Countdown 100: Bands that got megahyped that failed spectacularly...

From Fluffy's Wikipedia page: "The band was regularly featured in several magazines; Kerrang, Q, Select, Melody Maker[1] and NME. They also appeared on several UK television shows, including Top of the Pops, The Big Breakfast and Hotel Babylon."

Chart positions:

"Husband" (1996) Parkway - UK #58
"Nothing" (1996) The Enclave - UK #52

Ouch.

Kenickie had all that too but I think they did get a few top 40 singles.

That Bingo track isn't half bad.

Yeah, I loved that Catch song at the time. Normally I hate 'so bad it's good', but you just had to admire the way they managed to encapsulate so much that is reprehensible in a career that only lasted one song.

I owned and listened to CDs by Stabbing Westward, Filter, Gravity Kills, and Goldfinger, though it was obvious at the time that Goldfinger kind of sucked. There were a bunch of hypey punk revival bands like Millencolin that came and went -- who would have thought that the Blink-182 of "M&Ms" would be the one to hit it big. Portions of 1994-1995 were pretty ugly looking back on it.

Carly Hennessy

― kornrulez6969, Thursday, September 23, 2010 3:33 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

was waiting for this one. she was a huuuuuuuuuge bust before appearing on Idol.

Coal Chamber

I was thinking anything-post-Zep-involving-Jimmy-Page, but it seemed like the first Firm album did well.

The Egg!
And that mid-90s band with the astronauts on the cover!

can i just give a shout out to nerf herder

from an aussie perspective: Mandy Kane. upwards of $70K on an album that sold pathetically (i picked it up for $5 in the sale bin on its WEEK OF RELEASE)

los lobos are totally not failures by any stretch

if you can still play carnegie hall, you're really not a spectacular failure

Deaf School? You are mad. If by 'hyped' you mean that anybody outside of the UK 76-79 ever heard of them, you are incorrect. If by 'failed spectacularly' you mean they didn't make three endlessly enjoyable albums that I still listen to frequently, then you are delusional and incorrect. If you mean they never got the acclaim and popularity they deserved, you are quite right.

Dear Deaf School, I love you for all eternity. RIP Eric Shark.

What a way to end it all.

Frickin' Lone Justice.

Some ILX talk on this thread about them a while back. Great post by Alfred following up on it.

Wow -- thanks! It's amazing how much The Industry had invested in them.

If you mean they never got the acclaim ...

... is the point of this thread.

7. Northern State
6. Barbara Manning

Barbara Manning got megahyped and failed spectacularly?

i know that they had a vague hit and all, but jesus the level of hype + the lack of return of luscious jackson as the beastie boys but oh wait THEY LADIES fits for my own definiton

5 : regular fries

a lot of money. a lot of hype.
some great records (imho of course).
total lack of sales.

cornelius hope, the bands spokesperson a few years back :

"alas, such chaos has meant that labels are even more straight-laced now in the wake of the Fries legendary million pound debts…"

4. Blue Mercedes

^ wasn't their album called Rich and Famous or something?

3. Bif Naked

2. The Parkinsons (jesus fucking christ)

From Fluffy's Wikipedia page: "The band was regularly featured in several magazines; Kerrang, Q, Select, Melody Maker[1] and NME. They also appeared on several UK television shows, including Top of the Pops, The Big Breakfast and Hotel Babylon."

Chart positions:

"Husband" (1996) Parkway - UK #58
"Nothing" (1996) The Enclave - UK #52

Ouch.

I don't recall Fluffy's hype being particularly memorable or mega, they just seemed like another London scenester band who got coverage because they socialised w/ppl from MM and NME, I dunno.

I have "Husband" and another one of their singles (checks that shitipedia page) "Hypersonic", I think they were 50p each. Classics, both of them, "Husband" is fierce!

Spacehog? A no.1 out of the gates, of course, but I think they must have got turned into glue shortly afterwards.

And that mid-90s band with the astronauts on the cover!
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8d/Smartsleeper.jpg
Sleeper

Or perhaps http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e6/Failurefantasticplanet.jpg

Sleeper? Failed?

Hmpf.

16 Sleeper Inbetweener Single Jan 1995
5 Sleeper Smart Album Feb 1995
33 Sleeper Vegas Single Apr 1995
14 Sleeper What Do I Do Now Single Oct 1995
10 Sleeper Sale Of The Century Single May 1996
5 Sleeper The It Girl Album May 1996
10 Sleeper Nice Guy Eddie Single Jul 1996
17 Sleeper Statuesque Single Oct 1996
28 Sleeper She's A Good Girl Single Oct 1997
7 Sleeper Pleased To Meet You Album Oct 1997
39 Sleeper Romeo Me Single Dec 1997

They didn't fail and they weren't hyped much either, other bands at the time were far more hyped

Right, the final place should go to a band/artist that's being megahyped RIGHT NOW that are doomed to fail.

Drumroll keith!

(that's not the name of a band/artist btw)

2. The Parkinsons (jesus fucking christ)

Totally forgot all about them - saw them supporting someone (Freeheat maybe) at King Tut's and they were fucking appalling. Dude tried to climb up on the speaker stack with his guitar but the ceiling was so low he couldn't really fit so he had to leave his guitar then squeeze into the wee gap then get someone to pass it up to him - kinda lost the moment you know? First and only time I ever saw a literal embarrassing climbdown.

Symposium probably fit in here too.

the silence is deafening (i struggled to think of any current it name hype games .. )

which i guess leads to the question - are labels bank rolling full scale hype programs these days ?

Or possibly hype works better than it used to

Thesedays, it seems the hype machine spends money on what's already got some sort of posfeedback.

OK, I got one good enough for the current situ:

1. Sandi Thom.

She was born too late to a world that doesn't care

oh hang on .. who is that person who did all those viral videos that people believed were X-tina ?

as from the evidence so far, the whole thing seems to have totally failed.

There was an act around 1990 who got hyped to the extreme by his own label. Sony Music had seemingly decided they wanted to turn Halo James into a megastar. It ended up in one minor-to-medium-sized hit in "Could Have Told You So" and then nothing else ever.

As for bands that got mega-hyped by critics but never had any commercial success to speak of, I guess you could namecheck almost the entire Paisley Underground scene of the mid-to-late 80s.

Well, it's like any "scene", the bands that emerged and succeeded tend to be forgotten as "that's where they came from"...

I remember a fair amount of 'the next Smiths??' style hyping going on in the NME, some bands I recall being on the receiving end were people like Easterhouse, Gene, The Railway Children & James.

Oh and The Primitives, The Motorcycle Boy. All it took was for Moz to wear one of your t-shirts or praise you in an interview.

97. Freur AKA "Elephant with a stick of rhubarb" AKA "that dumb squiggle logo band"

I had a couple of this lot's singles as well, "Doot-doot" (which was pretty bad, but was a nice picture disc) and "Matters of the Heart", which was a great 12" single, the b-side was this weird techno-metal thing that ~I liked a lot, and there were a couple of weird little instrumentals as well, one of them being a brief blast of bleak, hawkwindish noise. I wish I still had it. In the long-term, maybe it worked for them, Underworld did pretty well I think?

Swansway and Hayzee Fantayzee come to mind - they were both unbiquitous in the music press for a while, HF had I think one minor hit, Swansway not even that that I remember.

xp bourgie bourgie I remember getting abit on next-smiths hype in MM, but not megahype really.

Thought of Swansway, and also of Scarlet Fantastic, who they became

Cranes got a fair amount of hype in MM I recall, 'this summer's coolest band' along with odd insinuations of child-abuse and Alison & Jim's odd-childhood (forget details)

I remember a fair amount of 'the next Smiths??' style hyping going on in the NME, some bands I recall being on the receiving end were people like Easterhouse, Gene, The Railway Children & James.

Also there was Bradford and Raymonde

Were Love & Money successful?

aw man don't lump the poor Primitives in with this lot :(

I liked the Motorcycle Boy too but they're the perfect fit for this thread.