But think of the music scene just before Ten. The overlap between pop and (hard) rock was very substantial both musically and in the way it was promoted and "consumed" by the public. Many power ballads were labelled hard rock for instance. Rock either more or less hard or more or less mainstream or essentially pop with distorted guitars had a huge audience. Ten is musically very related to that scene. Everyone who argues the music is inspired by earlier styles should take in consideration that all of the 80's rock also was.McParadigm wrote:Pop singer albums skewed old even at that point. It's the same reason Garth Brooks went from OMG big as Beatles to "remember him?" Cultural lasting records are a part of a different kind of ongoing story...The Monkees had the top selling album of 1967, but they weren't part of that story.
I think Ten's commercial success had a lot to do with it's "familiar" sound at the time. It was both part of the scene that would be on it's way out in a year and the one that was coming after it. The biggest difference between 10 and a ton of 80's albums is Ed's vocal style.
The fact that most of it's audience was very young isn't surprising either and it's part of the reason it didn't age all that well. Ten didn't offer anything interesting to people who where familiar with the previous 3 decades of rock and it aged accordingly. Ten's "life" has many elements of typically mainstream records because it's what it essentially was.
