First single off the album flopped, more or less - album went on to become a huge success on the back of one or more later hit singles

Kim Wilde: Close
Mike + The Mechanics: The Living Years
Crowded House: Woodface

Which others?

I suppose "Thriller" doesn't quite qualify, even though "The Girl Is Mine" may well have been the worst, it was still a more than moderate hit in late 1982.

are we talking mainly about established artists who have an underperforming singles or also new artists who take a couple singles to get their breakthrough album off the ground?

Appetite For Destruction

Apparently first single was It's So Easy.

But even the 2nd single, Welcome To The Jungle didn't become huge until nearly a year later, after Sweet Child O' Mine became a smash.

The Kid Rock album that had that Sheryl Crow duet, and the other one that had "All Summer Long".

speaking of Sheryl Crow: Tuesday Night Music Club's first single did nothing, second single was a moderate hit, then third was the big smash

The White Stripes: White Blood Cells

First single was Hotel Yorba. Love the song, but it didn't make them huge.

Crazy Town - The Gift of the Game

Butterfly was the third single.

It really wasn't until the Elephant singles that the WS were ever huge.

I dunno. Fell in Love With... was pretty big, at least on MTV.

to be honest I don't know if Geir refers to "chart singles" in his first post.

"Alive" was Ten's first single, which according to Wiki only went to #16 in the Modern Rock chart (not a hit by any means). But that album went on to be HUGE.

i saw "Alive" on MTV a lot well before "Evenflow" was released, and that was when i was just barely beginning to pay any real attention to popular music. plus "Alive" is such an evergreen radio staple that it just feels wrong to mention here.

nicki minaj?

if we're gonna go there, like the overwhelming majority of successful rap albums the last 5 years have at least one flop "first single" that is usually disowned and possibly not featured on the actual album once a later single becomes a hit

I feel like Beyonce does this a lot

b52s - cosmic thing

b52s - cosmic thing

― fit and working again

good example!

yes ;_;

"Channel Z" is so much better than its commercial success tho, it's my fave of the Cosmic Thing singles

First Madonna album.

we're gonna end up in a lot of hairsplitting about modest/niche success vs. crossover success vs. "flops." like "Channel Z" was a #1 Modern Rock hit, it just wasn't a crossover pop hit like the later Cosmic Thing singles. U2's "The Fly" a good example of the same situation.

I was going to make that argument but was afraid it would just be because I love "Channel Z"!

I don't know about "The Fly" analogy, ship. A physical single of "The Fly" was released and sent to radio stations; my local top 40 joint played it a couple of times to increasing disinterest from fans going WTF?! It stalled in the top seventy.

okay lol "Cosmic Thing" was actually the first single

Blondie's Parallel Lines, in the US at least, is an example of the first two singles going nowhere and third single top 10.

"Heart of Glass" went to number 1, in fact.

massive attack - daydreamin

portishead - numb

inxs, listen like thieves - 'this time' (was big in australia but did nothing really beyond that), then 'what you need' (US #5), album was a breakout success from there.

I don't know about "The Fly" analogy, ship. A physical single of "The Fly" was released and sent to radio stations; my local top 40 joint played it a couple of times to increasing disinterest from fans going WTF?! It stalled in the top seventy.

― a 'catch-all', almost humorous, 'Jeez' quality (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, August 31, 2011 1:58 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark

obv U2 were bigger from previous albums than the B-52s and the analogy isn't perfect, i'm just saying calling any single that went #1 on at least one niche genre chart a "flop" is perhaps a bit extreme

Geir is actually otm about Mike & the Mechanics:

The first single taken off the album, "Nobody's Perfect," peaked at number 63 on the Billboard Hot 100. The next single off the album, the title track, was a worldwide number one hit, reaching that mark on the Billboard Hot 100 chart the week ending 25 March 1989. The song also reached number one on the Australian ARIA singles chart the week ending 13 May 1989. In the United Kingdom, it spent three weeks at number 2 in January and February 1989, behind Marc Almond and Gene Pitney's reworking of "Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart."

U2's "The Fly" a good example of the same situation.

Still, Achtung Baby sold a zillion copies right out of the gate. The first single could've been a 10-minute Adam Clayton bass dirge and people would've bought it.

good thing the B-52's argument is partially undercut by "Cosmic Thing" being the lead single rather than "Channel Z", which I didn't even know until I just looked it up

now we can argue about whether hitting #3 on the modern rock chart is a flop or not, lol (also wtf "Meet The Flintstones" hit the top 40????)

haha

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Blood Sugar Sex Magik

First single was Give It Away, which stalled at 73. Under The Bridge hit #2, then the whole record became big.

I would like to point you to this entire argument we just had about The B-52s

also applies to the Pearl Jam "Alive" thing -- once something becomes a band's signature song it seems kind of silly to call it a flop

Regarding Mike + The Mechanics, "Nobody's Perfect" was also a flop in the UK. Strangely as IMO it's the best thing they ever did.

Otherwise, I was mostly thinking of established acts. Otherwise I might have included two albums by Crowded House, also the debut album (and they even had kind of a name then considering Neil had been in Split Enz).

XP I don't consider "Alive" to have been a flop either. Surely, Jeremy would become bigger, but "Alive" sort of established them as "another interesting grunge band to check out if you have just gotten into Nirvana".

And "The Fly" was kind of a hit here. Not as huge as "One" would be, but no less of a hit than its followup "Mysterious Ways". And the actual album sold from day 1 at a stage when "The Fly" was still the only single.
Still amazed they released a zillion singles from that album and none of them was "Zoo Station" nor "Love Is Blindness".

http://www.connollyco.com/discography/paul_mccartney/pipesgf.jpg

Prince "1999"

Dammit wrong thread. I think.

The apocalyptic yet upbeat party anthem saw chart success in 1983 (particularly in Australia, where it peaked at #2), but it did not make it into the Top 40 in the US or the UK on the first attempt. However, upon being re-promoted after "Little Red Corvette" hit the Top 10, it peaked at #12 in the US and #25 in the UK (reaching #2 in the UK when re-released in 1985).[2]

absolutely insane to me that 1999 only went to #44 when it was first released.

xp

my view of that song's initial success is warped because lol grew up in the Twin Cities

by that point he'd only had one Top 40 hit, which was 3 albums earlier, so i doubt anyone was going "hey Prince that '1999' song really flopped huh"

uh, he wanted a crossover hit VERY badly, I'm pretty sure plenty of people around him, including Prince himself, felt like a single (especially THAT single, which is so amazingly good) only going to #44 was a flop. The success of "Little Red Corvette" changed everything - for Prince, for the album, for the title song, etc.

Oh my god, this thready just made me find out that Mike & The Mechanics are still releasing new albums. I honestly had no idea!

now u can tell them in the living years

pretty sure no one besides their moms and Geir knew that

Manifesto is a really good example!

Can I do a good exaple now?

OK, "Too Rye Ay", the first single "Celtic Soul Brothers" got nowhere, the next was "Come on Eileen"...

Then CSB got remixed and it was an ok size hit...

"Let's Stay Together" wasn't a flop (it hit #26), but maybe it was compared to the subsequent singles off Private Dancer.

and the record company had NO idea what it had in its hands.

plus, wasn't "Let's Stay Together a BEF single appended later to the album?

No, that was "Ball of Confusion"

"Let's Stay Together" was a BEF production though.

yep

Goodnight by Babybird was a modest hit, 27 or so, before You're Gorgeous blew it out of the water

I remember people remarking "that song they had before, that actually wasn't that shit at all"

Squeeze - East Side Story.

The first two singles were 'Is That Love' (35) and 'Tempted' (41).

Then came 'Labelled WIth Love' (4).

Oddly enough, all three of these songs are considered pretty much equally big 'hits' in terms of their status

as a hit making proto-BritPOP machine

Yeah

My Iron Lung was the first single off The Bends but it only went to number 24 in the UK.

christina aguilera stripped? in the US at least.

Yeah and Britney's In The Zone too. Although I don't know if it was a huge success but it did better once "Toxic" was a hit.

the phrasing of the thread kind of disqualifies a lot of albums suggested for that reason -- they were established artists before the album and the first single's failure didn't have much effect on first week sales, so it's not like the later hits were entirely responsible for the album's success

he never even charted on the Billboard 100 until 1999!

I suppose there's supposed to be a quotation mark in here somewhere? :)

Cosmic Thing was what came instantly to my mind too.

Before looking up the details, I remembered The Bangles' Everything fitting the bill, with "Eternal Flame" being the eventual massive crowd-pleaser. But it's partly a regional thing: first single "In Your Room" looks to have been a fully-fledged hit in the US, unlike for instance, the UK or Aus.

yup -- it hit #5.

Something in this realm happened with Paul Simon's Graceland.

First single "You Can Call Me All" fell short of the top 40.

Second single "Graceland" stalled in the 80s.

Third single "The Boy in the Bubble" also stalled in the 80s.

Then about 9 months after the LP came out "You Can Call Me Al" was reissued and finally broke the top 40.

Little Creatures by Talking Heads. The Lady Don't Mind was the lead single which reached 81 here in the UK and didn't chart at all in the US. Road To Nowhere was the second single and went on to be their only top 10 hit here. I'm surprised to learn it wasn't much of a hit in the US at all only making number 105, And She Was was the biggest US hit from the album.

nicki minaj doesn't work because the first actual single that got left on the album was a hit

Chocolate Cake wasn't rly a flop qua flop, did better than the singles before and the single after it. And the first two Crowded House albums did waaay better than the last couple of Split Enz albums.

yeah chocolate cake was a pretty big modern rock radio single; in fact I'd say it was maybe the last thing CH did that had any significant airplay in the US.

Chocolate Cake wasn't rly a flop qua flop, did better than the singles before and the single after it.

I'd say it was just marginally that it did better than the ones before it (although the entire "Temple Of Low Men" album got undeservedly little attention), but it sure didn't match the success that "Fall At Your Feet" would have. Of course, "Woodface" didn't really take off for real until the third single ("Weather With You"), but "Fall At Your Feet" was still bigger than "Chocolate Cake".

iirc no one gave "Tones of Home" a thought, which was the first single off Blind Melon.
could be wrong here tho.

― Porto for Pyros (The Cursed Return of the Dastardly Thermo Thinwall), Wednesday, August 31, 2011 5:48 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

"Dear Ol' Dad" was a video before "Tones of Home" but apparently it wasn't a single? I was giving them a thought. : )

Sure, if debut albums are supposed to count, one might also add "Definitely Maybe". Although "Supersonic" was maybe not really a flop, more like the typical debut single of huge acts that would lay around in the lower regions of the chart for ages without reaching a particularly high position, paving the way for later and bigger successes (se also The Beatles, Rod Stewart solo and possibly Depeche Mode)

chart peaks are also deceptive -- songs from new acts tend to take longer to break through and get airplay, so they might end up with a similar number of spins/sales over a longer period of time than a song from an established act that races up the charts and then drops off fairly quickly.

plus this thread has basically become "any album where the biggest single wasn't the lead single," which is like 50% of all albums with hits and kind of pointless

Yeah, c'mon you all know a "flop" single, right?

"Celtic Soul Brothers" got to 45.

"Popscene" made 32.

Popscene wasn't even on an album, though. It was the lead single to an album that never got made due it's failure.

exactly. Although the album did get 'made', just that a whole bunch of tracks were dropped and some new ones added...

Which is why it seemed similar:

KevRowl basically went "oh" but put out the album anyway, "Come on Eileen" proving him right.

Whereas Damon went "oh" and everyone went "right" and scrapped the plan (and the second single) and had a rethink.

ABBA's self-titled album, to an extent - first two singles went nowhere outside Scandinavia but third one clicked in the UK and sent the album into the Top 20, and to #1 in Australia. I say "to an extent" because that's not exactly earth-smashing worldwide.

that awful Gwen Stefani Sound of Music song

The Sweet Escape wasn't exactly a huge success, though, the next single w/ Akon did better but it was generally looked at as a sophomore slump after her first solo

wow this thread is a real education, especially in respect of Graceland, Little Creatures* and 1999. so basically this happened *a lot* in the 80s! it was like an actual common thing, a phenomenon! i'm amazed it hasn't been covered before.

*you hafta wonder who was picking the singles though i mean The Lady Don't Mind.. heckfire.

yeah The Sweet Escape was a flop pretty much, especially considering she'd been the first artist ever to shift 1,000,000 download copies of one song with Hollaback Girl not 2 years prior. it was all wrong from the blessed awful artwork down and it slunk out about 3 weeks before Xmas. there was always something 'up' with that album.

To some extent, "Me Vs. The Music" by Madonna and Britney Spears might quality. Sure, it was not really a flop, but considering it was a collaboration between Britney and Madonna one might have expected it to do way better. Yet, it took until "Toxic" for that album to really kick off.

Yeah, but "Flop" does not necessarily mean "did not make it onto karaoke machines"...

Obviously the wheels were greased hugely by advertising here, but none of the early singles from Moby's Play did particularly well, there was no indication of how big that record would become.

Actually, Gwen Stefani's first solo album is the perfect example. Things weren't looking too good when "What You Waiting For" only made it to #47 on the Billboard 100, but the album went on to become a huge succes when the following singles all became hits.

"Play" is a very good example.

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Blood Sugar Sex Magik

First single was Give It Away, which stalled at 73. Under The Bridge hit #2, then the whole record became big.

The "Give It Away" single was actually reissued after UTB was a hit, and still stalled at the lower reaches of the charts. Despite lots of radio airplay, "Breaking the Girl" wasn't issued as a single, at least in the US - I think it would have connected better with "Under the Bridge" fans than "Give It Away".

The first single from the first Doors album, "Break On Through", flopped. Then they released "Light My Fire". The former is still a better song.

"Somebody To Love" was the third single issued off Surrealistic Pillow, after the first two (including Skip Spence's "My Best Friend") flopped.

breaking the girl was a single in the uk. give it away went top 10 here on its release. Under The Bridge is much more famous here as a cover by a pop band.

"Give It Away" was an MTV staple at least in Europe, but it is possible it also did better on the singles charts around Europe than in the US.

And should of course add that RCHP are in a genre that typically sells more albums than singles.

Zombies' Odessey and Oracle? "Care of Cell 44" and "Friends of Mine" charted low, before "Time of the Season" carried the album.

Sure, definitely "Odessey and Oracle"!

(although the fact that those two first singles from the album charted means they probably couldn't be considered flops, as most of their 66-67 material had indeed not charted at all)

The first song recorded by Derek and the Dominoes, "Tell the Truth", wasn't a hit (intentionally - Clapton had the single pulled early because he was dissatisfied with it). The song was rerecorded for their only album after Duane Allman joined the band. "Layla" actually flopped on its initial release too, as did the album it was from. Only after the single was re-released almost two years later did it hit the top ten in both the UK and US, eventually pulling the parent album onto the charts as well.

oops, sorry about the Dan Quayle spelling of "Dominos"....