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    Bands/Artists you thought wouldn't be as big

    Oasis - mega million album sales, the massive Knebworth gigs. The foloowing bands didn't ever get close to this - The Smiths, The La's, The Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses (maybe touching distance at Spike Island)

    The Spice Girls - again, mega millionselling first album, all singles at no.1, faces on everything - crisps, deodorant. No other girl group has come even remotely close - Bewitched, All Saints, Girls Aloud (possibly closest), The Saturdays or Little Mix.

    Coldplay/Dido - just, why?

    #2
    Bands/Artists you thought wouldn't be as big

    Maroon 5. Seriously, who the fuck goes out and spends money on a band which sounds that bad?

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      #3
      Bands/Artists you thought wouldn't be as big

      Isn't this 'artists that shouldn't have been as big'?

      I mean, as soon as I heard the Spice Girls I knew that this was going to be a major commercial deal for the foreseeable future. The sheer scale of the success of Oasis still surprises me, I guess (mainly because it couldn't happen now), but, on the other hand, their emergence was at 'the' time for indie-ish guitar bands - and they seemed to sit fairly comfortably at the table opposite Blur.

      The success of some of the bands that followed in the Britpop wake surprised me: Placebo, for one, who I felt would be way too spiky for chart success when first I heard them. (Obviously they tempered this by the second album.)

      The Stone Roses was sort of a bolt from leftfield at the time (1989, when the landscape was all SAW-pop and house), but they seemed to fit the need for a 'replacement' which the NME and MM had been trying to unearth since The Smiths split up. (Other hopefuls, like The House of Love, having proven by and large to be duds.)

      The Arctic Monkeys was a weird one: two straight number one singles and the fastest-selling debut in history from a dour-ish band of Sheffield teenagers that had only existed for eighteen months or so. (But they'd fit under 'my' reading of your header.)

      (NB I don't think The La's really fit into that list, FWIW. After all, they went to ground after just the one only-moderately-successful album.)

      (Edit: Ha - took so long composing this, that CV got in ahead of me with the AMs...)

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        #4
        Bands/Artists you thought wouldn't be as big

        Calvin Harris. Wtf happened there*? If someone had told me ten years ago that he would become one of the most successful artists in the world ever, I'd just have assumed they were not the full shilling.

        *I know, I know. EDM happened.

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          #5
          Bands/Artists you thought wouldn't be as big

          Actually the massive chart success of Disclosure and subsequent house and garage revival has taken me by surprise as well. I would have thought they were far too 'proper house music' to make it big, until they did and everything in the charts started to sound like them.

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            #6
            Bands/Artists you thought wouldn't be as big

            Fussbudget wrote: Calvin Harris. Wtf happened there*? If someone had told me ten years ago that he would become one of the most successful artists in the world ever, I'd just have assumed they were not the full shilling.
            Listening to that first album of his is like listening to a different artist entirely, though.

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              #7
              Bands/Artists you thought wouldn't be as big

              True, they were pretty pop from the start, but I think I was more taken aback by how retro their sound is. It didn't sound anything like the trancey, big room EDM sound people were lapping up until that point.

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                #8
                Bands/Artists you thought wouldn't be as big

                Carnivorous Vulgaris wrote: Sam Smith
                The "Rich Tea biscuit and glass of water" of pop music.
                Inoffensive but dull.

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                  #9
                  Bands/Artists you thought wouldn't be as big

                  That could describe at least two dozen current 'pop personages' I've heard. Ed Sheeran, ffs. It's like these people have charisma transplants as soon as they learn how to play an instrument.

                  Actually, scrub the 'inoffensive' bit.

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                    #10
                    Bands/Artists you thought wouldn't be as big

                    Muse.

                    I mean, they's alright, but...

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                      #11
                      Bands/Artists you thought wouldn't be as big

                      Well, Pink Floyd.

                      The Dark Side of the Moon is listed as the third biggest-selling album of all time.

                      It's neither commercial nor accessible. None of the tracks ever get played on radio.

                      I'm not denying it's a fine album, but how a progressive concept album, with themes of greed and mental illness, got so popular I'll never know.

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                        #12
                        Bands/Artists you thought wouldn't be as big

                        Money gets played on classic hits stations a lot.

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                          #13
                          Bands/Artists you thought wouldn't be as big

                          The thing with Oasis is that, right at the start, their first album and gigs were brilliant but those broke them, they didn't make them huge. It was the diminishing returns that made them huge.

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                            #14
                            Bands/Artists you thought wouldn't be as big

                            That's pretty true. I have the first two Oasis albums on my iPod but only ever listen to the first one.

                            I think there was also a massive groundswell of support for them. I know a guy from Hull who says he went to see Oasis 23 times.

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                              #15
                              Bands/Artists you thought wouldn't be as big

                              Stumpy Pepys wrote: Well, Pink Floyd.

                              The Dark Side of the Moon is listed as the third biggest-selling album of all time.

                              It's neither commercial nor accessible. None of the tracks ever get played on radio.

                              I'm not denying it's a fine album, but how a progressive concept album, with themes of greed and mental illness, got so popular I'll never know.
                              It's not a bad thing, though, surely?

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                                #16
                                Bands/Artists you thought wouldn't be as big

                                The arena sized success of UB40 was always a mystery to me.

                                I met a friend of a friend many years ago who proclaimed himself to be a huge fan. When I asked him why he liked them so much he explained earnestly that he loved the danceable reggae rhythms which he saw as the band's trademark.

                                Seems curious that with a seemingly endless supply of authentic Jamaican reggae and dub recordings to chose from, that he should pick what amounts to a reggae covers band from Birmingham to do the job. Still, he seemed happy enough.

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                                  #17
                                  Bands/Artists you thought wouldn't be as big

                                  Marc Bolan & David Bowie.

                                  Both had been drifting around as an under-card at so many gigs, for so long by 1970 that I thought they'd shot their bolt. Not that they weren't always interesting, just seemed doomed to failure.

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                                    #18
                                    Bands/Artists you thought wouldn't be as big

                                    UB40's first two albums were excellent. Some good social/political commentary on there too, then they started knocking out all those shite covers to turn a buck.
                                    They can fuck off.

                                    Depeche Mode, though.

                                    Why?
                                    How?

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                                      #19
                                      Bands/Artists you thought wouldn't be as big

                                      Trois Fois Un Rouge wrote:
                                      Originally posted by Carnivorous Vulgaris
                                      Sam Smith
                                      The "Rich Tea biscuit and glass of water" of pop music.
                                      Inoffensive but dull.
                                      And he looks as thick as shit. The Phil Jones of pop.

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                                        #20
                                        Bands/Artists you thought wouldn't be as big

                                        Def Leppard - saw them at Cambridge Corn Exchange and wasn't massively impressed. Iron Maiden on the other hand...

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                                          #21
                                          Bands/Artists you thought wouldn't be as big

                                          This is less "how are they so big because they're crap?" but "how are they so big despite being pretty niche?"

                                          Rammstein. They're brilliant. No, you shut up. They fill enormodomes in the UK with little or no publicity from the music press. And then they go and sell out a US tour of arenas.

                                          Industrial death metal, sung in German, accompanied by flamethrowers, sold out Madison Square Garden in 15 minutes.

                                          It's almost enough to restore my faith in humanity.

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                                            #22
                                            Bands/Artists you thought wouldn't be as big

                                            Sean of the Shed wrote:
                                            Originally posted by Trois Fois Un Rouge
                                            Originally posted by Carnivorous Vulgaris
                                            Sam Smith
                                            The "Rich Tea biscuit and glass of water" of pop music.
                                            Inoffensive but dull.
                                            And he looks as thick as shit. The Phil Jones of pop.
                                            Not just looks thick as shit, is thick as shit - did you hear his Oscars acceptance speech?

                                            As TV Tropes would put it, a major case of Critical Research Failure.

                                            Comment


                                              #23
                                              Bands/Artists you thought wouldn't be as big

                                              snakeplissken wrote: This is less "how are they so big because they're crap?" but "how are they so big despite being pretty niche?"
                                              Which is what it should always have been. (Not that a bit of playground slagging isn't fun sometimes.)

                                              Calvert wrote:
                                              Depeche Mode, though.

                                              Why?
                                              How?
                                              That's always surprised me, too. Not that I think they're sh*te (I don't - they've put out stuff I've liked), but, back in 1981, they didn't look as though they had the breath between them to last six months.

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                                                #24
                                                Bands/Artists you thought wouldn't be as big

                                                Deacon Blue. I never understood the phenomenon.

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                                                  #25
                                                  Bands/Artists you thought wouldn't be as big

                                                  Calvert wrote: Depeche Mode, though.

                                                  Why?
                                                  How?
                                                  Yeah, this - post-Vince Clarke, at least.

                                                  Every time I see or hear them now, I just want to shout (at the smitten crowd) "He's not the Messiah - he's a very naughty (but not nearly as naughty as he or you think) boy!"

                                                  Comment

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