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Post by Beeth on Jan 25, 2012 20:50:33 GMT
Harking back to an earlier discussion I recalled having sometime ago (with Spud iirc), I was wondering who, in music, would be regarded as the single, or perhaps two, defining artists of each decade. This is rather straightforward in some cases, though difficult to settle on for the 80s, and especially the 00s. Here's who I've thought of at the moment:
50s - Elvis Presley. One of the artists, if not the artist, responsible for introducing & inspiring rock & roll to a generation of people.
60s - The Beatles. Undoubtedly the first defining band from the 60s anyone thinks of, though The Rolling Stones may also be considered as well.
70s - ABBA was probably one of the biggest groups of the 70s, with music that has remained celebrated in the years since. Also T-Rex, arguably. From what I've seen he is regularly used as a defining artist of the 70s, if not necessarily cited directly.
80s - Like I say, a difficult one to consider, at least 10 artists were significant during this decade and could qualify as "defining", though none of them seem to stand out substantially. If I were to commit though, at the moment I'd say David Bowie and Queen. Both seem to be recalled more often and more fondly, and seem to be more highly regarded critically as well.
90s - Fairly easy one, this. Britpop defined this decade, with bands Blur and Oasis leading the way in this movement.
Then we come to the 00s (noughties, as it's come to be known). No one or two bands or artists significantly stand out as a defining artist of the past decade. A couple of admittedly dodgy decisions I've made at the moment are Enimem, relatively prominent throughout with critical acclaim to match. Arguably 50 Cent as well, though even I'm not particularly happy with that one as his success seems to be more franchise-based.
I'd like to know what other people think on this matter. Who would you say stands out as the defining artist of each decade, and why?
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Post by Nam on Jan 25, 2012 22:06:25 GMT
You've hit the nail on the head for the fifties and sixties maybe, but by the seventies (maybe even before then) the variety of music listened to on the radio had fractured that it wasn't even one artist per decade. The seventies brought us both Disco and Punk, as well as various other bands and genres who had there own influence in different genres. Same with the eighties giving us a lot of electro-pop-rock-synth, due to the technology required for it becoming more readily available, but at the same time hip-hop was starting to emerge, and hair metal was also very prominent.
The thing is, the further forwards music seems to go, the more fractured the audience is. In the fifties there were very few sources of new music. You either heard it on the radio (of which there were a few channels, both locally and nationally), or from someone else, who would've found it through a similar source, or perhaps you bought a record and took the gamble.
Nowadays, by comparison, with file sharing, digital/internet radio, music television (not MTV mind), and pretty much everything else making it easy to find music, not to mention an increase in the amount of people making music, and the increased access to instruments and recording and sound programs means more bands/artists are around.
In the fifties, if you wanted to find out about a new band from another town, you would have had to have traveled to that town, been where they were playing, and discovered them that way, or they would have to sign up to a major label. Nowadays, it's very easy to find out about bands on the other side of the world, and own several of there records, even if they've never officially released anything in your country, and are recording with nothing more than a webcam microphone, and are distributing and promoting it all themselves. This even happens with big bands in other countries. Goldfinger credited there UK success to one of there songs getting to the UK on the first Tony Hawk's game, having released nothing here before, and having no desire to, until fans of the game sent them the request for more.
Point is, in all of this off topic-ness, is that due to the availability of more and more sources to find music, individual artists have become less and less influential. This (probably combined with illegal taping among many other things that are killing the music industry), is part of what's killing the music industry, causing not only less influence, but less bands having staying power with regards to the charts. The fractured nature of the music industry means no one artist or band has an real staying power or influence that they once might've.
If anything, nowadays TV is the biggest influence in music. The fact that a lot of Christmas number ones (previously the biggest prize in music), of the last decade have belonged to X factor winners just goes to show that the single biggest collective audience for music in the current day are the sort of people who stay in on a Saturday night (preteens and mothers mostly), hence marketing to them is onto a good winner. In the last few years only two Xmas number ones have not been from TV shows, one being last years one (which was pretty much targeted at that same audience, and had more influence, than the obvious girl band that won that years X Factor - said series was noted to be nowhere near as successful in the ratings, and marred with problems that turned people off in droves, hence why it didn't have quite the success).
The other was Rage Against The Machine's "Killing in the Name of", which was a counter-protest that gained momentum on Facebook. It wasn't a recent release, and potentially it probably could've been any song by a relatively popular artist, the intention wasn't "get this song to Number 1" like how most songs were that year, but rather "Buy this one over any others to ensure that the number 1 doesn't go to the X Factor. The whole thing was a protest against the dominance of music bought for the TV audience, organised and supported largely by people who didn't care much for the charts, but merely didn't like having the X factor on TV, and wanted to send a message.
To sum up; it's not really bands and artists that have influence anymore. From the seventies (if not earlier) music was simply too fractured to have one artist from each decade. Certain events had more influence on certain genres, punk was a response to the 70's recession, eighties electronic stuff was down to the availability of synthesizers, pop has always been designed not so much for quality but marketability of what was popular at the time. The now widespread spectrum of music sources and bands/artists, means that almost anyone can succeed with enough promotion. Even recently Alex Day - known to the internet as Nerimon, a fairly popular Youtube user who has no real record label backing, or any real promotion beyond viral promotion, has made it into the top ten.
There aren't really any artists or bands who are the defining influence of a decade really. At least not really anymore. Elvis and The Beatles only seem to get a free pass because of how iconic both bands are. Elvis' career went into the seventies, but he always gets associated with the fifies, while the Beatles were formed at the start of the sixties, became a massive phenomenon, then split around the end of that decade. The fact that they're the two biggest selling artists in the history of the charts is what makes them so defining, but it's purely convenient timing that they both seem to define a decade. If either of them had come about five years later, they would've really only defined the respective end of one decade and start of another. But since they didn't they seem to define a whole decade, even though it's really only that there style of music was the most sought after and most marketable of that particular era, and there were many other artists who were, while not as successful in their niches, also pretty defining in there own way, as well as imitators of those artists.
Long story short, you cannot define a ten year period with one artist or band. Particularly when many seem to pop up and disappear within two years, and music is too fractured into different genres for any one genre to define an era.
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Post by Pitt on Jan 26, 2012 13:02:18 GMT
Yeah, Elvis definitely gets credit for bringing rock and roll to mainstream attention, even though performers like Little Richard and Chuck Berry were probably more important to its musical development than he was.
An aside; does anybody know who the second biggest artist of the fifties behind Elvis was? Pat Boone. No joke.
Agreed; the Beatles and the Stones were definitive, and I'd be tempted to say Bob Dylan as well.
That being said, even as early as 1960s, popular music was branching out in too many directions for one artist to encapsulate it completely. You could also list Jimi Hendrix and the Doors as defining artists of the late 1960s, while Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin and James Brown were the most important black performers of the decade.
ABBA is a pretty good one, though they weren't so big in America. I think Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd were very important (regardless of whether one likes them or not). Queen might also be counted. Maybe Chic as well.
As for glam rock, what one must recognise is that it wasn't a solid genre. You had T. Rex and Mott the Hoople doing the whole rock and roll revivalist thing, Bowie and Roxy Music doing the artsty stuff, and Slade and Sweet being borderline heavy metal (such as it was at the time) with make-up on.
Of course, at the end of the decade you saw the whole punk revolution. You can't underestimate the importance and influence of the Sex Pistols, the Ramones and the Clash on that front.
The definitive pop star of the 1980s, to my mind, was Michael Jackson, along with the likes of Madonna, Prince and Bruce Springsteen.
Certainly in Britain, but ask an American who the defining band of the 1990s was and they'd probably say it was Nirvana or Pearl Jam. Public Enemy were another important one in the development of hip-hop, but they were only big in the first half of the decade. After that it was 2pac and Biggie and Puff Daddy (who was one of the two defining hip-hop producers of the late 1990s, along with Dr. Dre).
Mariah Carey or Céline Dion were probably the defining female performers of the decade.
Hard to say at this point. I think it'll be a few more years before we can tell. I think Eminem could be a possibile candidate. Lady Gaga might be important as a kind of living summary of pop music by the end of the last decade.
As Nam says, though, with the exception of the Beatles you can't really pick one band or performer to define a whole decade of music.
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Post by Arch on Jan 26, 2012 13:46:50 GMT
than the obvious girl band that won that years X Factor - said series was noted to be nowhere near as successful in the ratings, and marred with problems that turned people off in droves, hence why it didn't have quite the success) Had they got the release schedule right, ie. releasing the X Factor winners' single on Christmas week, they would have reached #1, like they actually managed the week before. Had the Charts Company not moved things around, they would be the latest in several undeserving Christmas Number 1s. As it was, I think they were still #2. I think you largely missed the point with this one. RATM seem to be a band with a thinly-veiled hatred of all commercialism (or something, I don't actually care). 'Killing In The Name' has the line "[censored] you I won't do what you tell me", which is obviously the perfect retort to being "told" to buy the X Factor every single. It wasn't just "any" song. "Barbie Girl" by Aqua wouldn't have had the same effect. Nor would choosing a song by any previous X Factor winner. |
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Post by Pitt on Jan 26, 2012 14:02:01 GMT
Yeah, they were number one the week before, then the Military Wives' choir was number one on Christmas Day while the X Factor people fell one position to number two. I think they've both departed the Top 40 since then.
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Post by madhair60 on Jan 26, 2012 16:13:42 GMT
It's purely convenient timing that they both seem to define a decade. I'll respond in more detail later, but I just want to briefly address this point as far as The Beatles are concerned. The Beatles' music defining a decade isn't a coincidence, or at least not in the way I'm interpreting you here. Their music ran the gamut from a variation on the rock n' roll of the previous decade through the synaesthetic, psychadelic stuff they were producing later on. Their music perfectly represents the foregrounding of the liberal attitudes and behaviour of the 60s. --- Personally I associate the likes of The Bee Gees and the rise of disco with the 70s. It's also worth considering the Motown label for the 60s, one of the older examples of mainstream, popular black music. [censored] the 90s. Pop culture wasteland. |
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Post by Pitt on Jan 26, 2012 17:28:29 GMT
I realised about an hour ago that I forgot to mention Motown even though I'd intended to. It was very important.
If I might go back further, I propose that Benny Goodman is the defining artist of the 1930s. As for the 1940s, it might have been the Chairman of the Board.
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Post by Beeth on Jan 26, 2012 18:57:20 GMT
Lady Gaga might be important as a kind of living summary of pop music by the end of the last decade. Personally, I would've had Lady Gaga down as an icon of the current decade rather than the last one, at least so far. Also, can't believe I missed Michael Jackson, after all the potential ones I thought of. :S Overall, it's been really interesting and promising to see just what each decade represents in music to different people, as well as how many different things it could represent. It is more or less true that, especially in later decades, such large timescales could not be specifically represented by a single defining artist. Maybe several, at absolute best, but then with so many musical cultures and subcultures having emerged over the years (a process still ongoing), this is inevitably a given. |
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Post by Nam on Jan 27, 2012 9:52:39 GMT
The other was Rage Against The Machine's "Killing in the Name of", which was a counter-protest that gained momentum on Facebook. It wasn't a recent release, and potentially it probably could've been any song by a relatively popular artist, the intention wasn't "get this song to Number 1" like how most songs were that year, but rather "Buy this one over any others to ensure that the number 1 doesn't go to the X Factor. I think you largely missed the point with this one. RATM seem to be a band with a thinly-veiled hatred of all commercialism (or something, I don't actually care). 'Killing In The Name' has the line "[censored] you I won't do what you tell me", which is obviously the perfect retort to being "told" to buy the X Factor every single. It wasn't just "any" song. "Barbie Girl" by Aqua wouldn't have had the same effect. Nor would choosing a song by any previous X Factor winner. Perhaps not just any old song would've worked, but there was no reason for it to specifically be the song they actually chose. The whole thing was a Facebook campaign that got media interest and attention, and steamrollered into wildly popular territory. While I'll concede it wouldn't have worked anywhere near as well if they had picked your example of Barbie Girl by Aqua, the reason it wouldn't have worked would've been because it wouldn't've been taken seriously enough, and therefore not had the same backing as it did. The way I see it, the Rage Against the X Factor thing was only ever going to work once, as that was the year everyone was willing to jump on that particular campaign, due to it's media attention and hype. The following year such a campaign failed, primarily due to the fact that many copycat ideas had emerged, all vying to do the same thing with a different song, splitting popular interest several ways, and that the media wasn't interested the following year. But my point was that Rage didn't get the number one for having a great song released (your millage may vary on how much you like said song), or for being a really popular band with a large fanbase. They got the number one, because the organisers of a Facebook group saw that band and song as the ones who, as far as they knew at the time, had the clearest "[censored] off X Factor" message. It wasn't about the song itself, nor the band itself, but the message it sent to it's target, that message being "loads of people are sick of the X Factor's musical dominance, and, if properly organised, can still tell Simon Cowell to go [censored] himself". There were many other songs that had similar messages, and could've very easily been picked, and in all honesty, with the same sort of backing, would've also attained the number one spot. Because Rage's number 1, wasn't a product of song and/or band popularity, it was a product of the popularity of something else, the popularity of hating X Factor. It's kind of ironic in a way. The song that got to number one in order to prevent the song that would've only got number one due to the popularity of a TV show, and not because of the amount of people who actually liked the song or singer itself, only got to number one because of the popularity of a Facebook group, and not because of the amount of people who actually liked the song or band itself. Killing in the Name of, would never have been number one without the Facebook campaign, hence it was not about the song itself, and theoretically it could've indeed been any song. As I recall, the next year, they tried it with '4:33', but by that point there were many other groups also trying the same thing, and it fell apart, reaching just number 21. The Rage with Facebook thing was a product of media promotion, good organisation, and rallying people together in the name of a popular cause (i.e. hating X Factor, and how it always got Xmas number one). The song was just a song, and could've been anything to receive the same effect. The very fact that they tried again the next years proves they thought the same, only that the message "we'd rather listen to nothing than listen to the X Factor's output" was lost amongst by the copycats who saw the last ones success (and were probably a part of it). The fact that it was actually beaten by one of it's rival groups, with Surfin' Bird, a song that's probably most well known for featuring as an annoying song in an episode or several of Family Guy, again just testifies that any song, with enough of a backing, could work, so long as the group is large enough, and the song itself isn't completely awful. |
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Post by Pitt on Jan 27, 2012 11:08:14 GMT
I recall hearing on the radio a couple of years ago (whatever year people were saying they should try to make "Love Will Tear Us Apart" number one for Christmas) and there was this music industry guy who summed up that the Facebook thing will never work again, and the only way to beat the X Factor would be for a really big band (Take That or somebody) to put out a single with a bunch of guest artists, and it would have to be for charity.
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Post by Arch_one_zero_one on Jan 27, 2012 17:56:18 GMT
Had they got the release schedule right, ie. releasing the X Factor winners' single on Christmas week, they would have reached #1, like they actually managed the week before. Had the Charts Company not moved things around, they would be the latest in several undeserving Christmas Number 1s. As it was, I think they were still #2. I was under the impression that it was done on purpose by Cowell, as a result of the 'Rage Against The X-Factor' thing the year before in order to give other songs a chance to be the Christmas No.1. I remember reading that at the time, and being sceptical about whether they'd actually do it though. |
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Post by Pitt on Jan 27, 2012 21:48:21 GMT
The business about the Christmas number one position predates The X-Factor. In my school music department, we had these Pop Idol and Pop Stars: The Rvials video tapes, and on the back of one of them (I cannot recall which one it was), there was a comment to the effect of, "Prospective pop stars battle it out for the prize of Christmas number one single". I think those programmes were on about a decade ago. I can't remember; I didn't watch them when they were on.
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Post by Nam on Jan 27, 2012 23:07:26 GMT
The business about the Christmas number one position predates The X-Factor. In my school music department, we had these Pop Idol and Pop Stars: The Rvials video tapes, and on the back of one of them (I cannot recall which one it was), there was a comment to the effect of, "Prospective pop stars battle it out for the prize of Christmas number one single". I think those programmes were on about a decade ago. I can't remember; I didn't watch them when they were on. Popstars the Rivals was indeed an attempt for Xmas number one, and lead to the highly successful Girls Aloud, and the massive failures One True Voice. Girls aloud got the Number 1 (the first Xmas number one, as the first two series', Popstars and Pop idols didn't end anywhere near Xmas), with One True Voice making it to number two, but then slipping within two or three weeks, while Girls Aloud's song, Sound of the Underground, stuck around for ages. Essentially though, those shows come under the same set-up as X Factor, but with a few differences, as Simon Cowell had a different company make X Factor, as one of his own creations, for more money. Simon Cowell originally had nothing to do with Popstars, he wasn't in the first series at all (the resident "mean" judge was a "Nasty" Nigel Lythgoe). Either way, it's not too hard to include Popstars/idol in the same fold as X Factor, as the premise (for Pop Idol and the rivals series especially), is the same, with only the first series of Pop Stars being any different (a documentary about the assembly of a pop band with no phone in votes at all). Why do I know all this [censored]? |
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Post by Pitt on Jan 27, 2012 23:47:58 GMT
Admittedly, I wasn't as interested in music then as I am now.
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Post by Knuckles on Feb 3, 2012 19:13:00 GMT
Decent debate here, I'd agree with a lot of Nambot's comments but certainly there is still room for longevity and influence in today's music despite such talent shows which may have dominated the music markets for a long time but recently seem to be dwindling in popularity.
I'd argue Lady Gaga will hang around long enough and has had the backing of Sir Elton John. Westlife, however dire they may be, certainly stood the test of time, and Britney is still going, although certainly not as strong as she once was but one could argue that's more to do with her personal life than the state of the music industry.
While there is more choice for music and a massive variation is what people listen to, I don't think it's affected the longevity of stars all that much. If an artist is good enough they'll last the test of time regardless of talent shows and phone in popularity contests which define who is Christmas number 1. I'm still confused as to why Christmas number 1 is regarded so prestigously anyway. Or number 1 spot at all. Many many artists have made it huge without claiming many number 1 singles or albums.
As for defining decades I'd put Elton John up as a case for the 70's especially in America where he dominated album sales throughout the first half of the decade. Of course, I'd also claim he's the most influential and continously popular artist still releasing records, and his attitude and opinions on shows like X Factor is largely public.
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Post by Pitt on Feb 4, 2012 0:39:10 GMT
The best way to do it is to decide which artist was most influential within their own genre for each decade, rather than picking one artist as the most influential overall (though the latter prospect isn't impossible on those terms).
For example, the 1970s. The defining rock bands were Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, the defining pop stars were Elton John and the Bee Gees, and the defining R&B/Soul musician was Stevie Wonder.
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