MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
So, I was thinking about songs I like and what stays in the popular consciousness, gets heralded as great (see the recent "greatest single of all time" thread) and which ones that seemed great at the time don't seem to get the same attention nowadays.
There's something about artists that maintain their status and those that fade - you'll hear more early 80s U2 or Queen on the radio than, say, Adam Ant or Simple Minds, not necessarily because they're intrinsically better songs but, I contend, because the artists are still "up there" decades later.
So, and hopefully avoiding the temptation to post wilfully obscure stuff that most of us had never heard of when they were current, what great songs were hits "back in the day" but don't get the notice or credit they should years later?
Here's mine - one of my favourites and a song I honestly think is up there with the greatest of pop songs written in any era, but one that rarely if ever appears in the "greatest" lists. As a bonus there's two bands that can claim it as their 'original' (as co-written by members of both bands, who then each recorded it) so here are both:
Most things that Terry Hall got involved with are great but often forgotten.
Anything by Creedence
Ten - Pearl Jam
Insane in the Brain - cypress hill
Mr Wendall - Arrested Development
Mr Wendall - Arrested Development
Had this on a compilation back in the day. Great song. Not heard it for years. Thank you!
Dunno, I've forgotten.
Midlife Crisis by Faith No More.
Might just be me but you don't seem to hear much Fatboy slim & The chemical brothers from late 90's/early 2000's? Too many good ones to list like this one for example.
Nice idea for a thread. Fun Boy Three stuff has aged really well IMO.
Also on a 1980s tip...
There was a crap cover of this particular song, that gets played frequently on the radio, while the vastly superior original gets ignored.
This is the original:
The (shudders) Bay City Rollers had a significant hit with this particular song, while the much better original only ever got played on Radio Luxembourg, as far as I know; this is the original and better song:
One of those artists that was big the US, but didn't cross the pond so well, besides the odd track like Hazard.
Tricky thread for me to objectively post in, because until ~2000, I had to have music on in the background while at home. But since then, I rarely have the radio on at home, I think partly because I got into sim racing online. So in recent years, the only radio I hear is the one at work for ~two hours each morning.
Count Zero, you seem to have mistaken this for the "cover versions where the original was better" thread.
And the Mondays' Step On was better anyway.
😛
Midlife Crisis by Faith No More.
IIRC that one was quite a sizeable hit, but nowadays if you hear anything by them you can guarantee that if it isn't Epic it's gonna be Easy (like Sunday Morning).
A song by a band who are all but forgotten in their entirety these days, but Wikipedia tells me that The Wildhearts actually managed thirteen top 40 singles. They also managed a remarkably large number of appearances on Top of The Pops, allegedly due in part to the producer of the show being a fan.
Despite getting to No. 16 in the charts, I wonder how many non-Wildhearts fans remember this beauty?
A few kind of similar ones that might bring memories flooding back.
Was reading a thing (in the Guardian I think) this morning about Terence Trent D'Arby, although he no longer uses that name.
Quite a sad story really, never came close to replicating the massive success of hit first album, and he didn't take it well. He's seemingly convinced that industry conspired to actively sink his career to protect more established 'rivals' (Prince, Michael Jackson etc. - he was never short on self-confidence back in his heyday) and can't conceive that maybe his ambition exceeded his talent on his subsequent releases.
For me though, his finest moment hit-single wise was the equally "when did you last hear this one the radio?"..
thread/
I've been drinking.
[i]Quite a sad story really, never came close to replicating the massive success of hit first album[/i]
That's cos he was shit. And after the hype, mostly because of how pretty he was, after the appearance on The Tube, people lost interest. Sounds so badly dated. Like most of this thread really.
Mr Wendall - Arrested Development
Great tune. Though not, in my opinion, their best:
heard this on the radio the other day. Always overlooked in favour of the more obvious
One I'd completely forgotten until I saw it again a while ago on the BBC4 TOTP reruns, got to No. 21 and she / they never really troubled the charts again.
This is one of those times my tastes aren't exactly alighed with the STW collective... I think most of the above are terrible songs, best forgotten ha ha.
Hocus Pocus is one of the best songs ever. Delightfully mental and so awesome!!
P-Jay -
This is one of those times my tastes aren't exactly alighed with the STW collective... I think most of the above are terrible songs, best forgotten ha ha
Except for Hale & Pace, of course.
Didn't that Hale & Pace one have quite a lot of A-list British rockers involved - the cheesier half of Queen, Tony Iommi from Sabbath, Mike Moran all names that ring a bell? Cozy Powell possibly on drums?
EDIT: H&P's wikipedia page tells me Dave Gilmour's on it as well!
Daft title, horribly over played at the time and now mostly featured in one hit wonder lists but a beautifully understated dark/weird song:
My vote would be Suzanne Vega. Okay, it's the 90's DNA version not the original acapella, but hey.
You’re not wrong there. Saw her a couple of weeks ago, doing her first two albums right through, one after the other, including Tom’s Diner, of course, then she did the DNA version as one of the encores.
Great evening and she’s delightful live.
chakaping - Member
Count Zero, you seem to have mistaken this for the "cover versions where the original was better" thread.And the Mondays' Step On was better anyway.
No, I haven’t, and no, it isn’t, it’s trite and horribly dated. And was never good in the first place.
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Is it too late to point out that I didn't post that Hale & Pace song as a serious entry into the underrated songs thread and that I've never actually heard it ?
Always liked this at the time and can't remember the last time I heard it in the radio.
Also this was a favourite on the school bus mix tape... This is the only copy I can find in YouTube that plays ...
The best punk/NW song you may have (never) heard:
And this. The outro makes the hairs stand up on my neck. Stone Roses and Happy Mondays got all the fame but for me about that time for some reason it was Campag Velocet hit me in the yarbles. Also To Lose La Trek and Harsh Sharks. And We Are The Trumping Men. Too many great songs hardly if ever heard nowadays.
I often forget the Comsat angels
Couple from BSP
First one has the the most fitting title for this (ace, btw) thread
I like threads like this , however why can't posters just type the song title alongside the youtube link? For someone like me on a limited data connection on a slow old device it is pretty frustrating. To click on each and every link just to see what it is would take ages! Also much harder to contribute as I can't see what has gone before.
Fwiw -
Elvis Costello, 'What's so funny about peace love and understanding?'
The Corgis ' Everybody's got to learn sometime'
This is a very good point, I'm guilty myself on occasion but its damn annoying on a phone.
Indeed; apologies, [b]eviljoe[/b]. One of mine was the Nick Lowe version of “What’s so funny”. Apparently he received a huge & unexpected royalty checque due to the song’s inclusion (albeit sung by another) on high-selling “The Bodyguard” soundtrack.
Not sure Paul Hardcastle’s 19 is under rated as it’s definitely gimmicky and has dated but I’ve not heard it played on the radio for years so I think it fits into the forgotten aspect of the thread. At the time of its release it was massive. It was UK number one for a month, topped the singles charts in a dozen other countries and won an Ivor Novello award for best single of 1985.
CountZero - Member
My vote would be Suzanne Vega. Okay, it's the 90's DNA version not the original acapella, but hey.You’re not wrong there. Saw her a couple of weeks ago, doing her first two albums right through, one after the other, including Tom’s Diner, of course, then she did the DNA version as one of the encores.
Great evening and she’s delightful live.
Sure it wasn't her 2nd (Solitude Standing) and 4th (99.9F°) albums you heard live? That's what I saw her perform a couple of weeks ago, anyway. 🙂
Quite a lot of the suggestions here would hardly count as underrated, I reckon. Pearl Jam's Ten (an album rather than a song) was a massive hit and they're still a massive and generally we regarded stadium filling band. Midlife Crisis is one of Faith No More's best songs from their best album and they're pretty successful and a very influential band. Suzanne Vega's Luka and Tom's Diner are big hits from another critically acclaimed artist.
I'm sure a lot of the other stuff also fails the underrated test. Whether a particular person has forgotten a song or not is obviously a far more objective judgement though.
Hocus Pocus is a barmy masterpiece!
Yeah, sorry, Solitude Standing and 99.9F°, got a lot going on at the moment and couldn’t remember all the exact details.
Bloody good gig, as was her set at IoW a couple of years or so ago, basically a greatest hits set.
Just read an article on bbc about Belinda Carlisle and remembered this single,
can't recall the last time I heard it on the radio. Apparently she is about to release her first album in over a decade, now free of the big coke habit she had.
Just had a thread about True Faith by New Order. I hated this sound back in 1992 due to neighbour, but not any more.
"Your Woman" by White Town
"Olympian" by Gene
Take me right back to being 15.