People tend to associate acts with particular decades but thinking back there were many acts from the seventies which continued to have success in the eighties. I have thought of a few here (some even started in the sixties) but I'm sure more could be added.

Michael Jackson
Queen
David Bowie
ABBA
Elton John
Dire Straits
The Police
Genesis
Peter Gabriel
Bruce Springsteen
Madness
Prince
OMD
Kate Bush
Hall and Oates
The Jam
The Bee Gees
Status Quo
Kiss
Joy Division/New Order
The Cars
The Pretenders
The Cure
Van Halen
Billy Joel
Talking Heads
Lionel Ritchie
Billy Ocean
Roxy Music
Aerosmith

Who have I missed?

Hundreds. Just about every band that was big in the 1970s was just as big in the 1980s - except when they weren't affected by drug overdoses. Which still leaves one or two.

cant really see the point of this tbh.... music acts dont begin and end with a decade, the successful ones will span more then one decade especially if they start late in a decade.

i dont regard those acts as 70's artists, just artists who had a long enough run that happend to span one decade into the next. (even longer in some cases)

plus you could say that any of the new wave acts that started in 79 and had a hit in 80 would qualify for this.... oo look madness, first hit late 79... most in the 80's. see?..

The Rolling Stones.!

Yes, it might be more interesting to consider artists who were first successful in the 70s and not so in the 80s. Not so much the one hit wonders or the short-lived artists but music categories or genres like glam rock, funk, jazz-funk or disco which were popular in the 70s but didn't last into the 80s in a big way.

I was thinking glam rock/glitter pop bands, mainly the British ones like Slade, Mud, Sweet, Suzi Quatro, Smokey etc. Some glam acts like Bowie and Roxy had longevity because they changed with the times.

Funk was popular in the 70s, so bands like Parliament, War, Funkadelic didn't do so well in the 80s although they didn't disappear just because one decade ended.

Disco artists like KC and the Sunshine Band, Chic, Barry White, O'Jays, Harold Melvin weren't as successful in the 80s. But disco music had relatively short lived success in the 70s before it was re embraced later as the building block of dance music.

Maybe Prog rock artists like Focus, King Crimson, Yes, Can, Tangerine Dream, Mike Oldfield? The Prog rock era was again somewhat cut short with the arrival of punk and new wave.

And then some North American bands like Steely Dan, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Blue Oyster Cult, Doobie Bros, Boston, etc. were successful in the 70s but less so in the 80s.
One reason might be the advent of video and MTV and a visuality which some of these bands failed to embrace.

Most of these artists were 70s artists who helped define the decade but didn't really outlast it.

i reckon bowie and roxy made it in the 80's because their style appealed to the new romantics, whether bowie/ferry changed to suit the latest fashion or whether they inspired it is open for debate i guess.

wasnt funk big in the 80's?... jazz funk certainly was and many pop songs had a jazz element, well brass anyway in a jazz funk stylee.

I did it because people often do associate things with particular decades despite lasting much longer. For example when Cadbury started making Wispa's again they marketed it as "back to the eighties" despite the fact production had only ended in 2003.

Kraftwerk and The Wombles (didn't have any hits but were still on TV in the '80s so were technically still popular).

bib: They had a UK number 1 with "The Model/Computer Love" in 1982.

And their "Tour De France" single charted more than once, in the mid to late '80s. .

The Clash, The B-52's and Public Image Limited.

Yes, it's weird you associate Kraftwerk with the 1970s and yet they had more commercial success in the '80s. I don't think any of their big 4 albums (Autobahn, Radioactivity, The Man Machine, Trans-Europe-Express) did particularly well when they were released in the '70s and only the single version of Autobahn made the charts (Top 10 in 1975). I always assumed that the single version of Radioactivity had been a big hit but it never charted.

Judas Priest
Scorpions
Rainbow
Black Sabbath
Meatloaf
AC/DC
Slade
Motorhead
David Essex
UFO
Ramones
Tom Petty
Neil Young
Thin Lizzy
Alice Cooper

Actually a lot of these are still going strong today.

Well I suppose Heart are a good example. Their first taste of mainstream success was in the seventies with the folky rock of that era and then they re-emerged with big shoulderpads delivering big eighties power ballads.

And most the 70s diva's, Donna Summer, Patti Labelle, Diana Ross, Chaka Khan etc.

Blondie are a big example of this too, considering that the singles from their biggest album carried over from the late seventies into 1980.

Slade continued to be successful in the 1980s.


I can't believe that in 2014 people are still regurgitating the myth that punk and new wave "killed" prog....

Prog continued in to the 1980s and still continues today.

Demis Roussos - he was big in any decade

Tangerine Dream did a lot of film soundtracks in the 80s.

Nothing like the success of the 1970s when they were emblematic of glam rock.


I don't think there was a prog rock era after the mid 70s but yes, punk/new wave only coincided with a slight lessening in prog rock popularity. Any suggestion of causation was not deliberate.

I do recognise that prog persists I'm currently listening to The Devin Townsend Project's 'Epicloud' which sounds like good prog rock to me, a bit heavier, much less indulgent yet highly conceptional.

Despite the Waters-Gilmour rift Pink Floyd were still massive in the 80's. And 90's.

... but hardly at the level it did before punk. the point is that prog went out of fashion to a new younger audience and punk became the new style that appealled. i dont believe prog fans became punk, although some might. some embraced both whilst die hard prog fans kept on liking it.

though god knows why.... i detested prog almost as much as philly.

of course after the initial explosion punk too went out of fashion, but still survives today.

It could be argued that the likes of Pink floyd and Genesis were far more successful in terms of commercial success the 1980s and '90s than they were in the 1970s.

Musical taste is subjective, what appeals to one doesn't appeal to another. I am sure there is plenty of music you like that I couldn't abide.

They did, and they were very successful. They worked out they could make more money doing a couple of film scores a year than they ever could recording an album and touring.

Yes, that's better put. There probably weren't many prog to punk converts (although I was one, a 70s Yes fan). My friends seemed to embrace Rush and then Marillion I remember. I must admit to occasionally listening to Rush.


I would suggest that Genesis did repackage the sound writing shorter, more pop oriented songs to complement the longer works. But it did work for them. I think Yes did the same but less successfully.

Pink Floyd's music has its roots in psychedelic and prog rock but they transcend both genres for me. However, I wouldn't argue if they were described as a prog rock band who were successful throughout their career.

indeed, i bet you dont like trance!


interesting, and correct, genesis had more commercial success when they ditched prog and embraced a.o.pop!