Originally Posted by
RanRan79
Yeah, it's called "Her music stinks, she's been around for 20 years, and there are younger, more relevant women taking up the slack Diana's suck years have left us with.".
Remember, until 1964, Diana [[and the Supremes) were irrelevant to the world of music, and then BOOM! 1964 comes and they tiptoe into relevancy with "Lovelight" and then explode with "Where". From 1964-1970, there was never a year when Diana's voice wasn't on a number one record. Motown basically bungled the singles for 1971, but the following year she had a hit movie and a hit soundtrack to go along with it. 1973 brought her success with the Marvin duets and TMITM, including another #1. She managed another hit with "Last Time" later that year, but the album wasn't well received. 1975 brings another hit movie and a #1 hit to go along with it. The following year brings "Love Hangover" and then the launching of a major stage show that eventually makes it way to television and Broadway. While Baby It's Me ended up a critical success but was devoid of hit records, and Ross 78 was almost unnecessary, The Boss took off. And then of course, the year after that, 1980, saw diana80 and it's huge success, in addition to the success of "It's My Turn". In 1981 Diana left Motown with one of the biggest selling songs of the year in "Endless Love". At RCA, Diana largely allowed her talents to be misused on songs that did not fit her [[my opinion, but I stand by it), yet she still managed to have hit records in 1981, 1982, 1984 and 1985, with two or three major selling albums. Most women in the industry would have killed for this kind of resume. But then EA happens, and she follows that up with RHRAB, whose album contents didn't exactly live up to the title of the album. She takes the largest break of her career and then reappears with WO. Meanwhile, during that break, Whitney and Janet and Jody and Madonna and a slew of other younger, trendsetting ladies were ruling the charts. Diana's goose was cooked.
So was it "40" pushing her out? I think it's a combo of that. Had she been ten years younger, I think the industry and the public may have forgiven her duds and absence and accepted her if she was making music that the public found generally good. But she wasn't 30, she was over 40, and the music wasn't largely well thought of. EA could have been forgiven had she rebounded with a much more relevant type album than RHRAB, working with current hitmaking producers, and then from there it would've been interesting to see how long Diana could prolong her relevancy. But she was way past the point where she could be forgiven 2 dud albums, horrible singles, a long break, and then rebound with another dud album and questionable singles. While Sup is exactly right, the US has a weird thing about shelf life for most artists, Diana's shelf life was shortened by her own horrible career decisions.
I still maintain Mary Wilson's book had nothing to do with it.
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