Unusual Albums with Mass Appeal

Spinning off from the 'token albums' thread and a glance at Wikipedia's lists of best-selling albums (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums), I am sometimes intrigued by the mass popularity of certain albums, e.g. Sgt Pepper, Led Zeppelin IV, and Dark Side of the Moon that I think are actually much more adventurous and challenging than most albums that sell on that scale. What is it about these albums that connects with a mass audience on the same scale as Shania Twain or Michael Jackson or the Eagles so much more than, say, contemporary bands such as Jethro Tull? People get really excited when I play "Stairway to Heaven" in class but are horrified by Genesis's "The Musical Box", which is not so different, really. (Admittedly, Gabriel's inverted mohawk in the video clip might have played a role there.) Still, this isn't very well thought-out but I do find it interesting to consider what qualities might have made the difference here. Zep was not marketed that much more heavily than other rock bands and "Stairway" was an album track.

Similarly, although they're not quite popular on the same scale, it's interesting to consider why things like Kind of Blue or Gorecki's 3rd symphony resonate with many more people than most instrumental modal jazz or contemporary art music pieces. The former really is an exceptional groundbreaking album and had a great deal of press behind it; the second may be an even greater wild card.

The fact that ZEP didn't release singles in the UK and I'm pretty sure Money wasn't a single its strange they got so big. Cant imagine UK radio playing it (we never had rock radio here) did the emergence of rock radio in the USA help it?

I always thought Tubular Bells was a real odd choice to be a massive hit instead of some cult album that only gets discussed on ILX

As for Sgt Peppers *That* album cover was a huge iconic thing that excited people who weren't even into music.

yeah tubular bells is a good one too. but a certain film explains that i think?

also the fact that ELP's Tarkus hit #1 in Britain is really strange, especially since it's the one ELP studio album with no single.

in the UK a large fanbase is all you need to top a chart. No airplay based charts(So Maiden got a #1 despite zero airplay) ELP were definitely huge at the time.

I guess, in the case of the Beatles, they had already built a massive fanbase with more straightforward pop music before they started doing experimental things, which gives some explanation. Yet Sgt Pepper has become a much BIGGER seller than their earlier pop records.

But it's still a pop record, I think, for the most part.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/52/Korn_follow_the_leader.jpg

Follow the Leader has sold 3,951,884 copies in the US according to Nielsen SoundScan as of January 4, 2013 and over 14 million copies worldwide, making it Korn's most successful album.

back the there was a huge amount of boomer youth looking to rebel and experiment plus by the 70s the younger siblings too young to go to woodstock wanted to take things a bit further?

all i know is by 76 ppl complained music went safe and bland (like now) so why did mainstream music go from arty or experimental pop to bland in a few short years?

Radio must be the reason? but who implemented the change and why?

Tales from Topographic Oceans was also a #1 record so maybe it isn't so strange

But it's still a pop record, I think, for the most part.

Sure. I just don't think its Shania Twain-level popularity can be explained by its accessibility, even compared to other Beatles albums.

I'd have shit myself with glee if any of my profs had played The Musical Box in class. Probably best they didn't.

beatles/beach boys all experimented and were huge so its no surprise rockers with arty pretensions would want to and why shouldnt the BB/Beatles audience grow up with it too?

What id like to know is : was it all guys buying dsotm? If not, why was it different for floyd then to all boys fans bands like ELP?

all i know is by 76 ppl complained music went safe and bland (like now) so why did mainstream music go from arty or experimental pop to bland in a few short years?

I don't know if I agree with this characterization, but at some point the prog rock *moment* was over - not in terms of popularity and sales but in terms of the development of an aesthetic Zeitgeist.

ELP is an example: they were huge at the time and still have a following now but their albums haven't endured as a mass phenomenon in the way that Pink Floyd's or Led Zeppelin's have. (In ELP's case, it might be because they were shit.)

xposts

Roxy Music did this too and were huge in the UK. But by 75 why had mainstream music gone so bland? (or was the punk narrative just plain wrong?)

tim the 76 thing is the punk narrative

I wonder how much ELP's (and Yes) reputation nosedived in the UK because of Jim Davidson :)

I do think that massively popular, chart-topping music was less experimental from 75-85 than from 65-75. Perhaps you could make a case for some disco productions.

Even though their mainstream breakout, Cosmic Thing, isn't *that* unusual, the fact that a tacky little dance band from Georgia has sold 4x platinum of that album, and over 20 million records total, still amazes me. Really feel like I was in on the ground floor of that.

Personally I think Michael Jackson's Thriller has some pretty odd stuff on it, for being one the highest selling albums of all times. Or maybe just couldn't get enough of random Chipmunk style backing vocals, African chanting and Vincent Price monologues.

There was a whole back to roots movement also wasn't there? but again that was still very early 70s and it co-existed well enough?

The UK punk narrative was different, though, right? It was, at least in part, more that rock had become too self-consciously arty and technical, which is almost the opposite, in a way.

xposts

dan thats a great d/n! (i saw the craigslist thing it references)

we need to put out the batsignal to mark s

I almost want to put quotes around "experimental" there, though. Because I think "Don't You Want Me" and "Rapper's Delight," which were big singles when I was in middle school, were experimental records to as great an extent as much prog rock.

xpost re. Sund4r's post

That run of really popular Gary Numan albums (Replicas/Pleasure Principle/Telekon) was definitely very strange (even the singles were!). I think the UK still had interesting chart toppers even later on. Hard to believe that U.F. Orb shot straight to #1 in those days.

But neither of those bands have albums that are big like Dark Side of the Moon is big.

xpost to timellison

Eurythmics Sweet Dreams was pretty far out for mainstream when it hit. Self-produced by the band and confrontational/dada video imagery. Lots of amazing deep cuts and left-fieldisms. But it worked and it's still great.

Maybe your point was just that innovative music could still become very popular in the 75-85 period, which is fair enough. I'll give you "Rapper's Delight" and early hip-hop generally, for certain. Less sure about "Don't You Want Me". xpost

Enigma's The Cross of Changes is another real odd duck sitting at the top

But neither of those bands have albums that are big like Dark Side of the Moon is big.

maybe like 10 artists/bands in total do

Yeah.

I think I was confusing two points there tbh.

here's another one: Aqua has sold 33 million albums worldwide. A lot of that was being in the right place at the right time, but despite all the cookie-cutter imitators that followed, Aqua was a genuinely bizarre band that dare I say was a bit ahead of their time?

Sign O The Times is a very strange album.

I've always wondered how the hell THIS happened:

In 1971, Jesus Christ Superstar was named Billboard’s biggest-selling album of the year – against competition from such masterpieces as ‘Sticky Fingers’ by the Rolling Stones, ‘Led Zeppelin IV’, ‘Santana III’ and John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ – and made number one on the Billboard album chart twice in that year in February and in May.

A friggin' double album soundtrack to *nothing* (yet), by no identifiable group, telling a biblical story and it goes massive! All I can think of is that it was some kinda zeitgeist moment for both rock operas and Jesus-freakism.

radiohead to thread

probably my morning jacket?

I dunno, the popularity of most things sorta eludes me these days. Definitely surprised by how huge The Knife has become, for instance (I like The Knife).

all sorts of real odd and ambitious stuff make it big in the early 70's. though I had no idea that Jesus Christ Superstar was just an album first!

I didn't either tbh.

I do think that massively popular, chart-topping music was less experimental from 75-85 than from 65-75. Perhaps you could make a case for some disco productions.

i would make a case for fleetwood mac. and donna summer. and hall & oates. and madonna. and prince. and bruce springsteen. and pink floyd's the wall. and many many others.

I could see Donna Summer and Prince, sure. Maybe The Wall but I think Pink Floyd was doing safer things than they were doing previously. I don't really see it with the other examples but maybe I haven't heard enough Hall and Oates. (If they have much that sounds like "Family Man", you might be right.)

There's a Riot Goin' On is one of the weirdest records of the 70s. It hit #1 on the U.S. charts almost instantly, spawned a #1 hit single, went platinum, and had two followup hits. Why? Massive anticipation after a near-unprecedented 2 1/2 year gap between albums, and "Family Affair" is a catchy sumbitch.

here's another one: Aqua has sold 33 million albums worldwide.

You know labels, publicists, etc. make shit like that up all the time, right?

(xxpost) the rhythm section throughout fleetwood mac's rumours (since we're discussing massively popular chart toppers) is kinda bonkers if you pay attention to it. the harmonies, creamy as they sound, are pretty damn inventive and complicated. to say nothing of lindsey buckingham's gtr solos.

and yes, hall & oates have more in the "family man" vein.

I was a kid in Denmark when Aqua hit, and they didn't really seem like anything special. Every week there was a new eurodance-group singning about a toy or a videogame or a cartoon (names of bands include Toy-Box and Cartoons). I do remember hearing Roses are Red for the first time in a children show and thinking it was really catchy, that must be over 15 years ago.

Somebody That I Used to Know is a pretty weird best-seller of 2012, actually.

yeah, village people were kinda like action figures to me. don't know if the gay thing even dawned on me at the time. i would have been 10 around their peak. i thought they were kinda goofy but i liked the costumes.

wait, no, i would have been 11 or 12. their peak was around 1979?

where the super-technical stuff and the virtuosity were felt to be part of the grand shared project of bringing everything (all peoples, all cultures, all age-groups) together.

this is an interesting idea, but how would you support it? popular progressive rock often seems (to me) to celebrate heroism, to strive toward great uplifting moments. in its precision, athleticism and fondness for grand statements, it's always suggested a sort of hygiene fetish: strong of body, sound of mind, noble of spirit. maybe the most intensely utopian of all rock subgenres. but it's never occurred to me that the prog utopia might be uniquely defined by its inclusiveness. i suppose the aquarian dream was about the advancement/elevation of the whole human race...

the sex pistols were probably the weirdest thing i remember hearing in the 70's. weird to the point that i didn't even really grasp what i was hearing. it just sounded like noise. and that had to do with the volume or distortion more than anything else. they were louder than anything i had heard.

speaking for myself as a 70's rock fan, the beatles really did set me up to think that most rock i heard was normal even when it was weird or different. i knew all their weirdest stuff by the time i was 5 or 6 and everything i heard on the radio after that - including disco and funk and soul - seemed like an unbroken link from them on into infinity. they prepared me for the idea that music could take you on a trip. come to think of it, my dad playing prog stan kenton concept albums probably set me up even before that, but the beatles created almost my entire frame of reference for pop and rock for a decade. them and sly stone.

prog and funk and jazz in the 70's were sci-fi and utopian and looked to the future which is why i'll always kinda begrudge punk for making everything come crashing back to earth. punk only led to ronald reagan and deregulation.

Excellent post, mark! Sometimes I question why I spend so much time on this board and then something like that reminds me.

the sex pistols were probably the weirdest thing i remember hearing in the 70's. weird to the point that i didn't even really grasp what i was hearing. it just sounded like noise. and that had to do with the volume or distortion more than anything else. they were louder than anything i had heard.

On record? That's surprising. Musically, they don't sound that different from harder glam rock to me. (The voice is definitely different.)

Everyone is thinking about this the wrong way. It isn't "weird shit" vs. "conventional shit," or "harsh shit" vs. "pleasant shit," it's familiar shit vs. unfamiliar shit. Basic psychology. Once people have got it into their minds that a song is classic or popular or canonical, they cease hearing it as weird (outside the rock critic bubble, that it is.)

― katherine, Sunday, July 28, 2013 7:54 AM (2 hours ago)

i don't think it's a matter of the right or wrong way of thinking about things. tbh, i assume that everyone posting here understands that novelty is fleeting, that yesterday's great breakthrough becomes tomorrow's common practice. nevertheless, it may be interesting to consider the ways in which albums might seem "unusual", whether in our own perception or in what we can tell about the perceptions of others.

nirvana's in utero is certainly not the only example of a confrontational, brutally abrasive album released by a widely popular act known for more conventionally ear-pleasing fare, but given that pop context, i still think it's somewhat "unusual" in its deliberate inaccessibility. same goes for scott walker's late career turn to forbidding sound art.

first time i heard the sex pistols, they reminded me of jerry lee lewis

had a small frame of reference

did you think that in 1977 or 1978? i heard them on 8-track probably in 1978 or 1979. motorhead sounded like noise to me too in 1979. and i was already a big black sabbath and judas priest fan. the sex pistols definitely didn't sound like glam rock to me in the 70's.

x-post

i was in jr. high, so like 81? i mean, they were obviously feral, but i knew & liked the ramones, so it was fairly easy to adjust.

yeah i hadn't heard anything like it. two years later and they were old fuddy duddies to me.

I got the Sex Pistols mixed up with Kiss's Love Gun! Due to their name. Not sure to what extent I actually heard them back then. Do know, that when I finally tried, I initially found the Clash way easier to get into -- So I guess the Pistols struck me as unmusical at first.

By the way, people always make fun of it on this board for some stupid reason, but the first Big & Rich album (which has sold 3 million copies) sounded completely strange within the context of its genre when it came out. Though I guess it was kind of writing the rulebook for a new genre (hick-hop), too.

sex pistols album went gold the year it was released. so, pretty mass as far as appeal goes. number one in the u.k. 106 in the u.s.

It went gold in 1977, in the U.S.? Really?? Did it even get radio play? If that's true, I had no idea.

no, gold in the u.k.

it went gold in the u.s. in the 80's.

Oh okay - That makes way more sense.

then it went platinum here in 1992.

when i was young, i wanted everything to sound like "crocodile rock" and "saturday night's alright for fighting", goodbye yellow brick road being an early touchstone (along with the stones' greatest hits, "rebel rebel" & "suffragette city", jerry lee lewis, chuck berry and little richard).

so catchy 70's punk along the lines of the ramones, pistols and clash made sense to me. johnny's vocals did take some getting used to, i have to admit.

still think the numbers for the downward spiral are interesting. it was SO MUCH MORE popular in the states than anywhere else. americans must have been really bummed out in 1994. i was pretty bummed out.

Canada CRIA 3× Platinum[75] 300,000+ —
United Kingdom BPI Silver[76] 60,000+ —
United States RIAA 4× Platinum[42] 4,000,000+ —

Also the rules or conventions of rock music in the 60s and 70s were not anywhere near as codified as they are now. Modern stuff that seeks to consciously recapture that vibe never adequately captures all the weird stuff that would creep in, the recontexualisation of pre-rock musics.

prog and funk and jazz in the 70's were sci-fi and utopian and looked to the future which is why i'll always kinda begrudge punk for making everything come crashing back to earth. punk only led to ronald reagan and deregulation.

Suppose you could argue that the cultural/economic/political climate that led to Reagan (and Thatcher) made that utopianism seem anachronistic. Especially in the UK where post-war utopianism was about to be systematically dismantled.

all of these weird deviations from the norm Sund4r alludes to above -- unstraightforward song structures, convoluted changes or rhythms, foreign instruments, loud noises, extreme tempos in one direction or other -- in practice tend to get taken for granted as internal genre conventions really quick.

I think we may have talked about this point before. If e.g. it became a genre convention to write rock songs in rondo form in 7/8, I'd completely agree. I don't really buy that "non-standard song structures" or "convoluted rhythms" are genre conventions in themselves in the same way that "contrasting verse-chorus form with a middle 8 in four-bar phrases" or "4/4 with a snare hit on 2 and 4" are genre conventions, or, if they are, they allow considerably more room for formal variation within the genre. (I don't have a problem with highly standardized/formalized genres at all btw: music of the Classic era is great partly because of the level of standardization.) It's definitely the case that many novel instruments or production tricks have become subsumed as essential elements of popular music genres though.

i liked elton and the stones and chuck berry and david bowie in the 70's because they reminded me of the beatles. same with queen and 10cc and elo and everyone else. beatles beatles beatles.

x-post

If e.g. it became a genre convention to write rock songs in rondo form in 7/8,

And even then, if this was a genre with a niche audience and then one particular album from the genre became a chart-topping all-time bestseller, I'd still consider it unusual for an album with mass appeal.

has there ever been a musical movement as quickly anthologized, mythologized, canonized, annotated, and written about as exaustively as punk? wait, yes, the liverpool/brit invasion, i guess. and i guess elvis's two year rock invasion. was reading a Bomp magazine from 1977 the other day and the entire issue is punk including a very long history of punk. in 1977! so quick. not to mention the reviews of a zillion punk zines in the same issue. i always used to think of it (when i was a kid) as some shady thing that only two people were into or knew about. almost instantaneous iconic status.

summer of love

not a musical movement, though music was part of it. guess i mean the explosion of hippie culture between '67 and '69.

Did something important happen with the UK music press at that time? I think I read something like that at some point? I always did think it got written about a lot, considering how long it lasted and how much impact it actually had on the charts.

2xpost

NME & MM slagged off punk at the start didn't they? And it led to a lot of writers being replaced by younger ones like Burchill, Parsons etc

anarchy in the uk got a slagging in the nme.

re contenderizer's query: closest i've come to "demonstrating" my idea is maybe here? — relevant bit is quite a long way down — where i take the notion case by case and argue that prog is in effect kind of aggressively anxiety-beset subset of fusion. the primary precursor is sgt pepper, which as an art object is exactly the vaudeville of an album [key word] that appeals to everyone from kids to grans to ravi shankar to etc (and "all you need is love" also) (which is based on stockhausen's hymnen as any fule kno).

If you need book on the inclusiveness as stated ideology, jon anderson's lyrics are yr go-to i think :)

(the inclusiveness is an overall project, prog was just a high-visibility experiment towards its solution: which in retrospect has pretty obvious flaws, and yes, in plenty of ways pulls away from it more than it ever realised it )

I'm also interested in the answer to contenderizer's question to you about prog virtuosity and inclusiveness, mark. Your other points make a lot of sense and are well-articulated, I think. I'm a little intrigued by the idea that e.g. Sgt Pepper becomes popular because of its popularity and canonization: it makes sense to a point; does anyone think that if most casual listeners (who buy Pepper because of the charts and lists etc) heard With the Beatles or Help!, that they would actually prefer it?

xpost! Well, there's something to read.

mm was v wary of punk, nme were on the whole enthusiasts and more — there was specific beef between n.kent, who'd been guardedly pro mclaren, and sid vicious, who swiped him with a bike chain and somewhat soured his disposition, but the very recently late mick farren eg had written pieces demanding something like punk arrive

(when it did, it swept almost everyone away that called for it, but that's a different thing) (farren's vanishment was directly parsons/burchill related — if the mythology is accurate — in the sense that he was her first boyf and tony p her second, and the handover was not violence-free...)

pepper got a LOT of crossover promo in the grown-up papers in the UK: william mann's famous times leader review and so on — which is why my dad bought it for my mum! and arguably why i turned out as i did

(i still have their copy of the LP with the snipped-out review inside aw)

i blame punk for jazz going away too. jazz was everywhere in the 70's. pop, soul, disco, prog, rock, latin music, funk, etc.

all of a sudden nobody wanted to practice their tuba anymore! and then you got canned phil collins horns for a decade. so sad. i would definitely go back in time and kill johnny rotten if i could still hear big band charts on the radio. i think "sir duke" was the first 12 inch single i ever heard.

yet you love OI!

I don't really buy that "non-standard song structures" or "convoluted rhythms" are genre conventions in themselves in the same way that "contrasting verse-chorus form with a middle 8 in four-bar phrases" or "4/4 with a snare hit on 2 and 4" are genre conventions, or, if they are, they allow considerably more room for formal variation within the genre.

But the latter two allow tons of room for variation, Sund4r! Which is why they won't go away.

I mean, I might be twisting your argument some, but this reminds of how so many people thought "all disco sounded the same," when really the disco beat (as if there was only one -- but let's pretend there was, just for the sake of argument) actually allowed you to do whatever you wanted on top. It didn't quell variation; it provided a frame or foundation for it.

i love oi! for the hot disco beats.

people really don't get enough credit for liking weird stuff. long 100+ year history of smash hit "novelty" records will attest to that. heck, some of the best-selling records of the 1910's were comic monologues about irish dudes going to the hardware store. and on and on to spike jones and they're coming to take me away and disco ducks. allan sherman WAS the beatles. nothing normal about that guy.

If you need book on the inclusiveness as stated ideology, jon anderson's lyrics are yr go-to i think :)

(the inclusiveness is an overall project, prog was just a high-visibility experiment towards its solution: which in retrospect has pretty obvious flaws, and yes, in plenty of ways pulls away from it more than it ever realised it )

― mark s, Sunday, July 28, 2013 11:17 AM (28 minutes ago)

agree with all that, and it does answer my question. i see global unity and human enlightenment as the era's explicit and explicitly utopian overall goal, reflected throughout the cultural landscape. no more so in prog than folk, for instance. prog's tools are what make it a special case.

strange to consider prog as an invitation to global unity. it's not about hugging your neighbor and singing church songs together. instead, we stare in awestruck wonder at the puffy-sleeved pinnacle of human achievement. it's weirdly egocentric in that it presents itself as the inspirational ideal. otherwise, it's basically the olympics, which does add some traction to its claim.

http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_400/MI0000/678/MI0000678327.jpg

Any album with Fred Schneider on it has to be considered unusual.

in utero was, i think, an extremely noisy and abrasive for a mainstream rock album. i can't think of a straight-up rock-genre equivalent. i mean of a beatles/U2/michael jackson level world-dominating pop artist putting out something that deliberately challenging.

what about the white album? "helter skelter" and "revolution 9," for starters, were probably way more abrasive in their time than in utero was in its time. and the white album has plenty of other songs that upend expectations for a beatles album, or a rock album in general, in various other ways.

and since you mention u2, i'd argue that achtung baby is another great example of an album by a top-of-the-world artist that very directly challenged sonic expectations,

I don't really buy that "non-standard song structures" or "convoluted rhythms" are genre conventions in themselves in the same way that "contrasting verse-chorus form with a middle 8 in four-bar phrases" or "4/4 with a snare hit on 2 and 4" are genre conventions, or, if they are, they allow considerably more room for formal variation within the genre.

But not necessarily aesthetic variation, which would account for why prog rock is, in fact, a genre.

But the latter two allow tons of room for variation, Sund4r! Which is why they won't go away.

Not only that they allow room tons of room for variation (which they do), but that they and other conventions are not things that are strictly adhered to at all. I've been writing a blog on pop-rock songwriting for almost four years and that's pretty much my big theme.

in utero was, i think, an extremely noisy and abrasive for a mainstream rock album. i can't think of a straight-up rock-genre equivalent. i mean of a beatles/U2/michael jackson level world-dominating pop artist putting out something that deliberately challenging.

what about the white album? "helter skelter" and "revolution 9," for starters, were probably way more abrasive in their time than in utero was in its time. and the white album has plenty of other songs that upend expectations for a beatles album, or a rock album in general, in various other ways.

An argument too could be made for Keith Richards' combo of open tunings & lofi tape recording on the "Jumpin' Jack Flash" single and on Beggar's Banquet--not sure on exact release/recording dates, but probably the only time The Beatles & Stones were in creative/artistic harmony.

I don't really buy that "non-standard song structures" or "convoluted rhythms" are genre conventions in themselves in the same way that "contrasting verse-chorus form with a middle 8 in four-bar phrases" or "4/4 with a snare hit on 2 and 4" are genre conventions, or, if they are, they allow considerably more room for formal variation within the genre.

So I guess the thing is, in a way, I might have actually been doing what I argued against here when I started this thread (while killing time at a temp placement). I was assuming a set of pop music conventions and then conflating numerous different kinds of unconventionality - formal, rhythmic, timbral, harmonic, lyrical - into a category of "unusual". Then I made general statements that Sgt Pepper was more "unusual" than Rumours or Come On Over. Someone did argue that Rumours had some unusual qualities in terms of harmony and rhythm. Perhaps I should have investigated these further.

I guess that from here, I'd either have to get more specific and look for specific sorts of unconventionality or innovation or else throw the question wide open and look at any sort of "unusual" element in hugely popular albums. The latter seems like it's probably the more interesting thing to do with this now! Ultimately, I guess any album would need to have some unique quality to rise to all-time top-seller status. Perhaps it would be interesting to consider what all of them are!