How did they become so popular in America when the likes of Blur, Pulp and Manic Street Preachers are unheard of out there? All great bands that have iconic status in the UK, but completely obscure in the US compared to Radiohead.
How did Radiohead succeed while they all failed?
they make good music
>Blur
way too british
>Pulp
way too british
>Manic Street Preachers
way too british
Someone was djing at a party I went to the other day and when they put on Creep made sure to mention that "this band is a one-hit wonder." Not even particularly being a fan of Radiohead I was confounded by that statement. Technically that'd put them right with Blur and Song 2.
>Blur
Because blur is trash and way to brity
>Pulp
British
>Manic Street Preachers
Dadrock
But don't Americans love things that are "too British"? Didn't harm The Beatles. Also look at how much they love shows like Downton Abbey.
Oh, and by the way
>Manics
>Dad rock
Fuck you.
It's just lazy snobbery.
Now I fucking regret spamming this board with Everything Must Go. No, Manics are not dadrock (and really, if you're ever using that term unironically, I don't know what to say to you)
>Blur
>unheard of
manics have always been on the cusp of making it massive but they have just been a run of the mill big-ish dad rock band tbhwyf
shit like Blur and Oasis just didn't culturally translate whatsoever. The Beatles were way less British, they idolized Chuck Berry and Elvis.
blur were way too inconsistent
for the one good track they made they made 4 god awful ones
Their new music is dadrock. My dad literally pulled it up on his breaking benjerman spotify playlist
I don't get what's wrong with that even if that is the case. My mate listens to Radiohead and he has a son. Does that make Radiohead inherently "dadrock"?
yeah stuff like ok computer and the bends is 100% dad rock
Except Oasis were huge in America in 1996
Alot of Americans just know Radiohead for Creep.
The Beatles aren't too British. The Kinks are too British, and no one in America cares about them as a result.
Er, no, Oasis are a total one hit wonder over there. The kind of honesty they presented themselves with was endearing in the UK but just made them look retarded to American audiences.
americans like certain parts of british culture
they don't like pulp because they are from sheffield
Alright, but is there something wrong on a fundamental level with things being dadrock? Do you use it as a derogatory term or a simple adjective to describe a type of melodic, guitar based music?
Maybe now, but back in the day, Wonderwall, Champagne Supernova, etc. were all huge and Oasis were playing arenas in the US.
They fucked it all up by acting like assholes so Americans got sick of them, but for about a year, they were big.
history lesson:
>creep is a meme song for teenagers
>shortly after that ok computer gained meme status
>it was the perfect music for normies who think that they're not normies, hence popularity
whereas:
>pulp were a brit niche band that gained mass popularity in the UK for a short time in the middle of britpop, with two similar very british singles that americans would not understand
>blur were tongue in cheek "oi corblimey guvnor" singing about girls and boys, then listened to a pavement record, went "american" and "oohoo" and failed horribly
>MSP are welsh and sound like shit, though motorcycle emptiness was a minor hit I think. nothing was heard of them after that
music that dads listen to
the clue is in the name
No. Wonderwall was their only single to hit any Billboard chart in America and they never played anything bigger than clubs there.
Their 1996 tour was a complete disaster and their single biggest exposure at the MTV Awards made them look like a bunch of amateurs. Champagne Supernova came out at the right time to be a minor success, but that band is basically Wonderwall over there. Nothing more.
OH so it's "my dad listens to it so it's shit xd"
Forgot this board is for edgy teens
It never fails to amaze me how many fans Radiohead has. Like can please someone tell me realistically what percentage of the millions of people who follow Radiohead on Facebook, Twitter, etc., actually like them for something other than Creep?
all their tours are insanely huge, they're very very popular
billboard.com
billboard.com
Wrong. And the fact is, they did have enough success to be all over the radio and MTV and play arenas by mid 1996, but they fucked it up towards the end with Liam refusing to come to America, the MTV Unplugged debacle, the VMAs debacle, all the tabloid shit, and ending the US tour early.
wow
exactly, literally only one song in the Top 40
teens are one of the biggest consumers of dad rock though
you usually grow out of it in your 20s and start looking for new music
some poor sods are stuck forever listening to led zeppelin though imagine that
Because they only released Wonderwall and Don't Look Back in Anger as physical singles in America. Everything else was ineligible to chart on the Hot 100, but still ended up in the in the Top 40 of radio airplay
Creep
also Blur are pretty well known in the US
>being Montie
what do you like on your pizza bro?
think be here now reached 2 in the sharts as well, but at that time they long had stopped giving a fuck
it's not like america was the place to be for music in the mid nineties after all, wonderwall
>MSP sound like shit
Kill yourself
they are solid musicians but their songs don't really do much to impress do they
they release a good song every 5-6 years so it's not the worst I guess
Suuuuuuuure, you just keep telling yourself that
does nicky wire still put make-up on these days?
Honestly I think James Dean Bradfield is one of the most consistently alright songwriters from the 90s. He has an enormous knack for melodies.
radiohead has the benefit of being one of the most popular alt rock bands that still conform to conventional pop song format. so any normie can listen to songs like let down or creep and enjoy them and not delve deeper into amnesiac or TKOL.
Wonderwall was barely even a REAL hit in the US, nobody ever liked them or knew who they were.
Even in England, you just know they're literally three hit wonders lmao.
Confirmed for only listening to Girls and Boys and Song 2
this. The "oasis was huge back in the day" meme needs to die.
they never had more than one hit.
they never played a concert to 250,000 people.
they were never front page news.
no I also know beatlebomp (good tune) and coffee and television (great tune)
>Even in England, you just know they're literally three hit wonders lmao.
unironically the biggest band ever in the UK, especially in the 90's.
though this is also true
>though this is also true
not it's not
t. amerifat who wasn't even alive back during oasis' heyday
Radiohead's music isn't anglocentric and a lot of the UK press about OK Computer talked about how they were the antithesis to Britpop. Plus The Bends and Pablo Honey drew a lot more influence from Sonic Youth, Pixies, etc. compared to their peers who drew primarily from The Smiths and The Stone Roses.
man, I remember 1997 never forgetti, they played an oasis song every hour on mtv for months on end. great times.
The main big stadium in Philadelphia currently known as the Wells Fargo Center opened in 1996 and Oasis were the first band to play there.
>I hope they play creep
Yeah bullshit. Oasis never played stadiums in america. You can't play stadiums from having one hit song.
>You can't play stadiums from having one hit song.
Sure, but Oasis had multiple. Like the other guy said, even in America, for most of '96 and into '97 they were all over the radio and MTV a lot. And if you listened to both the "alternative" and "mainstream" rock stations, Oasis were pretty much mainstays from late 94 through the rest of the decade (with Go Let it Out being their last big hit in 2000).
Not to mention they were in the music mags ALL THE FUCKING TIME.
Most people in America trash on Radiohead
The answer is that we actually like good music
You know the Blur/Oasis feud has been over for like a many years, you can like both now, heck bands feuds shouldn't even prevent you from enjoying bands, or cause you to hate them.
Also you just use dad rock as synonym for something you don't like.
inberdesting
Or the Rolling Stones. They were 100% totally rooted in American music--blues, jazz, country, Chuck Berry, even disco and funk on some of their 70s albums. They also moved to NYC in the 70s.
It seemed that the amount of bands with trans-Atlantic popularity diminished after the 70s. Whether that's because the British groups who came up after the Led Zeppelin era didn't appeal to Americans or not, I don't know.
Consider a group like Special Beat Service. There's no way a group that specialized in anti-Thatcher butthurt (at least on the first two albums) could connect with Americans.
Good example would be Black Sabbath contemporaries Status Quo. These guys were a non-factor in the US and only one of their albums even charted here at all.
Bush did, allegedly, "break" America around that time.
They were fucking horrible though.
They were grunge tho
I've always thought about how Iron Maiden here are mostly associated with the singles from TNOTB when they were Led Zeppelin huge in Europe and Latin America.
Coldplay and U2 properly crossed over I suppose.
U2 were popular here, but they were 10x bigger in Europe.
>breaking benjamin Spotify playlist
Kek
I heard woo hoo on the radio just today.
Sometimes it's a mystery. Kiss were treated as a bad joke in the UK when there was nothing too "American" about their music, also grunge didn't amount to much over there and in fact led to Britpop starting as a counter-reaction.
Depends. If the band relies too much on sociopolitical commentary, as the Kinks generally did, it wouldn't go over with Americans.
Destroyer went to #22 on the UK charts, otherwise none of their albums charted there before the 80s.
Really? I thought they were huge in America too, since the 80's pretty much.
I think Gene Simmons is more famous over here for that show Rock School
All Kiss albums from COTN through Revenge charted in the top 20 except Hot in the Shade. It never made sense to me why Brits loved unmasked-era Kiss, but not the classic era.
When I saw radiohead at lollapalooza this summer there was a 30+ year old chick next to me that screamed "Play Everyone Can Play Guitar!" loud as fuck after every song. It was one of the cringiest things I've ever seen
Easily explained--70s Kiss were laughed out of the UK because nobody here wanted to listen to blokes in makeup singing about shagging birds when we had unions on strike and rubbish piling up in the streets.
It's not that they were too American for us, it's that party rock was not the mood we were in circa 1976.
>"Play Everyone Can Play Guitar!"
>Everyone
Top kek, the retard didn't even get the song name right. Did Thom seem annoyed by her?
The simple answer is all of those bands are extremely British so they didn't translate well to non-British audiences. Radiohead's music has never been British centric, practically anyone can identify with their music.
>they make good music
You can only know something is good AFTER you listen to it.
To 250000 guys think a band X is good, you need at least 25000 that know this band exist.
Quality dont help someone to become famous.
People discover the band and then after it think "hey this band I am listening is good"
This
What the fuck have U2 even done besides that Vertigo song?
Britpop was made for a British audience playing with British sensibilities. It didn;'t translate to the US because people in the US aren't British.
Radiohead don't make music about being British. They're also really good and they broke out because of a catchy tune on their first album.
>U2
>British
Yeah, no.
>it was the perfect music for normies who think that they're not normies, hence popularity
hah, that's the most fitting description of radiohead i've ever read
with ok computer they swept up all the disaffected suburban malaise kids who were left in the wild in the wake of kurt cobain's suicide and alt rock's subsequent decline and breakdown, only these people were going to college now. imagine all the thousands of lethargic dorm room "karma police" performances in the year after its release, from people who had been strumming reel big fish, mighty bosstones and hootie and the blowfish only six months earlier!
in a genius move the album firmly positions itself both in camps eclectic and intellectual, which adds a huge credibility boost. for a while it was probably the coolest cd in the mainstream world. the obligatory tour documentary not so much
is this the last (and first?) major-label rock record to deal with fear and doubt in the face of impending globalization? that's the most interesting aspect of it, in contrast with the relentless onslaught of rootlessness, free movement and border abolition you get from today's media
He probably was wearing an ear monitor and couldn't hear her.
Don't forget also that Smashing Pumpkins hit their zenith in the aftermath of Cobain's death.
I think a lot of Blur songs are too quirky for the mainstream.
Oasis didn't seem quite as Brit-centered as Blur unless maybe Go Let It Out which Americans could never "get".
Go Let It Out had a great melody to it, but lyrics about princes capering in their sawdust rings wasn't going to resonate with Americans.
I think RHCP were sort of trying to target that audience with One Hot Minute. It was definitely a lot darker than their previous albums.
you're absolutely right, they were genuinely arena-huge. and would ya know it, ok computer gained traction right as the pumpkins wound down their massive MCIS tour, late summer '97, even though i feel most of the SP fans probably veered more toward rawk-inclined marilyn manson than thom yorke and his merry men. judging by the sales of adore, they sure as shit didn't go back to the pumpkins!
that's another interesting album. feels like they really tried to cover it up or stalin it out of history with californication. that brief flea track is mind-boggling in its awfulness
Because those other bands fucking suck.
Ireland is a British Isle.
Yes. In 1994 everything was Weezer, H&TBF, Green Day...all very optimistic music and then in 95 the college demo gets taken over by Radiohead and Smashing Pumpkins.
Still was a Top 20 hit on alternative radio and got Liam onto TRL
>that brief flea track is mind-boggling in its awfulness
But it's somehow the only OHM song that has been retained in their setlist.
But not part of the United Kingdom
the chili peppers work in mysterious ways
British is a geographic term, not a political term.
Common People is a better song than anything Radiohead ever made.
No but Bono's primary musical influences were 60s-70s Britrock and he always rants to anyone who will listen how prog almost sunk rock-and-roll in the mid-70s.
Werent their influences stuff like the clash and joy division?
Them too but of course also the Beatles, Zeppelin, Stones, and The Who.
>he actually likes pulp
LMAO'ing at your life
>Some poor sods are stuck forever listening to Led Zeppelin though imagine that
This unfortunately describes about 80% of my friends.
Literally because Radiohead were a better band than all of them. That's it.
Really? I thought it was mostly punk/postpunk
HEY HEY MOMMA SAID
*cums externally*
who is the best radiohead member and why is it Ed?
OH GOD, FUCK YOU
I'm not even a Pulp fan, but Common People is a masterpiece and the defining British song of the 90's.
BEEN A LONG TIME A LAWNG TIIIMMMEEE
A bunch of wannabe alt faggots don't like Led Zeppelin. I guess one of the greatest bands of all time was just "too mainstream" for you.
GIMME A PIECE OF YOUR CUSTARD PIE
GONNA MAKE YOU SWEAT
Led Zeppelin are guilty of the following atrocious and grievous crimes against music:
1. Making entire albums out of stolen blues licks and saying OH YEAH YEAH YEAH BABY BABY OH BABY 50x a song
2. Inspiring all of the overwrought hair metal/cockrock/lighter-waving arena rock bullshit
3. Releasing singles that have been played on the radio 40x every day for the last 40+ years
4. The ultimate casual, normalfag band that back in the day appealed to normalfag white suburban teens who grew up to be accountant minivan dads that tortured their kids by forcing them to listen to dadrock on the radio as they're driving them to soccer practice
That's just Cred Forums essence. Bunch of faggots thinking they have superior music taste
Meeting People is easy is genuinely upsetting to me though. Watching that Thom try to talk is like watching that polar bear in that chinese mall try to hide from the public
mygnrforum.com
Have you guys seen this? I guess this is why Oasis is a one hit band
that fuckin chemical brothers remix on Gran Turismo 1 intro is the only song ive heard from them. fantastic song i love putting it on whenever i feel like driving fast
Because they're far better.
>oasis
>one hit band
I like them, but they pretty much only had 1 major hit in the US. There were a couple minor ones, but in the US, when people hear the name Oasis in the United States, I it's because of Wonderwall.
Were you even alive then?
>the likes of Blur, Pulp and Manic Street Preachers are unheard of out there (America)
lol, no. I think we have different standards for "unheard" maybe.
Blur never had a good song even Oasis are better (Song 2 is generic pop rock, however their best song Beetlebum isn't big enough so technically im saying they have no good songs).
No one even knows who Pulp is anywhere and Radiohead are big because they're always in news articles even though most people don't even know what they sound like.
That's more due to the passage of time, oasis had several big hits back in the day
