Being a Fan?

I'm curious to see what your thoughts are on people who say they're big fans of a band, but all they know are their biggest hits. Especially curious of what you think if they only know three or four songs (sometimes one) that are from the beginning of a band's career, and they have released several albums since then. 

Does that make them a fan of the band, or just a fan of those couple of songs? Maybe I'm just overthinking this because this is a big hobby of mine, but I've always thought that the single's aren't always the biggest indicator of the band, particularly when there's a lot of bands out there where their albums don't sound anything like their hits. Look at Train, you never would have guessed they're actually a  band. That's a pretty drastic example, but we can all think of bands that have that one hit that doesn't sound like the rest of their material. I always thought it seemed kind of jarring when I hear an album that has a few big hits, and the rest of the album flows nicely, but then those hits just stick out like a sore thumb.

While I think it's pretty elitist to say you have to listen to every album or know every song from a band, but I do think you have to at least know a decent bit of their material before you rant off about "___ is their best song!", and you only know five of their songs at most, and the band has like 10 albums. Though the amount of their material does differ depending on how many albums they've had, and how much their sound has changed.

I listen to a fair amount of bands where the record label basically told them to release a "radio friendly" single, but the rest of the album is not radio friendly. Every so often, you run into folks who have heard the singles but not the rest of the album. And then I'm sitting there talking about songs on the album, and they're just like, "What?...". I think a fan of the band tends to know a little bit more than just the singles. If you only like the singles, I would argue you're just a fan of the singles.

I can agree to that. I recently joined a site, and it's pretty obvious that they all only know singles. It's kind of odd when you go in a thread and see "oh man Oasis is such a great band" .

Yeah, I'd just call that being a fan of a few songs rather than the band. I think at the very least, to say you're a fan of the band, you have to appreciate the general sound they put out throughout the album(s). You don't even have to know all their songs or albums. Just the general sound you can expect them to put out and for them to deliver, which takes more than knowing their singles to figure out. Though, I tend to do that myself. As much as I love Dashboard and Float On, I don't think it's enough to say I'm a fan of Modest Mouse. Though the potential could be there if I worked at it.