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Groups or singers whose biggest hit wasn't their most memorable song

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    #51
    Originally posted by Satchmo Distel View Post
    Whereas U2 got their second No. 1 (The Fly) by switching from that style (however, it only spent 6 weeks on the chart, very brief for a No. 1).

    U2 probably qualify in the 80s because I don't think Desire is their most memorable single of that decade.
    The eighties U2 material that most people are likely to recall first is probably all from The Joshua Tree. On the other hand, The Fly is probably my favourite of theirs - mostly because it doesn’t sound like U2.

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      #52
      Originally posted by irony towers View Post
      Stevie Wonder's biggest UK chart success was I Just Called to Say I Love You, and Ebony and Ivory ranked highest on the Billboard chart.
      And both of which were shit.

      (Ebony and Ivory belongs in Sir James Paul McCartney's shit bin as well

      Stank of a "contractual obligation" single from the pair of them)

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        #53
        Originally posted by Satchmo Distel View Post
        U2 probably qualify in the 80s because I don't think Desire is their most memorable single of that decade.
        It's the least good single off that album. (Which I have a soft spot for, but then I like the U2 albums that other people don't.)

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          #54
          Stevie will win the thread. I Just Called to Say I Love You was an absolutely massive seller and he never had another solo No. 1, yet the gap between it and, say, Superstition* in quality is chasmic.

          *Superstition is his most downloaded and streamed song, last time I checked, so at least one measure of longevity is getting it right.

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            #55
            'Quality' and 'memorability' are not always partners, however.

            I mean, I doubt there are many on here that couldn't sing a large chunk of IJCTSILY.

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              #56
              That's true. Different criteria. But although people remember IJCTSILY they're not downloading or streaming it in the manner of Superstition.

              OTOH, Happy Birthday, which rivals IJCTSILY for annoying saccharine catchiness with no real depth, is an iTunes chart regular due to its utility at parties.

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                #57
                That, at least, carried a worthy message.

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                  #58
                  Originally posted by Simon G View Post
                  Add me to the list of under 40s who would consider Band on the Run as Paul McCartney's most famous song post-Beatles.
                  Maybe I'm Amazed?

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                    #59
                    REM is such an incredible shout on this thread. I wouldn't be surprised if no-one I know can even remember that song.

                    What about Prince? His biggest hit in the UK is The Most Beautiful Girl In The World, which while it's well liked, I wouldn't say it's even in his top 20 most memorable songs. Among some of this other biggest hits, aside from 1999, is the inconsequential and throwaway Batdance.

                    Listen, Stevie Wonder. I like the genius stuff as much as anyone, but I Just Called To Say I Love You is a decent cheesy pop song with some satisfying schmaltzy chord changes. It's like saying Elvis's Always On My Mind isn't as good as It's Alright Mama. You're right, but there's a reason the big hits are well loved.

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                      #60
                      I've often pondered why Stevie never rose to the challenge posed by Prince by upping his own game to the same level. He decided to rest on his laurels at only 35, the process of being a genius became too physically and mentally taxing, or he had exhausted everything he had to say.

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                        #61
                        Well, I don't think it's that unusual for pop geniuses to start repeating themselves at the (at that time, seemingly ancient) age of 35.

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                          #62
                          Cos almost every popular music artist has had only a brief, rarely more than a decade long stretch of not being boring or shit. Stevie did better than most. They might do one or two interesting things after their initial burst, but like poetry it's a youngster's game really.

                          All that "imagine what Hendrix would be doing with samplers if he was still around in the 90s" blah blah that NME types used to wonder (partly cos they couldn't bring themselves to process contemporary guitarless black music), more than likely what he'd have been doing was being shit.

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                            #63
                            Measuring these things by the highest point they reached in charts, rather than records sold might be the problem with a few of these. I suppose the best example is Oasis, who sold about as many copies of wonderwall in the UK as of their four no 1's put together.

                            I can't find numbers for "The Great Beyond" by REM, but I doubt it went platinum in the UK like losing my religion or everybody hurts.

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                              #64
                              It’s a particular problem for two reasons. Firstly, sales in the 2000s onwards are so much smaller, so a number 1 might be much less of a popular phenomenon than a top ten hit 20 years earlier. Also, singles in the 80s climbed slowly up the charts rather than jumped straight in, as the promo campaigns were not front loaded in the way they came to be later. Thus a number one in the 2000s might make much less impact than a single from the 90s which hung around the charts a whole summer

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                                #65
                                And that feeds into a thing that you see mentioned on chart music, where someone has a huge selling slow burner, that doesn't hit number one, but when the next single is released, one in four people who bought the first song, run out and buy the second song in the first week, and that record hits no.1 before plummeting.

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                                  #66
                                  Yep.

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                                    #67
                                    Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Post
                                    Measuring these things by the highest point they reached in charts, rather than records sold might be the problem with a few of these. I suppose the best example is Oasis, who sold about as many copies of wonderwall in the UK as of their four no 1's put together.

                                    I can't find numbers for "The Great Beyond" by REM, but I doubt it went platinum in the UK like losing my religion or everybody hurts.
                                    Oasis somehow managed eight UK number ones - but if you take Don't Look Back in Anger out of the equation, then I'd be tempted to back your assertion as regards the remaining seven.

                                    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oasis_discography

                                    Viz REM's The Great Beyond, it charted as well as it did because of the movie attached to it (the Andy Kaufman biopic, Man on the Moon). But it didn't surpass silver status in Britain (c 100,000 sales) compared to Losing My Religion and Everybody Hurts, which have both gone platinum despite their lower chart peaks.

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                                      #68
                                      Another 'slipstream' number one - benefitting from an increased and mobilised fanbase following prior huge success - is Fairground by Simply Red, the first single from the album after Stars sold three million or whatever it was.

                                      As Fairground doesn't have the title in the chorus ("and I looove the thought", etc) I can't imagine it's many people's idea of Simply Red's most memorable song: number 2 Holding Back The Years probably remains their signature tune.

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                                        #69
                                        The singles from 'Stars' would have been massive in the streaming age, where streams from albums count towards the singles chart, but 'Something Got Me Started' only made #11 and the title track #8. The group mastered Michael Jackson's trick of using follow-up singles purely to flog an album (Most Oasis singles, on the other hand, from their first two albums hung around a long time in their own right, and seem to have been a significant revenue stream for them).

                                        Because those 'Stars' singles were on our college canteen jukebox, they are far more familiar to me than the 80s hits. 'Fairground' was their only single from that album whose title I recognize, even though the 4th one was the official song of Euro 96 (sunk by 3 Lions but presumably crap anyway and had already been available on the album).
                                        Last edited by Satchmo Distel; 05-06-2021, 20:37.

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                                          #70
                                          Fairground was successful partly because it doesn't sound like a Simply Red song - big dance influence, big chorus, absolutely all over every radio station in early autumn 1995, so it would have picked up a lot of sales from people who might not normally have bought their music. They would also have sales from their huge fanbase at the time - Stars was absolutely massive (wasn't it the biggest selling album in the UK for both 1991 and 1992?) and this was their first single of any sort since they'd exhausted their range from that album, there'd been nothing at all in the interim couple of years which seems an unusually long gap even now.

                                          The Euro 96 song is really not something worth bothering with, an absolute dirge.

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                                            #71
                                            Agreed on all counts – Stars was indeed the UK's biggest-selling album of both 1991 and 1992, but then after they stopped mining that for singles they disappeared for a solid couple of years then had the good sense to return with a massive (but un-Simply Red-like) banger with a great chorus, memorable video etc. and topped the charts for 4 weeks.

                                            Weirdly though this also marked the exact moment where they stopped being an omnipresent chart juggernaut. Even at the time (I was 16) I recognised that the choice of second single from the Life album, Remembering The First Time, was a truly terrible one – a bog-standard loverman-Hucknall slow jam, with no tune, and one of the most excruciating lyrics I've ever heard (the actual use of the title in the chorus was in the line "Remembering the first time we made love"), and despite following up the massively popular Fairground it bombed out at something like #22 in the charts. The third single was rather better but didn't recover their fortunes, then nobody much cared about the Euro '96 tie-in fourth one. And after that subsequent albums continued to mostly do pretty well but steeply diminishing returns had set in. The only single of theirs post-Fairground that I really like is the unexpectedly wonderful Hall & Oates-sampling Sunrise, from 2003's Home.

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                                              #72
                                              There's a weird but unmistakeable sub-phenomenon of acts who gained widespread popularity via one well-received album and its associated singles, built a peak of anticipation for their second album and scored an instant Number One hit with its lead-off single, then achieved an similarly high initial chart placing for that album – only for subsequent singles to fail to make any dent whatsoever, with the act's popularity seemingly falling off a cliff at that precise point. The album thus disappears from the charts a lot quicker than their debut did, and all future releases barely graze the listings or the public's consciousness.

                                              Exactly why the public tires of each so abruptly at that specific juncture I don't know, but you could compile an effective 'Essential Collection' for any such act by simply taking their debut album and bolting on the first single from their second album, and ignoring pretty much anything else they ever released.

                                              These three for example follow the pattern perfectly:

                                              Scissor Sisters
                                              First album Scissor Sisters, UK #1, weeks on chart 131
                                              Singles Comfortably Numb (#10, 19 wks total), Take Your Mama (#17, 6 wks), Laura (#12, 12 wks), Mary (#14, 9 wks), Filthy/Gorgeous (#5, 11 wks)

                                              Second album Ta-Dah, UK #1, weeks on chart 55
                                              Singles I Don't Feel Like Dancin' (#1, 42 wks), Land Of A Thousand Words (#19, 5 wks), She's My Man (#29, 7 wks), Kiss You Off (#43, 2 wks), I Can't Decide (#64, 1 wk)

                                              Third album Night Work, UK #2, weeks on chart 14
                                              3 more charting singles ever

                                              Kaiser Chiefs
                                              First album Employment, UK #2, weeks on chart 101
                                              Singles Oh My God (#6, 25 wks), I Predict A Riot (#9, 41 wks), Every Day I Love You Less And Less (#10, 34 wks), Modern Way (#11, 15 wks)

                                              Second album Yours Truly, Angry Mob, UK #1, weeks on chart 80
                                              Singles Ruby (#1, 43 wks), Everything Is Average Nowadays (#19, 7 wks), The Angry Mob (#22, 8 wks)

                                              Third album Off With Their Heads, UK #2, weeks on chart 17
                                              2 more charting singles ever

                                              Scouting For Girls
                                              First album Scouting For Girls, UK #1, weeks on chart 95
                                              Singles It's Not About You (#31, 11 wks), She's So Lovely (#7, 56 wks), Elvis Ain't Dead (#8, 28 wks), Heartbeat (#10, 25 wks), I Wish I Was James Bond (#40, 4 wks)

                                              Second album Everybody Wants To Be On TV, UK #1, weeks on chart 28
                                              Singles This Ain't A Love Song (#1, 25 wks), Famous (#37, 8 wks), Don't Want To Leave You (#69, 1 wk)

                                              Third album The Light Between Us, UK #10, weeks on chart 3
                                              1 more charting Top 40 single ever


                                              The Scissor Sisters example is perhaps the strangest – they kept getting more and more popular over the course of their debut album's string of hits, such that it ended up the UK's biggest seller of 2004, and they ended that year writing a big hit single for Kylie (I Believe In You) and already firmly embedded in British pop culture. Come the second album, lead-off track I Don't Feel Like Dancin' became a massive hit and remains an enduring airplay staple to this day. But could anyone name their next single off the tops of their heads, or indeed anything else they subsequently recorded? Almost exactly the same applies to the others above, and I'm sure there must be numerous others similar.

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                                                #73
                                                Having had a look through, I might be able to bring a new one here.

                                                "When you were young" (#2) and "Killers" (#3) are not the tunes anyone is going to come up with when asked to name tunes by The Killers. I left out "Somebody Told Me" (#3) as that has a vague chance of getting a decent amount of shouts.

                                                The fourth most successful single they had just cracked the top 10 and is *the* tune that they basically live off.

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                                                  #74
                                                  The counter to that however is that whilst it's never got higher than number 10 in the chart, it's still there even now at number 69 for this past week and has currently had 270 weeks on the top 100 - 97 weeks ahead of the nearest competitior.
                                                  Last edited by Simon G; 06-06-2021, 06:32.

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                                                    #75
                                                    Originally posted by caja-dglh View Post
                                                    Having had a look through, I might be able to bring a new one here.

                                                    "When you were young" (#2) and "Killers" (#3) are not the tunes anyone is going to come up with when asked to name tunes by The Killers. I left out "Somebody Told Me" (#3) as that has a vague chance of getting a decent amount of shouts.

                                                    The fourth most successful single they had just cracked the top 10 and is *the* tune that they basically live off.
                                                    I don't remember the song called Killers.

                                                    I'm also surprised that "Somebody Told Me" isn't the tune they live off. (I presume you're talking about MR Brightside.)

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