Musicians Who Never Lived to See Their Success

Vincent van Gogh was an artist in the 1800s who was extremely unsuccessful only selling one painting in his lifetime and then he died at the age of 37 as a failure years after his death he became one of the most popular artists of all time with painting selling for hundreds of millions of dollars I'm sure everyone watching this has heard his name before and seen at least one of his famous paintings but unfortunately Van Gogh isn't the only artist to meet this Fate To Die unsuccessful and to never see the success they would Garner So today we're going to be looking into a handful of musicians who never lived to see their success hey what's up everyone it's your boy Maddie balls and I'm back with another video and I just wanted to make a little clarification before I got into this one since success can be so objective I'm just going to Define it as the peak of an artist's career I think that's a decent way to define it for this video since most people on this list saw a little bit of success or a little bit of buzz but never really saw their full potential so make sure to keep that in mind while watching and let's get into the video Nick Drake is probably the most interesting artist on this list since he was an artist that died with hardly any album sales and not much money but now he has hundreds of millions of streams is critically acclaimed and is very influential both of Nick Drake's parents wrote music and his mother taught him piano when he was very young he started recording songs on a tape recorder as a kid Nick learned multiple instruments on top of the piano like the clarinet and the saxophone so he eventually formed a band with some of his classmates called the perfume gardeners his Focus eventually shifted away from school and towards his music and in college he did street performances to make money in 1967 when he was 19 he started playing at local clubs and coffee shops and through doing this he made a connection with a producer named Joe Boyd Nick showed Boyd a demo he made in his college room and Boyd really liked it so he hooked him up with a record deal with Island Records Nick eventually dropped out of college and began working on his debut studio album five leaves left in 1968. there were a bunch of issues when making this album and conflict between Nick and the people he was working with but the album eventually released in 1969. the album didn't get too many sales and hardly received any radio play it essentially flopped and Nick wasn't too happy about it Boyd was still working with Nick so he helped Nick find a place to live in London and even paid for it Nick recorded some songs for a show on BBC and played a live show that unfortunately went poorly making him not want to perform live anymore he had a dash of Buzz and then began working on his next album brighter later it's also worth noting that during this time Nick had already been doing drugs and was possibly even getting into hard drugs although no one knows for sure regardless in 1971 he released brighter later and like his debut album it failed Joe Boyd left the label and went to go work in La leaving Nick all alone without the man who essentially acted as his mentor and his friend Nick then fell into a deep depression he performed his last show at a technical college and for some reason just walked away in the middle of one of his songs his family encouraged him to go to a psychiatrist and that is where he was prescribed anti-depress presence his label Island Records wanted him to promote his last album through interviews radio shows and live shows but he just stayed inside his apartment alone and depressed however for some reason in October's 1971 Nick approached his label because he wanted to record a third album the label didn't really even want it but after only two nights of Studio sessions Nick had completed his third album pink moon with 11 songs in 28 minutes it was a short acoustic and depressing album Nick very obviously enjoyed simple raw authentic music and that's what this album was he gave the label the album and it was released in 1972 but unfortunately this album flopped even worse than his previous two albums the label thought that the album had big potential but Nick refused to promote it or play live shows he did one awkward interview but that was it he retired from music in 1972 with his three albums combined selling less than 4 000 copies after the failure of pink moon he moved back in with his parents he told his mom I don't like it at home but I can't bear it anywhere else Nick was being paid a 20 pound a week retainer by the label which is worth about 257 pounds today he was extremely reserved quiet emotionless and he eventually had a breakdown and was hospitalized for five weeks in 1973 Nick tried again and making a fourth album Joe Boyd was back in town so they met up and Nick showed a motion for the first time in a while when he described how enraged he was that he wasn't famous he had also been talking to a girl that he was really close to and he even proposed to her but she severed ties with him because she did not feel the same way so then on November 25th of 1974 at the age of 26 Nick Drake died of an overdose in his bedroom the coroner said that Nick had taken his own life because of how many antidepressants were in his system after his death it was static with almost no coverage no documentaries and no compilation albums however five years after his death his label compiled all of his released work into a box set called the fruit tree then in the 80s artists like Kate Bush Peter Buck Robert Smith and many more began to pop up and cite Nick as an influence of theirs in 1888 he had a documentary broadcasted on BBC Radio then another release the next year then in 1999 Volkswagen decided to use his song Pink Moon in a commercial which instantly blew up the song introducing tons of people to Nick Drake for the first time he went from 6 000 copies of his album being sold to 74 000 in just a year his music began being used in soundtracks for films and tons of artists have cited him as an influence as of now he has over 2 million monthly listeners on Spotify and hundreds of millions of plays and despite all the mixed reviews he received while he was alive Nick had all three of his albums on the Rolling Stones 2003 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of all time he was also included in the faux Hall of Fame apparently before he died Nick Drake had told his dad that he had finished his life's work and had done more than many in a lifetime one day people would realize and it looks like decades after his passing people did eventually realize the talent that was Nick Drake now I don't want you guys to get me wrong with this one uh pop smoke was definitely successful while he was alive but it was extremely short-lived and he unfortunately never got to see the massive Heights that his career would eventually reach I know this pic may be like a tad bit controversial I think people kind of get their memories mixed up with the times but if you stick around I'm sure you'll agree so pop smoke first tried rapping in 2018 well in a recording studio with his friend Jay Guapo then later that year he recorded a song over a Beat from a producer named 808 Mello who he would eventually work with very frequently he started releasing music consistently in 2019 and made some connections in the industry about halfway through 2019 he released his breakout hit welcome to the party and then followed that up with a bunch of remixes with Nicki Minaj and skepta then in July he released his debut mixtape meet the Woo which had a handful of big songs and performed fairly well hitting 105 on the US charts it also included the song Dior which would eventually go on to become one of his biggest hits later in December of 2019 he featured on Travis Scott's Jack Boys album on the song Gotti which was his first song that charted on the Billboard Hot 100. pop smoke had some Buzz was making connections and was making a name for himself in the music industry Gotti definitely helped put him on the map as he was on a song with Travis Scott and definitely stole the show then on February 7th of 2020 he released his second mixtape meet the woo 2. it debuted at 7 on the billboard 200 with features from quavo a boogie little TJ and more pop smoke was on the cusp of Fame but only 12 Days After releasing his second mixtape he was shot and killed in a robbery gone wrong his music career barely even lasted a year and a half hopsmoke had accidentally posted his location on his Instagram story while he was staying at an Airbnb so some people decided to Rob him they found him in the bathroom and demanded his jewelry and at first he was compliant but then for some reason he decided to fight back so they shot him he was rushed to the hospital and pronounced dead a few hours later I remember when I saw this I was a senior in high school sitting in class on Twitter and it was really sad as I had just recently discovered him also also here is 20 which makes it even more sad because for a while I thought he was a lot older he looks older and sounds older but when you realize how young he was it's even more depressing anyways he was buzzing at the time of his death but after his passing he would achieve a whole other level of success according to billboard the month following his death his streams went up nearly 400 percent Dior went up almost 500 percent in streams better have your gun went up nearly 800 percent and his downloads went up nearly one thousand percent oh and his album sales also went up 12 000 percent in a day Dior in particular seemed to benefit the most from the attention he received after he passed as it began blowing up and is now three times certified platinum 50 Cent said that he would executive produce Pop's debut album that had been in the works then in July of 2020 shoot for the stars aim for the moon was released it hit number one on the billboard 200 every song Hit the Billboard Hot 100 and for the night hit number six which was pop Smoke's first top 10 hit other songs like what you know about love mood swings and got it on me became huge hits about a year later another posthumous album was released called faith and again it reached number one on the billboard 200 making him the first artist to have two number one posthumous releases and despite all the general controversy surrounding posthumous releases his were very clearly successful if you look at his top songs on Spotify five of them were released after his death and the other received a huge influx of streams following pop smoke has two gold songs and 11 Platinum songs all of which reached the status after he passed a fan commented on a video about him saying [ __ ] just hurts knowing he was only mainstream for less than a year and knowing that he could have done way more but we will never get to see that and what the fan neglects is that not only will we not get to see that but neither will he it really is a shame that pop smoke never got to see the insane numbers that he would continuously pull in so Bradley Knoll was the lead singer and guitarist for the band Sublime but he tragically passed away right before the release of their most successful album ever he was interested in music at a very young age since his dad played the guitar and his mom played both the piano and the flute he started his first band when he was 16 with a guy named Michael Yates and Eric Wilson who would eventually be the bassist for Sublime then in 1988 he got back with bassist Eric Wilson and Wilson's drummer friend but God to form the band Sublime they began jamming together in the drummer's garage and wrote the song date fairly early on Sublime started playing small shows at local parties when they were just starting out and they actually got fairly popular locally in Long Beach according to Rolling Stone they loved to get [ __ ] up they love to things up and they had many ways of doing it they were fairly popular in Southern California but because of their crazy reputation some venues were actually hesitant to book them then in 1990 Bradley and a guy named Michael Miguel hapult met at a party and Miguel was a music student who had his Studio at his school so he invited Sublime to record at the studio around this time Bradley also rescued a Dalmatian named Louis AKA Lou dog who is essentially sublime's mascot ludog doesn't pertain too much to this story but he was on all their album covers referenced in songs and was occasionally on stage with them when they performed which I think is really cute and he actually went to a meeting with a label anyways when Sublime went to record at Miguel's school they had to sneak in at midnight and recorded till 7am which resulted in their demo tape jaw won't pay the bills as the byproduct this tape helped him gain some popularity although most of it was still fairly local this is around the time that Bradley decided to pick up hard drugs more specifically heroin it said that he was fascinated by other rock stars like Kurt Cobain and thought that drugs would help him be more creative this would lead to a long Battle of him continuously getting sober and then relapsing after that Bradley and the others began working on their next project 40 Ounces to Freedom they used the same strategy of sneaking into a studio to record Bradley said you weren't supposed to be in there after 9 pm but we'd go in at 9 30 and stay until 5 in the morning we managed to get thirty thousand dollars of studio time for free following this they released 40 ounces of freedom and sold 60 000 copies now sixty thousand copies by no means is bad at all but it pales in comparison to the success they would achieve in the future one of the most popular songs on this album Badfish is often seen as a song about Bradley's heroin addiction because of lyrics like when you grab a hold of me you tell me that I'll never be set free but I'm a parasite creep and crawl I step into the night Sublime then began working on their second album robbing the hood which was actually recorded in a crack house and by this time Bradley's addiction was the worst it had ever been a lot of the lyrics on the album demonstrate that too like on pool shark when he says but now I've got the needle and I can shake but I can't breathe I take it away but I want more and more one day I'm gonna lose the war many people even refer to this song as his suicide note Robin the hood was released in 1994 and roughly one year later a Scott radio show owner took a copy of 40 ounces to freedom to an another radio station known as K-Rock FM and asked that they add dayroot to their playlist this was one of the first songs they ever recorded and released and because of the lyrics and the title the song was fairly controversial however it still helped them get some exposure following this they were approached by the record label MCA which prompted Bradley to try to quit drugs he even decided to go to rehab because he knew he had to get clean before the MCA thing could happen and he did for a while and then the band scheduled a Europe tour with MCA and had 40 Ounces to Freedom distributed by the label however despite briefly getting clean Bradley kept relapsing he also had a son in 1995 with his girlfriend Troy which helped him to get motivated to stay clean for a little while then in 1996 the band began to work on their self-titled album with MCA records while working on the album Bradley and his bandmates were often very drunk around some sort of drugs which made the process very rough blue dog made a mess in the studio the band trashed their hotel crashed their Studio car and were extremely Reckless Bradley had also relapsed during this time so he got sent home Troy briefly left him and he got clean again they were able to finish the album while Bradley was clean and then on May 18th of 1996 Bradley married Troy exactly a week after getting married Bradley and the rest of Sublime embarked on a five-day tour throughout California with a European and East Coast who are planned next but because of his recent marriage and success Bradley and the others were celebrating and he ended up relapsing again while staying at the hotel Bud gaw woke up in the morning on May 25th to see Bradley lying on the floor next to his bed while Lou dog was curled up on the bed whining gaw then realized that Bradley had overdosed on heroin called for an ambulance but unfortunately Bradley was pronounced dead at the scene the album was supposed to be released but they had it delayed and changed the name from killing it to the self-titled name Sublime the album then released on July 30th of 1966. two months after Brad had passed this album was their most successful body of work by far selling over 6 million copies in 14 years songs like Santeria what I got doing time wrong way and many more became huge hits the album reached the Billboard top 20 and the songs I just mentioned all made it to the radio however after Brad's tragic passing the band was over with the surviving bandmates Wilson and gloss sang Sublime died when Brad died in 2001 ludog passed away and he had his ashes sprinkled in the same spot that Brad had his and Brad's son Jacob actually started making music and still does to this day Eva Cassidy was a musician who died at 33 in 1996 and her music didn't begin to get attention until about two years after her passing so Eva Cassidy was an artist who learned guitar at nine years old and began playing guitar and singing when she was only 11 for a band called Easy Street her band played shows at weddings corporate parties and bars Eva began bouncing between bands as she was growing up such as Stonehenge characters without names and more she also played music at a Six Flags theme park for a summer six days a week one of her friends from Stonehenge David lorem invited her to sing on his music project he took her to a studio called black Pond where she met a guy named Chris Biondo who was an engineer and bassist Chris thought she was so great that he could help her find jobs as a session singer and introduced her to her future manager out Dale if you don't know what a session singer is it's essentially someone that just provides backup vocals for the main artist and what's even more interesting is that she ended up doing session vocals for E40 in 1990 Chris Biondo and Eva Cassidy who were actually in a relationship for a while founded a band called called the Eva Cassidy band with some other members and they began performing a lot in the Washington area after doing that for a while in 1992 Chris showed a tape of Eva singing to a guy named Chuck Brown a popular musician known as The Godfather of the gogo this led to both Eva and Chuck Brown making a duet album called the other side that was released through Brown's label unfortunately though the album did not sell too well the other side was actually the only album that Eva Cassidy released in her lifetime it was for this album that she also recorded the song Over the Rainbow the next year in 1993 Eva received a whammy award which was an award put out by the Washington Area Music Association the next year she was invited to perform there getting two more Awards as well she had a little bit of Buzz and briefly signed a record deal with blue note she recorded a live album at Blues Alley and began working on a second studio album as well in 1996. well at a promo event for her live album she noticed that her hips were aching which she just assumed was related to how she would paint murals a lot however after the pain persisted for a while she got an x-ray that actually showed that her hip was fractured she continued going to the doctor just to find out that she had cancer that spread to her bones and lungs after performing live for the last time on September 17th of 1996 she passed away from melanoma a couple of weeks later in her home still a relatively unknown musician after she passed away another Washington singer Grace Griffith showed her live album to a guy named Bill straw who worked for a record company called Blick Street records he asked her family if he could put together a compilation album of a bunch of her music so in 1998 the Songbird album was put on the CD it wasn't super popular for about two years until someone recommended Terry wogan to play it on his BBC Radio 2 show following that the album sold over a hundred thousand copies then in late 2000 BBC played a video of Eva singing Over the Rainbow which helped the Songbird album climb up the UK charts the popularity of Evo's music snowballed and eventually Songbird went six times Platinum selling 1.8 million copies in the UK she wasn't as popular in the US but song where it did eventually go gold there as well following Songbird a variety of other posthumous albums have been released even this year in March of 2023 there was an album full of her music released with orchestras backing her up which was a dream she had always wanted to achieve her previous collaborator and boyfriend Chris Biondo has been making sure to keep her alive through her music throughout his entire life and people may not even be aware of her music if it wasn't for him honestly when I came up with this video idea I thought it would be fun but the more I looked into these incidents it just kind of made me sad but it's also kind of cool to see how these artists have lived on through their music anyways though I hope you guys did enjoy this video if you did please make sure to leave a like down below maybe drop a comment of some other people who passed before their music was successful I know there's other people out there but I just didn't have time in this video but yeah thank you guys for watching I really appreciate it other than that though this had been Manny balls and I'll see you guys next time

Channel: mattyballz

Views: 39,264

Keywords: pop smoke, eva cassidy, bradley nowell, sublime, nick drake, nick drake pink moon, pop smoke dior, pop smoke what you know bout love, sublime santeria, sublime what i got, eva cassidy over the rainbow, musicians who never lived to see their success, musicians who died before their music became popular, posthumous albums, posthumous music

Id: WN1PErGVefY

Length: 19min 12sec (1152 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 12 2023