I think @musicprnt might have been referring to Madonna in post #94. The Material Girl is not the greatest singer in the world, nor the most accomplished songwriter, but her dancing, sense of style and attitude won many over in the '80s.
I always heard people in the past talking about the difference between a musician and an artist. The difference, they defined, was that an artist creates the music he/she loves and maybe it sells/maybe not, where a musician is simply just paid for his performance, and the larger the paying audience the better. A too simplistic definition I know, but it has some merit. Years ago, I remember “Money” by Pink Floyd was seen as a sellout song because it had a much more mainstream sound and was their only single that sold enough to hit inside Billboard’s top 15 (until later in 1980). There were plenty of people that liked Floyd, but didn’t like “Money”. And others that liked “Money” but not their other works.
^^ With “Money” being about selling out.
I may need to go see Inception again to understand this thread now.
@prezbucky:
I was referring to Madonna (Whitney Houston had talent, she had a genuine singing voice), she was all about marketing and hype IMO, she had great talent as an entertainer, people loved the spectacle, but I am talking more about the musical side of it. I love groups the musical snobs hate, so I am not talking snobbism per se, saying “oh, that group sold out” is bs IMO…as long as the group was writing stuff they wanted to. Big difference, relatively well known band in the 80’s created an album and used focus groups and stuff to shape it, and the album was successful but it was apparent they themselves didn’t like it. With someone like Madonna, the genius was in the producers and songwriters who shaped it. Lady Gaga does the same kind of outrageous stuff Madonna did, but the big difference is underneath it she has musical talent that can’t be hidden, despite all the crazy theatrics and whatnot. It raises questions that go on in all forms, what is genuinely music, what is pap designed to please a wide swath of people, and there are no real answers there (that debate rages in the classical world, especially with modern classical music, audiences tend to be attraced towards tonal, traditional music (the ‘warhorses’, like Beethoven’s Fifth symphone and the like) while modernist music gets an audience you might call “artsy”, and battles over ‘crowd pleasing’ versus “artistic” goes on. My personal take is kind of along the philosophical lines that Ars Gratia Artis (my latin stinks, “art that pleases artist”) is all well and good, but that that kind of art/music is listened to by few, so what is the point? (and again, that is my view of it). When a composer or artist says "I don’t care if I have an audience’ is a very brave thing, but it also leaves out that art/music is not just about yourself, and if audiences don’t listen, what have you achieved, especially if you are trying to deliver a message?
The other thing to look at is does the music last? Do people listen to it after its shelf life has passed? Back in the 80’s, we were told synthesizer bands were going to be the big thing going forward and plain rock music was going to die, but it didn’t, Disco was supposed to take over everything, it didn’t (it evolved into “Dance Music”), Obnoxious bands with, to quote Lester Bangs et al “Packaged Swill” were going to take over, Punk and then Grunge turned that on its ear…and one thing I’ll ask is the music still listened to years later? My take on artistry is whatever the form, if it can touch the soul of people at the time, then later on, it passes the test, if it doesn’t, then maybe the artistry is not enough, maybe its art was limited to what the person themselved viewed, rather than touching people…so that one hit wonder sold 10 million records, but did it pass the test of time other than that?
I think that Duke Ellington had the best description of it, he said there are two kinds of music, good and bad music, and I think the ultimate answer is good music continues to live on down the road, people hear it and enjoy it who never heard it before and continue to listen to it. It doesn’t mean it will be something like the Beatles, who seem to have a large group of listeners across all age groups, but if there is more than a handful of people relatively who discover it down the road, and keep listening to it or playing it, then it passes the test of time:)
You might not like Madonna’s singing chops but I respect her ability to create, recreate, and market herself. She wrote much of her own stuff and produced it as well. She was very much involved in creating who she is and she has had longevity and is very good at inventing and reinventing. She was also doing this at a time when very few females were. Madonna pushed the boundaries at the time in terms of choreography as well. She’s no dummy and she’s no slouch.
For those who like 80’s music, the guy at Fluxblog has put together a series of crazily comprehensive playlists / mix tapes for each year of the 80s. For those of us who were in high school and college in the 80s, it is a trip down memory lane to review the lists.
@PlantMom, you may like the above post.
@doschicos: I never denied that Madonna was great at packaging herself, at marketing her look and image and so forth, but I was talking musical artistry, not packaging. Don Kirshner did a great job packaging made up bands like the Archies (and I believe the Monkees), but that doesn’t mean they were necessarily great music, either. As an entertainer I think she was a genius, but I was talking music, and the quality of the music she put out is not great IMO (and after all, we are talking that). The real genius in pop music are the producers and engineers on most of it, one telling factor, when you have a performer who is basically dancing around on stage to mostly recorded music and is likely lip synching, then it is the back room people who are the geniuses.
The Archies may not have been great music, but one way or another I can still sing the Archies’ theme song. And they were nothing compared to the Ohio Express! (Sugar, Sugar; Chewy; Down At Lulu’s.) The people writing and producing those songs were the Max Martins and Dr. Lukes of their time – hardly an unambivalent recommendation, but I think you have to acknowledge a certain kind of greatness there.
And, by the way . . . No one has ever accused Madonna of having a great voice, but there are many more great voices around than there are great artists. Apart from the obvious brand-building, marketing, and courtesanly skills – valuable in the world, but hardly “art” – Madonna repeatedly broke new ground and made recordings that are certainly still listenable and danceable today. There’s a lot of joy and excitement in those songs. I don’t have any trouble appreciating Madonna (or Adele, for that matter), even though it’s not what I generally choose to listen to.
Yes, we know, musicprnt, you have superior music picking credentials than all of us. You’ve made that abundantly clear on previous threads.
Btw, it’s fashionable to diss the Monkees but they did an admirable job with some of the best pop writers in history.
Yes it is clear to me now, too.
@pizzagirl-
I was expressing my opinion, and i clearly stated it was that, and also stated that I liked groups that other people looked down on. I never said that the Monkees or the Archies didn’t have great songs, they had some great pop tunes, but they weren’t written by the members of the group, neither group really had a group in the sense that the Monkees didn’t play the instruments on the songs, and the Archies didn’t exist (they were both done by studio musicians). Like I said, the genius of a lot of pop music is the songwriters and the session guys and the engineers…great pop music is great pop music, but it also doesn’t mean the people performing it are that musically great either, they don’t have to be. You might think Madonna is the greatest thing since sliced bread, I said why I didn’t think she was great musically, and that is my opinion , and if you don’t like it, that is fine.
Someone mentioned Adele, and want to know the difference? You put Madonna on stage with a piano and a guitar player, and I doubt many people would find it a great concert, when Adele performs it is her voice and the songs that are the attraction, she performs on stage with relatively few musicians and she certainly is not using auto tune. Lady Gaga does the whole crazy stage thing, but she could probably hold a concert playing piano and singing her songs and others songs and it would likely be a good concert. Like I said, who will still be listened to 20,30 years from now of the generations we are talking about, and that is the ultimate answer to it IMO.
Madonna wrote, produced, and choreographed most of her own stuff. And she passes the 20, 30 year test as well.
Although, does she have the best natural singing voice? No, but neither does Bob Dylan or Springsteen or many other artists.
^True. And on the other hand, I get that Adele has a wonderful voice, but I cannot abide any of her songs, or her style. I would hate to have to sit through a concert of hers. So definitely a case of YMMV.
@garland:
Of course, that is the point, it is YMMV…what is great is in the eye of the beholder, I simply said where my viewpoint comes from shrug. George Bernard Shaw considered Brahms a hack, Tchaikovsky called Brahms an untalented SOB…lol
Just listening/watching to some late 70s music this afternoon and thought of this thread. (British TV show video) 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxu5dKqEmZM&feature=share
Dang, Tina Weymouth looked even more intense in that clip than she usually did.
Though I’ve always thought of even the 70s output of the Talking Heads as proto-80s, not 70s—one of the problems of thinking about music by decade.
The 80s without a doubt…
U2, Depeche Mode, New Order, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince, etc.
No other decade has had so many monumentally ground-breaking new artists with long-standing careers…
@djbdfb Yeah, not highlighting Tina at her best re: style but she was rocking the bass. 
You might have missed the discussion further up stream on this thread where I was including the Talking Heads and other groups as one of the reasons that I like 70s music, where one or two other posters were arguing it was 80s. For me, my strongest associations were the 70s because that’s when I discovered them. I was just an early adopter.
WWWard - I like the 80’s plenty. I think one could argue that the '60s had just as many, if not more, ground-breaking new artists with long-standing careers.