Status Quo Band Discography: Top Songs & Albums
Today we’re going to talk about the famous classic rock band that made it when boogie rock was popular in the late 60’s and 70’s. They had numerous names in the past, from The Scorpions in their early years, to The Spectres in their sophomore period, Traffic Jam (this name only lasted about a year in 1967), and The Status Quo (towards the end), which eventually just dropped the “The” from their band name. One of their main songs that is still to this day unforgettable is “Pictures of Matchstick Men” which has topped the charts and is still in regular rotation on classic rock stations worldwide. In this article, we’re going to cover some more info and give you some of the top songs that they’ve written (you may be surprised on how many of the songs you may have heard of).
Status Quo Band Top Songs
We’ll first cover the most popular songs that were written and released by the band, and give a little explanation about the songs history. We’ll go from Billboard’s top 100 and other charts to show which songs were the most popular worldwide (and still are). Many other forums and posts often are filled with opinionated material, but we want you to know what the best of the best are when it comes to this iconic rock band’s songs.
Pictures of Matchstick Men
This song was the first single written and released by Status Quo. There’s actually two versions of this song (one recorded in stereo and one in mono), and was on their debut album “Gentleman Joe’s Sidewalk”. The song was written and inspired by the unique paintings that were made by the famous artist L.S. Lowry from Salford. The song topped at number seven on the British Charts, and even made it to number 12 on the Billboard Top 100.
Ice in the Sun
This song was written in 1968 and although it reached number 8 on the British Singles Chart, it only made it to number 70 on the U.S. Billboard charts. It spent twelve weeks on the UK charts, and also peaked at 29 on the Canadian RPM charts. The downside to this song, is that it’s the last time they ever made the U.S. charts.
Mean Girl
This song was one of their songs written in 1971, and was a song that could really show on the band’s second wind that they could really still get down.
Paper Plane
This song was actually a poem, but it wasn’t about planes at all. In all actuality, it was about the tour bus that started helping the band get around in 1972. The band realized that they were literally just the band that was popular at that time, and felt unstoppable.
Blue Eyed Lady
This song is still played world-wide on many classic rock stations, but it’s actually a little more of a hard classic rock song compared to the normal songs they had written. By showcasing an awesome lead guitar solo in the song, it was definitely a song that was anti-feminist at the time it was recorded in 1973.
Mystery Song
This track broke in the soon to be 80’s for the band in 1976 and was literally about a prostitute. The story behind it though is the funny part. It was when the drug known as speed was becoming popular, and someone slipped some into Francis’ cup of tea in which the guitarist literally stayed up all night and ended up writing the song.
Again and Again
This song was considered by many as a dumb song because the word again literally appears more than 60 times in the song (that was kind of the point when they wrote the song jokingly).
Five Hundred Times
No, this song wasn’t written five hundred times, but it’s one of the longest songs they’d written, lasting approximately 10 minutes. It’s a definite original jam track that is one of a kind. When they perform it on shows, they utilize their band chemistry to decide when to end it, and it has been noted to sometimes be the last song of a set.
Riverside
Riverside was released on the Never Too late album in 1981 and is one of the band’s most masterful recordings, showing literally the difference that 10 years can bring to musicianship. It’s frantic melody and beat are definitely showcased in which it’s the final record that had John Coghlan appearing on it.
Come Rock With Me
This song, along with its following track “Rockin’ On”, both appeared on the Whatever You Want album in 1979. This song was written when the tax issues started to arise, along with all of the negativity of the press that was starting to take its toll on the band. This was a basic 12-bar riff of a song that was a modern take that showed that they still had their original sound when needed, but the times were changing so that’s why their music had been changing as well.
Better Than One Hit Wonders
There have been many one hit wonders over the years, and for a while, people thought that the boys of Status Quo were going to be one of them, however with the fact that they may have been considered that type of artist in the United States, they were actually quite successful overseas in their home. So we’ve covered the most popular songs that they have written (which have been proven to still be played today), so let’s get into some more about the band and where they’re at now.
Things Have Changed More Than the Name
Though the band finally changed its name to the last title they had since the 1970’s, they continued to make music even if most Americans haven’t heard of them much (they were primarily busier and bustling in the music scene in the UK. After hosting numerous reunion tours, the band itself is still playing music and live shows primarily in the U.K., but they’re also going outside the UK and ultimately, they ended up playing and announcing that they were going to retire and tour with Lynyrd Skynyrd on their farewell tour.
In 1991, the band had earned themselves a fantastic entry in the Guinness Book of World Records by playing four concerts across Britain all in a day, which hadn’t been done ever before.
In September of 2016, Status Quo’s most known guitarist, Rick Parfitt died after he suffered a bad infection. He was originally taken to a hospital in Spain for a shoulder injury that was pre-existing. At the time, Parfitt was starting to launch his own solo career (even though he had repetitively joined in reunion tours in the past years).
Interesting Facts People May Not Know About Status Quo
In this section, we’re going to go over some little quick facts that many people don’t actually know about the band. While as mentioned earlier, many people have heard the song popularly phrased as just “Matchstick Men”, there are a lot of awesome achievements the band itself has ended up receiving themselves, and most of them with the original members.
- Many people don’t know just how popular the band is, having sold over 118 million records over the course of their careers.
- Along with this, they released 100 singles by the year of 2013, which was more than most bands could ever dream of.
- On the BBC TV’s Top of the Pops, Status Quo appeared more than any other music group in the UK by making 106 appearances.
- Status Quo was the opening band at the Live Aid concert back in 1985.
- The band itself was together for 48 years, and have played more than 6,000 shows, as well as to audiences totaling more than 25 million, being away for more than 23 years away from their home in the UK.
- The UK-based beer, Piledriver, is one of the most popular beer brews, and has sold more than one million pints of beer… and did we mentioned that Status Quo created it?
- When they broke the world record mentioned above, they played all four of those shows in 11 hours and 11 minutes straight. It was a part of their “Rock ‘Til You Drop” event, and many of these shows actually had numerous fans go to all of the shows traveling along with them.
- Status Quo is also one of the most popular UK bands that actually hasn’t even been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, despite their achievements and successes.
Conclusion – Status Quo Band
If you haven’t heard of Status Quo yet after reading this article, then you may want to. The song “Pictures of Matchstick Men” itself has been covered by even the likes of hard rock hero Ozzy Osbourne, and many others. Aside from this song, however, there are many others, even though over here in America we may not have heard of the famous band that achieved most of its success overseas.
