What's up with prog rock artists going pop rock? Why does

Money?

It was the 80's and prog rock lost whatever popularity it had in the 70's after punk and new wave came. Most of those bands were trying to stay relevant.

it's always been hard for me to differentiate between pop rock and prog rock

>>73349934
for yes, it actually made a lot of sense
their album prior was written with both members of the buggles as members of the band, with video killed the radio star essentially being a defacto commencement for new wave becoming pop

chris becoming friends with trevor rabin after that only fueled them going in a pop prog direction -- it was inevitable, if you know the actual history of that album

abacab also made a lot of sense: duke and abacab are the first genesis albums created post collins solo career. collins himself is a huge motown fan and applied that to songwriting - they still stayed somewhat "prog" (i mean, the lead single from that album is like 7 minutes long and dodo/lurker still sounds like an art-rock song) while collins tried out new songwriting techniques to make up for the lack of hackett or gabriel. that, combined with hype over collins' solo albums, meant it was probably inevitable

tull became irrelevant, camel was never relevant, and derek shulman has been a shill for pop music since his greedy little scottish fingers touched money after free hand got to like, 178 on the charts