Big Star  

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Big Star is an American rock and roll band founded in the early 1970s. In the 1980s, critics began to cite Big Star's albums as among the finer recordings of the previous decade, and an important link between the classic guitar-pop of the 1960s and alternative rock sounds of the 1980s.

Influence

In the 1980s, critics began to cite Big Star's albums as among the finer recordings of the previous decade, and an important link between the classic guitar-pop of the '60s and the new-wave and alternative rock sounds of the '80s. Three of Big Star’s albums, Radio City,#1 Record, and Third/Sister Lovers are included in Rolling Stone magazine’s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”. Many alternative bands and artists of the '80s and '90s, including R.E.M., Teenage Fanclub, The Replacements, Primal Scream, the Posies, Bill Lloyd and the dB's, cited Big Star as a major influence. Big Star's influence on acts such as Game Theory, Matthew Sweet, and Velvet Crush is unmistakable.

The Replacements paid tribute to Big Star and Alex Chilton in their single "Alex Chilton," featured on their 1987 album "Pleased to Meet Me." The song includes the lyric "I never travel far without a little Big Star."

Big Star was introduced to a new generation of fans when "In the Street" was selected as a representative song of the 1970s decade by the producers of the sitcom That '70s Show, who used it for the show's theme song in 1998. In 1999, Cheap Trick recorded a new version of the song, renamed "That '70s Song," for the show. "That '70s Song" and the original Big Star version of "September Gurls" were included in a 1999 album released by the television program's producers, That '70s Show Presents That '70s Album: Rockin'. Numerous other Big Star songs appear in various episodes of That '70s Show including "Thirteen" which is played in both the season six episode "The Seeker", and during Donna's flashback in one of the final scenes of the series finale.




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Big Star" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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