I’ve noticed that the majority of bands I’ve loved since I was younger have entirely abandoned their old style for music that feels far more bland and uninteresting. It breaks my heart to no end when a band I’ve loved releases a new album and by halfway through you’re done with it.
Lately this has been happening too often to me. Anyone else notice this with their music selection of choice?
There are a few bands like Beck who I’ve been able to continue to enjoy throughout changing of styles in their albums, but for 95% of rock bands they have a “golden period” of a few albums which I like and then I don’t like anything after that.
U2, Yes, Rush, Metallica, all have 3-6 albums which I like, usually at or near the beginning of their careers and often 10-20 more which I don’t like at all. Usually the inflection point when I begin to dislike them is when they try to pivot to the new “hip and cool” musical style of the age and they just fail.
Metallica trying to go more grunge with their self titled Metallica, or Rush trying to go 80’s pop with Signals or Yes doing the same with 90125. U2 didn’t change that much but just started to suck after Zooropa (and it was probably only Brian Eno’s work that saved that one).
This doesn’t seem to be the same for Jazz though. While Jazz musicians do tend to have some bad albums, they don’t seem to be grouped together in the same way as rock artists for the most part. Miles Davis or Bill Evans have shitloads of good albums.