How did this record achieve such extremely huge commercial success? It's almost entirely instrumental symphonic prog with two side long pieces. It's beyond me how it became this successful, it's not rock-like and psychedelic enough for hippies and too odd for normies. He even won a grammy for it. I know about it's use in The Exorcist and some notable live performances but surely there is more to it than that, right?
How did this record achieve such extremely huge commercial success...
Samuel Cook
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Noah King
Novelty. Like how rock music fans know Aphex Twin today.
Charles Flores
idk, it's a pretty approachable album aside from the track length
Jason Hughes
Were normies really into this kind of stuff in 1973?
Andrew Fisher
the cover
it's the kind of album you buy because the cover is so good you feel like you need to own it
also endless reissues, remasters, sequels etc
Ryan Martin
>B-BUT WHY MY FAVOURITE ALBUM IS POPULAR. IT ISN'T SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE THAT, IT'S WEIRD AND I WANT TO FEEL UNIQUE!!!!11!!1!1!!1!!!!!
Josiah Murphy
It was the pet rock of music
Luke Morales
Most of Yes and Rick Wakeman’s 70s albums made the top 10 (in England anyway) so yes. Also live prog was huge in America
Robert Rodriguez
>Also live prog was huge in America
Which bands are you referring to? Stuff like King Crimson or more like those prog bands that went the New Wave route later on?
Dylan Cook
Prog was genuinely this huge. That's why the record companies destroyed it - artistically-motivated artists who demanded big recording budgets, didn't do singles and who encouraged intelligence and discrimination in their audiences were commercially hazardous as the economy tanked. Thus, the commercialization of punk: replace these artists with a generation of the barely-musical who feel lucky to be in the music industry, pride themselves on how cheaply they record, and think in terms of singles rather than albums.
Finally, it's probably down to oil prices. To make vinyl, you need oil. Oil was getting more expensive. Double and triple albums for a modest, ticking-over profit were out, hit singles bought by kids with their pocket money were in. "Serious" rock music became a malajusted echo of the pop market. And so it remained until the internet abolished the single.