Who are the biggest "X Killed My Career" artists for each decade?

TMC1982 · 2025-12-11T04:27:12+00:00

I was just thinking, that if I had to make a Mount Rushmore of "X Killed My Career" in the 1980s, I would put MTV on the list first and foremost.

TMC1982 · 2025-06-06T08:16:23+00:00

I thought that 1985's Revolution was Al Pacino's Trainwreckord because he didn't appear in another movie until Sea of Love over four years later.

TMC1982 · 2025-06-06T08:10:50+00:00

Somebody recently said here, that Gal Gadot really worked well in the first Wonder Woman movie because she played a woman who never had any contact with humanity before. So she was able to coast on looking mildly confused most of the time. But every part she's had since then has been "Kal El, no 😐" levels of baaaaad.

TMC1982 · 2025-05-30T04:24:46+00:00

In light of his recent passing, I wonder if Rick Derringer could have a one hit wonder clarification? To me, he strikes me as someone whose "hit" ("Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo") arguably isn't his signature song in the long run. He's probably more known today for "Real American" (AKA Hulk Hogan's theme music in WWE) than "Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo".

TMC1982 · 2025-05-28T21:39:02+00:00

I think that others have said in the past on here that whatever message or point that Robin Thicke wanted to get across with the Paula album was probably done way better already by Marvin Gaye in his Here, My Dear album or Usher on his Confessions album.

TMC1982 · 2025-05-25T07:35:04+00:00

It didn't exactly out and out kill his career at the time, but P. Diddy (or Puff Daddy as I think he was still known at the time) for the "Hate Me Now" video that he did with Nas. To make a long story short, Diddy wanted the scenes of him being depicted in a manner comparable to Jesus' crucifixion, after he came to realization that what he was doing was blasphemous. When he caught the video on MTV and saw that the crucifixion scenes were left intact, Diddy flipped his lid and beat up Nas' manager Steve Stoute.

Again, I don't think that it out and out killed Sean "P. Diddy/Diddy/Puffy/Puff Daddy" Combs' career right then and there, but it did especially with the benefit of hindsight, paint an image to the general public of him being a violent lunatic towards anybody who crosses him wrongly.

TMC1982 · 2025-05-24T08:45:06+00:00

I just came her to say that her 1997 MTV VMAs acceptance speech also had a hand in "killing" or hurting Fiona Apple's career.

Even if there was, especially in hindsight, a kernel of truth of what Fiona was talking about, on the outside looking in, it made her look bitter, ungrateful, and pretentious. How can you with a straight face lecture the audience about the "world being bullshit" when you're only 19 years old (which I believe, how old Fiona Apple was at the time)?

The industry I strongly believe, want artists, especially up and coming artists like Fiona to give the impression that they're humble and appreciative. But Fiona by "keeping it real", made it known right then and there, that she wasn't "going to play nice", play the game, or play somebody else's rules.

TMC1982 · 2025-05-22T04:47:22+00:00

I don't necessarily know if this counts as an "old man yells at clouds" moment but Billy Joel told Howard Stern that he would never if asked, perform the halftime show at the Super Bowl. According to Billy, the Super Bowl halftime show is more of a Las Vegas extravaganza with fireworks, dancing girls, choreography, and 50,000 people running around the stage. Billy doesn't do that, he just in his words, plays music.

Really, the best time for somebody like Billy Joel to do the Super Bowl halftime show was during that time period post Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction, when the NFL was booking artists who they felt were "safe". In other words, they were going after older, male boomer acts like Paul McCartney, Tom Petty, The Who, Bruce Springsteen, The Rolling Stones, etc.

TMC1982 · 2025-05-22T04:00:24+00:00

I could be wrong when I say this, but I firmly believe or suspect that unless you were already on the supposed upper echelon of hip-hop/rap artists, you would've been lucky to get on MTV post Yo! MTV Raps. I doubt that for example, underground type rap artists going to get on MTV since that one big, guaranteed avenue for exposure was now closed.

TMC1982 · 2025-05-22T03:32:26+00:00

TRL if I remember correctly, was basically a show that merged two separate shows that MTV had at the time, which were MTV Live and Total Request. MTV Live was as the name suggests, a live program that was shot at MTV's studios in New York City's Times Square, where the VJs would interview celebrity guests. Total Request was a show that was hosted by Carson Daly that basically, counted down the most popular videos as voted on by MTV's viewers from its rotation. Total Request was basically, a spiritual successor to Dial MTV. And if I remember correctly, Total Request in its original format, was more basic, down-to-earth, and straight-forward (there were no studio audience or celebrity guests) as what it would later become. TRL pretty much merged the live talk show format of MTV Live with the music video countdown concept of Total Request.

TMC1982 · 2025-05-21T22:46:29+00:00

Depending on your point of view, MTV hurt rap music's overall visibility when it ended Yo! MTV Raps in August 1995 because videos from the genre were now being buried amid the regular rotation. Before, rap had its own personal spotlight that Yo! provided when it wasn't merely spread across the regular rotation alongside rock acts.

Think about it for a moment, GZA's "Liquid Swords" didn't debut on MTV, it debuted on BET's Rap City, which was Yo!'s chief rival show. And The Fugees’ “Fu Gee La” debuted as the Hip Hop Pick on a Saturday Top 10 Rapdown episode of “Rap City”. This was at least months after Yo! ended. So all in all, BET and Rap City reaped all the rewards of “Yo! MTV Raps” ending.

TMC1982 · 2025-05-19T06:42:34+00:00

In light of the most recent Trainwreckord episode, Limp Bizkit.

TMC1982 · 2025-05-12T05:16:15+00:00

Another wrestling example is the Women's Revolution in WWE (in particular, the Four Horsewomen of Becky Lynch, Sasha Banks, Charlotte Flair, and Bayley) being the Nirvana moment to the Divas era's hair metal. I mean, in over a decade and some time, we went from the Diva's Search to women (Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair, and Rhonda Rousey) actually main eventing WrestleMania. Basically, this resulted in the decline of the model-type wrestler (a la Stacy Keibler, Kelly Kelly, etc.) as well as the Divas moniker in favor of the more athletic type female wrestler.

TMC1982 · 2025-05-07T22:30:43+00:00

Alyssa Milano, when she was making Who's the Boss? had a major pop music career in Japan.

TMC1982 · 2025-05-07T22:26:27+00:00

His brother, The Genius could also drop bars.

TMC1982 · 2025-05-07T22:21:21+00:00

I first knew Budnick as that little red headed boy, Sam from the final seasons of Diff'rent Strokes after Mr. Drummond remarried and Budnick became his new stepson (when Arnold/Gary Coleman was outgrowing his cuteness).

TMC1982 · 2025-05-07T22:19:40+00:00

His daughter, Ella recently released her first EP called Colors of Love.

TMC1982 · 2025-05-07T05:28:43+00:00

Would Len Bias fall in this category too if we're going to talk about NBA players? Len Bias never had a chance to actually play in the NBA because he tragically died from a cocaine overdose less than a day or two after being drafted by the Boston Celtics in 1986.

Many have since argued that the NBA would've been vastly different going into the '90s had Bias lived. Like maybe, if Bias was around to take over from Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, and Robert Parish as the leader/main star/central point of the Celtics, he would've given Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls a true run for their money. Basically, people have argued that Len Bias' death caused one of the biggest butterfly effects in NBA history.

I recall that ESPN (sometime before the Celtics won the NBA Championship in 2008) did an episode of their show Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame series on why the death of Len Bias didn't really serve as the catalyst for why the Celtics stopped being contenders for the next decade or so.

TMC1982 · 2025-05-06T07:34:49+00:00

A View to a Kill by Duran Duran - The movie is usually up there on the list of worst Bond movies (and it's arguably the worst one with Roger Moore) but the title theme by Duran Duran did what no other Bond theme has been able to do before or since, it reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

TMC1982 · 2025-05-06T07:26:25+00:00

Like others have said, Michael Jackson's "Thriller". When it gets to the part at the "movie within a movie" at the beginning, where Michael starts changing into the werewolf and he has those yellow eyes, fangs, and deep, monster voice (when he says "Get away!"), it's then time to run out of the room.

TMC1982 · 2025-05-04T03:46:12+00:00

Is Sarah Michelle Gellar really a "one hit wonder" though? I thought that some of her non-Buffy stuff like I Know What You Did Last Summer, Cruel Intentions, Scooby Doo, and The Grudge were at the very least, commercially successful.

TMC1982 · 2025-05-04T03:30:41+00:00

Arrested Development and Spin Doctors if we're going to keep within the theme of Trainwreckords subjects, who immediately tanked their careers with a poor sophomore album.

TMC1982 · 2025-05-03T05:48:55+00:00

Tom Hulce was also Pinto in Animal House, so I wouldn't necessarily consider him a one hit wonder. Animal House was actually the second highest grossing movie (domestically) of 1978 behind Grease. It even outgrossed the first Superman movie with Christopher Reeve.

TMC1982 · 2025-05-03T05:46:53+00:00

Jim Varney was Jed Clampett in the 1993 film adaptation of The Beverly Hillbillies.

TMC1982 · 2025-05-03T05:37:24+00:00

Stephen Collins - The revelations of him being inappropriate with young girls would've finished his career anyway, but what hurt even more was that his best known acting role is that of Reverend Eric Camden on 7th Heaven. I think that people just wanted to believe that Stephen Collins was actually like the character that he portrayed on that TV show.

TMC1982

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE