There are people --- too many, unfortunately as far as I'm concerned --- who will hear a song, like it, buy it and then move on. These people are mostly what we used to call single-buyers; people who are more interested in what's popular and in the charts than in any one band. Their collection probably consists of hundreds, perhaps thousands of singles all of different bands. Having heard something they like, they have no desire to look further into that artiste's music. They may love the single, but they won't buy the album. Or they might, if it has enough hit singles on it, but are unlikely to play the whole thing through any more than once. They're not interested in collecting an artiste's discography, and they don't care what their new album sounds like. To some extent, I experience this first hand, as my sister is, or was, one of these people. There were certain songs she liked and no matter how much I tried to get her into the albums from which those songs came, or other albums, she wasn't interested. She's a big Bon Jovi fan, but her last experience of them was "Keep the faith", and she hasn't had any interest in their newer albums. Of course, now she's bedbound with MS, so I shouldn't put her down for not keeping up to date with music. But even when she was well and healthy, this was her attitude.
It's an attitude sadly too familiar and widespread, and it leads to, I suppose, singles being hits, and more than that, being one-hit wonders, or classed as such. But it's sad when people won't take the time to delve a little deeper, because they might surprise themselves and find a lot more music they like. We've all learned that lesson; indeed, for most of us it informs the way we pursue, discover and enjoy music. But because of this tendency to just buy "the hits", a large percentage of the population --- let's not be unkind and call them ignorant; let's say "uninformed musically" --- probably think that some bands only had one hit, or that all their music is like that one they like. All Foreigner music is "I want to know what love is". Everything a-ha have done is "Take on me", and Europe never wrote or had another hit after "The final countdown". It's a blinkered, biased view, but I suppose you can't blame these people. Some people are just not as into music as you and I. However I would like to set the record straight.
The problem as I see it with this approach is that those outside of their fanbase or those not interested in the genre, or music generally, think this is all there is to a band, and that attitude gets around. So anyone hearing, for instance, a-ha's "Angel in the snow" would be surprised it's not a poppy, electro dancy song. They expect everything to sound the same --- I don't know why --- and they get a little miffed when this doesn't happen, and so don't buy another song from that band. But for the band themselves these big hit singles, --- sometimes their only mainstream successes --- can hang around their collective necks like a millstone, dogging their careers like the very albatross for which this section is named. Because they've been so successful, and because their next single isn't almost exactly the same, people turn away, and the band --- who probably don't really care --- soldier on, producing album after album and perhaps gaining awards and respect among their peers, but all this passes by unnoticed by the general public. To them, the band only ever had one song, and that's all they care about.
So in this section I'm looking at singles which were the commercial highpoint of a band's career, but which, after the dust had settled, they moved on from and went on to do quite well --- in some cases extremely well---, while the "single-buyers" stuffed the record away in their growing collection and forgot all about them. While the sometimes unexpected success was rarely if ever the end of a band, commercially it could seem so. DJs would know them by this single. Radio stations would play it and nothing else from the band, no matter how old it was. The band would become defined by this single, and in the eyes of the public, outside of those "in the know", they never released anything else, or nothing worth hearing anyway.
Follow you follow me
Genesis
Released February 25 1978
From the album "And then there were three"
Backed with "Ballad of Big" in the UK and "Inside and out" in the USA
Chart position: 7 (UK) 24 (USA) --- first chart success for Genesis in the States
Without question the biggest hit single for Genesis, and their first proper entrance into the pop charts since "I know what I like" in 1973, the final track off the first album to feature only the remaining three core members of Genesis --- Mike Rutherford, Tony Banks and Phil Collins --- shot them into the top ten and made people who had up till then only considered Genesis as a book in the Bible sit up and take notice. The song is a complete departure from their usual progressive rock pieces, most of which tended to be quite long and focussed on esoteric subjects, such as mythology, fantasy or folklore, or rural themes. It would be seen as their first real love song, and probably is really, although "Wind and wuthering" has the sublime "Afterglow". More importantly, it was an accessible song from the band. The lyric deals with simple themes: love, devotion, friendship. I guess you'd say it's Genesis's "chick song", and certainly after it became a hit the band do note in documentaries that there was a sudden increase in the female audience at their gigs.
Although it did phenomenally well for them, considering this was their first hit single and they had at this time been in existence for almost a decade, its success was not repeated with the followup single, another love song, "Many too many", which just missed the top forty here and did nothing Stateside. After that of course Genesis would become more commercial and by virtue of this become better known, with more hit singles from "Duke" and indeed later albums like "We can't dance", but this was their high point, and ask anyone --- who's not a fan or a person interested in music --- to name one Genesis song and the likelihood is that this will be the one they point to. It's quite sad really, because although I love the song it is a much weaker track than others on the album, particularly the powerful "Burning rope" and the beautiful, eerie "Snowbound", to say nothing of the menacing "The lady lies". Perhaps the label shot themselves in the foot too, by backing it (at least on this side of the water) with what is without question the worst track on the album, the risible "Ballad of Big", which I always skip over when playing the album. In the days of physical vinyl singles, it was often the practice to turn the disc over and see what was on the B-side. Anyone doing that here would have been most disappointed. Maybe it would have been a different story had one of the songs I mentioned above been chosen to accompany the big hit, or even "Scenes from a night's dream", or "Undertow". Or anything but that bloody song!
But this is how it went, and as a result, though Genesis became better known and accepted off the back of that single, and indeed changed their musical direction --- whether in an effort to replicate or cash-in on that success or not I won't speculate --- there must have been times when they got weary of the constant calls for it at their concerts. "How about
Supper's ready instead?" No, give us "Follow you follow me". Oh bloody hell, okay, here we go again....
Philistines.