It's always the same, innit? You mention a band, particularly a heavy rock or metal one, and someone who's totally clueless about them says “Oh yeah, aren't they the ones who did [insert name of hit single here]?” People like them think this is the only song the band had, or at least the only one that's known outside of the genre, and sadly sometimes it's true. Sabbath's “Paranoid”. “Motorhead's “Ace of spades”. Metallica's “Enter sandman” and Fleshgrind's popular chart-topper, “Duct taped and raped”. Nah just kidding: that just missed the top forty!
But the point is valid, and it doesn't only hold true for metal bands of course, which is why this is the “Metal edition”, but as we're in Metal Month II we're concentrating on only metal bands, and though this band might be considered more hard rock than heavy metal, they can certainly engage a headbang or two.
(Don't fear) The Reaper
Blue Oyster Cult
Released July 1976
From the album "Agents of fortune"
Backed with "Tattoo vampire"
Chart position: 12 (US) 16 (UK)
They've been around since 1972 and have fourteen albums, have sold 24 million albums and had a major influence on some serious names in the genre, yet they are and always will be remembered for their hit single from their fourth album, the classic “(Don't fear) the Reaper”. While it is a fantastic song and has a superbly hooky melody, it's sad in a way that many people will love this song to death (pun intended) but go no further in their exploration of the band. It's the “big hit single syndrome”, the event that, while it can make a band and open them up to new and unimagined audiences --- to say nothing of drastically improving both their market share and their personal bank balances --- can end up dogging them for the rest of their career, as they either try to top that single or measure everything else they have done after that against it.
Even if they don't, and their fans certainly don't, mainstream success after the big single may elude them, as the record-buying public frown on anything that's different from the single and wait for its successor, which may never come. Worse, the band may try to specifically write something that recalls the single in the hope of regaining that chart success, and wooing the fickle chart hunters again. Most times, this effort is doomed to failure, and could very well end up alienating their longtime fans as the band are accused of selling out.
Thankfully, Blue Oyster Cult have never done this: while obviously delighted with the success of “(Don't fear) the Reaper”, they have continued on their merry way for a further thirty-eight years and ten albums and, while they have not repeated the chart success or cult status of that single, they would go on to have two other hits. Nevertheless, when people speak of BOC they do not talk of “Burnin' for you” or even “Godzilla”. To those outside the fanbase, there's only one song that encapsulates the band, and perhaps it's no bad thing. It is an amazing song, after all.
The lyrical content of the song has been drastically misinterpreted though, with some people taking it as an anthem or even encouragement for suicide. When writer Buck Dharma discovered this he was shocked, explaining that he wrote the song merely as a result of getting older, and realising there was no need to fear death: it finds us all in the end. He did not, he categorically and rather worriedly stated, write it as a “blueprint for suicide” and it should not be taken as such. The song has passed into popular culture, being featured in every movie about death from “Halloween” to “Scream”, every other documentary that deals with death or the macabre, and was even used by urban artist Banksy for one of his installations.