ABBA ended 36 years ago and were only going for 10 years. I think that what everyone perceives them in the time since far outweighs what they were actually like at the time. Obviously, there was an element of shallow pop in some of their lyrics - "Does Your Mother Know" springs to mind. However, the music was excellent, well-crafted, varied and surprisingly dark (as were some of the lyrics). For all the froth of "Mamma Mia", "Dancing Queen", "Super Trooper" or "Take a Chance on Me" (as good as they are), there were just amazing dramatic songs such as 'S.O.S', "Gimme, Gimme, Gimme" or "Eagle"
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Or Name of the Game - which was Abba's best by some distance, because it backdated the 'love story' narrative to the beginning of the relationship, ie, when all is anticipation and wonder. As opposed to the usual 'all alone by the telephone'-self-pity of their countless break-up songs.
Originally posted by 3 Colours Red View PostTHAT'S the word I was looking for!
While I can sort of see the 'Pink Floyd'-comparisons, to me that sounds more like the kind of commonplace opinion given by people who don't really listen to either band.
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Originally posted by WOM View PostThey're lovely, almost perfectly-crafted pop songs.
ABBA aren't really a "thing I don't get" because I do get why other people think they're brilliant. I'm not a rockist who can't appreciate produced pop music, but they just annoy me. Perhaps it's one of those weird things where my unique brain chemistry picks up on something subconsciously in the subharmonics or whatever.Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 17-10-2018, 14:39.
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- Jan 2015
- 9700
- Wrexham... ish
- R. + R. McReynold's Travelling Circus, The Jurgen Klopp Farewell Tour XI, Page's Boys
- Ginger Nut
Originally posted by Jah Womble View PostWhich I think I used - far more accurately, IMO - to describe Muse, upthread.
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I'm fairly sure Muse haven't bothered many people over here, but I knowingly heard my first song of theirs last week. Something called Pressure off their new album. It's not shit, a bit hooky, but I wouldn't want to listen to a whole album. But yeah, their other stuff seems very earnest and joyless.
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Originally posted by 3 Colours Red View PostBut there's something of a weirdly baroque, nonsensical quality about Muse - it's almost like they listened to a bunch of early Queen albums and thought "how can we update this?". It's hard to take seriously... whereas I always thought Radiohead took themselves waaaaay too seriously.
Radiohead take themselves way too seriously? Yep, absolutely. I 'do' harbour some reservations about them - and that might arguably be one of them - but they're still infinitely more interesting musically than Muse.
I shouldn't get too hung up about bands/artists that appear to take themselves seriously, however. Joy Division certainly did in 1979-80 - and they were brilliant.
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It used to be that they were a spectacle band - not sure if that remains so, but a huge amount of pomp and sci-fi. Very appealing to a niche that gives huge sales but remains very distinct.
Insane Clown Posse have 2 platinum and 5 gold albums but I doubt you can ever find someone who will tell you they bought them. At least Imagine Dragons are all over radio - not sure these other bands have that, just a crazy following.
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Originally posted by WOM View PostThey seem to be a bit Imagine Dragons in having poorly reviewed albums that sell by the truckload.
I don't know much about Imagine Dragons at all (other than that it's a terrible name), but I suspect the general consensus with Muse is that they can play, but haven't really expanded much on what they do in well over a decade. Bands of this ilk do tend to have very faithful and forgiving fanbases, however.
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Yes, Muse in c. 2000 tapped thoroughly into a (Radiohead-created?) market for a particularly intense, somewhat 'futuristic' kind of rock, and that market has rewarded them ever since with an equally intense loyalty. It might well have helped that Radiohead themselves deliberately vacated that stage at that point, because maybe there was only room for one truly huge band making high-voiced, buzzing-guitared dystopian sci-fi rock opuses for the masses, but I do like how Muse basically turned everything up to eleven – chucking the OTT baroque theatricality of Queen (or simply, you could argue, the Darkness) into the mix – and made hay with it. I don't actually own any of their albums and there's only a handful of their songs that really do anything for me (oddly, it's the early, rather subdued single Unintended that remains the only one to have wormed its way fully into my mental jukebox), but I nonetheless find it pleasing that they're still there mining that coalface so successfully.
I have to confess that despite having loved The Bends and OK Computer more than almost anything when they came out (and Creep, if it comes to it, though I've never had any real time for their debut album), I was one of the unadventurous millions who got left out in the cold by Radiohead's abrupt turn into left-field with Kid A and couldn't actually hum you a single note of anything they've released post-1997. I suspect that I'd actually get on pretty well with their more 'difficult' albums now, given the amount of more esoteric stuff in my collection these days, but I still haven't had a really good urge to do anything about that as yet.
I first heard of Coldplay in October 1999 due to being on the Radiohead mailing list at the time (the only instance I've ever had of doing something like that) and receiving a mailshot from the record company promoting one of their early EPs – and as odd as it now seems they were one of those bands definitely touted as "the new Radiohead" at the time. I suppose they were making quite serious, vaguely literate or at least emotionally-literate guitar music, in a manner that a band like Oasis firmly weren't, so got lumped into the 'opposite' category more or less by default.
Curiously, or not as may be, in the case of both them and Radiohead it's their second and third albums that marked more or less the sum total of my interest. The likes of Yellow made my teeth hurt at the time, but when Coldplay made what seemed to be a much more interesting (less 'wet') second album in the shape of A Rush of Blood to the Head – the likes of Politik, Clocks, The Scientist etc. – I did get into them for a while. I regard the singles off follow-up X & Y as being on the same plane, although I confess that when I look at either album's tracklistings now I can't recall much of the non-singles, and I didn't have enough interest in subsequent releases to want to own anything else, but I've certainly never regarded them as being the rock antichrists they're often slated as.
Ed Sheeran, on the other hand...
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Originally posted by Various Artist View PostYes, Muse in c. 2000 tapped thoroughly into a (Radiohead-created?) market for a particularly intense, somewhat 'futuristic' kind of rock, and that market has rewarded them ever since with an equally intense loyalty. It might well have helped that Radiohead themselves deliberately vacated that stage at that point, because maybe there was only room for one truly huge band making high-voiced, buzzing-guitared dystopian sci-fi rock opuses for the masses, but I do like how Muse basically turned everything up to eleven – chucking the OTT baroque theatricality of Queen (or simply, you could argue, the Darkness) into the mix – and made hay with it. I don't actually own any of their albums and there's only a handful of their songs that really do anything for me (oddly, it's the early, rather subdued single Unintended that remains the only one to have wormed its way fully into my mental jukebox), but I nonetheless find it pleasing that they're still there mining that coalface so successfully.
I have to confess that despite having loved The Bends and OK Computer more than almost anything when they came out (and Creep, if it comes to it, though I've never had any real time for their debut album), I was one of the unadventurous millions who got left out in the cold by Radiohead's abrupt turn into left-field with Kid A and couldn't actually hum you a single note of anything they've released post-1997. I suspect that I'd actually get on pretty well with their more 'difficult' albums now, given the amount of more esoteric stuff in my collection these days, but I still haven't had a really good urge to do anything about that as yet.
I first heard of Coldplay in October 1999 due to being on the Radiohead mailing list at the time (the only instance I've ever had of doing something like that) and receiving a mailshot from the record company promoting one of their early EPs – and as odd as it now seems they were one of those bands definitely touted as "the new Radiohead" at the time. I suppose they were making quite serious, vaguely literate or at least emotionally-literate guitar music, in a manner that a band like Oasis firmly weren't, so got lumped into the 'opposite' category more or less by default.
Curiously, or not as may be, in the case of both them and Radiohead it's their second and third albums that marked more or less the sum total of my interest. The likes of Yellow made my teeth hurt at the time, but when Coldplay made what seemed to be a much more interesting (less 'wet') second album in the shape of A Rush of Blood to the Head – the likes of Politik, Clocks, The Scientist etc. – I did get into them for a while. I regard the singles off follow-up X & Y as being on the same plane, although I confess that when I look at either album's tracklistings now I can't recall much of the non-singles, and I didn't have enough interest in subsequent releases to want to own anything else, but I've certainly never regarded them as being the rock antichrists they're often slated as.
Ed Sheeran, on the other hand...
I enjoyed Parachutes by Coldplay, but absolutely loved pretty much every song on A Rush of Blood to the Head. X&Y though I just couldn't get with (singles aside). I haven't bought another thing by them since and have no interest in doing so.
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- Jan 2015
- 9700
- Wrexham... ish
- R. + R. McReynold's Travelling Circus, The Jurgen Klopp Farewell Tour XI, Page's Boys
- Ginger Nut
Originally posted by caja-dglh View PostInsane Clown Posse have 2 platinum and 5 gold albums but I doubt you can ever find someone who will tell you they bought them. At least Imagine Dragons are all over radio - not sure these other bands have that, just a crazy following.
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