Most bizarre first single off an album

[famethrowa]

The lyric was their reaction to Creep being a hit, though.

"Oh no now we're dead famous and going to be rich for the rest of our lives, woe is me"

[purlieu]

I reckon Pulp's biggest problem with This Is Hardcore was that they released it about a year too late, but yeah it ain't exactly packed with choruses.  Help The Aged was clearly a stopgap before they got anywhere near finishing the album.  I'd argue the title track was an inspired lead-off choice, but it didn't make the artistic-statement splash (a la Paranoid Android) it could have done due to momentum waning a bit.

Yeah, I think the three year gap plus a different musical climate required a big pop single as a comeback for a band like Pulp, much in the way Suede managed with 'Electricity' the following year. The late '90s were a weird time for previously successful bands, with some managing to pick up acclaim and sales, while others lost it, and not necessarily the ones you'd expect. In 1995, if you were asked which song out of 'Paranoid Android', or 'Guiding Star' by Cast, would be the higher charting single, you wouldn't have come up with 1997's answer.

[TheMonk]

There are fairly obvious sonic reasons why 'Thru These Walls' would have been chosen as the first single from Phil Collins' second solo album - it sounds like an overegged retread of the big song off the last album, 'In The Air Tonight'. Either Virgin Records or Phil himself clearly thought "Give 'em more of what they want. Everyone loved that gated drum break, stick two of the fuckers in every chorus." Someone should probably have remembered it's sung in character as a paedophile though. And in retrospect the video that featured Phil staring out of a window at some kids in a playground might have been a little ill advised.

In with a bullet at number 56. I'm sure Sidney Cooke and Catweazle were having a bop to it but the rest of the UK....ah, not so much. Have you got any covers of old Supremes hits instead, Phil? Maybe not 'Love Child'.

Similarly in retrospect, Genesis "No Son Of Mine" is a bit of an odd choice for a first single.
Something awful is going on in the lyrics there and it's a bit of a downer really as far as "look who's back after 5 years away!" releases.

[Hundhoon]

Kowalski by Primal Scream off Vanishing Point. sharing the top 10 with Spice Girls and Hanson in 1997.

Andrew Weatherall produced sample heavy, whispered vocals, fractured, odd, dubby, yet noisy and abrasive at the same time,