Short Lived Big Impact / Music

• Comedian Harmonists: A German a cappella sextet who were a major internationally successful group between 1927 and 1933, only to have their career cut short by the rise of Nazism in Germany, which was bad news for two of their Jewish members. They all managed to survive the war, but never had a reunion and sank in obscurity until the 1970s when they were part of a revival. Despite everything, they were a major influence on numerous A Cappella bands. They later inspired the musical Harmony, featuring music by Barry Manilow.
• The Skatalites: they were active for only 14 months (!), but churned out more than 300 singles that were influential in the development of Ska and were pretty much the most famous ska act of all time. The reason why their career was cut short? One of their trombonists, Don Drummond, committed a murder and was sent to an insane asylum. As a result, they lost one of their best musicians and their main songwriter, which made them lose a lot of their fan base. Apart from that, Ska went out of fashion around that time, and was quickly surpassed by Rocksteady and later Reggae.
• The Beatles' recording career lasted just 7 years, but in that time they completely changed the landscape of popular music, and managed to crank out a whopping thirteen studio albums. The band broke up before any of the members had turned 30.
• The infamous 27 Club, a group of singers who all died at 27, greatly limiting their output, but they all left profound impacts on music:
  • Robert Johnson – Made Blues what it was; was also a profound influence on many of the earliest rock singers. His entire recording career was compiled on one double album, Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings.
  • Brian Jones – Founded The Rolling Stones, who were the main influences of bands like AC/DC, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, etc, who pioneered the Heavy Metal genre. (Musically he was extremely talented, being able to pick up and play virtually any instrument; but he was eventually overshadowed by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, as unlike him they were prolific songwriters, and he was fired by the Stones because he couldn't travel to tour.) Interestingly, Jones has only one solo album on his name, released three years after his 1969 death, one which doesn't even feature him, but was merely produced by him.
  • Alan "Blind Owl" Wilson - The guitarist for the '60s psychedelic blues band Canned Heat may not be among the more famous names in the 27 Club, but had a significant impact on future blues-rock acts, especially groups like The White Stripes and The Black Keys.
  • Jimi Hendrix – one of the most influential guitarists of all time; the "burn the strings" guitar solo was invented by him, and just about every hard rocker since has imitated it. Recorded just three major studio albums during his lifetime: Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold As Love and Electric Ladyland.
  • Janis Joplin – a key player in women coming onto the rock scene; everyone from Hayley Williams to Gwen Stefani to P!nk owes something to her. Not bad for someone with only four studio albums to her name.
  • Jim Morrison – in addition to being the lead singer of The Doors, he is widely regarded as having perfected the modern "rock star" image.
  • Chris Bell – guitarist for highly influential Power Pop group Big Star. He released only one solo single during his lifetime, and then he died in a car accident a few weeks short of his 28th birthday.
  • D. Boon - Lead Singer And Lead Guitarist of the legendary punk band Minutemen. He died in a traffic accident in Tucson, Arizona in 1985, but in his wake, he left an enormous impact on Alternative Rock. Red Hot Chili Peppers owe a lot to the band's bass work and Modest Mouse owes a lot of their vocal work to Boon.
  • Kurt Cobain – the lead singer/guitarist of Nirvana, a band that only released three studio albums (and only hit it big with the second one), he helped define the early-to-mid-90s rock scene, and, for better or worse, set the stage for the rock scene in the next decade.
  • Richey James Edwards - the guitarist and lyricist for the British rock group Manic Street Preachers mysteriously vanished in 1995, shortly after the release of the band's album The Holy Bible, which vividly detailed his struggles with depression, self-harm, and anorexia. The band continued on after his disappearance and became commercially successful, but it's widely considered the band's most acclaimed and seminal work came when Edwards was in the group. The three albums that he recorded with the band are considered to be integral to the creation of the Britpop movement and remain highly influential in the British indie rock scene.
  • Amy Winehouse – only released two albums during her lifetime (Frank and Back to Black) before spiraling into drug addiction (A posthumous compilation of unreleased material entitled Lioness: Hidden Treasures was released after her death.) She was a key influence in revitalizing both soul music and a stagnant British pop music scene, she directly inspired and paved the way for major artists (both British and American) like Adele, Lady Gaga, Florence Welch, Paloma Faith, Jessie J, Duffy, Ellie Goulding, Rebecca Ferguson, Emeli Sande, Gabriella Cilmi, and Lana Del Rey.
  • Jonghyun - one of the main vocalists of the K-pop group Shinee, died in 2017 after releasing six albums with the group over the span of just eight years. Jonghyun co-wrote many of the group's songs and helped them craft a unique identity that both set them apart and made them one of the leading groups in the genre. The group was a huge influence on later K-pop groups like BTS and were one of the first acts in the genre to cultivate a Western fanbase. While the group continued after his death, time will only tell if they will maintain their level of popularity they had while Jonghyun was a member.
• The Sex Pistols had a grand total of one studio album, yet they are considered the pioneers of Punk Rock. Even more astonishing is Sid Vicious, who only joined the band in 1977 and died from a drug overdose two years later when he was only 21 years old, after which he became pretty much one of the most iconic punk musicians of all time.
• The Germs, who had one album, are considered the godfathers (and godmother) of LA's punk rock scene.
• Eazy-E had his life cut short by AIDS in 1995, but his career was one of the most influential in the Gangsta Rap genre.
• Klaus Nomi also died an early death because of AIDS in 1983 and, as a result, only recorded two albums (Klaus Nomi and Simple Man) in his life. But his influence on numerous pop acts is still felt.
• English indie rockers The Stone Roses managed only two albums (The Stone Roses and Second Coming, plus a rarities compilation), and yet were a big influence on many Britpop bands of The '90s.
• Sublime only released three albums from 1992 to 1996. Frontman Bradley Nowell, unfortunately, died from a heroin overdose before the release of their self-titled breakthrough album, and the band broke up immediately after. Nevertheless, their music represents the pinnacle of the mid-1990s ska revival.
• Tupac Shakur, The Notorious B.I.G. and Big L died violently in their 20s (2Pac was 25 and both Biggie and L were 24), Shakur having made only five albums in five years and the others only two; furthermore, all three of their final albums were released posthumously. They, however, left a profound influence on rap in their wake, which can be seen in the fact that all three of them have had more albums released after their deaths (largely pieced together from unreleased recordings mixed with guest verses) than when they were still alive.
• Joy Division only released two albums from 1976 to 1980, owing to the death of lead singer Ian Curtis (who was Driven to Suicide at 23), but they are the first thing everyone thinks of when they hear the term Post-Punk, in addition to helping lay the groundwork for what would become Goth Rock. If The Doors did not influence them, usually Joy Division did. Subverted, however, when the remaining members regrouped as the synthpop-driven New Order.
• Post-Punk started around 1976-1977 and continued up through the start of the '90s at the latest, but its real heyday lasted just four years, from the release of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures in 1979 to the release of both R.E.M.'s Murmur and New Order's Power, Corruption & Lies in 1983, with the two instigating a shift in the underground to Alternative Rock. Despite the small timeframe of its prominence, post-punk ended up acting as a major influence on a number of artists across genres around the world, from the experimental worldbeat of Peter Gabriel to the eclectic Synth-Pop of Yellow Magic Orchestra to even the mainstream pop rock of Fleetwood Mac, all of which would have significant repercussions on the music of proceeding decades. Most significantly, alternative rock emerged as a direct daughter genre to post-punk, and the longer-lasting lifespan and impact of that movement, which stretched all the way up to 2011, is directly owed to the much smaller boom that post-punk first went through.
• Cream was only together for a little over two years, and were a band for such short of a time that they had been broken up for a few months by the time of the 1969 Grammy Awards where they were nominated for Best New Artist (They lost). However, in that short amount of time, they were recognized as the first supergroup, influenced Hendrix and the development of both heavy metal (Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple) and jam bands like The Allman Brothers Band and The Grateful Dead.
• Buddy Holly died in 1959 at age 22, but without him, The Beatles wouldn't even be named the same. (It was a Shout-Out to Buddy Holly and the Crickets.) He was also a massive influence on Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and some of the sixties pop and rock scene.
• Ritchie Valens was an early progenitor of Latino rock that paved the way for the likes of Carlos Santana and Trini Lopez. He died three months before his 18th birthday.
• Slint recorded just two albums, with only one (Spiderland) being of major importance. However, that record defined most of the sound followed by later indie rock and Post-Rock artists.
• The Police: the band was only together for seven years plus a couple reunions (one of which never got further than re-recording two songs), and within that time they became one of the best-selling acts of all time, helped bring Post-Punk and New Wave Music into the mainstream, and influenced a plethora of later artists across genres.
• Syd Barrett was the guitarist for Pink Floyd for less than two albums, along with his solo efforts Barrett and The Madcap Laughs, yet had a big influence on Psychedelic Rock and even Proto-Punk.
• Tin Machine, David Bowie's Hard Rock band designed to break him out of a creative slump, was only active for roughly four years (1988-1992) and put out just two studio albums and a live record within that time before dissolving, with Bowie returning to his solo career afterwards. However, in hindsight, the band has been noted for being a major influence on 1990's Alternative Rock and especially grunge. Semi-subverted in the case of Bowie himself, who held a career spanning more than half a century and was regarded as one of the biggest influences on the course of popular music throughout the second half of the 20th Century.
• Dave Williams, who was the vocalist of Drowning Pool since 1999, died in 2002 from cardiomyopathy. The band rose to fame one year before Williams' death.
• Common in Classical Music; although most composers are active in the music scene longer than artists in other genres (particularly if they were child prodigies), they spend lifetimes building reputations and fame. Just to give a few examples:
  • Henry Purcell only lived to be 36, yet he had a massive impact on Baroque music in Britain, and he is still regarded as the greatest English composer from before the late 1800s.
  • Giovanni Battista Pergolesi died at just 26, but he had a profound effect on the development of Italian comic opera in the 18th century, and his Stabat Mater makes frequent appearances in film and TV soundtracks.
  • Perhaps the most famous example, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died at 35, yet his music is near synonymous with the Classical era (1750-1820), and he is enshrined alongside Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the three greatest composers in the classical tradition.
  • Franz Schubert beat Mozart by 4 years; he died at age 31, yet his contribution to German Lieder (songs for voice and instrumental accompaniment) is immeasurable, and he wrote several timeless classics of chamber and orchestral music.
  • Felix Mendelssohn died at 38, yet his works remain a staple of concert halls, the Wedding March from his incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream is ubiquitous in wedding ceremonies in the West, and he played a pivotal role in the Bach renaissance of the early 1800s.
  • Fryderyk Chopin died at 39, but his compositions are a cornerstone of the piano repertoire, and the Funeral March from his Piano Sonata No.2 is one of the most instantly recognisable Standard Snippets in classical music.
  • Georges Bizet died at 36, but his opera Carmen is a Standard Snippet-crammed fixture of the operatic stage to this day.
  • George Gershwin died at 38, but this was enough time to compose Rhapsody in Blue, one of the most celebrated early fusions of classical and jazz styles, and such jazz standards as "Summertime" (from his opera Porgy and Bess), "I Got Rhythm", etc.
• Dead and Euronymous of Mayhem, considered the founders of Norwegian black metal, both died violent deaths (suicide and murder) at young ages (22 and 25). Euronymous founded the Deathlike Silence Productions label and laid the foundation for all Black Metal that came after him.
• Likewise, the proto-Celtic Frost band Hellhammer: the band only lasted for 3 years, but is considered one of the First Wave of Black Metal's most influential bands and is one of the most imitated bands in the metal genre.
• Tom Lehrer wasn't short-lived (he was still alive at the age of 91 at the end of The New '10s) but his recording career in the '50s and '60s produced only three full albums — Songs by Tom Lehrer,^note which had a live remake, Tom Lehrer Revisited An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer^note which had a studio remake, More of Tom Lehrer and That Was the Year That Was, plus a few songs for The Electric Company (1971) — before he grew tired of the industry and retired to a life in academia.
• Aaliyah only released three albums over seven years before her untimely death in a 2001 plane crash at the age of 22. However, she is considered one of the redefining artists of R&B in The '90s and is probably one of the Trope Codifiers for current R&B singers.
• Brazilian comedy rock band Mamonas Assassinas is definitely an example. A time interval of only 6 months between their sudden rise to fame, to the tragic airplane crash that killed all members in 1996. They only had one released album but still remains one of the most popular and influential bands in Brazil to this day.
• Velvet Underground. 4 albums in 4 years (not counting the New Sound Album Squeeze, which the band threw into Canon Discontinuity) and they are credited for being the very first Alternative Rock band.
• Jeff Buckley only had one finished studio album (Grace) and an incomplete studio album (My Sweetheart The Drunk) to his name at the time of his tragic drowning in 1997 (the incomplete album was released eventually, under the name Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk). He is given credit for raising the bar for singer/songwriters in the '90s and into the 2000s.
• Tim Buckley died of a heroin overdose in 1975 at age 29. He left behind a much larger and just-as-acclaimed discography. Though odds are if it weren't for his son, he probably wouldn't be so well known today, many critics did and do remember him fondly.
• The Exploding Hearts released one studio album exactly a month before a van accident claimed the lives of 3 out of the 4 members of the band, effectively ending the project. Guitar Romantic is considered to be one of the best punk albums of the 2000s, adding awesome guitar melodies rarely heard or seen before in the genre.
• Codeine released two albums and one EP before disappearing off of the face of the earth. Their first album, Frigid Stars is considered the Trope Maker for Slowcore and featured guitar textures that very well may have inspired Slint's Spiderland. To this day they are considered to be gods of super depressing music.
• Galaxie 500 was a contemporary of Codeine and released three albums from 1988 to 1990 that are landmarks of indie rock and influenced the slowcore, shoegaze, and dream pop movements.
• Neutral Milk Hotel only released two albums before disbanding in 1999. Their 1998 album In The Aeroplane Over The Sea is given credit for helping define Indie Rock of the next decade.
• The Smiths were only together for a little over 5 years and put out just four studio albums, yet every modern indie rock band and their mother cite them as a major influence.
• Bon Scott was AC/DC's frontman for just 6 years before he drank himself to death in 1980, yet he remains one of hard rock's most popular vocalists.
• Country Music has several famous artists whose lives were cut short, but are still considered iconic:
  • Hank Williams died in 1953 at 29 thanks to alcohol and drugs. His Greatest Hits Album Turn Back The Years still managed to be included in Time's 2006 list of 100 essential music albums, and he's still being introduced to younger audiences through his son Hank Williams Jr. and grandson Hank Williams III.
  • Patsy Cline, who died in 1963 at 30 in a plane crash, continued to have her singles chart afterwards.
  • Keith Whitley died in 1989 at 34 of alcohol poisoning and is one of the most successful neotraditional country singers of The '80s.
  • Country-rock pioneer Gram Parsons was only a member of The Byrds for six months - joining in February 1968 and quitting in July. That August, his only album with the band, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, was released. After a slow start it was ultimately heralded as one of the band's greatest records and the album that codified the country-rock genre. Parson released just four more albums (two solo records and two with his post-Byrds group The Flying Burrito Brothers) before he died in 1973^note unfortunately for him, his death would be quickly overshadowed by Jim Croce's death the following day, just barely missing joining the 27 Club (he lived to be 26 years, 316 days). He's the patron saint of Alternative Country and even in mainstream country, his influence has been enormous, as it is also in some rock circles.
  • Known as the "father of country music" for more or less creating the genre as we know it, Jimmie Rodgers' career only lasted about 6 years before he died in 1933. His impact has been felt far beyond country, with numerous musicians from various genres citing him as an influence.
• Jellyfish, while not the most commercially successful band, nor ever a hipster favorite, produced in the lifespan of four years two albums that became influential in the field of Alternative Power Pop, and are constantly praised by fans of melodic, classic pop songwriting. The albums were recently remastered and re-released on an indie label on vinyl.
• While My Bloody Valentine has been ongoing as a band since 1984, the same cannot be said about most of their contemporaries. After the Shoegazing fad ended in the mid-'90s, many of the bands were pressured into drastically changing their sound. Most of the bands that were part of this movement ended up breaking up due to a lack of funds. Lush nearly pulled off a successful Genre Shift into Britpop territory until their drummer killed himself. Catherine Wheel changed their sound into Hard Rock and broke up in 2000. Ride couldn't adapt to Britpop and ended their career after the disaster that was Tarantula. Slowdive were Screwed by the Network. So many of these bands ended abruptly, but Shoegazing's influence on modern Indie Rock is undeniable as can be seen in how mostly all of it is slathered in reverb and echo.
• Jazz trumpeter Clifford Brown died in a car accident in 1956 at the age of 25. His career lasted barely three years but he still managed to influence a tremendous number of later trumpet players, wrote two major jazz standards, and Benny Golson's "I Remember Clifford", written in honor of Brown, has itself become a standard. His collaboration with Sarah Vaughan, Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown is considered to be one of the finest jazz albums of all time.
• Although he played from the late 1930s to 1955, saxophonist Charlie Parker's life and career were nonetheless cut short at the relatively young age of 34 due to his ongoing problems with drugs and alcohol. During that span, he was a constant innovator and experimenter whose effects on saxophonists in particular, jazz especially, and even music in general, are still being felt to this day. Many of his contemporaries continued to speculate on what new ideas he might have come up with even years after his death.
• The Dixie Chicks had actually been around since 1992, but their major-label hitmaking years ranged only from 1998 to 2003, at which point country radio had a total backlash against them over a comment made by lead singer Natalie Maines over then-president George W. Bush in concert. Still, those five years (in addition to comprising high critical acclaim, album shipments over 28 million, and six #1 country hits) raised the bar for crossover country from the Turn of the Millennium onwards.
• The Birthday Party: Only four years of releases; still inspiring Post-Punk, Goth Rock, and Deathrock bands to this day.
• The 2 Tone label was very influential on British new wave music and the second wave of ska in particular, but its time in the sun lasted barely two years, from mid-1979 to mid-1981, and the label's aversion to long-term deals meant that its two biggest names (apart from founders The Specials), Madness and The Beat, each jumped ship after one single apiece. There was a long slow decline ahead of it, but the label's days as a major cultural force ended when The Specials fell apart in the summer of 1981.
• Selena lived for just 23 years and recorded less than half of an English-language crossover album before she was brutally murdered in 1995 (the crossover album, Dreaming Of You, did get released eventually, albeit padded with some of her Spanish hits and previously unreleased tidbits), but still became a household name in the US, partly because of her folk hero status in the Mexican-American community, partly due to the success of the 1997 biopic. Selena's also credited with bringing Tex-Mex music, the genre that launched her career, to mainstream attention, and opening the door for the "Latino Invasion" in entertainment during the late '90s. Her cultural impact, especially the way in which her death galvanized Mexican-Americans as consumers and later on, as voters and shapers of mainstream American culture, is the stuff of numerous sociology papers, and even a college textbook has been written about her cultural legacy. And that's just in the English-speaking world.
• Nick Drake died at 26 after only releasing 3 albums. He's still well-known for his songwriting, lyrics, and unique style of guitar playing that typically revolves around fingerstyle techniques in unusual tunings.
• The Shaggs recorded just two albums, the first of which, Philosophy Of The World, has become a classic in Outsider Music circles. The other album, Shaggs' Own Thing proved their growth as musicians, but this one is more or less written out of canon.
• The Stooges only recorded three albums before disbanding — their self-titled debut, Fun House and Raw Power — but all three of them have become a major influence on the development of Rock and Punk Rock.
• Eric Dolphy: Influential jazz musician who started a solo career in 1960, released five albums, and then died in 1964 of an insulin shock after being in a diabetic coma.
• Trio Uncle Tupelo released four studio albums over the course of four years (1990-93), none of which were commercially very successful, but they influenced and helped codify Alternative Country for the next twenty or so years. The band's vocalist/guitarist Jay Farrar would go on to form and lead Son Volt, while its bassist, Jeff Tweedy, would found and lead Wilco. The name of their debut album, No Depression, was a byname for the movement they help to popularize, and a magazine that covered the style.
• Aside from the recording of, and very few and unsuccessful promotional appearances for, their debut album Wednesday Morning, 3 A. M. in 1964, and numerous short-lived reunions since the breakup, the career of Simon & Garfunkel spanned between 1966 to 1970, releasing five studio albums and the soundtrack to the film The Graduate, becoming one of the most popular and influential duos of The '60s and helping to popularize Folk Rock music throughout the world — so popular that their five studio albums have yielded more than three times as many "Greatest Hits" albums.
• Lynyrd Skynyrd had a total of five albums before the plane crash, and never actually had a number 1 hit, but are the defining example of the '70s southern rock movement.
• Though English folk-rock band Fairport Convention is one of music's great Long-Runners, their most celebrated lineup — with Richard Thompson on guitar and Sandy Denny on vocals - lasted only around a year and a half. The three seminal albums created by that incarnation of the band — What We Did On Our Holidays, Unhalfbricking, and Liege and Lief — were all released in 1969.
• Spice Girls were pretty much only around from 1996-1998 with two albums and only ten singles. Geri Halliwell had already announced her departure before the ninth single was even released. Yet they were huge, kickstarting a 'Girl Power' movement throughout the world and popularizing the Girl Group in the '90s. A third album with two additional singles was released in 2000 with four of the five girls after a year's worth of solo projects — but it didn't have the same impact.
• S Club 7 lasted shorter than one would think. They're remembered as a hallmark of many 90s and early 2000s kids' childhoods. They only released four albums in total. But for four years they were everywhere — and their sitcom heavily influenced the formula later used by Glee and High School Musical.
• The "grunge era" as a whole.
  • Grunge's dominance of mainstream rock music only really encompassed the first half of The '90s, with the genre burning out not long after the suicide of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain (himself listed above as a member of the "27 Club") as the other leading bands in the scene either broke up or faced various problems. Three of the "Big Four" of grunge — Nirvana, Alice in Chains, and Soundgarden, the latter two of which are described below — were all either dead or effectively dead by 1997, with only Pearl Jam continuing on without interruption, and even they fell into an Audience-Alienating Era in the late '90s. And that's just within the US; by 1994, Britpop was already pushing grunge off the UK charts. Regardless, popular memory recalls grunge as the sound that utterly defined the '90s, at least in North America. Starting with Post-Grunge, the genre that took grunge's place in the limelight, virtually every major genre of mainstream rock music for the next twenty years bore at least some influence from the "Seattle sound", even if only in response to it. Cobain famously quoted the Neil Young line "it's better to burn out than to fade away" in his suicide note, and one could say that the genre as a whole took his advice.
  • Alice in Chains only recorded three albums and two EPs between 1990 and 1995 before frontman Layne Staley's drug addiction got the better of him. The band went on hiatus in 1996 as he vanished from the spotlight, only recording two more songs (both for the soundtrack to The Faculty as part of the supergroup Class of '99) before dying of an overdose in 2002.^note They eventually reunited and started recording again with a new lead singer, William DuVall, but the gap between albums lasted fourteen years. The band essentially created most of the tropes of Alternative Metal, with lyrics about drug addiction and depression that had been mostly verboten in the Hair Metal of the previous decade. Staley, meanwhile, is often spoken of in the same breath as Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder as one of the greatest vocalists of the grunge era, and many Post-Grunge bands have cited him as an influence and/or written tribute songs to him. Together with Vedder, he popularized the gravely vocal style known as yarling, such that this article compared him to Mick Jagger and Robert Plant as one of the most imitated rock singers of all time.
  • Soundgarden recorded five albums between 1988 and 1996, only really taking off with their third album Badmotorfinger in 1991, before breaking up. Without them, grunge likely would not have made it out of the underground, since it was lead guitarist Kim Thayil who suggested to his friend, Seattle DJ and promoter Jonathan Poneman, that he should team up with Bruce Pavitt of the independent label Sub Pop Records. Sub Pop, under Poneman and Pavitt's leadership, would quickly grow into the force that would nurture the Seattle rock scene and help propel it to national attention, with Soundgarden riding the wave and becoming one of the defining grunge bands.
• Britpop holds a similar status in the UK as a genre that defined a decade despite its peak years only really covering half of it. It took off in 1993 with Suede's Self-Titled Album, peaked in 1995 with the "Battle of Britpop" between Oasis and Blur, and was starting to fade out by 1997. Its impact can still be felt on virtually every British rock band since, and even on quite a few American indie bands influenced by the British scene.
• Rage Against the Machine only recorded four albums, the last of which was a Cover Album. Not only did they bring Rap Metal into the mainstream consciousness, but their ferociously political lyrics are often credited with influencing the politics of many people who grew up in the '90s and '00s.
• After Rage Against the Machine broke up the three instrumentalists recruited Chris Cornell (formerly of Soundgarden, listed above) to form Audioslave, who themselves only lasted 3 albums before disintegrating due to the dreaded Creative Differences.
• The Buggles only put out two albums as a group, but the music video for their song "Video Killed the Radio Star" was the first thing ever played on MTV, essentially kickstarting MTV's influence on music and shaping the sound of the 1980s. Singer Trevor Horn is a legendary record producer in his own right, having more or less shaped 80s and 90s pop music, while keyboardist Geoffrey Downes is a member of legendary progressive rock bands Yes (which Horn was also briefly in) and Asia.
• Sinawe was a pioneering Korean Heavy Metal band that put out four albums between 1986 and 1990 before breaking up.^note While they reformed in 1995, the "new" Sinawe, while successful in its own right, was a very different band with an Alternative Rock sound and only one returning member: Shin Daechul. Not only did they play a pivotal role in the development of the nascent Korean rock scene in the wake of South Korea's transition to democracy and liberalization, but one of their members, Seo Taiji, went on to be hugely influential in the birth of K-pop with his group Seo Taiji and Boys.
• Seo Taiji and Boys itself is an example, as they wrote the book that every Korean idol group would follow in the years to come — while only recording four albums from 1992 to '95 before Taiji went solo. Notably, one of the members of Seo Taiji and Boys, Yang Hyun-suk, went on to found YG Entertainment, one of the "Big Three" K-pop record labels.
• Eddie Lang and Charlie Christian were both influential in the development of jazz guitar. Lang was the first musician to use the guitar as a solo instrument in jazz, while Christian expanded upon that innovation by using an electric guitar; Christian was also an early influence on bebop. Both men died young; Lang died at 30 after complications from a routine tonsillectomy, while Christian succumbed to tuberculosis at the age of 25.
• Creedence Clearwater Revival recorded six albums from 1968 to 1970, then experienced an acrimonious breakup in 1972 while recording their seventh and final album, Mardi Gras. In that short time, they became a key influence in the popularization of Southern Rock and heartland rock (their roots in the Bay Area notwithstanding), and their music, still in regular rotation on Classic Rock stations, practically defined the sound of the '60s/'70s counterculture as it is remembered by popular culture.
• In the Christian Rock field, perhaps the biggest example is Keith Green. Green's career in Christian music^note not including a short-lived period as a Child Popstar comprised just 4 albums plus a compilation album before the 28-year-old Green and two of his children were killed in a plane crash in 1982^note shortly after the last of the four albums released in his lifetime, "Songs for the Shepherd", was released; yet is still often cited as an influence in Christian music circles.
• Rites of Spring, Embrace, and Beefeater each formed in 1984-85, each recorded at least one album (Beefeater managed to record a second one, while they and Rites of Spring also each recorded an EP), and each broke up in 1986. Rites of Spring only ever played fifteen shows, and Embrace only nine. They were all among the mainstay acts of the "Revolution Summer" in the Washington, D.C. hardcore scene in 1985, which sought to pull Hardcore Punk away from its association with violence and machismo and towards positivity, moralism, and social activism, and as such, they are often credited as not only important progenitors of Post-Hardcore (Ian MacKaye, the frontman of Embrace, went on to found Fugazi, one of that genre's biggest names) but also the originators of Emo Music.
• Much like grunge in the '90s, the "disco era" only really characterizes half of The '70s. While it started gaining mainstream recognition in 1974 and '75, it wasn't until the 1977 film Saturday Night Fever that it truly took off as a phenomenon. After 1979's "Disco Demolition Night", the genre all but disappeared from charts in a matter of weeks as backlash reached a fever pitch. Even so, however, disco is remembered as the sound that defined a decade, and its impact would be felt on pop and dance music for generations to come — especially in Europe, where the backlash (influenced as it was by America's racial and sexual politics) was nowhere near as pronounced.
• The career of Hip-Hop producer J Dilla only lasted from the the mid-'90s to the the mid-2000s before Dilla died of a rare blood disease in 2006. Despite this, Dilla's unique style of instrumental hip-hop, with some help from the music of the bumpers and idents on [adult swim], influenced the genre in such a manner that Dilla is now considered the "godfather" of the genre of lo-fi hip-hop, a genre of hip-hop influenced heavily by chillout and vaporwave music which has become enormously popular on YouTube in the late 2010s and early 2020s.
• SOPHIE only released one full album and one compilation album during her lifetime before dying at 34 in a sudden accident, but her production style was massively influential on the landscape of pop and electronic music in the late 2010s and early 2020s, which made her one of the major figures of the Hyperpop scene. She was also a monumental figure in the LGBTQ+ community as one of the first high-profile, openly transgender musicians to break into the mainstream.
• Yellow Magic Orchestra were only active for around six years (1978-1984), barring occasional reunions in the decades since, but within that time they put out seven studio albums (with an eighth releasing during the first reunion) and two live albums, achieved massive commercial and critical success around the world, and became one of the most important and influential Synth-Pop bands in history, among other things acting as a major source of inspiration for western Hip-Hop, techno, and Alternative Dance acts. What's more, they became an even greater influence on their home country, practically rewriting a good chunk of the Japanese Pop Music scene from the ground up with their incorporation of traditional Japanese influences and eschewing of prior imitations of western acts, being directly compared to the aforementioned Beatles in this regard.
• Savage Garden. Short-lived by bubblegum pop standards (having been together for 8 years, with the first few of them spent without releasing anything major), they churned out two mega-hit albums in the late 90s, a number of worldwide no. 1 hit singles, and essentially became Roxette/Air Supply for the 90s teen idol generation before breaking up in 2001. They are regarded at home as being among the greatest Australian artists of all time, and still maintain a cult following to this day.
• Linda Martell recorded only one album, Color Me Country, in 1970. She quickly retired from the music industry due to the unfair treatment she received as the only black woman in the genre at the time (to this day, her single "Color Him Father" remains the highest-charting country song by a solo black woman). Despite this, she has remained extremely popular among country music fans in the 21st century, especially the contemporary generation of black female country singers such as Mickey Guyton who have cited her as an influence.
• DeBarge was a sibling R&B group that only lasted ten years, produced four albums, and despite plenty of hits had just one music video (for 1985's "Rhythm of the Night"). While they had the potential to be bigger than they were, infighting within the band, the executives focusing their eyes solely on lead singer El, and most tragically drug addiction derailed their careers. Yet their influence is still felt to this day and their songs have been sampled several times by some of music's biggest stars, including Tupac Shakur, The Notorious B.I.G., Mary J. Blige, and Mariah Carey.
• Milli Vanilli only lasted two years and released just one album before they were destroyed by a scandal... but what a scandal it was. Even after dance-pop and bubblegum pop became socially acceptable to enjoy again, every single act has been under scrutiny for authenticity, be it lip-syncing (the thing that ultimately did "Rob & Fab" in) or Auto-Tune, in fear that another Milli Vanilli will happen. Still, it wasn't all bad: the incident's notoriety did lead to the creation of a law which requires all music albums to credit exactly who provides the vocals, which still exists to this day and helped certain singers get out of similar jams shortly after, most notable being Martha Wash, who successfully sued C+C Music Factory after her vocals on their their mega-smash "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)" were mimed by a younger, slimmer actress in the music video.
• Patrick Cowley, a major influencer in the disco and early Electronic Dance Music scenes, was one of the first casualties of AIDS in 1982, age 32, after producing three albums of his own in the short span of two years, as well as regularly collaborating with Sylvester, who himself died of AIDS five years after Cowley.
• Randy Rhoads the lead guitarist of Quiet Riot and Ozzy Osbourne’s solo career after he was let go from Black Sabbath, he only performed on two albums from each group before tragically dying in a plane crash at the age of 25 after the pilot had been driving under the influence, years after his untimely death he became very influential to many musicians including Dimebag Darrell, Zakk Wylde, Mike McCready and Tom Morello, mimicking his techniques and playing style.
• Disco Inferno only existed for 6 years from 1989 to 1995, were commercially unsuccessful, and split up after financial issues and tensions between members. However, the sample-based style they'd shift towards from 1992 onwards ended up being foundational to the development of Post-Rock, and many successful bands such as Animal Collective and MGMT have named them as influences.

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