Big swings for pop stardom

[tragabigzanda]

Top 10 maybe?
Hello Morning
Close Captioned
The Kill
Place/Position
Do You Like Me?
Latest Disgrace
Recap Modotti
Nightshop
Break
Life & Limb

I'd maybe bump Life & Limb for Epic Problem

[tragabigzanda]

[tragabigzanda]

[tragabigzanda]

[tragabigzanda]

Top 10 maybe?
Hello Morning
Close Captioned
The Kill
Place/Position
Do You Like Me?
Latest Disgrace
Recap Modotti
Nightshop
Break
Life & Limb

I'd maybe bump Life & Limb for Epic Problem

[LoathedVermin72]

trag I think you’re way off the mark in this thread, buddy.

[tragabigzanda]

[verb_to_trust]

Kings of Leon -Use Somebody

[Kevin Davis]

I'm trying to think of examples of this from eras that I didn't live through -- feels like something that is way harder to pinpoint in hindsight. But I'm pretty sure I've read Elvis Costello say that Punch the Clock was a pretty deliberate swing for the charts (if lacking the kind of image overhaul one generally associates with these things), which ended up being pretty successful -- at least insofar as "Everyday I Write the Book" was a successful single, and still one of his most iconic songs -- even though it was followed by an attempt to replicate it (Goodbye Cruel World) which fell flat.


"Shakedown Street" by the Grateful Dead was an attempt to score a hit in the disco vein, at least according to Mickey Hart via this Wiki passage: "Hart has been forthright about the collusion between band and label to make a commercial-sounding album: 'We were trying to sell out – 'Oh, let's make a single and get on the radio'. Sure. We failed miserably once again. I mean, we could never sell out even if we tried, and we tried.'"


Van Morrison's 1978 Wavelength album is not unjustifiably perceived as a deliberate attempt to adopt a more mainstream sound, separate from the R&B-flavored or Celtic-soul-type stuff he had done to that point. I actually really love this album and think he totally hit the nail on the head with it, but a lot of his fans at the time objected to its soft-rock leanings (I could see you enjoying this a lot, LV -- give it a listen!):

[Birds in Hell]

trag I think you’re way off the mark in this thread, buddy.

Yeah, there has to be something more to this than simply making more melodic, accessible music.

The Nirvana suggestion is insane.

[Kevin Davis]

trag I think you’re way off the mark in this thread, buddy.

Yeah, there has to be something more to this than simply making more melodic, accessible music.

The Nirvana suggestion is insane.

Right, I think the mission of the thread is to identify deliberate attempts by artists to lay claim to an entirely different market share, not just larger portions of the same market share. Nevermind is just the music Kurt Cobain was already naturally writing, only on a bigger budget. Same thing with Dookie -- neither of these albums saw the artists completely altering their musical language in an attempt to cross over.

Jewel was already huge because of "You Were Meant For Me," "Who Will Save Your Soul," etc. The song mentioned in the OP was an attempt to exist in an entirely different realm.

Fun thread, by the way -- this and the "songs you like by artists you don't" threads have been really enjoyable

[Jorge]

I really like the Tegan and Sara album Heartthrob, which marked a sharp left turn from the kind of pop-influenced indie rock they had been making up to that point, and seemed deliberately designed to gain mainstream popularity. WB sunk a lot of money into the marketing for this album in a way they had never done in T&S's career. The extent to which it was successful is somewhat unclear -- on an artistic level, I think these songs retain the girls' strengths as songwriters and are very solid pop tunes. On a commercial level, it got some mainstream attention and significantly opened up the market for them, but I always got the sense that it didn't quite reach the stratospheric heights the label was hoping for. It definitely influenced a bunch of the (often more successful) 80s-tinged pop albums that were released later that decade.

[Jorge]

But I'm pretty sure I've read Elvis Costello say that Punch the Clock was a pretty deliberate swing for the charts (if lacking the kind of image overhaul one generally associates with these things), which ended up being pretty successful -- at least insofar as "Everyday I Write the Book" was a successful single, and still one of his most iconic songs -- even though it was followed by an attempt to replicate it (Goodbye Cruel World) which fell flat.

I came close to suggesting his cover of "She" from the Notting Hill Soundtrack, which is pretty uncharacteristic of him and had a big marketing push. It's still his most well-known tune in some markets, including Latin America.

[Jorge]

As big as Weezer already were, it's hard not to interpret "Beverly Hills" as one of these. It's pretty incongruous with what they'd done before, had a music video filled with Playboy bunnies, and marked the start of an amped-up media presence after the lukewarm commercial reception to Maladroit.

Also it is very bad, and was massively successful

Weezer has become aggressively embarrassing. To the point that i've sold off the Blue Album and Pinkerton bc I just can't stomach to listen to them anymore.

Yep and I think "Beverly Hills" was the beginning of Cringe City Weezer

[Jorge]

The 2003 Liz Phair album with "Why Can't I" and "Extraordinary" comes to mind as an example of this. I'm not big into her stuff but I feel like it was pretty successful -- I remember the usual types raked it over the coals, but those songs definitely got played

I remember one of the big criticisms of this was that she worked with the people who co-wrote that huge Avril Lavigne album a couple years prior

[Brett]

I posted about this before in a different thread, but I'm not quite sure if it counts for Jorge's intentions. Here's "She Keeps Me Up" from Nickelback's 2014 album, No Fixed Address:

This particular song sees them trying on a disco-pop style, kinda chasing some of the radio-friendly trends of the time. Apparently the rest of the album sees them dabbling in a bit of electro-pop and having a song featuring Flo Rida. I have no idea if this had any success or if they continued in this vein beyond this album.

[E.H. Ruddock]

Green Day is a horrible call. They were a pop band ever since Dookie. The American Idiot stuff sounded more produced, but let’s not kid ourselves about the intentions of Basket Case.

You're a horrible call

[tragabigzanda]

[E.H. Ruddock]

[ghost]