Artists/bands that were once quite popular, yet nowadays are mostly ignored in canonical history books

and the lucky country is Gambia !

It's like the Beatles arriving in the US.

I have actually just watched the whole thing and... oh my...

worst scottish export since mcewans

I'm quite partial to McEwan's Champion Ale although the 7.3% ABV might have something to do with that

Wet Wet Wet were an absolute shocker of a band. And, as has been noted, were Rangers fans into the bargain.

Disgraceland is in Liverpool though

Disgraceland is a podcast about pop music and crime

had never heard of wet wet wet before, that song with the video in the Gambia sounded like Culture Club

Have never forgotten Mark E Smith talking about being on the same label as Wet Wet Wet:

"The worst fucking drummer I have even seen in my lifel He is so fucking shit!"

https://thefall.org/gigography/90jan25.html

just gonna chime in to join the earlier mentions of Three Dog Night, who surely have the biggest gulf between popularity and canonization of anyone mentioned. they also work as the avatar of the late 60s/early 70s harmonically-oriented pop-rock melange discussed upthread - Rascals, Lovin' Spoonful, Grass Roots, that whole thing, and frankly I suspect their original audience base may have resembled Blood Sweat and Tears's, Chicago's, and Neil Diamond's. huge huge huge acts, largely wiped out by the demise of oldies radio and/or its time shift forward into 70s Denver/Carpenters/Taylor lite-rock and 80s soft rock material (which obviously threw Chicago a lifeline). too rockin' for the while-you-work stations, not enough guitars or attitude for classic rock. these are also all "greatest hits" type bands - albums all look generic and thin on material, feels obvious you want the comp only, there has never been much work putting into gilding their real careers with arcs or narratives or creative journeys. wonder if there are some generational or factors here too (did Three Dog Night sell to boomers' parents and Silent Generation relations as much as to boomers themselves?).

fanbase gender balance is surely SUPER relevant here - rockism 101, right?

i've yammered on about this on ilx before, but my 90s equivalent for Three Dog Night has always been Matchbox 20 - not nearly as successful at their peak but similarly adrift in recurrent plays. first album crossed over so quickly from rock to pop radio that the rock songs didn't build permanent roots, and then pop radio stopped playing guitar bands and rock radio stopped playing melodic roots-informed hootie-esque bands anyway in the nu-metal years. i'll still hear "unwell" and "3 AM" around here and there but nothing in proportion to their actual success.

as a keeper of the billy joel flame i'll also put his name forward in the "mega-successful, hardly forgotten, hits played all the time, but still no place in the Story of Rock" column. there are a couple of critics who really stan for him, but if you pull up a big history of rock documentary or something, i feel like nobody would feel obliged to include him. he doesn't serve any narrative function.

billy joel's commercial peak lasted about 10-15 years, and he still sells out the garden every month. that's a way different level of popularity than most of the people mentioned here

Joel isn't the kind of artist critics like to write about, but he won't soon be forgotten

right, which is what the thread is about, right?

how it started, I guess

the kind of artist critics like to write about, but he won't soon be forgotten

I suppose the Bee Gees qualify, if this is the metric

lol uh left off the "isn't"

if they are cited it's usually as a punchline to disco (a genre that has def been canonized, but w the Bee Gees written out of that history afaict)

like I feel there's a canon of disco that purposefully excludes the Bee Gees as interlopers/commercializers etc

also my Bee Gees track-by-track thread is mostly tumbleweeds these days :(

Yes, disappointed about that too. I don't know about over there but the Bee Gees are more than a 'punchline to disco' over here.

i have no evidence to back it up but i'm positive the bee gees are more respected by critics than say billy joel

Chris Molanphy did a Bee Gees podcast a few months ago

Bee Gees are so good. Οὖτις, I have been enjoying your posts on the track-by-track thread I just have nothing to contribute really.

they're perfect as a 'you know them for x, but actually they were y, and also great artistes" take, which is an evergreen narrative for canon construction.

Yes, despite their many ridiculous aspects and (especially) lyrics, the Bee Gees are too good to be the subject of a pointing and laughing thread a la the Eagles.

the bee gees are more respected by critics than say billy joel

I would think the opposite, but dunno how to gauge this really

Oh God no, please tell me no.

i regret dropping off of the bee gees thread after an early, doomed attempt at catching up with it - i was digging the deep dive! it still stares at me in my bookmarks, i should make the attempt

Bee Gees are so good. Οὖτις, I have been enjoying your posts on the track-by-track thread I just have nothing to contribute really.

Bee Gees & Joel are both RRHOF inductees; don't think it gets much more "canonical" than that...

(but then I also don't know what the hypothetical "history books" are, and probably haven't read them)

Stephen Holden reviewed a bunch of Bee Gees albums for Rolling Stone, most of them are just one back-handed compliment after another, for ex:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/main-course-100601/

Christgau couldn't be bothered:
https://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=bee+gees

thirded on Bee Gees thread

The best-selling artist for singles in the UK for the 80s was Shakin' Stevens. My 30-year-old colleague has not even heard of him (though he must have heard Merry Xmas Everyone which will be on rotation in shops as soon as we get past bonfire night)

Bee Gees & Joel are both RRHOF inductees; don't think it gets much more "canonical" than that...

As is Chicago.

(Induction speech by I think Rob Thomas, who said something like "If Chicago is your mom's band, then I want to party with your mom." Make of that what you will.)

https://youtu.be/baewtwI9A64

Gah, I was right, alas

xp Yeah — I also hear about Chicago all the time (a podcast guy I’m a fan of is a huge fan of theirs)

For the record, Rob Thomas is NOT invited to party with my mom.

the bee gees are more respected by critics than say billy joel

I would think the opposite, but dunno how to gauge this really

― Οὖτις

i mean just you could just ask anthony fantano

Herb Alpert and Johnny Rivers both had a few hits and made bucket loads of money but whose deeper catalog of music is probably at best mostly Goldmine readers material outside a few tracks. Of course, their hey day is like 40-50+ years gone at this point too.

Johnny Rivers was one of the first rock and rollers to go to Vegas if I remember right at one point might have been one of the highest paid musicians or at least his publicist like to say so.

Herb was like some other jazzers that played in the pop field not really unlike Quincy Jones, although Jones would by many be much, much more heavyweight as a musician and arranger. Alpert was pretty indie though starting his own studio and then label which got huge, so that would be an angle where he would be still quite significant.

"Big A&M Herb was there** His offices had fresh air. But his rota was mediocre. US purge, rock 'n' pop filth. Their material's filched." Kinda true of Johnny Rivers too as he was not really a writer, although he had the dough to buy whatever tunes he needed. Which was also from what I understood was true of a certain Matchbox Twenty (allegedly).

idk the theme for the american broadcasts of "danger man" is still pretty iconic i think? have no idea of anything else rivers did though

wasn't there an era of german popular music before krautrock that is roundly disparaged or ignored by english music critics? schlager i believe.

Looking at a couple of popular pop history textbooks, Joel is discussed in reasonable depth in Covach, even with a picture of him. The Bee Gees are mentioned in that and in Starr/Waterman, in the context of the popularity and impact of Saturday Night Fever, but not beyond that. In Starr/Waterman/Hodgson (the Canadian edition), the disco chapter is actually called "Night Fever". Neither American book includes the Guess Who in their index and Triumph and Midnight Oil don't appear in any of them (even the Canadian rock history book doesn't mention Triumph!).

Sweet - solid data! Thanks.

I missed the question upthread about whether Midnight Oil were ever a stadium band over here - they played the Pacific Coliseum, Maple Leaf Gardens, and Montreal Forum in 1988, so, yes, at least in Canada, they were that big.

wasn't there an era of german popular music before krautrock that is roundly disparaged or ignored by english music critics? schlager i believe.

Oh yeah, and both schlager and iskelmä are almost always sung in the local language, not English, which would partially explain its obscurity among Anglo listeners.

(resisting the urge to post some awesome Jürgen Marcus songs)

(for now)