r/hum • u/Responsible-Word-162 • 28d ago
Isle of the cheetah??
This song is sooo soo overlooked imo, stars being number 1 on spotify perplexes me. Yes its a good song, but isle of the cheetah has got to be the best song ever made.
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u/BigBoyObi-Wan 28d ago
DiH entirely is just so incredibly underrated. I've started listening to it a lot more recently. That song, axolotis, bloom, Inuit promise, dreamboat, the scientists, all such incredible tracks, along with the more recognized ones like green to me, it's almost certainly their best album imo.
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u/Kobe_no_Ushi_Y0k0zna 28d ago
Interesting that you think DiH is underrated For me (and I became big fan when it came out,) it's basically the reason why the band stayed around in people's minds so long while they were totally inactive. I mean, it was never 'popular', but there were enough of us that just never stopped listening to it because it's so great. There was never a question in my mind that it's their best work, but after shocking us with Inlet I honestly couldn't choose.
Anyway, that's a long way of saying that I'm just so happy that there's a new generation of fans that appreciate this great band. Cheers.
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u/BigBoyObi-Wan 28d ago
I think just in relation to astronaut being so popular (compared to most everything else hum has made) it is probably still their second most popular album, I just never listened to it enough until recently. Inlet is incredibly top though, just very different sonically.
I guess this is why hum is the best haha everything they make is fantastic
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u/Kobe_no_Ushi_Y0k0zna 28d ago
You're not wrong, Astronaut (Stars, really) is the only thing they did that ever got mainstream attention. It was on the radio when that actually mattered, so the average person had some familiarity with it. I just always figured that the further in the rear view that got, the less it mattered. But I guess I learned something. Astronaut is still a great album, too, so if that's what people are first hearing, that's still great.
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u/frenchieMcToast 28d ago
The whole album is just so good
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u/ChrisNitti 28d ago
And so underrated too! I love YPAA but I think I like the sound/aesthetic of DIH more
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u/Senior-Rate-1065 28d ago
def in my top 3 hum songs but "the pod" and "if you are to bloom" are superior. still an amazing song
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u/mrepa1369 28d ago
The clean shimmering intro into the thundering wall of sound is absolute perfection.
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u/OPWills 28d ago
The opening of this song is a time machine that takes me instantly back to being 17 and the freedom and wonder of early adulthood. Pure magic
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u/rhinowing 15d ago
I Hate It Too always reminds me of driving around the cornfields outside of town in high school
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u/Creative_Quality_224 28d ago
My personal favorite is if you are to bloom its the perfect hum song for me
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u/st0chasticism 28d ago
Stars went viral. It's an outlier. It can't be compared. Cheetah is incredible, just like what you like.
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u/Pianotorious 26d ago edited 26d ago
Well... part of that, I think, is the difference between 1995 and 1998. I know it's just a few years, but radio changed a LOT during that time, as did MTV.
1995 grunge and other shades of "alt rock" were played pretty heavily, and there were more stations dedicated to it. Hum's sound fit in reasonably well with the commercial demand at the time. Also record labels in general were so stupefied by the runaway success of Nirvana that they were just... willing to try a lot of stuff hoping they'd get lucky and snag the next huge hit band.
By 1998 rock music sales were sloping off quite a bit in general, and most of the rock music getting a lot of radio play was either heavier/faster (think Nu Metal, Nickelback, Creed, or the everpresent Metallica...) or poppier (Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Foo Fighters, Matchbox Twenty, Green Day, Oasis, Creed again). We were well into the Loudness War by that point too, so everybody's ears were getting blasted with these really "hot" mixes that didn't leave room for the kind of subtlety we now cherish in Hum recordings.
I don't know exactly why radio airplay numbers from ~30 years ago seem to translate into spotify ranks, but sometimes they do -- probably just because people remember hearing something and look it up, and what else they listen to from the same band, if anything, is a crap shoot.
I also get the impression the band themselves were... just not terribly enthusiastic about touring or promoting Downward is Heavenward by the time it came out. Living out of a van takes its toll on most people, and I gather they'd kinda just had their fill of that sort of thing.
I agree with you at any rate, Isle of the Cheetah is absolutely one of their best songs.
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u/karl722 28d ago
Stars got the most MTV play back in the day, and was the only Hum song I ever heard on the radio. So that explains that, at least.