It's fluff music.
And since you're placing yourself as the benchmark of taste, pray -- enlighten us with music that you find more acceptable.
well, I'm a good judge of my own taste, but I don't know about a "benchmark." I think appreciation for quality and creativity, along with repulsion for petty commercialism, come from somewhere very objective outside ourselves.
Notwithstanding that, let's see...to make it fair, let's find something from the '80's...sort of hard after '83-'84... what do I remember listening to then...Gerry Rafferty, City to City; Bowie (Modern Love); Jackson Brown (well, it was a phase); I saw Billy Joel once; Pure Prairie League twice (once they were excellent, once they were pitiful); Spyro Gyro; Pat Metheny a half dozen times; Edie Brickell; BB King; Delbert McClinton -- OK, these are my picks for '80s, caused it was happy music that launched a happy decade: Delbert McClinton, The Jealous Kind (Givin' it For Your Love...) and John Lennon/Yoko Ono, Double Fantasy (a great statement).
Really haven't got too far past the first couple of years, but it's getting late, and this post is long enough as it is.
Oh, and as I said, I think what's her name from the Bangles was a knockout, but that's not speaking musically.
s/b Spyro GyrA, and since I mentioned the word “Petty,” how could I have forgotten Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers?
Now there's your most important statement by far. Because, had it been only for "petty commercialism" that bands like Duran Duran, Bangles, Go-Go's and all these other 'fluff' ones had stayed in the business, then all of them would be filthy rich and retired by now, 25+ years later, and living off royalties somewhere in the Caymans. That is not the case with most of the bands discussed in this thread. They continue to play and tour, even in the most disgusting hellholes, away from their families. Some of them have kids who are teens now, and they never saw them growing up because they were out touring most of the year.
Personal taste is personal taste. It's still entirely subjective.
So, by your logic, everything you like is creative, and of quality. Anything you don't like falls into the great abyss. I see. Interesting.
So the musical acts you list, with the exception of BB King, are rather bland, safe AM-radio fare in my opinion. My idea of bands exhibiting quality and creativity are Roxy Music, Brian Eno, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Japan, Berlin-era Bowie. You are free to disagree, but I don't think you can legitimately make the claim that I don't care about such abstracts as quality and creativity -- because our ideas on what they are differ so greatly.
As far as Duran Duran goes, I thought they were, and are, quality musicians that DID make happy music for happy times. Nick Rhodes was pretty innovative with the electronic aspect of the band.
Petty Commercialism? What, are you some kind of liberal here? Get out of here with that kind of rage against the machine kind of talk, hippy.