Gary Glitter / YMMV

Chorus-Only Song: Hey, you know "Rock And Roll (Part 2)"? You know, The Hey Song? Yeah, there's also a Part 1. Our European tropers are already going "WELL, NO SHIT" but they need to remember, only Part 2 got popular over in America!
Harsher in Hindsight:
- Many of his songs (despite being standard for the Glam Rock era) have lyrics which can be pretty disturbing in hindsight. This includes songs like "Doing Alright with the Boys", which has the line "back to playing with my toys again". Jeez...
- One of his singles was called "Remember Me This Way". We could if it weren't for the scandal.
- He released a song called "Do You Wanna Touch Me?" It's safe to say the answer is a resounding "No!"
- To add a layer to "Do You Wanna Touch Me?", a wrestler called David Starr used Joan Jett's cover of the song^note and then a few years later was accused of raping his girlfriend, which he denied, setting off a scandal (#SpeakingOut) in wrestling equivalent to the Jimmy Savile scandal that put Glitter back behind bars.
- His appearances on Savile's shows Clunk Click and Jim'll Fix It fall into this, especially seeing as both would later be accused and convicted of child pornography.
- His appearance on This is Your Life has Roald Dahl's daughter Tessa appear and share an anecdote about she used to take her schoolgirl friends and charge them to see him at her house where he was staying. An embarrassed Gary clearly makes a "shh" motion. This became a lot more chilling in hindsight.
- In the 1980s, he appeared in a children's fantasy series titled Magic Mirror, where he essentially predicted his fall from grace.
  Mirror, mirror, framed in gold, in your depths a story hold...of a rock star WHO BECAME A MONSTER!...With an awful name.
- In The '80s, he appeared in a◊ series of adverts for the Young Persons Railcard, trying to appear younger so he could qualify for the Railcard.
Overshadowed by Controversy: He was once a famed glam rocker in the 1970s, with his mostly instrumental song "Rock and Roll, Part 2" been played as a popular cheering song at American sporting events for several decades. Nowadays, however, he is perhaps known only by the fact that he was arrested in 1997 for possession of child pornography, which was then followed by multiple scandals involving him sexually abusing minors. Not helped was his friendship with the disgraced Jimmy Savile, the most infamous paedophile in British history. Now, his once considerable fame and success is forgotten and he is only referenced nowadays in regards to his numerous crimes.
So Okay, It's Average: The general reception for his music throughout the decades when you take away his sex-abuse history. Compared to many Household Names of the era, his music ends up sounding like a cheap variety show act made to capitalize on the success of bands like Sweet, Roxy Music, and T. Rex (among others) and he was regarded as a fairly safe and unambitious artist, the Glam rocker that kids and parents could enjoy. This made his music seem cheap and manufactured, making him the butt of music jokes for much of The '70s. If anything, his over the top style makes him look like a parody compared to anything else.

YMMV / Gary Glitter

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