Worst follow-up releases to hit albums

CCR's "Pendulum" was a great album by most people's standards, but just another very good album by CCR's standards followed by "Mardi Gras" when the wheels came off for the most part.

 

Sure. Lemon, though, to me is different even from the bulk of what they did in the 90s, with its falsetto vocals and Brian Eno choruses and overt dance beat. But I guess it symbolizes how open they were at that time to sounding different. I'd like them to go back there again now that they've paid off the Popmart Tour with old-fashioned U2 music.

 

Woah. Angel Dust is generally considered to be their best album. Give it another try, it's awesome.

You beat me to it.

 

I think Angel Dust is much better than Real Thing. However, I think King for A Day is their best album.

 

I actually never got around to picking that one up, it's the only one I don't have. I'll listen to the tracks on the greatest hits today.

 

I felt the same way when it was released because I was so into the first one. But then after a bunch of years I busted it out and it's awesome. The first one is still great, but it hasn't quite stood the test of time as Angel Dust for me.

 

Nope.. I agree with you. I quite liked Tonight. Tonight and Loving The Alien and Blue Jean are great tracks. However the follow up Never Let Me Down.. did! It let us all down in quite a big way. Only one or maybe two redeeming songs in the whole shebang. Easily one of Bowie's worst albums ever.

Steve

 

I'm with John here. Fine sounds in the '90s with Achtung being brilliant, Zooropa a notch down from that, and Passengers and Pop down another notch. But still better (and at times, much better) than what they've done in the '00s.

 

Yeah--and I agree that Never Let Me Down is terrible, too.

 

My only question: what in the world is Passengers?

Is this a U2 record that I somehow missed in the 90s? (I was pretty sober in the second half of that decade, I should add.)

 

It's an album U2 made with Brian Eno. They released it under the name "Passengers" so people wouldn't expect a full-blown U2 album. The album is called "Original Soundtracks 1." The tracks are allegedly soundtrack music to different films, but only a couple of the films actually exist. It is a mixture of songs and instrumentals. The best known song from it is "Miss Sarajevo," featuring guest vocals from no less than Luciano Pavarotti, which is on U2's Best of 1990-2000 album. There are some good things on it but it is definitely a side-project.

 

I guess I'm in the minority I actually like Monster and The Final Cut.

 

I like The Final Cut, but I cannot get into Monster no matter how hard I try.

 

While Monster is pretty much the symbolic album of this thread, when I really look at it, the only songs I really dislike are "Crush with Eyeliner," "I Took Your Name" and "King of Comedy." The rest of the album is OK. But there is nothing really great on it, and the band's chemistry doesn't really seem to be there.

I like "The Final Cut" too, but it would be a much more popular album if there were 2 or 3 Gilmour-led tracks interspersed with Roger's ballads, a la The Wall. The problem with the album is that it is one acoustic guitar or piano song after another (and of course, the sense of Pink Floyd being a band is totally gone). It's like The Wall with all the most accessible tracks stripped off it. But many of the individual songs are good -- in fact in some ways I would say the songwriting is stronger than on The Wall.

 

This is so wrong. :thumbsdn:

Tusk is the Buckingham-Nicks era Mac's best album. Diverse, edgy, almost the anti-Rumours. Not that Rumours is bad -- it's not. It's that Tusk is a great album. In no way does it fit this thread.

 

The first one I thought of.

 

Some 80's pop disappointments....

Prince - Around The World In A Day after Purple Rain (not a "bad" album, but definitely not in the same league)
ABC - Beauty Stab after The Lexicon Of Love
Human League - Hysteria after Dare
Culture Club - Waking Up With The House On Fire after Colour By Numbers
Blondie - Autoamerican after Eat To The Beat
Squeeze - Sweets From A Stranger after East Side Story

 

not one that i thought of, but that may be the best example yet.

 

Agree with the first-I was waiting for someone to mention this-evidently Frampton was drinking heavily during I'm In You,but I disagree strongly with the second.I really like Tusk!

Also, I enjoy Monster a lot and prefer it to Automatic, which I find a bit precious.

 

I like "What's the Frequency, Kenneth", the best from Monster, giving them bonus points for that song title alone!

But yeah, the rest of it is not very memorable. I think REM should have become a singles-type band at that point. Their albums became rather monotonous post-AFTP. And why they decided they needed to rock out, a la Monster, is a question that needs to be answered.

 

I'm getting deja vu.

Sly Stone..."Small Talk" after "Fresh".

 

Bowie's "Tonight", R.E.M. "Monster" and Culture Club's third album...ok, I agree. And I must say that I don't love Zooropa and Pop as much as I love "Achtung Baby". But I happened to be more intrigued by "Supposed former infatuation junkie", while all of my friends used to consider the CD a huge disappointment... Terence Trent D'Arby had a similar fate after the first album: "Jagged Little Pill" is her "Introducing the Hardline..:", and SFIJ is probably her own "Neither Fish Nor Flesh" (that I happen to like a lot more than the debut).

I can also name Suzanne Vega's "Days Of Open Hand" after "Solitude Standing", or Sinead O' Connor's "Am I Not Your Girl?" cover album after "I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got" and... what about Tanita Tikaram and Tracy Chapman? After the debut album, way too many people started not to care about their music.

 

I've always been a fan of Monster - I'm amazed at how it's universally hated - it's definitely not typical REM (which I also love), but it's an enjoyable, loud record - give it another listen ......

 

Supertramp: "Paris" after "Breakfast In America". It seemed typical of the era--once you have a big hit album, follow it up with a live collection of sloppy, rushed renditions of all your favorites. I could only stomach "Paris" once or twice. Maybe you had to be there...

 

I've never really thought of live albums as "follow-up releases." Though in the 70s they weren't as peripheral to bands' careers as they tend to be now (today they are more likely to be live DVDs).