I love Tom Waits, and that’s a fine example - but it’s also the first time someone pointed out the Tom Waits = Cookie Monster thing to me…

There’s a classic mashup album - Aesop Waits, Tom Shall Pass. It’s actually good.

You can pick it up for a dollar on Bandcamp:
https://aesopwaits.bandcamp.com/album/tom-shall-pass

Or stream it on YouTube.

Lucinda Williams.  First album: 1979.  Best album: 1998.

Neil Diamond - Hell Yeah

this is a track from his album 12 songs released in 2005. Obviously he'd been knocking out hit songs a long time ago (mostly before i was born), and this is before he was back in vogue for sweet caroline etc...so i bought the album on a bit of a whim just curious what he would be like rather than as a huge fan. Anyway I enjoyed the album but this track really struck me, a guy looking back at his life and thinking about his death - I actually wondered at the time if he was ill and was on his way out. i shared the album with my dad, and this song also stood out to him to. and then when my dad died suddenly, this album was still in the CD player and the words for this song could have been written for him, and we played it at his funeral.
So I think this was my favourite track of his beforehand, I love the lyrics and the way it builds emotionally to the finale, but obviously has even more emotional meaning for me since....I just don't listen to it much now cos memories, I can only really listen to it now on my own in the car so i can sing along and get a bit emotional!

Cheers. Was worried I'd broken the thread when no one else was posting anything!

On a lighter note and trying to pick an artist I wouldn't normally go to: Kenny Loggins - Footloose. To be honest not sure i know any of his earlier stuff or much that wasn't in a film, and I could have easily picked his top gun efforts instead of this, but still he had been around a while before suddenly pumping out some 80's classic soundtrack stuff, and i reckon this one might be the most fun without the context of the films to support it.

Same. And occasionally I think of a band who got better later on but then realise that’s nothing close to ten years later.

Um, professor Brian Cox?

Aye, you could plump for George Michael on that criteria.

Aye, he's another good shout, but yeah, he loses points on personal input I reckon.

Another 'sort of...' because he wasnt bad turned good just relatively small then massive.
Norman Cook. 
He was in the Housemartins and various other projects all of which are quality in their own ways but he was never the face of it nor particularly famous.
Better Living Through Chemistry was his first album as Fatboy and received some success.
 
Not many electronic albums compare to the global success of his next album You've Come Along Way Baby.

From that point Norman Cook blew up as Fatboy Slim and became a household name even your gran knew. All warranted too as its a fantastic album start to finish.
In a very youth centric genre he remains somewhat of a godfather that even the trendiest of new acts will fall over themselves to work with.

Quite the contrast.

The problem with the fine wine question I think is that we tend not to register a band’s work in the period before we thought they were brilliant.  There are, I’m sure, loads of singers and bands where their latter work eclipses their earlier stuff, but we simply don’t notice.

Case in point - Tom Waits. Career started in the 70’s, yet the song that at least three of us picked is from the 00’s. (Though the other problem with this is what you do with people who are consistently great, but evolved their sound which arguably applies to Waits too.  See also Scott Walker - early beautiful crooning or late experimental weirdness?)

I know people who maintain that Blur have only improved (though as “Modern Life is Rubbish” was the soundtrack to my youth I struggle to agree).

Still, for me the band that’s matured best over time is probably Swans. The took the nigh on unlistenable noise in the 80s, and have gone on to craft some really fascinating, and undeniably still difficult stuff in more recent years. Playing with genres and soundscapes, while still keeping that disquieting core.

tin_robot wrote:

I know people who maintain that Blur have only improved (though as “Modern Life is Rubbish” was the soundtrack to my youth I struggle to agree).

I’d go Blur, albeit it was nothing like ten years until they released Blur.

Damn, just thought of Kylie but nope, first album ‘88, Confide in Me ‘94.

*Ten years or thereabouts. Would accept five.

Yossarian wrote:

Forgotten treasures: bands or artists with short careers who never saw any success, but who you still love.

Any objections if we change to this?

Heh. OK Ashes to Ashes then.    That's the Scary Monsters album, ain't it?