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

Re: Kansas, I recognized neither song, but they're both pretty good.

Their hits were ballads but their albums are full of wild-ass prog-rock suites with lots of violin.

Sounds up my alley. Which LP would you recommend as a starter?

Foreigner > REO Speedwagon > Styx > Journey > Kansas > Queen

Sounds up my alley. Which LP would you recommend as a starter?

Their first five studio albums - Kansas, Song For America, Masque, Leftoverture and Point Of Know Return - are all I know, but they're all great. "Icarus (Born on Wings of Steel)" from Masque is insane.

Cool, thanks.

My challop has been beaten.

ok but how is their 2020 album

Here you go:

https://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=65453

xxxxp I don’t really think of Queen as related to those other bands. (None of them had Freddie Mercury, for one thing.)

REO Speedwagon = don't know
Journey, Foreigner = know some songs, don't like any.

My ranking

Lots of other music >>>>>>>>>> Queen >>>>>>>> all of these bands >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> the poo in the ear thing

all we are is poo in the ear

genuine lol

All in all it's just a
'nother poo in the ear

feel like this is where I should come in and say, controversially, that I quite like a lot of Queen songs

-Colonel Poo In The Ear

Note: I don't really like any of these bands that have been mentioned recently, being on this thread right now is like being at a Superbowl party, just to get out of the house.

queen rules. queen haters are fuckin weird.

i started hating brian may's haircut a lot less when i realised it was basically an isaac newton tribute act

omg

I think my block with Queen might be that I don't really understand camp aesthetics. I feel like there's some kind of ironic distance with all of their stuff that leaves me cold more often than it makes me smile.

Entirely with you on that. It's fun for a spell or two when you're hanging out with friends but as a solitary listening experience, which is how I engage with music 99% of the time, I fail to hear the appeal.

lol trying to imagine putting on headphones and listening to "We Will Rock You"

from the "reception" section on the wiki entry for Don't Stop Me Now, featuring a former-ilxor:

Alexis Petridis of The Guardian wrote that the "astonishing" song "may be Queen’s greatest song of all." He felt it was "a direct product of [Mercury's] hedonism and promiscuity: an unrepentant, joyous, utterly irresistible paean to gay pleasure-seeking. You find yourself wondering if its title might not have been aimed at his censorious bandmates."[14] Mike Orme of Stylus Magazine ranked it the 7th greatest penultimate track on an album, calling it Queen's "most flamboyant and energetic single" and commenting: "Essentially three and a half minutes of Freddie Mercury jacking the mike from the rest of the world, the song offers him a chance to let us know just how much fun he’s having in the spotlight."[15] Billboard Magazine praised Brian May's guitar solo and also stated that "less gimmick laden" than Queen's previous single from Jazz, "Bicycle Race"/"Fat Bottomed Girls," "while still retaining the brazen braggadocio of Freddie Mercury's lead vocals."[16]
Despite its popularity, Brian May was not a fan of the song as he felt it was celebrating the hedonistic and risky lifestyle of Mercury.[17] He added that he struggled with the lyrics at the time, because it was about a difficult period in Freddie's life when the singer was "taking lots of drugs and having sex with lots of men."[18][19]

Mike Orme of Stylus Magazine ranked it the 7th greatest penultimate track on an album

Did he then hang himself upon realizing this was what he did for a living?

lol trying to imagine putting on headphones and listening to "We Will Rock You"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlxE0SjnctM

Put on headphones and listen to “It’s Late”!

That Youtube is p impressive tbf.

Foreigner > REO Speedwagon > Styx > Journey > Kansas > Queen

― vitreous humorist (Ye Mad Puffin)

QUEEN > JOURNEY > FOREIGNER > REO > STYX > KANSAS

Fixed that for you

STYX, REO and KANSAS I would rate about the same level tbh.

I'd definitely listen to Kansas before any of those others

where does Camel fit into this

I don’t think any of those bands are terrible, but placing Queen underneath them is quite the subjective opinion.

And I don’t even like Queen that much.

I have never heard a Camel song in my life. Maybe they are a good answer to this thread, they seemed pretty canonical if you were into prog rock three or four decades ago.

where does Camel fit into this

At first I thought you meant fit in the hierarchy of Queen, Kansas, and a bunch of AOR bands and I was genuinely confused! I love Camel.

I don't think Camel had any charting singles and the highest an album of theirs reached in the US was #118. They did better in Europe. They're probably still in about the same position.

now that I'm looking at their catalogue the band I was thinking of was in fact Kansas. oops!!!

Just chiming in to say that divorced of its obvious overexposure, "We Will Rock You" is a fucking amazing song in every regard

see also like 30 other queen songs

Pom, you've never heard "Dust in the Wind" or "Carry On Wayward Son"?xps

And I always though it was cool that Bill & Ted referenced a Todd Rundgren track :(

don't you cry noo more

maybe disqualified because his heyday was so long ago, but Ricky Nelson def fits the bill of this thread

Answering the original question, the Moody Blues were huge and have basically been written out of history.

Oh yeah there are literally dozens of posts about them upthread.

Looked up the Moody Blues’ US chart placings; surprised to see they had two #1 albums here, shocked and baffled that they had a top 10 album in 1986.

not in my house they're not

"Wildest Dreams" was a big boomer hit, Steve Winwood-big.

Are The Moody Blues any good?

Oh, I remember hearing that on the radio a lot, even seeing the deeply lame video a few times (“Did I ever tell you kids about the ‘60s?”). But I didn’t realize it was a huge enough to push the album into the top 10.

xp

*a huge enough hit

What's really nuts is that Long Distance Voyager was a #1...in 1981.