Most avant garde chart hits?

B

bun-u

Trumpet Police
Two things I heard on the radio over the weekend made me ponder this, Laurie Anderson's 'O Superman' and The Tornadoes ‘Telstar’ – both extremely conceptual and “weird” but also both huge hits. What other chart-toppers fit this bill?
 
H

henry s

Street Fighting Man
"Tubular Bells" by Mike Oldfield was a weird Top 40 hit...don't know if this could be considered avant-garde, though...I mean, what kind of name is "Mike" for an avant-garde musician?
 
H

henry s

Street Fighting Man
of course, Brian Eno famously referred to MBV's "Soon" (or was it "To Here Knows When"?) as the most "vague" piece of music to enter the (UK) Top 40...
 
D

dHarry

Well-known member
The Beatles - Strawberry Fields Forever
Beach Boys - Good Vibrations
Kraftwerk - Autobahn
Donna Summer - I Feel Love
Human League - Sound Of The Crowd (record co. almost refused to release this with drum machine beats 'cause "people won't dance to it unless there's a real drummer playing")
Gary Numan & Tubeway Army - Are Friends Electric?
Kate Bush - Wuthering Heights/Babooshka/Man With The Child In His Eyes/Army Dreamers/Hounds Of Love/Running Up That Hill
David Bowie - Space Oddity/Life On Mars/Ashes To Ashes (don't know which other early stuff were hits?)
John Foxx - Underpass
Pink Floyd - Another Brick In The Wall
The Cure - A Forest (was it a hit?)
New Order - Blue Monday
Japan - Ghosts
LFO - LFO
Tricky Disco - Tricky Disco
Do all the rave/hardcore hits count? Smart E's, Prodigy, Altern 8, Human Resource etc
Aphex Twin/Polygon Window - Quoth (think it scraped the UK charts?)
My Bloody Valentine - Soon
Stone Roses - Fools Gold
Sugababes - Freak Like Me
 
S

simon silverdollar

Guest
whigfield's 'saturday night' is really, really odd. honestly.
i heard it for the first time in years the other day and i couldn't believe it. it's crazily minimal and emotionless.
 
H

henry s

Street Fighting Man
perhaps there needs to be some kind of distinction between "weird" and "avant-garde" here...think of the myriad chart-topping novelty songs (Crazy Frog/"Shuttup You Face"/that stupid "don't forget to wear sunscreen" song, etc.) that are certainly strange but hardly avant-garde...
 
B

bun-u

Trumpet Police
henry s said:
perhaps there needs to be some kind of distinction between "weird" and "avant-garde" here...think of the myriad chart-topping novelty songs (Crazy Frog/"Shuttup You Face"/that stupid "don't forget to wear sunscreen" song, etc.) that are certainly strange but hardly avant-garde...
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I suppose as well as considering those hits underpinned with an overt avant garde manifesto, you could also consider hits which sought just to be hits but which were inadvertently avant garde. I’d stick ‘humanoid’ and ‘quoth’ in the former category –….not sure about Whigfield though.
 
B

borderpolice

Well-known member
early timbaland stuff, like Aaliya: are u that somebody. novel rhythmical phrasing. hugely influential. First HipHop HIts like rappers delight. i don't know if it made the charts, but
Brandy: what about us, at least the original mixes, has a really odd rhythm.

what is noteworthy about these -- and (almost) all the title mentioned upthread is that they innovate on one level but stay rather conventional on all others.
 
D

droid

Guest
borderpolice said:
what is noteworthy about these -- and (almost) all the title mentioned upthread is that they innovate on one level but stay rather conventional on all others.
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True.

Probably what allows them access to the charts in the first place.
 
O

owen

Well-known member
good calls all round. my tuppence worth-

this
cr0002a.jpg

is actually really really odd, all angular and rhythmically bent- haven't heard anything else quite like it, even in his subsequent stuff...
as is this single-
david-essex-rock-on.jpg

a sort of diconnected anti-rockist elegy, with incredibly eerie echoed percussion, like a depressive norman whitfield...
and the still utterly terrifying sound of slamming someone's head in a car door for fun- (love how 'tipsy' and 'hollerback girl' are like the bubblegum version of this)
grind.jpg

oh oh and in case anyone hasn't mentioned it yet, this is sui generis-
Japan-Ghosts-39575.jpg
 
H

henry s

Street Fighting Man
speaking of Prince, can anybody think of another (vocal) number one that doesn't have a chorus? ("When Doves Cry")

and how odd must Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit In The Sky" have appeared at that time...(now there's a real gospel-boogie number, to link to another thread)...
 
M

mms

sometimes
that track poing by rotterdam termination source just a drum and a man going poing poin poing

also da da da da

those people in the charts at the mo who sing pop songs in italian with amateur operatic voices . that is just fucking weird!
 
H

hamarplazt

100% No Soul Guaranteed
mms said:
that track poing by rotterdam termination source just a drum and a man going poing poin poing
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Poing was basically a minimal techno track, only faster. All variation was in the 909-programming. The poing-sound was a synth. I never cared much for the original, but there's some really great remixes, especially on the Merry X-mess-EP.

It reminds me of a track called 'Distorgasm' by the danish gabber group Barbaque, which became some kind of cult hit in Denmark, even though I don't know if it ever got into anything but indie-charts (but at the time these basically contained nothing but grunge, so it's amazing anyway). It was a total gabber blast full of insane analogue synth noise, but it also had a sample going "Karin Østergaard er et svin", meaning "Karin Østergaard is a pig" (Karin Østergaard was their school teacher, legend has it), and that made it a kind of novelty hit. One of the Barbaque-guys later became a producer for Aqua.

BTW, wasn't 'James Browns is Dead' a chart hit too?
 
M

mms

sometimes
hamarplazt said:
Poing was basically a minimal techno track, only faster. All variation was in the 909-programming. The poing-sound was a synth. I never cared much for the original, but there's some really great remixes, especially on the Merry X-mess-EP.

It reminds me of a track called 'Distorgasm' by the danish gabber group Barbaque, which became some kind of cult hit in Denmark, even though I don't know if it ever got into anything but indie-charts (but at the time these basically contained nothing but grunge, so it's amazing anyway). It was a total gabber blast full of insane analogue synth noise, but it also had a sample going "Karin Østergaard er et svin", meaning "Karin Østergaard is a pig" (Karin Østergaard was their school teacher, legend has it), and that made it a kind of novelty hit. One of the Barbaque-guys later became a producer for Aqua.

BTW, wasn't 'James Browns is Dead' a chart hit too?
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yeah you're right i remembered it wrong..


you've just reminded me of 'i want to be a hippy' by technohead who were the gto/tricky disco kids.

merry x mess was an ace ep
so funny when i was 17 and stoned all the time.

i liker that run of funny european pop concept bands like scat man john, aqua and the venga boys during the late 90's , they were ace .
 
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P

petergunn

plywood violin
borderpolice said:
early timbaland stuff, like Aaliya: are u that somebody. novel rhythmical phrasing. hugely influential. First HipHop HIts like rappers delight. i don't know if it made the charts, but
Brandy: what about us, at least the original mixes, has a really odd rhythm.

what is noteworthy about these -- and (almost) all the title mentioned upthread is that they innovate on one level but stay rather conventional on all others.
Click to expand...


i'd nominate "work it" by missy, just j/c the chorus is backwards gobblety gook...
 
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