On a recent interview form The Joe Rogan podcast, The Black Keys's Patrick Carney mentions how he stopped his record label from pushing the single "Lonely Boy" into the Top 40 radio format. He genuinely thought it would be a bad move with their core fan base. Simply, he didn't want their songs being played at the checkout counter in Walgreens.
Having a hit song comes with it's pros and cons.
PROS:
-You get more exposure and broaden your audience.
-More PR opportunities and better touring
-$$$$, etc....
CONS:
-You reach new audiences, but they don't dig deeper into your music.
-That new audience only see's you for that one song.
-The overexposure makes you less attractive to your original fan base.
I love Jimmy Eat World, their album Clarity is prolific and "For Me This Is Heaven" is one of my all time favorite songs. However, they are mostly known for "The Middle" not a bad song, but a song I can't listen to anymore, especially when I hear it while buying groceries at Ralph's.
To put it best, I have a SATURATION POINT with songs in popular music, to an extent that I feel they hold no value after a certain level of it being drilled into our heads a trillion times. This is just me, I'm a weirdo and in a way I see a lot of popular music as disposable.
Just think about Lou Bega's "Mambo #5" or Jimmy Ray's simply fucking titled "Are You Jimmy Ray", they are profitable after thoughts and irony of the late 90s. The band of my youth was Blink-182 but "All The Small Things" is a terrible song yet somehow managed to become their biggest hit.
Weezer made two of the most iconic rock albums of the 90s, however, it's a song like "Beverly Hills" that gets nailed into our heads.
Yet, that's the possible repercussions for artists/bands in popular music. Your new audiences are mostly passive listeners who will be listening to your song passively at work, car, gym, etc where it will then be displayed via social media.
Now listen, some take the :15 minutes and power on. Nora Jones, Dan Wilson (Semisonic), Duncan Sheik (Spring Awakening) and others manage to have successful careers after their one hit moments.
Overall it seems like record labels are always looking to "seize the moment" when a song cracks the mainstream because they are hoping for anything to break an artist. Simply you don't know what will happen tomorrow and the consumer's attention could easily drift somewhere else.
For me, maybe I'll just put on my iTunes/Spotify the next time I'm in the grocery store.
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