So this came up on shuffle on the commute this morning – The Shamen’s “Ebeneezer Goode”. I can’t remember the last time I heard it, and hadn’t even remembered it was on the compilation that smuggled it onto my iPod, but (eek) 25 years later it just sounds monumentally misjudged, a studio joke that went too far, a drug song for kids… and of course, despite its number 1 success, it effectively reduced the formerly supercool alternative dance act to the status of novelty-hitmakers, to be named & shamed alongside Benny Hill, Joe Dolce and Black Lace. Yes, they eked out a few more years of ever-less popular hit singles, but their career trajectory was instantly blown…
So, are there any other career-killing records (singles or albums) we can think of? Deservedly or otherwise? And should any be rehabilitated…?
Could be a cracking thread this @metal-mickey
How about the first Razorlight album? Snigger.
Very good point about Ebeneezer Goode. I vaguely remember them being a cutting edge act before this.
Yeah. So cool they made it into Super Hans’ wedding vows:
Yep spot on. I remember really liking the En-Tact album and for a while they had a quite a canny mix of Syd Barrett obsessed 60s Psych, industrial beats and trancey/ambient techno going on which was very right for 1991-92 but sounds very thin and vapid now. I wonder what they’re doing now?
Let’s not google it. Let’s speculate.
I feel as if Mr C ( was that his name?) is working in a Burger King somewhere.
Before a certain person adds this here I’d better add it first:
He was excellent in Twin Peaks.
One drowned in or off Goa, I seem to recall, putting a serious reflection on why their later stuff was shite. (Disclaimer: the first “dance”y disc I ever bought was Axis Mutatis, which came out after Ebernezer and is quite, well, reasonably OK.)
An uncertain person, you mean.
Max Maxwell of the Shamen sang with SAHB without Alex (obvs) 2004-08
WHAT!
WHAT!
….. WHAT!!!
Next you’ll be telling me that Dermo from Northside is in the current line-up of Blodwyn Pig.
Is he?
Oh dear. What a mess. That’s torn it for Freddie and the gang, right readers?
My (deeply unpopular) theory is that Queen were a succession of novelty one hit wonders. They were just rather brilliant at it. I mean, do Killer Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody and Fat Bottomed girls sound like the same band?
Roger Taylor is famously dismissive of that album. He regards it as simply a by-product of Freddie’s discovery of and obsession with the gay scene in Munich. As I recall, Brian May doesn’t like it too much either. Hardly a career killer though, as their next album was The Works, which was certainly one of their best, both in terms of sales and creativity.
Not QUITE career-killing, but to all RIGHT THINKING PEOPLE Paul McCartney lost it with “Mull of Kintyre”, Genesis with “Follow You, Follow Me”, and Stevie Wonder with “I just called to say I love you”.
Certainly Stevie Wonder was the first response I expected when I thought of this topic… 30 hit singles in the preceding 18 years, and his last album “Hotter Than July” had been a big hit with a clutch of hit singles, but IJCTSILY was very much the beginning of the end for SW as a chart force…
Good point about Stevie but Macca has made dozens of great records since Mull, which is actually not that bad, but just became too huge.
No Sir, all RIGHT THINKING PEOPLE had lost it with Fab Macca some five years before Mull Of Kintyre, when he released Mary Had A Little Lamb.
Actually Love Me Do was pretty bad …
Hmmm…. what about Jeff Beck’s Hi Ho Silver Lining? I think that could be said to have killed his career as a credible pop/rock artist and sent him to the fringes of jazz-rock for evermore. Could he have been a contender to Zeppelin/Hendrix/etc if he hadn’t become known for a bubblegum hit?
I don’t think Hi Ho.. had much to do with it, really.
The first Jeff Beck Group were doing very good business in the States. Turning down a Woodstock appearance was a pretty bad move. I don’t think Rod Stewart would have been very happy about that.
And then getting laid up in hospital after a serious car crash didn’t help. By the time he was fit again Rod & Ron Wood had joined the Faces and he had no band. Plus his pal Jimmy Page had pretty much nicked his idea of a loud heavy blues outfit.
I know the Lightning Seeds were never the biggest band on the planet but Jollification (with Change) and then Dizzy Heights produced singles like Sugar Coated Iceberg, and it was, of course, released in the wake of the first Three Lions.
Come 1999 and they released Tilt. I love it, but it’s offbeat and really, they just disappeared after that.
Agreed, Ivan.
I thought Jollification was a great album, and the Lightning Seeds did some great singles. Sense, co-written with Terry Hall, is a cracker.
The Boo Radleys had a number 1 album with Wake Up, and then chose to release What’s in the Box (See Watcha Got)? as a single. I still think it’s a great tune, but it totally killed them off as a mainstream act.
The Boo Radleys’ album was cheekily entitled “C’mon Kids” and Martin Carr declared in an interview “If I was a kid, there’s no way I’d be listening to this”.
They trailed the next Album with Free Huey, just to be sure…
That’s the most expensive-sounding cheap recording I’ve ever heard. It’s immense.
There’s a breathy acoustic version if Wake Up Boo being used by a breakfast cereal TV commercial at the moment. It was always, always going to happen.
Ooh I forgot about them. I loved Lazarus.
Giant Steps: time for a reappraisal?
It’s been done, very well, here:
http://thequietus.com/articles/13477-boo-radleys-giant-steps-review
It’s a brilliant album, even if it sounds like Martin forgot to tell Sice what the tune is before he went in to sing the songs.
Cut The Crap was a bad way to end a career – although The Clash was all but over by this stage. Bernie Rhodes was steering the ship, and Joe was left wondering if he was doing the right thing, had one envious eye on Mick Jones.
There are a couple of songs that (sort of) pass muster, not least This Is England. But the and reliance on drum machines and other studio stuff leaves this an overblown, overproduced unpolishable turd
Time Fades Away, Trans, Greendale. Has anyone killed his ‘career’ more frequently than Neil?
I love Greendale – fine album IMHO.
I like all three of those, but they’re are/were considered failures. Time Fades Away mainly because it wasn’t Harvest 2. Trans was one of the albums he got sued for by Geffen, because it didn’t sound like Neil Young.
Harvest Moon was ‘Harvest 2’, and it’s a belter. Even my wife likes it.
Two other people who like Harvest Moon. Can I move in with you?
I prefer Harvest Moon to Harvest. It holds together better, even if Old King is a turd.
Simple Minds – Don’t You Forget About Me.
Allowed them to break into the US market, but never quite as interesting thereafter.
Live In the City Of Light is a great live album, but probably the last “essential” SM purchase
That didn’t kill Simple Minds. The following album “Once Upon A Time” was full of hits. The record that killed them was “The Ballad Of The Streets” ep which preceded the appalling “Street Fighting Years” album.
Basically Once Upon a Time has “Alive and Kicking” “All the Things She Said” and others, they became a genuine stadium band, “Live In The City Of Light” was the result. It was rubbish but no one cared because, hell, it was a live album and then along came “Ballad Of The Streets” which had Belfast Child (actuually even worse than any U2 song), Mandela Day (merely unspeakable) and their cover of “Biko” (no one likes this). A more humourless collection of po faced shite has never been put together, at least till the album came out. Yes it got to number one, but after that the game was up…
Due to the momentum of the years up to and including New Gold Dream I held a zippo aloft in my heart for Simple Minds for quite some time. I played Once Upon a Time to death but time has not been kind to the anthems on that one. New Gold Dream still sounds tremendous, though.
The earnestness of Belfast Child, Mandela Day and Biko made my young ears wander off towards more exciting stuff.
@ganglesprocket
I couldn’t put it better myself…” A more humourless collection of po faced shite has never been put together.”
However, one wiki reviewer of the subsequent album, Street Fighting Years, described it as “flatulent bluster” which is pretty good!
Flatulent Bluster – TMFTL.
Humourless collections of po-faced shite? Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Tears For Fears…
I’m sorry Rigid but Live in the City of Light is where me and Jim went our separate ways. It’s overblown tosh innit?
The Style Council killed their career with a house-influenced album so effectively it wasn’t released until 20 years after they’d split up.
And rightly so. It is dreadful, the one occasion when Weller fell into the trap of following the mainstream rather than his muse.
Well, the previous album Confessions of a Pop Group very seriously died on its arse, and The Cost of Loving hardly had shifted Thriller-style units. After the high watermark of Our Favourite Shop at No. 1 and their tremendous Live Aid performance, TSC had a long, slow decline. You can’t help feeling that Weller didn’t deliberately drive the thing into the buffers, a la Terence Trent D’Arby.
I actually think Confessions is their best album, though I appreciate I’m in a minority there.
Life At A Top People’s Health Farm was a brilliant single. Great lyric and vocal. It’s like a Steve Bell set to music.
Didn’t PW briefly sport a tache at the time?
That probably didn’t help either
The tache went for a burton at the end of the 80s. Never mind the showdown between the government and the unions, the Miners Strike was the last stand of the non-ironic heterosexual moustache.
I think the subject has veered away from the original intent. ‘Don’t You…’ and the subsequent change of style might not have been to everyone’s taste, but they remained hugely popular thereafter.
My suggestion…not a song as such, but that daft Coke advert did much to bury Duffy’s fledgeling career.
I was actually working on the peripheries of the music biz at the time of Duffy’s 2nd album (in 2010!), and what was strange was that everyone knew for literally months ahead of release that it was a complete dog and was going to flop hugely… hard to say how much of it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, but it certainly bombed, and in real terms she’s never been heard of since…
“Don’t Stand Me Down” didn’t do a great deal for Dexys’ career.
Everyone seems to consider it their masterpiece now, though.
Perhaps I should dig out my old LP copy and give it another go….
You should, duco. It’s marvellous!
Seconded!
Yes, great album – I don’t think its lack of success was down to the music itself, so much as them basically refusing to promote it, not releasing any singles from it (until it was too late), and hving yet another total image change…
(And of course Kevin Rowland went on to kill his career all over again with “My Beauty”, but that’s another
Ebeneezer Goode was the only hit of an otherwise hit-free band. It hardly killed their career, but briefly made them look like they might have one.
See also: Tubthumping
@mavis-diles Move any Mountain was a very big single IIRC. Ebenezer Goode confused me a bit because it was a comedy record and previous releases had not been.
I’d totally forgotten Move Any Mountain! That was a great single.
Bassist and keyboardist Will Sinnott drowned while swimming off La Gomera in the Canary Islands, during the filming of the video for Move Any Mountain. Not surprisingly, things weren’t the same after that.
They’re a band that went through many iterations, but In Gorbachev We Trust (1989) was a great mix of guitars, samples and techno.
Good shout for Duffy. Her first album was genuinely massive: it sold 180,000 copies in the first week of release and was the best-selling UK album of 2008, as well as being the 4th best-selling album in the world that year. It went top 5 in the US, and she won a Grammy (yes, I had to look all that up). Total album sales stand at over 9 million.
Fast-forward four years, and I saw her in Manchester walking down a busy street near Piccadilly station. Not a single person seemed to recognise her. Her second album, in 2010, totally drowned, and she hasn’t released an album since. I wonder if anyone has been that huge, only to slip back so quickly into relative obscurity?
Are royalties from 9 million sales enough so that, properly invested, she could say “Sod the lot of you” and retire to a quiet life somewhere?
Definitely. As long as she doesn’t own a castle she needs to look after in each and every European country.
What is it with Bernard Butler and second albums?
Bernard wasn’t involved in Duffy’s second. It definitely could have used his songwriting and arranging.
Btw, People Move On is high on my list of albums I feel rather alone in enjoying.
You’re “Not Alone,” Neela (see what I did there?), PMO is a completely fine album I still dip into from time to time (“Not Alone” itself is fantastic), though BB’s voice is rather undistinguished, and I think he needs a Brett or McAlmont to really add that extra X% his songs need to take flight…
Just reading a back issue of Word, there was an article about Duffy recording a song for diet coke with her appearing in an advert for it whilst cycling through a supermarket. There are some thoughts that this killed her career or at least helped.
Ahem…that’s a thought I prepared somewhat earlier ^^^^^
Joss Stone’s duet with Mick Jagger, “Lonely Without You This Christmas”.
A career coffin nail, after her reasonably promising debut album of soul covers “The Soul Sessions”?
This was Terrorvision’s only hit and untypical of their usual rock sound. Apparently, at the time, it became a real albatross for the band because a whole bunch of new fans came to the gigs expecting to hear similar kitsch lounge pop tunes and felt cheated.
“Regular Urban Survivors” produced 4 top 20 hits, including the rather good “Perseverance”
Yeah, you’re right. I sit corrected.
This lyric change from their biggest hit on a regular TFI item was their biggest regret. Turned a rock outfit into just Chris Evans muppets overnight. They were never taken quite as seriously again according to the band.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46OoOtOnEuo&frags=pl%2Cwn
I bought the album. It was … mediocre
And how did they get away with those filthy lyrics:
“Place your hands, on my hole”
I know this is a vaguely “amusing” mondegreen
After a brilliant debut album the follow up “Neither Fish Nor Flesh” (which I actually like) scuppered the career of Terence Trent Derby.
Wonder what he’s up to now.
He’s still very busy, but not as TTD. He now goes by the name of Senanda Maitreya. He was across the media a few months ago, and is still ‘eccentric’.
History has recorded that NFNF killed his career stone-dead, but his third album did very well indeed – number one and yielding three top ten hits. Quite right too, it’s excellent (and not just because it has a song called T.I.T.S on it)
Symphony Or Damn…fantastic album. Let Her Down Easy is a thing of wonder.
Marilyn surfed the crest of a wave atop the mid-80s “gender bender” phenomenon with a fairly good Motown-y song Calling Your Name. Lots of fun.
Unfortunately, he followed it with a very slow and very dull song called Cry and Be Free – and it tanked. Made worse by the fact that Boy George, a friend of Marilyn’s, re-named it “Try and Be Me”.
Adamski was very cool and mysterious around the time of “Killer” in 1990, and you might think that he and Seal were onto something good, but “Flashback Jack” was patently rubbish and made him an exposed wizard of Oz by the end of the year. You are also referred to the sad case of Babylon Zoo.
As with many pop folk, the trouble started when he did interviews. He came across as likeable and daft, basically Dermo with a synthesiser, which contradicted the enigmatic “Keyboard Wizard” label. Then he started getting dressed up as a droog and making Bombalurina records… oh dear. Ill-advised.
I did some work for ZTT (Seal’s label), who tried desperately to get “Killer” credited to Adamski featuring Seal (or similar) to no avail, and almost pulled him from the track as he had his own record ready to go, and they didn’t want to confuse the market… but they figured it was such a strong track and certain hit, it would be worth it, and so it proved, at least for future multi-platinum husband-of-Heidi-Klum Seal, not so much for 3-hit wonder Adamski…
(And lest we forget, Adamski was formerly one of the Stupid Babies as a tweenie, who had a turntable hit with “Babysitters”…)
PS Suddenly remembered that Queen & George Michael covered “Killer”, and don’t feel quite so sorry for Adamski any more…
Has anyone mentioned Let It Be?
No, because the Replacements went from strength to strength after that
But I wonder why though?
Voice Of The Beehive had a second, almost equally successful, album after that one
Laibach did many more…
…oh we’ve done this joke
The troubled Finley Quaye has been sabotaging his career on and off since his heyday. The 2000 album Vanguard, the follow up to the 1997 best selling debut Maverick A Strike completely bombed but I rather liked its bonkersness.
After 8 top 5 hit singles featuring two number ones, Culture Club hit the dumper head on with The Medal Song, which didn’t even get in the top 30. Sporadic hits after that but the imperial phase was over.
I think the main reason why “The Medal Song” was a flop was that it had been immediately preceded by that lyrically complex non-masterpiece “The War Song”. No one much fancied buying a Culture Club single after that.