Hot Take/ Musical Confession Thread!

This seems really weird to me, but in terms of putting out new singles that are commercially successful (measured by top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100) in four different decades, Aerosmith is apparently the most enduringly popular American (maybe the world, too?) band of all time. Not the most critically acclaimed, for sure, but the most enduringly popular...from 1975-2001.

Is there any other band that had top 10-charting new studio hit singles in 4 different decades? The Eagles only had top 10-charting songs from 1972-1980. Even bands like U2 (10 years of top 10 singles from 1987-1997) and the Grateful Dead (only 1 top 10 single) only really have a 20 year period of commercially successful newly released music. Pink Floyd had 14 high-charting (though only 1 in the top 10) singles from 1967-1994, which is 27 years. The Rolling Stones' had 23 US top 10 singles from Sept 1964- Aug 1989, just less than a 25 year span, (and only in 3 decades).

Aerosmith had 8 top 10 hits from Dec 1975- Feb 2001 - 25+ years. "Dream On" (1975), "Walk This Way" (1975), "Angel" (1988), "Love in An Elevator" (1989), "Janie's Got a Gun" (1989), "What it Takes" (1990), "I Don't Want to Miss A Thing" (1998), "Jaded" (2001). And "Dream On" was actually initially released in 1973 with a 45 rpm single, and reissued in 1975 with the album version as the single (which is the one that broke into the top 10) so you could add another couple of years to that range if you wanted to go back to 1973.

The Beach Boys had 15 top 10 hits from March 1963-July 1988, but only because of "Kokomo" (which Brian Wilson wasn't involved in recording). Without "Kokomo" their streak would have ended in 1976, and regardless, they only had singles in 2 or 3 decades.

I'm talking bands, not solo artists.
 
Ericj32 said:
This seems really weird to me, but in terms of putting out new singles that are commercially successful (measured by top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100) in four different decades, Aerosmith is apparently the most enduringly popular American (maybe the world, too?) band of all time. Not the most critically acclaimed, for sure, but the most enduringly popular...from 1975-2001.

Is there any other band that had top 10-charting new studio hit singles in 4 different decades? The Eagles only had top 10-charting songs from 1972-1980. Even bands like U2 (10 years of top 10 singles from 1987-1997) and the Grateful Dead (only 1 top 10 single) only really have a 20 year period of commercially successful newly released music. Pink Floyd had 14 high-charting (though only 1 in the top 10) singles from 1967-1994, which is 27 years. The Rolling Stones' had 23 US top 10 singles from Sept 1964- Aug 1989, just less than a 25 year span, (and only in 3 decades).

Aerosmith had 8 top 10 hits from Dec 1975- Feb 2001 - 25+ years. "Dream On" (1975), "Walk This Way" (1975), "Angel" (1988), "Love in An Elevator" (1989), "Janie's Got a Gun" (1989), "What it Takes" (1990), "I Don't Want to Miss A Thing" (1998), "Jaded" (2001). And "Dream On" was actually initially released in 1973 with a 45 rpm single, and reissued in 1975 with the album version as the single (which is the one that broke into the top 10) so you could add another couple of years to that range if you wanted to go back to 1973.

The Beach Boys had 15 top 10 hits from March 1963-July 1988, but only because of "Kokomo" (which Brian Wilson wasn't involved in recording). Without "Kokomo" their streak would have ended in 1976, and regardless, they only had singles in 2 or 3 decades.

I'm talking bands, not solo artists.
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1. I'm not certain but The Isley Brothers immediately came to mind.
2. I'd be willing to bet the farm that Queen undoubtedly would've gotten there if Mercury was still with us.
 
Phaneronic said:
1. I'm not certain but The Isley Brothers immediately came to mind.
2. I'd be willing to bet the farm that Queen undoubtedly would've gotten there if Mercury was still with us.
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Im pretty sure than Queen have about 5 straight decades, maybe 6, of number 1 singles in the U.K. with the various reissues of that damned song. I think they might have broken Cliff Richard’s previous record that was broken by him not having a number 1 in the 10s.
 
Joe Mac said:
Im pretty sure than Queen have about 5 straight decades, maybe 6, of number 1 singles in the U.K. with the various reissues of that damned song. I think they might have broken Cliff Richard’s previous record that was broken by him not having a number 1 in the 10s.
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Granted, but I think they would've managed it even if a given song of theirs only charted once, and within a couple years of it being first released.
 
Phaneronic said:
1. I'm not certain but The Isley Brothers immediately came to mind.
2. I'd be willing to bet the farm that Queen undoubtedly would've gotten there if Mercury was still with us.
Click to expand...
The Isley Brothers is a great guess! Hadn’t thought of them.

It looks like they had a top ten hit in 1969 with “It’s Your Thing,” and then another on in 1973 with “That Lady”, and then another with “Fight the Power” in 1975, but then there’s nothing until 1996 when they were featured on the R. Kelly single “Down Low (Nobody Has to Know).” But that single was released on an R. Kelly album and was never released separately by the Isley Brothers, so I don’t know if I would count it. They just kind of provide backing vocals.

Also, even if you count that R. kelly single they would win for the longest span of top ten singles at 27 years [or just tie Aerosmith, if you give them credit for the fact that they released “Dream On” on their self-titled album in 1973, even though it didn’t top the charts until it was re-released in 1975], but still would only have 3 decades covered (because they didn’t have any top 10 billboard hot 100 hits in the 80s).
 
dhodo said:
Is the hot take in this discussion that the chart success makes Aerosmith good?
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I'm not sure if it's a hot take since I'm not really stating an opinion - just a way of looking at facts that yields a surprising result (at least to me). I'm not saying that chart success makes them good - just, like, culturally relevant in a way that I don't think most people give them credit for. Of all of the legacy acts that have high-priced tours, I don't think Aerosmith gets recognition for the fact that, love them or hate them, they actually tried to keep making NEW music and were pretty damn successful in making new music over a long span of time, rather than just coasting on the success of their past hits.

Mostly I posted it here to see if someone could come up with any other band that had a longer stretch of top 10 singles. Maybe it's more of a "musical confession" because I haven't been able to come up with any. I think it's interesting that there are so many solo artists with that kind of longevity, but bands don't seem to last nearly as long - maybe it's easier to stay in the music business with fewer people to pay and negotiate decision-making with. It's wild to me that Aerosmith still exists and tours with the same 5 band members they started with 50 years ago.

For whatever reason, it seems like most bands tend to be rock bands, and rock bands tend to focus less on hit singles now and more on complete albums. And maybe Aerosmith has more of a pop sensibility to their music than other rock bands, and that's why they've been more successful on the singles charts, so maybe that skews things here.

Ultimately, I was trying to think of a way of determining with objective criteria how long a band has put out new music successfully that at least registers with people in a measurably significant way. I feel like measuring album sales is messy and is distorted by the fact that pre-streaming, people would just buy albums by popular bands because that was the only way to listen to the album* - singles don't really have that issue as much. And the issue with album sales post-streaming is that album sales in general have declined so much that "topping the charts" doesn't necessarily mean what it used to. Case in point [for both of those points], Aerosmith's last SIX albums have all made it to at least #5 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. That includes 2005's "Honkin' on Bobo" and 2012's "Music From Another Dimension!". So, if we wanted to talk high-charting albums, their streak would go from 1976 with "Rocks" at #3 to 2012 with MFAD at #5 - they'd still have a top 5 album in each of 5 decades (1 in the 70s, 1 in the 80s, 2 in the 90s, 2 in the 00s, and 1 in the 10s) - but all of that seems to be a less accurate way of measuring cultural relevance and significance. Every Rolling Stones album has charted in the top 5 on the Billboard 200, other than their debut which came in at #11 - but they're not all great, culturally significant albums. For both of these bands, the albums chart highly just because the bands are so popular that people just buy the albums without really checking to see if they enjoy that particular collection of songs.

*I feel like there's a weird phenomenon when you look through many artists'/bands' album sales where the albums that are the most popular or considered the best didn't necessarily chart the highest in their discography. Sometimes, their highest-charting album owes that status to the album(s) that were released right before in that artist/band's discography, which may have been a slower burn in generating sales, but built up the expectations for the new release. Like in Aerosmith's discography, I think Toys in the Attic is great, it charted at #11, but the album that came after it went to #3. "Nine Lives" went to #1 even though I don't think it's really considered to be that great - its biggest single was that song "Pink." But the album that came before it was "Get a Grip" which was their highest selling album ever worldwide.

--One last fun fact about Aerosmith: "On June 27, 1994, Aerosmith became the first major artist to release a song as an exclusive digital download, making the unreleased track "Head First" available as a 4-megabyte WAV file to Compuserve subscribers. Around 10,000 users downloaded the song in the first few days, even though at the time, most users accessed the service with a modem, meaning the download would have taken several hours."
 
Thackeraye said:
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This is interesting. It looks like they disqualified Aerosmith because their streak started in the 70s and ended in the 2000s. I would argue however, that it's more impressive that Aerosmith managed not just top 40 hits in each of those decades, but top 10 hits in each of those decades. U2 only has top ten hits in the 80s and 90s, but none since then. (Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Weird Al are all solo artists.)
 
Ericj32 said:
This is interesting. It looks like they disqualified Aerosmith because their streak started in the 70s and ended in the 2000s. I would argue however, that it's more impressive that Aerosmith managed not just top 40 hits in each of those decades, but top 10 hits in each of those decades. U2 only has top ten hits in the 80s and 90s, but none since then. (Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Weird Al are all solo artists.)
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I actually thought the U2 claim was a bit of a stretch as they were only featured...
 
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