MR

Does anyone know how "Show Me The Way" was doing before the connection to Desert Storm? It ended up peaking at #3 on the charts, but how would it have performed had it just stood alone? "Love At First Sight", the follow up, was a modest hit, peaking at #25; would "SMTW" have suffered the same fate without the correlation to the Gulf?

#25 is hardly suffering

BlackWall wrote:Does anyone know how "Show Me The Way" was doing before the connection to Desert Storm? It ended up peaking at #3 on the charts, but how would it have performed had it just stood alone? "Love At First Sight", the follow up, was a modest hit, peaking at #25; would "SMTW" have suffered the same fate without the correlation to the Gulf?

From Wiki..... Not sure exactly how it would have performed had it just stood alone....

"Show Me the Way" is the second single released from Edge of the Century by Styx.

Lead vocalist/keyboardist Dennis DeYoung, a devout Roman Catholic, originally wrote the song for his son, Matthew, as a pseudo-hymn about the struggle to keep the faith in a "world so filled with hatred".[citation needed] Released in December 1990, the song was slowly scaling the charts in January 1991, just prior to the United States' entry into the Gulf War, and many radio DJs mixed the song with voice tracks of parents headed off to fight in the war.

The single rose up the Billboard Hot 100 all the way to #3. The song also hit #3 on the Adult Contemporary chart, remaining in the top 40 of that chart for an impressive 31 weeks. While that association undoubtedly buoyed the song's success and contributed to its lingering appeal, in fact, the single had not yet peaked when the war officially ended, on February 28, 1991.

The song was Styx's fourth and final top 5 single to date (and 8th top 10 single), and comes in at #68 on the Billboard rankings of the top Hot 100 singles of 1991.

I was shocked that "Love is the Ritual" wasn't a bigger hit. That song rocked.
Finally, Styx didn't seem so white.

brywool wrote:I was shocked that "Love is the Ritual" wasn't a bigger hit. That song rocked.
Finally, Styx didn't seem so white.

Love that song. Brywool love your AV

brywool wrote:I was shocked that "Love is the Ritual" wasn't a bigger hit. That song rocked.
Finally, Styx didn't seem so white.

Well if ddy had released smtw first like a & m wanted maybe it would've gotten up higher cause folks would know that styx is back. Just my opinion.

brywool wrote:I was shocked that "Love is the Ritual" wasn't a bigger hit. That song rocked.
Finally, Styx didn't seem so white.

the charts mean nothing. it got a ton of airplay, people know that song

Thenightbull wrote:

brywool wrote:I was shocked that "Love is the Ritual" wasn't a bigger hit. That song rocked.
Finally, Styx didn't seem so white.

Well if ddy had released smtw first like a & m wanted maybe it would've gotten up higher cause folks would know that styx is back. Just my opinion.

Actually agree with you on that one, night.

Bone headed move not to release SMTW first. Dennis admits that today.
Love At First Sight had top 10 potential, but by that point A&M and Styx could not agree on a contract continuation, so they stopped promoting it. Another dumb move by Styx not to negotiate the contract BEFORE the album was released.

All In A Day's Work could have been a nice 4th single and introduce Glen to the world.

I would have released SMTW - first - top 3 (maybe reaches #1), LAFS (top 10), then release LITR (rock) and AIADW (top 10 potential)

chickenbeef wrote:

brywool wrote:I was shocked that "Love is the Ritual" wasn't a bigger hit. That song rocked.
Finally, Styx didn't seem so white.

the charts mean nothing. it got a ton of airplay, people know that song

Hardly..most people (beyond ardent Styx fans) do NOT know LITR.

Toph wrote:

chickenbeef wrote:

brywool wrote:I was shocked that "Love is the Ritual" wasn't a bigger hit. That song rocked.
Finally, Styx didn't seem so white.

the charts mean nothing. it got a ton of airplay, people know that song

Hardly..most people (beyond ardent Styx fans) do NOT know LITR.

My college roommate will. When I got the promo single before the album came out, I played it incessantly (mainly to annoy him). But yeah, outside of fans, I don't know anyone who knows LITR.

StyxCollector wrote:

Toph wrote:

chickenbeef wrote:

brywool wrote:I was shocked that "Love is the Ritual" wasn't a bigger hit. That song rocked.
Finally, Styx didn't seem so white.

the charts mean nothing. it got a ton of airplay, people know that song

Hardly..most people (beyond ardent Styx fans) do NOT know LITR.

My college roommate will. When I got the promo single before the album came out, I played it incessantly (mainly to annoy him). But yeah, outside of fans, I don't know anyone who knows LITR.

Allen, you may know this (or Sterling as well), but what were things like in the Styx camp when the first single off their first album in 7 years stiffed so badly? Were they in panic mode? To have your first single that I'm sure you had huge expectations for only make it to #80 or whatever it did must have caused a lot of second guessing and consternation. How did they handle it? And what a relief when SMTW took off.

brywool wrote:I was shocked that "Love is the Ritual" wasn't a bigger hit. That song rocked.
Finally, Styx didn't seem so white.

It was played on MTV often when it first came out. I'm surprised it wasn't a bigger hit too.

Toph wrote:Allen, you may know this (or Sterling as well), but what were things like in the Styx camp when the first single off their first album in 7 years stiffed so badly? Were they in panic mode? To have your first single that I'm sure you had huge expectations for only make it to #80 or whatever it did must have caused a lot of second guessing and consternation. How did they handle it? And what a relief when SMTW took off.

Not to be a broken record, but look at my big (and most recent) interview with Dennis - he addresses it.

Love is the Ritual went top 10 on the Rock charts. It got a lot of airplay. At the time it was released we had 4 rock stations in the Bay Area and all 4 were playing it consistently. I still to this day say that there were more rock stations in the country in the70's. 80's and 90's than there were pop stations. Everyone here knows all of Rush's songs, correct? How many of them got played on POP stations????? Virtually none. But we all know them.
You don't have to be on Billboards top 40 POP charts to get a lot of airplay. I know of a little band called Led Zeppelin that gets more airplay to this day than probably any band on the planet. We have all heard their songs so much we are sick of them. How many of their songs have we heard on the POP stations. ZERO.

cittadeeno23 wrote:Love is the Ritual went top 10 on the Rock charts. It got a lot of airplay. At the time it was released we had 4 rock stations in the Bay Area and all 4 were playing it consistently. I still to this day say that there were more rock stations in the country in the70's. 80's and 90's than there were pop stations. Everyone here knows all of Rush's songs, correct? How many of them got played on POP stations????? Virtually none. But we all know them.
You don't have to be on Billboards top 40 POP charts to get a lot of airplay. I know of a little band called Led Zeppelin that gets more airplay to this day than probably any band on the planet. We have all heard their songs so much we are sick of them. How many of their songs have we heard on the POP stations. ZERO.

I think I heard it twice in Seattle...

cittadeeno23 wrote:Love is the Ritual went top 10 on the Rock charts. It got a lot of airplay. At the time it was released we had 4 rock stations in the Bay Area and all 4 were playing it consistently. I still to this day say that there were more rock stations in the country in the70's. 80's and 90's than there were pop stations. Everyone here knows all of Rush's songs, correct? How many of them got played on POP stations????? Virtually none. But we all know them.
You don't have to be on Billboards top 40 POP charts to get a lot of airplay. I know of a little band called Led Zeppelin that gets more airplay to this day than probably any band on the planet. We have all heard their songs so much we are sick of them. How many of their songs have we heard on the POP stations. ZERO.

That may be true in theory, but in this application it falls flat because bands like Rush, Zep et al may have had few or no pop chart hits, but they still sold records. EOTC debuted at what, number 60-something? And then fell straight from there. The singles charts convey airplay, not sales, so it's possible to have a decent chart position but not sell product, as in this case. If the public had liked LITR it would have pushed a much better debut. As it was I saw loads of pre-publicity for that album and it still stiffed on arrival, and would have died completely if not for SMTW. That's the hard truth. I thought it was the absolute wrong single from the first time I heard it. Didn't sound like Styx, sung by an unfamiliar guy . . . what the hell they were thinking is beyond me. I can still remember buying the cassette single of that song with B-side "Homewrecker". This was before the whole album was available, and I remember the feeling of absolute horror I had as I heard those two songs back to back. Thankfully some of the rest of the album was more to my taste, but man, that was off-putting for me . . . and I suspect a lot of other older fans. And the art cost what, about three dollars?

I still wish SMTW had been the first single, followed by "Edge of the Century".


Sterling

It's funny how we all have different tastes!
I agree that SMTW was the best choice for 1st release because of Dennis' familiar voice. I wish there would have been a good Dennis' sung rock song on that album, but there really wasn't.

But LITR is my favorite track on that album and the only one I still listen to today. And I had no idea at the time who Glen was. I just liked the song from the get go.

cittadeeno23 wrote:It's funny how we all have different tastes!
I agree that SMTW was the best choice for 1st release because of Dennis' familiar voice. I wish there would have been a good Dennis' sung rock song on that album, but there really wasn't.

But LITR is my favorite track on that album and the only one I still listen to today. And I had no idea at the time who Glen was. I just liked the song from the get go.

For me it was and still is "All In A Day's Work". I'd rank it in my top whatever list of favorite songs. That Glen - he's got talent!

StyxCollector wrote: For me it was and still is "All In A Day's Work". I'd rank it in my top whatever list of favorite songs. That Glen - he's got talent!

+1

StyxCollector wrote:

cittadeeno23 wrote:It's funny how we all have different tastes!
I agree that SMTW was the best choice for 1st release because of Dennis' familiar voice. I wish there would have been a good Dennis' sung rock song on that album, but there really wasn't.

But LITR is my favorite track on that album and the only one I still listen to today. And I had no idea at the time who Glen was. I just liked the song from the get go.

For me it was and still is "All In A Day's Work". I'd rank it in my top whatever list of favorite songs. That Glen - he's got talent!

AIADW would have been a much better way to "introduce" Glen to the world - because you still hear a lot of Dennis on that song.

And it has more potential to score on the charts. Similar in structure to Extreme's More Than Words which was HUGE at that time - so radio would have been receptive...

Their stupid ass single selection process clearly continued with Edge... how many times did those guys NOT score the big album because of stupid single choices....
(Cornerstone, Paradise, Kilroy, Edge)....

I've never thought about AIADW being a single. I thought it was a great song, but the whistling part in the middle of the song always rubbed me the wrong way. I wish that part had been some kind of accustic guitar solo instead.
But I can see how this song may have worked on radio because it was a really good vocal song and you could hear Dennis' voice quite clearly in it. If Dennis had sung lead and Glen Background it may have charted.
Does anyone think Love at First Sight would have gone top 10 in 1985 instead of 1991? I really think so.
Right after SMTW had its run in 1991, some of the stations in my town started changing formats. The POP station KWSS that we had for years changed formats right in the middle of 1991. Grunge then took over.

AIADW was clearly the best song off of edge. ok, carry on....

cittadeeno23 wrote: Right after SMTW had its run in 1991, some of the stations in my town started changing formats. The POP station KWSS that we had for years changed formats right in the middle of 1991. Grunge then took over.

That's what happened to my favorite hard rock station 103.5 The Blaze in Chicago, one day we were listening to everything from Ozzy and The Scorps to crap like Stone Temple Pilots and Nirvana


Robin

stmonkeys wrote:AIADW was clearly the best song off of edge. ok, carry on....

I'd say it was the second best song on the LP, behind Show Me The Way.

Regardless, as much as Edge gets panned, its first side (first 5 songs) are nothing to sneeze at. Its the second side where Edge goes down. If the second side featured a proggy Dennis tune, a better JY tune, a hard rock DDY tune, a decent ballad (not Carrie Ann - what if Glen had pulled out Sometimes Love Ain't Enough for Styx?), and a Glen acoustic rocker, then you have a strong record.

pinkfloyd1973 wrote:

cittadeeno23 wrote: Right after SMTW had its run in 1991, some of the stations in my town started changing formats. The POP station KWSS that we had for years changed formats right in the middle of 1991. Grunge then took over.

[color=indigo][i][b]That's what happened to my favorite hard rock station 103.5 The Blaze in Chicago, one day we were listening to everything from Ozzy and The Scorps to crap like Stone Temple Pilots and Nirvana

Will you be listening to Mike and Diana in the morning Robin on internet radio?

You won't believe the music I have lined up ..

froy wrote: Will you be listening to Mike and Diana in the morning Robin on internet radio?

You won't believe the music I have lined up ..

Where you at? If I have time I might give a listen