Artists whose popularity surprised/surprises you

Music
1

The companion thread to the other thread.

Coldplay and Muse are the obvious ones for me- both recorded decent enough debuts around the turn of the millennium, played NME tours etc, and then went on to be wildly popular.

I don’t have a massive beef with either band but their popularity surprised me. Muse more so than Coldplay I guess.

2

Radiohead

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3

System of a Down. I love them, but when I stop to think about it it’s insane that a metal band and a metal band as jarring as they are got so huge commercially. The Chop Suey video has 1.3 billion plays on Youtube.

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4

I remember hearing the UK premiere of Chop Suey on the Radio 1 rock show and thinking it was great but probably too weird to be a successful single. Nostradamus I ain’t.

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5

Snowpatrol

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6

Ed Sheeran - I know he’s not aimed at DiS and get that he appeals to the beige market, but how is he THAT popular? I just can’t see what holds anyone’s interest.

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7

At the time Kings Of Leon, 4 albums in.

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8

See also Crowded House

9

I dunno, I get it… He’s very effective at writing songs that appeal to a mass audience and is sensible enough to keep working away when he could have sat around enjoying his colossal wealth.

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10

Gerry Cinnamon. I had made peace with the fact that he is massive locally in Scotland but is he not headlining Reading next year? Absoutely bannanas! (Nothing against him, just can’t see what differentiates him from literally hundreds of similar artists)

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11

The Kooks ability to play Ally Pally size venues is also baffling.

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12

There’s that Liverpool lad who’s playing Sefton Park this summer, something Webster? People love a local lad.

EDIT - this guy

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13

Hadn’t heard of him TBH, but just listened to Weekend in Paradise and it couldn’t be more blatant that he’s basically just looked at Gerry and gone - I’m gonna do that - but in scouse!

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14

Shed Seven

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15

Good shout this. Of all the bands to survive Britpop.

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16

The Vaccines ability to play several nights at the O2 baffled me at the time - I can’t think of a memorable song they’ve done.

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17

They absolutely nailed a Reading mid-afternoon slot to a baying crowd entirely made up their target audience (teenage metal and punk fans with enough disposable income to spend on CDs) before Toxicity released. I remember me and my mates were mega hyped for it and had persuaded everyone else we knew to be just as hyped. Word of mouth carried them into the charts and repeated radio play room it from there. Nice, when you think about it.

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18

But received wisdom would have it that the people enjoying that level of beige aren’t the type to spend lots of time/money on music… and there he is selling out the Millennium Stadium for a week. How can you be passionate enough to spend £100 going to a gig and not passionate enough to realize that it is the blandest music made by a human?

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19

There’s a limit to how much I’ll go out to bat for the guy, but

  • there’s a sizeable chunk of people who like his songs
  • there’s a sizeable chunk of people who can afford £100 on a single event
  • the cost is comparable to (say) a reasonable ticket to go see the Lion King
  • the “one man and a guitar” act means that it’s basically a massive singalong

I would never choose to listen to him but I can kinda see why he’s got successful, I guess in the same way that I can see how any other capitalist venture has succeeded

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20

My record producer uncle told me a theory once, way back in the mid/late 90s, while we were actually discussing Radiohead

It’s a basic market version of ’music is how we decorate time’ … he said that it doesn’t really matter if music is good or bad or credible or commercial or whatever. What matters is getting it played in public - on the radio, tv, in shopping centres. That way it becomes a marker of time for people, so if they’ve had a brilliant weekend out with their mates, or a nice holiday abroad or just anything really that’s a significant memory in their life it will be associated with whatever music was around them at that time & hearing the music again will trigger those memories

Sheeran has had massive public exposure + a constant & steady string of hits + a really broad market & crossover reach by doing shit tons of collaborations.

Millenials can basically set their watch by him so a whole broad church turn up to his stadium gigs for a big old singalong. Plus, to be fair to the lad, he usually charges a whole lot less than the stadium filling bands for a stadium show (low overheads enable this I guess)

I can’t stand his music at all but I can understand his popularity. The guy’s a workaholic and the grind pays off

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