I strongly disagree with this. Simon has done his best and most creative work as a solo. S&G had great harmonies and the songs sounded nice, but they were, other than the Bookends album, ordinary pop-folk songs.
I don’t think Freddy Mercury’s solo efforts were as good as his work with Queen.
Much as I like Eric Knopfler, I really wish he’d stayed with Dire Straits. He went too far into the country genre for my liking.
Agreed, and Bill’s projects don’t do anything for me either. BUT…Charlie’s “solo” albums aren’t bad at all.
John and Paul complimented each other perfectly, and when together became a two-headed supergenius which greatly exceeded the sum of the parts.
Really? Sounds of Silence? The Boxer? I am a Rock? Not what I’d consider ordinary songs or ordinary themes. But I agree that Paul Simon at least matched and possibly exceeded S&G’s output in terms of quality. Garfunkle never really found the material he needed to overcome his voice’s essential sweetness – so a lot of what he recorded, while technically excellent, just hasn’t aged well (e.g Disney Girls).
From the progressive rock/folk side of the music world, I never was that impressed by Annie Haslam’s solo albums apart from Renaissance. I think if you have that big voice, you also need the bombastic overblown music and lyrics so you can really cut loose. Same thing with Mary Fahl from the October Project. (I’m not sure either of these singers efforts actually “sucked”, they were more like “meh”, at least if you were expected them to belt out vocals like they did when they were in the band.)
Morrissey had a few solid solo songs early on but it was the song-writing with Marr that made The Smiths one of the most influential bands to emerge in the 80’s.
ABBA’s individual members had varying degrees of success after breakup, mostly in Sweden, but none had the sort of worldwide success that the group had.
I think we need a clear meaning for “sucks” in this thread.
Is it
a) Commercially unsuccessful + I don’t like it
b) Commercially unsuccessful + I like it
c) Commercially successful + I don’t like it?
Because, for me, Sting is a “c”, but I could not say he sucks.
Amen. Apparently dissing McCartney’s post-Beatles career is like a right of passage.
I’d say that Roger Waters’ solo material fits the "commercially unsuccessful + I don’t like it"category (although I do sometimes find it a guilty pleasure).
He resented Gilmour, Mason and Wright for trading off the PF name, feeling that his solo material suffered commercially because he couldn’t do the same. But the truth is that, had his three solo rock albums been released under the PF name, Radio KAOS would still flop and Amused to Death would be seen as an anachronism in a post-Nirvana world.
I also liked the solo albums by members of Genesis: Banks, Steve Hackett (most excellent!), and of course Peter Gabriel. HATE anything by Phil Collins - the first two Genesis albums after Gabriel left were very good, then it went quite downhill after that.
One man’s sold out is another man’s success story.
What 90s bands like No Doubt survived from that era? The closest I can think of are REM and maybe Green Day (although I wouldn’t put GD and ND in the same musical category)
Like you said, Ska died out and she continued to make music that’s better and more culturally relevant than No Doubt would have done by itself, and I think if they were still together today, they’d be doing pop songs themselves
Not to mention Bill Wyman. “Je suis un rock star” might have been a pleasant little ditty which sold quite well (I think that’s the kindest way I can phrase it), but it doesn’t really stack up against the band’s output.
Edited to add: Sorry TreacherousCretin, I didn’t see that you had already mentioned him. I should have searched for “Bill” rather than “Wyman.”
IMO, Simon and Garfunkel isn’t the greatest example for this thread, simply because I’ve always seen Garfunkel as a bit . . . useless. Simon wrote the songs, sang half of each song, and played the guitar. Of course, the fact the Garfunkel’s voice has always made me cringe a little adds to this, as singing was all he really contributed, but still.
I actually prefer the early versions of S&G songs that are just Paul Simon and his guitar, with no Garfunkel or processing. For instance, try this version of “The Sound of Silence” and “April Come She Will”. They’re both from The Paul Simon Songbook, a solo album recorded in 1965. To me, they sound far more genuine and personal than the official, more sterile S&G stuff - the words have emotion. Granted, it’s a matter of personal taste, but it’s hard to deny that Paul Simon did at least 90% of the work in that duo. And pieces like “The Boxer” or “Bridge Over Troubled Water” are on the same level as “Graceland” or “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes”. There’s more to Paul Simon’s solo career than “50 Ways”. 
Yeah, the solo Beatles work are a real mystery to me. I mean, both Lennon and McCartney on their own were perfectly good, but they never came close to the mind-blowing majesty of the Beatles. The more you think about it, the more incredible it is - two boys in Liverpool who became friends due to a set of extremely specific circumstances just happened to each have a set of innate talents that blended perfectly.
But even in the later years of the Beatles, when they weren’t collaborating on songs, their work was still better than the solo stuff. Sure, if you compare the best solo McCartney with some lukewarm songs he wrote for the Beatles,they seem about equal, but I don’t think he ever wrote anything close to “Hey Jude” or “Blackbird” ever again.
The only explanation I have is either that even in the last years, they acted as a filter for each other’s weaker songs (and George Martin played a much bigger role in producing/editing their music than he cares to admit); or they both just peaked in their 20s and went downhill, and had the band stuck together, it’d have become worse as well. But the second one isn’t as fun to believe. 
Or maybe Ringo secretly wrote all the songs.
Fleetwood Mac --> solo Lindsey Buckingham
Well, de gustibus and all that, but I don’t think there’s a significant gap between McCartney’s best with and without the Beatles. Like I wrote, a major factor in what made the Beatles mind-blowing is that they were doing stuff that had hardly been done before. You just can’t keep on doing that. When Paul gave electronica a try in the 90s, there was no way he could blow our minds. It’s still a surprisingly solid album, that was borne of the same aw-what-the-hell-let’s-give-this-a-try attitude that made the Beatles great.
Take the best of solo McCartney, Lennon and Harrison and you get something that’s close to the Beatles at their best and certainly better (IMO) than Let it Be.
Pink Floyd defined my teenage years. I’m thus a huge Roger Waters fan. If Amused to Death had been done as a Floyd album I think it would have be better.
Same applies to the Division Bell, could have used Roger.
Sum of the parts.
Gilmore solo, utter crap.
A resounding NO to this.
If what made the Beatles’ work good was mostly that they were leading the pack into new territory, their work would not hold up well. They’d be like Iron Butterfly, something you dust off for nostalgia’s sake every now and then, but you’d realize how dated it was, and how it doesn’t hold up all that well, now that others have done similar stuff much better.
No, as a group, they were very, very good, pretty much whatever they did. Out of all their work as a group, I could put together maybe one album’s worth of stuff that I’d rather not hear very often. (Let’s see: about four tracks each from Let It Be and the White Album, the “Eight Days A Week” single*, and…? - no, not even a solid album’s worth.)
But aside from All Things Must Pass, you could take the worthwhile post-breakup solo stuff from all four Beatles, and put it on one double album. Maybe McCartney’s best solo stuff is up there with his best stuff with the Beatles (I’d disagree, but that’s JMHO), but what’s inarguable is that there just isn’t that much of that best stuff that compares well with his Beatles work. A few songs from McCartney, a couple songs from Ram, the “Jet” and “Band on the Run” singles, and…?
Not that it was just Paul. George had that one amazing album, All Things Must Pass, and then turned mediocre fast. “Give Me Love,” “Crackerbox Palace,” “Six Words Long**,” etc. - really? His contributions to the first Wilburys album are more worthwhile than his entire post-*ATMP *solo career. Lennon had a few decent moments, but have I mentioned that “Imagine” is a boring piece of drivel that should have stopped getting airplay 30 years ago, and that’s supposedly one of his better solo moments?
So you’re comparing the best of their solo work with what is generally regarded as one of their weaker albums, if not their worst? The one where the Rutles version was “Let It Rot was released as a film, an album, and a lawsuit. It showed the Rutles as never before; tired, unhappy, cross, and just like the rest of the world”? The one the Beatles themselves looked at and decided they had to go out on a better note than that, resulting in Abbey Road? The one described by their sound engineer just the other day as “a bunch of garbage”?
While I don’t think it’s that bad, comparing the best of the Beatles’ solo efforts to the weakest of their collaborations really doesn’t tell you much. Again excluding ATMP, sure, the best dozen tracks of the the Beatles’ solo stuff compares well with the dozen tracks of Let It Be, but really if that’s the best you can say for their solo careers, I believe the term is ‘damning with faint praise.’
*Like I said, “stuff that I’d rather not hear very often.” Most people like “Eight Days A Week” better than I do.
**Oops, that’s the Weird Al parody, which is better than the actual song, “(I’ve got my mind) Set on You.”
I love “Crackerbox Palace” and “All Those Years Ago” and I adore “Fab” and “This Song”
Not mostly, importantly. However, you can’t move from “very good” to “great” without leading the pack in some way. My argument is that you can stop being great without a significant drop in quality of output.
No one can argue that as solo artists they weren’t as prolific and without the internal competition, support and feedback, the signal-to-noise ratio took a dive. All geniuses produce a fair amount of crap, if they’re lucky they can recognise and filter it out. That’s where John and Paul failed on their own. It doesn’t mean they stopped being brilliant, it’s just we were subjected to their bad ideas as well as their good ones.
Regarding Simon & Garfunkel v. Paul Simon solo:
Here’s one of those no-airplay tracks, “A Most Peculiar Man,” which follows “Richard Cory” on their Sounds of Silence album. The interplay between their vocals is wonderful: in their harmonies, each dominates at just the right time, especially with the bite of Paul Simon’s vocals dominating the last verse.
Just how much Art Garfunkel contributed to the duo’s success can be debated. But they certainly had plenty of success as a duo.
And then there was Graceland, which is just one of those great albums that can justify a career all by itself. (And incidentally, it’s way better by itself than everything McCartney did post-Beatles, put together.)
After that, there was The Rhythm of the Saints, which has some good songs, but it’s hard not to compare it to Graceland, and a lot of albums would suffer for that comparison.
(Simon’s done some new stuff since, according to his Wikipedia discography, but I confess I haven’t heard any of it.)
This was my first thought. I believe that I was overseas when Dee Dee King hit the stores and it was gone fast. Not that I actually put any effort into finding it. I like The Crusher but it sounded better when the Ramones did it.
Ozzy SHOULD have flopped without Sabbath , but he’s thrived. He has had the luck or the smarts to surround himself with talented musicians and has made more good records without Iommi than vice versa.