'Iris' by the Goo Goo Dolls has been in the UK Rock Top 40 chart for 787 weeks and counting...

[GhostMachine]

Well, to be fair, those are the only two I know, so.....

[fourstarfizzle]

They used to be a decent 80's punk band starting out. I also forgot they released two albums on Metal Blade Records.. 

 

[completeunknown]

On 19/04/2022 at 12:43, Hobo said:

Imagine if all of pink floyd were your grandads though

It would make family gatherings a bit awkward since Grandpa David and Papa Roger don't always get on.

If Papa Roger would shut the fuck up about Margaret Thatcher and his dad dying in the war, we could possibly enjoy our dinner

[Benji]

Good jam tho.

[Benji]

On 19/04/2022 at 12:03, Brandon Cutler Fan Account said:

The entire chart just proves rock music is being crippled by the industry, half of that list are songs older than me, one is a cover of a song that's older than me, and the other is by Pink Floyd so even though the song is new they're all old enough to be my grandad anyway.

Strong disagree, some music is timeless and gives people good memories. Importantly - it's one of the easiest ways to access dopamine. Of course people are going to keep listening to the songs they love, and if they are good songs more and more people will love them. There's no "crippling the industry", people just know this music makes them happy so they go back to that well. It's the same reason Friends, Cheers, The Simpsons and other TV shows remain popular in re-airings years after their release, people get a reliable happy feeling of familiarity from them.

[LL!]

To think, they claimed they DIDN'T want the whole world to see them. 

[PantherFan22]

"Another One Bites the Dust" by Queen only peaked at 3?

 

Edit: Bring Me to Life by Evanescence has been in the charts for 666 weeks (20 May 2022 - 26 May 2022)

Edited May 22, 2022 by PantherFan22

[Skummy]

On 21/05/2022 at 11:24, Benji said:

Strong disagree, some music is timeless and gives people good memories. Importantly - it's one of the easiest ways to access dopamine. Of course people are going to keep listening to the songs they love, and if they are good songs more and more people will love them. There's no "crippling the industry", people just know this music makes them happy so they go back to that well. It's the same reason Friends, Cheers, The Simpsons and other TV shows remain popular in re-airings years after their release, people get a reliable happy feeling of familiarity from them.

yeah, nostalgia is one of the biggest driving forces in music, and that's no bad thing - it's rare that you'll ever find music that means as much to you as you did when you were, say, 15-21, as you get older, and that stuff will likely always still appeal in ways that newer music simply can't. And, of course, most of us just don't have the time as we get older to invest as much of our energy in finding new music to listen to.

That's pretty much always been the case to some extent - it's why we have whole radio stations and TV channels dedicated to the music of the past - but what's changed is distribution methods and record sales no longer being the bedrock of the industry, so nostalgia is increasingly the predominant means of making money from music. Older songs are in the charts because streaming and downloads are factored in now, but that's a symptom of a wider problem, in music, and culturally in general. There's a paradox of choice thing in that there being so much music available at our fingertips now means it's actually quite daunting, and much easier to either just go back and keep listening to what you already know, or for people to fall down increasingly esoteric rabbit holes of finding music that really appeals to them but doesn't necessarily have mass appeal. Caught in the middle of that is established stuff still getting played, because it's safe and comforting. That's all happened in line with festival line-ups and big tours being far more skewed towards older artists, as bands that aren't making as much money from record sales are spending more time on the road, so newer bands rarely feel as "big" because they're not getting the big breakthrough performances that, say, Pulp had at Glastonbury in '95 or Nirvana at Reading '92.

We're past the time where radio and the music press can act as tastemakers, which has its advantages, but also means there's probably never going to be bands that feel like the hot new thing, or the biggest band in the world, or genuinely exciting, in the way they used to. 

[The Buscher]

On 21/05/2022 at 06:24, Benji said:

It's the same reason Friends, Cheers, The Simpsons and other TV shows remain popular in re-airings years after their release, people get a reliable happy feeling of familiarity from them.

My dad's recommended like 50 different shows for me to watch and between baseball, wrestling, and gaming that's effectively all of my TV time.  On the rare time I need something to watch during the 30 minutes I'm sitting on my couch eating dinner...my choices are to either watch something new or to throw on a Seinfeld, Office, or Community that I've seen before.  The latter is almost always my choice.  On the rare time I actually give a new show a chance, even if it's brilliant, I get frustrated because I know I'm just not gonna have the bandwidth to binge it and it could take me months to get through a single season.  The shows I've seen before and can just throw on/not really think about bring such a comfort.

Similarly with music.....I have many songs on my phone right now that were downloaded some 20 years ago and have migrated from one computer, MP3 player, iPod, and iPhone to the next.  I don't think I've bought a physical CD since the mid-2000s either but the ones I did buy were all ripped to my computer and also in this same rotation of thousands of songs moving from device to device.  If I hear a new song I like, I'll download it and maybe check out the band for further stuff but this is all a matter of circumstance.   I discovered a few new bands during a Sirius XM trial and then realized they just kept playing the same stuff over and over, so I downloaded what I liked and moved on.

Feel like I hit skip on every other song when I drive, because it's stuff I've heard before and sometimes I'm just not in the mood for a certain band.  But going out of my way to seek out new music is just something I don't make time for.  It's easy to see why nostalgia is my fallback.