Acts that sold well but didn't really have a following

Status Quo fans were known as the Quo Army. They also had their own fan chant! I'd say that was a following.

think it's easier to think fondly of Quo if you (as an American) know them as a decent psych-rock one hit wonder and not (as a britisher) as a band with more hits than the beatles across four decades, most of which are both samey and shit. when they used to turn up for totp with another 5-minute medleys my heart would sink.

Like Steven Malkmus, I will defend them up till about 1976. After that forget it.

I only know them for the song they did with Scooter

I saw a tabloid headline some years ago with one Quo saying "I hardly think about the other Quo", who had recently passed away. Not quite as sad as Ray Davies spending most of his set when I saw him slagging off Dave (though can't say I was surprised), but kinda sad.

I'm not a Quo fan but most of their 70s hits were OK and some were great.

Yeah, early 70s Quo albs are great, more varied than their reputation suggests and sometimes surprisingly heavy. Fans of AC/DC or Thin Lizzy would definitely have a good time with recs like Quo from 74. Even now they're touring reasonably sized venues - and seem to be very popular in Germany

https://www.statusquo.co.uk/tour

Supergrass were the favourite band of Nicky Graham (RIP) of Big Brother UK stardom
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXOV2zeN61o

There are so many American radio rock bands like this. I mean, who would say out loud where other people could hear them, "Yeah, I'm a big 3 Doors Down fan"?

― Tahuti Watches L&O:SVU Reruns Without His Ape (unperson), Saturday, February 10, 2024 12:40 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Hang out with normal people instead of music nerds and you'd find plenty who'd say that!

― the most powerful man in cornish politics (Matt #2), Saturday, February 10, 2024 12:46 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Saw someone in a Three Doors Down t-shirt last month, and it's rare that I see anyone wearing a band shirt (other than those that are being endlessly printed and available everywhere, like Def Leppard and Nirvana)

Are there still Sha Na Na super fans other than Andy Daly’s Hot Dog character?

― B. Amato (Boring, Maryland)

probably not, but even when i was a fan i never really knew any of the members except bowzer, whose career has gone full will smith since he started appearing in the "super mario bros" series of games

There are a lot of late 1990s bands (aforementioned Three Doors Down, Third Eye Blind, 311, Matchbox 20) that come to mind, but I'm sure each has a following if not a subculture I'm not aware of.

3EB have a serious fandom, for sure

I knew someone who was a super fan of Bran Van 3000.

this thread doesn't make any sense to me at all. I guarantee every one of these artists has super hardcore fans (PM Dawn seems like an outlier they are basically a one hit wonder to most people, underrated group though)

but like in a world where we evaluate by stuff like TikTok and Twitter buzz and streams, I just checked and Bad Company, who were mentioned in this thread, was touring in the mid 70s, headlining 10,000-15,000ish arenas all over the USA.

3EB have a serious fandom, for sure

― atmospheric river phoenix (morrisp), Monday, February 12, 2024 11:17 AM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

on this board, in fact (me!!!!!)

xpost PM Dawn had three top 10 hits. I mentioned them as a weird case where they obviously had hits (and likely fans) but were disrespected in the Hip Hop community in various ways: KRS One bum rushing them off the stage at their own show, Snoop and the Dogg Pound yelling homophobic slurs at them, the parody of them in Fear of a Black Hat, etc.

There’s that old adage about how every band is someone’s favorite band. I’ve read the book by Jake, the drummer of Semisonic, and he talks about reading comments about his wardrobe etc. by fans on the Semisonic messageboard back in the day. You figure if a band like Semisonic can have a fan board…

(of course, some fandoms are bigger than others)

P.M. Dawn was my favorite act in 8th grade.

I guess it doesn't help that a lot of their stuff available on streaming is actually re-recordings made by people who weren't in the group

No doubt The Charlatans have fans, of course they do, but still I was surprised to see them headlining Reading festival in 1999. The headline acts on the other days were Blur and RHCP, both of which have rabid fanbases.
By comparison, The Charlatans seemed more like competent workhorses - well liked but rarely LOVED with plenty of hits and a lot of critical acclaim but somehow... eh, do they have a legion of followers who know every word and discuss the band's mythos? I don't know, maybe I was born a bit early for them, but I don't feel like they do?

Charlatans have probably been helped along a bit in recent years by Tim's extracurricular activities.

There's gotta be some equation like... whoever has the biggest delta between sales/chart positions when they were popular and currently streaming numbers (or maybe current streaming numbers minus their one big hit)? Something like Sean Ross does with his Lost Hits posts on that radio website.

yeah, this was well before Twitter. They must have just released Us & Us Only (a good album! I like it!), but y'know, just hard to see them up there with Blur and RHCP as a band that a significant number of mainstream rock/pop people would drop their chips for

how non-famous do you have to be. like, vertical horizon? days of the new? do they count?

I'm pretty sure Days of the New have a very strong fanbase.

Seemingly any band that plays guitars can get a bit of a fanbase

not true in my experience

you gotta make the right faces

I thought that was more of a bass thing.

https://gui✧✧✧.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Joe-Bonama✧✧✧@2000x1500-696x✧✧✧.j✧✧

ugh

how about Lou Bega? where my fellow Lounatics at?

Lou Bega's one of those performers where I wouldn't be surprised if he had a huge following in Switzerland or Denmark or somewhere like that.

A little bit of Margrethe in my life, a little bit of Elinor by my side, A little bit of Rigmor is all I need, a little bit of Lærke is what I see

Dude is probably raking it in doing Cameos

Surely the true answer to this is rapper’s mates. Memphis Bleek has two gold albums. Cappadonna’s debut sold 130k in its first week. Obie Trice went gold with his first album, sold 250k on the second etc etc

https://hiphopwired.com/playlist/barbra-streisand-is-a-memphis-bleek-fan-allegedly/

Stuff like Mr Mister, Cutting Crew

Yes they have fans but relatively anonymous studio dudes immediately coming out of the blocks with Top 10 singles and albums isn’t the best route to fan longevity

I'm definitely a Cappadonna fan

Lou Bega's one of those performers where I wouldn't be surprised if he had a huge following in Switzerland or Denmark or somewhere like that.

― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Monday, February 12, 2024 1:05 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Lou Bega is from Germany so probably there

Cappadonna has been vindicated by history, The Pillage is considered an underground classic now

Bleek and Obie are maybe the best examples yet, especially because their sales were largely due to their association with an era-defining all-time popular rapper (Jay and Em)....Young Buck might be another good example...Shyne, etc.

though I see a lot of stuff where rappers who are really popular now can't sell tour dates, I know there was that Lil Baby/Nicki tour that got cancelled

That reminds me of Suzanne Vega writing recently about how her management booked a huge tour after "Luka" was a big hit, and barely anyone showed up to the first show or two... so they canceled the rest.

Fun looking at the Spotify monthly listeners numbers for these.

Looking at that cohort of 90s-10s rappers, we have...
Obie Trice 1.9M
Young Buck 905K
Memphis Bleek 440K
Shyne 272K
Cappadonna 151K

Obie would def be a lot less popular without Dre and Em on his top tracks.
Odd that Shyne and Cappadonna are essentially as Spotify-popular as things like David Sylvian, Marie Osmond and The Blow Monkeys. Bless.

is anybody listening to Freeway these days?

Freeway is a god

Shyne is in the House of Representatives in Belize and I think the head of his party he's probably not sweating it anymore

i have friends who are Maroon 5 and Matchbox 20 fans, though in both cases it's more like "I really like their hit songs/that one album they did" rather than a hardcore following

the one band I have a hard time believing having any serious fans despite having big hits is Smash Mouth

I have a friend who I shit you not is an obsessive fan of Dada the "Dizz Knee Land" song

I feel like it’s more that people are fans of a certain era of radio than a specific group

but he likes their albums and deep cuts and shit and had travelled to see them, crazy he's gotta be the only one

Some others with lowish monthly Spotify numbers—

Missing Persons 188.6 k
Romeo Void 107.6 k
Book of Love 75k
The Call 92 k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0VOJ0Z3vY0

my memory of the 70s includes a bunch of relatives who loved Hot Chocolate, Errol Brown is pretty much the definition of a human trademark

people loved Wet Wet Wet in their big hit years too

also i don't have deep knowledge of her whole career but there's a bunch of P!nk songs I love and i've done "Try" at karaoke way too often

most of this thread is "acts that individual posters have at best tangential knowledge of" tbf

And he sang Imagine at a Tory conference in the 1980s, never forget.

Who? Marti Pellow?

Not long after I moved to Glasgow, someone said to me that 'they're very loyal to their artists up here', and they were right, WWW/MP can still easily fill decent size venues up here even now (that's when Marti isn't doing panto/musical theatre). See also: Fairground Attraction/Eddi Reader, Texas.

Hot Chocolate cop:

Original guitarist Franklyn De Allie (born 1944) later became a police officer, and died in Warwick, Bermuda in 2018.[17]

And xps Errol Brown was the tory.

Any Scottish band that has some success remains a big deal to the Daily Record/Sunday Mail until the end