this criteria might not mean much. I looked up three lists of bestselling artists - one was top 20 and Foreigner was not on it, one was top 25 and foreigner was 17 and a list that just listed artist in order had Foreigner at 71st.
Yeah, corporate rock. Boston was 10x better.
Boston was better. Both were good. Neither were "corporate rock" which mostly became a thing in the 90s as overproduction and then autotune started to become common and MTV influence meant less focus on the music. Now we have AI bands. It's pathetic and sad.
Did you read this on Wikipedia? Because "corporate rock" was a common term in the 70's.
It's funny you say that because I always associate the two bands with each other. I'm not much of a fan of either but give Foreigner the slight edge because of Lou Gramm's voice.
No. My father in law was in the record business in that era, so I got a lot of inside background on it. You may mean something different by "corporate", but Boston was a group of talented musicians formed from a band called Mother's Milk. Stoltz was the genius behind it, started it while at MIT. Most of that debut album was recorded in the home studio Stoltz built in his basement. Very non-corporate.
I have no inside background but I read Creem Magazine in the 70's and they called Foreigner corporate rock.
What makes Boston more HOF-worthy too me was that they were phenomenon when they first hit the airwaves. They sounded much better on the typical car stereo then anything else. I think they were influential in making other bands pick up their sound game. That entire first album is good. I always considered Foreigner as replacement-level hard rock; only as good as their hits. Their one most identifiable riff came from a hired sax player.