Falling into obscurity after becoming mainstream
By Jean Brown
Most people have a band that they are a really big fan of. Whether the band is popular or niche, there will always be certain songs by the artists that are underrated or barely listened to. But how about when an artist gets one second of fame, but an entire album by them goes practically unnoticed?
Sir Chloe is a formerly indie American alt-rock band based in Brooklyn, New York, that deserves mainstream recognition and popularity.
Most people recognize the band for their hit song “Michelle” released in 2020, and around two years later, the song became extremely popular on apps like TikTok, and has around 182 million streams on Spotify and 5.4 million views on YouTube.
Not so long after the release of “Michelle,” Sir Chloe released their first EP album "Party Favors" an indie rock album, produced by Terrible Records, which contains some of their most popular songs, “Animal,” “Too Close,” and “Sedona,” which all place in the top three in number of streams after “Michelle,” their number one hit. Due to the success of their music, Atlantic Records, the fifth-largest record label, signed the band.
The band toured opening for Modest Mouse during Lollapalooza 2021, a popular music festival in Chicago and supported Portugal the man in opening for Alt-j in 2022. More recently, they toured with and opened for Beck and Phoenix during their Summer Odyssey 2023 tour in North America.
With all of this going on, you'd believe that Sir Chloe’s debut album, "I Am The Dog," would be an instant hit, and would continue to launch them into virality. However, you couldn’t be further from the truth.
The most popular song on their new album is “Hooves” with 233k views on YouTube, a pretty stark contrast to their first album. At this point in time, the album has been out for 4 months.
This is actually quite puzzling, knowing that Sir Chloe’s most popular song arguably matches the style of her new album more than it does her first. Why is the album so unknown?
I believe that the lack in popularity of this album has not much to do with the music itself, but in advertising the album.
Many artists post snippets of their singles before the songs get released and advertise them on popular social media platforms, though they did do this, they only did it on the app Instagram, which is honestly not a good decision.
Instagram tends to be hard to advertise on since to see posts you typically have to click on what you're interested in. Even when following people, seeing their posts is quite rare. Even though I didn't really know about the album until a few months ago, I never saw the posts come up on any social media, even though I follow the band on most of their platforms.
Despite the advertising, the album reviews are overwhelmingly positive, just by scrolling through Google, it's easy to find reviews from people who love the album. Though I acknowledge that fans of Sir Chloe may have a positive bias towards their music, there are many positive reviews from people who’ve never listened to Sir Chloe a day in their life.
Some may not even give the band a chance considering that when bands get one second of fame, most of their music will not compare to that memory of popularity.
However, I believe that the new album is definitely worth the listen, and maybe it can help you find a new favorite band.
I'm glad I read this article, since it reminded me to support artists! I remember listening to "Michelle" on TikTok, and it's crazy that they aren't as popular anymore since their previous songs were so good. I'll definitely have a listen now, and I hope they can continue to be successful in the future.