10 albums that saw artists lose their momentum
Every great rock and roll success story is built on momentum. Even though everyone tries to have that one album that catapults them into the stratosphere, some of the greatest acts of all time had to work for years until they settled on an album that worked best for them. While momentum requires years to cultivate, it took bands like Pink Floyd only one album for everything to fly out the window.
Because when you think about it, momentum is about far more than a typical career formula. It’s about having a rapport with the audience, and when the crowd isn’t interested in hearing what their favourite act is playing anymore, it doesn’t take much for them to sit out most of their later projects.
But there are a few ways that people can end up tuning out on their favourite artists. Most of the time, people can point to someone who drastically changes their style and leaves everyone underwhelmed by what they just heard. The biggest names in music have always been known for being consistent, but the minute that people figure out they can play around with their sound, they end up sticking their noses in places it doesn’t belong.
Even when some artists have the world in their hands, the biggest crime is them making an album that’s simply boring, leaving the audience thinking about what better uses they could be doing with their time than having to listen to someone drone on for an hour. Although these albums didn’t necessarily spell the end of an artist’s career, they did manage to set them back a few notches with many of their fans.
10 albums where artists lost their momentum:
10. Victim of Love – Elton John
The massive run that Elton John had throughout the 1970s feels nearly impossible to pull off. While not every one of his albums may have been celebrated alongside the likes of The Beatles or The Stones, seeing the way he and Bernie Taupin ascended from musical paupers to the greatest songwriting duo of the decade is still one of the greatest success stories in rock history. But since it was the 1970s, drugs were also a major power player, and bringing in disco to their formula did them no favours on Victim of Love.
Then again, this isn’t really one of their usual collaborations. Taupin’s words aren’t on the album at all, which left John free to spread his wings, work with other writers and perform tasteless covers that go nowhere. While ‘Johnny B Goode’ being turned into a disco song is enough to make some people cringe, it’s even worse in practice, practically robbing the rock staple of any of its charm and sounding like something playing in an enthusiastic disco.
Also, it doesn’t help that John was out of his mind on cocaine when he made the record, turning in songs that sound closer to a parody of what he had done in the past. He could still write classic tunes, but there are some pieces on Victim of Love that feel like he’s actively trying to neuter his sound to get a slight whiff of Saturday Night Fever.
9. Somewhere in England – George Harrison
George Harrison never thought that much about having a solo career. The whole point of his solo years was to get his songs out there, but he was never meant to be the person at the front of the stage serving as the bandleader of everything. But in the case of Somewhere in England, it felt like ‘The Quiet Beatle’ decided to roll over to his record label and lost his identity for the rest of the 1980s.
Despite having a great tribute to John Lennon on ‘All Those Years Ago’, hearing him going into full-on 1980s pop on ‘Teardrops’ and ‘Unconsciousness Rules’ is pretty much the antithesis of what fans wanted from his spiritual side. Instead of having tunes like ‘Flying Hour’ as part of the album, fans had to deal with cover tunes by Hoagy Carmichael that felt like the former Beatle officially entering his dad-rock phase.
And judging by how he was working on Gone Troppo, it seems like Somewhere in England soured his relationship on the business side of things as well, eventually making that album at arm’s length while on vacation. He was still looking to make music where he could, but from the minute that he started Somewhere in England, it was clear that hits were the last thing on his mind.
8. The Long Run – Eagles
Every band is usually looking to hit a peak when it comes to an artist’s momentum. Even though someone can try to make the best record they can, it takes years of experience before someone truly refines their handle on songwriting. And while Glenn Frey and Don Henley were on the cusp of history during the making of Eagles’ Hotel California, The Long Run is the perfect case study for when bands need to take some sort of break.
Since they needed to capitalise on the success of their blockbuster album and having one of the greatest-selling best-of records of all time, Henley and Frey were fried the minute they walked into the studio. Outside of the lacklustre songs throughout most of the record, the lion’s share of The Long Run sounds overcooked, as if they were trying to write a grand epic and never having the follow-through.
Henley wasn’t all that fond of the results, either, usually citing the music business as the reason why everything failed, saying that the machine needed to be fed and them having nothing to work with. There is still some salvageable material in the record, but it’s hard to hear them over the sea of guitar overdubs and the riffs that would have been considered on any other Eagles project.
7. St Anger – Metallica
Metallica have never been ones to repeat themselves throughout their career. Even when making their thrash masterpieces in the 1980s, the beginning of the 1990s saw them reaching for mainstream success that either made people love or hate them, depending on how much of a purist they were. But if Load and Reload couldn’t destroy their career, they were willing to test that threshold again on St. Anger.
Then again, a lot of the baggage of the album tends to be everything going on around the songs. James Hetfield had already been working on himself, and by the time he returned to the studio, he was always going to give minimal effort when writing the lyrics. But as much as the production sounds terrible and the songs are half-baked, it’s easy to see what they were going for.
The whole point of their approach was to make something unapologetically raw like Nirvana had done on In Utero, but that was never where Metallica worked best. Their songs are meant to hit the audience in the face with one riff after another, but the minute that someone gets past the incessant pinging of Ulrich’s snare bashing, they’re going to be greeted with pure cacophony rather than something from the heart.
6. Pop – U2
U2 was never a band destined for much of a shelf life past 1991. The whole point of them being known as God’s gift to rock and roll wasn’t supposed to mean a thing the minute that alternative rock began, but making Achtung Baby actually managed to put them on an even keel with the Nirvanas and Nine Inch Nails of the world. Since their musical second wind was based on experimentation, why not try to go fully digitised and see what happens?
Despite Bono usually having a vision for what he wanted U2 to be, hearing them tear through songs with only a few synthesiser glitches wasn’t going to put them in the same league as The Chemical Brothers. There are even a few songs that edge closer to disco territory, but since Bono has been known for being earnest, hearing him try to get serious on top of these beats feels like he’s making fun of what he’s talking about.
Then again, U2 does hold the world record for correcting that momentum, only needing a few years before picking themselves up on All That You Can’t Leave Behind. But while they managed to do irony a lot better than they really should, Pop is the moment everyone collectively realised that Bono could build a condo up his ass.
5. No Code – Pearl Jam
Pearl Jam never had the best relationship with their own fame. No one in Seattle was ready to become a superstar by the time Nirvana became the biggest band in the world, and when people started zeroing in on the Pacific Northwest, everyone felt like they were being invaded for all the wrong reasons. While Eddie Vedder tried his best to control the band’s fame as best he could, No Code took things one step too far for most commercial fans.
Since Vitalogy already primed the pipes for something weird on songs like ‘Bugs’ and ‘Stupidmop’, this was the kind of downtempo record with none of the fury that most people expected. Despite Vitalogy benefiting from having tunes like ‘Spin the Black Circle’ and ‘Better Man’, there isn’t much punch outside of ‘Hail Hail,’ usually featuring Eddie writing half of the material and not even bothering to call up Jeff Ament when they started recording.
Then again, it’s hard to judge the album as a momentum killer when that was the whole point. Vedder had said beforehand that he had tried to make this album as impersonal as possible to stop any kind of parasocial relationship with his fans, so part of me wants to give the record kudos for making songs that don’t sound like they want to be listened to.
4. The Final Cut – Pink Floyd
No band should have to suffer through finding momentum twice like Pink Floyd did. They already had some of the biggest space rock epics to their name, but the minute that Syd Barrett left, it took them over half a decade before they found their mojo once they made their epic ‘Echoes’. Roger Waters may have found his voice as a lyricist around that time, but when he finally came up for air after his magnum opus, the rest of the band could see through his bullshit in an instant.
The whole point behind The Wall was to realise Waters’s vision for a rock opera, but listening to The Final Cut, David Gilmour couldn’t get behind the project, thinking that everything on the record was a weak retread of what they had already made. Although the orchestrations are still great for what they are from Michael Kamen, hearing Waters try to channel the character of Pink with no real storyline to go on feels like him trying to build a rock opera from the ground up on every song.
Even though ‘The Gunner’s Dream’ and ‘Two Suns in the Sunset’ are great examples of everyone working in sync, there was no doubt that this wasn’t Pink Floyd anymore. This was Roger Waters using everyone else as side musicians, and by the time he walked out on the group shortly afterwards, most people were happy to see the band working as a collective again once they took to the road.
3. Be Here Now – Oasis
Noel Gallagher always prioritised the importance of momentum when it came to Oasis. The whole point of the band was to keep their name in the press for as long as possible as they made one hit after another, and once they hit the ceiling with What’s the Story Morning Glory, they became legends in the same way their heroes like The Jam and The Smiths were a decade earlier. Once Noel decided to dream bigger than the peak, though, it started to look a little bit more embarrassing on Be Here Now.
The real tragic part of this album is the fact that the old Oasis is in there somewhere. All of the songs have fine melodies, but hearing them realise that they can do anything and be millionaires was the kiss of death, featuring them stretching out their songs a bit too much and an endless amount of guitar overdubs that seem to lead to nowhere whenever any of the songs come on.
And looking at how everything worked out on Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, it’s clear that Noel still has some regrets about fumbling it so hard. Because they could have ascended to the realm of The Beatles had they kept the ball rolling, but considering one of the standout tracks from the next project was ‘Where Did It All Go Wrong’, it’s safe to say that he knew their time in the spotlight was officially over.
2. Use Your Illusion – Guns N’ Roses
Most fans can only dream of having the gradual ascent that Guns N’ Roses had throughout their early days. They may have slaved away playing small clubs on Sunset Strip, but the minute that ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ appeared on MTV, fans got to see a more cutthroat version of LA, which made everyone else in hair metal look like a poser by comparison. This was what rock and roll was all about, and now that they had the world in their hands, Axl Rose figured it was time to make something extravagant.
As much as Use Your Illusion has some nice ideas on it, it’s far too long for anyone to devote too much time to. Despite having one of the biggest names in music at the time, it was clear that Rose was in over his head in some areas, almost as if he was trying to pack three albums’ worth of musical growth into two years. That doesn’t mean there aren’t highlights, but to get to something like ‘November Rain’, you also have to sit through something like ‘My World’ as well.
And with a tour that went around the world twice, forced Izzy Stradlin to leave, and almost killed Slash in the process, no one else was onboard by the time that an album on new material started to get floated around. Chinese Democracy may have eventually been released, but by the time it finally came out, most of us knew that the days of rock and roll debauchery were long gone.
1. Self Portrait – Bob Dylan
It was going to be hard for anyone to escape the massive shadow of Bob Dylan in the 1960s. Even though he wanted to play the kind of songs that people could sing along to whenever attending political rallies, hearing him being talked about in the same breath as massive figures of history was never something he was comfortable with. While he tried his best to go the road not travelled half the time he made records, what better way to get people to leave you alone than making something deliberately?
Then again, it’s not like Self Portrait was meant to fail the minute it came out. The old Dylan is still here in some capacity, but the whole meaning behind his songs seemed to change. Instead of writing earnest tunes that people could sing along with, hearing him do covers of standards like ‘Blue Moon’ and cover Simon and Garfunkel made him look like someone who was actively trying to downplay his ego.
The whole point may have been for Dylan to shake off those legendary accolades, but even if it almost worked, Self Portrait is still seen as an odd duck in his catalogue. Nothing was ever going to make him any less omnipresent in rock history, but hearing him try his best to make something horrendous wasn’t any less endearing than when folk artists watched in horror when he went electric.
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