Artists for whom you have a firm "cut-off" album

Sabbath - Sabotage
Van Morrison - Enlightenment (not inc. live releases)
Deep Purple - Perfect Strangers
Elvis Costello - Spike
Bruce - Nebraska
Foreigner - 4

 

Not that nothing good came later but-Iron maiden-7th Son back in 87 or 88?

metallica-And Justice For All
Van Halen -1984

 

Barbra Streisand - Back to Broadway

 

Van Morrison - Back On top - last album of his that I love throughout
The Moody Blues - Seventh Sojourn

 

Have you not heard VII?

 

Prince (actually, 0+> at the time) – Emancipation.

I'd been a huge Prince fan, but felt he was losing the plot during the whole TAFKAP/"slave"/"Prince is Dead" brouhaha with WB in the mid-90's.

I was still buying new releases like Come, The Gold Experience, and even Chaos and Disorder when they first came out, but actually started feeling empathy with WB as Prince started to self-release garbage like Goldn**** and 1-800-New Funk. (As a fan, I'd been dutifully buying everthing Prince put out.)

Emancipation was the final straw. I think I might have listened to it once, but that's it. Its cover art was poor and like everything else Prince was releasing at the time, it was chock full of filler.

It was around this time that Prince started his various music websites that all eventually failed, having his lawyers go after various fanzines, and o+> pretty much becoming a total d***.

After he died last year, I ended up getting nostalgic for his 80s hits, but never bothered to revisit with anything after "Thieves in the Temple".

 

Wow! You missed their best album then (Automatic For The People).

 

Van Halen - 1984
Floyd - Piper
Who - Sell Out
Kiss - Love Gun
Stones - Undercover
Kinks - Arthur
Dylan - stop with John Wesley then pick back up with Good As I Been etc.

 

For a long time, I felt similar to you as there was just too many songs coming from all over the place (albums, singles, downloads, fan club exclusives, etc). It was too much to keep up with the guy. Since he has passed, I have been getting into his music over the past twenty years, and I have found some truly great songs that are worth seeking out. The albums can be a little uneven, but overall there is a lot more quality material than one would expect given the lack of radio hits that Prince had during this time. Anyway, I put together a compilation for the post-Warner Bros. years that I feel gathers up the best he had to offer. If you're reluctant to get the full albums, try to find some of these individual tracks. You might be surprised by how good they are! (BTW, if you want to try one complete album, I'd recommend 3121 from 2006 as it has some really good songs and is highly listenable throughout.)

 

Chicago - Chicago 17

Ohio Players - Angel

Pink Floyd - The Final Cut

Yes - Big Generator

Earth, Wind & Fire - Millennium

Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited

Parliament - The Motor Booty Affair

Bar-Kays - Dangerous

Boston - Stage Three

Fleetwood Mac - Tango In The Night

Queen - Some Kind Of Magic

Eric Clapton - Slowhand

Smokey Robinson - Quiet Storm

Kiss - Rock & Roll Over

 

Bruce Springsteen, his first album. He just never resonated, more about my musical likes than his I suppose.

 

Some last albums I really like by the respective artists:
The Who - Who's Next
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Damn The Torpedoes
The Kinks - Arthur
Pretenders - Packed
Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
Johnny Thunders - So Alone

 

Have you heard the double album Hymns To The Silence from 1991? I think it's very good, probably better than Enlightenment, and a reasonable cut-off-point; none of his subsequent albums have matched it.

 

I couldn't be without Hurt Me, the acoustic album.

 

No Blood on the Tracks, Desire or Oh Mercy?

 

Guess it's possible, but it seems quite unlikely. He would have to change his attitude to songwriting.

 

Oh Mercy - Bob Dylan

i just can't get past his further degrading voice afterwards, sorry.

Somewhere In Afrika - Manfred Mann's Earth Band (solo Manfred: Plains Music) (live stuff is great though, even the new songs on those are nice to great, not at all cheesy cheap chintz-pop)

Going For The One - Yes (don't own Tormato, but what i heard from it doesn't make me wish to go further in that direction any time soon, also this way they go out on an all-time high for me with the closing track, Awaken)

 

The Holy Bible - Manic Street Preachers
The Game - Queen
S.C.I.E.N.C.E - Incubus

Not a complete cut-off, but Zoot Allures is the point where I start to get very wary about Zappa. Everything up to that point is gold...everything after...is not.

 

Travelling Wilburys - Vol. 1

 

Bowie - let's dance
Styx - paradise theatre (new album may change that)
Kansas - monolith
ELO - out of the Blue
Zappa - joes Garage
Queen - the game
Rush - moving pictures
Yes - Talk

 

This deserves its own thread: Artists you cut off for 25 years before reinstating

 

I own them but don't listen to em... something about his 70s and 80s work just doesn't connect... with Blood, I just don't care enough about the subject matter to relate... the others it's probably more a case of the production...

 

I am not the one to first notice or coin the phrase but his "late career renaissance" is unprecedented methinks...

 

Rock was certainly an influence, but Miles' s 70s music is some galaxies removed from standard rock music, with the possible exception of Jack Johnson. Weird, for sure.

 

I prefer Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz and Oczy Mlody over Embryonic.