For many decades promotion and connections were king when it came to breaking a band. From relentless radio pushes (and perhaps some underhanded payola,) to a hit music video, a choice inclusion in a blockbuster movie or soundtrack, or even a key performance at a widely seen event, few songs ever made it to the top without a lot of behind-the-scenes wrangling.
The advent of streaming and digital downloads eventually helped to crack that monopoly. No longer could the major labels effectively wall off the playing field from outsiders. In turn, the various apparatuses in the press and retail industry that once ensured the dominance of those power plays, soon crumbled as well.
The arrival of social media further allowed artists to flourish outside of the music industry machine, but it wasn’t till more recently that perhaps the most powerful tool in getting a band over in the modern age of music came to pass: the algorithm.
While the mainstream appeal of heavy music has waned since its last commercial heyday in the late 90s and early 2000s, the scene has remained resolute, managing to spit out a bona fide stars.
However, when it comes to more recent breakout artists and success stories, viral success on services like TikTok have done the majority of the heavy lifting. Bands like Bad Omens, Sleep Token, The Plot In You, and even the resurgence in interest in beloved alternative metal veterans Deftones, have all largely been propelled by favorable algorithmic reach.
One such band to benefit from that was the band Ghost. Back in 2019, the Swedish occult rockers issued a b-side track by the name of “Mary On A Cross” as part of their “Seven Inches Of Satanic Panic” EP. While a new offering at the time, in the band’s lore, that song was originally recorded in the 60s by a fictional former frontman of the band.
While the tracks on that EP performed modestly, it wasn’t till a fan-altered version of “Mary On A Cross” with a slower tempo and stacked on reverb blew up on TikTok. Capitalizing on the renewed interest in the song years later, the band themselves went on release their own ‘slowed+reverb’ version of the track in 2022, effectively granting fans outside of TikTok a platform to listen to that version, while also allowing the band’s streaming numbers to spike.
By November of 2022 “Mary On A Cross” went toe to toe with the group’s biggest hit yet, “Square Hammer“. That latter track went gold in the United States in June of 2022 and was a full-fledged single with the might of the band’s label and promotional team behind it. Despite initially begin given less treatment, “Mary On A Cross” itself went gold in November of that year, and in September of 2023 became the band’s first platinum single in the United States.
That algorithmic windfall didn’t just change the creative approach of the band’s mastermind Tobias Forge, it also impacted how Ghost‘s label viewed the band’s output. In a recent interview with The Rock Hard Radio Show With Kim Rennie, Forge recalled how “Mary On A Cross” upended a lot of things for the band, and ultimately allowed him more free reign.
When it was pointed out by the aforementioned shows host that the songs on the group’s forthcoming album “Skeletá” are a bit less conventional, he replied:
“Just because you mentioned radio and I’m obviously talking on the radio right now, and I must underline, underscore that I grew up with a radio on, so I have nothing against the format. I am also a songwriter and I’m also very, very interested in the art of writing hit music. So there’s nothing bad about that. But for as long as we have, with Ghost, experienced some sort of what you might call mainstream success, where radio has been an element through which greater success could be achieved, it has been a little bit of a question mark, exactly what are the elements needed in order to succeed?
And I think that the biggest element of surprise was some years ago when I had written a song that, according to the lore, of course, was written 50 years ago, but was a song that I had written and recorded, and I showed it to the label and I was, like, ‘How about that?’ And they were, like, ‘What?’ ‘It’s pretty good. My kid likes it.’ And they were, like, ‘Okay, it’s a good song, but it’s like a b-side. It’s not meant for…’ It was just like a question mark.
‘What do you mean? It’s like an old song, right?’ I was, like, ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s a good song. Okay, regardless, I’m gonna play it live.’ So we started playing that immediately, the moment it came out. And I felt like, ‘Wow, that’s amazing. One of the best songs I’ve ever written is like just a b-side. Fine.’ A few years later, it turned out that was gonna be, so far, the biggest song of my career. That turned a lot of heads within the label world because they were, like, ‘Oh, we didn’t know.'”
Speaking of how the unexpected success of that internally overlooked song has impacted him now, he replied:
“What it told me was just like, we have no plan — I have no plan — so I’m not gonna chase that. I am gonna write songs — I’m gonna write the best songs I can ever write — and we’ll see what happens with them because there’s no clear way of telling exactly how it’s gonna materialize to a song that is worth anything from a hit point of view.
And I felt that is not even a bad thing, because I’m in a great spot anyway. I can make a record filled with songs that are maybe too hard or maybe too this or too little of that or just thematically sits together. If it’s a hit, it will show itself, it will materialize. If it’s not a hit, that’s fine. We can play the other hits too. We’re blessed, for lack of a better, more fitting word, to be able to go out on tour. And we have a lot of fans and we have a lot of support anyway, and that, to me, actually alleviated me from a little bit of that stress because I’m, like, ‘I’m not gonna chase another big hit.'”
Ghost‘s fifth studio album “Skeletá” is due out on April 25th.
[via Blabbermouth.net]
