When did the decline of guitar or sax solos in pop/rock/metal start?

A friend of mine said this on facebook as a reply to me asking about was nu-metal the point where solos went away from metal since even grunge had solos (just not wanky ones)

I think it was a bigger shift in music away from solos, not just a metal or guitar thing. Earlier even Michael Jackson, Wham and Robert Palmer songs had guitar or sax solos. That all pretty much went away around the same time.

can anyone pinpoint the actual time and what caused it? was it just the 80s ended or had the shift started before then?

rap

ie the 90s

sax had a big role in early 90s MOR at least.

well speaking for pop music, most of it's purely electronic now, so having a guitar solo in the middle of every song would make about as much sense as having a washboard breakdown on every other iron maiden track

Just a guess, but the further away music got from the conventions of 50s/60s songwriting, and newer song templates emerged from the club scene/underground metal/etc and seeped into the mainstream variations of those different genres, there was not much room left for solo breaks. As for pinpointing exactly when the shift happened, it's probably impossible. It was more gradual than some people just saying "solos are a waste of space!"

but nick a lot of electronic pop in the 80s still had guitar solos. even the soul and disco stuff did. When did that shift come about and why?

maybe eddie van halen just priced himself out of the game

I dunno, but Kirk Hammett was sure furious about it in that Metallica movie.

1991: The Year Punk Broke

Bands with conventional instruments either embraced the pop & punk ethos of hooks without virtuosity, or the prog ethos of virtuosity without hooks.

another comment

I think the big decrease might have been in the early 90s? "3 AM Eternal" or "I Touch Myself" still had solos, but for example Jackson's "Black Or White" didn't from what I remember. A bit later indie rock got more popular and you got fewer solos in rock, then solos in metal became optional with nu-metal and black metal.

I always smile when I hear a pop/rock band these days employ a sax or two, most notably with Ezra Furman and tUnE-yArDs.

I'm all for people bringing sax back into rock/pop music. Guitar solos I'm less nostalgic for.

I thought one of the reasons you disliked post 90s metal was because it was too extreme and not enough fun solos like in hair and thrash metal?

Whenever music takes itself deadly serious, be it metal or anything else, I'm turned off. Metal seems to have shifted into being deadly serious all the time after hair and thrash metal went away, and I laugh at it. (It's also why, in older metal, I can't really get with super-technical noodling and clownish operatic singers.)

I was thinking about this hearing OMI-Cheerleader on the radio over the weekend. The first pop song I can recall in forever that has actual instrumental soloing, let alone what sounds like the grandson of Al Hirt toot-tooting away in the background.

http://youtu.be/PIh2xe4jnpk?t=154

I'm all for people bringing sax back into rock/pop music.

― Johnny Fever, Monday, August 17, 2015 6:08 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Swap "sax" with "fretless bass" and I agree! :D

But why not both?!

Check the bass on Carly Rae Jepsen's "All That."

Way back in the sheet music era, when the topline melody *was* the song, a solo was a complement to that melody that made a recording distinct. Eventually, it's the whole recording that make a record distinct- the textures and the beat and the vocal tics. But the old structures stuck around for a long time, even when Eddie Van Halen's solos don't really have anything to do with the hook. So yeah, in the 80/90s, you still have a lot of forms that may not be coming from the Brill Building, may not be overly focused on the topline melody, but songwriters (certainly Robert Palmer, probably even Jackson or Cobain) are still constructing songs verse by verse followed by refrain and solo.

Which suddenly raises the question in my mind, as multi-track recording became more and more accessible, was it the main force behind the move from "songs" to "tracks", shifting songwriting from verse-chorus to track-by-track layerings? Even non-electronic rock from the early 90s like MBV or PJ Harvey seems like it's built up in layers, which is part of why they felt modern in a world where clearly hip hop and techno were the groundbreaking forms.

in the 90s even celine dion songs had guitar solos as the likes of her used the best session musos around - so are top session musicians not been used for newer acts asmuch as previously? Is that just a thing from a bygone era now?

even tho/ugh pop has become very much about production and beats, its not like those things didnt come with sax or guitar solos previously.
I suppose it only takes one huge hit and then every song will have them gain and we will all be moaning :)

Not losing too much sleep over the decline of the pop/rock sax solo tbf.

blow the saxophone, whatever happened to the harmonica solo? they were everywhere at one time: i feel for you, karma chameleon, say say say, there must be an angel, I guess that's why they call it the blues, is there something I should know, you take me up, church of the poison mind, loads of things

sometimes rihanna employs nuno to great effect

The harmonica solo crawled under a rock where it belongs, and hopefully will lay dormant there until the end of time.

Somewhere, John Popper is crying his eyes out.

whatever happened to the harmonica solo? they were everywhere at one time: i feel for you, karma chameleon, say say say, there must be an angel, I guess that's why they call it the blues, is there something I should know, you take me up, church of the poison mind, loads of things

Maybe the bigger question is why were they only popular in the year 1983

I often wonder about this, too, and don't really have an answer per se.

Bands with conventional instruments either embraced the pop & punk ethos of hooks without virtuosity, or the prog ethos of virtuosity without hooks.

This gets at one idea I've had, which is that perhaps lead guitar virtuosity was always a bit at odds with the pop song and maybe people just started specializing? So you get pop/rock songs without solos but at the same time you also get very popular jam bands and a cult around Dream Theatre; maybe the people who were REALLY into learning solos ended up going into jazz/fusion once it became a standard academic option??

I think 'I Will Always Love You' was the last #1 hit to feature a sax solo. For harmonica think it was 'Say You Will Be There' a few years later.

Another thing is that it may well have seemed by the mid- to late-90s that there was little new that could still be done in the standard rock lead guitar solo format, especially if you didn't have Van Halen-beating chops. A lot of mainstream hard rock solos from the 80s are not really that inspiring, with obvious exceptions. Focusing more on timbre and texture might have seemed both i) more novel and ii) less difficult.

Or maybe that particular style of guitar soloing came to be seen as a little bit "masturbatory" after a while, apart from in certain circles.

some older metalheads loathe the loss of technicality esp when metallica stopped making them.
None of this explains why solos fell out offashion across music. Id still like to know if the use of session musicians went down a lot in the 90s as technology improved/presumably cheaper to make music too

Why pay some old wanker session rates when one person can make a hit record in their bedroom?

Players like Neal Schon of Journey were really good about making guitar solos a logical part of the song, an extension of the main theme, and a lot of session musicians followed (pardon the pun) his lead. It's the virtuoso showboat players who were once oddly celebrated who found themselves unwanted and cast aside except for a small community of shredder nerds who worshiped them.

None of this explains why solos fell out offashion across music.

I think we've explained that several times, actually, in that the further away we get from the old style of songwriting (particularly the 50s/60s), the less anyone wants to devote a section of a song to a player who isn't the singer. For better or worse, modern songwriting isn't beholden to music's past but only to itself.

Although, one could argue that, for a few years, "the drop" was the "solo" section of songs that everyone anticipated and it had nothing at all to do with the singer. Skrillex was the 21st century Edward Van Halen.

mutt lange probably was the one producer in the 90s who kept the guitar solo in pop going.

Session players never really left Nashville, did they?
xps

probably explains why a lot of older rock fans growing up in the 70s and 80s embraced country as it was far more like classic rock than alt rock/metal or indie was, sund4r

I seem to remember a lot of virtuoso showboat shredders writing columns for guitar magazines in the '90s, mostly tutorials for the wannabe shredders that were still interested.

Los Angeles has its own session community too. Oddly enough, though, a lot of modern Nashville session players are the guys who did a lot of pop/rock/hard rock stuff in the 80s either in their own bands or as LA session musicians. It's another reason modern country sounds like arena rock.

There aren't many synthpop songs these days that have anything a synth solo either, are there?

*anything approaching a synth solo

There is a good amount of modern pop usually with female vocalists where they really don't even use much of an arrangement at all except with the voice. You get a bit of drums and maybe a vague synth line or instrument to set key or chord then just vocals.

Synth solos are dumb. Dumber than guitar, saxophone and even harmonica solos.

I think it was skot who said once that bands grow up without chops. Whether its rock or electronic bands maybe thats true?

Synth solos are dumb. Dumber than guitar, saxophone and even harmonica solos.

― Johnny Fever, Monday, August 17, 2015 11:16 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh, come on! The one in Queen's 'I Want To Break Free' is all-time!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54K2F3zAZ0o

wasn't there a song on Katy Perry's last album that had a "digital love"-style talkbox/synth-guitar solo?

synth solos are so not always dumb

jamie principle - your love
van morrison - wavelength
les mccann - sometimes i cry
marvin gaye - t plays it cool
simple minds - hunter and the hunted (herbie hancock, yall)

...Gett Off

hadn't heard "'t' plays it cool" before - that's great.

This is the cover for my band's new album we are working on.

http://www.atomicthrillride.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/072815-009.jpg

Well, at least up to the early/mid 00´s there still were guitar solos (strokes, white stripes...). There were in the latest daft punk too and I think there are some in the latest Miguel or in things like Bruno mars for instance so they are still around !
The sax solos, on the other hand...

Ah there was also a guitar solo in beyonce's 1+1!

When i had sex with your mom

pretty sure that's a piccolo on that one

maybe bill clinton killed the sax solo

http://stopcryingyourheartoutnews.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/noel-gallagher-on-saxophone-in-riverman.html

Are we once more only focusing on famous music? I think we are!

Biggest hit of the year, has saxophone.

Half the charts these days are tropical house tunes with saxophone.

xp that's trumpet, but your point stands

Are we once more only focusing on famous music?

For the purposes of this conversation, it wouldn't make sense to focus on not-famous material. It's not like these practices have gone away entirely. Just, for the most part, on the charts.

xp that's trumpet, but your point stands

Which reminds me...that fucking inescapable "Safe and Sound" song is lousy with trumpet (and just lousy).

imago, yes, its about the more popular end of the spectrum

on the charts

I had been interpreting the question strictly in this way. Obv, there are tonnes of jazz guitar records with long solos on every track.

Synth solos are dumb. Dumber than guitar, saxophone and even harmonica solos.

― Johnny Fever, Tuesday, August 18, 2015 12:16 AM (19 hours ago)

*cries*

which contemporary producers would be most able to pull off a tasteful guitar solo in a pop song?

I think it was skot who said once that bands grow up without chops. Whether its rock or electronic bands maybe thats true?

this is definitely true - as the live band has been phased/thinned out of pop music, the vital elements of live music performance have atrophied across the board. i believe there has also been a sharp decline in music education in terms of both performance & appreciation, though that is just based on anecdote & might not be true. also pop music criticism by non-musicians and armchair sociologists has fucked everything up for everyone & continues to do so.

also pop music criticism by non-musicians and armchair sociologists has fucked everything up for everyone & continues to do so.

that pesky ILM

A lot of the time I wish I had the ability to hear music again without my brain trying to figure out how it's written/played/arranged. Not like I'm a musical prodigy, but I know enough to figure out what's gone into the music I'm listening to and it's kind of distracting when trying to appreciate the music purely. I'm torn between appreciation and deconstruction.

crut otm

I have no musical knowledge though i am not a critic either but do you guys really think music critics must be able to play an instrument?

they should be able to submit tracks to ilm precover albums ;)

those things should be banned.Backslapping bullshit.

:O

damn really?

singing in the shower is literally the only thing more low stakes than those things in the """music industry"""

Thinking about it, Rihanna also had tracks with guitar solos and I suppose Taylor Swift too.
So, many of the biggest acts of the last years still have them : the guitar solos are still alive !

no-one itt mention the Clarence Clemons solo on Edge of Glory?

I have no musical knowledge though i am not a critic either but do you guys really think music critics must be able to play an instrument?

nah but it does feel like we're in an era where any understanding of music qua music is p incidental to criticism, which is all about artist narratives/the arc of their careers. And that was always a big part of it but more and more now it seems like that's all there is. And as such musicians seem less and less interested in music qua music and more in "telling their story" or whatever, erecting a public persona, etc. of which music is only a part.

I'm not making a judgment call on that as good or bad, that just seems like the way it is to me.

(this is totally a separate issue from this thread fwiw)

feel free to start a thread on it then

that sounds like the sort of thread i'll come a cropper on, so can you start it on a board i've left off sna, like i love hoops (no shade hoops fans)

idk that I have that much of value to say on it tbh, iirc it was discussed to some degree on a recent thread about "progress" in music and whether that concept held any validity anymore. ("Progress" tied to production technology, technical facility etc. which have all plateaued/lost significance)

(started by THE SONIC UNREGULATED ELECTRIC CATFISH (imago) on board I Love Music on Oct 2, 2013)

CROPPER

Oh I just thought of sax solos recent (and relatively popular) examples : destroyer have some, especially on the successful album kapputt !
There might be one on the latest kendrick too, I think...
And another one interesting for guitar solos : the latest d'angelo.

Eheh on the Mark ronson's album there are guitar, synth and... Harmonica solos !

so they're coming back you think?

Didn't Katy Perry hire Kenny G specifically to do a sax solo on "Last Friday Night"?

Lol this was one of the first google results for the above:

From Ariana Grande To Redfoo: These 9 Pop Songs Make Saxophones Sexy
http://www.mtv.com/news/1915090/saxophone-pop/

maybe there's hope for guitar solos yet

those things should be banned.Backslapping bullshit.

Non-musician as music critic or what?

no, the innocuous ilm pre-covers of albums

Less backslapping more bass-slapping.

(xp) someone's taken agin them

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9rzuPmqv2Q