I was listening to some Doobie Brothers songs today, and you don’t need to be a music major to know the band of “Long Train Runnin’” wasn’t remotely the same as the band of “What a Fool Believes”. And it got me to wondering: If you have a favorite band and their sound significantly changes, do you still remain a fan of the band? What specific bands did you stop following because their sound changed and which did you stick with?
I stopped listening to Radiohead when Kid A came out. Not because I ‘resented’ them for their sound change, I just didn’t like the music anymore. I’m still a fan of everything before that though and I still listen to the CDs that I bought before Kid A, I just don’t listen to that one and I didn’t buy anything after that one.
Sometimes…
(Old Fart’s Story: my sister dropped all interest in the Beatles after “Sergeant Pepper.”)
When Bryan Adams went with a more pop-heavy sound I quit liking his music.
I didn’t dump them, but I wasn’t too crazy about U2 in the 90’s, although later on I revisited their music and found it wasn’t as bad as I originally thought.
And I’ve never listened to any of Rod Stewart’s American Songbook albums.
I was a major fan of Rush while growing up, but when they released Counterparts, I felt it was a blatant attempt to try to cash in on the grunge sound. I still bought their next couple of albums when they came out, but it was the same thing - they were trying to sound like whoever was popular at the time. So I gave up on them.
I didn’t care for the Michael McDonald incarnation of the DB. Not at all. So yes, I dumped them. If the DLR/Sammy Hagar versions of Van Halen count, then, in that case, I did not dump them.
Really depends on whether I like the change. I don’t have to like it MORE, I just have to like it.
That’s often said by reviewers of the album, but I bought it precisely because I hated grunge and so was instead looking for bands from the 80s I might have overlooked a little. Rush being one of them. I found Counterparts to be their best work ever. There might be a little down-tuning and the keyboards are much reduced, but it’s still melodic, still thoughtful, and still progressive.
I generally drop any band that plays slow songs too much. Seems like as bands age they want to slow down, but slower tempos aren’t a sign of maturity, intelligent lyrics and innovative melodies are. I think a lot of bands slow down simply because they don’t have any other ideas for being taken seriously.
I agree about the “slowing down” thing, that’s one of my pet peeves.
A lot of bands I like have changed over the years. Sometimes I lose interest, like Tears for Fears. Sometimes I like the changes, like Depeche Mode. (Synth band starts using twangy guitar, how did that happen?)
Some bands change so much, it’s like it’s not even the same band. X Marks the Pedwalk was sort of an industrial band. They didn’t do anything for sixteen years. Now they’re… I don’t know. Dreamy, synth-y, but a little ominous? And somehow that’s exactly what I was looking for.
Same with the Ramones. I swear they were trying to sound like Billy Idol in the mid to late 1980s. Listen to I Wanna Live.
Come to think of it, everything after Road to Ruin was subpar, IMO.
I walked away from Bob Dylan during the religion years, came back when he got better.
If they no longer play music I like, then I stop looking for new songs from them. I don’t understand band loyalty as I am only seeking entertainment. If I like what I hear I usually do not care who is creating it. Unless they are assholes.
Wouldn’t Genesis be an interesting example?
- Full original membership
- Peter Gabriel leaves and Phil Collins steps from the drum set to the mic
- Other personnel changes - and then there were three
- Phil goes super-commercial, and the band follows him there
I was never a hardcore fan, but I enjoyed the various iterations up to the Phil goes commercial phase…
I only liked the Phil Collins years. In any case, the 80s was the decade when nearly all of those 70s art rock bands went commercial. Which is weird, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a whole genre sell out en masse like that. The 80s hair bands are still hair bands, the 90s alt bands are still alt bands. I’m sure there’s an exception or two(like Bon Jovi), but mostly those bands still do what they do, and most of the 70s art rock bands went back to doing what they did. Even Genesis, once Collins was gone. Heck, even Heart went back to their 70s sound.
Hey, give her credit for sticking with them right through “Revolver.”
As per the OP: One test of this would be REM fans – those that started liking them in the 80s or early 90s. Then, in 1994, they released “Monster”, a noisy tribute to glam rock. I kinda got into it, so, yes, I didn’t mine following them in this new (temporary, it turnes out) direction.
A few tests later, their drummer retired, and they released a synth-heavy, uninteresting album called “Up.” That’s when I gave up on them – but, more because they were starting to really suck (they we’re running out of musical ideas), nit because of the change in style per se.
The flip side of this would be interesting as well.
“If a band you like never changes their sound, do you continue to follow them?”
Because, as a long-time music fan (with Rush, Queen and others in my sweet spot), hearing the same thing for 20 years would be too much for me. At what point is a band just pandering by not growing and evolving?
Well, for me regarding the Stones, that would be 1983, with “Undercover.” I have nothing in my digital collection after 1981’s “Tattoo You,” and not for lack of giving newer stuff a chance. (Okay, I have Keith’s nice, slow track from 1989.)
So, to answer your question – In 1983, the Stones had been around for exactly 20 years, and they had had essentially the same “sound” for about 10 years (albeit with some interesting detours among some tracks).
So, from this one data point, we might say “a band starts to lose fans due to boredom”… “when it has been doing the sane sort of stuff for a decade,” or perhaps “when a band has been doing the same sort of stuff for the duration of half their career.”
I stopped listening to Nightwish after they replaced their lead singer - the new one is excellent too, but she doesn’t have the same register and as a result the songs changed a bit to accommodate her and… well, it’s just not the same. Even though it’s still very good.
I gave up on Metallica after St. Anger, having “stayed with” them through Load and Reload, which I still like a lot. I heard bits and pieces of Death Magnetic at parties and such, and they didn’t make me regret my choice one bit.
It depends on whether it’s repetitive, or whether they are just getting better at their craft. A band like AC/DC, they’ve been trying to recapture what made Back in Black great for decades now and haven’t succeeded. But a band like the Scorpions, after their major stylistic change around 1980 they just got better and kept on getting better up until the present day. With a couple of misfires along the way, of course.
Then there’s the other kind of pandering, where an artist or band is always just doing whatever is commercial at the time. That’s how it is with a lot of R&B artists. If they’ve been around long enough, they’ve done the 70s sound, the 80s sound, the 90s sound, and today’s sound, never once departing from whatever sound was contemporary.
I wasn’t ready to let Tarja go yet either, as Once was a masterpiece. But I did like the band with Annette and I think they were more commercially successful than they otherwise would have been if they’d kept Tarja. Annette’s gone too now though, so who knows what’s going to happen. Probably Floor Jansen, since she can pull off both what Tarja and Annette did.
Metallica is pure garbage these days. Load and Reload I thought were acceptable enough, but St. Anger is when it just got too stupid.
This happened to me as I was exploring discography of Deep Purple. I didn’t mind change of a singer from Ian Gillan to David Coverdale but when Ritchie Blackmore left, that was it. The sound has changed super dramatically for any true fan of Deep Purple to deal with it. I still remember 1984 and “Perfect Strangers” album and the recognition of the familiar sound; even though it was not exact replica but songs sounded right, melodically speaking.