Forgotten Music Artists

[KUGDI]

Instead of underrated artists, who are some artists that you think were great in their heyday, but have slipped in relevancy in modern times?

Rod Stewart’s Rhythm of My Heart (which has a fantastic refrain) was on XM yesterday, and we got to talking about it. There are other threads which frequently put artists like him into the underrated category, but I can’t think of any real way Rod Stewart was is actually underrated (he might even be overrated). Instead, I think I’d put him in a “forgotten” category.

So, who are some successful/talented artists that are fading into time, and deserve being readdressed?

[EasyDisease]

Could be either underrated or forgotten, depending. But I submit Badfinger.

[beakumhawks]

Warren Zevon was much more than Werewolves of London and Harry Chapin was much more than Cats in the Cradle

[sean]

Rod Stewart was born in 1945 (i.e., he's less than 2 weeks from turning 76), so he's long past his prime. Heh. He was starting his singing in a band in 1963 before most of us were alive. In the late 60s, he started performing with the Jeff Beck Group and that's where he developed into a leading singer and became more widely known.

I have (or had . . . not sure I have a CD player, so I might have tossed it out) the 4 CD Complete Anthology: 1964–1990 of Rod Stewart called Storyteller. I enjoyed his 1980's music during the 80s, but the earlier stuff is where he really hit his stride (e.g., if you view his top songs on Rolling Stone, all but 1 of the top 10 are from the 70s), and he was much more bluesy. He was sort of unique in his day in being able to jump from blues to hard rock to folk, sometimes on the same album. For example, his 3rd album, Every Picture Tells a Story, was released in 1971 and was ranked 172 on the top 500 Rolling Stones ranked albums of all time. At one point that year, the album was #1 UK, US, Canada and Australia at the same time. Maggie May barely got included on it because Rod was told it didn't have a chance for commercial success (ha!). I was surprised at how many of the songs on that album I knew. And, his catalog through the rest of the 70s included a bunch of songs that were popular that I bet many of us would recognize. He mellowed out into the 80s and turned more pop (and that pop shift allowed him to attract and marry Rachael Hunter).

In 2013, his album Time hit #1 on the UK charts (giving him the largest gap between #1 albums ever) where it hit the adult and contemporary charts in the US. He's just pretty old. I don't know that I'd argue that he's underrated, but I doubt I'd consider him overrated, and I don't think he is forgotten quite yet. He's just an artist who had pretty decent success over a long period of time. In 2008, Billboard magazine ranked him the 17th most successful artist on the “Billboard Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists."

[sean]

Billy Joel should be on the list before Rod Stewart.

[EasyDisease]

Billy Joel should be on the list before Rod Stewart.

Ain't nobody forgotten Billy Joel...

[NoPantsChico]

[WolfShirtSophomore]

Butthole Surfers

[GardArmighty]

I'm old, so most of the great artists that I listened to are unknown (or barely known) by you younguns.

[EasyDisease]

I'm old, so most of the great artists that I listened to are unknown (or barely known) by you younguns.

That's awfully presumptuous.

[LARPHawk]

Someone tried to quantify this for 90s music. https://pudding.cool/2020/07/song-decay/

[KUGDI]

Someone tried to quantify this for 90s music. https://pudding.cool/2020/07/song-decay/

That’s fantastic.