On Pentecost, the Feast of the Firstfruits, it is customary to miraculously elevate the major debut albums. Those one-time creations, bursts of talent from a young and hungry artist or a promising band, that left an immediate imprint and engraved his name forever in the eternal pages of history.
But, what to do, it does not always happen that way. There are huge artists who have taken time to get started, and their debut albums range from a forgotten curiosity to a glorious commercial and artistic failure. This time we chose to remember them.
David Bowie
The best-known anecdote about David Bowie’s debut album is actually related to a single that came out to promote it, but was not included in the record itself. This is an incredibly silly song called The Laughing Gnome, and an act that was like this was:
In 1990, Bowie, then of course the mythological icon he is, set out on a tour with a novelty: the audience will be able to choose part of the set-list. Voting lines were specially opened. Music magazine NME chose to thrill Bowie and launched the “Just Say Gnome” campaign, which calls on fans to call and choose that idiotic and forgotten song. The campaign was so successful that the phone lines collapsed, and Bowie received it in a sporty and good spirit, but in the end did not perform the song.
- A cheesecake with a spoiled taste that you will never guess is low in calories
Other than that story, there is really nothing to say about the album. He left no mark, no song from it is etched in memory (not even in retrospect), and when he came out, in 1967, he did not receive any media attention. Only two years later will Neil Armstrong land on the moon, let’s release “Spice Audit”, and the legend will begin to take shape.
Elton John
In 1969, the same year that Bowie began to take off, the debut album of a young and promising artist was released in the UK. He was born as Reginald Kenneth Dwight, but at the beginning of his musical career, at the request of the record company, he adopted a stage name consisting of the names of two musicians he loved. Already then a friend of Elton John to Bernie Taupin, the lyricist who will accompany him throughout the glory years, but on the first album, “Empty Sky”, the magic has not yet happened. Except for a minor success of the (beautiful) song “Skyline Pigeon”, the album completely failed. It was only a year later that the duo John-Taupin created the second album, called “Elton John” and included “Your Song,” the beautiful “I Need You to Turn To” and more, and John’s star began to tread.
Blair
In 1991, the band Blair won a contract to produce their debut album. Attached to the Colchester Quartet was Stephen Street, the producer of the great Smiths band, and together they created an album that was heavily influenced by the Baggy style – a kind of combination of rock, dance and psychedelia that characterized the Manchester scene bands, led by the Stone Roses, which peaked in 1989- 90.
So the intentions were good, but the realization? Nothing. Despite the success of the singles “There’s No Other Way” and “She’s So High”, and despite the wonderful covers of the album and the singles, the album released in August 91 failed. Worse than that was the band’s tour in the United States, which was a real catastrophe. Damon Albern later called the album a “threat,” adding that it was done in a hurry to please the record company. In 1993, on the second album, “Modern Life Is Rubbish”, Blair changed direction, established the Britpop style and finally hit the road to success.
Radiohead
This is one of the most familiar and entertaining stories, but always nice to repeat again: in early 1993 “Pablo Honey”, Radiohead’s debut album, was released in the UK, and was largely ignored. It is considered another non-unique rock album, not particularly commercially successful, and quite engulfed in the shadow of Swede’s debut album, which conquered the UK at that point in time.
Only in one country in the Middle East did the album become a surprising success: it happened thanks to the man and legend, Yoav Kutner, who repeatedly played the song Creep on IDF waves until it became the number 1 hit in Israel (and with the beginning of Channel 2 he starred in Jeremy’s cover version Kaplan, in the mythological advertisement for Castro with Yael Abacis). The success arranged for Radiohead to tour in Tel Aviv – their first outside the United Kingdom, and from there the success began to spread around the world. “In any case, it is still considered the weakest album in the repertoire of Tom York and his friends.
Arik Einstein
By 1966 Arik Einstein was already a big star in local terms, after the success of the Yarkon Bridge trio and his performance in the play “Irma La Dos” and in the film “Salah Shabati”. When he came to record his first solo album, he is a member of Dafna Eilat – a songwriter, composer and actress, a somewhat unjustly forgotten figure in Israeli culture, who was responsible for some of the songs “Gesher Hayarkon”.
Eilat wrote the lyrics to all but one of the songs on the album “Sing for You”, and composed most of them (except for a few based on melodies by successful bands from abroad, such as the silhouettes). Unfortunately, this is probably Einstein’s most forgotten album To remain in consciousness. Einstein’s musical style was not yet sufficiently cohesive, prior to his founding meetings with Shmulik Krauss and Shalom Hanoch. Great for an eternal Israeli legend.