Is Ed too Cliché? Options

[Hoodstock]

To answer the question posed in the thread title ..... Yes

[SinfulEyes]

To answer the question posed in the thread title ..... Yes

The new record cover, album and song titles scream cliche louder than his lyrics and image he is trying to create for himself.

[Voodoo Lady]

I feel that artists just reach a highpoint (is plateau the right word here?) and then the decline begins. "Better to burn out than to fade away." I think we all can agree that Eddie's artistic plateau was TC & SS.

[TMac]

The "New Year Eve 2000" show was to be my first. Had a weird feeling when it was moved to a not special date and my $50 (this was a HUGE amount then) ticket was not given a partial refund. Seeing the opening band further concerned me; The Martini Brothers were a minor league local Harrisburg band that you could see for free on many weekends. Why did they have to have an opener that cheap in a large venue with very expensive tickets? The Live set was OK, saw them again twice that summer with Counting Crows; not bad. But the NYE fiasco definitely made it seem like the band was very much trying to make maximum profit off of their fans.

I am not saying Chad T. and the boys aren't all about the dollar, but when discussing Ed it certainly seems clear that racking it in has been the number one priority since at least 2000. I am all for artists making money, but when that is the driving force in music it is a hard thing to hide.

Ed now selling Skype private shows? That reeks of desperation. But to me the worst of all signs was his hawking his solo music on Christian outlets...really? Still love Ed for all the beautiful music he once created, but this whole downward spiral is very depressing.

I do remember seeing them on the TDTH tour...and that was when they lost their magic for me :(
I remember being very disappointed that the band would play the same songs every night...not that I was at every show, I only went to a couple shows on the TDTH tour. But we all knew they played the same setlist every night...at least the fans who used the Internet knew. Hell, we all knew that Ed would try to sell the crowd on the super-hyped New Year's Eve show to ring in the year 2000...a show that never happened despite Ed talking about it every night at one point. The show was so fake to me, I can't even imagine what it must have been like for the band. They had to play the same songs nearly every night, hear Ed's almost never-changing crowd interactions night after night. Maybe this is why all the passion went away?