the album with the least subsequent influence in proportion to its popularity, like, ever.

or basically, what bendy said

That already happened by 1986. Licensed to Ill, Raising Hell, etc.
Curtis Blow selling Sprite http://youtu.be/Q18TEfOsosg
Big Mac Attack http://youtu.be/Mr7bXomATps

― wk, Monday, December 8, 2014 8:31 PM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There's a huge difference between Kurtis Blow doing a Sprite ad and MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice doing, collectively, a Taco Bell ad, a KFC ad, the Turtles soundtrack, the Addams family soundtrack, a saturday morning cartoon, a doll each(!), a British Knights ad, a Pepsi commercials, a starring role in a movie, etc etc

A pepsi commercial

feeeelings...

i'll say one thing about texas, the wu tang version of say what you want on the end of the greatest hits record is one weird-ass piece of music

How does it differ from the single version of that?

REO Speedwagon's fingerprints are all over contemporary country.

― Don A Henley And Get Over It (C. Grisso/McCain), Monday, December 8, 2014 7:44 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Could be. Has it generally been noted how much 'hot new country' of the 90s (and whatever they called it later) sounded like Christine McVie songs in Fleetwood Mac? There's probably a bunch of other 70s 'class rock' type stuff in there too.

"class rock" boy what a freudian slip and slide that was

anyone who thinks Shania wasn't influential must not have heard any country radio in the 00s.

Stone Roses?

Of course Shania Twain was influential.

Would be surprised if "Whipped Cream" had no "influence," but I'd have no way of articulating what that influence might be. It's not like it was some weird novelty thing like Tiny Tim. I figure if you were a gigging mood-music session player, you listened to records like that and looked for things to nick, right? I'm sure people who chronicle the evolution of TV soundtrack music, most obviously game show music, could put it into some kind of context. But I'm really just speculating.

Was gonna say, I'd be really surprised by Come On Over having no influence! Just seems...unlikely, unless the argument is that everything about it was already generic when it came out...? Don't know enough about contemporary pop-country.

Tijuana Brass wasn't influential, it was influenced: by the 1961 hit "Mexico" by Bob Moore. Pretty much the whole Tijuana Brass idea in that hit single. Now, Herb Albert as a music businessman? Very influential. Influential album cover I must say too, hubba hubba.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ncSdmCR7L._SY300_.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Drz37Q7RL._SY300_.jpg

I mean, his impact is reallllty underplayed in rap writer circles because, well, come on

But anyone who actually lived through him and Hammer knows that the combined impact of those two really kicked open the boundaries of what hip-hop could be in American culture. Like what was being written up as this scary thing in a racist Newsweek hate piece like one year before could suddenly sell soda and Turtle movies and Saturday morning cartoons

It's like DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince and LL Cool J never existed up in here

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61LZGGmP4vL._SX300_.jpg

This gets into singles more than albums, but the monks chanting reminded me of something. Here from wikipedia:

In the United States, "The Lord's Prayer" in 1974 (...) made Sister Janet the first Roman Catholic nun to have a hit record in the United States since Jeanine Deckers, the Singing Nun, hit #1 with "Dominique" in late 1963. It also became the only song to hit the Top 10, whose entire lyrical content originated from the words of the Bible. More specifically, it is the only Top 10 hit whose lyrics were attributed to Jesus Christ.

Oddly enough the "nuns having hit records" thing didn't continue to happen even once a decade. But I imagine lots of lyrics have been attributed to Jesus Christ.

It's amazing they were able to get The Fresh Prince of Bel Air in production and on the air in the six months after Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em came out. I bet Will Smith tithes to Hammer to this day.

xposts

Hammer definitely influential, 'Nilla Ice strikes me as a Frampton - the corny, thin-of-content end of the road for one strain quickly blasted out of the water after making their quick mint

Like yeah Nilla was big but on a continuum he didn't add to.

there must be a weird tiny generation gap here. it seems to me that anybody who liked Ice Ice Baby already liked Parents Just Don't Understand a year before that.

Hammer at the very least was a big influence on arena rap flash in the late 90s, particularly "shiny suit man" p diddy

Has Bat Out of Hell been particularly influential? It combined a bunch of things that were big but in my current exhausted state, I can't think of many big names since then that have attempted a similar combination.

Jim steinman's definitely been influential.

I was like eight or nine in the heyday of Icemania and really don't recall knowing any other rappers by name, before him and Hammer. That doesn't really indicate anything at all, but I sort of wonder whether it would be verifiable that any labels signed any acts because of Vanilla Ice. Even if it were... that's really just another measure of popularity, and the thread question separates popularity from "influence."

I don't know if anybody ever actually tried to sound like Vanilla Ice, except schoolkids in the first month or so of his success. Other people probably ended up sounding like him just because they were influenced by the same things he was. I was about to reach for Kid Rock on Grits Sandwiches For Breakfast, but listening to the first half of "Yo Da Lin In The Valley" convinced me that he was probably going for Paul's Boutique if anything.

But we're talking about albums, not artists. Unless you mean that his influence became possible because of the huge success of the Meat Loaf album?

xpost

I guess I was assuming that we were talking about "influence" in the sense of "a later artist emulated musical ideas from the earlier artist in a way that is evident when listening". The term is vague and potentially broad, though.

Ha, I am apparently on just the right side of the generation gap since "Parents Just Don't Understand" was big in my Grade 5 class. Vanilla Ice still seemed impossibly, depressingly huge in Grade 7, though. Not really saying anything about influence rn.

http://images.gibson.com/Lifestyle/Spanish/use_your_illusion_1_2_800.jpg

ha, a lot of "New Jerseys" might well apply here actually

yeah forgot this was albums, not artists, in which case "new jerseys" would definitely be a circle inside of the bigger circle of "big albums few bothered to imitate"

but yeah re: bat out of hell, it's already a burlesque of bruce springsteen so it's definitely hard to point out its "influence" separate of bruce's, but the album did inspire a bunch of folk to make epic pop-drama with steinman

How about this one?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/86/Crash_Test_Dummies_-_God_Shuffled_His_Feet.jpg
(Crash Test Dummies - God Shuffled His Feet)

One of the biggest-selling rock albums of the early 90s, but it was released during the grunge era, and I can't remember that anyone would've tried to imitate their sardonic, literary type of gentle pop-rock.

let's see where riff raff's career is at in a year before we say vanilla ice had minimal influence on hip hop

katy perry "teenage dream" has like the most #1 singles of any album ever but can anyone really trace out significant influence from it? has that album altered the sound/look of pop in any real way? KP's more of a cypher for things happening in pop culture than someone who really drives it.

especially if you view her as the shiniest and most expensive car off the dr. luke assembly line you wouldn't even pin, like, kesha or idk becky g or whoever on her.

maybe the most charitable influence i'd give teenage dream is that it might've kickstarted rappers getting thrown on pure sugary pop tracks... could you trace "dark horse" and "talk dirty" back to "california gurls" and "ET"?

I think its a little too soon to stick a fork in albums from this decade, esp ones that share a producer and bit of vibe with the current number one single in America.

i think 'prism' and its visuals might prove to be more influential (total mainstreaming of tumblr culture) but yeah we'll have to see

I hear the influence of "teenage dream" on carly rae jepsen's album and on taylor's "style" - thumping four by four tracks where the percussive vocal lines provide the rhythmic counterpoint.

yeah Taylor Swift's definitely been influenced by it.

The Fine Young Cannibals-The Raw and the Cooked was a really big record for a year or so. You never hear anything about them now.

that's funny because a lot of these mumbly new singers remind me of FYC

that Future Islands song everyone loved had a vaguely Fine Young quality to it

man, the ghost of shania is everywhere on the radio. a huge influence.