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Are “bands” a thing of the past?

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I was listening to Richard Osman talk about this on his podcast recently. I don’t recall the actual stats but a surprisingly small amount of “bands” currently exist – with the last one having a number one single aaages ago.

The pop charts are solo performers and/or DJs collaborating with people. You won’t see Bruno Mars forming his own Tin Machine any time soon.

A confident, stage-schooled solo performer is a lot easier to handle and promote. Also, the reality shows that gave us One Direction and HearSay are gone.

The trouble is that some of the most talented and successful artists have started in bands – shy, awkward, nervous in themselves but a group of mates creating a noise behind them gave them the necessary confidence to get onstage. Top-of-head examples, George Michael, Thom Yorke, David Byrne, Gwen Stefani. Without their respective bands/friends it is highly unlikely we’d have seen them at all.

Solo performers seem to be more troubled than singers in a band. Sweeping generalisation I know. I get the feeling that Bono for example really, really needs the band to save him from himself. God knows what he’d have ended up doing if he’d gone fully solo in the 90s.

Do what do you think? Is it all over for bands as we know them? The big show bands that toured in the 40s and 50s all died out as a going concern. Perhaps that’s what’s happening now.

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Comments

  2. Being in a band gives a siege mentality, always someone to fall back on, share the load. Yes they may depart and explore a solo path, but more often than not return to the fold.
    I get the feeling that money invests in solo bods for a cheaper investment and quick return, rather than a long term prospect.

  3. Pop music as represented by “The Charts” and what gets streamed the most in 2024 is now a separate thing from live “gig” music. The likes of Taylor Swift etc. has become almost a separate branch of entertainment from what is experienced in small-to-medium venues. Bands are still there and still playing music, of all different sorts, all over the place. They don’t get written off that easily.

    OTOH, the guitar, guitar-or-keyboard, bass & drums quartet (possibly with an added singer) is old hat in popular music. Not much more to be done now with that format.

  4. Stating the obvious but a tech savvy teenager with a laptop doesn’t need to leave their bedroom and lug loads of gear to a rehearsal studio to create a backing track. No collaboration of course but no endless arguments either.

  7. As an aside to this, I remember when interviewing Paul Young a few years ago that he commented that bands can split up, have a reunion, and then celebrate that with a tour etc, whereas he as a solo artist doesn’t have that opportunity!

  8. If anything, I find it impossible to keep up with the plethora of bands that are around. So many names. Once upon a time I could name a great band I’d heard and my friends would say they’d never heard of them and then a few weeks later they’d see them on TOTP and say how much they loved them and I’d be seen by all as the ultra-cool tastemaker with the fab haircut. Those days are gone alas. Now I name a great band and years pass and still no one’s ever heard of them. No one outside of The Afterword plus KFD, anyway.

  9. “The ultra-cool tastemaker with the fab haircut”! You hit the nall on the head there, @Gary.
    If I was going to try and describe you to one of the my pals, those are the very words I would use!

    Be they The Wu Tang Clan, Spinal Tap, Kraftwerk, Slipknot, De La Soul, The Bangles, Sun Ra’s Arkestra, Hawkwind, Acker Bilk and his Paramubnt Jazz Band, The Supremes, the Happy Mondays, Rammstein, the Beach Boys, Dixie Chicks or the Fairport Convention, bands have a function that no solo artist can replace.

    A band is an uber-cool gang that half the audience dreams of joining. And the other half are drooling over them and sizing each of them up as potential boyfriend/girlfriend material.

    • Most of the above fulfil my concept of a b(r)and more than a band, excluding, possibly only the Dixie Chicks. Altho’ are you thinking of both the Dixie Chicks and the Chicks as two different entities with the same line up.

          • This is a very interesting comment. Its apparent lack of any relevance to the previous comment (made, coincidentally, by yourself) is intriguing. You have my utmost respect.

            • That was an interesting question @retropath2. When does a band become a brand?

              It’s a very deliberate choice. Some bands, not to mention some artists, have turned the production of merchandise into an art.

              At Roskilde this summer, the Foo Fíghters didn’t have a merch table. They had an ginormous merch cabin with an enormous range of different T shirts, tote bags etc. Even so, they are not in the same league as the Grateful Breadheads, who (long before record sales had diminished), had an enormous range of classy, well-designed, hideously expensive souvenir items.
              I was more impressed at Roskilde by Belle and Sebastian. Their diminutive, rather sparse merch table was manned by a delightful lady from Glasgow, who had taken a few days off from work to tour with the band. What she lacked in range of goods, she made up for in charm, and we had a great chat about the deliberate disenfranchisement of voters in the EU elections, the cross-generational appeal of B & S and arab straps.

              Talking of artists who are a brand, when my son and I saw Kendrick Lamar, he had piles of astonishingly classy T shirts, hoodies etc. on sale for ridiculous prices. And there long queues of punters who couldn’t wait to part with their money..

              • I guess a band is the same people, conveying a similar message over their career. Beatles, ABBA, U2, even R.E.M., despite losing the drummer. Same members and an identifiable sound. Bands. Whereas those that keep going, regardless, as most and sometimes all the original members leave or die, tend to be brands. I am tempted to think the Stones and the Who, therefore, have become brands.

                • Not necessarily the same people. Or not all of them.
                  Steely Dan are a band. Most of the time they were Becker & Fagen plus whoever they needed for a particular recording, gig or tour.
                  Verging upon a brand*, but still a band (just).

                  *Particularly those years when they gave up touring.

                  • That’s an interesting wormhole, around band becoming brand. This has certainly happened with the first two mentioned. However, given each are no longer actual entities that exist, it is their memory that has been monetised into the “r”. U2 I think of purely as a band.

                    • During the seventies I recall there were t-shirts with twenties art deco writing on so it’s not dissimilar to wearing band logos from 50 years ago today.

  10. Solo artists are easier for the business and legal side of the industry (aka “the Man”) because there’s only one person to sign the contract and they can’t split up.

    Bands aren’t going anywhere, based on the plethora of music mags I read via Apple News.

  12. The last time this topic was aired in a newspaper and industry figures were interviewed the huge importance of insta and tictoc on new acts was made clear. In a small square image a solo artist will always be easier to market and understand than 4’different people.

  15. In country, at least, there are lots of artists that appear on the surface to be solo artists, but they still need a hand to play live and they are often the same band for a long time. I’m not sure of the democracy of that arrangement though.

  17. To be fair to Richard Osman, his comment was chart related, and then on a quite specific stat. I believe he said that there have been 3 weeks of bands being at number 1 in the singles chart in the 2020s. Everything else is solo artists or collaborations. Obviously he was factually wrong to then say ‘no one is in a band anymore’, but I took that as a bit of a slip of the tongue, and he actually meant that no one in bands were having big hits any more.

    One of the three weeks was the Beatles, and one was the live lounge all stars who did the Foo Fighters song during first lockdown so effectively loads of different individuals. Only leaves Little Mix as a band who would actually tour to have had one solitary week at number 1 in this decade. He then went to detail the number of No 1s by actual bands in past periods and the contrast was striking.

  19. And then there are bands – the Ramones would be an excellent example – who unwittingly morphed into brands when T-shirts bearing their logo started being a big hit with modern day kids who’d probably never heard them or their music

  20. If you look at the most music most streamed on Spotify, and beyond the AW’s natural demographic there’s barely a band to be seen in any of the Top 5 over the last 10 years beyond Coldplay and Daft Punk. The top 50 artists who have attracted the most streams in a month is much the same with just 6 bands or so (Queen, Coldplay, Maroon 5, One republic, Imagine Dragons).

    Does that mean bands are dead? Not really. But there are clearly not the dominant form of music they once were. Bit like vinyl.

  21. Contrariwise, I find it surprising in these days when all your dosh comes from touring, how many eight pieces I see, where it would be possible to trim peripherals. Although, contrary to that, I notice a trend where seemingly permanent members of bands are Joyce/Rourke-ified. Dream Wife (who I mentioned here once, but I think I got away with it) always play with the same drummer. Is he “in the band”? Nope. The Last Dinner Party do similar with their drummer, I think.
    Adding to the confusion, many solo acts operate with band names: Illuminati Hotties, Fears, The Japanese House, Waxahatchee etc (although not many of those are likely to top the charts..)

  22. Too many ‘bands’, IMHO, have become one or two members (plus a greedy manager), with hired hands padding out the rest on realistic wages. As beige as their music is, at least Coldplay have stuck to the ‘everything split equally’ ethos they started with. Joe Public may not care who’s backing the Gallaghers/Mick and Keef/Axl and Slash, of course, but the ex-members who are unceremoniously dumped along the way for financial expediency will tell you different.

    Don Felder’s book about his time in the Eagles is an eyebrow-raising read on how the thin end of the wedge (changing the order of the credits on Hotel California) became a demotion when one or two people got their rights to the band name – coincidentally when they had a coke habit to fund. And Mike Anthony – one of the most solid bass players in hard rock and a fantastic backing vocalist – was first put on a wage in Van Halen, then got rid of in favour of the guitarist’s teenage son. Not a good look, is it?

    • @TypF

      I would imagine that with the possible exception of Glenn Frey, a sizable chunk of those who go and see The Eagles would have the slightest clue who was in the band along with him

      • Yes, once again M. Weller’s dictum that “the public gets what the public wants” comes into play here. Us indie idealists, with our belief in the old small “g” small “f” gang of four against the world were horrified to discover that The Smiths’ deal was to demote their rather fine rhythm section to manual labourers. But there is also a constituency for whom M. E. Smith’s idea that him turning up with his Nan on bongos was fulfilling the contract sounds about right. Once Billy Bighead is present the tour bus might as well have a revolving door. It’s notable that, once again, the Sex Pistols are the ones to tear down this nonsense, as they are about to embark on a tour featuring 75% of the original band but 0% of the charismatic ones..

          • Were you not there fitter? There was a decade of press imposed/fan imposed/self-imposed rules wrt “selling out” to major labels, right on politics, being coy about seeking fame etc in the days before blowing your wad on coke, making a virtue of your sexism and homophobia and showing off your brown rolls Royce was all the rage.
            As recently as this year, Yard Act’s “We Make Hits” has fun with the dichotomy of being a band where everyone is “on the same wage” but also wants to have proper pop hits..

  23. I’m sure there was an episode of Friends where Rachel (I think) wore an MC5 t-shirt. I can’t imagine anyone on that show was a fan, so at least they flogged some merchandise.

  25. From roughly the age of 13 I became immersed in pop and rock culture and a large part of this was following bands. The music came first but what they stood for was also important. As a politically earnest young man, I was drawn to bands I could identify with because of they might have had a similar background to me. The Jam and Depeche Mode are from areas very similar to my own.

    As I reached my 20s, the friends who went to public (i.e. private) schools in Surrey tended to favour Gabriel-era Genesis, The Stranglers, The Clash, Stones and Pink Floyd. Although there is variety there and pockets of peerlessly great music, I do see those bands as a specific, more well-to-do genre.

    I liked it when “my” bands started to do well. Particularly if they turn out to be smart and funny people too.

    Where am I going with this? No idea. I guess what I am saying is I don’t *want* bands to be a thing of the past. The Oasis reunion will dominate the news but this is a band that was about 30 years ago. The news coverage should be about The Thargmen or something – where we all scratch our collective bonces and say “who??”.

  26. This year’s National Album Day list has just been announced.

    “Today, National Album Day announces the exclusive list of limited edition albums that are being released for the annual event celebrating the art of the album on Saturday 19th October, this year themed on Great British Groups.”

    Finally, a chance to pay full price for those Culture Club, Soul II Soul, Spice Girls and UB bloody 40 albums you never, ever, see cheap in a charity shop.

    https://www.nationalalbumday.co.uk/news/national-album-day-announces-lineup-of-exclusive-releases-reissues-from-british-groups-to-coincide-with-annual-event-on-saturday-19th-october/

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