Now that "Nuke the Fridge" has (sorta) caught on as a film term, I was thinking there should be a musical equivalent to pinpoint the moment a musical artist totally alienated his devoted fan base and lost his last shred of "cool".

The most obvious examples are when singers sell out for ads. It's easy to point to Michael Jackson's hair-blazing Pepsi spot or Bob Dylan hawking ladies undergarments (God, that still hurts to type). But it's not only an embarrassing ad (or pedophilia arrest) that can be the defining moment. For example:

Prince changing his name into an unpronounceable symbol.

R.E.M. singing "Shiny Happy Monsters" on Sesame Street

U2's Discotheque video

Metallica's haircuts

Aerosmith recording a Diane Warren song for a crappy Michael Bay movie

Elvis' first movie

Paul McCartney records "Let 'Em In"

Bruce Springsteen dumps the E Street Band, replaces them with studio musicians from Toto and releases two crappy albums simultaneously.

.....

The list goes on & on. Anyway, I was wondering if you could add to the list and come up with a catchy term. The best I could come up with was "Dance With Muppets" since it honors R.E.M. (one of my favorite bands to that point) and because so many rock stars humiliated themselves on The Muppet Show. I'm not sold on it, though. Any thoughts?

isnt' the term just 'selling out'. You could argue that metallica sold out when they made the video for 'one' (they said they would never do one) or when they made the black album.

Aerosmith sold out LONG before "Don't Want To Miss A Thing". That was just the moment where they passed a point of no return and became irrelevent (well, to everyone except the producers of the Guitar Hero franchise, that is)

I believe that term is "sold out".

yep, that's about when he started to suck.

I dunno. Being silly on a kid's show is sort of an exception. IMO, REM's low point was "Around the Sun".

I disagree. Pop is an underrated album and I really liked ATYCLB and HTDAAB.

Yep. Although, IMO, "Unforgiven" is when things started to suck. It's not that bad a song itself, but the direction it pointed the band towards is a decaying spiral.

The problem with this one is that Lucky Town isn't that bad an album, The Ghost of Tom Joad has its moments and both The Rising and Magic (despite having one of the worst sounding masters ever) are pretty damned good.

"Married the Yoko"

"Dismantled the Atomic Bomb"

I agree with what you said but I think that this is different than selling out. Selling out implies that the band went from being a band that just cared about their music to a band that was in there for the money or made a move that had big financial implications either by changing their music (Metallica) or doing commercials.

The difference with this new fangled term that we're working on is that it works for every facet of music. The OP lists "I Don't Want To Miss a Thing" as Aerosmiths downfall. However, Aerosmith was making radio friendly music long before then. Some can argue that they've always been a "pop" rock band. Same with U2 to a degree. My point is that you can alienate a big part of your fan base without selling out. You can do it by releasing a crappy album or single.

Of course this new term can coincide with selling out as well since Metallica "jumped the shark" the same time they "sold out".

"releasing their 2nd album"

Yeah, you see my point. A lot of U2 fans feel that they "sold out" when they put out The Joshua Tree, or certainly that they had by the release of Rattle & Hum (movie and/or album). Still, there's a long way between that and THIS:
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/lZSPiojUCFI&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/lZSPiojUCFI&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

Regadless of the album, I felt that video was pretty embarassing.

And I like "Married The Yoko", even if that's more about the destruction of a band than the onset of the band's suckage.

I think there's a big difference when bands "jump" compared to TV shows. Mainly because TV shows have a shorter shelf life, whereas bands/artists can last 30+ years.

A great number of artists llisted who have "jumped the shark" at one point or another (U2, Springsteen, Prince, REM, Bowie) have jumped back and redeemed themselves artistically IMO. Maybe Pop/Discotheque is seen as a low point in U2's career (I personally enjoyed it, but do agree it is one of their weakest) but there's no denying that whatever luster that album cost them, they regained it with ATYCLB and HTDAAB.

I'll cast a vote for:

"took off their makeup"

for those who remember Kiss doing it.

Or if you wanna go real retro:

"went electric"

-jason

My vote is for this.

How about "Hot Spaced it"? In recognition of Queen's 1982 album "Hot Space" which went into the disco/funk territory (fooled by the success of "Another One Bites the Dust") after spending almost 10 years becoming one of the best rock bands around. The album helped signal their massive downfall in popularity in America.

am I the only person who likes Discotheque? Yes, I do think the video is embarassing, especially the Village People part, but I think the song did a good job merging rock and electronica and predated The Bravery, The Killers and other groups who have made a career doing such music

How about "Joined Myspace"?

How about "Married a Model" -- fits for Billy Joel, David Bowie, The Cars, The Rolling Stones and maybe Rod Stewart (if you ever considered Rod's music to not suck).

Except that turned out to be a brilliant move that ended up bringing them back into the spotlight.

People think Rod Stewart always "sucked"? Wow, Jeff Beck Group, Faces and his early recordings, of course my opinion, were very good.

how about "lead singer left so we replaced him with some guy who sounds like him hoping the fans won't mind" (Journey, Styx, Chicago, Foreigner, etc...)

another one, sort of in line with my last post is Queen + Paul Rodgers. Queen without Freddie is Nirvana without Cobain or The Beatles without Lennon

"hired Gary Cherone"

"achieved technical ecstasy"

too obscure?

As far as KISS' history goes, that's not really a good analogy though. "Recording The Elder" (or maybe Dynasty or Unmasked)* would make more sense. Taking off the makeup was the beginning of them starting to regain their popularity to some degree.

* I really like all three of the above albums personally, but each could be considered the point where KISS went wrong. Well, Dynasty was a commercial success, but much less of a success with real KISS fans at the time, thus the "beginning of the end".

That's a good one, for those who get the reference.