Bands which are far better than their most famous song allows you to believe... - Page 3

Faith No More - Epic

Renaissance - Northern Lights.

Nice enough pop song but they'd had a few great prog albums under their belt before it.

Simple Minds... the band best remembered for their upbeat one hit wonder on the The Breakfast Club soundtrack, "Don't You Forget About Me", were not always so upbeat. Going back to earlier parts of their discography you'll find albums like Real to Real Cacophony which is a dark post-punk masterpiece.

Same is true for other many other 80s pop bands. Modern English best remembered for their one hit wonder "I Melt With You" popular today in Burger King ads once had a very Joy Division type sound with their first album Mesh & Lace.

Stevie Wonder - I just Called to say I love you
One of the worst songs ever, from one of the best performers ever.

I don't particularly care about the Kings of Leon, but it's a shame that they'll only be remembered for the absolute abomination of a song that is "Sex on Fire"

I don't know... to me, some of these bands sound pretty much exactly like the rest of their catalog. The songs themselves are all pretty good examples of what you find when you dig a little deeper.

Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar On Me" from the Hysteria album sounds pretty much like everything else on that album. I believe the Pyromania album is a bit better sounding album because of the real drums, but nothing on either album or even the album before that make me think that Pour Some Sugar On Me is out of the ordinary really.

De La Soul's "Me, Myself, and I" is a great tune that's not completely unlike their other stuff. Yeah maybe its a bit more pop than their more jazz oriented stuff, but it gives you some impression of what to expect.

The Cardigan's Lovefool, from what I remember, sounds pretty much like how they sound on their early albums.

I think Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall is a very fair example of the post Barrett Floyd sound (which I'm not really a fan of... I prefer the first two albums).

Bohemian Rhapsody is straight ahead Queen
Stairway to Heaven, though not Zepplin's best...isn't really atypical for their sound

Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart... I kind of agree with this, but I really like that song. lol.

The Clash - Rock the Casbah/Should I stay or should I go... I really don't think those are the worse Clash songs, and are really pretty decent examples of the Clash's signature sound.

Stevie Wonder has dozens of hit singles over a 25-30 year period . I Just Called to Say I Love You represents one part of that period very well... He's not exactly misrepresented by it.

Some of the songs and bands listed, I don't think the general public really know that well so its hard to call them poor popular representations of the band...

Band recommendations I totally agree with include Soft Cell's version of Tainted Love and The Flaming Lips' She don't use Jelly. I still flinch when people mention the Flaming Lips. I hated that song. I saw them putting on some live concert on Current TV and the song they were doing wasn't that memorable, but it sure wasn't She Don't Use Jelly. I'll have to check them out sometime. People seem to love em.

Oh... by the way, while I'm griping I might as well point out that Rock of Ages is certainly not Def Lepard's most popular song. According to the Billboard charts it looks like Pour Some Sugar On Me and Love Bites were their most popular songs.

I would agree that "Pour Some Sugar On Me" and "Love Bites" are a bit more popular than "Rock of Ages", but Billboard statistics are not always the greatest indicator. Journey's highest-charting single was "Open Arms", but if you ask the average person to name the first Journey song that comes to mind, the answer will likely be "Don't Stop Believin'".

Since I've been listening to them all day, I'm gonna say Air. Their most famous song is probably "Sexy Boy", and IMO, they've gotten so much better over time.

fixed

Maybe so... still it seems like an odd choice. I used to love Def Leppard back in the late 80s, my brother and I literally wore our tapes out playing them so much, and I really liked the song Rock of Ages, but Hysteria was a far far more popular album. At least it was on the East coast, and again, regardless of your thoughts about the Billboard charts, they agree. Rock of Ages was a top 40 single for Pyromania, but the first song I think of when I think of that album is Photograph, which again, appears to have charted at #1 while Rock of Ages went to #16.

I suppose its not a big deal, but just sort of interesting. Maybe its a regional thing... :shrug:

oh come on! that song rocks!

yeah, sexy boy is really creepy

I love Fleetwood Mac's Tusk, but then I listened to Rumours expecting it to be even better because the reviews all say it's their best album. But wow, it didn't have the same feeling at all. Overplayed cheezy rock songs. Not that bad, but Tusk goes much deeper, IMO

"Your Body is a Wonderland" and anything else that gets regular airply by:

John Mayer.

I completely ignored him until I saw him on some awards show a while back, and on Austin City Limits just last weekend - That guy can play guitar!

I don't necessarily want to call myself a fan of John Mayer, but I don't hate that much of his music. Honestly, I really loved 'Continuum' and 'Try' but I wouldn't admit that to my drinking buddies.

That said, even though I do enjoy "swimming in a deep sea of blankets" and exploring "wonderland", that song is annoying and not representative of his creativity and chops.