NOBODY75 wrote: Sun 15 Feb 2026, 10:12 am
Looking at their album sales, over 70% of fans jumped ship after Very. And I think the vast majority never came back. I was always very surprised by such a drastic drop from one album to the next. Although I think Before was a very bad first single, that obviously can't be the key to everything
Firstly, not all of the millions of copies sold up to Very were bought by fans in the traditional sense. Then again, you’re wrong. They’ve been coming back to Dreamworld for four years now.
NOBODY75 wrote: Sun 15 Feb 2026, 10:12 am
Looking at their album sales, over 70% of fans jumped ship after Very. And I think the vast majority never came back. I was always very surprised by such a drastic drop from one album to the next. Although I think Before was a very bad first single, that obviously can't be the key to everything
Firstly, not all of the millions of copies sold up to Very were bought by fans in the traditional sense. Then again, you’re wrong. They’ve been coming back to Dreamworld for four years now.
m+
You're right about that, Minimal; not everyone who bought Very can be called a fan. But based on data from previous albums, we get a certain number of followers (people who bought their records). The drop in sales for Bilingual compared to previous albums always caught my attention because it was so significant. And when I say that most never came back, it's obvious I'm talking about people who bought their records, call them fans or whatever you want, and I say this because the data shows that their sales continued to decline. I haven't said anything else. The four-year Dreamworld tour, I don't know how it proves me wrong when I say they had a huge drop in (followers, people who bought their records, popularity)... from Very to Bilingual.
But let's leave it at that and let the Fans continue commenting on the closure of Bilingual
New Devon Boy wrote: Sun 15 Feb 2026, 9:47 pm
A very strange time for me in 1997.
I started at university in 1993, riding in on the crest of Very. I remember nights in the student pub with Shameless on the duke box, with literally everybody joining in. Then sitting in the hall tv room watching the Children in Need 3D version of I wouldn't normally do this kind of thing.
In 1997 everything seemed so different. I’d hated before, but loved its b-sides. Bilingual just wasn’t doing it for me either. I travelled up from Exeter to see the Somewhere shows twice, incline first meeting with N and C, but everything seemed a bit flat.
Looking back I think my perception of PSB was coloured by my life experiences. In 93 I was young and heading off on an adventure. In 97 I was ending that adventure and joining the ‘real’ world of employment.
Funny how each PSB era captures a different emotional moment for me. I’m getting reflective in my old age!
I do think that's the case with most people and why it's hard to stay relevant in pop music, or at least used to be. When I was 16, PSB were central to my existence. When I was 26, they were peripheral.
Cut tracks 3 and 4 and this, and add Hit and Miss (sorry, Chris!) and you've got a brilliant ten-track album. Just such a bland nothing song to end things. It goes nowhere and sounds like the theme to a cheesy Saturday night gameshow on BBC1. What were they thinking?
New Devon Boy wrote: Sun 15 Feb 2026, 9:47 pm
A very strange time for me in 1997.
I started at university in 1993, riding in on the crest of Very. I remember nights in the student pub with Shameless on the duke box, with literally everybody joining in. Then sitting in the hall tv room watching the Children in Need 3D version of I wouldn't normally do this kind of thing.
In 1997 everything seemed so different. I’d hated before, but loved its b-sides. Bilingual just wasn’t doing it for me either. I travelled up from Exeter to see the Somewhere shows twice, incline first meeting with N and C, but everything seemed a bit flat.
Looking back I think my perception of PSB was coloured by my life experiences. In 93 I was young and heading off on an adventure. In 97 I was ending that adventure and joining the ‘real’ world of employment.
Funny how each PSB era captures a different emotional moment for me. I’m getting reflective in my old age!
I do think that's the case with most people and why it's hard to stay relevant in pop music, or at least used to be. When I was 16, PSB were central to my existence. When I was 26, they were peripheral.
Cut tracks 3 and 4 and this, and add Hit and Miss (sorry, Chris!) and you've got a brilliant ten-track album. Just such a bland nothing song to end things. It goes nowhere and sounds like the theme to a cheesy Saturday night gameshow on BBC1. What were they thinking?
Yes. I think it happens to most of us. You still get excited about a new album and of course you buy it... But it doesn't reach the same levels as when you were 15 or 18. Is the "sorry Chris" comment because he vetoed the inclusion of "Hit and Miss" on the album?
NOBODY75 wrote: Sun 15 Feb 2026, 8:26 pmLook, if you buy four or five albums by an artist, I don't think you can be called a casual listener.
Most people didn't buy all of those albums, but in any event, yeah, you can buy a few albums by someone and still be a casual listener. That's most Taylor Swift listeners, after all. The general public and fandom are two different things.
petshopgrrl wrote: Sun 15 Feb 2026, 8:51 pmTrack 99: "Saturday night forever"
Chronology: Bilingual, Track 12
...According the the FL liner notes, Neil calls the words "completely nothing" and Chris says it's "a bit cheesy-sounding" but this kind of moronic euphoria feels as though it's right in his wheelhouse.
Neil and Chris are correct here - it's one of their worst tracks. Thin, pointless, uninteresting. Almost a synecdoche for their trajectory around this time.
Saturday night forever is, in my view, a woeful misstep on which to finish their most peculiar album to date. Yes, they finally happen on a discotheque, but it might have been more interesting had they got lost on the way...
Neil just sounds strained on this, the disco pastiche is uninspired, and the whole thing is all a bit naff. If this was the disco they have been looking for since the start, they're definitely in the wrong neighbourhood, perhaps in the wrong decade.
By now it is abundantly clear that quality control has been abandoned. There are four magnificent tracks that tower over everything else on this album (Discoteca/Single, A red letter day, It always comes as a surprise, and To step aside) and these pillars are reinforced by a clutch of excellent supporting structures (Se a vida E, Up against it, The survivors, and Before). But Metamorphosis, Electricity, and Saturday night forever hole this under the bow. One is trivial, one is weird, and one is naff. I think that's one acquired taste too many for the record to sustain, and so Bilingual becomes their most uneven record to date, intermittently brilliant, occasionally bizarre.
There's a superb Latin EP here. Thow in The boy who couldn't keep his clothes on instead of the three acquired tastes and the Bilingual balance is immediately better.
Drico.
The pale kid that hides in the attic behind his PC...
Would this song exist if it weren’t for Bilingual?
I know it feels more like a piss-take than a tribute — maybe even an anti-reaction to ’90s pop culture in the same way Bilingual was — but I’ve always thought it was a great track nonetheless. https://youtu.be/TpvF7Qq9svk?si=zUYVmPq353MgvF55�
Lleonard Pler wrote: Mon 16 Feb 2026, 10:20 am
In my Bilingual, The boy who couldn't keep his clothes on is the fitting last number of the album and SNF was given as a Spice Girls B-side.
SNF would be their worst closing track if Wedding in Berlin didn't exist.
I've sometimes felt something similar over the years but when actually listening to the album from start to finish, SNF fits with the concept of "going out and carrying on as normal". "Going out" has two meanings here: going out into the world and going out clubbing.
I rather like 'Saturday Night Forever'. Of course it's lyrically slight, but musically it has some clever and interesting changes and finally finding that disco nearby works for me thematically. We all get to go out and carry on as normal.
I find 'The boy who couldn't keep his clothes on' overrated.
Drico One wrote: Sun 15 Feb 2026, 11:42 pm
There's a superb Latin EP here. Thow in The boy who couldn't keep his clothes on instead of the three acquired tastes and the Bilingual balance is immediately better.
Drico.
I agree. Chuck in TwentySomething and Skeletons in the Closet for the reggaeton vibe...boom!
markus wrote: Mon 16 Feb 2026, 4:22 am
Would this song exist if it weren’t for Bilingual?
I know it feels more like a piss-take than a tribute — maybe even an anti-reaction to ’90s pop culture in the same way Bilingual was — but I’ve always thought it was a great track nonetheless. https://youtu.be/TpvF7Qq9svk?si=zUYVmPq353MgvF55�
U2's POP came out in the same era as Bilingual, in 1997, and was panned by many but it's one of my favourite U2 albums. Simply because they explore and therefore discover sounds, productions and melodies that wouldn't have been discovered if they had set out to make a simple rock album. The difference between Pop and the follow up, All That You Can't Leave Behind, is stark. The latter is a good album but not as great, and marvellously esoteric, as Pop. I feel the same way about Bilingual.
