Dennis, calm down old chap, you'll do yourself an injury.

Please remember, prog is a form of popular music, nothing more, nothing less.

As for the bands you quote:

Genesis started selling records by the truckload and massive arenas after Hackett left. Prior to that, they were a successful, but not commercially profitable band.

Rush started doing the same after Moving Pictures. Prior to that, they were adored by sad buggers like myself, but not by the masses.

Yes are the exception. They were massive in the 1970's, but then upset everyone with TFTO, and reverted to a relatively successful band before gaining a new lease of life with 90125, a commercial album.

Making popular music is not selling out. It is just becoming more popular, and, as you say, some pop is jolly good. Likewise, some pop/prog is too - I would go as far to say that I prefer prog pop to ordinary pop. It's better played for a start.

I don't care for the I Can't Dance track. But No Son Of Mine is a classic piece of music, and the album is, actually, a damn good one.

 

 

Isn't this like asking which sick person has the best disease?

 

 

Seriously , I have always been disappointed by prog bands who go pop.  Why?

 

Do I hate pop?  No.  I enjoy a lot of pop.  Todd Rundgren , Elton John, Alice Cooper, etc...

 

Why then?  Ok:

 

There is no shortage of pop artists or songs.  Prog is a very small subset of music.  If a pop artist changes styles

there will be thousands of popsters to step in and make more pop.

 

If a prog band goes pop, it casues a large hole which is almost never replaced and the prog world suffers a great loss.

 

It isn't like the prog artists were starving and needed to feed their families.

 

Genesis were packing stadiums with prog songs

RUSH were packing stadiums and selling tons of records with prog.

YES...  same thing. 

 

Oh, you say times change?  Yeah times always change.  An artist needs to stay fresh and original no matter if it is

prog or pop or country or whatever.  So the argument that a band must stay "fresh" and change to pop is specious. Pat Metheney has always changed & grown yet stayed true to being a musician.

 

Pop music is a sell out.  A very rich one, but still a sell out.  Pop music takes almost no energy or effort to compose and is a waste for a gifted musician.  If I sound judgemental here, please ponder the Genesis song: "I Can't Dance"

I rest my case.   When it comes to pop, as a musician myself, I am not afraid to call pop music out for what it is.

Do people like it? Sure. Great!  That is popularity.  Being popular leads to fame & money & power, but there is no connection from popularity to music.  That is what I am saying.

 

Like I said, the world has millions of pop acts.  When a prog act goes pop, a big part of prog dies.

 

So I ask?  Which corpse do you find most attractive?

 

Iván.

I agree.  In my opinion, all of Rush's more pop-rock oriented 80's albums are worth four stars at least, if not five.  They were always songwriters at heart anyway, unlike other 70's prog greats who could well be classified as "composers" in the classical sense.  That's really where Rush separated themselves from most of the other 70's prog bands; they were able to lose "proginess" without losing quality.