Is Coldplay the most mainstream artist in TP's current listings?

For context, I was looking to see if Take That (in light of two current movies, second being Anora) were there...nope.

But Coldplay has its own entry.

maybe Coldplay are included because of the Brian Eno connection? Eno has produced their albums. Which I figure is like his day job, allowing him to do cool stuff on his own time. Horrible band.

Sade, Prince, and Madonna are pretty damn mersh, with questionable connections to alt-rock. Maybe you could include Prince because of his Paisley Underground phase. But, if that's the case, then you could include P-Punk (George Clinton produced the Chili Peppers, Bernie Worrell played with the Talking Heads). It's a slippery slope!

All those fake-alternative bands of the '90s are here in TP as well: Blues Traveler, Blind Melon, Sheryl Crow, ad nauseum, but I understand their inclusion: the music biz was touting them as alt-rock, so The Bible of Alt Rock was somewhat forced to respond.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/02/2025 03:51PM by MrFab.

I just took Prince and Madonna's inclusion on good faith, but they probably didn't seem out of place because in Prince's case, he was a true innovator - he made music that didn't sound like anything that was happening in the mainstream and he did things what many considered unusual (i.e. nothing that seemed calculated to win a bigger audience), all from the very start, and ultimately it was the mainstream that was transformed by his work than the other way around. With Madonna, she wasn't remotely the innovator Prince was, but she was very savvy when it came to the underground dance world, having always been steeped in it long before she made a record. She arguably brought a lot of pioneering sounds directly into the mainstream, catalyzing their cultural recognition in a way a less popular artist probably could not.

My personal opinion...Coldplay would be more highly regarded if they stopped after their fourth album. (Coincidentally or not, that's where the TP entry ends.) It's been all downhill from there.

Does Robbie Williams have a solo entry? MTV was trying to market him as "alternative" when "Millennium" came out.

If hip-hop counts as "Trouser Press music," James Brown and P-Funk should as well, as the equivalents of the Velvet Underground and Stooges for the genre. Good luck to anyone starting those entries!