214 said:

MotownSubdivision said:

There's also the fact that the music video medium was discovered in the 1960s and of course was revolutionized in the 1980s.

Music videos came about in the 1930s or 1940s. They were called soundies. Also the media likes to say that after The Beatles, there was only British Invasion, Motown, Woodstock, and psychedelic rock. That isn't true. During the 1960s easy listening, bossa nova, and soft pop were big too. Herb Alpert & Tijuana Brass and 5th Dimension were popular and acts like Percy Faith, Mantovani, James Last, Johnny Mathis, Dean Martin, Burt Bacharach, Henry Mancini, Neil Sedaka, etc. were charting during that era too. Louis Armstrong knocked The Beatles off of #1 with Hello Dolly in the mid 1960s. Soundtracks from movie musicals like The Sound Of Music charted in Billboard's Top 10 albums during the 1960s.

214 said:

We never know, what or what not could be a hit nowadays.

Since Lil Wayne & Drake has more Hot 100 hits than anyone else, having them or Nicki Minaj on a song is a good sign that it will be a hit today. If you follow Billboard or listen to Top 40, you can tell what is more likely to be popular, especially since most of today's radio is run by a conglomerate with identical playlists run by computer. You can also look at what new songs and performers get the most views on Youtube. That's why Billboard uses streaming as their chart criteria nowadays.

MickyDolenz said:

MotownSubdivision said:

I'll concede with the music videos; thanks for informing me. With the 60's music scene, I wasn't trying to say that Motown and The Beatles were all there was but they were at the forefront of mainstream music. Every decade has stuff going on on a lower level.

Part of the the reason those acts are today considered at the forefront is because the main music press is Rolling Stone magazine style rock journalism. History is generally written by the winner. So of course they're not going to say much if anything about about easy listening or other non-rock music that was popular. Like they say that between late 1950s rock and when The Beatles became popular, there was nothing and that The Beatles came along to save music. "Save" it from what? The rock press means that the British Invasion "saved" music from what they thought was uncool like Connie Francis and Frankie Avalon. It's also the same thing when they write about Elvis Presley having a "comeback" in 1968, when Elvis hadn't gone anywhere and continued to chart with his soundtrack songs & albums the years before that. But the soundtrack stuff wan't cool or "rock n roll" to them, so he had to "comeback" from it. Herb Alpert was getting hit singles in the late 1960s during the psychedelic flower child era. So the music The Beatles "saved" music from didn't really go anywhere if you look at the charts.

MotownSubdivision said:

Dasein said:

I would like for you to unpack this: how are the 80s a more colorful incarnation of the 60s?

Let's look at the facts: -The 60's introduced an influx of UK acts to the US with the British Invasion. The 80's did the same with the Second British Invasion. -The 60's saw black music go mainstream on a major, recognizable scale with the likes of Motown, setting the stage for the 70's where R&B, soul, funk and disco were prevailing genres. The 80's started off with mostly white acts receiving the lion's share of the spotlight but as black artists began to be thrust back onto center stage, the music scene became diverse again. Just like the 60's set the stage for black music to be huge in the 70's, the 80's set the stage for black music, namely R&B and hip hop to be dominant genres in the 90's. -Many artists who would go on to define the 80's were born or were kids in the 60's and grew up on Motown and the British Invasion. It stands to reason that many of them were influenced by the sounds of their childhood and you can hear it in their music. Many British acts in particular wore the influence of black music on the sleeve (Phil Collins, George Michael, etc.). To sum it up, black and British acts were major forces for both musical eras; in both cases, black acts had to cross over to appeal to the mainstream [white] audience with pop music steeped in soul and R&B but were able to succeed with the pure incarnations of which by decade's end. British acts set the stage by introducing new musical techniques and genres which define their respective decades(a different variation of rock/pop in the 60's and new wave/synth-pop in the 80's). There's also the fact that the music video medium was discovered in the 1960s and of course was revolutionized in the 1980s.

why was it that people were expected to crossover, why couldn't have been where your talent could exist with audiences supporting that person without the pretense......

the crossover phenomenon planted the seeds for music's overall decline....

Scorp said:

why was it that people were expected to crossover, why couldn't have been where your talent could exist with audiences supporting that person without the pretense......

If you look at the Top 20 of the biggest selling acts in history, what is the race of most of them? There's your answer. The same with TV & movies in the USA. The "mainstream" is really code for a certain race that someone has to crossover to so that they will buy their records. Like in the 1990s, there was talk of a Latin Explosion in music. But acts like Shakira, Luis Miguel & Ricky Martin were already popular to the Latino audience. The "explosion" was when Columbus "discovered" them and they became popular to him for a little while. At one time Jackie Chan was one of the biggest movie stars in the world but was mostly unkown in the US other than appearing in The Cannonball Run movies, where Burt Reynolds was the main draw. Jackie's crossover happened in the 1990s with Rumble In The Bronx, when he had many movies before that and he tried to break into the American market long before that but failed.

MickyDolenz said:

Scorp said:

Im very aware of those occurrences I asked that question to point to who specifically was all the crossing over was for and geared to

Well more white people bought records than non-whites and whites were also more likely to buy merchandising. That's why companies sold Beatle wigs, games, & dolls in the 1960s. There was all kinds of things for New Kids On The Block, but not for New Edition. Whites also ran most of the magazines and television where acts can be promoted. That wasn't the case for most non-whites, so it wouldn't make much sense for a white act to be considered as crossing over to a black audience where there were fewer sales and media coverage. Appearing in Ebony or Jet wouldn't reach as many people as appearing in People or Rolling Stone. There was even a skit on Saturday Night Live where Frank Sinatra tells Stevie Wonder that Ebony is a magazine that most people don't buy, when they were getting ready to perform Ebony And Ivory.

MickyDolenz said:

Scorp said:

Im very aware of those occurrences I asked that question to point to who specifically was all the crossing over was for and geared to

Well more white people bought records than non-whites and whites were also more likely to buy merchandising. That's why companies sold Beatle wigs, games, & dolls in the 1960s. There was all kinds of things for New Kids On The Block, but not for New Edition. Whites also ran most of the magazines and television where acts can be promoted. That wasn't the case for most non-whites, so it wouldn't make much sense for a white act to be considered as crossing over to a black audience where there were fewer sales and media coverage. Appearing in Ebony or Jet wouldn't reach as many people as appearing in People or Rolling Stone. There was even a skit on Saturday Night Live where Frank Sinatra tells Stevie Wonder that Ebony is a magazine that most people don't buy, when they were getting ready to perform Ebony And Ivory.

so ultimately, the way things have been shaped and dictated by

instead of being a situation where true merit should be the only measure of success where the environment would allow support to branch over naturally cross party lines

when it pertains to the issue of race where race is premium in any given situation, support of the exclusive audience is held in higher esteem and promotes a greater degree of validation than anything else

Scorp said:

so ultimately, the way things have been shaped and dictated by

instead of being a situation where true merit should be the only measure of success where the environment would allow support to branch over naturally cross party lines

when it pertains to the issue of race where race is premium in any given situation, support of the exclusive audience is held in higher esteem and promotes a greater degree of validation than anything else

I'd say it is more a money situation. If Prince hadn't of crossed over, would this site exist? Not likely, as I don't see any fansites for old acts primarily popular to the R&B audience like Teddy Pendergrass, Lou Rawls, or The Gap Band. Would Michael Jackson have been able to build Neverland or buy the ATV catalog without getting crossover sales? Notice that The Jacksons albums and songs don't get the same amount of attention as they didn't really crossover, nor do they have sites dedicated to them like Mike or Janet, who did have major crossover success. Really the record companies many of the crossover acts were signed to were white owned and ran. They're a business, so they're going to try to reach the audience with the most money who will buy their products. So they're going to push for records that will reach the mainstream white audience more than ones who will mainly sell to a non-white or non-mainstream audience. Like a label isn't going to spend a lot of money on promoting polka albums, even though mostly white people buy that and most af the polka acts are white. A lot of albums that mainly sold to the black audience are out of print today, or is in print in other countries like Japan & UK and you have to buy it as a costly import. But you can find the albums of crossover R&B acts like Stevie Wonder, EWF, Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson, & Billie Ocean. You're also not likely going to see this kind of release with a R&B audience only act like Lakeside or The Dramatics.

MickyDolenz said:

Scorp said:

so ultimately, the way things have been shaped and dictated by

instead of being a situation where true merit should be the only measure of success where the environment would allow support to branch over naturally cross party lines

when it pertains to the issue of race where race is premium in any given situation, support of the exclusive audience is held in higher esteem and promotes a greater degree of validation than anything else

I'd say it is more a money situation. If Prince hadn't of crossed over, would this site exist? Not likely, as I don't see any fansites for old acts primarily popular to the R&B audience like Teddy Pendergrass, Lou Rawls, or The Gap Band. Would Michael Jackson have been able to build Neverland or buy the ATV catalog without getting crossover sales? Notice that The Jacksons albums and songs don't get the same amount of attention as they didn't really crossover, nor do they have sites dedicated to them like Mike or Janet, who did have major crossover success. Really the record companies many of the crossover acts were signed to were white owned and ran. They're a business, so they're going to try to reach the audience with the most money who will buy their products. So they're going to push for records that will reach the mainstream white audience more than ones who will mainly sell to a non-white or non-mainstream audience. Like a label isn't going to spend a lot of money on promoting polka albums, even though mostly white people buy that and most af the polka acts are white. A lot of albums that mainly sold to the black audience are out of print today, or is in print in other countries like Japan & UK and you have to buy it as a costly import. But you can find the albums of crossover R&B acts like Stevie Wonder, EWF, Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson, & Billie Ocean. You're also not likely going to see this kind of release with a R&B audience only act like Lakeside or The Dramatics.

It's not that artists of a distinctive cultural background could not have succeed if things were structured properly

The problem is and has always been in order to "crossover" a premier artist has to play the game, and some of them did advance, but it was at the expense of everything that made them truly successful, and crossing over when it became paramount to do so, every single distinctive cultural expression of music was devalued, and underappreciated which is why many of today's urban radio stations refer to classic r&b as "old school" when that same classic r&b was the richest music across the landscape that many from other genres has either borrowed from, sampled, or interpolated....

when it all boils down to it, and I'm not speaking of the common folk, but when it comes to validation, the sought after audience, the audience that a premier artists was pushed to seek the entire time, even when their original audience started out supporting them in the beginning, that sought after audience wins out and is deemed more important, but then everyone including the sought after audience loses in the end

Whereas if things were done in balance, with a sense of equal value and consideration, we would see more website/forums online focusing on those r&b acts that we're not seeing, but the reason that's not happening, is because that audience who often served as the initial base of support, that audience is often casted and pushed out when the artist they have supported crosses over, and that audience was pushed out a long time ago before the internet expanded.

to me, everyone's dollar should be viewed as equal.

if the crossover dynamic never existed, music would not have declined and the environment permeating throughout the entertainment industry would be allot more healthier and balanced today.

reminds of the famous saying, what's good for the goose is good for the gander

Scorp said:

if the crossover dynamic never existed, music would not have declined and the environment permeating throughout the entertainment industry would be allot more healthier and balanced today.

The record industry wouldn't exist at all without the mainstream audience. If there's more white people to buy a product than black people, how is sticking to a black only audience who there wasn't as many of, and were likely to have less disposable money for entertainment, going to keep a company in business. It was the white audience who mainly made blackface performers popular. It was the white audience who made Stepin Fetchit rich & famous. Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie were famous because their records sold to whites and they performed in "high class" white establishments like The Cotton Club, unlike black audience only acts who mostly played in TOBA chitlin' circuit juke joints, clubs, and hole in the walls that didn't pay as well. The Apollo Theater was white owned too. Those early crossover acts like Louis Armstrong, Ink Spots, and Mills Brothers were filmed. Some of them were in Hollywood movies. You can't say that for the average chitlin' circuit performer.

There'a also the case that the white audience are more likely to be nostalgic and support their old acts. The Stones, Depeche Mode, Bon Jovi, & Paul McCartney can still have big grossing tours long after their Top 40 airplay days have dried up. The black audience in general will abandon what came before. They did it with ragtime, jazz, the blues, funk, soul, etc. Several blues acts have said that they had a hard time getting gigs in the early 1960s until the British acts like the Rolling Stones started talking about them and putting them on their tours. After that, they started getting booked in white coffee houses where beatniks, white college students & hippies paid to see them. B.B. King said that Frank Sinatra helped him to get gigs in Las Vegas in the 1960s and he also said that during that time many blacks became middle or upper class and that some started to feel ashamed of the blues, it was backwards & country to them. Like they were black hillbillies with overalls and chewing tobacco. That's why blues lost popularity on R&B radio then and soul became the hip thing. If you look today, there's often more whites at blues and jazz concerts than black people.

phunkdaddy said:

214 said:

We never know, what or what not could be a hit nowadays.

^^^^ My sentiments exactly

But i didn't mean it in a negative way. It happens all the time actually, not just nowadays. Who would imagine that something so weird like Family Affair, Like Arolling Stone or When Doves Cry would top the charts.

MickyDolenz said:

Scorp said:

if the crossover dynamic never existed, music would not have declined and the environment permeating throughout the entertainment industry would be allot more healthier and balanced today.

The record industry wouldn't exist at all without the mainstream audience. If there's more white people to buy a product than black people, how is sticking to a black only audience who there wasn't as many of, and were likely to have less disposable money for entertainment, going to keep a company in business. It was the white audience who mainly made blackface performers popular. It was the white audience who made Stepin Fetchit rich & famous. Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie were famous because their records sold to whites and they performed in "high class" white establishments like The Cotton Club, unlike black audience only acts who mostly played in TOBA chitlin' circuit juke joints, clubs, and hole in the walls that didn't pay as well. The Apollo Theater was white owned too. Those early crossover acts like Louis Armstrong, Ink Spots, and Mills Brothers were filmed. Some of them were in Hollywood movies. You can't say that for the average chitlin' circuit performer.

everything you just said highlights that ultimately, the white audience is viewed as the most important audience because they are in a position to determine who who's going to achieve what. and I'm not really talking about all segments of the white population, that would be unfair to suggest that because it's not abot the all. I'm specifically speaking of the audience who holds keys to validation and privilege

all the coding is in the context of the words we often use to state our position......

if things were done right and had been done right....there would be no such thing as a mainstream audience or crossing over....those two entities withen itself are predicated on race and who's in position to dictate outcomes....

if things were done right, where everyone's input/contribution to the growth of the industry, regardless of whoever carries the dominant population size, and if one segment of society have majority control of the functionality of a particular industry, we wouldn't be witnessing what we are today......black music has been decimated and it does not exist anymore because the culture from with all that body of music was created out of has been exhausted and tapped out, and proof is what is being offered on these airwaves today.

if thing would have been built on equal principle, on equal billing, we would never have had the chitlin circuit, the chitlin circuit was created by the need to create a subculture to exist w/in a dominant culture that tends to exploit, but got exploited anyway in the end, and it existed because that was all that was left to be given.

if things were done right from day one, we would have had more black owned record labels right out the gate, the latino community would have had more latino owned record labels out the gate, along with other cultures of people.

The reason the music was still rich was despite of the contradictory principles is that the culture was rich and vibrant through years, decades, centuries of raw creativity, emotion, instinct that contributed to the shaping of it

and no way Im a suggesting that an artist of a distinct culture should only seek the support of its own......what I'm saying is the crossover movement and phenomenon encouraged premier black artists to contort their image, presentation, and look in order to achieve "mainstream" support, and when that happened, most if not all of those artists who went down that path lost that enthusiastic support of that original audience because they felt that what was so precious was being taken away, and it generated hostility along the way because the original audience saw how they were being pushed out.

Crossing over does not encourage nor promote balance, and it was never designed to do that.

if things would have been done right and the talents of the premier artists would have been promoted without pretense, or without all the angles, we would not have had the problems that we've seen over time.

there's a cause and effect to this stuff, the ying and the yang

[Edited 5/18/17 3:52am]

MickyDolenz said:

There'a also the case that the white audience are more likely to be nostalgic and support their old acts. The Stones, Depeche Mode, Bon Jovi, & Paul McCartney can still have big grossing tours long after their Top 40 airplay days have dried up. The black audience in general will abandon what came before. They did it with ragtime, jazz, the blues, funk, soul, etc. Several blues acts have said that they had a hard time getting gigs in the early 1960s until the British acts like the Rolling Stones started talking about them and putting them on their tours. After that, they started getting booked in white coffee houses where beatniks, white college students & hippies paid to see them. B.B. King said that Frank Sinatra helped him to get gigs in Las Vegas in the 1960s and he also said that during that time many blacks became middle or upper class and that some started to feel ashamed of the blues, it was backwards & country to them. Like they were black hillbillies with overalls and chewing tobacco. That's why blues lost popularity on R&B radio then and soul became the hip thing. If you look today, there's often more whites at blues and jazz concerts than black people.

the primary reason why this is the case, why the white audience are more prone to support those traditional acts is because those acts didn't have to crossover, or ever encouraged to cross over.

it's not a case of abandonment of the black audience but the black audience feeling that it was abandoned.......this is why the generation that follows tend to chide what came before because of the actions that occurred in years prior

this is why I say, the onus, or blame is directed at the wrong source.......

if things would have been done right in the begin as the music industry started to flourish in the 20th century, there never would have been an abandonment of support.

if we took the race dynamic out of the equation, 95% of the problems that we see and have seen would have never existed and there would be balance across the board.

MotownSubdivision said:

Dasein said:

I would like for you to unpack this: how are the 80s a more colorful incarnation of the 60s?

Let's look at the facts: -The 60's introduced an influx of UK acts to the US with the British Invasion. The 80's did the same with the Second British Invasion. -The 60's saw black music go mainstream on a major, recognizable scale with the likes of Motown, setting the stage for the 70's where R&B, soul, funk and disco were prevailing genres. The 80's started off with mostly white acts receiving the lion's share of the spotlight but as black artists began to be thrust back onto center stage, the music scene became diverse again. Just like the 60's set the stage for black music to be huge in the 70's, the 80's set the stage for black music, namely R&B and hip hop to be dominant genres in the 90's. -Many artists who would go on to define the 80's were born or were kids in the 60's and grew up on Motown and the British Invasion. It stands to reason that many of them were influenced by the sounds of their childhood and you can hear it in their music. Many British acts in particular wore the influence of black music on the sleeve (Phil Collins, George Michael, etc.). To sum it up, black and British acts were major forces for both musical eras; in both cases, black acts had to cross over to appeal to the mainstream [white] audience with pop music steeped in soul and R&B but were able to succeed with the pure incarnations of which by decade's end. British acts set the stage by introducing new musical techniques and genres which define their respective decades(a different variation of rock/pop in the 60's and new wave/synth-pop in the 80's). There's also the fact that the music video medium was discovered in the 1960s and of course was revolutionized in the 1980s.

'Tis a great post, Motown, but I thought we were speaking of the compositional and production
values found in songs in the 80s and not anything else?

Dasein said:

Dasein said:

Shawy89 said:

Billie Jean comes to mind as it's the definition of a timeless record

What'dya think?

I seriously doubt that songs from the 80s, even the "good ones", would be as successful today as they
were yesterday. The proof is in the music that is charting currently which hardly carries any similarities
in terms of genre, compositional/production values, etc. with what was charting back then.

I guess if you want to ignore that Uptown Funk, the biggest hit of the decade, was basically a big Prince rip off.

Fucking MJ barely wrote any of his songs.

Scorp said:

the primary reason why this is the case, why the white audience are more prone to support those traditional acts is because those acts didn't have to crossover, or ever encouraged to cross over.

They didn't have to crossover because they're white already, the default race in the US. MTV showed way more white acts than non-white, and the Top 40 played more whites. People tend to buy their own race/ethnicity. If I go to my relatives house, most of the music they listen to is by black performers because they're black. When I went to school, most of them were 99% black students, and many considered rock "white boy music" and made fun of people who listened to it or say things like "why you wanna be white". That's the reason Pat Boone sold more than Little Richard & Fats Domino with the same songs. Vicente Fernandez & Selena sold primarily to Mexicans. It has nothing to do with the music business, it's society in general. Whites are more likely to buy the music by other races, than vice versa. White people buy music from other countries and call it "world music". They record with said acts (Paul Simon, Sting, Peter Gabriel, etc). You don't see many black R&B performers doing Irish, Russian, or Samoan based music in the same way. Not that many blacks go into the classical & opera field or buy records of it either. There haven't been many blacks going into country or folk music either. Some have made country songs like Lionel Richie & Pointer Sisters, but not doing it exclusively like Charley Pride.

MickyDolenz said:

214 said:

We never know, what or what not could be a hit nowadays.

Since Lil Wayne & Drake has more Hot 100 hits than anyone else, having them or Nicki Minaj on a song is a good sign that it will be a hit today. If you follow Billboard or listen to Top 40, you can tell what is more likely to be popular, especially since most of today's radio is run by a conglomerate with identical playlists run by computer. You can also look at what new songs and performers get the most views on Youtube. That's why Billboard uses streaming as their chart criteria nowadays.

That fact tells me that today's youth would not appreciate or understand good music from the '80's. Therefore, nothing from the '80's would sell today, IMHO.

MotownSubdivision said:

Dasein said:

'Tis a great post, Motown, but I thought we were speaking of the compositional and production
values found in songs in the 80s and not anything else?

That's not what I was going for; I meant in terms of atmosphere and culturd. I'm not well-versed on that level of musicology anyway.

Gotcha.

2freaky4church1 said:

Fucking MJ barely wrote any of his songs.

Depends on how you define "wrote" here. Michael Jackson's songwriting process, if I'm not mistaken,
was to sing instrumental/vocal melodies into a tape recorder and bring the ideas to Quincy Jones who
helped him flesh out the melodies compositionally, who then took these more concrete ideas to studio/
session musicians who made their compositional contributions too.

Well, how did all of this start? So, give Jackson his just due. But he was not certainly writing out charts
and distributing them to musicians like Prince would do . . .

First one that comes to mind..the Beautiful Ones..minus the screaming at the end.

alandail said:

2freaky4church1 said:

Dasein said:

NorthC said:

Dasein said:

Depends on how you define "wrote" here. Michael Jackson's songwriting process, if I'm not mistaken,
was to sing instrumental/vocal melodies into a tape recorder and bring the ideas to Quincy Jones who
helped him flesh out the melodies compositionally, who then took these more concrete ideas to studio/
session musicians who made their compositional contributions too.

Well, how did all of this start? So, give Jackson his just due. But he was not certainly writing out charts
and distributing them to musicians like Prince would do . . .

Okay... Marvin Gaye used to do this too: just mumbling and doodling into a microphone and work out lyrics from there. In the case of the Jackson/Jones collaboration: who wrote the lyrics?

Jackson.

NorthC said:

Dasein said:

Depends on how you define "wrote" here. Michael Jackson's songwriting process, if I'm not mistaken,
was to sing instrumental/vocal melodies into a tape recorder and bring the ideas to Quincy Jones who
helped him flesh out the melodies compositionally, who then took these more concrete ideas to studio/
session musicians who made their compositional contributions too.

Well, how did all of this start? So, give Jackson his just due. But he was not certainly writing out charts
and distributing them to musicians like Prince would do . . .

Okay... Marvin Gaye used to do this too: just mumbling and doodling into a microphone and work out lyrics from there. In the case of the Jackson/Jones collaboration: who wrote the lyrics?

214 is right. And I think Gaye had more ability in this area than Jackson did as if I remember
correctly, Gaye was adequately efficient at playing piano, where I think Jackson was not so much
efficient at playing anything.