Destroyed by their biggest hit

[3 Colours Red]

Robin Thicke by Blurred Lines - the plagiarism case and the questionable nature of the lyrics ended up digging him a pretty deep hole.

Let us not forget it was "Girl You Know It's True" that Milli Vanilli were performing when the CD happened to stick.

[Janik]

Kurt Cobain

[Satchmo Distel]

Destroyed is perhaps hyperbole, but if we limit the criterion to damaged, then George Harrison was hit quite hard by the My Sweet Lord plagiarism case.

Wings didn't do much after Mull of Fuckingtyre. Simon & Garfunkel split after their biggest record. Chuck Berry had to carry a crap smut song to his grave. Brian Wilson had a breakdown shortly after Good Vibrations.

[Hot Pepsi]

Destroyed is perhaps hyperbole, but if we limit the criterion to damaged, then George Harrison was hit quite hard by the My Sweet Lord plagiarism case.

Wings didn't do much after Mull of Fuckingtyre. Simon & Garfunkel split after their biggest record. Chuck Berry had to carry a crap smut song to his grave. Brian Wilson had a breakdown shortly after Good Vibrations.

Berlin broke up because they did that song for the Top Gun soundtrack which they didn't write and that annoyed some members of the band.

[Gerontophile]

I don't think Chuck Berry had to carry a crap smut song to his grave. But then he didn't have to put a video camera into the ladies' toilets in his restaurant.

*Edited for maximum pearl-clutchiness.

[Jah Womble]

Similarly, Grace Slick disowned all of the Starship megahits - We Built This City, Sara, Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now - as 'horsesh*t' in interview some years back. (All three of these outsold ice-sculpted JA-moments like White Rabbit by about 10-1.) Slick explained that this was why she'd left the band in 1988 and not the 'exhaustion/retirement' of which her management had spoken at the time.

Take it to the Limit wasn't The Eagles' biggest hit either, but it led to a post-gig fistfight between Randy Meisner (who hated it) and Glenn Frey (who insisted Meisner must sing it) - which resulted in the former leaving the band for good. (I gather that Tommy Shaw left Styx because he disliked Mr Roboto so much - but I neither know nor care about them enough to look into it.)

Whatever, this seems to happen a lot with US stadium acts.

A non-US-stadium-act: After Geno went to number one, Dexys Midnight Runners keyboardist Andy Leek walked out on the band, quoted as saying that he didn't wish to be famous or sign autographs and that his dad (a labourer) 'deserved more respect' than he. However, this ultimately proved neither Dexys' biggest hit, nor a destruction of the band (at least not permanently).

[Patrick Thistle]

Chesney Hawkes.

[WOM]

Similarly, Grace Slick disowned all of the Starship megahits - We Built This City, Sara, Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now - as 'horsesh*t' in interview some years back. (All three of these outsold ice-sculpted JA-moments like White Rabbit by about 10-1.) Slick explained that this was why she'd left the band in 1988 and not the 'exhaustion/retirement' of which her management had spoken at the time.

Which is funny, cuz I've read/heard more than once that she told her label she wanted them to produce one massive album so she could get rich, tour once more, bank it all and retire.

[Giggler]

Maybe if Spaceman by Babylon Zoo (or 'Babylon 200' as the PA announcer at Glanford Park called them on my visit in April 1996) had featured more of the sped-up bit that featured in the Levi's ad, they could have been bigger. Jas Mann needed to rein his ego in a bit too.

[Various Artist]

"Babylon 200"! Hahah, that's brilliant. Poor old Jas.

[Stumpy Pepys]

The Boo Radleys

[Giggler]

The Boo Radleys

Great shout.

[Stumpy Pepys]

American Pie overshadowed Don McLean's career. He refused to play it for a while.

[WOM]

Bless him.

[Amor de Cosmos]

American Pie overshadowed Don McLean's career. He refused to play it for a while.

He wouldn't have had a career without it though.

[caja-dglh]

I think The Darkness fit this pretty well. A hit album about living the rock and roll dream resulted in the rock and roll dream - drug addictions and all.

[Auntie Beryl]

Chumbawumba.
Terrorvision - that's the curse of Tequila

[Giggler]

Chumbawumba.
Terrorvision - that's the curse of Tequila

Still, they showed quite a lot of Perseverance.

[Excitable_Boy]

Smash Mouth and All Star - if only for their continuing battle to distance themselves from Shrek because of it

[ursus arctos]

Ha!

I was going to nominate Palchebel, but he doesn't have anywhere as good a story.

Do we know what Lully was conducting when he impaled himself?

[Jah Womble]

I seem to recall the D***y M**l quoting Blue Zoo as 'Blue 200' as well, during their five minutes in 1982. As for Babylon Zoo, their (his) career was scuppered by not being very good. The follow-up, Animal Army, was one of the worst records ever made ('Try-anno-saurus', ffs). And the rest, I can't even remember.

Did American Pie really make Don McLean's career? Perhaps, but Vincent was the better tune and (rightly) outdid it over here by reaching number one a couple of months later.

Which is funny, cuz I've read/heard more than once that she told her label she wanted them to produce one massive album so she could get rich, tour once more, bank it all and retire.

Oh, I'm sure there's plenty of truth in that, too.

[Snake Plissken]

I'm probably being wound up here but...

Tequila didn't break Terrorvision. They had had several hit singles and two hit albums beforehand. The problem was that they went a different route with "Shaving Peaches" and it wasn't as commercially successful - even if it does have some good stuff on it they are never going to top HTWFAIP and RUS.

IIRC, the Mint Royale mix of Tequila was released after EMI officially dropped them. Zoe Ball discovered it and gave it a lot of airplay, which led to them shooting a video in a day at a pub with Sean Hughes and then agreeing that they didn't owe EMI anything if they could release a Greatest Hits (I believe the magic of record company accounting had TV down as in the red to £1.5m, or as they called it - "a bar bill").

EMI signed up to distribute the follow-up album. So we have the odd case of a band getting dropped, re-signed and having their biggest hit single during the period between.

[Jah Womble]

Was anyone saying that Tequila 'broke' Terrorvision?

I s'pose one could put in an argument for The La's, given that Lee Mavers hated it. It was certainly the band's biggest hit - and John Power quit on the back of the stasis that this created with his colleagues.

[Various Artist]

Well, Terrorvision and Tequila were suggested together in a post in this thread, which is about bands being destroyed by their biggest hit. So Auntie Beryl was saying it, yes.

Vincent is a wondrous song, I much prefer it to American Pie and it's sort of fitting it was the one that made the top of the UK charts. Don McLean also had a Number One with Crying in 1980-ish, one of the few voices that could do a Roy Orbison classic justice.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Vincent is mawkish rubbish.

"But I could have told you
Vincent
This world was never
Meant for one
As beautiful as you."

You couldn't have told him anything you pompous prat. Do you really suppose no one ever tried?

#1 in the UK? Shit, I'm glad I'd left the country by then. It failed to make Top 10 over here.