The Dead are a good reference actually. Like Buffet, their success was far outside the typical path of successful musicians and built on the bedrock of live performance. Most people know one Jimmy Buffet song, but I bet most know zero Grateful Dead songs.
Obviously one-hit wonder is an incorrect description, but it is accurate to say that Buffet was very different than most rock stars.
I am very sad to learn that we have Parrot Heads on this website
Sure - Buffetâs success and lasting was based more on his live performances/aura than on his hits. But he couldnât have got to that point without initially having popular songs to bring people to his shows. This is similar to the Dead. Another more recent comp is Dave Matthews - he never had any huge hits (no top-10 and only a few top-40) but had an outsized influence due to his live performances. But again, he still needed those initial top-40 hits to draw people to his shows.
Iâm not sure thatâs accurate, the Dead had their biggest commercial success Touch of Grey after theyâd built up a cult fan base.
I donât think Clovis is being disparaging at all here. Some bands just inherently arenât radio-friendly.but still build up a following of loyal fans through word of mouth. They can be a âone hit wonderâ in a literal sense but still have a big cultural impact.
Thatâs true, but a âone-hit wonderâ is a band that has one hit and is never heard from again. A band that only has one traditional hit but is otherwise enormously successful is not a one-hit wonder.
Something about shark fins, though that might be in âCheeseburger in Paradiseâ
In light of the news
Exactly. Itâs just a question of how literally you want to interpret what âone hit wonderâ means. Perhaps âonly had one commercial hitâ would be a less loaded way of saying it.
Clovis sounds like he thinks almost no one knows more than one Jimmy Buffett song because he only knows one Jimmy Buffett song. It feels disparaging towards Parrot Heads, like he feels Buffett suckered a bunch of people into being loyal fans by just playing âMargaritavilleâ, that his âcomplimentâ about building an empire is more about thinking Buffett had an elite one-hit wonder grift to make way more money than his talent deserved rather than that he put out a lot of music that built up a dedicated fan base.
We watched this last month. It was pretty funny. What a timely video for Burback
He didnât say anything at all about grifting or a lack of talent. Iâm not sure I even grok what it means for a musician to âgriftâ their fans like that.
Man, we will argue about anything.
No we wonât.
I didnât say any of that. How about not adding a bunch of extra shit to my post thanks.
If there was a way to bet I would bet that less than 10% of a randomly polled population could name two of his songs.
I think his appeal was the truly escapist nature of his songs/writing. He used to do 5 sold out shows every summer in Cincinnati.
Why was he Cincinnatiâs Taylor Swift? Partly because of âFinsâ (âshe came down from Cincinnati, took her 3 days on a trainâŚâ), but mostly because he sang about this ethereal, slightly fantastical place and people that were the antithesis of a Rust Belt working class city.
As we on this board approach middle age, I also highly recommend his book âA Pirate Looks at Fifty,â where youâll see his true talent for storytelling on display. He was truly a talented writer of songs and stories.
Supposedly, according to Reddit at least, he was a coked out prick in person.
I mean who isnât
Less than 10% of a randomly polled population could name 2 Beyonce songs
We will not. Idiot
Would take the over on both of these.