Stylus's Top Ten Momentum Killing Follow-Up Singles to Breakthrough Post-Grunge Albums

zombie

uh Zombie was a huge hit, wasn't it...?

like I thought that WAS their breakthrough single

Surprised to see Zombie too.

Black Love is a fabulous album and Honky's Ladder one of the Whigs' better post-Gentlemen singles.

honkey's ladder fucking RULES

"Linger" was The Cranberries' breakthrough single in Europe, but maybe not in the US? "Zombie" was a bigger hit though.

the idea isn't that these songs necessarily weren't hits, but that they kind of signaled a change of direction or poor choice of single that would lead to their commercial decline. the first Cranberries album was 5x platinum in the US, the second with "Zombie" on it was 3x platinum, but more importantly "Zombie" was a total 180 from the big hits from the first album, "Dreams" and "Linger."

vote for the best (or "best") btw

haven't heard some of these in a while but as far as i can remember them:

Angels Of The Silences > Lakini's Juice > Anything > King of New Orleans > Honky's Ladder > Cleopatra's Cat > All I Want > Gel > Misery > Zombie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDyxSu2Yv7A

actually most mystifying inclusion in this would be Gel...didn't do too great as a single, but didn't it usher in Collective Soul's most succesful period?

This article is pretty arbitrary about what counts as a momentous "poor choice" for a band. Funny how he calls it a "overly wordy and exclusive category" and then picks a bunch of songs that totally weren't "momentum killing" at all, with a few (most notably "zombie") that did better than some singles from the breakthrough album. I'd really only put "Honky's Ladder," "Cleopatra's Cat" and maybe "Always" as songs that actually maybe fucked up a band's shit. "Misery" and "Lakini's Juice" are chart high points for those bands, and the rest were at worst modest hits preceding bigger ones from the same album.

idk what to tell you guys other than i thought it was a fun article and that i'm interested to see how the poll results pan out, if you really wanna tell Cohen he was full of shit for including "Zombie" or "Gel" in a listicle 5 years ago i'm pretty sure he's on twitter

haha how is saying this article is pretty weak any sillier than announcing it "one of my favorite things Stylus ever published"

Cleopatra's Favorite Cat

^ "post-grunge"

who said silly? we're all silly, man. that's what we do here, isn't it?

btw i think recurrent spins in subsequent years count here more than initial chart peaks. the whole point is that these bands were on a roll when they released these songs and so some of them were warmly embraced by radio at least for a minute. but "Zombie" is pretty much the only one i've heard on the radio multiple times after the year of release.

also "Honky's Ladder" was one of the ones i thought was iffy since Afghan Whigs weren't exactly a huge radio band before that and i didn't think that song/album hurt their standing much if any with critics or fans.

Are we voting for best song or best momentum killer?

Also, a single can be a chart success *and* a momentum killer. Those things aren't mutually exclusive.

best song, favorite song, most affectionate lol 90s chuckle, etc.

Afghan Whigs was straight up "I can't publish a top 9 list"

^^Yup. And Zombie is pretty much universally reviled, isn't it?

If the idea was "flop first singles from follow-ups" I could see more counting, though "Lakini's Juice" "Misery," "King Of New Orleans" "zombie" and "angels of the silences" still wouldn't. Back then, the commercial plan usually was to release a harder first single for the hardcore fans, and then roll out of the pop balladry and whatnot.

xp The afghan whigs def had "momentum" though, and considering the sales drop between black love and 1965 I could see someone saying Greg Dulli's "grunge soul" shtick wasn't the side of the Whigs he should have been humping after Gentlemen

I think list needs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ9kBQrZXOI

I will rep for Angels of the Silences as actually being a pretty good song in retrospect. You can hear the DNA of a ton of recent buzzy bands (Band of Horses comes immediately to mind) that are loved by the same general audience that loathed Counting Crows. Not that that's totally unique.

Afghan Whigs, "Honky's Ladder"

stopped reading here- voted

I can't remember what "Gel" or "Anything" sounded like (not sure I ever knew), but the only songs on this list I know I don't like are "Misery," "Zombie" and "Cleopatra's Cat" - though I can enjoy them in a LOL NINETIES way in the rare instances they're heard today.

I didn't read the article, but on what planet was "Zombie" a flop

man you used to read things what happened to you

Only song on the list that makes me absolutely want to punch someone in the goddamned face is "Gel," so I voted for that. Not that I cared much for Collective Soul anyway, but that song is just GAAAAAAAAAAAAAH so lazy and awful and stupid. It's like they didn't even aspire to Nirvana and fall short, they aspired to Stone Temple Pilots and fell short.

All I know about "Gel" is that xhuxk has reliably repped for it ever since it came out.

"E-Bow The Letter" arguably belongs here, if you consider Monster REM's "breakthrough post-grunge" album, which it kinda was

another vague, arbitary potential choices for this vague, arbitrary genre: "geek stink breath"

man you used to read things what happened to you

― da croupier, Monday, March 28, 2011 4:47 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

lol you were the man of letters homie what the fuck happened to you

I've been singing the chorus to that Soul Asylum song to my 6-month-old sometimes when she gets fussy.

i should be saying "aww" because i have sung some pretty goofy songs to my son but tbh dude i'm kinda roffling about the idea of someone whispering "frustraaaated incorporated" to an infant

Yeah, it's probably the worst part of my little show.

i wouldn't call anything that was successful enough to warrant a Weird Al parody a flop

"Lakini's Juice" "Misery," "King Of New Orleans" "zombie" and "angels of the silences"

I'd reliably call these all momentum killing. My objection w/ "Gel" was that it seemed to come before not after a big winning streak for CS

like Gel was momentum gathering. xhuxk was only the first to notice.

are we voting for best or worst.

(also I was going to argue with Whiney about "Abuse Me" being the actual Silverchair momentum killer, but I guess Freak was the first single out in AU so fuckit)

vote for the best (or "best") btw

― corkslovetoscrew (some dude), Monday, March 28, 2011 4:12 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

best song, favorite song, most affectionate lol 90s chuckle, etc.

― corkslovetoscrew (some dude), Monday, March 28, 2011 4:39 PM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

thanx -- I voted Lakini's Juice

Mmmm pretty much everyone in my generation grew with Cranberries and I'd bet some serious money that if you ran a poll on their most memorable song Zombie would come on top. It's definitely their most ubiquitous song.

Last.fm stats support me: http://www.lastfm.es/music/The+Cranberries - Zombie at top with almost the double of listeners than Linger at 2nd.

come on top is not the appropiate phrase is it? end at the top?

xp it's a shame; Linger is pretty great.

I think both those songs and Dreams are all pretty ubiquitous...but Linger's the only one of them that I can stand...

I forgot about this article. I don't mind "Misery" at all. The hook isn't half as annoying as Pirner's hair.

we've definitely established that "Zombie" was the biggest hit on this list and arguably too big to really belong here. i'm curious how many people will actually vote for that piece of shit, though.

Cohen's right: I don't remember "Anything" but liked "Never Let You Go" the first couple of times I heard it.

(but I don't hear how it's "power pop," unless the ooh-ooh-ooh and guitar hook confused him)

Lakini's Juice is great goddammit. I liked Secret Samadhi too.

i voted All I Want tho. great single from a mediocre album and the beginning of a freefall from which the Springs wouldn't recover.

Voting "Lakini's Juice"

If these dudes had a "momentum killer" it was probably the single after the hit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEUsJRVV-PE

haha also where's "el scorcho"

I hated El Scorcho but the rest of that album was golden

but yea didn't that one do drastically less in sales?

at this point it feels like a list of the top ten momentum-building follow-up singles to breakthrough post-grunge albums would actually be the harder list to make

momentum-building? hmm that would be like, "Brain Stew," "Everlong," something from The Bends i guess?

something from /The Bends/ i guess?
--corkslovetoscrew (some dude)

lolno

Rongy G. RONGgarten

The Bends was kind of a big sleeper radio album in the U.S., very "oh that 'Creep' band actually has a new one that's pretty good" repeated 3 or 4 times until they had a pretty serious fanbase by the time OK Computer rolled around

The Bends was when I got into Radiohead. I really liked "Fake Plastic Trees" and "High and Dry" and got the album one day and played it nonstop, so by the time OK Computer was out, I was begging my mom to buy it for me the day it came out.

yeah same here pretty much, although it was my brother that was more into them and "Just" that hooked us. not sure what Whiney's objection was but that album totally built their momentum.

Yeah "Just" was my entry into Radiohead fandom. Staying home sick from school one day, I was watching MTV and saw the video for that song. Totally blew my mind.

The Bends was my favourite albm throughout high school.

I don't know how going from having hits to not having hits counts as "building momentum"

"Hit", Whiney. When there's only one of them then you don't add an s to the end of the word.

Erm Whiney, they weren't as massive in scale as "Creep", but, uh, Radiohead's singles were all over rock radio and MTV.

"Just", "High and Dry", and "Fake Plastic Trees" I heard on the radio AND saw the music videos for regularly. They weren't plastered all over the place, but withoyt the exposure, I'd have never gotten into them.

Hell even the dorks in my choir class used to sing "High and Dry"!

I don't know how going from having hits to not having hits counts as "building momentum"

― suxv (Whiney G. Weingarten)

Mmm The Bends placed #4 and #88 at UK and US charts respectively. Every album they've released ever since then has placed #1 on the UK and on the top 3 in the US.

As for singles 'street spirit', 'paranoid android', 'no surprises', 'pyramid song' and 'there there' all placed higher than 'Creep' ever did at the UK charts (#7). Can't say the same for the US charts tho where 'fake plastic trees', 'karma police' and 'there there' have figured on #11 and #14 but nowhere as close as Creep on #2. Still your statement is nothing but distilled contrarianism.

on the "Modern Rock Chart" though, right?

cuz Radiohead remains a one-hit wonder in the US.

High and Dry made the Hot 100, but Creep is the only one that hit Top 40

Wikipedia says Creep got to 34, Nude got to 37.

No, not the modern rock charts. Album wise i'm talking about Billboard 200 and the UK albums chart. Single wise I'm on the UK Singles Chart and on the Billboard Alternative Chart. Creep was actually far from a one-hit wonder in the Billboard chart (#34).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiohead_discography

Just for clarification "Alternative" chart IS the former "Modern Rock" chart.

Oh yeah, I forgot about "Nude." So Radiohead is a two-hit wonder then.

I can't tell you how shocked I was after reading some article in TIME magazine about alternative rock & Pearl Jam and thinking they were some huge, massively successful rock band, then afterwards going to listen to Casey Kasem count down the top 40 and finding out that "Daughter" had been their first top 40 hit! I don't even think it made that high either...

"Last Kiss" is still their biggest too.

Radiohead are by all means a critical and commercial failure. It's all been downhill for them since Creep.

they just could never get over that one big hit :(

think maybe the Gin Blossoms could be in here?

The Gin Blossoms had like 3 hits in them didn't they? I remember Hey Jealousy, 'until I hear it from you' and 'Follow You Down' were sort of big. One point tho, neither Gin Blossoms nor Radiohead had a breakthrough Post-Grunge Album per se.

...or at least not before 'follow you down' and 'creep'.

Oh wait, I'm seeing the Gin Blossoms did have a 4x Platinum album twice before releasing the single "As Long as It Matters". They could definitely qualify.

momentum-building? hmm that would be like, "Brain Stew," "Everlong," something from The Bends i guess?

Except the "follow-up singles to breakthrough post-grunge albums" from Green Day and Foo Fighters were respectively "Geek Stink Breath" and "Monkey Wrench." And it's not like "Brain Stew" was BIGGER than the dookie stuff.

or even as big, rather

Thinking that Follow You Down could maybe count even as momentum-killing. (xp to Moka)

yeah i was fudging the lead single rule there. but i think "Monkey Wrench" totally counts, that felt very much like a statement of oh look we're definitely a real band that makes big hooky singles with flashy videos, that first album wasn't a one-off, etc.

"Follow You Down" hit the top ten and spent almost a year on the charts.

"Monkey Wrench" totally counts, as does "Bullet With Butterfly Wings"

I'd actually count "Lakini's Juice" as a momentum-builder...it was a hit! it's the follow-ups that failed to capitalize.

"Misery" too

yeah but do either of those songs get recurrent spins now like "I Alone" or "Somebody To Shove"? the way playlists have swept them under the rug and forgotten them says a lot imo.

well there's only so many hours in the day to play Live in 2011

also Better Than Ezra really didn't "kill the momentum" until they bought into the late '90s trip-hop-whatever on the third album, the singles from Fiction Baby continued their post-"Good" status as alt-radio filler.

god i try to limit how much alt flotsam i flood this board with but i'm totally going to do a Better Than Ezra singles poll at some point

Man, eels "Last Stop: This Town" might fit into this

good call

Mmm The Bends placed #4 and #88 at UK and US charts respectively. Every album they've released ever since then has placed #1 on the UK and on the top 3 in the US.

Nope, OK Computer didn't crack the top 20 in the US (#21). It was a long, drawn-out campaign, though. Their US tour started in August of 1997, and another leg swung through in March of 1998. In Chicago, the '97 show was in a 3000-seat theater, and the '98 was in a place double the size. The length of the campaign, plus the ephemera that dribbled out in the ensuing two years (Meeting People Is Easy, Airbag: How Am I Driving?) all aided in the buildup to Kid A which entered at #1.

sorry i briefly alluded to Radiohead guys, can it please not swallow the thread

another momentum-builder (if you accept that being the hit first single from a hit album that wasn't quite as big as breakthrough doesn't count as "killing"): "Swallowed"

What was the single after "The Chemicals Between Us" (also huge on modern rock radio)? That sounds like the Bush momentum killer.

Urge Overkill's "The Break" (which I love) def counts as a momentum killer, though. Saturation had some radio play, "Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon" was a hit, and then they decided to tell the world that Eddie Roeser wasn't happy.

Bush points out the funny thing about "momentum killing," which ignores that Breakthrough Album followed by Decent Selling Follow-Up followed by Hey Look More Than Five Years Has Passed And You Just Have A Cult Now, Good Luck is pretty regularly the momentum

unless you luck into Breakthrough Album followed by Decent Selling Follow-Up followed by Oh Shit People Like Your Ballads Oh Nooooo

See Linkin Park, Green Day, Foo Fighters

thx for the display name croup

I have the same objections others do to the inclusion logic of this list (did ANY of them actually kill anybody's momentum?) but it got me to listen to "Angels of the Silences" again, which I've never minded. "King of New Orleans" and "All I Want" are fine too. "Lakini's Juice" is probably the best of Live's singles, but I say that just because like everybody else I got completely worn out on the Throwing Copper singles and can't even give them begrudging acknowledgment as well-constructed, hooky alt-rock.

Damn. Better Than Ezra are apparently one of those bands who are really vigilant about YouTube, I kinda wanted to hear King of New Orleans right this second and I'm too lazy to look for it anyplace else.

da croupier OTM about rock band career arcs; there's also something going on here with genres and audiences shifting out from under people's feet, although this applies more to these bands' actual declining years than for the gap between "monster hit" and "moderate hit."

But the fact that radio stations don't play "Lakini's Juice" is surely just down to lazy programming, right? Skimming only the top-tier hits to ensure you're playing songs Everybody Likes, etc? I would LOVE a radio station that only played stuff that scraped the top 40 Modern Rock but never got higher than #15 or whatever....

well, some bands have a longer list of top-tier hits than others. that's what separates Green Day from Live, among other things.

I would LOVE a radio station that only played stuff that scraped the top 40 Modern Rock but never got higher than #15 or whatever....

totally with ya there dude. We have a modern-rock station here that plays some of those songs, and a lot of the 90s alt stuff that doesn't fit in with the main rock playlists (can I just say how awesome it was to hear Cannonball on the radio again?)

eh, angels of the silences was and is fine

the honky's ladder suggestion is ridiculous, i refuse to see it and i'm gonna listen to it now

king of orleans? nah. how does your garden grow was actually a pretty good album but i could see it as a whole be it for them... coming out of nowhere with a largely trip-hop/ambient album with strings and everything for your largely grunge fanbase can be a problem no matter how good it is. then there was that thing of their next few albums going back to alt but just not being that good

s/grunge/modern rock/ ... whatev

focusing on King of New Orleans, it is easy to forget that the follow-up single Desperately Wanting almost charted in the regular non-modern rock Billboard charts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gl6gaF_6Wcs

this actually got radioplay, as opposed to KoNO which I think charted higher on the modern rock charts mostly because the video was one of MTV's Buzz Cuts for a while...

(sounds a LOT more like Live than I remember...)

yeah "Desperately Wanting" was kind of huge, I might actually hear it more on the DC alt-rock station than any of the singles that preceded it that had higher chart peaks

Live comparison is OTM, wowwwwww. Don't know how I never heard that at the time.

no Live song is that good imo

truth

idgtt

'zombie' is a p cool song theres a great mid90s club mix of it i d/l offa napster. bangin

lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASQDzdiblNE

^ hurt djp's ears when he heard that for the first time last year

anyway zombie is easily one of the worst songs ever made

by this point, whenever I see reference to this band all I can think is "SARAJEVO! SARAJEVO! SARAJEVO! SARAJEVO! SARAJEVO! SARAJEVO! SARAJEVO! SARAJEVO! SARAJEVO! SARAJEVO! SARAJEVO! SARAJEVO!"

it's like the dour version of Rebecca Black's "FUN FUN FUN FUN"

lol

btw dude I think you should def. do a Better Than Ezra singles poll

"with their tanks and their bombs and their bombs and their guns"

"you said bombs twice"

"they have a lot of bombs"

Now look what this thread made me do
Battle Of The Worst: The Cranberries 'Zombie' vs Simple Minds 'Belfast Child'

wow that live song 'freaks' is seriously terrible.

witnessed a hard house / trance remix of zombie in baltimore at 1223 a few times which obviously wasn't cool. the original was also fine and well-received but i can see it as a momentum killer - the next lp was from the faithful departed, which was just ok but has a lot of zombie-ish rock tracks, away from the tweeish sound fans had gotten into them with. also wasn't o'riordian being generally disagreeable in the spotlight at the time? or more than usual dunno.

Freaks is Silverchair goole

there is also a live song called freaks, itt

"Salvation" was basically as repetitive and self-righteous as "Zombie" but it was also a fun little ska song about heroin

xp oh I remember that song! LOL yeah that was horrible

lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KotlCEGNbh8

re: later Live singles, Don't forget "Rattlesnake," though, that was pretty good.

Since when did Spin Doctors become "post-grunge"?

i took "post-grunge" as a description of the commercial climate in which the songs existed -- Spin Doctors and all these bands thrived in the alternative radio format that exploded in the wake of Nirvana/Pearl Jam/etc.

Live comparison is OTM, wowwwwww. Don't know how I never heard that at the time.

To be fair, I think it's a lot easier to hear commonalities between middling alt-90s bands now than it was in the heat of the moment.

also I fucking love "Salvation" - better than every self-righteous Cranberries song that isn't an under-three-minutes basher with a horn section

yeah Salvation was crazy

tbh I still have Desperately Wanting playing through my head

God I hope that Salvation video is buried in a time capsule somewhere

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KotlCEGNbh8

yeah it's upthread. I just watched it.

it can't be posted enough tho

thinking about dropping it on the Weeknd thread

forgot about the salvation video!!! kind of creepy, was it banished to 120 minutes time period

LOL this is the video I want to drop in the Weeknd thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjQrYYIl33w

I remember a commercial for that Cranberries record, like a proper advertisement with a narrator hyping it, and clips of the "Salvation" video playing. Somehow just seeing the commercial made me way less interested in the record and the band, it seemed way more packaged and lame that way. Listening to the song again it's pretty good but a really strange production job I think...like very much "of the period" but this also makes it a mess...the ska part in the middle seems to come out of nowhere, whereas I think if the grungier elements (guitar blanket, loud fuzzy bass) weren't there you'd notice all along that the guitar has this certain jumpiness to it. If that makes any sense.

Was that the same record with "Free To Decide" aka "harassment's not my FOR-TAYYY"?

. . . but you do it very well!

I like that song, but the lyrics really are preposterous. "I'm freeeeeeee to decide . . . that I'm not so suicidal after all!" Uh, congratulations? o_O

led to

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxFeesWL5OI

Some of these are weird choices..

In the case of Third Eye Blind, Collective Soul and Offspring, I their labels were following standard record company practice (at the time) to release a less accessible first single since these albums were all going to sell decently in their first week anyway, and then the more accessible 2nd and 3rd singles were meant to keep the album charting over a longer stretch..

So this would be why "Anything" was the single before "Never Let You Go" and "Deep Inside Of You." I don't think "Anything" killed their momentum at all. Collective Soul followed "Gel" with "December," and Offspring followed "All I Want" with "Gone Away," and in both cases these 2nd singles were both on daytime MTV constantly and charted pretty well.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

lol heard "Zombie" on the radio today

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

apparently it's in everyone's heads

profoundly offended "lakini's juice" didn't get more votes than "misery" or "all i want"

Frustrated overrated.

LET YOUR DIM LIGHT SHINE SOMEWEHERE ELSE, PIRNERBOTS

was this a vote for best??? cos 13 of you are nuts

im not a goon im in dublin

somehow i'm equally annoyed about the most commercially successful song and the least successful song doing so well, but hey, 3rd place ain't bad for my favorite