This isn’t a “go back in time and assassinate” someone question. It’s just their musical career never takes off and thus any music they ever would have made is no longer in this timeline.

  • ultranaut@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Ted Nugent. He is just a complete scumbag and without his shitty music career he never would have impacted so many people with his gross bullshit. The world would be better off if his music never existed.

    • kinther@lemmy.worldOP
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      6 months ago

      I was about to give the example of Ted Nugent in the body of the post because he’s just such a douche. I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought the same.

    • Lorindól@sopuli.xyz
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      6 months ago

      Nugent is a truly despisable creature, but his playing in Amboy Dukes’ “Journey to the Center of the Mind” album is very good.

    • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Ted Nugent deserves to have more than just his career erased. Fucking admitted pedophile piece of shit.

    • Dagwood222
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      6 months ago

      I worked retail for exactly one Christmas. The day I worked the toy department they had one album on repeat for eight hours. I hated Christmas music for years, and now it just annoys me.

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    6 months ago

    I won’t say his name but I stopped someone’s musical career once. He was an up and coming young guitarist, getting performing gigs here and there, and teaching guitar students to help pay his bills while waiting for a break. I took some lessons from him and as part of general chatting it came out that I worked with computers. He thought that was interesting and asked good questions, so I brought him some programming books. He became a full time programmer a couple months later and a very good one too. I’m glad it worked out for him, but I always wonder what we lost.

    • myfavouritename@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      My coach used to tell the story of a really promising track and field athlete who might have had a serious shot on the world scene, but quit to play in his band called The Barenaked Ladies. I never fact checked that, so I have no idea if it was true or not. But it stuck with me because it made me think of all the people who might have been incredible in one field or another who just never gave it a shot.

      • Dagwood222
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        6 months ago

        “Ike At The Mike” by Howard Waldrop. Award winning short story. An elderly Dwight Eisenhower is invited to the White House. Ike famously gave up his West Point cadetship to become a jazz musician. Among the attendees honoring him is the young Elvis A. Presley, Senator from Mississippi.

      • solrize@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Nah, Windows was supposedly inspired by NASCAR. Bill saw how people loved seeing constant crashes, and he got an idea…

      • solrize@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        This was decades ago. I don’t remember the specific books but they were about programming in C. By now that is considered a neckbeard language. The first thing the guy did, with like zero experience, was write a video compression program in C.

  • Mr_Blott@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Simon Cowell

    The cunt worked out how to make millions from gouging money from kids with cheaply produced pop, and caused a massive collapse in the quality of the British music scene, from which it’s never really recovered

    It was the only good thing left Simon 🤨

  • Microw
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    6 months ago

    Michael Jackson. Having his career fail during the childhood “Jackson 5” phase. Better for him and a lotta other people.

    • Doorbook@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Last i remember he would play with kids but didn’t sexually abuse them. Was there any more infor came out?

      • neidu2@feddit.nl
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        6 months ago

        I’m on the fence about him, as I haven’t really dug into it, but i get the impression that it’s mostly allegations without proof. His sister made some outlandish claims, but her credibility has been called intoquestion.

        There were some settlements/payoffs, but I’m not going to speculate whether that was for covering something up, or if it was an attempt at appeasing people who just wanted a quick buck.

        It can be said with certainty that he liked being around kids, possibly in a purely innocent manner. Anything beyond that is hard to say for certain. And the stories about kids sharing bedroom with him often fail to take into account that his bedroom was larger than most houses.

      • XIIIesq@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        He asked them to show their butt holes and masturbated in front of them, so not as severe as rape but definitely sexual abuse (allegedly).

        What swung it for me is when Louis Theroux said that anyone claiming he’s not a pedophile is in denial. If you’re willing to look the other way because “he made great music though”, then shame on you.

    • Howdy@lemmy.zip
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      6 months ago

      Eeeeeeee oooooooooo eeeeeeeeeeeee oooooooooo eeeeee - oko nono

  • ChicoSuave@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Outside the box: Robert Elliot, a charter pilot who flew and killed Jim Croce by crashing into a tree on takeoff. Pilot error was found to be the cause as the overweight 57 year old pilot was unable to drive to the airport so ran for 3 miles, from his motel to the hangar, to be on time for the flight. The run exacerbated his coronary artery disease, causing him to tunnel vision and not see the tree.

    • acetanilide@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Wasn’t sure if I should believe you or not, so I looked it up

      …I’m still not sure if I can believe this

      • ChicoSuave@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        I thought about that and that’s why I picked Croce - different flight than Big Bopper, Richie Valenz, and Buddy Holly.

    • smort@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Similar story, when I was 12 I was late for the school bus and ran about 2 blocks with a full backpack and a snare drum. Ended up puking in the bus aisle about halfway through the hour long ride. Basically the same thing.

    • rbesfe@lemmy.ca
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      6 months ago

      It would be super simple too, just obtain footage of him beating the shit out of Rihanna and make it public, his music career would surely be destroyed in seconds.

      • Rob T Firefly@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        The brutal details of Rihanna’s domestic violence report against Chris Brown and the photo of her injuries are so common as to have been a copypasta for over a decade, and his fans still worship him.

          • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Cause half of them think its okay to beat women, and half of them want to be the women he beats.

            Cause the weird cults of personality that form around fame and fortune are beyond rational comprehension.

  • GraniteM@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I’d do the inverse of this and see what might have happened if Charles Manson had had a successful music career. I heard an album of his songs and they were actually pretty good, kind of a mix of The Beach Boys and The Doors. Maybe if he’d sold some more songs then he wouldn’t have gone into the whole murder cult thing.

    But then again maybe it would have positioned him to be way worse and we’re actually living in the universe where somebody stopped Manson from achieving true wealth and power and like leading a nationwide death cult or something.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Nothing.

      Elvis didn’t invent anything musically, he was just the first white guy to do what Black guys had been doing.

      If it wasn’t Elvis, it would have been someone else a couple months later.

      • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Actually, that was one thing I considered. If he hadn’t become a superstar by never writing a single song, would it have changed the industry’s thoughts on using pretty faces to sell other people’s songs?

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        6 months ago

        “Though I’m not the first king of controversy
        I am the worst thing since Elvis Presley
        To do Black music so selfishly
        And use it to get myself wealthy (Hey!)
        There’s a concept that works
        Twenty million other white rappers emerge
        But no matter how many fish in the sea
        It’d be so empty without me” - Eminem

    • sangriaferret@sh.itjust.works
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      6 months ago

      A lot more piano probably.

      Jerry Lee Lewis was poised to be one of the first white rock and roll superstars until his career was rocked with scandal. Had that happened it is very possible that the piano would become the predominant instrument in white rock.

      The genre already has its roots in jump blues and boogie woogie, both piano driven styles. Little Richard and Fats Domino were at the top of the charts.

      Had a piano player been the king of white rock then you would have likely seen a lot more artists picking up that instrument rather than the guitar.

      • BottleOfAlkahest@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Jerry Lee Lewis became fairly successful in Country after his Rock career faltered. Most country musicians still play the guitar rather than the piano though.

        • sangriaferret@sh.itjust.works
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          6 months ago

          True, but many of country’s conventions were well established when he got into it. When he got into rock it was new, especially white rock. I think he would have a more significant influence there.

      • Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        6 months ago

        Nah, guitar is the musical equivalent to football (soccer). It’s cheap, easy to learn, you can take it with you, and you can play with your friends.

        The trope of a kid turning up with their guitar couldn’t happen with a piano.

        • sangriaferret@sh.itjust.works
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          6 months ago

          You’re right. I shouldn’t have suggested that the piano would be more popular than guitar, only that you might have heard a lot more piano if Jerry Lee had been the face of white rock instead of Elvis.

          People are going to play whatever they can get their hands on. I remember reading in a Muddy Waters biography about someone who started off writing songs using an old piano wire attached to a shack because that’s all he had available.

          • Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            6 months ago

            Nothing wrong with suggesting a different idea :)

            It would have been cool to watch 90’s kids humping pianos to band practice with their friends though :D

          • Obi@sopuli.xyz
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            6 months ago

            Yeah, I actually really like that movie, because it pulls all the right heart strings for me, but overall they didn’t really explore all the impacts of the Beatles being gone on the actual music industry, besides a runaway joke about Oasis. It mostly focuses on how the protagonist makes a career out of his special knowledge.

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    6 months ago

    Amy Winehouse. If she stayed a blues singer in London she might not have had so many drug issues made worse by fame.

    • Anamnesis@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      I hate how people on Reddit have a fucking bizarre fascination with this band. Yeah, I was 13 once, too, and also thought it was deep then. Then I grew up.

    • qyron@sopuli.xyz
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      6 months ago

      I own Meteora and when I try to listen to it in ViMusic the program serves me so many iterations of it I don’t know which is the original.