Rock bands/artists who went pop

Yup - that was my point. VH never "went pop" - they were pop from the debut on!

 

Seems that no one mentioned the worst violator---Grand Funk Railroad

 

Robert Plant...

 

When you start out AOR or corporate arena rock to begin with, how commercial can you go?

 

Good point. I was 10 when Foreigner debuted and they clearly appealed to a pop audience then - I mean, a lot of rock was also "pop" at that time.

No, 1970s radio-friendly rock wasn't "pop" like Barry Manilow or Carpenters were "pop", but I think "pop" is a broad umbrella - and was even more so in the 1970s since rock was so big in that era.

I wouldn't claim that a rock song automatically becomes "pop" because it's a hit, but "pop" and "rock" aren't as mutually exclusive as some seem to feel...

 

Those stations have osteoporosis.

 

That's right. There was a time not all that long ago, where a hard rock song could still become a hit. That time seems to have passed into history now. The 7os rockers like Queen and Aerosmith and Van Halen to some extent did seek out some pop glory while trying to fit into the 80s culture and radio.

 

Queen and Aerosmith carried it forward and made appearances on American Idol. At least VH knew when to stop "fitting into culture."

 

(Most) or all of them.........

Comes a time when a DJ or a record company took that one song, even if it's not representative of that band, and it ends up on the radio. Then they want more.
Of course artists have a choice, but most of them like to have their music heard. Before the Internet, radio and MTV-VH1 were those avenues. Now you can do whatever you please and have a worldwide audience and avoid the cliche'.

 

More like they didn't have the nerve with Sammy. Not enough girl appeal w/o Dave.

 

Try again.

 

Coldplay were borderline early on, but fully sold out to pop from album five onwards in my opinion.

 

No reason to. I stand by my remarks.

 

This is the first band that I thought about after reading the title.

 

Let's face it, the entire Hair Metal genre was an excuse for metal bands to go pop....to try to get the girl fans as well as the boys.

 

I think music in general went from more of a rock foundation to a pop sound. So... while most of these are accurate examples, nearly everyone would be. The 80's weren't kind to most classic rockers.

 

Van Halen had 7 top 40 hits with Dave (three of which were covers) and 9 with Sammy.

 

My point was never commercial vs. non commercial. It was FM rock vs. Top 40 pop.

 

Other than Motley Crue, not sure how many of those groups had metal bonafides to begin with. Most of them were using Van Halen as their template, rather than, say, Zeppelin or Sabbath.

 

Their metal cred or not didn't matter that much; theirs was the age of MTV, spandex, and hair spray.

 

Gentle Giant
Santana
Clapton
U2
Steven Wilson - his last album
Rush
Allman Brothers Band - 2 albums in the early 1980s

 

I'm just saying that other than Motley Crue, those Sunset Strip bands didn't sweeten their sound, most of them were poppy from their debut album on. Though some did actually try to go the reverse route and toughen their sound after hair metal went out of fashion.

 

Nowadays, it seems easier to go from rock artist to country artist. Especially for those not so young anymore....

 

Just because Straight From the Heart (for example) got played on FM rock stations doesn't mean that it wasn't a pop song. Bryan Adams didn't go pop. He didn't have to. He was already pop.

 

The Jam into the Style Council

The Clash into Big Audio Dynamite