Ruined Forever / Music

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• After Anneke Van Giersbergen left The Gathering in 2007, many fans thought that both careers came to an end and new albums from both sides wouldn't have been as good as the previous ones.
• Any new pop star (Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, The Jonas Brothers, Britney Spears, Selena Gomez, Justin Timberlake, etc.) ruins the genre of Pop forever. Just read the iTunes reviews of the songs to get an idea of how serious this can get.
  • This is actually a subversion in some cases. Many people use the similarities between popstars as proof that pop is terrible in the first place, despite the fact that since they play/sing the same genre, they're bound to be somewhat similar.
  • What, they only ruined Pop forever? Bring up a YouTube video of any song more than a decade old and observe a comments section with nothing but claims that pop-star-du-jour represents the death of all good music, everywhere.
    • You can find commenters claiming everything made after 2000 is bad, pop or not, and that we should go back to the "good old days" (nevermind the fact that there are terrible songs in every decade). Try listening to an old electronic song or classic rock - you will find this trope in spades. Sometimes you get kids saying that they were born in the wrong generation just because they like older music.
  • It's also worth noting that fans of such teen pop stars will often cry foul when they go Darker and Edgier. This has happened with Britney Spears since with "I'm A Slave 4 U", Miley Cyrus since "Can't Be Tamed", Justin Timberlake with his solo work, and so forth.
  • In Brazil, this happens a lot among detractors of funk carioca and sertanejo universitário, who claim that music is ruined forever and who see these respective genres as nothing more than vulgar or otherwise bad music. And sometimes even within fans of funk carioca you find people wearing nostalgia glasses and saying that in the '90s the songs were so much better and less sexual/violent, which is blatantly untrue. The only thing is that nowadays the lyrics are more explicit - before, they made heavy use of double entendres and metaphors.
• When Black Sabbath fired Ozzy Osbourne, fans were first skeptical about his replacement, Ronnie James Dio, but they soon accepted him as the frontman of a different Sabbath. However, each singer following Dio was heavily critized by fans. Former Deep Purple frontman Ian Gillan left the band after one album. Tony Martin stayed for almost a decade, yet his tenure with Sabbath has always been deemed somewhat controversal. Despite being a decent vocalist, many fans dislike Martin and consider him the weakest singer Sabbath ever had, and his tenure as a desperate attempt by Tony Iommi to keep the band alive after its heyday has been over for long.
• Bruce Springsteen, Dave Matthews, Pearl Jam and other artists who have strong cult followings suffer from this with just about every major release. Springsteen, in particular, has hordes of fans at places like Backstreets and Stone Pony London who kvetch about each new record at or shortly before the time of its release, only to eventually decide that it's GOLD compared to the next album that comes out a few years later.
• This is the fan reaction to just about any indie band/Christian band that signs to a major label. That's why, to many fans, bands like Death Cab and Underoath flat out suck now. Because, apparently it's impossible to make good music once you're in the industry. Punk bands have been getting this for years, although their anti-establishment themes often make you wonder why they didn't see it coming.
  • Entertainingly, this is also true at the opposite end of the spectrum from Christian music - Black Metal (those crazy church-burning ones) is notorious for claiming only the most amateurishly-produced and listener-unfriendly music as "true Black Metal". Even then, it's preferable that the band should be inactive because a) they've killed themselves, b) half of them are in prison for killing and eating another band/the other half of their own band, c) they've been too busy to tour due to putting all their time into their eight dozen different yet Suspiciously Similar Sounding side projects or undergoing a five-year drinking binge in some remote part of Norway.
  • The situation isn't helped when then-indie bands issue lyrical take thats to big-label artists, only to later become the same presumed sell-outs they have previously bemoaned.
• Some My Chemical Romance fans went totally insane over Danger Days. Any song that passes Gerard's lips that isn't about death is, to them, not worth listening to. Screw band evolution. Screw happiness. Screw life.
• Metallica released an album without Cliff Burton? Metallica is Ruined FOREVER! They released an album that was closer to old-school heavy metal instead of thrash metal? Ruined FOREVER! Death Magnetic isn't a bland copy of Master of Puppets? Ruined FOREVER! Seriously, no matter what, Metallica is never going to catch a break from its so-called "fans".
  • Metallica, and Ruined FOREVER means we need to mention St Anger? Even Metallica has all but disowned this record.
  • The Lulu album took this to whole new levels.
• Pretty much any band that changes its sound is accused of "selling out."
  • The band doesn't even have to change its sound. All it has to do is have a Top 40 hit or two after years of toiling in relative obscurity. There are many examples, especially from '70s album rock and '90s alternative.
  • They either changed it for the label, or didn't change it for the label.
  • Divided fanbases are not uncommon to find because of this. Someone might tell you to listen to a certain album but not another, for example. It's even worse if a long-time member leaves the group. For example, Tarja Turunen's departure from Nightwish caused a storm between several fans.
    • Might also happen if a band enters on hiatus for an extended period and then comes back - their music might not be "the same" and therefore, they are RUINED FOREVER!
• Hip-hop is ruined forever about once a week depending on who you ask.
  • Not only that, but any song ever sampled by a hip-hop or rap artist becomes ruined forever. Such as Kanye West sampling Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger," though plenty of examples of this trope can be found by searching through the Youtube comments of every song that's ever been sampled.
  • Even worse now with the advent of "mumble rap" - expect to find a myriad of comments talking about how "mumble rap" isn't music and that true hip-hop ceased to exist after a certain date (usually 2000, but also as late as 2009).
  • And then Trap Music became big after crossing over into the mainstream - cue an unlikely alliance of old-school hip-hop fans and fans of rock & metal (the latter because trap helped hip-hop overtake rock as the "most popular form of music" in 2018) deriding it too for not being real music, and again claiming that true hip-hop ceased to exist once the 2000's ended.
• Some fans say indie rock bands like Grizzly Bear and Florence + the Machine were Ruined FOREVER by contributing to The Twilight Saga soundtrack.
• Fans of Against Me! claimed the band sold out when they moved from the tiny No Idea label to Fat Wreck Chords in 2003, to the point where fans slashed the tires of the bands tour van and vandalised it and reportedly poured bleach over their merch table. The bizarre thing is that Fat Wreck Chords was well known for being anti-establishment indie label. Ironically, there was a lot less outcry when the band left FWC for an actual major label, Sire Records, in 2007.
• When The Beatles were still only popular in their hometown, drummer Pete Best was given the boot for the more competent Ringo Starr. Many fans cried Ruined FOREVER at the time, but everything turned out okay.
• In 1965, Bob Dylan's switching from an acoustic guitar to an electric one provoked great outrage of this nature from his folk rock fans. This went beyond 'ruined' forever; Pete Seeger allegedly tried to cut off his amplifiers with an axe at the Newport Folk Festival, and a fan famously shouted "Judas!" when Dylan played electric at the Manchester Free Trade Hall.
• After years of being bashed by rock elitists for their artsy prog-rock "pretentiousness", Yes released their 90125 album with a more conventional rock sound—and were immediately declared Ruined Forever. When they later moved back towards prog-rock with Union and Keys to Ascension, much of their 90125-Big Generator fanbase likewise declared Yes to be Ruined Forever.
• Similarly to Yes, Genesis was Ruined Forever when Peter Gabriel left and Phil Collins took over lead vocals and moved Genesis to a more mainstream sound. Similarly, when Collins left and Ray Wilson took over, though ...Calling All Stations... did seem to have lasting negative effects. In fact, the Hate Dumb for Collins' solo career took to the mainstream because of the belief of certain members of the Fan Dumb of Gabriel-era Genesis that Collins ruined the band forever.
• David Bowie has long had a broken fanbase due to his fondness for the New Sound Album trope, but wailing and gnashing of teeth hit a fever pitch when he switched to mainstream pop-rock for Let's Dance and had a Newbie Boom...
• Fan Dumb on the part of fans of any genre of metal have a tendency to claim this. Constantly. In the 80's, it was Ruined FOREVER by glam metal, in the 90's, it was Ruined FOREVER by grunge or Nu Metal, and in the 2000's, it was Ruined FOREVER by either Emo, Rap, Pop, or any genre that wasn't metal. And metalcore. And deathcore. The reason it's Fan Dumb is because the 80's was metal's high point, the 90's, commonly looked to as the "decade metal nearly died," was actually the decade that saw the beginning of Black Metal, Death Metal, and Groove Metal. The 2000's has seen death metal and black metal become more streamlined, merging again with elements of Thrash Metal, and Progressive Metal, as well as the creation of Post Metal, and a return to form of many of the thrash bands from the 80's such as Megadeth and Metallica.
  • Tenacious D has something to say on the matter...
• The Loudness War has ruined most contemporary and remastered music FOREVER.
  • Not forever, provided the original, unruined masters still exist. It's likely that once the companies come out with a new format claimed to be 'the best sound quality ever' they will use the original masters and people will think that it's an improvement.
• "American Pie", according to the most popular fan theory, is a requiem for popular music and pop culture in general after the 1950s.
• What?! ICP are releasing a "second deck" of the Joker's Cards in order to expand upon the obscure mythology of the Dark Carnival?! Ruined FOREVER.
  • They used surf rock guitars in "The Bone"!? They've sold out and are now ruined FOREVER!
• DragonForce's replacement vocalist Marc Hudson has caused some fans to complain about how he sounds different to ZP and claim he won't be able to do the old songs as well.
• Morbid Angel's newest album Illud Divinum Insanus has elicited many fan complaints thanks to a 90s industrial buttrock sound and what many fans will consider almost embarrassingly bad lyrics, coupled with a severe decline in Dave's voice and the only real death metal songs on the album being a). of FAR lower quality than you'd expect from MA, and b). having a "we gave you some goddamn death metal, now shut the fuck up" air about them. Some have even gone so far as to describe it as Morbid Angel's St. Anger.
  • That being said, the band's condescending responses to fans criticizing it and obvious paid shills of it by other musicians did not help their cause one bit.
• Oh no! Geri Halliwell has left the Spice Girls and the rest of the group have to carry on their tour without her! The group is RUINED FOREVER!
• mewithoutYou is gonna release a new album in 2012, the first since their few years hiatus? Fans were very excited. Wait, Hayley Williams guest appears on not just one, but two tracks? Loyal mwY fans cried RUINED FOREVER! (and that's even before the album's out).
• This can often happen when a singer-songwriter that is not well-known in the mainstream features on a track by a mainstream artist, which then becomes better-known than anything they had done before. An example of this would be the negative response from many fans of Sia to her collaborations with David Guetta and Flo Rida.
• Avril Lavigne upon the release of "What The Hell". The message of the song and especially the music video ruined FOREVER any perceptions of her as the sweet, next door type.
  • Britney Spears at the end of the innocent girl next door phase of her career would qualify for similar reasons.
  • Or for that matter, any musician that sheds their young, innocent image and releases videos with lots of sexual imagery and innuendo.
• Linkin Park. A ton of us are tired of people saying that Minutes to Midnight and A Thousand Suns ruined them forever.
• When Opeth released Heritage, many a fan cried this because it's more prog rock than Progressive Death Metal.
• The Brazilian singer Latino (who is already a point of contention in his country), after making his version of "Gangnam Style", turning it into a dirty song, revolted many people including his own fanbase. The song's music video (dead link) was the most disliked video on YouTube Brazil until the removal request by Universal Music was granted.
  • After this, Universal Music refused to further distribute this version of Gangnam Style, effectively making the song banned, so no alternate music videos or any kind of marketing was allowed.
• Roger Waters is taking over Pink Floyd now that Syd Barrett left? Roger's changing the band's style to be more satirical? Roger is leaving the band for his solo career? Roger is disbanding Pink Floyd? The band is getting back together without Roger? ALL OF THIS ruined Pink Floyd forever!
• Any time a member of a rock or metal band cuts his long hair short. The degree of ruination is proportional to how many members do this, the time frame in which said members do it, and how much overall hair is left in the band afterwards.
• It is actually possible that Ludwig van Beethoven met the reaction when he presented his third symphony: A first movement fifteen minutes long? Putting yourself inside your work? Music that is actually about something? Your career is ruined, Ludwig...
• Many music critics and music elitists will tell you that rock was ruined FOREVER AND EVER when Progressive Rock and Arena Rock became big. Or when MTV premiered. Or when Hair Metal became big. Or when Nu Metal became big. Or when Post-Grunge and Emo became big. It's just best to tune out any critic or music elitist that still despises any rock/metal genre that isn't Three Chords and the Truth.
  • For certain classic rock fans, the cutoff may be the rise of Grunge in the early 90's.
  • While grunge did sound the death knell for hair metal, it actually caused '70s rock to become hip and relevant again; Neil Young was often called the godfather of grunge, after all. But the classic rockers' complaints about MTV add up purely to a jealous hatred of a medium that enabled newer and "alternative" musicians to break into the stuffy, staid American music scene. The classic rockers had a stranglehold on American radio, with only the odd radio station here and there (e.g. Los Angeles's KROQ or New York City's WLIR) willing to take a chance on the younger artists that would come to define the "MTV Generation" in the 1980s.
• Fans of Daft Punk felt the French duo was Ruined FOREVER when they released their second album Discovery. While their first album Homework was clearly house-oriented, Discovery explored disco-funk sounds as well as synthpop music. Then a new batch of people thought they were RUINED FOREVER again when they released their third album Human After All in which they switched back to house elements (although the hardcore fans rejoiced). The same thing happened again with the release of Random Access Memories, which the hardcore fans deemed was too "disco" for their tastes.
• Cat Stevens has a classic rock themed album called Foreigner? The synthetic Numbers a few years later? And he converts to Islam and changes his name? One guess to what that would mean...
• Oh lord, the inane chatter amongst fairweather Duranies (Duran Duran fans) when Warren Cuccurullo stepped into the role of lead guitarist, at first a session and touring musician during the Big Thing era and finally acknowledged as official in time for 1990's Liberty and accompanying tour; one would have thought Warren was solely responsible for the hole in the ozone layer, constant warring in the Middle East, and everything that went wrong in the grousers' lives ever. Not even Warren's key role in the band's massive 1993 comeback (with his house serving as the album's recording studio and his musical feedback contributing to the album's vital and of-the-moment sound) was enough for these people. It's just best to tune out any so-called "Duranie" who derides Warren.
  • Many fans of the New Wave & New Romantic era think it was ruined forever as soon as DD got big on MTV.
• The Wiggles:
  • They made Jeff constantly be late for work in Network Wiggles? RUINED FOREVER!
  • They're replacing Greg with some guy named Sam because Greg has health issues? RUINED FOREVER!
  • And now they're replacing Greg, Murray, and Jeff with a chick and two new guys just after Greg returned to the group?!? WHY?!? WHY!!!!!!
• Kraftwerk's fanbase had this reaction when Florian Schneider left.
• Hard rock fans feel that REO Speedwagon was RUINED FOREVER when they transformed into a pop rock band with Hi Infidelity, Good Trouble, and Wheels Are Turnin'.
• Jimmy Page collaborated with Puff Daddy on a Sampled Up version of "Kashmir"? LED ZEPPELIN IS RUINED FOREVER!
• Arcade Fire were RUINED FOREVER when they dropped their whimsical indie sound for Synth-Pop on Everything Now.
• The Beach Boys Mike Love making the group stick "the formula": the simple songs about stuff like surfing, cars, girls, and of course, the beach as opposed Brian Wilson's attempts to make the band more experimental and relevant, has caused the group to split into two warring factions.
• There are many Lynyrd Skynyrd fans who will tell you the "real' band ended with the plane crash.
• This trope has happened to They Might Be Giants not one, not two, but three times.
  • Shortly after the release of Apollo 18, the band decided to get a backing band for live performances due to both feeling that they had exhausted their potential with the lo-fi approach they took, as well as pressure from their label, Elektra. When it was announced that they would be once again be using a backing band for their album John Henry, this alienated many of the fans who liked their lo-fi music style, resulting in them being RUINED FOREVER. This aspect has calmed down over the years though, and is not as contentious as it was once before.
  • When the band started collaborating with Disney to make children's albums, they were RUINED FOREVER in the eyes of some fans, who thought that they were selling out and not taking music "seriously". This actually happened twice; once in 2004 when Here Come the ABCs was announced, and again in 2009 when fans thought that the band was more focused on children's music due to releasing two children's albums in a row and engaging with Playhouse Disney more. Over the years, the albums have gained many older fans who consider them to be just as witty and fun as their adult albums, and while there is still somewhat of a divide, it wasn't as big as it was before.

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