The 1980s were a glorious time with lots of big hair and bouncy musical hits. In fact, there was so much new music and newish genres (New Wave became massive in the early part of the decade) that it was easy to lose track of where some of the musical artists went.
Some had a hit and faded away. Others created new bands or went solo and stayed relevant. The four examples below did none of that.
They made good music for a short time but are mostly forgotten. That is meant as no disrespect to the artists, but if you don't keep releasing new songs, people move on.
4 1980s hit-makers people lost track of
Fine Young Cannibals
This trio only released two studio albums, and the second hit number one globally, including the United States. The album, The Raw & the Cooked, featured the huge-selling "She Drives Me Crazy." At first, the song was fine, but it grew stale after being overplayed by the millions.
Oddly, none of the members achieved much success after the group disbanded. Interpersonal issues caused the split, but one might assume that at least one would do something well over the decades, but no.
Loverboy
The first Canadian band on our list was a bit more Foreigner than pop. They had four top-20 singles in the United States and two top-10 albums. Their album chart success ended in 1985 with the record Lovin' Every Minute of It. They always seemed a bit more fluff than substance.
The band sporadically kept releasing studio albums, though, and their final one came in 2014. Lead singer Mike Reno did have his own hit song, though. His 1983 single with Heart's Ann Wilson, "Almost Paradise," featured on the Footloose soundtrack, reached number seven on the US Billboard charts.
Men Without Hats
The problem for this Canadian band is that its catalog, while eccentric, was always deeper than many gave it credit for. Their hit single, "The Safety Dance," was such a phenomenon that it overshadowed the rest of the band's work. Oddly, the song did much better in other countries than Canada, which only reached number 11.
The group continued to make albums in the 2020s, with some long breaks, but there were also a number of lineup changes, so the band didn't sound like it did in its early years. Besides The Safety Dance," "Pop Goes the World" also proved to be a hit, including hitting number one in Austria in 1987.
Nena
This one is a little misleading for lots of reasons. One is that Nena is the band's name and the solo artist's name. The band stopped making albums in 1986, but the solo artist continued in the 2020s. Plus, Nena, the solo artist whose birthname is Gabriele Susanne Kerner, had a good run in her native Germany but few other places.
However, the band will remain timeless on a global scale due to the 1983 single "99 Luftballons," which hit number one in many countries and number two in the United States. The English version hit number one in the UK. In Germany, solo Nena has had seven top-10 singles.