be 80s King Crimson, who found a way to keep their prog sensibilities in the new decade. Though I would argue "SO" was pretty mainstream, Peter Gabriel III showed a more interesting side of pop. I can't say I know much of Peter Hammill's career in the 80s, but I think "A Black Box" is a pretty good showcase of all the things I like about 80s music. Plus there's a side long epic!

Are you talking about prog artists that started in the 70s and then went pop or just prog artists who didn't go pop in general?

Lots really. Eskaton, Cardiacs, This Heat, Bacamarte, Dun, SBB, Present, Univers Zero, Kultivator, Zamla Mammaz Manna / Von Zamla, Solaris, Aqsak Maboul, Arrigo Barnabe, Shub-Niggurath, Asia Minor, Kenso, Thinking Plauge, Hawkwind, Art Zoyd, Devil Doll, Pekka Pohjola, Fred Frith, Robert Wyatt, Eider Stellaire, Art Bears, Picchio dal Pozzo, Rahmann, Modry Efekt, Ruins, News From Babel, Abus Dangeraux, Allan Holdsworth, Mr Sirius, Alas, Celelalte Cuvinte, Skeleton Crew, Horizont, Ain Soph, Igra Staklenih Perli, Cassiber, Debile Menthol, Begnagrad, Paga Group, Orthotonics, Aburadako, Hellebore, Het, However, After Dinner, Ur Khaos, Miriodor, Birdsongs Of The Mesozoic, Stromboli, The Dregs, Nazca, Confusional Quartet, The Muffins

Well, i could go on but i think you get my drift ;)

Absolutely.

Ugh... A-ha and Madonna in the same sentence. A-ha deserve better.  

My band, Casual Crobar, lit up the skies of Tulsa Oklahoma with brilliant renditions of Spinal Tap's debut album (and a bit of Fripp & Eno). 

 

....we must have had an impact, as the Mighty Tap are coming out with new material!

https://deadline.com/2024/03/spinal-tap-sequel-filming-elton-john-paul-mccartney-questlove-garth-brooks-trisha-yearwood-join-1235854578/" rel="nofollow - https://deadline.com/2024/03/spinal-tap-sequel-filming-elton-john-paul-mccartney-questlove-garth-brooks-trisha-yearwood-join-1235854578/  

As the bassist to Robert Fripp's student Alonzo "Lon" Jones, we charted a path that steered right past "mainstream," combining polyrhythms, third-world instrumentation, Australian drummers and all sorts.  Lon's band CAVU was another fixture in Tulsa Oklahoma USA.  

Here, have a taste of CroBar!  (p.s. do you sense the irony?  We were a satire band of a satire band....a Möbius strip of bad.  We sucked, and we were proud of it.)  

This is not meant to criticise them being listed here, just an aspect that is probably worth mentioning. Same Holger Czukay and Brian Eno to some extent, by the way, also Tangerine Dream (partly for technological reasons). All these were still innovative. 

Sure the 80s music industry was aiming for the lowest common denominator but the 80s was AMAZINGLY rich in bizarre indie artists lurking in the shadows.

For anyone interested i compiled this follow up 80s version of the Nurse With Wound list and i found well over 2000 weird and freaky artists including prog

http://rateyourmusic.com/list/siLLy_puPPy/nurse-with-wound-wave-strange-beyond-tubular-music-of-the-1980s/" rel="nofollow - https://rateyourmusic.com/list/siLLy_puPPy/nurse-with-wound-wave-strange-beyond-tubular-music-of-the-1980s/

Vangelis solo was excellent but he did the Jon and Vangelis albums that was sort of art pop (Horizon was a 20 minute track)

Eloy were always prog but 1983's Performance was a bit AOR ish and embraced 80's plastic production values

Rush were selling a ton of albums but I don't anything they did was mainstream, just late 80's a bit dull.

Iron Maiden arguably created progressive metal in that decade but were selling tons

I suspect a lot of underground art based music had nothing to do with 'prog' at the time but we like a bit of revisionism around here. 

I just wanted to say thanks for this massive musical list. Looking forward to discovering some great music! 

Lewian wrote: King Crimson for sure didn't "go mainstream", however they adapted their approach quite strongly to trends of the time. (I actually loved that at the time and still do.)

Been diving further down the RIO rabbit hole. I've been loving Univers Zero in particular! As for 80s Zeuhl, Magma's Retrospektiw is one of my favorites. Now Merci, on the other hand... It's not exactly "normal" but it was certainly an attempt at it.

What this led to were albums that no longer sounded like the albums recorded in the 1960s/1970s. To this day, many prog listeners dismiss 1980s material simply because it sounds "computerized" or "plastic", unlike the analog albums from earlier days. Someone above mentioned the Emerson, Lake, and Powell album from 1986. While the album did have a single ("Touch and Go") that did receive a lot of airplay, I remain convinced that many older ELP listeners who hated the album were less offended by Carl Palmer's absence than by the simple fact that the album sounds nothing like Tarkus. And after 15 years of technological advancements, why should it?

Good point regarding Emerson, Lake and Powell not sounding like classic era ELP (1970-74). Certainly I felt at the time that Emerson had dumped the Hammond Organ in favour of inferior sounding keyboards. However the musical ideas mostly were not bad, although personally I think the album would have been a zillion times better if they recruited Terry Bozzio or Simon Phillips instead of 'hard rocker' Cozy Powell.

Keith's Hammond features very prominently on both "The Score" and "Mars, the Bringer of War" (admittedly layered with other keyboards), and even receives a solo spotlight on "The Miracle".

I wouldn't go with 'prominently' in truth. The Yamaha GX1 is by far the most 'prominent' keyboard and Emerson was also experimenting with MIDI to get that orchestral sound. He said at that time he was most disappointed he couldn't get those sounds on Love Beach and had to wait for the tech to catch up. It was perhaps being slight disengenious as there were more overriding reasons for the partial reformation of ELP (Lake's failed solo career and Emerson getting in to a licencing war with a distributor of his solo albums and so having to park his own attempt at a solo career as a result).