Tom Dunne: The best sellers aren't always the best albums
My Bloody Valentine in 2008. (Photo by Samir Hussein/Getty Images)
A very recent vote to decide what was the “Top Irish Album” of all time concluded that My Bloody Valentine’s 1991 album Loveless was just the job. This was a great poll in fairness, lovingly compiled from votes cast by music writers, DJs and industry people who love music. I was one such judge.
Inevitably, as all good polls should, it sparked debate about the entire pointlessness of such polls. “You are comparing oranges and apples,” some people say, “They are both fruits, but that’s where it ends.”
Loveless is a great example of the type of album that tops these polls. It sold almost nothing. Its recording, reputed to have cost almost £250,000, almost bankrupted its record label, Creation. It peaked at 24 in the charts and the band was dropped.
Subsequently the band behaved as all great “lost bands” should behave. They were signed to Island for a lot of money but failed to deliver very much by way of “product.” There were rumours of “writer’s block” and endless unfinished recordings. The member’s drifted away.
Critically it was adored. It was seen as a kind of indie equivalent of the Beach Boys' classic Pet Sounds. There is something in that blend of voices, melody and feedback guitar that is simply sublime, and god-like. It stood out as something cut from a superior cloth.
The Pet Sounds comparisons proved prophetic. Both albums hinted of even greater works to come. For Wilson and the much-anticipated Smile album, it was a weight of expectation that proved too much.
When I interviewed Kevin Shields in the late 1990s, he was almost as reclusive a figure as the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson had become. He seemed bemused by the clamour for a follow up to Loveless. The critical reaction had astonished him. He wasn’t really sure what he had done in the first place. How was he going to repeat it?
If the record industry was to be based on albums like Loveless, there would be no industry. But it isn’t. It is based on albums like The Joshua Tree, Everybody Else is Doing it Why Can’t We, and I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got. Big, smelly multimillion-selling, era-defining monsters.
That is why it is called Popular Music. It is why it is a part of Popular Culture.
Record companies want something that is not only critically vital but also massive. It is the sales figures that allow us all to do it again. Without them, as Neil Hannon once told me, “We would need to go away.”
The Blue Nile were a case in point. Their art was without equal, but their work rate was painfully slow. They frustrated their record company to the point where one executive remarked that, in industry terms, they were “gentleman farmers.” It was a labour or love for them more so than a career. The record company needed signings that got the career bit. It’s a Faustian pact, but if an artist wants longevity, it’s one that must be entered into.
That said you can’t look at such critic’s polls without marvelling at the bands that, technically, didn’t make it. Wonderful bands like A House or the Stars of Heaven. The music still seems as fresh as ever, the lyrics on point. How did this not sell whilst REM, to name but one, sold millions?
I don’t have an answer here. My record shelves groan under the weight of “classic albums” that have sold almost zero copies. Radiators from Space, Ghostown, come on down.
I think often, though, of the words of Tracey Thorn from Everything but The Girl. When the success of Missing catapulted the band into the upper reaches of the charts it brought with it a level of fame they had never expected or sought.
It reached a peak when they were asked to open for U2 on one on of their stadia-filling world tours. “This isn’t me,” thought Thorn, “I’m not Sade. We just wanted to write songs.”
You can’t help but think there are many bands like this. People who fall in love with the idea of making music and who sometimes exceed their own wildest expectations. But they didn’t really set out to be “stars.”
And that is why we need “critics polls.” To remember the ones that the industry, with its metrics based on platinum disks and ticket sales, will not recall. But who still lit up the night, with artistry and originality, and their own unique voices.
