Modulation fluctuates in popularity. About a quarter of number one hits from the 60s through the 90s utilized it, whereas in the 2010s only one number one hit did.

Why the key change has disappeared from top-charting tune - NPR - All Things Considered

Edit: I realize this doesn’t answer your question, but I’m not sure there really is an answer. It’s such an old technique, musically speaking.

Probably not the correct answer, but a lot of Jim Steinman composed/produced songs have that cheesy power ballad flair to it.

You see it in classical music all the time, like minor to major changes leading to crescendos or other larger shifts leading to the end of a movement. Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Chopin. It's nothing new.

I'm pretty musically ignorant, but I wouldn't be surprised if the answer was Chicago.

~~That style actually pre-dates the 80's by at least a few decades. In more traditional music, particularly Christian hymns, that's referred to as a "descant". It was popularized in church music in the early 20th century by Ralph Vaughn Williams.~~

Edit: See comment below.

There is a cool video by David Bennett about this. I can't seem to remember if he mentions who was the first one, but he puts on a lot of samples I wasn't aware of

https://youtu.be/fJf8MhLQz-8

The short answer, I don't know.

But from my own observation there were a lot more general key changes in 1980s-era rock, which may have been the result of fewer other ways to escalate a song for the final chorus and outro, which is to say, yes, new tech (mostly sampling, looping and higher-fidelity recording) reduced the need for creativity much the way that movies had a lot more stage effects before they just filmed actors in green-screen and added everything with CGI.

Last year I went to a SGMC concert of mostly Queen, and was noticing how much their tunes bounced around, often having two or three key-changes per verse+chorus.

Like most others here, I don't have an answer for you. I just wanted to share that I feel songs using this gimmick are lazy attempts to pad the length of the song. Nothing prompts me to change the channel or skip ahead faster.

I know nothing about music history, but consider that you're basically describing yodeling