I was going to begin this post by saying it's now 10 years since the boom in indie music in the charts, but then I realised it's been 20 years. I was also going to say one of the big bands of that indie boom 20 years ago was Snow Patrol except they never had any Top 40 hits in 2005. If we go for a broader era of mid-00s then Snow Patrol were certainly one of the biggest indie bands in the charts.
They first formed in 1994 and became Snow Patrol in 1997. They made their Top 40 debut in 2004 with "Run" and were on their 3rd album by that point. By the end of the 00s they'd clocked up 11 Top 40 hits with 5 of them being Top 10s and included "Chasing Cars" which stayed in the charts for a long time.
By the time the 2010s came around indie music was going out of fashion. Instead artists from all genres were coming together to make electropop records which was the genre of the moment. When Snow Patrol were back in 2011 with a new album they reacted to this by putting out an electropop single with "Called Out In The Dark" which made a respectable number 11 in the charts.
Then came this record which was the indie sound we knew them for. Given that indie music was very much out of fashion by this point it was always going to struggle to make an impact on the charts and they've not had a Top 40 hit since.
It was following this single that Johnny McDaid became a full member of the band and he's since had great success as songwriter for other artists. There's been little in way of music output from Snow Patrol since, at the time of writing they have only released one further album and lead singer Gary Lightbody is the only original member that remains.
No comments:
Post a Comment