I just want a hit record, yeah
I was recently listening to a CD mix I put together several years ago. It’s comprised of songs by bands that never quite hit the big time but, in my opinion, deserved to be bigger than they were. And it got me thinking. Why do some truly talented singers/musicians/songwriters never achieve the success they struggled so hard for? What prevented them from earning the attention, critical praise and/or chart success that other artists did?
From rock and roll’s beginnings to the present day, there are hundreds of examples of artists who never achieved the fame and fortune many people think they should have. (There are also scores of examples of groups who inexplicably garnered attention and Top Five albums/singles that were wholly unwarranted, but that’s another essay for another day.)
Like many discussions of rock music, this is a very subjective area. If I were to say, for example, that Humble Pie wasn’t as big as they should have been, there are those who might say, “Humble Pie?! They sucked!” One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and so forth. But we all have our favorite under-the-radar artists who we believe should have made it big. “I LOVE this band, why doesn’t everybody else??”
For decades, and perhaps still somewhat true today, rock music and television have had what Keith Richards describes as “a very weird, unnatural marriage.” From its inception, rock and roll was rebellious, brazen and controversial. Television, on the other hand, was bland, familiar and non-threatening. They had very little in common.
Hack's Back Pages 