Bad choices for lead-off singles

Did it? I remember it being a huge hit and hearing it all the time on the radio.

If'it's filler, it's damn good filler. It's a fantastic song and Seger performs it beautifully. While there's no bad song on The Distance (Seger's best album in my judgment), "Shame on the Moon" is one of the best. If I recall, two of the rockers on the album ("Even Now" and "Roll Me Away") were released as follow-up singles and neither made as big a chart impact as "Shame".

 

Coney Hatch going with Devil's Deck instead of...

 

It was his second biggest hit single ever at US #2 on Billboard. How could a #2 hit single kill his chart momentum? Unless you mean it killed his momentum of consistently charting lower than that?

 

In the US, I'd go with "The Fly" off of Achtung Baby by U2. Lousy first single.

It pretty much tanked and didn't make the Top 40 -- they redeemed themselves with "Mysterious Ways" and "One" -- the next two singles.

In the late '80s and early '90s (and maybe into today -- who knows?), I think some of the larger artists were leading new albums off with weaker first singles simply because it bought them a hit. The first track is almost always going to get airplay simply out of curiousity, and, if it was a decent enough song, might chart higher if it was first out of the gate.
Then the artist could follow it up with 2 or 3 of the killer cuts from the album...

 

Wow...I like "My Best Friend" a lot but never knew it was the lead off single.

 

Strange, I've never thought Women sounds much like anything from Pyromania. Armageddon It is nearer to me. Women wasn't a great choice if it wasn't edited. It takes a long time to get to the chorus, which isn't one of their strongest. It's a good album opener though.

 

No, Drive was perfect for what they set out to do at the time.

 

Did it? I mean, it was supposedly a big hit (although I've never actually heard it anywhere post-80's, ever), #2 for several weeks. If anything killed his momentum, it was not making another album for 4 years afterwards. But then he had another #1 hit in 1987 (albeit another song I don't think has been played anywhere after the 80's ended). So considering he only made two albums between 1981 and 1990, I think he did better than most, from a strictly commercial standpoint.

 

I bought that song right after it came out in 1973...I remember my mom saying that it was really weird!

 

So do I. They got away with it in the UK as it wasn't a big hit, wasn't played much on radio and was quickly forgotten. I'm surprised that the US chart position is so high (11?). That's a high profile duffer of a record.

Roger and Brian like to blame homophobia or MTV for the decline in US popularity, but I think releasing records like Body Language when they did had far more to do with it.

 

The only great track on the album. People have no taste, but we know that.

 

“Elephant” by Tame Impala from Lonerism. Too safe a choice musically, and may as well have been a Black Keys song. “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” or “Apocalypse Dreams”, which better represent the album’s theme, would have been my preferences.

 

::: I discovered this GREAT album recently: it really deserves a listen

 

(re: The Fly / U2) Oh, it's not a bad track...just a bad first single imo. I was around 20 when this first hit and I remember that people I knew were pretty pumped for the new U2 album...and "The Fly" went nowhere with pretty much all of them. Since it went to #62, it seems like it landed with a thud for most listeners.

 

I was in thick of my radio career in August 87 when Def Leppard delivered "Women". I asked the same question to Polygram when we finally got our copies and they said - "Trust us - the album is very deep - this is just a taster to get people talking". And remember too - Hysteria did not really break (even with all those wonderful 2nd, 3rd and 4th singles) until the next summer (Around June/July 88) when things really began to heat up. That's the 80's for ya.

If they tried that today - taking the better part of a year to break a record - the band would be extinct. Then again - no band today would ever be as prepared with a killer set of tracks like the Leps were with Hysteria. I would think it's in my top 5 most perfect albums - merely for the overall quality of the songs - and that was one long record too!

VP

 

Yeah, I liked it too...I don't think it was necessarily a bad choice, it was a top 10 regional hit in the Bay Area.

 

It rehabilitated their credibility and went to number 1 in the charts

 

"Rock'n'Roll Cities" off the Kinks' Think Visual. Not only a bad choice for a single, it's the worst song on the album, and one of the worst of the group's career. Whose idea was that?

And they didn't learn any lessons from that debacle -- the leadoff single off their next album, UK Jive, was the utterly pedestrian "How Do I Get Close". Its B-side, "War Is Over", would have been a vastly better pick.

Neither album sold well.

 

::: I got this cd over radio air play of 'Chocolate' and how much I enjoyed 'Temple Of Low Man' on high school. I found an amazingly tight and well crafted album with songs like "Wheather with You" "Fall At Your Feet" and specially "It's Only Natural"... a real missed opportunity by the band on the US 1st single. I still have that cd and enjoyd the songs but always skip the cake.

 

The Fly by U2 also went to number one in the UK. Might have flopped in the States, but there are other countries out there, right?

 

The all-time champ of baffling lead-off singles, Bill Wyman's "In Another Land" from The Rolling Stones' "Their Satanic Majesties Request" LP. London Records were quick to figure out it was a stiff and rush-released "She's A Rainbow" a mere 2 weeks later.

 

I was only a kid, about nine, but I don't remember hearing The Girl Is Mine at all in the UK. Beat It, Billie Jean and Thriller were everywhere. I also remember hearing Wanna Be Startin' Something a lot.

 

The first push of this album from MTV was the fantastic "Animal"...still easily my fave cut from Hysteria. I didn't even notice "Women" until I bought the record.

 

Body Language was an awful choice. In my alternate universe, that song doesn't exist, and Back Chat, Las Palabras De Amor, and Calling All Girls are the three singles from that album (and Under Pressure is a non-album track). In this universe, as poorly as Back Chat did in the UK (#40), it would've probably been a killer lead single.

 

According to the timings on wikipedia, the single version was shortened by nearly a minute. Interestingly, though Women only made US#80 on the Billboard Hot 100, it made #7 on Billboard's "Rock" chart, beating out the title track at #9 and 'Pour Some Sugar' which peaked at only #25 on that chart!