Thought of a couple more:

Jilted John- Jilted John (4)

BC-52s (apparently a fictionalised version of the B-52s!)- Meet The Flintstones (3)

Edited August 11Aug 11 by gasman449

22 minutes ago, gasman449 said:

Thought of a couple more:

Jilted John- Jilted John (4)

BC-52s (apparently a fictionalised version of the B-52s!)- Meet The Flintstones (3)

isn't going down the B52's line a little wide in interpretation? Leaves the door open for such acts as PJ & Duncan (unless you want to include them?😁)

Just now, Gezza said:

isn't going down the B52's line a little wide in interpretation? Leaves the door open for such acts as PJ & Duncan (unless you want to include them?😁)

I did debate whether or not to include this one but I guess they're playing fictionalised versions of themselves here, same mentality we've applied for the WWF wrestlers. PJ & Duncan is another strange case as they're using the character names but aren't performing as the characters from what I've gathered. When I first started this topic I didn't think it would get so complicated!

Haha- maybe "Animated" would have been better?

Then you've got all the acts who were fictional in so much that they didn't sing on their records (Black Box, Milli Vanilli etc) so in a sense they were fictional as well......

Why hasn't this 16 billion viewed video been mentioned yet... 🤨

6 minutes ago, awardinary said:

Why hasn't this 16 billion viewed video been mentioned yet... 🤨

Has it charted top 10 though

Edit Seems it was top 6

Edited August 11Aug 11 by 777666jason

Also, I only recently discovered that this theme tune was released as a single in 1982, but it got to... #44!

Thank you to Ken Barrie for lending his vocals for the early themes.

Maybe a change of it appearing on one of the Now Vault releases for 1982? @gooddelta

Baby Shark is credited to Pinkfong though, who are a company and not a fictional artist!

I think it's the varied way in which one could define a term such as 'fictional' in respect of popular music history that makes it a debate worth having on sites like this though! The fact that it can be determined differently by different people - and even then it can be tricky to stay within one's own personal definitions consistently - does make it more complicated, but also more interesting...

The Pinkfong thing is yet another complication as the more precise one gets, the less easy to readily define it is as to whether it should count as a 'fictional artist'.

Does the three songs (‘Don’t Stop Believin', 'Halo/Walking on Sunshine' & 'Total Eclipse of the Heart') by the cast of Glee (credited on OCC to Glee Cast, the later being ‘Glee Cast feat. Jonathan Groff’) count as fictional artists?

Interesting one. Clearly the actual cast members of 'Glee' were the ones performing on their recorded releases, and so in that sense I suppose the answer is 'no', because they were real people singing on records and appearing in associated clips. But why did so many of their tracks sell/stream so well in the first place - if the assembly of vocalists had not branded themselves in such an obvious manner as clearly linked to the production of 'Glee', and their performances 'in character' as it were on the shows which evidently were intended to promote consumption of both the show and records, then would their material have become as popular as it was for a couple of years at the turn of the '00s/'10s? Probably not, so in another sense, it was the fictional element of their performances - the characters they were embracing while performing their particular type of choral covers and medleys of already-familiar numbers - which was key to The Glee Cast's act, which arguably makes them 'fictional' in the context of initial user engagement and commercial appeal. Oh God now this really is getting difficult!

As mentioned before any blanket "cast" credits like Glee would not count, only credits to the characters they play would count.

59 minutes ago, Gambo said:

But why did so many of their tracks sell/stream so well in the first place -

Tbf it was during the height of downloads back in 2010, and was mostly only season 1, early season 2 and very rarely season 3,

Most of the tracks would debut the week after they aired in the UK and fall straight out the next week, so I wouldnt even say they sold particularly well,

Other than DSB (which did linger in the charts for a while) no other songs has done enough to be certified in the UK [ only a handful certified anywhere at all]

Do DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince count? Summetime (8) and Boom! Shake The Room (1).

The difficulty here is that their duo was formed in 1986, whilst the TV show wasn't created until 1990, but the show was built around their onstage characters and their two top ten hits were well into the show's run so most of the people buying it at the time would have perceived the singles as being by the characters from the show.

3 minutes ago, DanChartFan said:

Do DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince count? Summetime (8) and Boom! Shake The Room (1).

The difficulty here is that their duo was formed in 1986, whilst the TV show wasn't created until 1990, but the show was built around their onstage characters and their two top ten hits were well into the show's run so most of the people buying it at the time would have perceived the singles as being by the characters from the show.

Yeah that's another tricky one. At first glance I would say no as they came before the show, and like PJ & Duncan they aren't really performing as the characters, just using their names. Though I'm sure there's some logic we've applied to other artists that we could apply to them... Thanks for the suggestion anyway 👍

11 minutes ago, gasman449 said:

Yeah that's another tricky one. At first glance I would say no as they came before the show, and like PJ & Duncan they aren't really performing as the characters, just using their names. Though I'm sure there's some logic we've applied to other artists that we could apply to them... Thanks for the suggestion anyway 👍

I've also thought of Morris Minor and the Majors, Stutter Rap (3), but it's the same problem as Fresh Prince, in that the TV series Morris Minor's Marvellous Motors was built around the Morris Minor character after the single had been a hit.

Although I'd probably exclude them from the list, The Monkees deserve a mention. I mean, they were a fictional band who didn't play anything on their early records and only provided some vocal parts. Between 1966 and late 1967 they were merely actors playing roles as a band.

It was only the pressure to perform live that forced Jones and Dolenz to learn their instruments. They discovered their second album existed whilst on tour in 1967.

In 1968 when they gained control over the recording process, they released two albums that qualify them as a real group but they rarely worked together. Much of the stuff that came out under the band's name was really solo work by one member.

On 22/08/2025 at 18:46, DanChartFan said:

Do DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince count? Summetime (8) and Boom! Shake The Room (1).

The difficulty here is that their duo was formed in 1986, whilst the TV show wasn't created until 1990, but the show was built around their onstage characters and their two top ten hits were well into the show's run so most of the people buying it at the time would have perceived the singles as being by the characters from the show.

DJ Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince are just stage names though and they were quite well known in music circles, long before the TV show. Both the Rock the House and He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper albums were given quite a bit of press back in the late 80s.

It's no different to Alice Cooper or Marilyn Manson in that sense, as they are both described by the artist as characters that they performs as.

Well if we are being pedantic like that then Sclub7, cleopatra and Allstars would all count because they all basically played OTT version of them selves in their own sitcoms before they had their first hits

(I don't think they should count though)