What were your artists you discovered and liked before they:

a) blew up in popularity (especially internationally)

b) got a big chart hit

 

 

My picks:

I started getting into Glass Animals around their How To Be A Human Being era, long before Heat Waves

I was a fan of Jungle since... not too long after their debut came out. I was pleasantly surprised at how well Back On 74 did on the charts

I love Steve Lacy and his work with The Internet, and my fondness started at around near the end of the 2010s. I also heard Foldin' Clothes by J Cole and PRIDE by Kendrick around the time the albums they were on came out but I didn't notice Lacy provided guitar work until much later.

Sam Fender was one I discovered at around 2018/2019 and really liked his Hypersonic Missiles album. This was a few years before Seventeen Going Under

Plus I started liking AJ Tracey and Jorja Smith at around 2017, not too long before they managed to get chart success

Quite a few, some I still liked once they became popular, many I didn't. Some good ones:

 

Scooter - although they'd been in the charts in the mid-90s most people I knew had never heard of them before "The Logical Song"

Roni Size - had a few tapes of his before the Mercury Music Prize win

Pied Piper and the Master of Ceremonies - heard their big hit way before it charted, but also had Pied Piper tapes and also heard many sets with MC DT on it where he'd use the "we're loving it loving it loving it" line long before that tune existed

 

Ones I stopped liking:

 

DJ Fresh - he was part of Bad Company in the 90s who were good but the commercial drum & bass he was releasing with the female singers years later was dreadful

Swedish House Mafia - more the individual DJs really who were initially known collectively as the Swedish House Mafia before it was really a thing. The actual music they released as Swedish House Mafia was the start of all that EDM nonsense that I hated

Styles & Breeze - again more them separately, Styles was part of Force & Styles and before that Force & the Evolution who were excellent. Was listening to Breeze too in the 90s. When they came together making hardcore it wasn't really my cup of tea, but the watered down versions of hardcore tunes that charted later were even worse.

 

An in between one:

 

DJ Zinc - started off as a drum & bass DJ and I liked his garage record "138 Trek" that was his first hit. The music he made in later years not so much.

My most notable personal example (I could think of for now?) would be BTS back in 2016... around 'Burning Up (Fire)', before 'Save Me' and 'Blood, Sweat & Tears'.

I’ve been a fan of Sabrina carpenter for a good few years now, casual fan since like 2019/2020 and a proper fan since skinny dipping dropped as the lead single to emails I can’t send!

I would also say RAYE, I grew up with her dance features in my teens, and had been following her journey from leaving her label and going independent, so escapism was on mg playlist from release day so seeing it go so massive was so special to see knowing all the background context and watching it happen!

Oh there are stacks of them depending on your definition of big, although not so many recent ones due to the way things are now chart wise -

 

Liked all of these before any had a hit

 

R.E.M.

Nirvana

Green Day

Nick Cave (if you consider him 'big')

Manic Street Preachers

Nine Inch Nails

Libertines

Radiohead

Architects

Hole

Levellers

Sleeper

Smashing Pumpkins

KLF

 

 

To be honest there were loads of 80s and 90s Indie type bands that where popular on my scene long before they broke through

 

 

 

Walk The Moon are the ones that immediately came to mind. Loved their first album and loved Shut Up & Dance when it was initially released. When it blew up I was there for it. They deserve more than their one hit wonder status

The Weeknd

Bloc Party

The Killers

 

Brooks: I've been a massive fan of future bounce music before Like I Do.

Marshmello: Early Marshmello with those Joytime/Monstercat releases were rather fun and deadmau5 could cry about it all the time lol. Good to see him getting his first hit with Khalid.

Stray Kids: I've been paying attention to their releases since MIROH in 2019. They're the best Gen 4 group imo.

I guess she's arguably still pretty niche now (at least in this country and outside the Internet) but I was quite early to discover ROSALÍA from spotting 'Catalina' on a Reddit post in July 2017 (then sat on it for a few months and sent it to BJSC in February 2018, still a little while before the 'El Mal Querer' era kicked off and started building more buzz for her outside of Spain).

I don’t know if anyone can realistically say Adele, but I’m going to anyway. Here’s my reasoning:

 

I purchased 19 the day it was released in Australia, I don’t even recall it charting at all until after 21 blew up.

 

I also purchased Chasing Pavements and Cold Shoulder on cd when they were released here and bought 21 the night before it was released as there was that little buzz here the record store actually had it on their shelves early.

 

Saying all that though I know she was a household name in the UK. So mine basically applies to here in Australia.

Listened to Gotye's music a lot in 2007, could've been earlier but wasn't into music at the time. Tame Impala a year or so later. The Weeknd's "House of Balloons" was my morning commute soundtrack for much of 2011, also heard BENEE's debut single (back when she was just Bene) literally the day it came out in 2017 and was championing her all the way from then.

I bought Taylor Swift's first album after hearing about her through MySpace in late 2007.

 

And I was buying Ed Sheeran's EPs since early 2010!

I remember sending Dua Lipa's Be The One to friends on WhatsApp in 2015 saying she will be the next big thing

 

 

I remember Sam Fender's 'Friday Fighting' being the Introducing Track of the Week on BBC Radio 1 years ago, and quickly became a fan!

I was there in 1968.....I was there at the first Can show in Cologne.....

I never had much luck with this, when I used to go to festivals in the late 00s/early 10s I'd see a lot of smaller artists who I thought were about to blow up, only for them to never get any big break at all and disappear soon after. Or I'd get really into a new artist once they'd have their one big hit usually at the start of the year thinking it was the start of many, but they'd end up as a one-hit wonder - David Jordan, Sam Sparro etc.

 

I was a fan of David Guetta around the time of 'The World is Mine' in 2004, which got to #49 here and he just seemed like one of many DJs around then, not realising he'd go on to absolutely dominate the end of that decade into the next. Similarly I saw Calvin Harris live in 2009 when he was still a solo artist making quirky electropop hits, I wouldn't count it as 'before they were cool' as he'd already had a #1 with I'm Not Alone, but he performed in the middle of the day during Wireless Festival which even just two years later once We Found Love came out would have been mad.

I saw James Bay supporting Tom Odell in early 2014, 8 or so months before Hold Back the River was released (and about a year before it took off in a big way). I picked up a free demo CD - these have been sold for as much as £150 on Discogs since...!

 

The Chainsmokers had a #1 hit in my chart with a song called Erase, featuring Priyanka Chopra, over a year before #SELFIE (which I hate oops) went viral. Erase isn't even on Spotify any longer unfortunately. On a smaller scale, I discovered Alec Benjamin in 2016, and his only UK top 40 to date, Let Me Down Slowly, reached #1 in my chart in its release week in 2018, a year before it hit the top 40. I remember discovering Benjamin Ingrosso the same day as Alec Benjamin, and whilst he's not a thing in the UK, he's a huge star in Sweden nowadays! Conan Gray was also someone I discovered before his only UK top 40 hit - I found him in mid-2019, Heather took off in the second half of 2020 - he's the only primary artist I've sent to BJSC to score a UK chart hit after I sent them.

 

I was into the likes of Benson Boone and The Kid LAROI before they took off in a big way, but in both cases it was after their first UK chart appearance (in the top 100), though particularly in Benson's case that was over 2 years before Beautiful Things took his career to the next level. I found Shawn Mendes and Troye Sivan through their debut releases charting on iTunes (Life of the Party and Happy Little Pill respectively), and subsequently, following Stitches' climb up the chart is one of my favourite chart stories (as well as There for You scraping #40 to give Troye his first top 40 hit! It felt like it'd never happen at the time).

 

A different case but I found Ryan Lawrie in mid-2016 through a competition for a brand new artist to open up Capital's Summertime Ball, and I heard his song If Only in the process. A few months later, he was on my TV auditioning for X Factor (where he placed 6th in the end), and is now a notable K-Pop songwriter (he's written for the likes of BTS and TOMORROW X TOGETHER).

Probably The Weeknd, though I wasn't a big fan of his until 2015/2016 when he broke through with Can't Feel My Face and then Starboy a year later. I remember hearing his music as early as 2011/2012 and enjoying it. By the time he found commercial success, it felt like he was around for years.

idk if it's fair to name any Disney girlie for this especially Sabrina Carpenter bc they already had a huge fanbase from whatever show they're from before they made it big (Girl Meets World in Sabrina's case). She'd been in the game for a while before "Thumbs" popped up on US radio stations which was when people really started having eyes on her. So uh yeah shout out to when Kylie Cantrall gets her big break I guess 🤷‍♂️

 

I feel like this is the case with most of the artists I properly stan these days :lol: I hear a song by them and that gets me casually into them before another song turns me into a full on fan. With Twenty One Pilots it was Holding On To You, with BTS it was Dope, and with Zedd it was Spectrum when it was featured on Tap Tap Revenge

I think Sia probably fits into this category for me. I loved her first single "Taken for Granted" and also the stuff she did with Zero 7, and "Breathe Me". So when she took off about 10 years ago with all the David Guetta stuff I was a bit non-plussed!