Overshadowed By Awesome / Music

• Alex Lifeson would probably be the standout member of most ensembles, but he happens to be in a band with Geddy Lee and Neil Peart.
• The Arrogant Worms: The title character of "Jesus' Brother Bob" spends the whole song complaining about how hard it is to keep being compared to the son of God.
• The Beatles:
  • George Harrison was overshadowed by the John Lennon-Paul McCartney songwriting powerhouse for most of the band's existence. Learning from and competing with them drove him to become a formidable songwriter in his own right, and his ballad "Something" became one of the most covered songs in the Beatles catalogue. Infamously, Frank Sinatra called it "the best love song written in the past 50 years"… and then promptly attributed it to Lennon and McCartney. Also to his credit his song "Here Comes the Sun" is the most listened to Beatles song on YouTube (only being beaten in views by a small child trying to sing "Hey Jude").
  • Even more so with Ringo Starr, the remaining member of the group; he fits this trope so well that "the Ringo" has become an expression used to refer to the least important or respected member of a group.
• Adrian Belew isn't a household name, but that's because his most notable work was done in collaboration with a wide variety of artists, including but not limited to: Frank Zappa, David Bowie, Talking Heads, King Crimson, Cyndi Lauper, Paul Simon, Mike Oldfield, Nine Inch Nails, Tori Amos, etc. and specifically some of the most popular albums released by these artists, such as Remain in Light (Talking Heads), Graceland (Paul Simon), and The Downward Spiral (Nine Inch Nails). None other than Trent Reznor once called him the "most awesome musician in the world", and his work with Zappa impressed Brian Eno to the point where he introduced him to David Bowie - yet Belew isn't someone normally discussed outside of music circles as much as other guitarists like Paul McCartney or Brian May.
• Fleetwood Mac has had the same talented rhythm section—bassist John McVie and drummer Mick Fleetwood—for its entire existence. They remain a distinctive and integral part of the band's sound. At the same time, however, they're non-songwriting musicians who have shared the stage with extraordinary singers and songwriters—including Peter Green, Christine McVie, Lindsey Buckingham, and Stevie Nicks—who get most of the attention.
• The 2005 Live 8 string of shows had artists like Green Day, Stevie Wonder, Madonna, and even Paul McCartney and U2 doing a double act in London, while Will Smith sung the theme for The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in Philadelphia. And while all of these are undoubtedly awesome, the one thing that Live 8 is remembered for is that it was when the '70s lineup for Pink Floyd performed together for the first time in twenty-four years. And now that Richard Wright has passed, it was also their last.
• When a musician universally regarded to be a virtuoso dies early, their replacements in their respective bands can often fall into this. Examples include Cliff Burton of Metallica, Roger Patterson of Atheist, and Vitek of Decapitated. Their replacements (Jason Newsted and Robert Trujillo for Burton, Tony Choy for Patterson, and Krimh and Michał Łysejko for Vitek) are quite capable musicians in their own right, but they will probably never be as beloved as their deceased predecessors. The all-time classic example may still be Duane Allman of The Allman Brothers Band.
• This happened to most of the Jackson family (The Jackson 5) once Michael Jackson became a solo act, and from there a megastar with Thriller. Sister Janet subsequently becoming a big star in her own right served to further overshadow the other siblings.
• Back at the height of Shoegazing in The '90s, any band not named My Bloody Valentine qualified for this distinction, most notably Slowdive.
  • The rabbit hole gets even deeper than that. Out of the bands that weren't MBV, there was a slew of shoegazing bands that had moderate fanbases that even eclipsed some of the even more obscure bands of the genre. This resulted in a rare case of being doubly Overshadowed By Awesome. Some of these bands included Majesty Crush, Lilys, Telescopes, the Pale Saints, and most notably, Kitchens of Distinction. The later of the bands had heavy critical acclaim and have had a heavy influence on much music throughout the nineties but have been mostly forgotten by the masses.
  • This happens with modern bands as well, with even many early "Nu-Gaze" bands getting compared to My Vitriol. However, after that band became Reclusive Artist, MBV became the focus again.
• Any drummer in Nile not named George Kollias has gotten this to a certain extent. Keep in mind, this has included some of the most acclaimed drummers in Death Metal, such as Tony Laureano and Derek Roddy.
• Similarly, any guitarist not named Steve Hackett, any drummer not named Phil Collins, and any vocalist not named Peter Gabriel or Phil Collins in Genesis. The band members themselves acknowledged that Anthony Phillips leaving probably had more of an effect on their sound than Peter Gabriel leaving did, but most people still have no idea who Phillips is.
• The Rolling Stones:
  • Supposedly, one reason their 1968 TV special, The Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus, wasn't publicly released until 1996 was because of The Who's amazing performance of "A Quick One While He's Away", and they couldn't take being upstaged by a rival band in their own show.
  • The Stones had another one earlier in their career when they performed at the TAMI Show in 1964. They consider it the biggest mistake of their career, as they wound up having to go onstage after James Brown.
• Rossini's opera version of Shakespeare's Othello from 1816 was one of his most popular operas for decades — but it disappeared almost completely from the theaters after Verdi's opera over the same story premiered in 1887 and is almost forgotten today.
• Simon Nicol is a skilled guitarist, excellent singer and not bad as a songwriter. Unfortunately, he had the misfortune to be in Fairport Convention in the era featuring the awe-inspiring guitarist/songwriter Richard Thompson, as well as the chillingly talented singer/songwriter Sandy Denny.
• Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture ends with a rousing version of the Imperial Russian anthem "God Save the Tsar" — which nobody ever notices because at the same time the orchestra is firing freaking cannons!!
• The Who's John Entwistle would probably be a Lead Bassist in any other band, but his lack of stage presence compared to his bandmates (Roger Daltrey swinging his microphone around by the cord, Pete Townshend swinging his arm around while playing, as well as he and Keith Moon smashing their instruments) led to him being forgotten about onstage.
  • Similar case would be Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones, who was overshadowed by the shrieking banshee wails and fanservice of Robert Plant, the intense if sloppy guitar playing of Jimmy Page (especially through his unaccompanied guitar solo during "Dazed and Confused" where he uses a violin bow) and the energetic, intense drumming of John Bonham (especially through his own unaccompanied drum solos like "Moby Dick").
• Antonio Salieri and Luigi Boccherini are both excellent Classical composers, and well worth listening to. However, since they were contemporary and con-locational with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Joseph Haydn, they pretty much faded into obscurity.
  • Salieri was a gifted composer, but Mozart was a rock star — wild and temperamental. Salieri composed with an ear for what was in-demand at court, in order to earn his pay and support his teaching. In the rare circulating piece where Salieri's playful side shows (26 Variations on La Folia de Spagna comes to mind), it becomes apparent that Mozart may have taken a couple of cues from him. In truth, Salieri should be remembered as a great teacher: his list of pupils reads like a short Who's Who of Classical Composition. Schubert, Liszt, and Beethoven all learned from the Maestro. But he's still overshadowed by Mozart...
  • How many people are even aware that Leopold Mozart (father of Wolfgang) was a fairly respected composer in his own right?
    • Or Joseph Haydn's brother Michael, who was also a prolific composer? (Organist at Salzburg Cathedral.)
    • The Bach family was full of gifted composers, but the only one most people can name is Johann Sebastian Bach. People schooled in classical music may also be able to name Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, whose composition "Solfeggietto" is standard fare for intermediate piano students, but it's unlikely most people have heard any other compositions by any other members of the family.
• Similarly, Yes has had musicians who are considered so defining in their positions that they have eclipsed other musicians who are virtuosos in their own right. For example, Bill Bruford on drums eclipses the virtuosic Alan White; Rick Wakeman on keyboards eclipses the similarly virtuosic Patrick Moraz and Geoff Downes; and Steve Howe eclipses Trevor Rabin and the late Peter Banks. Similarly, anyone who follows the late Chris Squire as bassist will be unfairly compared to him, and none of Jon Anderson's replacements have been as well loved as he was, despite being capable vocalists in their own right. Strangely, the most loved Anderson-Bruford-Howe-Squire-Wakeman lineup was only together for one year and two studio albums, but those albums (Fragile and Close to the Edge, as well as part of the live album Yessongs) are two of the most loved Progressive Rock albums of all time. ^note (Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, and Howe did record an album later as the imaginatively titled Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe, and the five of them appeared alongside Rabin, White, and Tony Kaye on Union, which has been mostly disowned due to Executive Meddling, although the tour promoting that album, which was documented on Union Live, was quite well liked. The Anderson-Howe-Squire-Wakeman-White lineup, by contrast, appears on more albums than any other lineup of this Revolving Door Band, including Tales from Topographic Oceans, Going for the One, Tormato, both volumes of Keys to Ascension, most of Yessongs, about half of Yesshows, Live at Montreux 2003, and all of the fourteen-disc live box set Progeny.)
• The rap group D12 contained numerous skilled lyrical rappers, particularly Proof/Derrty Harry (considered to be the great talent in the Detroit underground hip-hop scene of the time, a central figure in the whole scene, and was the mentor of that other member), Swift/Swifty McVay (a capable Gangsta Rap artist headhunted for the group by The Pete Best Bugz) and Kuniva/Rondell Beene (whose skill led to him being the stand-in for that other member of the group when he couldn't participate). Among the less lyrical members of the group, Bizarre was and still is a well liked Detroit character-rapper with a cult following for his Fat Bastard persona; and Mr Porter/Kon Artis is a respected hip-hop producer who serves as hype man for that other member on stage. However, that other member is Eminem/Slim Shady, the most commercially successful rapper of all time whose breakout was the Genre Turning Point for Hip-Hop replacing Rock'n Roll as the backbone of Pop, regarded as the voice of a generation and a pioneering songwriter and poet, a gifted vocalist, a race-subverting pop legend comparable to Elvis Presley, and the sole white member of any sane G.O.A.T. list, Top 5 Dead or Alive or Mount Rushmore. While Eminem did a lot to promote the group and try and get them to stand up without his involvement, the overwhelming power imbalance caused friction between Em and the other members, a theme appearing throughout their 2004 album D12 World — Played for Laughs on "My Band" (which casts Slim as a narcissistic, spotlight-hogging Boy Band tyrant) and Played for Drama on "How Come", in which Eminem, Kon Artis and Proof take turns airing out their feelings about how Eminem's fame is straining their friendship.

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