"The" bands just good marketing?

Bartronilic

I noticed while growing up when I used to read obscure music forums and The Vibe on teletext (!) that every year around janurary to may (not always this time) there is a new "brilliant" band that is "so much better than the tripe on the charts at the moment" but are "obscure". The band members have cockney, geordie, yarkshire, scouser or manchester accents or some strong accent, have "the" in their name, sing about working class life and have 2 catchy songs with a killer riff and quirky but cool lyrics. Weirdly, enough, by the end of the year this band have one or more top ten hits, are nominated for 20 billion brit awards and the same people who liked them for obscurity hate them now except a few. Then the bands either fade out of the mainstream (Kasabian, franz ferdinand (probably cos they have no "the" in their name)), or end up having an exact same second album (snow patril, monkeys). Someone get rid of these bands before Editors and the view become the next big thing.

Is this a way for record companies to get through to the sort of anti mainstreamers? By creating word of mouth and hyping them up and marketing them as "cool" and "so NOT spice girls"?

And also i didn't give great examples, I can provide later. Am I just stating the obvious here?

pbsuxok1znja4r

Definitely just stating the obvious.
Here's a tip, though. Don't listen to the radio. Don't listen to magazine. Don't listen to what's on T.V.

TBH it only takes a listen or two to find out if a band is really "brilliant", so people who go in for these hyped bands have of course heard them and are obviously just happy to consume what they're being fed, etc.

Karl Hungus

Obvious.

The whole alternative rock thing is just pop dressed up for people who don't want to believe they're listening to pop. It's the same simple songs and catchy choruses that Britney and the likes have, and they just go through the same phases as pop, with bands being the next big thing one moment, and gone the next.

A rose by any other name...

Captain Smiggy

Karl Hungus wrote:

A rose by any other name...

Sums it up exactly, Whats so bad about pop anyway? Beach boys were pop. The Pipettes are pop. There's nothing wrong with being accessible.

Karl Hungus

Captain Smiggy wrote:

There's nothing wrong with being accessible.

Accessible has become a formulae. A particular structure of verse/chorus/verse. It's all about writing a song for the sheer sake of making something that'll sell, not about making music for the love of it.

Spectator#1

I love bands that come out in January.

weemcd

fúcking A dudes, alternative baby \m/:D\m/ :rolleyes: