10 albums that were made exclusively for money

“The Spaghetti Incident?” – Guns N’ Roses

Guns N’ Roses had no business sticking around past 1993 in more ways than one. While they were one of the few bands from Los Angeles that were actually able to ignore the grunge wave entirely and keep on trucking, almost every single member of the band was absolutely fried after going through their massive world tour for Use Your Illusion. All they needed was a break, but since the band needed one more album in the can, “The Spaghetti Incident?” was both the most unnecessary album they ever made and the reason why they fell apart for years. 

But, really, this could have been the easiest record that they ever made. Any band that puts together a covers record is usually just trying to have some fun in the studio, but even then, the band seems much too tired to really care about having any sense of direction. It is interesting to hear them play the occasional punk tune and Axl Rose trying his hand at a tune like ‘Since I Don’t Have You’, but the lion’s share of the songs feel like they’re only being held together so that the band can look like they are a united front.

And since one last cover song put the band to bed for good after they made ‘Sympathy for the Devil’, “The Spaghetti Incident?” doesn’t so much look like a proper album these days. It’s like the band were staging their own funeral wake with a bunch of their favourite tunes, and given how harsh they fell out later in their career, it’s not like Slash was all that broken up to not be playing with his friends anymore.

‘Here My Dear’ – Marvin Gaye

The entire Motown machine wasn’t called ‘The Hit Factory’ by accident. The entire point of making one band after another was to make sure they had product out to get people singing along all over again, and Marvin Gaye was one of their greatest champions ever since What’s Goin’ On set the world on fire. He could have released anything he wanted at that point, and it would have sold, but after even more classics, Gaye almost seemed to test that theory when Berry Gordy demanded a massive record from him.

Since Gaye was going through a lengthy divorce with his wife, who also happened to be Gordy’s sister, Here My Dear feels like one of the biggest middle fingers that he could have made. The songs are still as soulful as ever, but something seems a bit off seeing someone like Gaye sing these songs. He can play a lot of characters in his tunes, but a vindictive lover just sounds wrong coming out of the same person who was talking about the greater problems with the world on ‘Inner City Blues’.

Seeing Gaye so upset was not what the fans wanted, but if it managed to get him out of his label disputes, that was all he could have asked for. It was still a decent album from Gaye’s classic period, but since everyone was coming to Gaye for something sexy and compassionate, seeing him play the scorned lover is like watching someone like Mr Rogers cursing out someone on the street. It’s not unthinkable, but when you hear it happen, a little part of you dies inside.

‘Squeeze’ – The Velvet Underground

The entire Velvet Underground operation needed to end before it started to feel forced. Andy Warhol had helped build the band up as one of the most artistic collectives to come out of New York City at the time, and the last thing that Lou Reed wanted to find himself doing was making a bunch of records that he didn’t feel like he could get behind. So four records seemed like the right place to stop, and yet the fact that the band’s name made it to album number five just feels wrong.

I mean, you can still call this a Velvet Underground album if you want to, but since the only classic member is Doug Yule, it feels closer to a solo album from him. He did get some decent personnel to work with him, like Ian Paice from Deep Purple, but most of the tunes are virtually unrecognisable from the classic Velvet sound, especially since Reed would be doing something much more inventive just a few years later on Transformer. 

Any band can try to put together an odd album to get back on the charts, but Squeeze is one of the few albums that doesn’t really have a need to exist. No one was demanding this kind of record, and given who is playing on it, this IS NOT The Velvet Underground. This is a decent tribute band at best that somehow got to hold on to all of the band’s copyrights.

‘Summer in Paradise’ – The Beach Boys

It’s always better to look at The Beach Boys as a band with two identities. There’s the version of the band that made some of the greatest music of the 1960s with Brian Wilson at the helm, and then there’s the version of the band that turned into a nostalgia act with the help of Mike Love dictating everything. There’s no disputing the fact that Love contributed to the rise of the band in the early days, but if you want to understand why people hate the guy so much, I’d direct you to the moment that he dragged the band’s name through the mud for a few hits.

Summer in Paradise wasn’t supposed to be anything more than Love’s usual fun-in-the-sun style song, but since ‘Kokomo’ turned into an unexpected hit out of the blue, he figured that he didn’t have to try on his next record. So instead of the typical album cuts that are a bunch of leftovers from their old days, we get tunes that just sound like him trying to write the same song all over again, whether that’s ‘Island Fever’ or turning The Drifters’ ‘Under the Boardwalk’ into something that you’d hear out of a second-rate wedding band.

But maybe it’s a blessing in disguise that they didn’t make too many experiments, especially considering what “great successes” ‘Summer of Love’ and ‘Forever’ turned out to be, the latter of which was already a classic but somehow needed a boost from John Stamos. There are plenty of albums that seem a little bit cheap by Beach Boys standards, but some wires definitely got crossed when someone felt that Uncle Jesse from Full House needed to be more involved in the record than their resident genius.

‘Diver Down’ – Van Halen

By the time that Van Halen reached the 1980s, they definitely deserved to take some time off. They had rarely seen any kind of break since they first started promoting their debut album, and now with four records under their belt, it felt like they were finally able to find some space to breathe while they figured out their next move. Eddie was more than happy to stay at home and fiddle around with some different ideas, but once David Lee Roth had the idea of giving their fans one cover song to tide them over, the label got ants in their pants and demanded one more record.

So with no material to work with, Diver Down feels like more of a massive EP than a proper album. The band didn’t want to be there throughout the entire recording process, and even when Eddie did have a few decent ideas, some of them ended up getting used in the wrong way, like when the producer tacked on one of his keyboard experiments onto the beginning of ‘Dancing in the Streets’ or getting them to go back to the same well of Kinks covers with ‘Where Have All the Good Times Gone’.

Every band usually has those one or two records that capture them at their lowest, but everyone learned a valuable lesson about giving their label more than they asked for. No matter how many inches you give the higher-ups, they’re always going to want to take a mile, and since Eddie was calling the shots, he was going to make sure that this kind of headache never happened again on their other projects.

‘Stevie at the Beach’ – Stevie Wonder

During the heyday of Motown, the higher-ups at Hitsville were doing everything they could to get Stevie Wonder a hit. This kid was one of the biggest prodigies that the Motor City had ever seen, and there was no way that they were going to give up just because he had a few albums that were duds. They had an ace in the hole every single time he made one of his records, but when any label is desperate for some kind of success, they will throw any old material at their talent to try and get a hit.

Which is half the reason why we’re talking about Stevie at the Beach. Nothing about Wonder’s early career signalled that he was going to be a surf rocker, but since the biggest thing in the world at the time were bands like The Beach Boys, why not try to get Wonder behind the microphone with some surf musicians? Sure, it makes about as much sense as having James Hetfield front a mariachi band, but when no one at the label has any other ideas, they will cling to the one bad idea that they do have like a life raft.

Some of the instrumentals are fairly nice and add to the nautical vibe of the entire record, but given that this was the same kid that will go on to make tunes like ‘Sir Duke’, seeing a glimpse into another world where he could have made ‘Surfin’ USA’ isn’t the kind of pain anyone needed to be subjected to. Wonder was a man of many talents, but with no disrespect meant to him, he seemed to have a greater vision for where his music was going than anyone in the Motown offices.

‘The Black Album’ – Prince

The entire journey that Prince took to get out of his contract with Warner Bros isn’t something that you would inflict upon your worst enemy. ‘The Purple One’ had had it with his label screwing around with what he wanted out of his music, and since he wasn’t able to release his massive triple album experience, the only thing he could hope to do was speedrun his contract by getting as many albums out as he could. So it’s sometimes good to have an entire record like The Black Album in the can.

Granted, Prince could have made any number of albums out of the tunes that he had in his vault, but The Black Album is one of the few records that seemed to serve a purpose. This was what Lovesexy was supposed to be back in the day, but since Prince deemed it evil when he was working on it and pivoted, seeing the original version of what that album was supposed to be is a lot more interesting, especially when he gets a little bit more political on the back end of the record.

This was far from the kind of record that Prince approved of, but sometimes it pays to have some tunes already in the can. Not many other artists are usually given the massive mountain of shit that he had to deal with, but after making an album like Emancipation, he finally seemed like he could put The Black Album and all of his contractual obligation records in the rearview for good.

‘Time’ – Fleetwood Mac

Fleetwood Mac didn’t necessarily need to rely on their drama to get them through every one of their records. They did walk around like a musical soap opera more often than not whenever they made an album since the days of Rumours, but after Tango in the Night, some of the magic seemed to be lost when Lindsey Buckingham left. They limped their way to getting one more album finished, but if an album without Buckingham was shaky, the band felt like a husk of themselves when Stevie Nicks decided she had had enough.

Even after making a massive return to form with their performances at The Dance, seeing Christine McVie and Mick Fleetwood make their way through Time is a chore to sit through. Compared to most albums that seem like a genuine creative endeavour, this sounded like the band trying to do everything they could to hold on to the rights to use the name, complete with some of the most lifeless country-rock songs that have ever turned up in their entire discography.

And given the fact that Christine was more than happy to record her songs without the rest of the band, that was about as good a sign as any that the band were ready to call it a day. There was no way that the world was going to accept them without their classic lineup, and if the band themselves sounded checked out behind the scenes, you can only imagine how the songs turned out.

‘Gone Troppo’ – George Harrison

George Harrison never envisioned having a solo career in the same way that the rest of his Beatles bandmates did. He wanted to get his songs out there when he made All Things Must Pass, but when you look at some of his best records, he was more interested in making music with his friends than worrying about having a number-one hit. But when the massive chart-toppers dried up and the world stopped caring about his spiritual practices, Harrison started to see every other album as a chore.

His self-titled album seemed to be a fine step forward, but if Somewhere in England was a sign of things getting shaky, Gone Troppo is like a middle finger aimed directly at his management. The label had demanded that he make one more album, but since he was clearly more happy to look over HandMaid Films by that point, all that he could muster on this record was whatever he could throw together when he went on vacation. It definitely sounds like a tropical getaway in some respects, but when you think of Harrison’s music, Jimmy Buffett isn’t usually the first name that comes to mind.

And given that some of the songs are leftovers all the way from his Beatle days, the whole album feels like Harrison is cleaning house and trying to get anything out there to get out of his contract. Jeff Lynne may have helped him discover his love for music all over again, but if Gone Troppo proved anything, it was that Harrison wanted absolutely nothing to do with the manufactured side of the 1980s.

‘Victory’ – The Jacksons

It’s impossible to think of anyone who had the decade that Michael Jackson did in the 1980s. Aside from him being one of the most popular people in the world by 1986, Thriller would have been enough to put him at the height of pop stardom for the rest of his life. So you’d think that one of the biggest albums in the world that had some of the greatest music videos of all time would have a promotional tour for it? Well, no. Not at all exactly.

Because no matter what ‘The King of Pop’ wanted to get up to in his solo career, he was still tied to his brothers at this point, with his father calling all the shots. And since Victory was made up of a bunch of tunes that they were throwing together for a national tour, it seemed more and more like the entire tour was riding on the star power that Michael already had. No one was coming to hear anything but songs from Thriller, and Michael seemed to know that from the moment that he stepped out onstage with his brothers for the last time. 

By the time he reached the final leg of the tour, Michael decided that enough was enough and decided to break up the band on the spot during their encore and catapult himself into his solo career full-time. Joe Jackson may have felt that he had every kid in his family wrapped around his finger for the rest of their lives, but he was straight-up delusional to think that Victory was going to do anywhere near the same numbers that one of the greatest pop stars of all time was going to do.