10 albums artists swore never to make again

‘Probot’ – Dave Grohl

Supergroup albums are always a bit of a tricky beast. Never before do many bands have such high expectations on a debut album, and if the biggest artists in the world don’t gel like they’re supposed to, there’s a good chance that they’ll be ridiculed for committing the cardinal sin of being merely good instead of great. Although Dave Grohl had nothing to worry about on most of his records, Probot was always bound to be a one-off no matter how much people loved what they heard.

Because as much as Grohl loved rock and roll, he did have that metallic side always waiting to get out. And while ‘Weenie Beenie’ was a decent taste of what he could do on Foo Fighters’ debut, hearing him play his heart out with a round-robin of different metal vocalists is one of the most aggressive projects he’s ever been a part of, always knowing the right person to call when working with everyone from Lemmy to Cronos from Venom.

When stacked up against the rest of Grohl’s discography, it wouldn’t be fair to expect him to go this heavy every time he made a record. We should all be blessed to have another Them Crooked Vultures record in our possession, but asking someone to make one of the heaviest records of their era twice isn’t the kind of scenario that anyone wants to measure themselves against.

‘Pablo Honey’ – Radiohead

Talking about Radiohead pre- and post-Kid A sounds like talking about two different bands. The alternative icons may have changed the way that most of us look at rock and roll during their time in the 1990s, but as soon as they drew a line in the sand in the 2000s, no one knew what to expect whenever they released new music. If there was one thing that was blatantly obvious, though, it’s that Pablo Honey wouldn’t be seeing any airplay past 1993.

Although every band has to start somewhere, every member of Radiohead wanted to distance themselves from their debut as soon as it was finished. It should be commended for giving the world the song ‘Creep’, but there are too many grunge habits holding them back here, including Yorke trying his best to sound like a British version of Kurt Cobain on tracks like ‘Anyone Can Play Guitar.’

There are some fine moments on the record if you know where to look, but given their career trajectory, they needed something with the same hooks as The Bends if they were going to get anywhere. Otherwise, there would have been a darker timeline for Radiohead when they joined the ranks of Toad the Wet Sprocket and Harvey Danger in the club of ‘Bands that the 1990s forgot about.’

‘From Genesis to Revelation’ – Genesis

The whole purpose behind prog-rock was to deviate from the norm. The beginnings of the genre were about breaking down the customary sounds of rock and roll and adding new elements around them, and when looking at King Crimson or Yes, everyone knew they were in for a crazy ride before the music even started. While Genesis took some time to grow into their prog-rock credentials, that’s not to say that it had the best start when they were woodshedding their first song ideas.

Even though Tony Banks and Peter Gabriel are accounted for, From Genesis to Revelation never feels like the kind of album Genesis was supposed to make. Gabriel’s vocal tone is certainly admirable, and they know how to throw a decent tune together, but it gets too bogged down in the baroque-style arrangements they’re trying to put over what amounts to fairly average rock and roll songs.

While the band would hit the ground running on their sophomore album, Trespass, their proper debut seems to occupy the same space that David Bowie’s debut record did before he landed on ‘Space Oddity’. It’s far from a bad album from back to front, but looking at where the band would go, many fans could skip the record entirely and nothing would change much in the band’s history.

‘The Fragile’ – Nine Inch Nails

Every single Nine Inch Nails album is usually defined by some kind of heightened emotional state. Where Pretty Hate Machine was pure frustration, and The Downward Spiral was self-destruction, later records like With Teeth were the first signs of Trent Reznor recovering from his years of excess. There was a strange in-between period, though, and The Fragile took all of those feelings and amplified them by 10.

Aside from the fact that the record is as long as a standard feature film, every piece of Reznor’s psyche is examined on this album. Following up on the same themes as The Downward Spiral, a lot of what Reznor talks about involves the darker corners of his mind, even if there are some massive choruses on songs like ‘We’re In This Together’. When someone unloads that much emotion, there comes a moment where things start getting to be too much.

Although Reznor remains proud of the record, he was already talking about how hard it was to make before the press tour was even over, vowing never to set foot in the studio and trying to make another record like it. It’s a little bit disheartening not to hear what another grandiose album like this would have sounded like, but maybe it’s a blessing in disguise if it means we’re not going to get any more songs like ‘Starfuckers Inc’.

‘Station to Station’ – David Bowie

It’s hard to capture the essence of a classic whenever an artist goes into the studio. If there were some magic spell that shows someone how to make the greatest album they can, it would have been bottled up and sold by now, but every artist reacts to their own songs differently than most. And while David Bowie is one of the few artists from his time with multiple musical faces, he knew that some of those sonic costumes are best worn once and then thrown away until the end of time.

Which is strange to say about an album like Station to Station. Despite the record only being six tracks, ‘The Starman’ delivered one of his greatest projects of the 1970s, embracing the sounds of krautrock and getting much more mechanical in his song construction. Every part of the album seemed to work wonders, but there was a dark character lurking in the shadows, and his name was ‘The Thin White Duke.’

When adopting a new persona, Bowie imagined this character as one of his darkest alter egos, which included him becoming strung out on cocaine, starving himself in the studio for months on end and making uncomfortable defences of icons like Hitler or standing up for the occult. Bowie may have been half-joking with this album when he talked about everything being the side effects of cocaine, but if he wanted to see the end of the 1970s, he needed to get as far away from Los Angeles as possible.

‘Extra Texture’ – George Harrison

There’s always a certain sense of balance that comes with George Harrison albums. As much as he might have used his rockstar status to preach, there was always a part of him that knew that every failure made for a success waiting around the corner. But we don’t have to spend time wondering about which category Extra Texture falls under during his solo years.

After the melodrama of Dark Horse, this album is where Harrison seemed to officially bottom out in terms of songwriting. Whereas the last record saw him making great songs that his voice couldn’t do justice to, this is the same thing in reverse, with the song ‘You’ being one of the only highlights outside of a few soulful ballads. And while he does make an attempt to capture his past glory with a sequel to ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, the song ends up sounding like a lethargic jazzy version of the original.

But the lack of song power might speak to the greater problem that Harrison had during this period of his life. He was already dealing with not being inspired, but given how much he was getting hooked on cocaine in between takes, it’s safe to say that he was right on the money when he called the album grubby when looking back on it.

‘And Justice For All’ – Metallica

It’s impossible for any band not to want to go outside their comfort zone. It might be a bit difficult to avoid the label of heavy metal band with a name like Metallica, but the thrash icons have tried every genre that would suit them throughout their career, whether pure thrash on Kill Em All, alternative on Load, or trash-core on St Anger. There might have been a lot more left for them to explore, but And Justice For All was the moment that they realised that it was okay not to outdo everyone else around them.

Although Master of Puppets was one of their greatest technical masterpieces, this is even more technical, complete with songs that go on for way too long and contain sections that stretch out the song for the love of the sport. Despite the lack of bass, this was one of the heaviest offerings they ever made, but looking back on it, they knew that there was no point in trying to spend their time trying to play on the same level as the virtuosos coming out like Steve Vai and Joe Satriani.

Those players certainly had their place in the world, but if Metallica wanted to take things to the next level, they needed someone who could make them sound as massive as they could be live. And while most people argue that The Black Album was the moment the band officially sold out to the masses, there’s a good chance they could have been selling out to the hardcore fans if they tried to keep rewriting songs like ‘One’ or ‘Dyers Eve’.

‘Hemispheres’ – Rush

Rush have never been looked at as slouches behind their instruments. Other prog rock bands may have had complicated time signature changes that threw a wrench into everyone’s record collections, but trying to get any of the Canadian icons’ songs under one’s fingers is something that was going to take more than a few years to truly master. And despite them trying to top themselves on every record they made, they had enough sense to realise that the human body could only play so fast.

Whereas Close to the Edge by Yes benefited from having multiple different sections across its runtime, Hemispheres is one of the most convoluted albums in the prog canon. Picking up where their last record left off, this is the kind of music that sounds like classical music arranged for rock and roll, with some songs being so hard that the band had to write out schematics for how every one of them was supposed to go.

They may have held things together for one album, but Neil Peart remembered that the common consensus among the band was to never do this kind of album again. Prog rock may have had its moments of brilliance, but this was the equivalent of mad scientists running loose in the studio. And by running away from this album into a song like ‘The Spirit of Radio’, perhaps pairing down their sound was a blessing in disguise.

‘Southern Accents’ – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Tom Petty never had to really worry about his track record throughout his career. He had earned the right to do whatever he wanted once MTV kicked in, and despite being a rock and roller, he was always cool enough to have regular airplay for his videos while also rubbing elbows with living legends like Bob Dylan. If there’s one thing that’s fatal to the Heartbreakers, though, it’s giving them too much time to work on a record.

Since Long After Dark saw them treading water creatively, Petty wanted Southern Accents to be the double record that told the story of the South in his eyes. As soon as he ventured into the studio, though, everyone had picked up some habits when cocaine started flying around, leading to them making poor decisions like Petty rejecting ‘Boys of Summer’ and eventually pulverising his hand in a fit of frustration when the song ‘Rebels’ was turning out the way he planned.

After the band regrouped, they realised the double album idea was out of the question, and what turned up on the album was the table scraps of songs that were finished by the release date. While the record is an essential piece of Petty’s discography and one of the most brilliant creative detours he made in the 1980s, it would have been much better had he decided to stick to the concept rather than falling victim to the booger sugar.

‘Diver Down’ – Van Halen

By the start of the 1980s, Van Halen was on a touring rollercoaster that never seemed to end. Even though they were the biggest band in LA, they weren’t safe from having a few moments where things went haywire, either with management working them down to the bone or Eddie having to do the lion’s share of the work when none of the band showed up at the studio. They deserved a break by 1982, but that’s not what the label had in mind when they heard the beginnings of a hit.

Since ‘Oh Pretty Woman’ was meant to be a holdover for the band while they recuperated, everyone insisted that they get back into the studio to pump out another record. Given that they were running on fumes at this point, Diver Down is easily the weakest entry in the Roth catalogue of albums, with Eddie getting pissed off that half of the record was being dominated by cover songs he didn’t want to record.

Then again, it’s really a testament to their skills that the “weakest” effort of their career thus far managed to sound this good. It might be criminally short and have some of the most toothless performances of the band’s early days, but even when they weren’t at their best, they could sell a hair metal song to pretty much anybody.