In a three months (thirty years ago) Cracked Rear View by Hootie & the Blowfish will hit #1, but this week it is only at #7. Looking at the last.fm page for Hootie & the Blowfish the top comment says "Damn...their one album sold more copies than they have plays on Last.fm" which equally true and revealing. As of this writing, they have 7.6 million scrobbles on last.fm, while Cracked Rear View has sold over 20 million copies. Working the math, this means that if all of Hootie's scrobbles came from playing a copy of Cracked Rear View just once, only 3% of those albums sold have been played while last.fm has existed. Clearly, Hootie's popularity is not what it once was.
Of course, this is not how scrobbling works; last.fm didn't exist when the album was released and only a fraction of music listeners bother to scrobble their plays. Also, I don't want to emphasize scrobble counts too much: The Beatles have 842 million scrobbles and Taylor Swift has 2.86 billion. I would hope that even Taylor Swift would admit that The Beatles are far and away more important, consequential, and everlasting (and honestly better) than she is. The only real thing we can read from Hootie's scrobble count is that they have fallen out of the current musical zeitgeist.
Like most last.fm users, my listening history for Hootie is pretty thin. I had only 17 plays prior to listening to this album, which averages to less than one play per year. I remember being aware of Hootie when it came out and hearing the songs on the radio, but they were not what I purposely listened to. Thirty years later, I don't think my opinions have changed all that much. Hootie is fine, but doesn't move me nor does it grab my attention. This album gets a big "meh" from me, I recommend that you listen to it, or don't, whatever, I don't care.