Whatever happened to this staple of the 80's?


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fact: Billy Ocean was the first concert I ever attended. I think I was about 16 or 17.

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from a few months ago:

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He played a free concert at a local casino this summer. Dude must be swimming in money and chicks.

You can't forget about the License to Drive song.

I thought maybe he would still be big after all the hits he had in the 80's.

I saw him perform live at Epcot two years ago. It was a free show. It wasn't bad for what it was.

It's sort of crazy how many of these 80s artists were just huge for awhile and then suddenly fall completely off the map. Here in the US he had 3 number one songs and 4 more top ten hits in like a 5-year span, and then nothing.

Thanks, Nirvana!

Seriously though, there are plenty of acts from every decade who are big for a while and then drop off the face of the earth. Some of them just can't hold the public's interest, others move into other areas of music (Nile Rodgers of Chic became an incredibly successful producer for Madonna, Bowie, etc.).

Funny how someone like Lionel Richie who is around the same age as Billy Ocean has a career going on 4 decades. He was actually able to re-invent himself and change his sound a few times.

I saw that Ocean's last major studio album was in 1993 and after that tanked, he pretty much left the industry.

It's just something that doesn't happen as often today. You just don't see people and radio stations all deciding en masse that they are suddenly sick of Katy Perry or Usher, for instance. Hell, even Chris Brown is still charting. Maybe it's that today's pop stars have all learned from Madonna's example and became better at trend-shifting to stay relevant.

That girl got into his car and they haven't been heard from since.

Fin.

The tough got going...

Seems like he fell into the danger zone.

Huh... I thought he went back to Trinidad and was still a fairly popular star in the Caribbean. Maybe it's Eddie Grant I'm thinking of.

Why would he go to Trinidad they don't even have any Luft Balloons let alone 99.

80s Fail.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSkik6EUQUc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAjInKiOkqo

Here he is on some Aussie chat show in 2009. Dude is killing it and sounds even better then the record.

He is a full trained and qualified tailor, so he could always have fallen back on that.

He was on the Tonight Show this week

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R.i.p.

Dam right

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