What artistic choices do musicians make that ends their best years?

For Madonna, it was going more R&B and pop. She started making music Miley Cyrus was making.

Taking a year or two of sabbatical. Then you come back onto the music scene and sometimes no one remembers or cares about you.

Honestly, there is no great answer to this question. Every musician is different.

Experimenting with drugs

Picking producers who won’t say no to their bad ideas

Putting their non-musical spouses/partners on the album

Plastic surgery.

Refusing to pay your musicians and making shitty music (Amanda Palmer)

[quote] Putting their non-musical spouses/partners on the album

I have to let you know that Don Johnson made music long before I recorded a duet with him.

Aging into an era of new technology/new sound that they aren't able to understand well enough (I heard this about Joni Mitchell's 80s albums, though haven't listened to them myself).

R7 I feel like Joni Mitchell was better liked for her talent at songwriting than for her singing and recording. She was an enigma for most.

^I like Joni, but yes, I can see that. When I discovered her, only a couple of years ago, much to my shame, it was her songwriting that really stood out to me.

Featuring Chris Martin or Adam Levine on the chorus.

^or a rap by Nicki Minaj.

Start writing and performing songs about how awful it is to be rich and famous

R8 I love Joni’s voice. Both she and Aaron Neville have voices that really sound like “instruments.”

In Joni’s case I would say the issue was transitioning to a new genre of music that she might not have been as talented in. BUT I don’t think her aim was popularity, so I don’t think she cared about losing some audience. Of her somewhat recent albums, “Night Ride Home” is great to listen to on a summer night.

R7 A good example of that is Neil Young’s 80s albums. But it came out recently that he was using those technologies in his music after seeing them used to try to help his disabled son communicate, which is pretty touching.

Doing an album of “classics”. Especially Christmas songs.

Running out of ideas and trying to make inferior versions of your biggest hits

Getting bored with your own style and going in a different direction. The reason people know you / liked your music is because of that style. For a rocker, for example, no one wants to hear your stripped down, acoustic, slow shit.

^^Annie Lennox - now a maudlin, moaning granny

Madonna trying to appeal to the TikTok generation. I know it's sad but young people don't want to listen to a 63-year-old woman and they decide what goes to the top of the charts for the most part.

Not making any choice is the worst choice of all. Continuing to do what you've always done, as it gets staler, and you lose your mojo to old age. Thinking you can recapture, at 50, the magic of being 20 (when your fans were also 20). Ending up as "mutton dressed as lamb" (as my granny used to say).

The best choice is to keep evolving and changing. It keeps you interested and it allows your fans to grow with you. This only works for people who had talent in the first place, though.

Having a children’s chorus sing backup. Never a good sign.

All these new so-called singer songwriters singing with absolutely no diction . (Passenger - Let Her Go)

I’ve heard this trash in Home Depot enough times.

Leaving their successful bands to begin solo careers dilutes the art and success of many musicians. Yes, I know there are exceptions.

Firing all the people who came up with your best ideas so you don't know what to do next and throw everything at the wall to see what sticks.

[quote] Firing all the people who came up with your best ideas

I would hope that the artist (if that person is actually a musician and not just a manufactured pop singer) is the person who came up with their own best ideas?

Most of the time, artists have only one excellent talent. A frontman can be great at singing (Simon LeBon from Duran Duran, Morrissey from The Smiths) and some other band member is great at writing music and / or lyrics (Nick Rhodes from Duran Duran, Johnny Marr from The Smiths). It's quite rare that a single artist can do it all (Dolly Parton, for example).

Chris Gaines.

Being too ironic for your own good.

Trying to go commercial after becoming famous for artistic merit and independence (Liz Phair).

They go Disco!

R29, for all the revisionist writing about Liz Phair’s pop album (“actually, it’s a great album— yass queen!”) and its popularity among women and gay men of questionable taste, it really did ruin her career.

"For Madonna, it was going more R&B and pop."

Didn't she actually go less pop for a while? We might not be on the same page regarding her timeline. To me, Bedtime Stories was her very concerted effort to go more R&B and it was pretty damn successful and was still within the perimeter of her best years, if not at the center.

Best years are usually going to end no matter what they do, so it's an interesting discussion about whether a downturn is really caused by a decision or just a natural life cycle. "Not changing it up" is a reason why the best years end - they're doing the same thing and people have seen enough of it and are bored -- it's not novel anymore the thrill is gone. But chasing trends or abrupt reinventions also end best years.

A lot of great artists from the 60s and 70s made two mistakes in the 80s:

-Overuse of artificial & synthesized sounds. Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder

-Attempting to participate in making music videos. I mean, look at poor Al Jarreau:

Using the same old, tired formula that gave you massive hits back in the day, for your new songs that is easily detectable to your long-standing fans. Depeche Mode, Fleetwood Mac, Eagles, - love them but yeah, I can hear the patterns.

Surround yourself by yes-men who applaud every bad choice. Despise your audience.

Suddenly going from Disco to New Romantic.

Album of songs from the Great American Songbook.

Going cyberpunk.

Prince. I'm saying this as a die-hard lifelong fan too.

Drug addiction, There were rumors of him being hooked on pills as far back as 1998. That year also happened to be the very first time I was underwhelmed seeing him live (relative to how amazing he was at prior shows).

The other thing would be his conversion over to Jehovah's Witness, sanitizing his music, and becoming all preachy.

Aside from a few flash in the pans, such as the Superbowl performance, pretty much all of his output from 2000 up until his death in 2016 was forgettable imo. He was just treading water and going through the motions. Is anyone really still listening to 3121, NEWS, Lotusflow3r, The Slaughterhouse, Art Official Age, 20Ten, Planet Earth, The Chocolate Invasion, etc... Did you even know these albums existed?

Similar to doing a Covers album or a Christmas Songs album--teaming up with younger, famous musicians for a duets record.

Example: Santana and Rob Thomas song "Smooth" from an album in which every song on that Santana record is a duet.

Example: Elton John and Dua Lipa song "Cold Heart"

Example: Duran Duran and Janelle Monae song "Paper Gods" (swing and a miss)

[quote]Is anyone really still listening to 3121, NEWS, Lotusflow3r, The Slaughterhouse, Art Official Age, 20Ten, Planet Earth, The Chocolate Invasion, etc... Did you even know these albums existed?

I gotta admit, as I was reading that list, I was thinking exactly that: never heard of any of these, had no idea he'd released so many albums after the early 90s.

[quote]Annie Lennox - now a maudlin, moaning granny

OMG, she is SO boring now. How did that happen?

Fleetwood Mac should have gone into the studio after their Rumours world tour and put out another album. Instead, two years later they released Tusk which disappointed many.

Todd in the Shadows does a whole series on this type of thing, for those interested. His one on Madonna's American Life is really good:

And the one on Jewel:

And the hilarious Liz Phair one:

Inserting a rap break in an old song. Steve Miller’s “Fly Like an Eagle” did this, embarrassingly.

[quote]no one wants to hear your stripped down, acoustic, slow shit.

I have to say, personally, that my least favourite type of music ever is what I refer to as "whiny men with acoustic guitars"

Anything that's too drastic a change from their previous work. Jewels awful screeching whore ballad " Intuition" ruined her career.

Collaborations in different genres with some flavor-of-the-month.

This.

Butt implants, recycled sacrilege, Mary Kay Letourneau-esque romance.

I don't understand the question.

When Madonna made her wannabe Nelly Furtado/Timbaland hip hop album “Hard Candy,” shit got bleak. Lyrics like “see my booty get down like… whah” were embarrassing coming from a 50 year old.. And yes, there is an expiration date to sex appeal in women. But don’t tell Madonna that. She’s still telling period jokes on her madame x tour. Bitch hasn’t bled since the aughts.

^Hard Candy is a great example. Even before it came out something about it made you suspect it was the tipping point, I guess the whole Madonna hunting down famous and successful of the time producers for her new album, when in the past she'd always sought out more underground talent.

Cultural appropriation aside, this seems like a sincere attempt to do something fresh and relevant.

But in the end, Madonna seems to be using the women of color as set decoration.

This did go to #1.

But Coldplay, no.

Just no.

^^ I hate that “X” collaboration signifier. “Coldplay X BTS”. I see it on Instagram whenever somebody announces a collaboration … could be an actor posing for a fashion shoot, whatever. I get that it’s convenient shorthand, but it seems newfangled and very online, so I hate it.