'70s Grammy Winners Who Fell Victim To The Best New Artist Curse

The best new artist category at the Grammy Awards is meant to give music fans a glimpse into the future, highlighting an act that has broken through in the industry and looks set to go on to a bright and glittering career in the years that follow. But according to popular belief, the accolade might provide anything but. Since the award's creation in 1959, when it was given to Bobby Darin, it has gained a reputation for being the undoing of many of the artists who won it. Some even suggest that there is a "best new artist curse" by which the award becomes a detriment, and the artists' careers are never as successful again.

Though this phenomenon has been observed throughout the decades — Men At Work in the 1980s, Arrested Development in the 1990s, and Shelby Lynne in the 2000s — the fact is that there are ample examples suggesting the idea of a curse is bogus. Back in the 1960s, best new artist winners included such enduring groups and musicians as The Beatles and Tom Jones. And recent winners have included Dua Lipa, Billie Eilish, and Olivia Rodrigo, artists whose careers appear to be going from strength to strength since winning the award.

There were also plenty of artists in the 1970s who took home the award and went on to do great things, such as Crosby, Stills & Nash, Bette Midler, and Carly Simon. But those familiar with the idea of the curse point to this decade as its potential origin — when a small number of artists won the award with little benefit and managed to cast a long shadow over how the award was seen thereafter. Here they are: Three acts that never replicated their initial success again, and in two cases split just a few years after bagging the award.

A group with one of the most divisive songs of the 1970s, Starland Vocal Band was a four-piece with a hit single, "Afternoon Delight," that spent two weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1976 and 20 weeks on the chart in total. Though immensely popular, the years have not been good to the song. To modern ears, the track sounds toe-curlingly saccharine and like a cringy innuendo for daytime sex (one of many '70s rock songs that have aged terribly).

Nevertheless, that year's Grammys saw Starland Vocal Band as potentially the big new thing. The band was awarded the best new artist award for 1977, as well as the Grammy for best arrangement for voices (duo, group, or chorus). The same year, the band's self-titled debut album peaked at No. 20.

But from there it was a story of immediately diminishing returns. A follow-up album the next year, "Rear View Mirror," stalled at No. 104, while none of the next three singles that charted in the following four years managed to crack the Top 60. The band released two more albums that failed to chart before splitting up in 1980. At the height of its fame, Starland Vocal Band was made up of two married couples, but both partnerships ended by 1990. Whether this is the result of the dreaded best new artist curse or simply the pressures of overnight fame is for you to decide. 

The music tastes of the record-buying public changed quickly during the 1970s and 1980s, a fact that won't have escaped the disco-soul group A Taste of Honey. Founded by bassist, guitarist, and vocalist Janice Marie Johnson and keyboardist Perry Kibble in 1972, the band soon evolved into a four-piece. By 1978, A Taste of Honey was looking at a huge hit with the release of "Boogie Oogie Oogie," a danceable, bass-heavy cut that took the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks.

The group's self-titled debut album peaked at No. 6 the same year and, like the single, eventually went platinum. As a result, A Taste of Honey scooped the Grammy for best new artist ahead of such legends as Toto and Elvis Costello, which seemed to suggest that the band was more than a one-hit wonder. And that is true: Three more albums and a handful of singles from A Taste of Honey were to come in the next few years, most notably its English-language version of Japanese artist Kyu Sakamoto's "Sukiyaki," which went to No. 3 on the Hot 100 and topped the R&B chart. But despite the group's bright start, it was unable to reach the same heights of its debut again, and A Taste of Honey split in 1983, almost half a decade after its Grammy win.

Proving that you can enjoy a successful creative life even if the so-called best new artist curse sees your pop career cut short, Debby Boone is the third and final artist on our list. The New Jersey singer is the daughter of 1950s crooner and teen heartthrob Pat Boone, and she toured in a family band called the Boone Girls before striking out on her own as a solo artist. Her debut single, "You Light Up My Life," a cover of a song released in 1977 on the soundtrack of a film of the same name, was a soaring ballad and iconic love song that became a chart behemoth. In August 1977, when Debby was just turning 21, it climbed to the top of the Hot 100 and stayed there relentlessly for 10 weeks — a record at that point.

The song single-handedly secured her the Grammy for best new artist, but surprisingly, Debby was unable to capitalize on its success on the pop charts, with other releases in the late 1970s struggling to chart. Instead, she pivoted toward country music, with some degree of success, before abandoning that too to work in the Christian music genre. She won several awards for her work in the early 1980s before shifting gears again and focusing on acting. But while she has since returned to music, it was a surprisingly low-profile career for the singer of one of the biggest songs of the entire 1970s.