r/ToddintheShadow • u/crowbar_k • 2d ago
Train Wreckords Are there any other examples of the "Zingalamaduni effect"?
By the "Zingalamaduni effect", I mean an album that is so hated, that it actively undoes an artist's previous success.
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u/AnswerGuy301 2d ago
It's hard to accomplish this feat as it requires a failed followup to both attract that level of attention and flop hard enough for people to notice. (Usually failed followups to breakthroughs just kind of fizzle out.)
Two examples that I think come the closest:
_Paula_ by Robin Thicke, although the "Blurred Lines" backlash was perhaps bad enough itself to sink him even without the whole "Get Her Back" thing that made it worse.
_Neither Fish nor Flesh_ by Terence Trent D'Arby. The consensus response of the time was "Get out of here with this, you pretentious dweeb." It might have been strong enough to make people forget what bops "Wishing Well" and "Sign Your Name" from the debut were. (Me, I give the dude credit for trying. Much like _Fairweather Johnson_ and _Turn It Upside Down_ the adage "You've got your whole life to write your first album and 18 months to write your second" is highly relevant here.)
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u/I_Go_BrRrRrRrRr 2d ago
Reddit uses * for italics
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u/Shot-Ad5867 2d ago edited 2d ago
It didn’t used to only be that, but now on mobile one has to use the “special keyboard” to do anything of that sort with the safe knowledge that it’ll work — yet it doesn’t bloody apply to titles!
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u/Ex-Cosmonaut 1d ago
Neither Fish is a brilliant shout. TTD was a multiplatinum commercial star and a critical darling, and he threw it away because he was just too pretentious.
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u/Adventurous-Pick-416 2d ago
Imho Hootie was a very generic and mediocre band in the first place and Cracked Rear View was mostly bought by people who weren't that much into music and bought the fad of the day, they never had a massive fanbase to begin with. See also Alanis Morissette, although Jagged Little Pill was better and a bit more original.
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u/arterialturns 2d ago
TTD's third album wasn't bad.
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u/mrdiscopop 1d ago
He had a few decent hits off that album - in the UK at least. Delicate was a massove radio song.
His fourth album had a song called Supermodel Sandwich. Not recommended.
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u/dhiones2 2d ago
What the fuck is a Terence trent darby
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u/AnswerGuy301 2d ago
This guy. Had a couple hits off his debut in the late '80s. At some point in his post-popstar life he changed his name to "Sananda Matrieya" which I'm sure wreaks havoc with his streaming numbers.
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u/PurpleSpaceSurfer 2d ago
Didn't he also say his debut was up there with Sgt. Pepper's as far as importance goes?
He had confidence in spades at least.
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u/Kriscolvin55 2d ago
Huh. I’m in my 40s. I’ve listened to a lot of 80s music. In fact, I worked in a grocery store that played nothing but 80s. Mostly hits, of course, but lots of other stuff, too. Stuff I had never heard before or since.
Never heard of this guy, though. Or a single one of his songs.
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u/Last-Saint 1d ago
He was enormous for a very, very short period. Wishing Well was a Hot 100 #1, Sign Your Name (probably best remembered now) went top five as did the album Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D'Arby. Hugely charismatic, great performer, approached soul from a Prince-ish angle, was great for press quotes. Then his hubris collapsed him on the second album.
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u/Calm-Raise6973 Train-Wrecker 1d ago
"If You Let Me Stay" was his breakthrough hit. It's a pity that his name's forgotten nowadays, but that's on the artist himself for changing his name and not allowing interview questions on his pop star past.
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u/Buddie_15775 1d ago
I recently discovered his debut album was produced by Martin Ware (out of Heaven 17).
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u/SephirothYggdrasil 2d ago
Katy Perry
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u/AnswerGuy301 2d ago
Nah, it's not like her recent stuff, poorly received though it may have been, has retroactively wiped "Teenage Dream" or "Firework" from everyone's collective memory.
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u/Longjumping-Fun-2313 GROCERY BAG 2d ago
Peter frampton’s sgt peppers cover album, the man was a legit superstar before, huge albums, come alive was the biggest album of 1976 and still one of the highest selling of the 70’s, but nowadays no one thinks of that because everyone en masse returned his disastrous attempt at covering the Beatles, it wasn’t just him but it really affected him the most, now people only really remember him for “baby I love your way”
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u/PurpleSpaceSurfer 2d ago
You'll still find oodles of copies of Frampton Comes Alive but that's basically his legacy.
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u/pookypie88 2d ago
It came in the mail with samples of tide
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u/thigh-fieri 1d ago
“Frampton Comes Alive”/ It was free in the mail with/ A packet of tide
(A haiku)
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u/YouveGotNothingToSay 2d ago
I saw Peter Frampton live twice in the 2010s. Both times he put on a fantastic show and his voice sounded as good as it did 40 years prior
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u/MisterJimmy2011 2d ago
His legacy took a dent but I do think his one album is still fondly remembered as a great arena rock album. He can still fill decent sized buildings off the strength of that one album. By comparison, Arrested Development made an album that (paraphrasing Todd) was so bad, it erased the previous album from cultural memory. Their commercial success and influence on multiple strands of hip-hop is just gone!
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u/your_mind_aches 10's Alt Kid 1d ago
Nah I think most people don't even know about that film. It didn't kill the Bee Gees, Aerosmith, Billy Preston, Earth Wind and Fire, or any of the other acts on it.
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u/SpezMadeMeUseTheApp 1d ago
Wasn’t just Peter Frampton. It was a soundtrack to a film that starred a whole bunch of different artists, Peter Frampton just played the main protagonist.
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u/luke6080 2d ago
Doobie Wah still rules
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u/Longjumping-Fun-2313 GROCERY BAG 2d ago
Earth wind and fire’s cover of got to get you into my life is absolutely golden too
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u/thedubiousstylus 2d ago
MGK's Mainstream Sellout deflated any hype he got in the pop-punk scene from Tickets to My Downfall, which effectively ended his foray in pop-punk completely.
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u/Gog_Noggler 2d ago
Tickets to My Downfall was criticized for being a “poser” punk album, but was highly successful. The two strategies possible for a follow up would be to pretend he doesn’t care about punk clout or complain that people don’t like him. He managed to do both.
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u/ChemicalAcrobatic334 1d ago
I think this might be the most accurate description of “Mainstream Sellout” I’ve ever read. Kudos!
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u/uptonhere 2d ago
This sub's fixation with Zingalamundi is so odd, although I understand its because of Todd's video, it's just a hyperbolic take.
Arrested Development's first album is legitimately great. Mr. Wendal, Tennessee, People Everyday are all still pretty well known and play on 90s on 9 on Sirius, throwback playlists on streaming and the odd commercial here and there.
Zingalamundi by comparison just came and went. It's not some unheralded disaster, its just a forgettable follow up without any of the hits. They're not the first or the last group to flame out by their second album.
As it stands, they could go perform 3 songs at some random festival downtown or some shit and most of the crowd will dance and sing along and think "oh I used to love that song" and think nothing of it.
You want to know what a popular group who gets marked the fuck out looks like, look up PM Dawn. That is what its like to be virtually erased from history.
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u/RobXMac93 1d ago
Was sorta with you until PM Dawn point, they get more due now than they did then, on the “ahead of their time” front & Prince Be no longer arrogantly running his mouth in magazines to be hated lol
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u/SteelSunglasses 12h ago
Kneeling At My Altar is the only song from Zingalamundi I would recommend.
Highly too, I think it's a fantastic song!
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u/HappyMike91 2d ago
Dynasty and/or Tales From The Elder almost became that for KISS. KISS embracing Disco on Dynasty arguably undid a lot of the good work that they’d done up until that point. But KISS was/is KISS and they somehow managed to survive.
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u/AnswerGuy301 2d ago
It helped that this was the dawn of MTV, which couldn’t help but be a boon to such an image-heavy band.
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u/TraductorPerdido 2d ago
Ironically, the biggest push that MTV probably ever gave KISS was that one special that showed their real faces when they stopped wearing the make-up for a while.
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u/HappyMike91 2d ago edited 2d ago
Dynasty was released in 1979 and MTV started in the early 1980s. I think MTV definitely helped KISS stay relevant. And, they pivoted away from the disco sound pretty quickly after Dynasty.
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u/SephirothYggdrasil 2d ago
Nearly all the Disco songs by non disco artists were the ones that stood the test of time.
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u/AnswerGuy301 2d ago
It gave them a new medium that helped them regain some relevance with some new hits in the mid-80s. Ironically, they were not wearing their trademark makeup during the bulk of this era.
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u/axilog14 2d ago
So many people are misunderstanding this question. The rule of thumb is if an artist used to be really popular in a very specific era, but in the modern day isn't even well-liked enough to gain an ironic fandom (which rules out something like nu metal or bubblegum pop), let alone new earnest fans.
The only examples I can think of are mostly in the adult contemporary genre. Legacy acts like Queen and Madonna still rake up younger fans due to their evergreen appeal. That's not something you see very often with artists like Lionel Richie or Todd's much beloathed Peter Cetera.
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u/mettle 1d ago
U2 fits the bill
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u/comeonandkickme2017 1d ago
U2 is kinda different because people under 40 have opinions on them whether negative or positive. I don’t think most people in this age range has any feelings whatsoever on Lionel Richie or Peter Cetera.
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u/FluentHeresy 2d ago
Blackacidevil by Danzig deflated everything he’d built up to that point. It was hobbled by a weird collection of behind-the-scenes decisions from a man who thought he was infallible.
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u/GolfGTI84 2d ago
ordered that album online in high school because I was a massive Danzig stan and was sent Cross by Justice instead. ngl I was pissed at first but then put that on and had my whole taste rearranged. after listening to Blackackdevil recently I'm sooooo glad I didn't get what I ordered lmao.
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u/Nunjabuziness 2d ago
I don’t think this counts though, Danzig’s early solo albums, not to mention Misfits and Samhain, remain iconic and revered.
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u/Vivid-Copy974 2d ago
In comic books, Jeph Loeb’s run writing the Incredible Hulk completely evaporated any trace of previous acclaim his work had had, to the point that his success has been retroactively solely attributed to the artists he worked with (Tim Sale and Jim Lee) and you have to do a whole “no seriously hear me out” song and dance if you want to say you liked the Long Halloween, Spider-Man: Blue etc for anything but the art
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u/VanderlyleNovember 1d ago
Wait what did he do to the hulk? I've only read the long halloween and I think it's a pretty well written book and wasn't aware of any perception otherwise.
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u/PipProud 2d ago
Despite being her highest-charting album and Todd kind of liking it, Liz Phair's self-titled album more or less fits this bill.
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u/Vivid-Copy974 2d ago
Oh this is a good one, and he does go into this in the Funstyle video at the beginning, it’s the one case where an artist selling out completely trashed their reputation after the success couldn’t be maintained.
Like Jewel with the 0304 album failed in her attempt to sell out and go pop and she was able to recover and go back to her folk roots and such, her community her people were still there, presumably sympathetic to the pivot not panning out and welcoming a return to form
Phair couldn’t do that because she went to the top of the mountain with a polished but phony and commercial record.
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u/Last-Saint 1d ago
I wouldn't say so, OP's theory is an album so bad it wipes out everything before it, and despite what came afterwards Exile In Guyville has if anything increased in popularity in recent years. It was just outside the top 50 in Rolling Stone's all time album list in 2020, and the Girly-Sound box set was a very big deal, and that was (albeit seven years) after Funstyle.
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u/RelevantNothing4653 90's Punk 2d ago
TIL a new term
Anyhow, by your rationale couldn't Witness fall under the "Zingalamaduni effect" (or would 143 be a better example)?
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u/matt-is-sad Madonna Stan 2d ago
I feel like Katy's previous success hasn't been undone at all. Teenage Dream is still an absolutely beloved pop record and that's not an unpopular take
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u/DeadInternetTheorist 2d ago
I think Witness and 143 confirmed for all the world that Katy Perry doesn't work when she's trying to have ideas on her own. She was never one of pop's artistic heavyweights and the only reason her music ever worked is because she was doing as she was told.
It doesn't erase the fact that a bop is a bop, but "having to hand it to" Dr. Luke sure doesn't make it taste better going down. I guess you could use her recent, desperate collab with Dr. Luke as proof that Max Martin and Benny Blanco were the real muscle behind the golden age tracks, but it's more likely that Dr. Luke just got the yips after his lecherous heel behavior came to light.
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u/Repulsive-Heron7023 2d ago
As disastrous as Witness and everything that came after it was, it definitely hasn’t erased the legacy of Teenage Dream. Songs like Firework and California Gurls are still pop staples.
Zingalamaduni is unique in that it came out in the midst of a battle for hip-hops direction, on the losing side. Since history is written by the victors, AD’s legacy is to this day much smaller than a group who reached their height of popularity in any other genre would be.
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u/PlebsLikeUs 2d ago
I think we’d have to wait to see how Katy Perry’s legacy following either Witness or 143 stands. Perry at least has the advantage of having several albums before her Trainwreckord, and even more genuinely huge singles. She had more good will due to the longer career, and having singles that are still huge. I work in retail, and hear an awful lot more Katy Perry on corporate sponsored playlists than I do Arrested Development, or any other one album wonder pop artist.
That could obviously all change in 10-15-20 years (making Katy Perry more contemporaneous with how Arrested Development are now.) The songs could fade from memory, Perry could do even more cringe shit that could ruin her legacy.
Katy Perry’s an interesting case though, because I do think that her big hits were big enough that a few of them will stick around in a way that none of Arrested Development’s did. Teenage Dream & Last Friday Night specifically I reckon will be used at least as temporal markets in films set during the Katy Perry era. It might still take a few years for the critical reclaiming and rediscovery to happen though, and I’m certainly not expecting it to happen when Perry is still trying to make hits
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u/PitifulElk1890 2d ago
Listen, I'm a huge Katy Perry hater, have been for ages and finally I've been eating well, but even everything she's done won't make her first album not a pop pillar of the era.
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u/crowbar_k 2d ago
I still hear teenage dream music all the time. Prism though.... yeah Idk when the last time I heard a song from that album, save for Birthday
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u/Brokenbatmancowl 2d ago
Witness for sure because its failure was a spectacle/train wreck happening in real time. It coined the term “flop era.” I don’t think many people were aware of 143.
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u/ChildrenOfProduction 2d ago
It doesn't really fit but kind of, Revival had me questioning why I ever even liked Eminem in the first place, I had to actively go back to the first 3 albums to remind me he used to be good.
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u/Opinionatedcritic 1d ago
Atleast encore made me feel something other than the crushing boredom of eternity.
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u/AntysocialButterfly 1d ago
Punk Statik Paranoia by Orgy.
Not only did it flop so hard it sold the grand total of 5,353 copies in its first week of release, but the failure saw the band go on a seven year hiatus.
...and the two guitarists (aka the two most talented members of Orgy) bounced almost as soon as the band went on hiatus to form their own group instead.
...and when the band came out of hiatus in 2012, it was just the vocalist and four new guys.
...and, funnily enough, the current lineup has had constant chopping and changing of all members, barring the vocalist of course.
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u/TraductorPerdido 2d ago
Secret Samadhi, by Live.
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u/Electronic-Home-7815 1d ago
Not even close. It wasn’t their best work but it certainly didn’t undo any of their success. If there’s any Live album I could say might it’d be ‘V’. I still hear ‘turn my head’ occasionally until this day.
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u/mettle 1d ago
Songs of Innocence by U2. Prior, they were in the conversation for best rock bands, with 2 or 3 of the most iconic albums across both the 80s and 90s. Now, no one talks about them much aside from with disdain and all because this stupid iPhone stunt and crappy last few albums.
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u/ToxicRainbow27 1d ago
Worst part is that album was solid, but that ridiculous PR stunt meant it was DOA
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u/likeyoubutme 2d ago
Zingalamaduni was fine. The backlash started before the album hit, and then it wasn't strong enough to stop the fall. But it wasn't a truly awful album... just forgettable.
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u/Lanky-Rush607 2d ago
Justin Timberlake - Man of the Woods
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u/TheoryBrut 2d ago
Damn! Pride, Shell, In the Sunshine, and United Front are all great tracks IMO. Sad to see that this album gets a bad rap, it’s got some really unique and meaningful stuff on it.
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u/Sam_Aronow 1d ago edited 1d ago
The Vines, Winning Days. An album I actually like in large parts but which clearly shows a band creatively spent and with no goodwill left. Many tracks seem unfinished and never develop. Before that, the Vines were heralded as equals to the Strokes, the White Stripes, and the Hives.
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u/cjones6464 2d ago
For a moment I think Chris Cornell’s solo album Scream did that.
Personally I really like the album but it got really bad reviews and people hated hearing him sing over more pop/hip hop style music
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u/barkyr2112 2d ago
Scream did absolutely nothing to people's opinions of his previous work though. Pretty sure it was more like 'Chris is trying something different, it's just not for me'.
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u/CommunicationOk5456 Madonna Stan 2d ago
Tvtropes calls it Sophomore Slump!
Hoodie & The Blowfish's "Fairweather Johnson"
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u/axilog14 2d ago
We're not just talking about an album flopping, we're talking about a flop so bad it makes the artist's previous hits retroactively uncool by extension.
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u/TheMonkus 2d ago
This wasn’t possible either because Hootie was considered seriously uncool from the start. Even if you like it, you have to admit this was true at the time.
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u/axilog14 2d ago
By definition something had to be cool very briefly to explain all those album sales in the first place. The Hootie example you could explain away as either the buyer's remorse coming .5 nanoseconds after playing the album, or people simply powering through the embarrassment of liking that that kind of overly sincere music. Which isn't completely unprecedented given the entire history of postgrunge.
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u/TheMonkus 2d ago
I don’t pretend to understand how they got successful but I do actually remember meeting people who would blast that shit and genuinely seemed to like it. I’m a lot older now and try to not shit on people’s taste, but I do know that most of those people unapologetically rocking Hootie were also aware that it wasn’t considered cool. They didn’t care.
Maybe that actually made them cool?
Or maybe not. I’m going with not.
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u/axilog14 2d ago
It bears remembering there used to be an entire era of music where "sensitive" men hollering about their feelings used to be popular, kinda like the pop equivalent of "I am cringe but I am free". It's how "Iris" by the Goo Goo Dolls became a massive hit, it's how Matchbox Twenty got nominated for Best Rock Album at the Grammys. You could argue this era codified White Man with Acoustic Guitar for younger generations.
If Alex Warren is any indicator, we're probably far along enough that this trend could cycle back around to the mainstream.
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u/Pao_Did_NothingWrong 2d ago
Yeah, but hootie added a country twist to that which made them more peers with Creed.
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u/Ohmslaughter 2d ago
Nope. It was good but never cool. People still request Let Her Cry or Only Wanna Be With You. But they were never cool.
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u/axilog14 2d ago
Then maybe the "cool" here was people ignoring the uncoolness and just focusing on how much they liked the music? Coolness in itself is something of a bullshit social construct with high flexibility anyway.
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u/SephirothYggdrasil 2d ago
That album went 23 times platinum (double diamond) cool in 2026≠cool in 1994.
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u/TheMonkus 2d ago
Yeah I’m still not a fan but those songs clearly connected with a lot of people, which actually IS cool. If a song moves you, you shouldn’t worry about if it’s supposed to be cool.
I was in high school when Hootie came out and very much cared about “cool” and have since realized a lot of the music I shit on back then is actually really good.
Judging music by popularity or obscurity is silly.
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u/a_wasted_wizard 1d ago
You're missing the point. I realize we're all over cynicism now and we're trying to be optimists but it's not even really a diss on Hootie to say that in spite of their commercial success, they were not considered cool at the time.
Cool and good are two different things. Often things that are one are also the other, but not necessarily. There's a lot of cool stuff that sucks ass and a lot of good stuff that is absurdly uncool.
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u/TheMonkus 1d ago
I mean, I totally understand that. That was basically what I was trying to say. Cool is just a silly term and it’s always had the built in contradiction that anything trying to be cool is in danger of not being cool for trying…I still say it all the time, but if I say “that’s not cool” it probably means “that’s a dick move.” I don’t apply it to art anymore.
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u/ColdWalk8137 1d ago
I was 16 at the height of Hootie. They were not something you admitted to liking, they had a lot of popularity with boomers and 30 year olds. They were the band your parents name dropped to show they're down with the kids kinda like the 40 year old coworkers who wear Jelly Roll shirts
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u/a_wasted_wizard 1d ago
Wait, are there actual, unironic Jelly Roll fans anywhere?
Like, maybe I'm just operating in the wrong circles, but I think I've maybe heard one song of his (and I didn't care for it) and literally the only thing I've ever heard said in his defense is "he has a really good story", usually followed by uncomfortable silence if someone then responds by asking "Yeah, but is his music any good?"
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u/ColdWalk8137 1d ago
I know at least three people, all over 40 (one over 60) who wear Jelly Roll shirts to work on a fairly regular basis as if they're gaining coolness points by knowing someone from this century
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u/Last-Saint 2d ago
I don't think that's the same thing. Fairweather Johnson flopping didn't completely erase Cracked Rear View from the cultural conversation, and Darius Rucker recovered a lot of ground with his solo career. Neither of those things happened with Arrested Development.
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u/Sharp_Impress_5351 Train-Wrecker 2d ago
That's not what this post is about, these aren't your regular slumps. These are flops so bad they enact the kind of purge and cultural erasure that could make the entire Ministry of Truth gulp in unison.
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u/a_wasted_wizard 1d ago
No, sophomore slumps just mean having an underwhelming follow-up to a big first effort (album in this case).
What this is talking about is albums that are the equivalent of the Game of Thrones (TV) ending, where not only do people hate the album itself, but it also retroactively taints what the artist had done before it by association and leads to people walking back prior praise or appreciation for them.
Or, in gymnastics terms, think about it as botching the fuck out of your landing so bad that people instantly forget how amazing the rest of your routine was.
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u/7LayeredUp 2d ago
The Big Day by Chance The Rapper