I wanted to explore this, it seems like it mostly happens in classic rock. I like it because it’s like the group delivering a thesis statement for the content of their music or their intended commercial trajectory.
I think it works even better when it’s done by a band later into their career, like they’re reflecting on the culmination of their work. Can people link me examples? I’d love to see if this has happened more outside of the rock genre
Off the top of my head:
Bad Company (debut album)
Black Sabbath (debut album)
Damn Yankees (debut album)
Blue Öyster Cult (11th album)
Dimmu Borgir (8th album, black metal)
Run the Jewels (debut album, rap)
Eyes of Noctom (debut album, black metal, fun fact: this is Nicholas Cage’s son)
Highwaymen (debut album, country)
They Might Be Giants have a self titled track (but not album) included in their third album Flood
Lol what genre is this? I love the utterances of BOY
I saw them play and record a song backwards and then play the tape backwards for us to hear the song forward. Does that make sense? Too much musicality for my brain…
TMBG defies genres, but they can’t be silenced.
They are a little bird house in my soul.
Not to put too fine a point on it
BOY
Their first album is self titled, always bothered me that the eponymous song wasn’t on the eponymous album.
You’re right. I had the collection of their first two albums with bonus tracks. I forgot it was actually self titled originally.
You mean Then: The Early Years? There are some solid bonus tracks. The Joshua Fried remix of The World’s Address is great
Big Country - In A Big Country
I like this vibe. Shoutout to music videos that are just the band members goofing around doing stuff that they construct to give a short narrative.
Slave to the System by Slave to the System on their album Slave to the System.
I thought this was the tackiest shit ever when I was younger, but looking it up now I guess they were a super group so the very on-the-nose-ness of it feels a little bit less bad. I have no idea how I came across the album but I listened to loads of random music.
I love this though! Tackiness in music is great, it’s what we have headphones for.
listened to loads of random music
The best way to find new music.
“Iron Maiden” by Iron Maiden off their debut album called “Iron Maiden”.
Ooh, that should have been obvious. Iron Maiden was always a bit of a blind spot for me but that song inspired something:
green day
motorhead
slip knot
rammstein
canned heat
Oh hell yeah, I wish I had known about that Rammstein one long ago. I need to catch up with their music. The video was adequately sexually charged and disconcerting for what I would expect from them
adequately sexually charged and disconcerting for what I would expect from them
Sadly this seems to apply in the worst possible way to Till Lindemann on a private level as well. 🤮
Indeed. One of my favorite people said that there’s something more deeply wounding about sex crimes when they’re perpetrated by people from countercultural and alternative art movements. Like a huge thesis of counterculture is that there should be nothing to fear in the darker aspects of the human experience. But then a guy like Till or Manson or Victor Salva will fuck it all up. They reinforce the cultural narratives about fear of the other, social hierarchy, and the invincibility that their fame earns them.
Those ones really fuck me up
Yup.
Another issue I have is when artists make art about the fucked up sides of human nature, and you buy into it and think they are brilliant for portraying it. And then you find out that nope, they’re just giant creeps who tell on themselves. It makes it pretty much impossible for me to enjoy their art after.
I believe, in some degree, in separating the art from the artist. I can listen to the Beatles even though Lennon was a wife beater, though the line “I used to be cruel to my woman I’d beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loves” hits a bit harder than it should. But when the art mirrors the artist it becomes impossible. The jokes of Louis CK would have aged a lot better had they not all been about behaving like a total creep. With Rammstein I can’t help but feel that the trademark uneasiness is just Till telling on himself, and I feel like a gullible idiot for using to enjoy it without realizing it wasn’t an act. Like the joke was on me.
That’s EXACTLY what it is. Like, oh you weren’t portraying anything artistically this is just how you live.
Same, I like to think I can and prefer to appreciate art sperate from the artist’s private lives. But that’s the kind of transgression that rewrites and recontextualizes the work. Also that Louis CK shit is wild because if you listen to him talk about it afterwards he still doesn’t really understand what went wrong with what he was doing. Now that I’m thinking about it this might have been why I never checked in on Rammstein after the last time I heard they were still making music
Big in Japan were not from Japan but they were big in Japan after they released their single “Big in Japan”.
Wow search engines kind of hate them. Interesting case of normative determinism though and it looks like they all went on to be in other more famous acts.
Living in a Box, by Living in a Box from their debut album Living in a Box.
Holy HELL i loved that. New fixation unlocked.
It is a catchy one.
Then there’s the band Flowers that released an album called Icehouse, and halfway through the release changed their name to Icehouse - to not be confused with a Scottish band called Flowers - so the early albums are called “Icehouse by Flowers” and the later ones “Flowers by Icehouse”.
You missed the fact the last track on the Icehouse album is also called Icehouse.
The international release is icehouse by icehouse containing the track icehouse
Ramones covered R.A.M.O.N.E.S. by Motörhead on their final album, Adios Amigos.
Wilco (the song) appears on Wilco (the album), which is the seventh studio album of Wilco (the band).
God’s Hate
This is a vibe. I love how he’s sensually whispering Wizaaard throughout the track
Crash Land - Crash Land is one of my fave songs, which has been in my rotation for quite a long time. Originally one of the remixes made its way into a playlist of mine. When I checked out the original, I was hooked.
I can see why you like that, I really like this Rootkit one. As a serial job-hopper with autism this is really speaking to me. I am a fucking alien
Angel Witch - Angel Witch - Angel Witch
Talk Talk
This doesn’t fit the prompt in a technical sense, but does so thematically:
The band originally known as Imagica changed their name due to overlap with another artist. For one week they went by Nothing and Nowhere (shared with their first album and a track that would appear on a later album) before settling on their current name, The Birthday Massacre. The Birthday Massacre was the original third track of the Nothing and Nowhere LP, but was renamed Happy Birthday during the band’s final name change.
I like it a lot though. Going to listen to more of them.
edit: Fuck this is really good. It goes so well with retrowave and some goth music I’ve collected from lemmy.
Oop, I am bad at checking replies.
Yeah, TBM is criminally underplayed. If they hadn’t shown up on a Pandora station for me some 15 or so years ago, I don’t know if or when I would have encountered them. Glad you’re enjoying them! They have a really unique sound that scratches an itch in my brain that no one else really does.
I’d be happy to trade music recs as I’m big into retrowave and some goth as well.
Hell yeah, it blew my mind that album that Happy Birthday was on was from 2002. At that age I would have had no idea music like this existed, I can’t imagine how I would have reacted.
Sure! The band this reminds me the most of is Gunship. But also this group called Your Inland Empire got posted to c/gothindustrial and they fit the sound pretty well.
I’m open to any more you’d recommend 🤘
Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if my life trajectory went slightly differently if I discovered them back in 2002 as well.
Love Gunship, been a fan since their eponymous album (though no such track yet, haha) and I’ve been listening to Unicorn pretty regularly since its release.
I haven’t heard of Your Inland Empire, but I like their sound from the track you linked. I’ll have to check out more of them.
I don’t listen to The Midnight a lot, but they are what immediately come to mind for retrowave with vocals.
Since we’ve only discussed artists with vocalists, I’m not going to go too deep into non-vocalist solo artists but I love darksynth, so I gotta give shout outs to Pertubator and Carpenter Brut who are the goats of the genre and have several tracks with featured vocalists. And a much more obscure darksynth artist without vocals I am going to recommend is Orax’s Love Kills the Demon as it emotionally vibes closer to TBM than a lot of other things for me.
A bit more mainstream, Shiny Toy Guns has some similar energy to TBM, more so on their first and third albums, though I guess they’ve been on hiatus for 10+ years now.
Let me know if any of this tickle your fancy. I didn’t pick out any real goth stuff, but I should have been asleep hours ago, ha
I love Perturbator and Carpenter Brut. That Desire song is new to me though, I haven’t heard anything of theirs be so chill before. Also reminds me I’ve been meaning to watch that Angel Egg film
These are all great! My favorite was the Midnight Sun one but I’m going to be exploring them all a lot more. I liked how quintessentially 2000’s that Shiny Toy Guns video was. So thanks for showing me more stuff 😀
