lcd soundsystem for the 2000s: nostalgic and anxious about being nostalgic.
― Treeship, Friday, 22 August 2014 23:14 (nine years ago) link
I can't really think of one for the 80s cuz imo they would have to straddle both new wave synthpop and rap in some way (to say nothing of what was going on w guitar rock at the time such as the Smiths), and I can't think of a single act that did that
― Οὖτις, viernes 22 de agosto de 2014 20:54 (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Mantronix?
― cock chirea, Friday, 22 August 2014 23:14 (nine years ago) link
80s: Zapp, Culture Club, Big Black
― cock chirea, Friday, 22 August 2014 23:15 (nine years ago) link
― Treeship
That's not what the 00's is about! It's more about dancing and being self-concious.
― Moka, Saturday, 23 August 2014 00:01 (nine years ago) link
White Stripes would have been perfect for 2000s, had their debut not come out in 1999.
― MarkoP, Saturday, 23 August 2014 00:19 (nine years ago) link
Got one for 2000s:Jet
― MarkoP, Saturday, 23 August 2014 00:20 (nine years ago) link
As it currently stands:The Fiery Furnaces
― MarkoP, Saturday, 23 August 2014 00:23 (nine years ago) link
Lil Wayne maybe. He was the first artist I noticed who catapulted himself to top tier status using the internet. Also his mixtapes from the mid aughts have a kind of exhausting, gratuitous quality that I associate with American culture during Bush's second term.
― Treeship, Saturday, 23 August 2014 00:32 (nine years ago) link
rip lil wayne 2000-2009 such a talented 9 year old whyyyyyyyyyyyyy
― linda cardellini (zachlyon), Saturday, 23 August 2014 00:36 (nine years ago) link
00s: 2 Many DJs, Glass Candy, Fischerspooner (not sure if these two are still active, they seem like a good fit anyway)
― cock chirea, Saturday, 23 August 2014 00:45 (nine years ago) link
re-posting from some other thread I probably shouldn't have revived:
I was thinking of this yesterday, although not so much in terms of favorite as much as in terms of artists' whose work during a given decade best approaches encapsulating that decade. Prompted by listening to a bunch of Prince stuff, of course. His run of 80s albums contains so much - both in terms of musical styles and genres covered or touched upon as much as the overall subject matter and aesthetics - and his output reflect the times so well. It has the panicky hedonism, the apocalyptic eschatology (both religious and sexual), the 60s/baby boomer hangover, the sense that computers/tech are the future, flirtations with Reaganism. And musically so much of the decade's trends are present, regardless of whether or not he was setting or following them: post-disco R&B, new wave, 60s throwback jangle pop, Bob Seger-style guitar anthems, rap. If you go through these records they give you a better picture of what 80s pop culture was about, from the dawn of the decade to the end, than almost any other artist I can think of.
Then working back I was figuring Zep for the 70s and (duh) the Beatles for the 60s, although going the other direction I have a harder time - feel like from the 90s on either the number of artist's who sustained a career height through the entire decade become rarer (and they were pretty rare to begin with), or the pop landscape fractured too much for anyone to really cover it all.
I mean you could even (to some extent) extrapolate 80s hair metal from Prince - the androgyny + guitar pyrotechnics and stupid come-ons
― Οὖτις, Friday, 18 December 2015 22:01 (eight years ago) link
although Prince was active outside the 80s so I guess he doesn't quite meet the thread premise re: activity
― Οὖτις, Friday, 18 December 2015 22:02 (eight years ago) link
also I can't accept the Pumpkins for the 90s because the 90s were VERY much about rap imo and Corgan is like the whitest of lily-white non-rap dudes possible
― Οὖτις, Friday, 18 December 2015 22:04 (eight years ago) link
feel like to represent the 80s you'd have to have "light and jaunty" sounding records early on but "heavy and bloated" records by the decade's end.
― lute bro (brimstead), Friday, 18 December 2015 22:10 (eight years ago) link
maybe that's rock-centric, idk
Prince def meets that criteria!
― Οὖτις, Friday, 18 December 2015 22:13 (eight years ago) link
For the 90's, I'd say Pavement might be the best example for it.
― MarkoP, Friday, 18 December 2015 22:22 (eight years ago) link
60s: The Beatles70s: Led Zeppelin80s: Prince90s: Nirvana00s: Animal Collective
― flappy bird, Friday, 18 December 2015 22:28 (eight years ago) link
i don't think prince is a band?
― rap is dad (it's a boy!), Friday, 18 December 2015 22:38 (eight years ago) link
ok, Madonna then
― flappy bird, Friday, 18 December 2015 22:40 (eight years ago) link
tell that to the Time
xp
Madonna is the only real contender for the 80s imo. I have zero interest in her catalog but her transformative zeitgeistiness is undeniable.
― Οὖτις, Friday, 18 December 2015 22:41 (eight years ago) link
Teena Maria
― rap is dad (it's a boy!), Friday, 18 December 2015 22:52 (eight years ago) link
you can't pick an artist you have 0 interest in! you can't subtract yourself from the question
― rap is dad (it's a boy!), Friday, 18 December 2015 22:57 (eight years ago) link
why not? I haven't ever really enjoyed listening to Madonna but I am familiar enough with her work (still have copies of the first three albums, for some reason) and a clear enough memory of her impact over the course of the decade to understand how well she embodied the decade. I guess she's a bit musically less adventurous than other contenders like Prince or Zep or the Beatles - and that's to her detriment - but she was pretty on top of mainstream pop trends, and she still covers a lot of ground.
― Οὖτις, Friday, 18 December 2015 23:01 (eight years ago) link
I guess she has no real connection to any of the rock of the decade, that's a hindrance.
― Οὖτις, Friday, 18 December 2015 23:02 (eight years ago) link
they might be referring to prince and the revolution, but i don't know. i wouldn't choose prince to rperesent the 80s
feel like prince representing the 80s would be saying the 80s was a sex addict's dream sound. the guy made some cool stuff, but his mind didn't coincide with most 80s music? 60s or 70s would be more of a sexual liberty thing
― F♯ A♯ (∞), Friday, 18 December 2015 23:04 (eight years ago) link
porn first became widely available in the 80s thx to VHS so no
― Οὖτις, Friday, 18 December 2015 23:08 (eight years ago) link
choosing a single band/musician/artist to represent decades is a fool's game
as if porn was the peak of 80s pop culture
― F♯ A♯ (∞), Friday, 18 December 2015 23:10 (eight years ago) link
I just meant that in comparison with the 60s/70s the 80s had its own kind of "sexual liberation"
if you have an issue with the basic premise that's all well and good (albeit a different complaint)
― Οὖτις, Friday, 18 December 2015 23:11 (eight years ago) link
― Οὖτις
lol maybe where you're from x-post
― rap is dad (it's a boy!), Friday, 18 December 2015 23:12 (eight years ago) link
exactly. you can't win. it's useless
― F♯ A♯ (∞), Friday, 18 December 2015 23:13 (eight years ago) link
to my mind there was a very deep strain of puritanism vs. sexual hedonism that ran all through the 80s - AIDS crisis, Ed Meese's anti-porn crusade, John Holmes and the Wonderland murders, the Dorothy Stratten murder, the PMRC, the teen-sex comedy genre, I could go on and on
― Οὖτις, Friday, 18 December 2015 23:14 (eight years ago) link
and Prince (and Madonna!) were right in the middle of that stuff, sometimes literally
was grunge the first pop phenomenon that was sex-negative
― COOMBES (mattresslessness), Friday, 18 December 2015 23:16 (eight years ago) link
probably. it was unusual on a lot of levels.
― Οὖτις, Friday, 18 December 2015 23:18 (eight years ago) link
if prince and madonna were the sexual hedonism half, who was the puritanism half? or are they puritan in some way i'm missing
― rap is dad (it's a boy!), Friday, 18 December 2015 23:18 (eight years ago) link
like who were pop music puritans? idk... Stryper? Obviously hedonism has more popular appeal. otoh we don't have to take our clothes off to have a good time, now do we.
― Οὖτις, Friday, 18 December 2015 23:20 (eight years ago) link
outside of music it's pretty obvious who the puritans were
prince's storybook transcendence is kind of puritan on some level imo
― COOMBES (mattresslessness), Friday, 18 December 2015 23:20 (eight years ago) link
i don't think that's how Outic is using puritanism though?
― rap is dad (it's a boy!), Friday, 18 December 2015 23:21 (eight years ago) link
the funny thing about Prince is he can kind of be argued to embody the 80s puritan/hedonism conflict itself, as opposed to just the sexual hedonist side of it. He always had stuff like "Temptation" in his ouevre, refs to God/Xtianity, that kind of thing.
― Οὖτις, Friday, 18 December 2015 23:23 (eight years ago) link
yeah I'm talking old school American religious capital P puritan - renouncing the sins of the flesh for the glory of spiritual communion
obviously Prince *really* went there later in his career
― Οὖτις, Friday, 18 December 2015 23:24 (eight years ago) link
yeah, puritanism in music is rare. i don't think it should be looked at puritanism in music, though. more like the absence of sexual connotations/innuendo, which prince is the polar opposite of.
goth had a dark view on sex and some of them were asexual, but they had opinions on that so you find references to it in their music, so it's definitely some level of hedonism, but not quite prince-level of moaning sounds
― F♯ A♯ (∞), Friday, 18 December 2015 23:25 (eight years ago) link
goth always seemed closely tied to the S&M scene ime, or at least a lot of 80s goths I knew were into the S&M scene and vice versa. Which is not puritan really, if anything it inverts trad religious punishment tropes into sources of pleasure.
― Οὖτις, Friday, 18 December 2015 23:28 (eight years ago) link
puritans probably didn't make a lot of music in the 80's
― rap is dad (it's a boy!), Friday, 18 December 2015 23:29 (eight years ago) link
One thing I did and do appreciate about the Smiths was Morrissey's puritan put-on - claiming to be asexual while always singing about sex
― Οὖτις, Friday, 18 December 2015 23:29 (eight years ago) link
didn't CCM really take off in the 80s? I know it def had its roots in hairy 70s hippie Xtians but like didn't Amy Grant start in the 80s
― Οὖτις, Friday, 18 December 2015 23:31 (eight years ago) link
wait so all you have to do is basically mention christianity to be a puritan?
― rap is dad (it's a boy!), Friday, 18 December 2015 23:33 (eight years ago) link
is that all Amy Grant did? (I wouldn't know tbh - let's ask Joan Crawford Loves Chachi)
― Οὖτις, Friday, 18 December 2015 23:34 (eight years ago) link
i hung out with a bunch of goths in the usa for a short time and a lot identified with being asexual, and the s&m part become more popular as the years went by (after the 80s).
music is just too nuanced and time/city/culture-specific
― F♯ A♯ (∞), Friday, 18 December 2015 23:36 (eight years ago) link