Biggest critical/artistic career downfall

who went from being great to the shit most tragically?
i'm looking for big contrasts between early amazingness and later career horror.

i'll start us off with Roxy Music, with more recent unhonourable mentions going to Patrick Wolf and Chris Cornell.

and let's go for Suede/Brett Anderson too (anyone hear his solo records? shocking.), plus Mansun who somehow managed to do the biggest u-turn ever between Six and whatever that last one was called.

Jam ------>>>> Paul Weller
Police ----->>>>>>>> Sting

Though I am probably giving way too much credit to the former bands, neither of whom I would really put into the 'great' category. Just hear recent solo stuff by both artists and they are some kind of awful.

also, Rod Stewart?

Simple Minds, but certainly not Roxy Music. Their last album was their best.

In the case of Police, the first three Sting solo albums were not at all bad, but later stuff surely has been.

Ah, Little Kix. Good times, great memories.

Catherine Wheel did this, I believe, twice.

(with probably the biggest artistic UPturn I know of in between)

i'll start us off with Roxy Music

Classic Suggest Ban material.

and let's go for Suede/Brett Anderson too

Bernard Butler's solo stuff is an even bigger drop, especially his second album which even he hates.

here's the BB quote I was looking for..."universally seen as the shoddiest work of all time"

phil collins

weezer

Yep. Phil Collins is a good call. You could probably say Genesis/Phil Collins even, as Genesis of the 70s were brilliant, Genesis of the 80s and Phil Collins' 80s material somewhat less brilliant, and Phil Collins' solo material of the 90s not exactly brilliant to say the least.

Michael Jackson, well not entirely musically

i'll start us off with Roxy Music

Classic Suggest Ban material.

― ^^^ looks well sick in a u/v light (Noodle Vague), Saturday, 28 March 2009 12:00 (50 minutes ago) Bookmark

^^^^this.

I just kept SBing and SBing and SBing in some kind of Joe-Pesci-in-Goodfellas style frenzy.

FWIW I think Avalon might be my favourite Roxy album.

And I now realise that I have agreed with Geir.

Later career horror in terms of a tailing-off of quality is pretty commonplace. A conscious, willed decision to stuff everything you're good at down the toilet is something special.

Bowie.

Are you claiming his drum 'n bass record is anything less than amazing?

Yep. Phil Collins is a good call. You could probably say Genesis/Phil Collins even, as Genesis of the 70s were brilliant, Genesis of the 80s and Phil Collins' 80s material somewhat less brilliant, and Phil Collins' solo material of the 90s not exactly brilliant to say the least.

Dance into the Light is great! :)

they are sort of minor anyway, but i always thought I Am Kloot fell pretty fast from an awesome album (debut) to a pretty good 2nd one and then a painfully weak third (i think they already released a fourth one as well, which sucked as well)

tina turner

THE STROKES

Becoming kinda bland (ie Tina Turner) is one thing, going from great to gutwrenchingly shit is another thing altogether.

It's the most obvious of all obvious answers, but I'm having trouble seeing past Macca and Bowie on this one.

Critically, not necessarily musically, I'd say Public Enemy's fall from grace was pretty dramatic. Also Dexy's, to a lesser extent, I think.

hmm i'd say bowie has picked it up a bit more on the most recent two.

The Clash- from Combat Rock to Cut the Crap
Lauryn Hill

But he's made me suffer so many 'return to form' articles/reviews - that I wish he'd stop. (cf. Macca also)

(x-post)

Biggest drops in quality ever

But to answer the question: Mouse on Mars. In 10 years they went from unique innovators to boring imitators.

Metallica between And Justice... and the black album.

maybe Ice Cube between The Predator and Lethal Injection

^ good one

q-tip - tribe to 'vivrant thing'

jay-z? -'black album' not on same level as best but compared to 'american gangster'?

velvet underground - 'loaded' to 'squeeze'?

ambitious lovers - 2nd album to 3rd (cant remember the names now)

hootie and the blowfish

Liz Phair

It's been said before by others, but Squeeze ain't too bad if you think of it as a Doug Yule solo album (which it started out as) rather than a last Velvets gasp.

john squire

dunno about catherine wheel ever being amazing

q-tip - tribe to 'vivrant thing'

Eh? "Vivrant Thing" is a great song!

And it's not like Tribe was at it's critical peak when their last album came out.

prince.
sly stone.
george clinton who must be really broke/addicted these days cos hes like a rent-a-dr-funkenstein.

Only Built 4 Cuban Linx to Immobilarity

Van Morrison
REM
Elvis Costello

Talking Heads/David Byrne

Alex Chilton is the template for this no?

Apparently you are all too smart to have tried to listen to "The Endless Wire." Once heard the horror cannot be undone.

The cover was enough to put me off...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/de/Endlesswirecover.jpg/200px-Endlesswirecover.jpg
Looks like the cover of ST Format magazine, circa 1992...

ABC, really. One brilliant debut, followed by a disastrous followup, two somewhat better (but not close the the debut) albums and then a complete downfall filled with lots of pointless releases.

John Squire quitting The Stone Roses to form The Seahorses still shocks me

Tiesto - from generally respected underground DJ to favourite strawman for both rock(ist) critics and anti-populist dance scenesters

v disappointed my "Tiesto monkey dance" meme never took off

Tiesto - from generally respected underground DJ to favourite strawman for both rock(ist) critics and anti-populist dance scenesters

Pretty much the same happened with Paul van Dyk: from a genuine trance innovator in the early 90s to a boring, mediocre pop-trance producer in the late 90s.

Perhaps the real ur-figure in that department was Paul Oakenfold.

Seahorses > "Second Coming".

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2271/2451232703_9f9e84cd6f.jpg?v=0

Real UR-figure

what happened to mad mike?

i'm going to second Weezer...never has a band for me gone from so beloved to so reviled.

There's an argument that Beefheart dipped before becoming awesome again... But I'm not going to make it because Blue Jeans is an awesome record.

i didn't think endless wire was that bad. plus, the who is a bad example, way too muddled of a discography.

yeah...plus EW came 20-something years after some other post-Moon albums that have a bad reputation.

Plus it's actually pretty good.

was Paul Van Dyk really a genuine trance innovator?

not heard anything he did before My World (which was crap no?)

Yeah, back in the early 90s he was considered an important trance producer, at least in Germany. Stuff like "Pump This Party", "Pump This Universe", "Emergency!" "For an Angel" (the original version, not the later pop trance remake), his collaborations with Cosmic Baby, plus some of his early remixes are probably still considered classics in certain circles. Maybe "innovator" is a bit too strong a word, but he certainly was a respected producer.

As a producer no, as a DJ most definitely yes - PvD was one of the few people still believing in & promoting the genre when it went back underground circa 95, when most of 91-94 first wave people (Vath et al) jumped back onto the techno bandwagon.