Hit the Lights – “Anthem” • Page 5

none of that is pop punk. most of those bands are just pure pop

 

Yeah, and it's not even close.

(And all those bands outsold HTL by a factor of like 10.)

 

Are we really going to argue about the difference between pop and pop-punk? I'm too lazy to get into it, but this is the jist.

Neon pop - Wikipedia

 

Haha, he picked BLG, a band who's lead singer has gone on to write for massive artists because he's so good at writing hooks

And yeah, FTSK and Cobra Starship were huge in comparison, haha. Even metro station, hahah.

 

do you still think fall out boy and my chemical romance are emo because wikipedia says they are?

 

Still? I'm not sure how anyone ever confused those bands with anything ranging from Rites of Spring, Embrace to Mineral, Texas is the Reason, Braid, etc.

I'm also not sure what your point is.

 

Who said HTL sold more records than any of those bands?

 

the point is i don't know why you're comparing the goals and musical ability of hit the lights to cobra starship and breathe carolina and boys like girls, all of which are sonically very different

 

We can argue genres all day. My point is that Hit the Lights got grouped in with all those other mid-2000s neon pop-"punk" bands that have been brought up in this thread like All Time Low, The Maine, etc. I'm simply saying anyone stating that they were "awful" and "the worst" need to remember the actual garbage that was around during this time. They were comfortably mediocre and I'll listen to any HTL record long before I put on Breathe Carolina, FTSK, Cute Is What We Aim For, etc. But I get it, hyperbole and radical opinions are very "in" right now.

 

I'll never understand this site's unconditional love for Boys Like Girls. I'm a fan of them, but their career path of was so much different from the smaller neon bands that it's not even comparable. Didn't their first album come out on a major label and had Top 40 cowriters? It was also considered generic and basically an All-American Rejects clone at the time. Yes, it went gold, but facts are facts.

 

My main point was the first one-Boys Like Girls was a very talented band and way above HTL and I don't know why you'd group them together

 

How can you say "yeah it went gold, but facts are facts"

 

Okay. Well I listed like 6 bands so I'm not sure why you're taking the straw man approach. But by all means give me 4 posts defending Breathe Carolina.

 

It sold a lot of copies, but it's not as if BLG had to work their way up.

 

That was a part of YOUR argument

 

The songwriters they worked with were S*A*M and Sluggo, who at that point had really just done scene stuff, without a huge crossover hit. Sam Hollander has done plenty of major stuff since, including One Direction and Train and Fitz & the Tantrums.

 

What was?

Really getting some mileage out of that emoji also.

 

Obviously this is off topic in a thread about HTL but record sales aside, weren't 2/3 of their albums pretty much universally panned among critics? Maybe I don't get the reverence either.

EDIT: I will say, after googling it, I found this pretty funny; reviews of their last full length.

 

Yes. There's no world where they were considered a game-changing band...just popular. Not even All Time Low has a gold album, and it's not because their music wasn't as good as BLG.

 

Got a platinum single, two other gold singles, and a gold video release though..

 

Yeah, that's why I specified album. Still, those songs weren't certified until YEARS later and are a real testament to the uphill climb of the band.

 

Dear Maria: Released 2007, gold in 2011, platinum in 2015.
Weightless: 2007, Gold in 2014
A Love Like War: Released 2013, gold in 2016.
DVD: Released 2010, Gold in 2016

Pretty normal time between release and certification for that size of a band. Like, that's an impressive run. Not sure what your point was ...

 

These are not "facts" ...

 

Care to clarify?

 

Care to offer your evidence of top 40 cowrites on their debut album, of which the singles were posted on Purevolume before ever signing, and revise to remove opinions stated as "fact"?