The “extraordinary” band David Bowie wouldn’t recognise on the street
It is often said that every mainstream artist yearns for cult success and every cult artist wishes they could shift a few more records. In that regard, David Bowie, as in virtually every aspect of his existence, was always something of an oddity.
To suggest that Bowie never caught a glimpse of widespread commercial success or mainstream appeal would be a needless fib. In the UK alone, the ‘star man’ achieved an impressive five number-one singles and eleven number-one albums; he can hardly be considered an underachiever.
Still, it is true that his level of commercial success didn’t always reflect his colossal, all-encompassing influence over the musical landscape, particularly in comparison to the many long-forgotten pop fads who eclipsed his commercial success in a purely monetary sense.
At his core, after all, Bowie was a cult artist, even if his cult audience spanned multiple generations and was always far more expansive than what was afforded to his fellow cult artists. Particularly during his more experimental years, within the Berlin trilogy or even some of his 21st-century work, the songwriter was so far removed from what the masses were creating that he struggled to gain mainstream attention with his efforts.
David Bowie himself was aware of that inherent contradiction, too. During a 1990 interview with Q Magazine, discussing the state of the music industry, he mused, “It’s odd that there are a number of artists, with myself at the forefront, who are well known and their material is well known, but their album sales would belie that fact.”
Logically, there must be somebody on the other end of that spectrum who isn’t overly well-known despite massive album sales and an insurmountable degree of commercial success. For Bowie, only one group seemed to come to mind: “When you think of people like Foreigner,” he said, “I wouldn’t know one of them if I bumped into him, but they have these extraordinary [sales].”
Foreigner are a particularly good example of that paradox of huge sales and little notoriety. After all, you rarely – if ever, to be fair – meet somebody who is outspoken about the fact that the New York-based group are their all-time favourite band. Rarely, in fact, do you ever hear of the band being discussed at all, at least in the present day. Yet, if music is just a numbers game, Foreigner are among the most successful bands of all time.
Even by the metric of the singles charts, Foreigner pale in comparison to Bowie, with their sole number-one single being 1984’s power-pop earworm ‘I Want To Know What Love Is’. On a global scale, however, the band have sold upwards of 80 million records, putting them in a similar league to the likes of Bob Dylan, The Beach Boys, Simon and Garfunkel, and other such artists who are utterly unavoidable within the landscape.
Then again, it is difficult to imagine David Bowie being overly unhappy about the way his career panned out, allowing him to explore every avenue of inspiration he deemed fit while amassing legions of supporters. Likewise, it seems unlikely Foreigner are annoyed at being one of the best-selling groups of all time, and still being able to walk down the street with relative anonymity.
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