Inspired by Oasis waking me up on the radio alarm this morning, I got to thinking if there were any fast and hard signs that your favourite band or artist was going all 'Frog Corus'. Here's my stab at it, feel free to add your own :D

1.The Recording Studio
Cause - In a move that surprises their fans, the band decide to record their next album in a custom built studio in the lead singer's Hertfordshire mansion. Officially, this is to allow the bands creativity to recorded where they feel most comfortable. In reality, it’s because everyone from the studio technicians down to the tea boy are telling the band there latest tracks are crap.
Effect - The new album is crap. Sales fall, the band are dropped by their label, the bass player ends up writing songs for Shane Ward and the lead singer appears on 'Celebrity Come Dancing'. He gets voted off in week two.

2.Marriage
Cause - It’s announced that the lead singer of your favourite band has married a famous Hollywood starlet. 9 months later they give birth to their first child - Juniper Bush.
Effect- People are already sick of the bands mealy mouthed piano based indie-pop-rock. The realisation that the marriage will boost the bands profile (ensuring even more column inches of publicity) drives people to hate them all the more. The band appears on Comic Relief.

3. Awards Ceremony
Cause - Dressed like a set of twots, your favourite band turn up at the most highly publicised domestic music ceremony three sheets to the wind.
Effect - Already considered by most people to be little more than a novelty act with affected accents, appearing on national TV dressed as and acting like p***ed up students on rag week does little for their credibility. The lead singer announces he's leaving the band to form a Lindisfarne tribute act. Many see the move as 'Ironic'. Most just think he's a cock.

4.Celebrity Friends
Cause - Off his t*ts, the lead singer invites one of his Hollywood friends to play lead guitar on one of their tracks. To his horror, the actor agrees. Too embarrassed to admit he was wasted when he asked, the lead singer hastily arranges for his friend to play lead.
Effect - Fade in-Out. Nuff said.

5.Name
Cause - Despite being regarded as one of the musical geniuses of his generation, your favourite artist announces at a press conference that he is changing his name to ۞. Most people are puzzled by this turn of events, but are sure it will have no effect on his music...
Effect - ... they are wrong. His music becomes more and more lacklustre until, in a move that smacks of desperation, he gives away his latest album in the 'Sport on Sunday'.

AM

6. The "Side Project"
Cause - The singer goes off and makes an album with a mate he met in the pub. It's self-indulgent rubbish that only a sycophant would like, but on the strength of a few half-decent reviews the public buy it anyway.
Effect - The anonymous other three guys in the band realise their 15 minutes of fame is almost up and would be wise to start planning a trip to the jobcentre.

7. The Copycats
Cause - The record industry watch a band become hugely famous and search the country for younger copycat bands. The fans begin to realise the limitations and greed of the original band and start buying the records of the fresh young bands.
Effect - Everyone gets sick of seeing bands with the same haircuts and songs.

8. Death
Cause - A nutter with a copy of JD Salinger's Catcher In The Rye decides to shoot his hero and a world megastar falls to the floor in his adopted country just after his 40th birthday.

Effect - 'Re-issue, re-package, re-package, re-evaluate the songs, double pack with a photograph, extra track and a tacky badge'.

9. Religion
Cause - Religion
Effect - Crap songs + huge ego = bargain bin.

10. <band name> Day
Cause - Radio 2 decide to hold a day celebrating your songs and feature interviews and a one-off concert
Effect - see Death

11. Nomination for the Brit award for most popular female.
You've had a half decent album that some people have appreciated. You get nominated for a Brit award.
EFFECT = Short term high where your album goes to number one. Annie Lennox wins the Brit regardless again and you get sent to the Tasmin Archer academy for one album wonders.

The “Hit Single”
Cause – after months of being a hot tip, feted in the press and loved by a small number of dedicated fans, the band release a single that’s a major hit, reaching the top spot in the charts and being played over and over again on the radio and MTV. The band cross over from the music press to the tabloid press.
Effect – The record company tells the band to write another hit single that repeats the same formula, then another, then another. Any attempt to do something imaginative or different is rejected. Each is progressively less successful than the last and eventually people realise the band’s only got one song and tire of them. The band split and are never heard of again.