TOTO "africa" classic or dud

lmao everyone jumped on that at once

lmao everyone jumped on that at once

Okay so I clearly do not know what I am talking about so feel free to ignore me. a previous flippant and reductive summary is here:

wtf why are there nearly 300 new answers on this thread - tldr please tell me - TIA

― Benson and the Jets (ENBB), Friday, September 22, 2017 3:58 PM (ten months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I wondered the same but I saw sund4r posting and he never shuts up about toto..

― starving street dogs of punk rock (Odysseus), Friday, September 22, 2017 4:00 PM (ten months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

IIRC, a dood was like "wtf, Africa has always been popular, and it's popular because it's fucking great" and other doodz were like "yabbut it was brought to a new level of prominence due to its presence in the memeosphere" and other doodz were like "what does it mean to be a meme anyways" and other doodz were like "can't it be both a great song and one that was rescued from relative obscurity by a video game" and other doodz were like "does that diminishes its greatness? nope."

At the same time somebody was all like, "why are all these rescued tunes so dude-o-centric?" And then ppl were all like, "dude, are there songs by female artists that are this corny anyways?" And there was discussion of that. Then some other dude was all like, "dude, when are we going to start talking about the awesomeness of the 1982 song 'Africa' by the band Toto again?"

― stop the mandolinsanity (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, September 22, 2017 4:11 PM (ten months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And by Overkil (gah, sorry) I meant the Colin Hay appearance on Scrubs where he plays the Men at Work song "Overkill" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzYjqQezxoQ

Thx for all this... I forgot about the role played by "GFA" in popularizing older songs in the 2000s. Often I'll check out comments on a song's YouTube page, and it's full of "(XXX) brought me here!" (XXX being a new game, or other stuff I'm not even aware of now).

I see "Africa" has 373mm+ streams on Spotify, which seems pretty hot. "Don't Stop Believin'" has 466mm+. Clicking around on some other bands in the "Fans Also Like..." sidebar (i.e., comparable '80s acts), I don't see many other top tracks that come close to these two.

Like, for a comparison - "Sister Christian" has a paltry 20mm+, and that song got another era's equivalent of a (pre-social media) meme-ifying boost, via its appearance in "Boogie Nights."

...and in "Rock of Ages."

speaking only personally, I was a kid when it was popular and I was hella into songs w/ dreamy sounding synths, and then I went without hearing it for years (lol at pre-streaming/dling days) so the lack of exposure to it inflated it in my mind.

Wow - even artists like Aerosmith and Bruce Springsteen don't have tracks that hit 373mm+ plays

xp Those synths and the percussion in the intro sound a lot like Peter Gabriel songs that came a bit later. I'll assume this has been noted...

I swear, and I've said this before, the "Don't Stop Believin'" revival started heating up well before the Sopranos finale. I never heard it on the radio as a kid, then I started hearing it more and more during my undergrad years, which ended in 2005. By the time I was living in the Fenway area in Boston a year after that, I got my first case of "DSB" fatigue when a whole subway car started singing it after a Sox game. Again, this was 2006. Sopranos finale was June of 2007.

"sister christian" is like "desperado" but even worse

I think Sister Xian is my favorite of these 3 songs... it's not really my genre, tho.

to any defenders itt: if you are a college radio DJ on the air today, all that you prove by playing this song is:

1. you have active contempt for your audience, most of whom hate this song

2. you have zero creativity or imagination as a DJ

3. you can't even be bothered to look up what "deep cut" means

if I could travel back in time to murder any one band, Toto would be it. suck it, poptimists.

iow DUD

I had literally never heard Don't Stop Believin' before the Sopranos finale

I don't think it was a hit at all in Europe first time around

deservedly so!

I literally don’t understand the fascination with this song

it's "ironic"

thewufs is right though

The song has been a rallying cry for a multitude of sports teams, first by the Chicago White Sox in their successful run to the 2005 World Series, when catcher A. J. Pierzynski and teammates heard the song being sung in a bar in Baltimore. The White Sox invited former Journey lead singer Steve Perry to the team's celebration rally, where he sang the song along with several members of the team.

going back to whiney's tweet, i think the south park reference was a reflexive thing commenting on the resurgent popularity of africa."we've grown fond of this song cause we remember it and it reminds us of a simpler time," etc.

Dear Millennial Meme Influencers -
Please do "Eye In The Sky" next.

Aw, don't ruin that one for me.

don't think sorry's easily said

Sopranos finale was June of 2007.

Scrubs did an entire episode ("My Journey") built around "Don't Stop Believin'" in 2003. It's a song I always heard on CR radio, tbh, though.

"Africa" reference in Community was 2011 btw.

wonder if in 25 years there's gonna be a revival of "Gangnam Style"

Oh, Neanderthal pointed that out last year. xp

Sleeve lmao

I swear, and I've said this before, the "Don't Stop Believin'" revival started heating up well before the Sopranos finale. I never heard it on the radio as a kid, then I started hearing it more and more during my undergrad years, which ended in 2005. By the time I was living in the Fenway area in Boston a year after that, I got my first case of "DSB" fatigue when a whole subway car started singing it after a Sox game. Again, this was 2006. Sopranos finale was June of 2007.

― It's like an Christian pop (thewufs), Wednesday, July 25, 2018 8:29 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i was living in boston at this time as well, i'm about your age, and this is basically otm

Unlike "Don't Stop Believin'," "Africa" was a song I heard plenty as a kid - the big Journey hits on A/C stations were "Open Arms," "Who's Crying Now," and "Faithfully," but "Africa" and "Rosanna" appeared pretty frequently alongside the other soft rock hits on the stations my mom used to play on car rides in the late 80s/early 90s. And I remember I liked it enough that I taped it off the radio sometime between 1991 and 1993. I rediscovered it like a decade later and I still liked it, and it's been a frequent comfort-listen ever since. Has there been a big uptick in radio play for "Africa" like there was for "Don't Stop Believin'" in the early to mid aughts? Because that song wore the fuck out on me, and the same thing hasn't happened for me with "Africa" yet.

I don't think it was one big meme with Africa, just a lot of small ones until it sort of snowballed?

I first came across Don't Stop Believin' in a Family Guy episode from 2005 where there's a big piece built around it, but then again it sounded instantly familiar so either 1) I had heard it somewhere before 2) those are magic chords or 3) collective unconscious

"DSB" was a pretty big Classic Rock Staple in the late '90s.

I don't think anyone likes Toto "ironically" in 2018.

if I could travel back in time to murder any one band, Toto would be it. suck it, poptimists.

The implications of your murder would be far reaching indeed - no Thriller as we know it, for one!

That could be a good thing to you too afaik, of course. It's just Toto are a really fun band to play this sci-fi game with because the entire Pop scene of the era would be different in lots of small ways, in a form that you can't say of many other bands.

sleeve otm

there are entire genres of music that seem to be huge in america that are known in the civilised world through ironic shout outs in american tv/sitcoms

most of them are bad, very bad.

I don’t recall being specifically aware of “DSB” in the ‘90s )or it having any special place in “the culture”).

I do remember being aware of the Toto song, but not sure how. Was a snippet of it maybe played & identified in a TV ad for one of those mail-order compilation albums?

I remember being in a hipster diner in Philly after closing time in like 2001 and when DSB came on the radio everyone started singing along and playing air guitar--so it had some kind of ironicred pre-Sopranos

hey did you guys know there’s not even really a “south Detroit”

there was a rollerskating scene in Monster (w Christina Ricci & Charlize Theron as Aileen Wuornos) in 2003 that used DSB that recontextualized it for me. Before that it was just a corny Journey song but it seemed a little more poignant after that. I didn't see the Sopranos finale until much later, but that didn't happen until 2007.

Africa remains a mystery but I have always liked it, ever since it came out and i was a dumb little kid. It's got a big chorus & a cool beat. What more do you want.

I was a huge DSB fan as a kid so it never really left my consciousness

Dave Q was citing it as a quintessential AOR song in 2002: Top 10 AOR Songs

I do remember being aware of the Toto song, but not sure how. Was a snippet of it maybe played & identified in a TV ad for one of those mail-order compilation albums?

DSB has always been a huge song, its popularity with Golden Age Of TV viewers is what’s new. America was there before Columbus discovered it. Etc.

omar otm

It was never unfamiliar to me but tbf I don't remember it being THIS huge before the millennial revival: it has more than twice as many Spotify plays as "More Than a Feeling" or "Dream On", over 10 times as many as The Cars' "Just What I Needed". I would have pegged it as less big than at least the first two of those songs in the 90s. I probably heard "Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin'" nearly as often.

i'm sure i heard it before this, but the first time i ever heard the song knowing it was "africa" by toto was in an episode of Chuck

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

The implications of your murder would be far reaching indeed - no Thriller as we know it, for one!

nor any silk degrees which would be a huge absence for me personally

imo you can't fuck with the band that played "lowdown"

well technically, we still could've had the even numbered thriller tracks, plus wanna be startin' somethin'