With the momentum of a young singer songwriter or group, their best material is often in the earlier part of their careers. It's difficult to actually pinpoint how successful a follow up album can be given the fact that it is subjective opinion. Honestly you could state your claim on an entire nation with a successful chart topping act, and it could last for a couple of months, or a couple of decades.
In the modern age, we have a tendency to consider everything disposable, our jobs, our appliances, our cars. So when record companies can capitalise on a band's success while they are hot on their heels of breakin it, they can destroy their reputations and hopes for the future in the blink of an eye when there sophomore single fails to make the charts. It's disposable talent, and that is the future for our consumerist counter culture of internet celebrities, and myspace bands who are the next big thing. Having not been conditioned to the industry, are enticed into a promiseland of everlasting success and wealth.
When artists have well received debut albums,the follow up is one of the most daunting tasks they encounter in their careers. It mostly comes down to the selection criteria. Consistent material which outshines or builds on the first set of songs, may be enough to eclipse the success of the first album. But the reason why they call it "the difficult second album" is because many artists will fall short of the mark concerning their legitimacy in following up an otherwise stellar debut effort. This is a fact of life for musicians, and they would probably wish they could bypass this obstacle and go straight to the third album.
Classic debut albums have all the bells and whistles, and are never modest in their approach to reaching their audience. A good thing going is best executed right there and then. Momentum can build when you're song writing, and if the hooks keep coming. Then why not, but keep in mind your life will depend on what you do next, and you will not want to be forgotten.
Alanis Morrisette exploded onto the music scene in 1995 with Jagged Little Pill. Although it wasn't the first album she had recorded ( it was actually her third, but first record released internationally). The album met with commerical and critical acclaim upon release, and turned her into an international supserstar.
The bulk of the album contained many chart topping tracks, including "Ironic" "You Outta Know", "Head over Feet" and "Hand In My Pocket."It is the higest selling debut album by a female artist with over 14 million units sold up until september 2008 in the US alone, and over 30 million worldwide.
Morrisette enjoyed considerable success around the world with the album, including Grammy Nominations and world wide tours.
So Morrisette's follow up "Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie" emerged in November of 1998. Upon release it sold well, and met to generally favourable reviews. However sales declined, and the material wasn't as potent as it's predecessor had been. The reason for this was the material selected for the album. Jagged Little Pill had the urgency and pop sensiblity of a young canadian singer songwriter who had a musical visionary in the partner of Glen Ballard, who co-wrote and did the arrangements for her music.
A more mellower effort, the compositions were more subdued, and not typical of what made her a phenomenon in the first place. Singles packed Jagged Little Pill set with consistency which made it a blockbuster. None of these elements were evident in Fomer Infatuation Junkie, therefore making it a less memorable event in Morrisette's discography.
From 14 million, to 2 in the US marked a significant drop in sales. Her second effort just didn't reach as many people as she would of liked, despite constant radio rotation.
Boston, from Massachusetts exploded into the mid seventies in the same manner. Tom Sholz advertised for players to come join a band, after initially being a keyboard player he converted to guitar to play in Boston which would originally consist of Sholz, vocalist Brad Delp, drummer Jim Masdea, and bassist Barry Gondreau. Their self titled debut album appeared in 1976 when they were signed to CBS subsidiary Epic Records ( who represent the likes of Sly and the Family Stone, and formely Pearl Jam).
It became the highest selling debut album in US history selling over 17 millions albums, it still holds the record to this day. "More Than A Feeling" became a world wide hit, with top 40 hits in "Long Time" and "Piece of Mind".
A couple of years passed, and Tom Sholz planned a follow up with material written over the two year gap between the debut and "Don't Look Back" which appeared in 1978. Don't Look Back sold reasonably well in it's first months with 4 million units in the US sold, however the sales and the critical reception for the album was symbolic of the lacklustre's effort to succeed.
Moderate success followed for Boston in the coming years, but were never able to reach that pinnacle that they did on the first album.
With the evidence provided to suggest that stellar debut albums can overshadow successive efforts, we can't help but expose this when big artists are successful and all the pressure is on them to create history again and again. Many have managed to achieve this, namely U2, Madonna, Minogue,AC/DC, Metallica have managed to have huge fanbases spanning several decades. So for an artist to fall from grace so abruptly, one can suspect the artist of not having the ability to overcome media scrutiny and the high expectations set upon them by their peers and critics. This is true, and while the bands that have defined generations still enjoy mainstream success and their records are considered timeless, there will always be the former superstar who the public had an infatuation with for a split second, then discarded like a butted out cigarette, squashed into the ground, an analogy which could be used for the treatment of pop idols of the contemporary era.
The Strokes were a force to be reckoned with when "Is This It" came in 2001. It topped critics lists and saw emergence of one of the most hyped bands around the Us and Britain. It all went to waste when the sub standard "Room on Fire" was released in 2003.
Guns n Roses enjoyed the multi platinum debut of "Appetite For Destruction" in 1986, but conjured up an effort to cringe at with GNR Lies years later.
The MC5, one of the most notorious bands of the late sixties from Detroit, released the uncompromising, unleashed hell of Kick Out The Jams. An era defining album which saw the roots of what would later become the punk rock movement.
They followed it up with the sterile, glossily produced "Back In The USA", this marked the end of the long reigning Detroit outfit, who many looked up to in the sixties, as giving the middle finger to the establishment.
X-Ray Spex, one of the most infamous bands from the English punk scene, only managed to make "Germ Free Adolescents" in 1978. The all girl punk outfit made one of the most acclaimed albums in music history, and didn't release a follow-up until their reformation in 1991, in which it took another four years to deliver a follow up "Conscious Consumer" which appeared in 1995. It was received poorly and the music press took hardly any notice of it.
We all have thoughts, of what could of been. But when the artists lower themselves to become forgotten relics of the past, or sink to the level of mediocrity, where they are still working but no one really cares anymore, you have to consider that as a part of the nature of music. It was in the moment in which they thrived, and even though many of these artists have been forgotten today, we can at least acknowledge that they were a part of our consciousness for a short amount of time.
No comments:
Post a Comment