Todd In The Shadows

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Is Todd In The Shadows a lolcow?

  • Yes

    Votes: 134 28.8%

  • No

    Votes: 73 15.7%

  • Todd is Lolcow Adjacent

    Votes: 259 55.6%
  • Total voters
    466
Ninon42 said:
Out of my Head also made the Billboard Top 40, they aren't technically a OHW but he's made plenty of exceptions in the past.
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The term "one hit wonder" is also a very vague thing that has technicalities. Some people consider any musician who only ever had one solitary Billboard Top 10 hit to be a one hit wonder, despite their popularity, large catalog of albums, massive tours, concert attendance, and revenue generated. If you go by this metric -- and as crazy as it sounds -- The Grateful Dead, Johnny Cash, Rage Against the Machine, The Who, The Allman Brothers Band, Weezer, and Bad Company are "one hit wonders" by this definition. Rush, Radiohead, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, The Misfits, Tool, Ramones, AC/DC, Megadeth, Judas Priest, Slayer, Primus, Stone Temple Pilots, and Iron Maiden never had a hit single -- as in, they've never even charted in the Billboard Top 10. KISS -- yes, as in, one of the biggest fucking American rock bands in history -- has only had a total of two hit Top 10 singles in their entire career, and never had a #1 hit. The highest charting KISS song is "Beth", a.k.a. that shitty Peter Criss ballad that the fans hate.

Skid Row has had more Top 10 hit singles than Iron Maiden, but let me ask you this: how many times have you seen anyone in public wearing a Skid Row T-shirt? Meanwhile, you can buy Iron Maiden shirts at Target, or Iron Maiden air fresheners at Pep Boys. I mentioned the Misfits and Ramones never having any hit singles, and just like Iron Maiden, those bands have become brands. You can walk outside and probably see someone wearing a shirt for the Ramones presidential seal logo right now.

With that said, I think it's a bad metric to label an artist as "one hit wonder" simply for their total number of Top 10 hits. It's a terrible metric and does a disservice to huge artists who weren't known for hit singles. As I mentioned, Grateful Dead only ever had a hit single later on the 1980's well past their prime, and for crying out loud that band is also a brand. I regularly see people with tattoos of the skull logo.

I think a better metric for judging one hit wonders would be:
  1. Regardless of charting success, album sales, and concert attendance, is this artist mostly known for one specific song?
  2. Did this artist have an otherwise mundane or unsuccessful career, with their one hit wonder song being their cashcow?
Todd nailed it when he did an episode on Bobby Boris Pickett's Monster Mash. Bobby had a mostly unsuccessful music career prior to his big hit, then released a famous novelty song, then couldn't match the success, and ultimately spent the rest of his life being known as "the Monster Mash guy" who milked the success of that one song. That description of Bobby Boris is not in any way shape or form comparable to the long and influential careers of the Grateful Dead or The Who -- the latter of which only ever had a song reach as high as #9. Can you believe "My Generation" only got #74 in the U.S.?

Professor of Rock dislikes the term "one hit wonder" as it's a bad metric and also belittles the talent of the artists. He prefers "lightning in a bottle", or artists who were once king for a day. By this logic, Bobby Boris also caught lightning in a bottle, so to speak, and he meets the two criteria as I laid out. Bobby Boris Picket's "Monster Mash" is the epitome of a one hit wonder.

Todd did a video on Mr. Big by claiming they count as a one hit wonder due to their only hit single "Next to Be With You", yet the band actually was somewhat popular at the tail end of the 80's hair metal craze, and would go on to have a massive career in Asia. I'm too young to remember Mr. Big at their heyday, but I have older relatives who loved glam metal and they seemed to have enjoyed them along with Slaughter, Poison, Warrant, and Whitesnake. Hell, Warrant is technically a one hit wonder, but they had some popular songs apart from Cherry Pie, like Heaven or Uncle Tom's Cabin.

TL;DR - a one hit wonder is an artist who only ever found success with one song, regardless of other work they've done. A lot of songs covered in Todd's OHW do not meet these criteria.
 
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@Michael Jacks0n thanks for the post and insight, buddy.


Back in the day, Todd did a OHW on Float On by The Floaters, and this is how he started it since it was on April Fool’s Day:

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And here’s something from “Hooked On A Feeling”
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Also, IIRC, back in the days when he was on Twitter, Todd talked a lot about how some artists aren’t one hit wonders (he even went all caps once to say that Smash Mouth isn’t one), and once he mentioned that Rick Astley and Tiffany will NEVER be on OHW because they had more than one song reach number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, which seems to be the only thing that can disqualify someone from one hit wonder status in Todd’s eyes from what I’ve seen.

Also, in his episodes for “MMMBop” and “Lovefool”, he mentioned how those were Patreon requests and he talked to the requesters about how he really didn’t consider them one hit wonders, but eventually did those episodes because the requesters were pretty dead set on those songs being their requests (IIRC, in the case of MMMBop, Todd mentioned on Twitter that the requester was so adamant, had their heart set on it so much, that they were practically begging to have that song and episode be their request. )

From what I can gather , Todd’s definition of one hit wonder lies somewhere between Billboard Hot 100 performance and “whether or not Todd knows more than one song by an artist before committing to doing an episode on that artist”.
 
Random Internet Person said:
Also, IIRC, back in the days when he was on Twitter, Todd talked a lot about how some artists aren’t one hit wonders (he even went all caps once to say that Smash Mouth isn’t one), and once he mentioned that Rick Astley and Tiffany will NEVER be on OHW because they had more than one song reach number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, which seems to be the only thing that can disqualify someone from one hit wonder status in Todd’s eyes from what I’ve seen.
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I feel like Todd could make some easy cash and views by doing a "Top 10 OHW requests I'll never do" and then he can explain these things. Or he could talk about why he never covered Rebecca Black back in 2011 (He thought the hate was too much considering how young she was and he didn't want to pile on). There are a number of people I was convinced were OHWs that it turns out weren't. Rick Astley being one of them.

He should also do a similar video for Trainwreckords so he can explain why Cyndi Lauper isn't going to get an episode since she just faded away, she didn't have a blow up that ended her career (Something he said specifically in one of his TW videos but I can't remember which one so I can't point to it).
 
I did not expect the Detachable Penis reference, but the Barenaked Ladies snark was good (fuck off, leafs). Besides the obligatory monocle-dropping at their name and "muh historical racism" from the song name, kinda boring video. I'm an old who went to Warped Tour during the height of ska and swing and other questionable music fads involving brass instruments and copious amounts of hair product but none of the jokes, such as they were, really landed for me. Was more annoyed at him saying $2.50/mo was 50% off a standard Nebula subscription of $6/mo; that's 58.3% off, Mr. masters in 3rd or 5th grade math teacher. The Lindsay pandering is simply to be expected by now.
 
Todd is refreshing brief in his history on the actual Zoot suit riot. That said his comment about fabric rationing just being an excuse to beat up non white people is very stupid.

We know this by the fact that in 1947 Christian Dior "new look" which used large amounts of fabric caused riots in France where older people attacked younger people for flaunting austerity measures. You can see a photo of one such attack here. So Todd is once again being a moron who doesn't know nearly as much as he thinks he does.

 
fremenchips said:
Todd is refreshing brief in his history on the actual Zoot suit riot. That said his comment about fabric rationing just being an excuse to beat up non white people is very stupid.

We know this by the fact that in 1947 Christian Dior "new look" which used large amounts of fabric caused riots in France where older people attacked younger people for flaunting austerity measures. You can see a photo of one such attack here. So Todd is once again being a moron who doesn't know nearly as much as he thinks he does.

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*flouting
 
fremenchips said:
Todd is refreshing brief in his history on the actual Zoot suit riot. That said his comment about fabric rationing just being an excuse to beat up non white people is very stupid.

We know this by the fact that in 1947 Christian Dior "new look" which used large amounts of fabric caused riots in France where older people attacked younger people for flaunting austerity measures. You can see a photo of one such attack here. So Todd is once again being a moron who doesn't know nearly as much as he thinks he does.

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Reading the Reddit comments, and they're saying the Zoot Suit Riots were about race as well. I'm so sick of leftoids like Todd and his kin making every fucking thing about race. He always does this in every video about disco songs where he has to shoehorn in a mention of Disco Demolition Night and how it was a "hate crime" against muh blacks and gays. I think a lot of the seething has to do with Todd being an insanely dysgenic half breed mutt.
 
Michael Jacks0n said:
Reading the Reddit comments, and they're saying the Zoot Suit Riots were about race as well. I'm so sick of leftoids like Todd and his kin making every fucking thing about race. He always does this in every video about disco songs where he has to shoehorn in a mention of Disco Demolition Night and how it was a "hate crime" against muh blacks and gays. I think a lot of the seething has to do with Todd being an insanely dysgenic half breed mutt.
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To be fair, the Zoot Suiters were almost exclusively hispanic, but they were targeted by the police for the street crime they committed. The suits just made them easier to find and target.
 
The Token Ethnic said:
cultural appropriation of swing music during the (third wave) ska resurgence,
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He actually didn’t say anything about cultural appropriation. The most he said about swing music was the revival was a flash in the pan.
The Token Ethnic said:
sexist band name
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He didn’t call it sexist. At most, he was skeptical about the band’s explanation for the name.
The Token Ethnic said:
Fuck ICE!" said in Todd's mush mouthed way of talking?
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No, that wasn’t there.
 
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Michael Jacks0n said:
I think a lot of the seething has to do with Todd being an insanely dysgenic half breed mutt.
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100% correct. From my experience, the people who are into this antiwhite race shit the most are mixed race people, especially mulattos. They are extremely insecure and feel the need to overcompensate.
 
Franz Joseph said:
100% correct. From my experience, the people who are into this antiwhite race shit the most are mixed race people, especially mulattos. They are extremely insecure and feel the need to overcompensate.
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A prime showbiz example is Jordan Peele, who has a white mother but never passes up an opportunity to shit on white people for their race.
 
Half-white, half-nonwhite people go in one of two directions: either they only identify as their nonwhite side and only have utter hatred for whites -- or -- they're in denial of being nonwhite and are full "fellow whites, we need to secure a future for the white race! 1488 Total Nigger Death NOW!". They're usually one or the other, and I've met both. Todd is obviously the former. I knew a woman who was just like Todd (albeit she was actually attractive). I used to know a female hapa who was half-Chinese and half-German, and kinda cute. But she was a radical far-left feminist who only identified as being Asian and hated white men. Meanwhile, I've known a considerable amount of brown Hispanic and mixed Native American people who were blatantly neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

But I digress. Todd is an ugly motherfucker whose opinions are dogshit, and his videos mostly aged like milk, even if I admittedly used to enjoy them back in the 2010's. He wouldn't be so bad if he kept his opinions to himself and tried to review music more objectively instead of being an insufferable Redditard.
 
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