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| - A very popular album goes gold, platinum, or even double platinum, without containing any hit songs on the singles chart. Songs may appear on genre-specific radio charts, but otherwise the album sells itself. In The Fifties and The Sixties, albums were often perceived as secondary to hit singles. This began to change when groups like The Beatles and The Beach Boys started to produce albums which tried to avoid Album Filler and make every song count. The British Invasion helped, thanks to the then-common practice of excluding hit singles from albums. See also No-Hit Wonder.
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| - A very popular album goes gold, platinum, or even double platinum, without containing any hit songs on the singles chart. Songs may appear on genre-specific radio charts, but otherwise the album sells itself. In The Fifties and The Sixties, albums were often perceived as secondary to hit singles. This began to change when groups like The Beatles and The Beach Boys started to produce albums which tried to avoid Album Filler and make every song count. The British Invasion helped, thanks to the then-common practice of excluding hit singles from albums. The trope came into its own during the predominance of "album-oriented" rock during the 1970s, when albums making a unified musical statement had become more common. Some Hard Rock and Heavy Metal groups active at this time, such as Led Zeppelin, did their best to avoid releasing singles at all. Similarly, while they did manage to score some hits, the most successful Progressive Rock artists active in this period, including Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull and Yes, were well-known for producing songs which were simply too long to be feasible for release as a single or were much more effective as part of an album. Also an obvious trend in the career of a Long Runner artist. Consider discography pages on The Other Wiki; album sales are usually consistent or improve with time while hit singles eventually trail off as more airtime is given to new performers. See also No-Hit Wonder. Examples of Hitless Hit Album include:
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