and songs are overproduced now.

[quote]Led Zeppelin didn't have too many chartings, either, but they were huge in the 70s.

Led Zeppelin didn't peak and then fade away like most of the other artists in this thread. Their drummer died and they decided to hang it up.

Jefferson Starship - they had several hits in the 70s and 80s but then tanked and disappeared when Grace Slick retired in 1990.