Commercialism in the sense that their music was much more approachable to the masses. I listen to Voices, Peruvian Skies, The Silent Man, Lifting Shadows Off a Dream and many others from their earlier days that seem more listener friendly to me. Hence more commercial in being that the non-prog community would like it. Don't get me wrong I love all their music, but after listening to ADTOE and then going back to Awake and FII I just noticed that the earlier albums were much more radio or listener friendly to me.
A good portion of FII could be considered radio friendly, but not Awake.
There are a decent number of songs on Awake that could have had mainstream appeal if properly marketed. Caught in a Web, Innocence Faded, Silent Man, Lie, and Lifting Shadows all have very strong commercial appeal. Furthermore, even the lengthier, proggy songs like Voices and Scarred have big, bombastic singalong choruses that are very memorable and instantly recognizable. In fact, in a very real sense, I think Awake had more mainstream friendly songs then I&W. The problems was, though, Awake didn't have Pull Me Under, so it never got the proper amount of mainstream appreciation. But when you consider that Awake in general has relatively short, concise songs with catchy melodies and hooks, yeah, I consider it to at least have had the potential for big mainstream appeal that regrettably was never properly utilized.
Topic: DT and commercialism? (Read 1795 times)
