Artists dumbing down or dumbed down and better for it

Not sure how to post this topic but something I think about quite a lot. On one hand there are artists that move away from simpler more accessible earlier work and look down upon their earlier efforts. On the other hand there are high-falutin' artists who dabble in pop accessibility and are maybe even better at it.

These are the examples I can think of...

Peter Hammill's Nadir's Big Chance. Van der Graaf Generator and solo capital A artist Hammill creates an alter-ego to comment on the dumb glam rock of the time and makes his best record? It's not all dumb glam rockers, there's a range, but it's all more accessible than just about anything else he's done in his career.

Simon Dupree & The Big Sound. Pretty good to great psychedelic pop band who only really gained fame as Gentle Giant.

Jackie Lynn. Pop pseudonym of Circuit Des Yeux's Haley Fohr. CdY albums are relatively experimental, though the last one was a bit more pop as she was pregnant and turned a lot of the production duties over to someone else as an experiment. But under the name Jackie Lynn she released two albums, an LP in 2016 that's relatively stripped back, and another, Jacqueline, in 2020, which I think had production from some of the Bitchin' Bajas and has more pop and clubbier moments. I love CdY albums, but I love the Jackie Lynn albums even more.

Brian Eno. Comes out of the gate with 4 albums containing some of the best songs you'll ever hear, before essentially giving up singing and pop songcraft in favor of ambient experiments and color video paintings. He's returned to it a few times over the years. Wrong Way Up was an outlier but he's sung more in the last decade than he had in years. Still there was plenty of time where I'd have loved to see him play the True Wheel with a rock band.

Todd Rundgren. Another one for whom pop songcraft of the highest order must feel like a walk in the park. Can't say I know enough about Utopia and later albums, but always got the sense that they were more progressive/pretentious, though looking now maybe that's not accurate. Seem like slightly progressive power-pop.

The only Frank Zappa song that I quite like is 'Valley Girl'.

In this regard I think of someone like Epic Soundtracks. Not that Swell Maps were necessarily complex/complicated, but I don't think "accessibility" was their primary concern. Epic Soundtracks, in his later solo work, was very clear that what he really always wanted to do was to create simple ballads that connected with people on a basic emotional level, citing Rundgren, Carole King and Laura Nyro as primary influences.

I know it's not what you asked for but the first artist I thought of was Genesis, who dumbed down and got worse for it.

does dumbing down mean playing more by the rules of the pop music industry? or making music that is 'simpler'? obvious to state but it takes brains to make a hit. i doubt many artists consciously think "i'm going to make something stupider" as they progress (i wonder if there are any examples of this though - devo?). maybe "i'm going to make something more direct" or "i'm going to make something aimed for the charts" with a background reason like "i'm going to make something that makes some money." that can come across as inspired innocence or crass exploitation.

r.e.m. seems like a band who went on a trajectory somewhat related to this - from inward-looking to outward-looking you could say. i don't think they necessarily got smarter or dumber though.

maybe an artist who started off kinda ambitiously arty and went through a midlife crisis to become publicly knuckleheaded? like u2 or metallica or foo fighters.

i think morrissey may have actually gotten stupider as he got older lol

wait, how was gentle giant a "dumbing down" from simon dupree & the big sound? gentle giant recorded some of the most intricate and complex rock songs of the '70s (and ever, really) . . . unless going prog is categorically "worse" than remaining pop psych

Zappa:

The music of Cruising with Ruben & the Jets was the most straightforward genre work the Mothers of Invention had performed yet, attempting to faithfully reproduce the sound of 1950s doo-wop and rock and roll.[2]

Devo I think definitely count - I don't know if Oh, No! It's Devo is better than Freedom of Choice per se but I think it was totally the right direction.

Zappa is a funny example. I think his idea of "dumbing down" makes him a lot worse. But when he puts less of himself into his records it's usually a good thing.

The one guy that really stands out here is James Ferraro. When he's trying to make music that sounds a bit braindead or lobotomized it's genuinely a lot of fun. And fairly interesting to boot. His high concept shit is where he really loses me.

Urge Overkill - Saturation

I would say that Genesis started to benefit from dumbing down but ended up going off the dumb deep end.

I'd figure Journey gets loving touchin squeezin looking at their bank app figuring out doing long prog jams inspired by comets was not going to work for making bank.

Jethro Tull going MORE prog and yet getting more popular has to be a Kobayashi Maru paradox of pop.

'Dumbing down' doesn't come into it - they remained no less high theory than usual - but great examples of artists whose best work may've been when first coming to terms with 'pop accessibility' are Scritti Politti, the KLF, Adam and the Ants, Kraftwerk, the Human League.. hmm possibly this is New Pop all over.

Two (controversial?) reverse examples: Thompson Twins and Eurythmics, whose debuts really are excellent and generally superior to what they got up to once they settled on their identities.

Prefab Sprout's debut album is a little more thorny, challenging, rythmically weird, overthought vocals. It's great, but it doesn't hold a candle to their poppier stuff.

Don’t overthink the awkwardly worded question. I don’t mean it’s necessarily a chronological thing. Not saying Gentle Giant was them dumbing down but that to them Simon Dupree is the dumb early stuff they grew out of. And I’d rather listen to Nadir than most Peter Hammill albums, which are cool, but the accessibility of that album makes it rock.

Eurythmics got to have their cake and eat it too for a while in the 80s using the classic “save the b-sides for the weird stuff” mode.

Some New Pop maybe fits but I’d say not Scritti. Like Cupid is obv more “pop” than the post punk stuff, but it’s still very elaborate. It doesn’t read as a dumbed down sell out.

Simple Minds ilon the other hand…

I take issue with the metric that “dumbed down” creates (with the other end being, what, “smarted up”?)

Certainly I can think of artists brazenly asserting that they attempted to make something dumb to get some chart success— Black Eyed Peas?— or serious composers of modernist music turning to film scoring and becoming John Williams or what have you

But the only artist I can think of who deliberately made a dumb album and it ended up being my favourite of theirs is Derek Bailey with “Ballads”

Diamanda might fit the bill here for me too, in that my fave of her albums is s/t (Panoptikon) but I’d mostly enjoy listening to her singing “Iron Lady” and “O Death” like the zombie Nina Simone (complimentary) she sometimes enjoys to be

Then ignore the term “dumbed down”. You get what I mean.

Picasso. Give me all his work prior to cubism, the glorious dumbed down impressionism and tonal portraiture.

oh wait, this is ILM not ILP

I think that when artists - in whatever medium - stop trying to second guess themselves and what an audience might respond to, then they do better work with less effort. Sometimes the trigger for that is the artist saying "fuck this the next album is just going to be pop". It's not that the resulting album is pop, but that the artist has taken the pressure off themselves to create significant meaningful work. And paradoxically that allows them to create significant meaningful work.

i feel like bringing your own voice and technical accomplishment to art that becomes popular or exists within genre is a great thing, even if it's not the only way of doing art

I feel like this is kinda the Weezer origin story?

Conservatory student plays shredalicuous technical metal, wonders why no one likes band. Decides to make stupid pop songs instead. Success and acclaim.

I've listened to Fripp's Exposure far more than anything he did with KC

wheels of fire and blind faith are pretty cool albums. dunno who clapton could have collaborated with next to keep making marginally popular hendrix influenced psychedelia without his songs being the focus, maybe someone psych-country like mike nesmith or lee hazelwood, someone to struggle against and add some nasty noise to; he could’ve made an instrumental album with a jazz backing like mclaughlin’s extrapolations or peter green’s acid damaged first lp. instead he made derek and the dominoes and i have no more interest in anything he ever recorded.

speaking of blind faith, not sure when winwood definitively dumbed down, maybe as late as back in the high life. i suppose any early boomer who has comeback hits in the 80s did it by dumbing down (bowie, moody blues, stevie wonder).. or late boomers with breakthrough hits (johnny lydon’s remolding of pil into the plastic metal of “rise”, tim finn finally writes a bona fide hit with “fraction too much friction”, the cure’s big singles)

the weeknd would never have become as huge as he has, ie performing at the super bowl ffs, if he didnt go more pop than his initial stuff idk i feel like this trajectory can apply to a lot of acts

Can - I Want More

Not sure how many people think that single is better than anything they recorded with Damo.

Any number of 80s bands went from abrasive mainstream repelling sounds like hardcore (Husker Du, Replacements) or no wave (Sonic Youth) to more melodic sounds with greater commercial and (arguably) creative results. Dinosaur Jr. started off as a post punk band before leaning into Classic Rock guitar heroics.

Pavement is a hell of a lot more accessible on Crooked Rain than they were on Perfect Sound Forever, etc.

Not sure how many people think that single is better than anything they recorded with Damo.

i love Damo most but I want more is a great song you have to admit

I agree! (And love later-Can more than most fans.)

I'm not saying it's better than early or mid mid-period Can, but it's a step up for late Can.

Is it?

When does late Can start?

I actually do know one person who thinks Damo Suzuki Can is too weird and experimental but he really likes the albums from Flow Motion on. especially Saw Delight which he says is one of his favorite albums ever. I always find that sort of thing interesting, like people who are way into Genesis but only from Duke on, but this is even stranger, I mean I don't know anyone who doesn't love Future Days (outside of those who haven't heard Future Days), but this guy says it's "meh"

in my mind it goes pre-Damo / Damo / post-Damo

But "Soon Over Babaluma" is one of their best albums - in fact it's their best album in my opinion.

I don't know anyone who doesn't love Future Days (outside of those who haven't heard Future Days), but this guy says it's "meh"

Unfortunately I don't like "Bel Air" much.

xp still feels kind of Damo-era despite his absence

Bit of a stretch there. "Landed" is good too of course.

I always find that sort of thing interesting, like people who are way into Genesis but only from Duke on, but this is even stranger,

used to know this American guy in Prague who was a massive solo Roger Waters fan and considered Dark Side... / Wish You Were Here etc. to be imperfect early work.

This person is a lunatic.

he looked physically disgusted when I told him I liked the Syd Barrett era, said he had checked it out once and it "wasn't even music"

This person is OTM.

xps I don't really like Landed, just something about the mix sounds wrong to me, it does not spark joy.

Barrett era Floyd is best Floyd obvs

XTC might be a good example, they really smoothed out after the first couple records.

I love pretty much everything on Flow Motion and were I to rank the songs "I Want More" would probably be in the second half.

Soon Over Babaluma is their best album but as I said in another thread the other day there really aren't any Can albums I dislike.

Bel Air is a masterpiece.

Is this where I say "Denim were better than Felt"?

... and I agree with you?

Great, we're all agreed then. Better put the thread to bed I guess.

There's a great story in Alex Ross' 'The Rest Is Noise' about Arnold Schoenberg. He wrote his breakthrough, Gurre-Lieder, before he moved into much more abrasive and atonal territory, but because Gurre-Lieder is such a massive work it took ten years for it to be performed. So when it was finally premiered, people knew of Schoenberg as the weirdo who made unlistenable music, and they were relieved and ecstatic at hearing he could do much more conventional music too, people were weeping, chanting his name. Apparently he tried to hide, then turned his back to the audience when he was brought on stage, feeling even more alone and misunderstood.

Some heathens might say Jimmy O'Rourke. Not me though

Though could argue this to be true for his mate Grubbs

as much as i enjoy c spencer yeh's improv scrabble & babble, my favourite of his is his "pop" album "transitions", which sounds like a lo-fi night of the living dead vince clark and features a stevie nicks cover

So many interesting suggestions; Yeh is good at everything he does, Burning Star Core is too unique to rate over “Transitions”, O’Rourke is decisively better at avant-garde than he is at his pop efforts— as good as they are; Grubbs is still even at what age 60 developing his voice and every album he makes is an improvement on the last; and god, Felt? I like it all but Deebank was too intrinsic a collaborator for any album to be rated higher than “Strange Idols Pattern”, and again, I like it all (except the aspartame jazz instrumental album, “Snakes”, “Pictoral”, uhhh a lot of Duffy-era Felt actually; I do love “Monkey” tho)

Grubbs is 58, love that brilliant Southern gentleman. I can’t think of an artist who has consistently just made better records upon better records with every passing year. I am somebody who bought “Banana Potato Carrot” or whatever it’s called, some 25 years ago, and said “this Grubbs ain’t shit” and his development since has proven me extremely wrong

Banana Cabbage is a hit damnit!!!!!

I die for that piano

i'm always wishing grubbs had foregrounded his feldman/guaraldi piano a little more. still love banana cabbage, his side of the fatcat split 12". if you, too, are missing that, i'd suggest every christian wallumrod & christian wallumrod ensemble release on hubro (v diff in character to his ecm output)

I have to admit I haven't listened enough to the extent of his career and was actually just thinking about digging back in while reading something about Tortoise but I have to say, the first Gastr without Jim was my favorite.

"Hurricane Season" from A Guess at the Riddle is an epic Guaraldi-esque jam, which I think also features Matmos.

At the Gates were a more sophisticated melodeth band when they first arrived, with longer songs with more adventurous pieces in them, Slaughter of the Soul they switched over to big dumb melodeth riffs and for some fans, this made them Gods, for others, it was a betrayal, others like me enjoy both eras

I like Beatle John
you like Beatle Paul
we don't hate the rest
we can love them all

Did anyone mention Blur's "Song 2"? I think that was basically the band writing a big dumb song to parody the mouth-breathing grunge bands.
(I don't know that the band was better for it, but it was the single that finally broke them in the US, after years of trying)

it’s better than grunge

Always thought it was funny they ended up writing the best and most effective grunge 'hit' since Nirvana, without really trying and famously hating the genre

How about the Grateful Dead. Their earlier psychedelic albums like Anthem of the Sun and Aoxomoxoa were experimental and challenging, with plenty of avant-garde influences.

Then they dramatically streamlined their sound on Workingman's Dead and American Beauty. Much more straightforward. With harmonies influenced by Crosby Stills and Nash, who were mega-sellers. You could say they dumbed it down.

tangentially related, just clicked on a youtube video made by some proggy guitar channel about Missing Persons. The gist of which so far is "can you believe these brilliant Zappa-approved musical geniuses were able to dumb down their abilities to make a 'pop' band?"

Personally, I'd take Destination Unknown or Words over Zappa's entire career.

Joy Division into New Order would seem like one.

I don't agree with that one. More of a logical progression with a few bumps in the road. Any dumbing down of lyrics are because Barney and/or the New Order hive-mind were not the poets Ian was, but musically it's not really an example of this.

Is there a thread for the opposite phenomenon?

Artists who got "better" and were worse off for it?

E.g. one could argue that Bettie Serveert was not improved by Carol van Dijk getting voice lessons.

(Not sure I share this opinion, merely that it's out there.)

It took a while for Iceage to get good again after they learned how to play their instruments, imo.

I will acknowledge there are a wide range of interpretations both for "better" (as in virtuosity, skill, chops, training) and "worse" (as in less interesting, less novel, less exciting).

Maybe distinct from a formerly "raw" or primitive/naive DIY punky artist deciding to put on a more polished or softer side later (like exploring more textures, different instruments, crooning, appearing in front of an orchestra, doing a "standards" turn).

I am also holding space for the artist's "more professional" sound being simply different, a choice for which de gustibus applies.

But if I put the second Bettie Serveert album alongside the first, I know which I prefer.

There are a ton of cases where bands went from shitty production to big league studio class production and suffered for it.

It's Blitz! is the best Yeah Yeah Yeahs album.

yep

Maybe distinct from a formerly "raw" or primitive/naive DIY punky artist deciding to put on a more polished or softer side later (like exploring more textures, different instruments, crooning, appearing in front of an orchestra, doing a "standards" turn).

i do think what took a lot of great artists off-course wasn't an improvement in skill or production, but a desire to be really eclectic. i guess for example the "seminal" Clash album is London Calling but that first self-titled is just perfect, albeit one which a Rolling Stone album guide can't gush over by namechecking the genres it's stylistically covering. not that i think London Calling is bad at all, but it's like an actor steering away from what they actually do best in order to get more respect for their work. something like the s/t is more trad punk on the surface but it hits so hard.

I suspect those Clash had those eclecticisms in their suitcase all along, and brought them out when they could. Like the Policemen having jazz and studio cred before doing reggae-tinged punk.

Not sure if I'd say dumbed down but the VU 3rd & 4th with Doug Yule were far less experimental but just as good as the Cale era.

it’s incredible that as many covers of vu songs there’s been, i don’t think there was ever a top forty placing on either side of the pond. so i’m not sure we can say loaded was a dumbed down hit.

apart from clapton whom i mentioned above as getting nigh worthless when he dumbed down for hits, i’d cite elvis costello, who periodically dumbs down for the hits (the clanger-winstanley singles, veronica, “she”) but i think it’s safe to say his fans vastly prefer his early stuff.

also the fall’s ghost in my house/hit the north/victoria run of uk hits are kind of the beginning of the end for them.

Not sure if I'd say dumbed down but the VU 3rd & 4th with Doug Yule were far less experimental but just as good as the Cale era.

― Gouty_Ted, Sunday, February 1, 2026

or Roxy when Jobson replaced Eno.

"Veronica" is dumbed down? I don't hear it. He got his American hit because it coincided with the rise of college/modern rock influence on the Hot 100.

Something about early XTC irritates me. But then they invented the Dukes of Stratosphear, who made deliberately stupid Nuggets-inspired garage pop, except that it was also very clever. And it was ace! And also a little bit like Strawberrys-era The Damned. XTC went up a notch after that.

Also to an extent Yes. Post-Topographic Oceans they ran out of ideas, and then 90125 was big dumb 1980s stadium rock and it was awesome. Drama was notably more concise than their preceding albums as well.

Judas Priest started out as a vaguely proggy blues-rock band. Then they harnessed the throbbing power of metal. And were much better for it.

it’s incredible that as many covers of vu songs there’s been, i don’t think there was ever a top forty placing on either side of the pond.

Just checked and was surprised that Cowboy Junkies version "Sweet Jane" didn't make the US or UK Top 100, given how ubiquitous it felt then and still at CVS.

i’d cite elvis costello, who periodically dumbs down for the hits (the clanger-winstanley singles, veronica, “she”) but i think it’s safe to say his fans vastly prefer his early stuff.

He had eight Top 30 hits - two of which were Top 10 - in the UK from 1977 to 1980. It was his most successful period for singles in the UK. Likewise all of his albums were Top 10 in the UK from 1977 to 1984, with the exception of My Aim Is True which still got to #15

Haha, YES! YES is the perfect example

I thought that "Pump It Up" was supposed to be Costello's attempt at dumbing it down.

Considering how often I've heard it at baseball games, maybe?

Also to an extent Yes. Post-Topographic Oceans they ran out of ideas, and then 90125 was big dumb 1980s stadium rock and it was awesome. Drama was notably more concise than their preceding albums as well.

idk about this, Relayer to me feels like a leap forward from even CTTE, GTFO maybe doesn't progress a whole lot from their previous albums but it still rules as much as anything they've done. after that is when they started to run out of ideas, the reason why Drama and 90125 are so interesting is because they let the Buggles take over a lot of the songwriting on the former and on the latter Rabin is basically the main dude.

Yes had an album called Get The Fuck Out? Cool.

Anderson and Wakeman left the studio to drink Calvados in a bar; in Wakeman's words: "Jon and I got really quite depressed and started crying on each other's shoulders and Jon said 'This is not the band that I love, this is not the band that I wanted to keep on going', [and I replied] 'I'm with you, Jon'".[5] The sessions were ultimately called off after White cracked a bone in his right ankle while roller skating with Richard Branson in a nightclub, rendering him unable to perform for about six weeks.[7][8]

Branson making an appearance in The Yes Files

Maybe not "dumbing down", but in my head the more obvious answer for Can is not "I Want More" but rather the shift from Tago Mago to Ege Bamyesi - shorter track lengths, tighter song structures and no stretches of drift or collapse into freeform noise - and for me the result is a more concentrated and readily-listenable expression of what I go to Can for.

In a slightly different way I'd probably say something similar re Tim Buckley following Starsailor with Greetings from L.A - again, "dumbing down" isn't quite right but the latter is a dramatically more approachable record.

Can always had short poppy songs though - just not on Tago Mago.

Yes, but there was a kind of dialectical back and forth - they had to do Tago Mago and maste their new style before they could work out how to express it in short form

When did Turtles Have Short Legs come out!

Recorded as part of the "Tago Mago" sessions, I believe

Before that "Soundtracks" has "Tango Whiskeyman", which sounds pretty poppy to me!