TheBig3

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Neapolitan

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jadis

I guess not

Exo

Disintegration is goth girl prom night panties dropping magic but Seventeen Seconds is the spin here. You guys are trying to get Big3 to like The Cure, remember?

Also...to answer the OP...the 80's did something that not many decades have been able to do and that was to get Iggy Pop to wear a shirt tucked into f*cking denim.

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Trollheart

Or just wear a shirt.

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TheBig3

I told you guys it was corporate.

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bob_32_116

I think it was a mix of all three of those factors I have quoted in bold.I would add Yes and Genesis to that list.

MTV - because it suddenly became a requirement to look youthful and attractive in order to get the MTV watchers interested.

Technology and trend chasing - because so many artists got seduced by the possibilities of what you could do with computers and synthesisers. What they did not realise was that just because you CAN do something does not mean you SHOULD. Adoption of new technology is not a bad thing in itself, but it won't make something sound great that was not a great tune to begin with. Of course I am not referring to artists like Kraftwerk, where the technology was kind of the point.

Trollheart

Ok well this OP is pretty badly informed, at best.
Stevie Wonder I'm not too familiar with all of his work, but wasn't "I Just Called to Say I Love You" a number one hit in 1984? And then there's this:

(from Wiki: bolded text is mine)

The 1980s saw Wonder achieving his biggest hits and highest level of fame; he had increased album sales, charity participation, high-profile collaborations, political impact, and television appearances

Donna Summer, from Wiki again:

Summer received four nominations for the 7th Annual American Music Awards in January 1980, and took home awards for Female Pop/Rock and Female Soul/R&B Artist; and well as Pop/Rock single for "Bad Girls". Just over a week after the awards, Summer had her own nationally televised special, The Donna Summer Special,[18] which aired on ABC network

Joni Mitchell was a child of the sixties; nothing lasts forever. I can't speak of her as I don't know enough about her but I think perhaps she might have found it hard to fit into the new world of synths and DAT. She seemed to have reservations about Thomas Dolby producing one of her albums.

Earth Wind & Fire were very much a thing of the seventies soul explosion. When that began to wind down, good as they were, they probably found themselves in a similar situation to Joni. NLF again.

Elton John? Bowie? Queen? Aerosmith? Seriously? These artists had some of their biggest hits and best-selling albums in the 1980s, with Elton having major hits like "Blue Eyes", "I'm Still Standing" and "I Guess That's Why They Call it the Blues", plus that memorable duet with George Michael; Bowie kicked the eighties in the teeth with a "remember me?" including "Ashes to Ashes", "China Girl", "Modern Love" "Let's Dance" and "Blue Jean" to say nothing of teaming up with the next band on your list for "Under Pressure"; Queen had "Radio Ga-Ga", "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", "Another One Bites the Dust" and then there was this little aside, from Wiki again:

Queen chalked up a major international "first" by becoming the band to do for popular music in South America what The Beatles did for North America 17 years ago. Half a million Argentinians and Brazilians, starved of appearances of top British or American bands at their peak, gave Queen a heroic welcome which changed the course of pop history in this uncharted territory of the world rock map. In open-air concerts at temperatures of around 96 degrees, in stifling humidity, the ecstatic young people saw eight Queen concerts at giant stadia, while many more millions saw the shows on TV and heard the radio broadcasts live.

I could go on. Streisand is Streisand and at one point gouged witless fans of five hundred dollars per ticket, so I don't think she was worried. Many of the others - Diana Ross, Dylan, Aretha etc - were again of their time, though all of them had further hits.

In summation, I think you're being either very cruel or unfair to these artists or just trying to make a case by framing your evidence in a way that suits it. None of these artists "fell off badly in the 80s" as you like to say, not from what I've read and not from the evidence of sales and ticket numbers.

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jadis

The point that Bowie had an artistic crisis during the 80s is the opposite of controversial unless you suddenly decide that commercial success is the only relevant factor. 1980's Scary Monsters, the last of his postpunk albums, is widely considered to be the last album of Bowie's golden era, maybe his last great album full stop until Blackstar.

Let's Dance is cute but very few would put it anywhere near his 1970s masterpieces. Absolute Beginners was a great one-off single but much of what he recorded during the 80s is painful to listen to today.

bob_32_116

That's the problem. As soon as you start discussing the high points and low points of someone's career, half the people reading the thread assume that you are talking about commercial success, which can be measured objectively and therefore can't really be disputed - or at least any dispute can be resolved by simply looking at the data. The other half, which includes people like myself, interpret the discussion as being about quality of output, which is of course subjective.