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Songs that are millstones

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Apologies to @Tiggerlion, shamelessly picking up on your ‘Songs of a Generation’ thread in which you mention that some classics can actually end up being a millstone around the artist’s neck.

This made me immediately think of Babybird, known to just about everyone solely for ‘Your Gorgeous’, a song I’ve never liked but which was clearly a classic for many at the time. A mate talked me into seeing them live quite a while ago now and I went along somewhat apprehensively as this song was all I know about them at the time. When they came to sing it, frontman Stephen Jones said: ‘Here’s the song that ruined my career’. Given the content of the rest of the gig, I couldn’t have agreed more as the rest of set was tremendous and he/they deserve a wider audience, yet will be remembered for that one song.

Here’s one of many finer moments from Babybird. Any other bands/artists you feel have suffered a similar fate (apologies if this has been done before on here).

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Comments

  1. I reckon this is a major irritant to musicians, let alone fans. Doesn’t help when typically an act has a creatively imperial phase where they were producing their best work (and only a few years long; the beatles did it all in 8 years, and Floyd, Zep, Yes likewise done in 10 good years). the creative phase may not equal the most economically successful; Bowie and Genesis made more money and played to bigger crowds after their artistic peaks. When Jeff Beck dies, just imagine how many people will play “Hi-Ho Silver Lining”.

  2. Certainly advertising can play a huge part in creating these out-of-proportion numbers – cf Marvin Gaye being reduced to Heard It Through the Grapevine, and the Clash to Should I Stay…

    I would suggest that Come On Eileen is a song Kevin Rowland may not write down first on the set list with a heart full of joy. Whereas Liam and Noel I guess are still quite chuffed they came up with Wonderwall (those streaming numbers are astonishing).

  4. Chrissie Hynde hates Brass In Pocket with a vengeance, yet continues to play it. I really don’t know why. I guess those who go to see here these days are long term fans, for whom she could get away with not playing the brass making hit.
    Roy Harper refused to play I Hate The White Man for years, berating those who called out for it. But he returned to playing it this century, probably because it was no longer the millstone it had been.

  5. Streets Of London is about the only song most people know by Ralph McTell, and he does sing it without an apology as such, but acknowledges the fact that he has to do it. By the way, do go and see him if you get the chance – always a good night out!

  6. I’d nominate Unbelievable by EMF as being the song that got to millstone status the quickest. A friend saw them on tour when the album came out. They played it twice.

  7. Reminds me of an episode of The Larry Sanders Show where the late Gary Shandling tells the late Warren Zevon that he really ought to play ‘Werewolves of London’ on the show rather than anything from the new album, because it’s the one everyone wants to hear.

  8. When I went to see Paul McCartney a couple of years ago, it’s possible Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da got the warmest greeting of the evening. Now, how is that even possible? When did that become his biggest draw?

    It’s not a millstone, obviously, because he has many many many other classics. But still. For me it seemed mainly like an opportunity to go to the rest room.

  9. Certainly, as far as radio programmers are concerned, Brown Eyed Girl is the only record Van Morrison has made in the last 55 years. I note that recently, he has finally bowed to the inevitable and re-introduced it to his live set.

    • He refused to play it because he never used to earn any royalties from it, due to a bad contract he signed at the time.
      Maybe he’s re-acquired the rights to it. Or maybe he no longer cares that he was ripped off at the time.

    • I remember it was always Moondance that was played when a Van Morrison track was on the radio – that was up until Brown Eyed Girl appeared on the soundtrack to Born on the 4th July – at which point BEG became the Van track of choice. Before that film, I’d only heard the Del Amitri version…

  10. It’s a running joke at Lloyd Cole concerts -he makes a point that people only came to hear Forest Fire/Perfect Skin. I think the last time I saw him he said that those people would have to listen to other stuff first, and that way at least he’d know the audience would stay.

    • To their credit, I get the impression they only occasionally played it throughout the 80s and 90s. They certainly didn’t play it at any of the first few gigs I saw of theirs and I don’t think anyone expected them too as it was well known they played a different set every night.

      It’s only since they went a bit more showbiz and became a Festival/Arena band and starting just playing the same 20 songs every night that it’s now a permanent fixture on the setlist.

      • I saw them a lot 1985-1993 and they’d usually get it over with somewhere near the end of the set, but hardly ever last song and hardly ever as an encore (the thing about them never doing encores was a myth, at least post-1985).

        It still slightly irks me that civillians have to have it explained to them that NO are “the Blue Monday/True Faith band” but I’m not going to change the world now.

  13. An old friend of mine went to see the Kinks at St. Albans Civic Hall some time in the late 70s.
    They started playing the first few bars of “Waterloo Sunset” and, of course, the crowd erupted. Then they stop, Ray says “Nah, we don’t wanna play that song”, and they go and play something else instead. Charming!

    • Ray was always doing stuff like that. I saw them around 1981 and he said they would do a song that had recently charted as a cover version. They did the (beautiful) intro to Stop Your Sobbing before abruptly stopping and launching into David Watts! Also they would tease the Lola intro throughout the night before finally getting around to playing it late in the set.

  14. One of Marc Almond’s mid-80s solo albums includes a song with the lyric

    “the taxi driver starts to sing one of my songs – the one that I like the least – (tainted love tune) – he says ‘that was the only one I liked’ – my face cracks – my misery complete”.

    Still – he seemed to get over it.

  15. Two of my toppermost of the poppermost acts long term (Numan and Depeche Mode) have developed perhaps surprisingly into highly successful live performers. Numan really kind of has to perform Cars and AFE whereas Depeche Mode do not have one standout hit song that must be played. Personal Jesus might be nearest they have to that. They don’t tend to play Just Can’t Get Enough (but they have done in recent times) and will never play People are People because they themselves think it’s terrible.

    • I think a lot of DM fans would love them to play more stuff from the first half of the eighties, pre Black Celebration. It´s not my favourite era of their career though, and apparently not the band´s either.

      You can usually tell the age of a DM fan by their favourite era. “My” era would be Violator/Faith & Devotion/Ultra, which I´m sure older fans consider the “too much guitar” phase. It was, of course, followed by the “when is Alan coming back?” phase.

  16. The slightly a-typical record that becomes the biggest or only hit.

    Someone has already mentioned Hi Ho Silver Lining, see also All Around My Hat by Steeleye or that Chumbawhumba one about being knocked down etc. It may be from a film e.g Maria Mckee’s Show Me Heaven.

    Or, as with Brown Eyed Girl, the same old hit that is trotted out when there are dozens of records to choose from

    For example, you would think Tull only made Living in the Past or Marillion made Kayleigh.

  17. I am not sure what Mike Scott thinks of The Whole of the moon these days but every time I have seen him live he has played it at what seems like twice the speed of the recorded version. Almost as if he is trying to get it over and done with. I am sure Waterboys fans can do without it.

  21. That BabyBird example is spot on – a chilling example of what happens when you have an unexpected huge hit with a song which is atypical of your oeuvre. I can’t top that (neither could he).

    I suspect Boo Radleys may have hastened their own demise with ‘Wake Up Boo’ but they had already earned an NME album of the year and sold bucketloads of records well before that. They seemed lost and reeling afterwards. Martin Carr is gigging and to his credit, does not play that song (although he does play songs from the lost, later years of the Boos).

    However, let’s have a look at the line up for this years Rewind Festival -of the acts on the bill I think I’d these all have the heaviest millstone but let’s not feel too sorry for them after they drag it through the festival mud to the nearest bank to cash their enormous cheque, in the queue behind Peter Hook.

    Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel
    Tiffany
    Hue & Cry
    Wendy James out of Transvision Vamp
    Roachford
    Musical Youth (Who..to be fair.. have gone on record to say they’re more than happy to play Pass the Dutchie as they’re actually earning money for the first time in their careers)
    Doctor & The Medics
    Chesney Hawkes

  22. Back in Ye Olde Merrie Showbiz days, the standard intro to this kind of career-making tune would be something like “… and now here’s a song that’s been very good to me”, which is a more positive attitude….

    • “Never record a somg you don’t like, ‘cause if it becomes a hit you’re gonna have to play it every night” – Cornell Hurd. I believe this is the intro to ‘Genitalia of a Fool’ from ‘Live at Jovita’s’, later admirably covered by Glenn Tilbrook.

      • Thing is, even with a good song you once loved, through overexposure you can get fed up of hearing it. Let alone having to play it.
        This is where the difference between “good” songs and “great” songs comes into play. How could you ever get fed up of hearing, let alone playing what you know is a “great” song?

  23. This is my bugbear when it comes to music radio.

    If any of us were to compile a set of songs by Van Morrison, Buffalo Springfield, Jeff Beck, Julie Driscoll etc. we could probably all do an interesting job.

    Music radio does it, and we all know EXACTLY which songs they’re going to play ….. “and after a word from our sponsors, Buffalo Springfield.” “Hmm, I wonder what song that could possibly be?”

    I don’t dispute the comment about advertising above, but why is that formula, enacted over and over again, deemed advantageous for advertisers?
    Follow-up question: why are people so thick?

      • This is true. “I like this song because I know it, I can remember it”. I´ve heard people say that.

        I can understand if you remember a song because you like it. But the opposite? You really have low expectations if you like a song ONLY because you can remember it.

        “Is it any good, then?”
        “No, but I can remember it.”

      • The other comment (from Zappa) is:
        “Most people who come to our concerts wouldn’t know good music if it came up and bit them on the ass.”

        The likes of us need to keep in mind that this applies to about 90% of the public. The radio programmers are very well aware of it.

          • I think he probably meant something different to that, but whether you like his particular music or not, the fact is most music punters are pretty clueless about music. Usually quite a bit more clueless than they think they are. I know I’m not as knowledgeable as I’d like to be. That’s one thing this site has taught me. The ones who sail on without recourse to AW or the like (as if..) don’t always get that moment of realisation.
            A proportion will only be at a gig for social reasons, anyway. i.e. because their mates/other halves wanted to go. Or (pub circuit gigs) just because they fancied a night out and a few beers. I can recall sparsely-attended pub gigs filling up with red-faced besuited middle-aged men at about 10:30 because they had a late license.

  24. It does seem a bit of a mind-bender to have to do the same gig you’ve been doing for decades, even if it pays the rent. Maybe it’s that latter issue – if 60k people want to pay generously to see you sing songs that are 45 years old and have been performed thousands of times already, the pain of the performance may be well corrected by the hefty wedge you are paid. This is, of course, a commercial decision, but let us not forget that quite often the new artistic directions of musical performers may not be as successful as all that.

  26. Heaven forbid the delicate flowers of rock get a little bored delivering a show to customers. If you are not going to do the well known/classics/popular/most loved songs, just make it clear on the ticket so people know. If you don’t, then don’t be surprised that people ask for the hits.

    I’d rather be singing Waterloo Sunset for the umpteenth time than hacking away at a coal face.

    And really good bands (James are a brilliant example) have fun with their back catalogue but do most of the favourites, most of the time without ever doing the same show twice. Maybe that’s too much effort for some.

    • A bit harsh. Surely creative people can’t be blamed for wanting to create rather than churn out something they created many years ago for the several-hundredth time. They move on, the fans may not. I’d be really hacked off if my customers at work kept badgering me for the spreadsheet I created using Excel 97 rather than all the fun and useful stuff I’ve learned since.

      • You can decide to do what The Stones and McCartney do, which is to give the people what they want the way they want it, or to do what Dylan does and Bowie did, which is to “fuck you, it´s my music – I´ll perform what I want they way I want to”. Or you can do what Springsteen does, which is just to play everything.

        Though if you opt for the former, you´ll propably find it hard to change later.

        I´m one of the weird “play more new” types.

        • I agree with Neela and Gatz. There are quite a lot of artists who don’t play the game, and have a more selective appeal as a result, but fair play to them. Not every gig is about nostalgia and comfortingly familiar tunes…otherwise it becomes Showbiz. I’d rather see a band playing what they want, and see them mak show, whether that’s the hits or something fresh…if they don’t play your favourite tune so what? Leave em wanting more I say.

          • I was a little disappointed when I went to see Lou Reed and he finished with encores of Walk On The Wild Side and Sweet Jane. It was too much like a one-hit wonder catering for an audience of civilians. I thought someone with his vast and interesting catalogue could have been a bit braver. I liked it more when I saw Weller and he didn’t play any of his “hits”.

              • It was 1998, and to be honest I’m not much of a fan of either Lou or of concerts in general, so I can’t remember much (I remember I got told off for smoking a joint, quite rightly given that it was inside). Looking at an online setlist from around that time I find:
                Dorita (The Spirit)
                Sweet Jane
                Egg Cream
                Set the Twilight Reeling
                Vicious
                Perfect Day
                Street Hassle
                Hooky Wooky
                Kicks
                Hang On to Your Emotions
                Into the Divine
                Future Farmers of America
                New Sensations
                Satellite of Love
                Dirty Blvd.
                Riptide
                Rock & Roll
                Walk on the Wild Side

          • “otherwise it becomes showbiz”
            A lot of what we call rock, indie, r&b, reggae, americana, folk etc. etc. is actually showbiz, when you take a good hard look at it. You’re putting on a show for the entertainment of paying punters. If your repertoire is such that it’s the oldies/hits they’re coming to see, you’d damn well better play them with a semblance of good grace or they won’t come back again.

        • Bowie played a mixture of hits and latest stuff in every tour right up to his last, apart from a mini tour when he played the whole of Low in the correct sequence, the first to do that ‘album’ type gig. Even then, he followed it up with a second half of crowd favourites.

          • One of the best Prince shows I ever attended was on the 1995 tour when he was showcasing the then-unreleased-and-still-under-contractual-dispute The Gold Experience. Screened a short video compilation of the hits prior to coming on, and didn’t play any of them during the show, which featured the new/unheard stuff and choice b-sides and deep cuts. An absolutely stupendous gig, with the special atmosphere of a secret club performance, only this was in Sheffield Arena…days of wild indeed!

        • The most obviously perverse one is naturally Neil Young. An acoustic evening with him turns out to be an unreleased (at the time) album called Greendale in full! Still enjoyed it though.

          • Have seen Neil three times. Only Heart Of Gold and Keep On Rocking In A Free World have been played on all occasions. But he’s never had tons of hits anyway.

            • He may not have had too many bonafide “hits” but he has probably 12-15 well known songs that a casual audience might expect to hear. If any song would be a millstone it would be Heart of Gold though which you are never guaranteed to hear.

              • Not many hits, but definitely some classics. If there’s a next time I wouldn’t mind Like A Hurricane. Haven’t heard it live yet.

                I don’t think he attracts ‘tourists’ the way, say, the Stones do. Thus it’s easier to ignore the greatest hits setlist.

      • I don’t mind bands that don’t play the hits. That’s fine. But make it clear that you are not doing so. Or play them and don’t complain about it. But playing them (which, by definition, is charging people to listen to you playing them) and then complaining about it is just churlish.

  27. It’s a sunny afternoon in a field in England. Tom’s sweating, grinning from ear to ear, the band have played a belter and they’ve all enjoyed the gig hugely; the crowd’s going apeshit bananas. The set’s got to fit into a much longer running order, so it’s time for the second and final number of the encore. He undoes another shirt button, smiles broadly and addresses the audience, “This is a number that was a big hit for me, quite a few yurrs ago now.”

    Bap ba-dah, bap ba-dah, bah ba-dah, bah ba-dah…

    Everything erupts. It’s not unusual to hear an encore that is the one you’ve been waiting and hoping to hear, but they don’t often come as joyfully as this one does; and the singer and the band are lovin’ every second and giving it their all, though they’ve played it ten thousand times.

  28. As with all bad things in pop, It’s The Beatles’ fault.
    We’re artists, maan. We go where the muse takes us.
    1. Before Beatlesband the greatest artists were, like Melvyn Hayes, here “to entertain you”.
    You’ve been down ‘t pit 23 hours a day for the last six days/broke a nail speeddialling the ticketbast*rd hotline and then waded through yard deep snow/had to use the furthest car park just to be squeezed in behind the tallest/in front of the smelliest human on Earth but, y’know, we regard that instrumental number one from way back as a bit of an albatross at this point.
    2. Genuine Question: When writers get their big cheques for “that song” I presume said hit is mentioned somewhere in the correspondence? How can one not harbour some warm feeling towards a hose spewing forth fivers….?

  29. It doesn’t seem to bother David Hepworth too much …

    Talking about Simon Mayo’s All Request Friday, a list including “I Predict a Riot,” “Tutti Frutti,” Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” “Sweet Home Alabama,” “Twist and Shout” (The Beatles’ version), “The Muppet Show Theme” and “Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)” (a song mentioned as being played on another Radio 2 in the same Radio Times) is apparently proof that “request shows are always a good thing.”

    I can’t comment on Mayo’s role in it, but the examples given above sound decidedly “Gold radio,” and clear evidence, if it were needed, that request shows are always a shite thing!

  30. I listened to quite a lot of Babybird before his big hit. He was very prolific in the early to mid-90s, seemingly releasing a new album every six months. He had a huge backlog of songs. I remember Mark Radcliffe giving his stuff quite a lot of airplay. Fatherhood was a great record. Stephen Jones 1985-2001 was a mini box set of instrumental music, released on three 3 inch cds, and is well worth a listen.

  31. It’s got to be-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee…..

    Cambridge Folk Festival, 1987 or thereabouts. Fairground Attraction are a rather serious little folk band with a shy Scottish singer who is shaking with stage fright and a bloke who plays the bouzouki or something like that. The bazooka, maybe. They also have a huge fuck-off number one pop hit, Perfect.

    Now I don’t know how familiar you prog chaps are with folk festivals but there’s usually some kind of ale involved, and female women as well. All in all it’s lively and jolly, two words rarely associated with Emerson Lake and Palmer. So obviously when someone starts shouting “It’s got to be-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee…..” after every song, of course the whole tent’s going to go “PER-FECT!” isn’t it?

    After. Every. Song. The band are visibly twitching with anger. So there’s an onstage meeting, and they play it. They throw the millstone into the crowd. We all sing out our PER-FECTS on cue. There’s a huge cheer at the end.

    And then someone goes; “It’s got to be-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee…..”

  32. I went to see the Bluetones about 15 years ago & predictably enough they never played slight return or cut some rug, claiming that “We’ve moved on from that”.

    A local Cumbrian festival about 10 years ago. Chumbawumba failed to get knocked down, get back up again or took a whisky or lager drink as “that song isn’t who we are now”.

    AFAIAC, both bands took the audience for granted & (to me) acted like twats.

  34. Roger Taylor refers to Bohemian Rhapsody as “that bloody song”.

    Madness only representation on commercial radio is Baggy Trousers or It Must Be Love (a last minute cover version recorded for a radio session)

    • Interesting. Bohemian Rhapsody was written by Freddie Mercury and is one of the best selling singles of all time (another record enjoying a renaissance by product placement, this time in a movie). The convention is that the B side shares the royalties. Roger Taylor wrote and sang that B side, the slight beyond belief, I’m In Love With My Car. Therefore, he gets 50% of the royalties, much to John Deacon’s and Brian May’s disgust.

    • I haven’t read Suggs’ book but I have seen his one man show and a dramatisation of it was on Radio 4 yesterday. He always describes It Must Be Love as something Mike Barson was playing around with. If it was a last minute thing then he doesn’t make a big thing of it.

  35. Obligatory Richard Thompson post: he always plays (I Want to See the) Bright Lights Tonight, and always refers to it as a medley of his greatest hits. It wasn’t nearly or remotely a hit.

  37. ‘Making Plans For Nigel’ and ‘Senses Working Overtime’ are probably millstones for XTC, even though they’d stopped playing live before it got to be too much of a problem. ‘Nigel’ is certainly the first/only thing that many people say in response to me declaring a liking for the band. A friend was genuinely startled how many albums came after Drums and Wires, and what the band did in later years. Unbelievable that the band who did ‘Statue of Liberty’ also did ‘River Of Orchids’.

    • Only a few months ago I saw an NZ gossip magazine with the front cover headline “Making Plans for Nigel” – referring to a TV personality here called Nigel Latta. I wondered if, like Joy Division, XTC enjoyed huge success here. Turns out not to be the case. The single got to No 29 which in late-70s New Zealand would have probably meant selling about 29 copies.

    • Back in the late 80s/early 90s a group of us went ski-ing to a little Austrian village called Niederau. One of the ski-school instructors was Dave Lambert, once of The Strawbs. Most evenings he could be heard playing a few songs in one of the local bars; every evening he played State of the Union – twice! He certainly seemed to bear it no ill will – it had given him enough money to spend his days ski-ing and his evenings playing music and he seemed entirely happy with that as a lifestyle.

  39. I saw a poster a few weeks ago … Edison Lighthouse at the local British Legion.

    Edison Lighthouse not doing “Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)” would be the equivalent of the 1970 England World Cup Squad not doing “Back Home!”

    Went to a Man. City game in 1992 and whoever the dance duo were who did a cover of “Baker Street,” did it twice. It was as awful as it sounds.

  43. Cos they don’t mind playing it: Gary Brooker is no fool, and as the sole current member of the band left standing, knows which side his bread is buttered.
    A question that intrigues me is whether the Stranglers still play Golden Brown? Or indeed anything sung by Hugh Cornwell, or have those songs been expunged.

    • I saw them at Cropredy several years ago. They bored us to the tea tent after several hours of their set, during which every song started off sounding like it might be Whiter Shade of Pale but wasn’t. I assume they played it at some point, or perhaps they already had while we were resting our eyes.

  44. Mark Knopfler still plays Sultans of Swing at every gig and the last time I saw him he told the audience he still enjoyed playing it I am not sure I entirely believed him.

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