That’s shocking to me. With their impact i would have thought they took off in their early 20s.
Good example of another mom performer. The singing shows definitely seem to give local level musicians a different avenue.
He was also the star of a very popular TV show, and drugs destroyed his life and career. I’m surprised he lived as long as he did.
Do “mom bands” count? Kate Bush had a #1 American hit with “Running Up That Hill” almost 40 years after the song was recorded, thanks to “Stranger Things.”
Benjamin Orr was about the same age. Ocasek’s age was lowered by a few years for publicity purposes, and when his son released an album (which was terrible and bombed) some years later. He was 19 when he had his first child, not 14.
Barry Mcguire sang and recorded with the New Christy Minstrels without a break out hit.
Eve of Destruction was recorded in one take on a Thursday morning from words scrawled on a crumpled piece of paper. The next morning it was playing on radio. Eve of Destruction was McGuire’s only top 40 entry
He did produce and record Christian Rock in the 70’s. He was one of the original artists that made it popular. Barry produced the 2nd Chapter of Acts successful albums. I still have those albums in my collection.
Arnel Pineda was singing in lounges and nightclubs in Manila until he was 40, when Journey invited him to become their new lead singer. Does that count?
Charles Bradley was a James Brown impersonator of and on for years before he had some success with Daptone records. Sadly, most of his success came after his death.
Oops, didn’t proofread first! Ric Ocasek’s age was corrected when his son recorded that album.
The actual singers of Milli Vanilli were middle-aged session musicians whose looks didn’t fit the image the record company had for the music involved. The rest is history.
Yeah, but though she had not ever really broken through in the U.S., she charted with her first album (recorded when she was 20), and her albums and singles were (and still are) very popular in the UK, even though she hasn’t recorded much since the early '90s. All ten of her studio albums reached the top 5 in the UK, and she had 14 top-ten singles in the UK between 1978 and 2005.
The use of that song in Stranger Things in 2022 got her a ton of renewed visibility in the U.S. and beyond, but she doesn’t fit the OP’s question, as she certainly wasn’t toiling away in obscurity before 2022; she just wasn’t well-known in the U.S.
(Also, FWIW, “Running Up That Hill” did chart in the U.S. back in 1985, reaching #30; it was Bush’s only top-40 single in the U.S. prior to 2022.)
Not entirely.
Too late to edit/clarify: her first album, actually recorded when she was 19, hit #3 on the UK chart.
Carlos Santana had his share of hits in the '70s, but he didn’t make #1 for the first time until he was 52, when “Smooth” with Rob Thomas topped the charts in 1999.
Meat Loaf similarly had his first and only #1, “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”, in 1993 when he was 46.
With singles, no. But, with albums…his / his band’s first four albums all were top-10 in the U.S., and two of those hit #1; his first album (which reached #4) came out when he was 22.
And as for Mr. Loaf, his breakthrough album, Bat Out of Hell, came out when he was 30, though he recorded an album with another singer in 1971 (when he was 24), for Motown; a single from that album made the Billboard Hot 100, and #30 on the Soul chart. (Plus, he appeared in several popular musicals in the late '60s and early '70s.)
Neither Santana nor Meat Loaf meet the OP’s criteria.
I get that. I was responding to your mention of an act that had their biggest hit late in their career.
If you’re referring to my mention of Kate Bush, that was really me noting that she had a ton of success in her home country (the UK), starting at age 19, but her biggest hit in the U.S. (where she had never gained prominence) was on a song that was 37 years old at that time.
Bill Withers was 33 when his first album became a big hit. I think he was assembling airplane seats at the time.
Los del Río were a pair of Spanish guys who started performing together in 1962. After 33 years of working in the trenches, they briefly became international superstars in 1995 with a huge (and hugely annoying) hit, “the Macarena”. Both of them were in their mid-50s.
The original recording of Macarena came out in 1993 and was a hit in Spain and (for some reason) the Netherlands, but not anywhere else. It was the 1996 remix by the Bayside Boys, which replaced the original Latin jazz instrumentals with an electro-pop beat and kept their chorus but replaced the verse with a female vocalist singing in English, that became a worldwide smash and made #1 in the US.
The English lyrics are actually tamer than the Spanish ones - in the original, Macarena’s boyfriend Vitorino has been drafted and she’s off cheating on him with his two best friends while he’s away, while in the English it’s at least implied that their relationship was on the rocks when he went “out of town”.
True. Still, as far as I can tell they were more or less unknown, even in Spain, in the 31 years between 1962 and 1993.
Pulp was formed in 1978. They played lots of small gigs in Sheffield throughout the 80s and even managed a John Peel session. By the 90s the lineup had changed several times and even Jarvis was ready to give it all up. But the albums ‘his ‘n’ hers’ followed by ‘different class’ launched them into the mainstream of Brit pop.