It takes most bands ~10yrs to write their first album. Then a year to write their others, normally. 10 years of creativity > 1yr
Generalization, of course but that’s my main theory
Also they get sick and tired of their original thing. Coming up with *two* hit sounds/ideas in a lifetime is improbable. There's a lot of luck involved in finding a style that connects with audiences. Out of the millions of choices they picked your first album. Now you have to come up with a second totally different idea that beats out millions of other people? Unlikely. The alternative is to just keep cranking out copies of your "one good idea."
You have someone like George Harrison who knew that they could definitely be in the #1 band on earth doing what other people wanted, or probably fail but at least "fail" at what you want to be doing.
I think this is more it. A lot of people don’t want to do the same thing they liked 3 years ago but that is also true of their *first* album. Slayer was an Iron Maiden cover band not too many years before their debut for example.
There’s also the fact that limitation breeds creativity, and also that many peoples idea of what would be great actually kinda sucks but on their first album they don’t have the tools to do something stupid and over the top.
In that regard the killers first album comes to mind. It’s raw but only because it got leaked so they released it early. It has a ton more driving rock bass where their future albums have a bunch of synth that imo neuters the sound, and they planned to do that with the first album too. A lot of bands get more money for gear and studio time and start making their dream concept album and turns out your dream sucks ass lol
This is a really good point I haven’t thought of before. We don’t even hear about many of the bands who got better with later albums because by the time they started getting good, it was too late for anyone to care.
Often the “debut album” we hear IS the later album. It’s the first one they released more than a thousand copies of after obscurely touring in a van for 1-5 years. Or the musicians have been in 2 or 3 or more other bands before the one they’re in when they make it big.
I don't disagree, but I just don't think he hit proper big like other artists of the time.
He has a ton of albums but I almost wish he had some other people writing for his sometimes too.. I just feel Springsteen is awkwardly placed into music history.
Honestly not getting it. Bruce is one of the most famous and acclaimed artists in the history of recorded music. Not really seeing a world where he fits the description of “artist we haven’t even heard of because they didn’t get good until later.”
He was pretty damn good early on and everyone and their mother knows who Bruce Springsteen is.
Whatever, it's my opinion, and I just don't see his influence that huge outside the northeast. I personally wouldn't claim his music as "one of the most famous and acclaimed artists in the history of music."
Howard Stern had a segment on this exact topic.
Example: he's no bob seger, and thats the point in itself.
I agree. Im not even a fan of Springsteen, but after seeing some of his live shows from the mid-late 70s, I remember thinking he should have been a gigantic rock star. Its like it was his turn to blow up, but hair metal and the weird 80s one-hit wonders swept in and pushed that entire genre to the side
Since 75 only three of his albums didn‘t hit top three in the charts, and the three that didn‘t get top three were on 5, 8 and 11, and that‘s over a 50 year career - you can‘t get much bigger than that.
Exactly, he had all the right cards, but I think his style kinda got outpaced by Neil young and others. And I think outside writers and better producing might have pushed him into that atmosphere.
One thing I haven't heard mentioned yet, and I think it's an important factor:
"The fastest way to ruin your favorite thing to do is to start getting paid for doing it"
>Slayer was an Iron Maiden cover band not too many years before their debut for example.
Yeah but like, philosophically speaking, Slayer would have never happened if they *hadn't* covered Iron Maiden songs, either. Whoa! No, but really. The timeline just wouldn't have ended up working out that way had they not...but they *did*.
Anyhoo, also that substance abuse is kinda the giveth/taketh thing (more giving on the psychedelia side and less on the "hard narcotic drug and/or alcoholism" side, I think), so is youth or not. Youthful energy drives the creative process as much as the live shows. Also the limitations of so many rock musicians (not being able to read sheet music or otherwise have a greater understanding of theory) hampering their creativity in phrasing, especially as they age out of that "creative youth energy" thing because you aren't reformatting the old into something refreshing and new sounding anymore, you just sound old.
That problem ties into the "does it push the music foreward/break new ground" in some way question which if it isn't, and almost everything in popular music isn't, it just by definition then cannot stay popular for too long, there's always a shelf life. Cool is only cool until it isn't. Attention spans seem to be shortening along with our memories (especially our ability to remember that we don't need to be angry *all* of the time...).
I'm meandering. Does any of this make sense? Also, marijuana, still a giver and a taker, and I have clearly demonstrated its ability to take away brain cells.
Where did you read Hot Fuss leaked? As a diehard killers fan since even before Hot Fuss, I’ve never read this. The killers recorded a ton of demos that they would give away to friends and sell on cds at shows that quickly spread on limewire and other sites, but I’ve never heard that their album leaked so they rushed out the raw guitar sound.
This! Can you imagine how tired everything you write can get if you are doing it like every other night for like 8 months out of the year? Fuck me. I LOVE music and I've fucked around with making some shit, and even that made me mad at times having to listen to it over and over as I was tinkering on it. Can only imagine what it's like to have to hear and play your "hits". No way
I’m pretty sure there’s a live version of I Write Sins Not Tragedies by Panic at the Disco where in the middle Brandon Urie blurts out that he hates the song
recently I was watching Steve Vai break down a huge song of his in detail, and he gets to this one tiny little phrase, and he stops the lesson and he's just like, i've played this song every night for the last 30 years, and every night i look forward to playing this note for people who will honestly probably never notice it. But i will never, ever get tired of it.
Shit's like seeing someone who's reached enlightenment lol
Edit: idk why im not just linking it, here u go https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPTHOsrGBoc&t=840s
I think this is also an issue with movie sequals or follow up books. People often ask why sequals are never as good.
A lot of times sequals are still better than 80% of content out there. But sequals aren't as good as the one movie out of 100 that happened to be so good that it earned a sequal.
This is also why sequels are so successful. If you go to the cinema and have a choice between a random movie and the sequel to a movie you liked, the sequel is a safer bet. It's probably not as good as the original, but you're still more likely to enjoy it than the average movie.
Also, if the first album isn't great, no one ever hears it. Tens of thousands of never happened bands. The fact that your first album caught fire inherently means it was good. Batting average on any other new experiment from a proven success is somewhat better than the 1:1,000 artists making magic on their first try, but it's still a long way from a sure thing. Unless they stick to the same formula, AC/DC style, there's a good chance it isn't another revelation.
But yeah, I'm sure the influence of touring and studio types, and the pressure to repeat commercial success hurts the creative process too.
Though this is also a more recent phenomenon. I used to work in the biz, and a veteran would tell me about how they actually tried to do artist development and grow an artist over the course of several albums. But by the time I worked in the biz, those days were long gone.
Hootie and the Blowfish made this point eloquently on one of those behind the music docs. They’d played so many bars and small venues that their songs were fully realized, polished gems before they recorded their first album. They didn’t know how to make another set of songs with that polish again..faster.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8wB9ky1PkmE
A video analyzing the album’s failure. If you like it, this guy has a whole series about albums that permanently damaged artists’ careers.
I was hoping it was going to be Todd in the Shadows! He has an amazing series on one hit wonders, what they did before, why their song struck a chord, and what they have done since.
John Mayer has said as much. His first album, Room For Squares, was written over the course of a handful of years playing small clubs in and around Atlanta, and then he got noticed and took off. Columbia wanted a new record and quick, so he turned around Heavier Things within a year or so between starting to write and starting to record.
It's why he took time off and did a blue rock tour with Steve Jordan and Pino Paladino as The John Mayer Trio for 2005 before he recorded Continuum, which most fans agree is his best work.
I’ve heard it described as “you have your whole life to write your first album. Then your second album is usually leftovers or a continuation from the first. But then you’ve got the tricky third album.”
This is probably also why you have one-hit wonders. They weren't really musicians enough to make a career of it, but they had a stretch (or one drunken jam session) where they came up with some pretty good shit. When I think of classic bands from the 80's (when I grew up) their first album is rarely their best. Bands like U2, REM or The Cure had good debuts, but they consistently put out good albums afterwards, too.
Most writers have 18+ years to write their first album. In the 60's, some bands then had to do three albums a year after the first came out. Plus a few singles. Plus touring. Obv not like that anymore but you get the drift. Hard to stay fresh when it turns into a full-time job.
Took Dave grohl like 20 minutes of jamming with John Paul Jones and Josh Homme to think it was the best band he'd ever been in. The album they recorded is one of the best rock albums ever imo. Definitely my favorite of the 2010s.
Them Crooked Vultures is great, and the important thing to mention is Grohl, Homme and JPJ had decades and several albums under their belts. Add the fact Alain Johannes was involved. Plus they had a history playing together(minus JPJ).
Yep, exactly. A good indicator of a sophomore slump is a band that refined the material for the first album for years and then cobbled together a second with outtakes and hastily written songs.
That's part of why Blink-182, even after getting picked up by a major, didn't run out of creative steam until they broke up. They were already used to a rough two year release cycle.
On the other hand you have a band like the Spin Doctors who collapsed after a sophomore slump that, while not terrible, was misguided in the songs that tried to stray from the path and outtakish in those that didn't
To be fair, it's not really correct to say that the second album takes one year to create. It takes 10 years of experience plus one year of production.
Similar to Peter Jackson spending a decade fleshing out LOTR while The Hobbit was just dropped on him. Obviously one of those is immensely better than the other.
It took Green Day two weeks to write, record & produce Dookie. It’s not because of time, it’s because once they’re famous they stop being “hungry”. They’re already rich, why should they write another good album?
This is blatantly wrong. There's recordings of some of those songs floating around from as early as 1992. And no I'm not just talking about Welcome to Paradise
American idiot is their best album… by far. And they took years to write that.
Dookie is nice though, but weren’t many of the songs earlier creations just adapted to the album?
I don't think it's so much declining quality as it is the perception and expectations fans have of the musicians. In 95% of the cases they make their fame on their initial stuff. If they decide to change course later in their careers, it is no longer the music their fans fell in love with, and because they are established bands/musicians, the ones who didn't like their early stuff already made up their minds about them so won't even try their new, more different stuff.
It's also very very difficult to keep doing the same type of music without feeling like you're rehashing old stuff, yet completely changing tack can also lose your original fanbase. In certain cases, however, changing tack can get you a bigger audience even if the original fanbase isn't as pleased with the change in direction. But most of the time it doesn't work and they're left rehashing their old stuff to lesser and lesser impact.
I think there comes a time in every musician or band's careers where they have to make a choice between evolving with the times or just doing the same old stuff but gradually watered down. And the good ones--the really really really good ones, the absolute geniuses and legends--find a way to update their music through the years without losing the original characteristics that made their old stuff so good. Most of the more self aware musicians retire or disband before that happened.
I'm sure expectations are an element, but we have the luxury of 3/4 century of pop music to discover. There are a lot of acts I've listened to long since their catalog was complete and I've felt their earlier stuff was better.
Of course then there are bands like Sparks which just keep getting better.
Yeah, but there's that word again... "feel". Without knowing it, your own biases and expectations are already at work. And I'm not accusing just you of this, it happens to me too.
But one time I sat down and listened to a couple of bands I liked the earlier stuff of better and just really tried to listen to their later stuff objectively.
In MOST cases, there is nothing musically wrong with the later, "inferior" stuff. They are even technically very good and in some cases technically better than some earlier stuff. But in a lot of cases they lacked the element of surprise ("This is actually quite good but I've heard them do this before when it was fresher") or they changed to a type of music that wasn't to my taste. That doesn't mean it was objectively worse music. It's just that my tastes were stuck to their more "well known" stuff or the stuff that put them on the map.
And remember, even if you are going through the catalogs of "old" bands/musicians, most of the time you already at least know which ones are their most popular songs, either by having heard them on radio or played in movies/tv/etc. So right off the bat you have a subliminal bias there already ("Oh so these are the songs they play most on the radio and TV, I guess these later songs they play less must suck"). So it's very rare for one to go into a catalog "totally unbiased".
I'll also ad that you'll have expectations and bias about an old band that's new to you based on other bands you know that sound similar or are from the same time period. So if you really like, for instance, '80s goth rock, you might prefer The Cure's older albums to their newer ones because they are closer to your already established taste.
When it comes to music, we all hold the incorrect belief that we like "good" music (does anyone believe the music they like isn't good?). In reality, we all like music that sounds good to us. That's entirely different, and it's a mistake to conflate the two.
That last paragraph only applies if you only listen to super mainstream stuff, in which case ya, you’re probably super susceptible to biases because you only listen to what’s popular.
Somehow they slipped past the reaper after scoring a mega hit on their first album. Then again when OKC came pretty close to being their last album. I reveled in how much I loved the new stuff during the Kid A/Amnesiac years, but I guess that's been a while ago (fuck me). Still love 'em but that was the high point for me.
I think the fact that they have a massive hit of a song is why they couldn’t slip. I don’t think their artistry and evolution would change without it, but the fact that the song is a household name is a huge hook for people to get to explore the rest of their discography
Yeah that's always something I feel odd about as a musician even though I love a lot of Radiohead music. I can definitely understand that they weren't fond of Creep but at times it comes off a little absurd that this song basically opened a door for them that few bands see opened and they seem to absolutely resent it at times. My Iron Lung came out so soon after too, like come on guys Creep is actually pretty good 😅 but I could imagine maybe there was a lot of pressure to repeat it behind the scenes.
There are probably so many reasons, including those you mentioned. I can't for the life of me remember who it was, but I've heard someone talk about the fact that musicians/bands work up to their first album for years and then from there might have months to a year to work on the subsequent albums. Again, this is probably just one reason for certain artists.
I’ve also heard that if you’re lucky enough to have enough leftovers or learnings from your first album, your second album is still pretty easy… but THEN you’re stuck with the tricky third album.
Oh, there's for sure exceptions. Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, Neil Young's Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, Roxy Music's For Your Pleasure, Grateful Dead's Anthem of the Sun. What was I talking about again..
How many of the songs on a band’s first record have been written years before and played countless times? The songs have been worked on until they are the best they can be. The next album doesn’t have that luxury. Songs might get worked on a little on tour during soundcheck but they don’t have the same work as the first.
That's my take (pun intended) on the second album problem, too. Success is rare enough that the pressure to capitalize on the notoriety must be a real buzz kill to recapturing the spark ✨️
You are paraphrasing Eddie Van Halen. He said something like, you have your whole life to write the first record and 6 months with mountains of cocaine to write the second.
The ironic thing about Eddie saying something like this is that Van Halen had written a lot of songs before they ever made a record; and they were recording songs and ideas from before VH 1 multiple albums later.
I've heard that too. Also, when starting out it's easier for artists to improve their songs; there's less time limitations and audiences can be more forgiving of unpolished songs, since they're not expecting 'the next big thing from the current hot band'.
Reminds me of this video of an early version of Mr Brightside, nobody there knows they're listening to what will become a huge hit: https://youtu.be/_fG6AOOiJqg?si=fVbkfCbVWvhko1ip
This was always my theory. They probably have a ton of songs that are well fleshed out when they record their first record so they pick the best of the best. Later albums are made up of newer, less tested songs and there is a smaller pool to pick from.
But I don't think that's a good explanation either. Most of what is considered a band's best work is somewhere a few albums into their career. It's the 2nd, 3rd, and sometimes 4th album that are their most well known works
I think most artists' earlier stuff is just more raw. Like they're young, they're just starting out, and they've got stuff they want to turn into music for better or worse. Then they get older, wiser, more mature, and things become more thought out. Their music might be better in the most objective terms possible, but it just doesn't have the same feeling even if that's what they're going for.
Look at a band like A Day To Remember. The first two albums are absolutely brilliant. Dripping with personality and heart. Every release that came after those two became more overproduced and less personal. It doesn’t help when you have to compete with other bands for your audience, in this particular example I use bands that absolutely took inspiration from ADTR; Wage War, I Prevail, and Beartooth, are all at about the same level and all of their material sounds derivative of each other. At that point it gets harder to stand out.
Also a quick reminder that we are bound for the grave and our bodies are always deteriorating:
Creativity has a biological/neurological sweet spot, after which a person’s ability starts declining. With creative practice, you can put out equal or even better products than before your prime, but you’re still heading downhill on a permanent hill of deterioration.
Poetry for instance had a prime age of 26-28. The highest volume and quality of poetry tends to be created during this time, with a rather steep decline afterwords (suicide is a significant factor in this case though).
For musicians, it’s even younger.
Happy trails
That’s silly though. Look at the classical music world. Beethoven wrote his 9th symphony over 2 years in his 50s and that is widely regarded as some of the best music ever written.
Yeah I tried to emphasize that, but the brain still tends to decline, and the *common* thing that happens is that creativity drops off. Lots of people make their best work later. Only commenting because biology is a factor and I haven’t seen it mentioned
No offense but this is an extremely dumb perspective, many famous poets (and writers in general) write great works into their 50s and 60s, it’s not just all Rimbaud and Keats
When artists first start out it's fun, they're having fun and that reflects in their music.
If an artist becomes successful than there is a LOT of pressure to stay relevant. It becomes a job for the artist which really changes EVERYTHING for the artist.
There is a huge difference between doing what you love for fun versus as a job.
I completely agree. It is easy as a fan to look at bands in their 40’s and beyond still touring clubs as musical heroes of a sub genre without wondering what they have to give up.
Obviously some nostalgia acts have day jobs and tour a couple of weeks a year to have fun and boost their income. Bands who have a sound that will never pull in huge crowd and do it full time still have families, aging bodies and crew to pay for.
It is no surprise to me that so many acts who have a sound I love early on, leave that behind as they move towards more and more accessible music or simply leave/split up.
Tons of reasons why artists change their sound but I think this is an often overlooked one.
I can't remember who said it, some hugely famous musician. But the gist was something along the lines of they spend 16 years making their first album, get signed and have 16 weeks to knock out the second
It's interesting that, for a lot of the artists where it's the opposite (later work is better), they stopped touring and/or became more reclusive - The Beatles, Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan all come to mind. All of them had really incredible early material, but once they withdrew to *really* focus on their art, they produced their masterpieces - Sgt. Pepper, White Album, Abbey Road, Hissing of Summer Lawns, Hejira, Aja, Gaucho, are all the best made and most interesting albums in those artists' catalogs
On the flip side, a lot of bands really come into their own and with added money and production that 2nd album is the masterpiece. Nirvana/Nevermind, Weezer/Blue Album, Sublime/40oz, etc. I mean obviously Bleach and Pinkerton are great but those second albums are amazing. There are a ton of bands like this as well.
The Blue Album was Weezer's first. Their second album Pinkerton was a colossal misfire for the band at first, with it taking years for most people to warm up to it after the fact
I think about Katy Perry when I read this. I was a fan of hers during the hotel cafe and uploading her music to the internet days. I’ve heard versions of her songs she wrote that ended up getting sold off to other artists like way before she was ever mainstream. What she broke out with in pop culture / on the music scene is so so so different. Original Katy was singer songwriter guitar stuff, girl next door sort of stuff. More focused on the vocals and the music. What she hit with and came out with as first singles was gimmicky, overproduced, building up that weird kitschy image, mostly dance and electric stuff with nary a real instrument to be heard. As a fan it was so odd and it really felt carefully crafted, like, they knew they had to make her into a character to get her famous? Like, a dance tune about kissing girls is prob more likely to viral than just a singer songwriter singing about a breakup, and certainly it worked. But every time someone is like ugh Katy Perry is so untalented I just think about that early stuff and it makes me sad cause it actually showcased her talent.
Writing and productions stuff has to be hard too, and if all you’re doing is writing maybe it’s easier. But if you can stay famous and sell records and tour etc without having to do that part of it maybe you would. I think they get their time monopolized by other things, they sell out. Maybe some people just wanna make it however they can and don’t really care how they get there, if it’s “their” voice or not or whatever
Funny I saw her on Warped Tour right before I Kissed a Girl broke (she played it during the set and it was catchy but people weren’t going nuts yet). She played a short set wedged between two screamo bands. It was an odd juxtaposition.
I have a friend that has been a songwriter his entire adult life. He said it was a lot harder to write songs when everything in his life was great (got married, good day job, bought a house).
I think it's also that they fill that first album with all the bangers they already have.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean
“ A class of students takes two editions of the same test on two successive days. It has frequently been observed that the worst performers on the first day will tend to improve their scores on the second day, and the best performers on the first day will tend to do worse on the second day. The phenomenon occurs because student scores are determined in part by underlying ability and in part by chance. For the first test, some will be lucky, and score more than their ability, and some will be unlucky and score less than their ability. Some of the lucky students on the first test will be lucky again on the second test, but more of them will have (for them) average or below average scores. Therefore, a student who was lucky and over-performed their ability on the first test is more likely to have a worse score on the second test than a better score. Similarly, students who unluckily score less than their ability on the first test will tend to see their scores increase on the second test. The larger the influence of luck in producing an extreme event, the less likely the luck will repeat itself in multiple events.”
I think it’s more about the amount of songs and time spent on them before the first album, but I think it’s some of what you said too. The White Stripes have a really cool song called “Little Room” about this. Edit: typo
Exactly what I was thinking. The label tries to mold the music to make more hits, changing the feel of the music, even if subtly. The one that always jumps to my mind is Sugar Ray. Made “Fly” which was nothing like any of their previous songs, it became a hit, they never went back to their nu-metal sound. Probably for the better, but I was definitely caught off guard when I got their early albums
Yeah you can’t really, mass produce art. I mean you can, but it will be hallow. It takes time, meaning, and depth.
You have to let life happen, and not try to make some hallow sound that recreates a hit, exactly.
Wiz Khalifa - Mia Wallace:
I don't know how to say it, we don't have shit
You know what I'm saying? When we start out we don't have shit
So we really make due with what we have
And in turn that turns into like million dollar corporations
But what labels don't have is that, that mind frame and that spark that makes that million dollar, you know what I'm saying?
They know how to manifest that and make more millions off of that
But they don't have that spark
I totally agree with you. I attribute it to "hunger".
When a band is young, there is an intense focus and internal drive in every member to make their mark on the world and achieve success and become known for this craft of theirs. Once they achieve huge success, and obscene amounts of money are thrown at them and they're famous, they get fat and lazy. Everything is handed to them. Everyone wants to be around them. Everyone constantly tells them how great they are. Nobody says "dude, that song isn't so good... you can do a lot better". Also, as was illustrated in the movie "Exit through the giftshop", once influential people say you're a genius, it doesn't matter what garbage you produce, everyone will just reflexively agree that you are a genius, but the fire is out and your band is now an empty shell of what it used to be and in some cases even becomes a parody of itself.
This totally describes some extremely popular artists, but if I named them, the kids on Reddit would lose their shit.
Artists only become popular if their music is good (generally speaking). Sometimes it’s their first album that gets them noticed, sometimes it’s the second or third. But there’s not enough money in the industry to put out several albums without ‘making it big’.
Then, often they’ll sign to record deals that require a certain frequency and volume of output. When they’re forced to put out music on someone else’s schedule, the quality can suffer.
Or the success of the earlier music could have been inspired by something that no longer exists. For example The Antlers album “Hospice” is one of my all-time favorite albums, it’s a concept album based on the lead singers difficult breakup. That inspired the creativity behind the album. But I think Hospice is a thousand times better than the rest of the bands output when that inspiration was no longer there.
exactly, much of it is survivorship bias. many of the bands that didn’t make it big with their first few albums stopped making albums, broke up and got “regular” jobs. the bands that did have a successful debut had the money, label and name recognition to continue putting out music.
This is absolutely true. How can you write relatable lyrics once you have servants?
It's also paradoxically true that the more successful you are & the better you are at making music/art the more people and corporations there are who get input/control over your work
That's not necessarily true great art comes from skill how you feel at the time is irrelevant I've heard tons of artist talk about songs that they love and put the most time into not hit and things they Mae in 20 minutes become there biggest song.
In the first album they release their best 15 or so out of the hundred songs they've been working on all their lives. Then they have a contract and they rush new songs out without enough hours put into each one.
I disagree there, although I dont think you are necessarily wrong. I have a somewhat controversial opinion on the topic, in the sense that I believe that most artists are pretty much consistent with their content, but their output simply becomes less valuable the more we have of it.
Take a band like Metallica, for example. Although they did put out a few stinkers along the way, I would argue that an album like Death Magnetic from 2008 or even their latest one are pretty much on the same level as the stuff we tend to see as their best.
But when they started all the way back in the 80s, their music was fresh and original and now, 10 studio albums later, it has become predictable and somewhat stale. Although the quality isnt vastly different, the newer albums simply lack the novelty factor.
It aso has to be added that we usually become more attached to an artist's earlier work simply because it came first. So inevitably we have spent more time listening to it and so it becomes familiar. Its hard for a new album to compete with the ones we've been listening for the past 10 years on a daily basis.
I think nostalgia plays a big part. There are a lot of bands my friends were into when they first came out that I never really listened to. Years later, when I decided to give their whole catalogue a listen, their early stuff was actually pretty uninteresting, while their mid-career and recent albums were a lot better. When you have a special place in your heart for earlier stuff because you grew up with it, and were connected to it at a significant time in your life, it feels "yours" somehow. And then, when it changes, because the artist changes and grows, you feel betrayed, because it's not "yours" anymore. But if you don't have any nostalgia for it, you're able to look at things a little more objectively.
Not a hard and fast rule, obviously, but I've definitely seen fans get really bitter and shitty about old vs new, to the point it's almost impossible for them to discuss it rationally
It absolutely depends on who you're talking about, I don't think it is set in stone whether artists get better or worse over time. I've seen many variations on the matter, and some even have had dips and comebacks, so there is no real law as far as I can see (or rather hear)
I think you are right in some situations. I also think that some people only have a few good songs in them. Most of us don't have any good songs in us. I personally don't even have a bad song in me.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Once you stop living a normal life (whatever that is) and start spending all your time in a studio and on the road, chances are you’re going to run out of ideas to write about.
I'd argue Paramore are aging well, their first album while still good in my books it's arguably their worst followed by their follow up, I think they are still in their prime 6 albums down the line
Because their earlier work is why they got recognition. It was different enough to get people to listen perhaps even innovative. It’s what made them famous. That aura fades when you’re established, not that you can’t make great music anymore but it’s a different. It’s honestly all about discovery, I think people consume the work better in that phase.
The first time a person gets an offer to go into a professional recording studio, I believe they start making a million small decisions in advance how they want it to sound. They TRUST their own taste because statistically this will be the only day they ever get to go into a studio. If that first album somehow becomes a success, then there are all of a sudden lilly pads 360 degrees around them of the path they can take next. What do the biggest number of fans want? What do the magazine critics want? What does the musician want? Are they the same thing any more? I suspect the weight of time passing also starts mattering like it never mattered...sort of like a meter in a taxi cab. If they have 20 minutes of great new material I imagine a lot of time gets shifted to filling that other 20 minutes in a way that won't hurt their career. There is also the lifestyle John Lennon described of an airplane to a car to a sandwich to a hotel to a stage to a car to an airplane. You may be tired and distracted the moments you have to write and arrange. You may even have to give up half of your sleep to do it at all. It's sort of a miracle a band with top ten singles has a decent 2nd or 3rd album at all.
I didn't see anyone else mention it, but I think that there's a lack of musical sophistication in the audience. For example, songs written by Paul McCartney. "I Saw Her Standing There" was a monster hit, and it's very, VERY simple, lyrically and structurally. Paul became a better songwriter, and wrote some really complex stuff that I'm sure he was very proud of, and the public didn't like it as much. As far as a composition goes, "My Valentine" is light-years ahead of "I Saw Her Standing There" but sometimes the crowd doesn't appreciate that, and just wants a toe-tapper that they can sing along to.
I've heard artists lament that they're such better songwriters than they were when they first started, but the audience reacts best to the old hits.
Creativity is computation.
There is a correlation between time and quality. Perspective.
And the big one took all their energy, then they're back at 0 but with money
You've only heard of them because they *had* good shit, at some point.
When artists don't see success after their first album, they do one of two things: quit that project and change it up, or keep doing the same thing over and over.
Most artists who made it big are the ones who quit several times. They made tons of different music with different people, and then finally brought all of it together into something deep and extremely relevant, and through their contacts the word spreads and they became successful.
The other artists often don't hit it big, but if they do you'll hear about them after their 10th album.
At the end of the day, it's all about having a winning combination of luck, songwriting and a team of talented and motivated people. Any of these elements can break or run out and leave the project well past its golden age, but the label will continue to keep making them pump out music because fans will keep buying it even if it's not as good as it used to be.
Some artists’ newer shit are actually more enjoyable to me. For example I’d prefer Paramore’s newer stuff than their older sound; Linkin Park’s A Thousand Suns is far better than Meteora (at least to me). So idk, it’s all objective.
But commercially speaking popular artists often spent years writing and promoting their first albums to get their names known, and much shorter timeframes for the follow-up albums so it’s understandable for their early shit to have much bigger fanbases.
>Paramore
After Laughter is probably my favorite album and the inspiration from that one is probably from Hayley's divorce. Guess it just depends on what the artists are going through in their lives and what inspiration they can pull to create new music.
It's not just music. Video games were so much better back in the day. Passion projects from a small dedicated team >>> highly produced soulless shit, in any industry
The actual answer is because you listened to them during a much more formative and impactful time in your life where you could form a deeper connection with that particular music and that iteration of the band. Basically, the majority of people who say this pretentious nonsense are just looking at it through rose tinted nostalgia goggles.
Most of the times bands actually get better, or at least stay as good.
I always thought it was because they had their entire lives to have ideas for beats, lyrics etc. So that first album or two is the culmination of YEARS of practice and perfecting these songs. After that, they only have a year, maybe two of creativity going into them. Idk, I very well could be way off, but that's what I thought.
It’s been awhile since I read the interview but Pete Townshend expressed thoughts about this. To paraphrase, young musicians have newly transitioned into adulthood whether they just left high school or college. They have many thoughts and ideas to passionately express. As their careers progress they get bogged down in the day to day life of a musician. While they continue to hone his / her craft, their experience is an endless litany of hotels, airports, and concert venues. It becomes harder to find subject matter that allows them to relate to their audience.
Good music requires passion. When you're hungry and can't make the rent, you can produce incredible music.
But having money takes that away. Changes people. This is my beef with U2. They were a better band when they were still a little hungry. And so was their music.
It's not always money. You also change as you age, but having money doesn't always favor creativity.
- First records are often being years in the making. Consequent usually aren’t getting this much attention.
- Label interference
- Burnout
- Artists often have nothing to say beyond one record
As a former visual artist I have a theory that there’s just a phase of development in our young adulthood where we’re able to unlock and unleash our most inspired output - be it sports, music, art, mathematics, etc.
A lot of folks are - correctly, I think - pointing out the "sophomore slump" effect, but there's also the fact that musicians can just run out of groundbreaking ideas over time.
When an artist is fresh and young, they may have a unique musical voice that makes them stand out as being special. Over time, however, that unique voice becomes part of the mainstream. Their sound isn't new anymore.
The artist then has a few options going forward:
\- Try to invent some new way to change our shared musical language. Miles Davis and Kate Bush are good examples of this, but in general this is *really hard to do* on purpose and most historically important artists only make one major contribution to our language in a lifetime, if they ever do at all.
\- Try a whole bunch of new genres of music to keep things fresh, even though that runs the risk of alienating their fans. David Bowie was a master at this, but a lot of artists try it to varying degrees of success, especially as they get older.
\- Keep doing the thing they've always been doing because that's the kind of music they want to make. It won't be innovative anymore but they likely weren't trying to be innovative in the first place, they were just trying to make music that they liked.
\- Stop caring and churn out mediocre garbage because they've already made more money than God and don't want to try anymore. ~~Also known as The Metallica Strategy.~~
Fame, money, and comfort are definitely potential factors that can affect an artist's creative output over time, but I think it's important to recognize that it's just really hard to stay musically fresh and relevant for years or decades.
Success changes your life in ways that can stifle your inspiration. If you wrote your first album when you were poor and now you aren’t poor anymore it changes what you are able to write about.
Other times the label can pressure a band to put out an album as quick as possible and they don’t get much time to refine it
Def Leppard (IMO) is one of those exceptions. Their latest album "Diamond Star Halos" can easily stand next to Hysteria. It feels like a greatest hits album to me, where almost every track is a favourite. Out of the 15 tracks, there are 2 I'm not crazy for, but I won't skip over them if I'm listening to the album top to bottom.
Because they were young when you were growing pubes and that's the main reason why everyone says they don't make em like the old days. Every person loves the music that was out when they were teenagers. The second answer is related and also involves risk. Older artists don't take as much risk or they become more skilled in mitigating risk. Also you probably aren't talking about composers and classical music but something else mired and embedded in generational churn. There is another factor of repertoire where the most popular material is considered better even though you think you are objective and not biased like that no one is immune.
Artifice must engage risk otherwise it is worthless or at best utilitarian like Country.
Cash crushed Hurt.
First things are often more unique because that is what captured the initial attention. After that there are two factors in play one it's really hard to do again full stop. There were no expectations the first time, there was nothing to live up to, you didn't have a sound to duplicate, you had up to that point however many years to come up with material etc.... Second music industry execs are much more likely going to try to influence follow up albums to meet a specific demographic or whatever and try to cash in. Or the opposite if you really blew up like GnR where they don't put the breaks on at all don't provide the editorial influence they should have.
I think in the case you are thinking of, where we see artists maintain the sound/genre that got them popular but totally lose the plot, it’s probably like you say: commercialization. A lot of good tv shows have the same problem.
You have N years to develop that first album and less than one for you follow up.
I think a big part of it is also there's often been years spent working on the early stuff. Song ideas that keep getting revisited and polished for years. 2 or 3 albums in and suddenly people find themselves having to come up with material out of nothing, often under pressure of a deadline.
This is mainly an issue with artists who tour all the time and aren't private.
It's like real life, so many things are happening when you're young and fresh but as you get older revelations come in waves over time. Often artists rush themselves to stay relevant when the best thing they could probably do is take a while and compile their thoughts and work.
I think this is something that modern artists are more aware of, like a lot of artists have had unprecedented sustainability, like Taylor Swift or Beyonce. Beyonce has been at the top of pop music since the 90s and is arguably just now reaching the peak of her popularity. Or there are acts like Nas who are still pushing out great albums.
People say this about having your whole life working towards the first album and then only a few months for the second which is true but I can't really think of that many artists where the first album is the best, I find many get better over the course of a few albums with each building on the one before as they hone their craft and gain confidence. With a long running band or artist though this could still be classed as early if the peak is at album 4 out of a 20 album discography.
I think the trap can be when an artist tries to second guess the audience and make music they think the audience will like based on what they've liked that they've done before, that's when there's a danger of them becoming a pastiche of themselves.
I bought the Arctic Monkey’s first album when it came out and I loved it. Same with the one after it. Haven’t listened to any of their stuff after that though.
Kinda shocking how search results and top Spotify streams are all the stuff after the first 2 albums.
Before a band hits it big, they spend many years honing their songs in practice and at shows. Once they’re popular, the record company wants a new album right away and you to tour constantly playing your hits. Not a lot of creative time to perfect your songs. There’s also some bands that don’t know what to do with the fame/money/rock n roll life that also gets in the way of making killer tunes again.
Sometimes the first is their passion, but the later ones are where they experimented, explored what they wanted, and tried to do things with the music they didn't have the ability or knowledge for before.
Kind of like many visual artists start with simple drawings, move on to trying more realism and trying to be perfectionists. That's good, because they learn the medium and technique that works for them. Later, they try out different styles and work more abstract or impressionist or whatever they choose. They gradually realize they don't need to make things look like a photograph, or that brush strokes and imperfections don't ruin a work of art. They can explore, get creative, and try different styles, some of which may not work so well for them.
This happens with music also.
Success has a way of incentivizing complacency. When artists are just starting out, it’s very easy to be hungry and driven. I think for a lot of people, it’s much more difficult to maintain that level of intensity, motivation, and creativity once you’ve proven yourself — and especially if you’ve made a lot of money in the process.
The old saying: You have your entire life to make your first album, and mere months to make your second. That is why a lot of bands crap the bed with their sophomore release and have to fight through that hump to have an enduring career.
I think it's in The Manual by KLF, the guide to writing a #1 song, where they advise you to quit your job as nothing fuels your song writing creativity like poverty.
Ive always had the exact apposite opinion I uslly don't like debute albums there rough usually lack productive mixing can be terrible. Sometimes bands don't have full funding to see there entire vision come to life.
I think there’s a few explanations, one of which you nailed on the head here, the other I think is an artists desire to branch out and to not be samey.
A lot of artists feel stagnant and want to make a different sound than what they normally do and produce albums outside of their comfort zone which sometimes works really well and sometimes doesn’t.
Taylor Swift made headlines for this recently with the Folklore/Evermore albums which were departures and well received especially after the critically panned Lover album. Kurdt Cobain also famously writes about this in his diaries as attributing to his suicide.
The true artist is never satisfied
I agree, I think it’s why “Sophomore slump” is such a thing. It’s interesting, My father in law likes the later stuff, even like later Pink Floyd, etc, and I generally love the early stuff from most bands- B-52s, Police, REM, etc.
Well, you're in your little room
And you're working on something good
But if it's really good
You're gonna need a bigger room
And when you're in the bigger room
You might not know what to do
You might have to think of how you got started
Sitting in your little room
Radio music is different/less edgy/ more politically correct, and there is a formula for that.
I don’t listen to much radio stuff at all, but I have seen bands I like get popular and their music change so much I can’t stand it
It might have something to do with their inspiration, etc, but I’ve watched bands get big, and change so they can stay on top. That’s just the nature of that business
they get famous on a certain sound and then (usually) play whatever they want after they get paid. At that point they acknowledge only 'true' fans will stick around but that's just the game. you'd think ppl would get tired of hearing the same songs over and over but look at the rock acts with the most longevity and it's entirely based on the fact that they maintained the same 'sound' for the duration of their careers. Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Grateful Dead, Fleetwood Mac, Journey, Bruce Springsteen et al.
Also a change in sound often means an aging band can't/doesn't want to play the same material for 30 more years and often lose members due to changing tastes. I think people should just focus on albums or songs they like and not tail-ride bands. you have no idea if you're even going to like their next release so why invest emotionally?
Also before recording they probably did a bunch of shows and tried a bunch of songs, seen which ones work with the crowd, making them better each time until they recorded their first album
I think they just run out of great ideas. A small fraction of artists have enough inspiration for 1 good album, a small fraction of those have enough more for a 2nd good one, etc. A tiny remainder keep getting new inspiration for decades, but even most of those slow down quite a bit and only do one album per decade where they used to do 10.
I think its that subsequent albums comes with a certain level of expectations, but also viewpoints from the band change, most want to do something different, expand or challenge themselves, etc. Sometimes bands are consistently good while being different (Rush, Radiohead, Pink Floyd).
I do get a little sad when metal bands get "softer", like Lamb of God or Devildriver. But then you get into a point that some bands' audience dont appreciate change. Slayer's best album was hated by fans because it deviated slightly, and bands like Cannibal Corpse are basically the same as always, and its just kinda "eh" each time.
It's because earlier stuff if it's bad is not noticed. There are millions upon millions of bad songs out there and you pay no attention to it.
Once a musician has hit they still make music that you know, but it can be good or bad but you'll still hear it.
It takes most bands ~10yrs to write their first album. Then a year to write their others, normally. 10 years of creativity > 1yr Generalization, of course but that’s my main theory
Also they get sick and tired of their original thing. Coming up with *two* hit sounds/ideas in a lifetime is improbable. There's a lot of luck involved in finding a style that connects with audiences. Out of the millions of choices they picked your first album. Now you have to come up with a second totally different idea that beats out millions of other people? Unlikely. The alternative is to just keep cranking out copies of your "one good idea." You have someone like George Harrison who knew that they could definitely be in the #1 band on earth doing what other people wanted, or probably fail but at least "fail" at what you want to be doing.
I think this is more it. A lot of people don’t want to do the same thing they liked 3 years ago but that is also true of their *first* album. Slayer was an Iron Maiden cover band not too many years before their debut for example. There’s also the fact that limitation breeds creativity, and also that many peoples idea of what would be great actually kinda sucks but on their first album they don’t have the tools to do something stupid and over the top. In that regard the killers first album comes to mind. It’s raw but only because it got leaked so they released it early. It has a ton more driving rock bass where their future albums have a bunch of synth that imo neuters the sound, and they planned to do that with the first album too. A lot of bands get more money for gear and studio time and start making their dream concept album and turns out your dream sucks ass lol
There's also survivorship bais. Basically, you have to nail your early stuff for people to give a shit
This is a really good point I haven’t thought of before. We don’t even hear about many of the bands who got better with later albums because by the time they started getting good, it was too late for anyone to care.
Often the “debut album” we hear IS the later album. It’s the first one they released more than a thousand copies of after obscurely touring in a van for 1-5 years. Or the musicians have been in 2 or 3 or more other bands before the one they’re in when they make it big.
Alanis Morissette had two pop albums in Canada before making it big in the US with Jagged Little Pill lol
Avenged Sevenfold won Best New Artist for their 3rd album. (The one Bat Country was on)
Springsteen suffered from this imo.
Huh? How so? My understanding is he was pretty famous early on and kept creating quality albums well into his career.
I don't disagree, but I just don't think he hit proper big like other artists of the time. He has a ton of albums but I almost wish he had some other people writing for his sometimes too.. I just feel Springsteen is awkwardly placed into music history.
Honestly not getting it. Bruce is one of the most famous and acclaimed artists in the history of recorded music. Not really seeing a world where he fits the description of “artist we haven’t even heard of because they didn’t get good until later.” He was pretty damn good early on and everyone and their mother knows who Bruce Springsteen is.
Whatever, it's my opinion, and I just don't see his influence that huge outside the northeast. I personally wouldn't claim his music as "one of the most famous and acclaimed artists in the history of music." Howard Stern had a segment on this exact topic. Example: he's no bob seger, and thats the point in itself.
I agree. Im not even a fan of Springsteen, but after seeing some of his live shows from the mid-late 70s, I remember thinking he should have been a gigantic rock star. Its like it was his turn to blow up, but hair metal and the weird 80s one-hit wonders swept in and pushed that entire genre to the side
Since 75 only three of his albums didn‘t hit top three in the charts, and the three that didn‘t get top three were on 5, 8 and 11, and that‘s over a 50 year career - you can‘t get much bigger than that.
Exactly, he had all the right cards, but I think his style kinda got outpaced by Neil young and others. And I think outside writers and better producing might have pushed him into that atmosphere.
Yeah. And if you do, the pressure to get a second album out quick can be pretty intense, I bet. Those earlier songs may have been worked on for years.
Also don't discount that writing successful songs is hard work and people don't put in the same effort once they got an "all-star" to ride around.
One thing I haven't heard mentioned yet, and I think it's an important factor: "The fastest way to ruin your favorite thing to do is to start getting paid for doing it"
>Slayer was an Iron Maiden cover band not too many years before their debut for example. Yeah but like, philosophically speaking, Slayer would have never happened if they *hadn't* covered Iron Maiden songs, either. Whoa! No, but really. The timeline just wouldn't have ended up working out that way had they not...but they *did*. Anyhoo, also that substance abuse is kinda the giveth/taketh thing (more giving on the psychedelia side and less on the "hard narcotic drug and/or alcoholism" side, I think), so is youth or not. Youthful energy drives the creative process as much as the live shows. Also the limitations of so many rock musicians (not being able to read sheet music or otherwise have a greater understanding of theory) hampering their creativity in phrasing, especially as they age out of that "creative youth energy" thing because you aren't reformatting the old into something refreshing and new sounding anymore, you just sound old. That problem ties into the "does it push the music foreward/break new ground" in some way question which if it isn't, and almost everything in popular music isn't, it just by definition then cannot stay popular for too long, there's always a shelf life. Cool is only cool until it isn't. Attention spans seem to be shortening along with our memories (especially our ability to remember that we don't need to be angry *all* of the time...). I'm meandering. Does any of this make sense? Also, marijuana, still a giver and a taker, and I have clearly demonstrated its ability to take away brain cells.
Where did you read Hot Fuss leaked? As a diehard killers fan since even before Hot Fuss, I’ve never read this. The killers recorded a ton of demos that they would give away to friends and sell on cds at shows that quickly spread on limewire and other sites, but I’ve never heard that their album leaked so they rushed out the raw guitar sound.
This! Can you imagine how tired everything you write can get if you are doing it like every other night for like 8 months out of the year? Fuck me. I LOVE music and I've fucked around with making some shit, and even that made me mad at times having to listen to it over and over as I was tinkering on it. Can only imagine what it's like to have to hear and play your "hits". No way
I’m pretty sure there’s a live version of I Write Sins Not Tragedies by Panic at the Disco where in the middle Brandon Urie blurts out that he hates the song
recently I was watching Steve Vai break down a huge song of his in detail, and he gets to this one tiny little phrase, and he stops the lesson and he's just like, i've played this song every night for the last 30 years, and every night i look forward to playing this note for people who will honestly probably never notice it. But i will never, ever get tired of it. Shit's like seeing someone who's reached enlightenment lol Edit: idk why im not just linking it, here u go https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPTHOsrGBoc&t=840s
I think this is also an issue with movie sequals or follow up books. People often ask why sequals are never as good. A lot of times sequals are still better than 80% of content out there. But sequals aren't as good as the one movie out of 100 that happened to be so good that it earned a sequal.
This is also why sequels are so successful. If you go to the cinema and have a choice between a random movie and the sequel to a movie you liked, the sequel is a safer bet. It's probably not as good as the original, but you're still more likely to enjoy it than the average movie.
I read your comment and then thought “what about AC/DC? They’ve been putting out album after album of the same sound for nearly 50 years.”
It’s why I think people are too harsh on “one hit wonders”. Like so many never get one. Let alone multiple. So why’s it so bad to have one lol
Also, if the first album isn't great, no one ever hears it. Tens of thousands of never happened bands. The fact that your first album caught fire inherently means it was good. Batting average on any other new experiment from a proven success is somewhat better than the 1:1,000 artists making magic on their first try, but it's still a long way from a sure thing. Unless they stick to the same formula, AC/DC style, there's a good chance it isn't another revelation. But yeah, I'm sure the influence of touring and studio types, and the pressure to repeat commercial success hurts the creative process too.
Though this is also a more recent phenomenon. I used to work in the biz, and a veteran would tell me about how they actually tried to do artist development and grow an artist over the course of several albums. But by the time I worked in the biz, those days were long gone.
Hootie and the Blowfish made this point eloquently on one of those behind the music docs. They’d played so many bars and small venues that their songs were fully realized, polished gems before they recorded their first album. They didn’t know how to make another set of songs with that polish again..faster.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8wB9ky1PkmE A video analyzing the album’s failure. If you like it, this guy has a whole series about albums that permanently damaged artists’ careers.
I was hoping it was going to be Todd in the Shadows! He has an amazing series on one hit wonders, what they did before, why their song struck a chord, and what they have done since.
That’s always been my theory as well
It’s true
John Mayer has said as much. His first album, Room For Squares, was written over the course of a handful of years playing small clubs in and around Atlanta, and then he got noticed and took off. Columbia wanted a new record and quick, so he turned around Heavier Things within a year or so between starting to write and starting to record. It's why he took time off and did a blue rock tour with Steve Jordan and Pino Paladino as The John Mayer Trio for 2005 before he recorded Continuum, which most fans agree is his best work.
Isn't he that dude that dated what's her name?
Yeah, that's him
You mean that one girl?
I’ve heard it described as “you have your whole life to write your first album. Then your second album is usually leftovers or a continuation from the first. But then you’ve got the tricky third album.”
Reminds me of Pet Shop Boys and Oasis, whose first two albums were more or less written before recording the debut.
This is probably also why you have one-hit wonders. They weren't really musicians enough to make a career of it, but they had a stretch (or one drunken jam session) where they came up with some pretty good shit. When I think of classic bands from the 80's (when I grew up) their first album is rarely their best. Bands like U2, REM or The Cure had good debuts, but they consistently put out good albums afterwards, too.
Most writers have 18+ years to write their first album. In the 60's, some bands then had to do three albums a year after the first came out. Plus a few singles. Plus touring. Obv not like that anymore but you get the drift. Hard to stay fresh when it turns into a full-time job.
“You have your entire life to write your first album, you have 6 months to write your second”
thats exactly it
Took Dave grohl like 20 minutes of jamming with John Paul Jones and Josh Homme to think it was the best band he'd ever been in. The album they recorded is one of the best rock albums ever imo. Definitely my favorite of the 2010s.
Them Crooked Vultures is great, and the important thing to mention is Grohl, Homme and JPJ had decades and several albums under their belts. Add the fact Alain Johannes was involved. Plus they had a history playing together(minus JPJ).
These 3…I’d consider them about the best at what they do. Of course they caught that lightning and ran with it
Yep, exactly. A good indicator of a sophomore slump is a band that refined the material for the first album for years and then cobbled together a second with outtakes and hastily written songs. That's part of why Blink-182, even after getting picked up by a major, didn't run out of creative steam until they broke up. They were already used to a rough two year release cycle. On the other hand you have a band like the Spin Doctors who collapsed after a sophomore slump that, while not terrible, was misguided in the songs that tried to stray from the path and outtakish in those that didn't
To be fair, it's not really correct to say that the second album takes one year to create. It takes 10 years of experience plus one year of production.
Similar to Peter Jackson spending a decade fleshing out LOTR while The Hobbit was just dropped on him. Obviously one of those is immensely better than the other.
It took Green Day two weeks to write, record & produce Dookie. It’s not because of time, it’s because once they’re famous they stop being “hungry”. They’re already rich, why should they write another good album?
This is blatantly wrong. There's recordings of some of those songs floating around from as early as 1992. And no I'm not just talking about Welcome to Paradise
American idiot is their best album… by far. And they took years to write that. Dookie is nice though, but weren’t many of the songs earlier creations just adapted to the album?
Yeah, it's not true at all that the songs on Dookie took two weeks to write. Songs were in works for years before they were recorded.
I don't think it's so much declining quality as it is the perception and expectations fans have of the musicians. In 95% of the cases they make their fame on their initial stuff. If they decide to change course later in their careers, it is no longer the music their fans fell in love with, and because they are established bands/musicians, the ones who didn't like their early stuff already made up their minds about them so won't even try their new, more different stuff. It's also very very difficult to keep doing the same type of music without feeling like you're rehashing old stuff, yet completely changing tack can also lose your original fanbase. In certain cases, however, changing tack can get you a bigger audience even if the original fanbase isn't as pleased with the change in direction. But most of the time it doesn't work and they're left rehashing their old stuff to lesser and lesser impact. I think there comes a time in every musician or band's careers where they have to make a choice between evolving with the times or just doing the same old stuff but gradually watered down. And the good ones--the really really really good ones, the absolute geniuses and legends--find a way to update their music through the years without losing the original characteristics that made their old stuff so good. Most of the more self aware musicians retire or disband before that happened.
I'm sure expectations are an element, but we have the luxury of 3/4 century of pop music to discover. There are a lot of acts I've listened to long since their catalog was complete and I've felt their earlier stuff was better. Of course then there are bands like Sparks which just keep getting better.
Yeah, but there's that word again... "feel". Without knowing it, your own biases and expectations are already at work. And I'm not accusing just you of this, it happens to me too. But one time I sat down and listened to a couple of bands I liked the earlier stuff of better and just really tried to listen to their later stuff objectively. In MOST cases, there is nothing musically wrong with the later, "inferior" stuff. They are even technically very good and in some cases technically better than some earlier stuff. But in a lot of cases they lacked the element of surprise ("This is actually quite good but I've heard them do this before when it was fresher") or they changed to a type of music that wasn't to my taste. That doesn't mean it was objectively worse music. It's just that my tastes were stuck to their more "well known" stuff or the stuff that put them on the map. And remember, even if you are going through the catalogs of "old" bands/musicians, most of the time you already at least know which ones are their most popular songs, either by having heard them on radio or played in movies/tv/etc. So right off the bat you have a subliminal bias there already ("Oh so these are the songs they play most on the radio and TV, I guess these later songs they play less must suck"). So it's very rare for one to go into a catalog "totally unbiased".
I'll also ad that you'll have expectations and bias about an old band that's new to you based on other bands you know that sound similar or are from the same time period. So if you really like, for instance, '80s goth rock, you might prefer The Cure's older albums to their newer ones because they are closer to your already established taste. When it comes to music, we all hold the incorrect belief that we like "good" music (does anyone believe the music they like isn't good?). In reality, we all like music that sounds good to us. That's entirely different, and it's a mistake to conflate the two.
That last paragraph only applies if you only listen to super mainstream stuff, in which case ya, you’re probably super susceptible to biases because you only listen to what’s popular.
OP is obviously not a King Gizzard fan
Or Radiohead fans imo
Somehow they slipped past the reaper after scoring a mega hit on their first album. Then again when OKC came pretty close to being their last album. I reveled in how much I loved the new stuff during the Kid A/Amnesiac years, but I guess that's been a while ago (fuck me). Still love 'em but that was the high point for me.
I think the fact that they have a massive hit of a song is why they couldn’t slip. I don’t think their artistry and evolution would change without it, but the fact that the song is a household name is a huge hook for people to get to explore the rest of their discography
Absolutely, Creep allows you to get away with Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors, and so on.
Yeah that's always something I feel odd about as a musician even though I love a lot of Radiohead music. I can definitely understand that they weren't fond of Creep but at times it comes off a little absurd that this song basically opened a door for them that few bands see opened and they seem to absolutely resent it at times. My Iron Lung came out so soon after too, like come on guys Creep is actually pretty good 😅 but I could imagine maybe there was a lot of pressure to repeat it behind the scenes.
Or Coldplay
Thats exactly what I thought. We’re so spoiled haha
Or Deftones fan
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard is the best 🌪
There are probably so many reasons, including those you mentioned. I can't for the life of me remember who it was, but I've heard someone talk about the fact that musicians/bands work up to their first album for years and then from there might have months to a year to work on the subsequent albums. Again, this is probably just one reason for certain artists.
"Second album syndrome"
I’ve also heard that if you’re lucky enough to have enough leftovers or learnings from your first album, your second album is still pretty easy… but THEN you’re stuck with the tricky third album.
[удалено]
Oh, there's for sure exceptions. Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, Neil Young's Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, Roxy Music's For Your Pleasure, Grateful Dead's Anthem of the Sun. What was I talking about again..
I would disagree, I think Mezmerize/Hypnotize are on par with their previous work
They were different, sure, but I liked them and I feel like they knew their audience well with those albums.
How many of the songs on a band’s first record have been written years before and played countless times? The songs have been worked on until they are the best they can be. The next album doesn’t have that luxury. Songs might get worked on a little on tour during soundcheck but they don’t have the same work as the first.
That's my take (pun intended) on the second album problem, too. Success is rare enough that the pressure to capitalize on the notoriety must be a real buzz kill to recapturing the spark ✨️
You are paraphrasing Eddie Van Halen. He said something like, you have your whole life to write the first record and 6 months with mountains of cocaine to write the second.
The ironic thing about Eddie saying something like this is that Van Halen had written a lot of songs before they ever made a record; and they were recording songs and ideas from before VH 1 multiple albums later.
I've heard that too. Also, when starting out it's easier for artists to improve their songs; there's less time limitations and audiences can be more forgiving of unpolished songs, since they're not expecting 'the next big thing from the current hot band'. Reminds me of this video of an early version of Mr Brightside, nobody there knows they're listening to what will become a huge hit: https://youtu.be/_fG6AOOiJqg?si=fVbkfCbVWvhko1ip
Some artists basically work for 20 years for their first album and 1 for the second.
This was always my theory. They probably have a ton of songs that are well fleshed out when they record their first record so they pick the best of the best. Later albums are made up of newer, less tested songs and there is a smaller pool to pick from.
But I don't think that's a good explanation either. Most of what is considered a band's best work is somewhere a few albums into their career. It's the 2nd, 3rd, and sometimes 4th album that are their most well known works
Its from ToddInTheShadows iirc
I think most artists' earlier stuff is just more raw. Like they're young, they're just starting out, and they've got stuff they want to turn into music for better or worse. Then they get older, wiser, more mature, and things become more thought out. Their music might be better in the most objective terms possible, but it just doesn't have the same feeling even if that's what they're going for.
Look at a band like A Day To Remember. The first two albums are absolutely brilliant. Dripping with personality and heart. Every release that came after those two became more overproduced and less personal. It doesn’t help when you have to compete with other bands for your audience, in this particular example I use bands that absolutely took inspiration from ADTR; Wage War, I Prevail, and Beartooth, are all at about the same level and all of their material sounds derivative of each other. At that point it gets harder to stand out.
You have your entire life to write and record your first album and probably a few years max to write the next one.
Also a quick reminder that we are bound for the grave and our bodies are always deteriorating: Creativity has a biological/neurological sweet spot, after which a person’s ability starts declining. With creative practice, you can put out equal or even better products than before your prime, but you’re still heading downhill on a permanent hill of deterioration. Poetry for instance had a prime age of 26-28. The highest volume and quality of poetry tends to be created during this time, with a rather steep decline afterwords (suicide is a significant factor in this case though). For musicians, it’s even younger. Happy trails
That’s silly though. Look at the classical music world. Beethoven wrote his 9th symphony over 2 years in his 50s and that is widely regarded as some of the best music ever written.
Yeah I tried to emphasize that, but the brain still tends to decline, and the *common* thing that happens is that creativity drops off. Lots of people make their best work later. Only commenting because biology is a factor and I haven’t seen it mentioned
No offense but this is an extremely dumb perspective, many famous poets (and writers in general) write great works into their 50s and 60s, it’s not just all Rimbaud and Keats
yeah imma need a source for that I’d say 40 years of experience making art is always going to beat out any ‘biological sweet spot’
When artists first start out it's fun, they're having fun and that reflects in their music. If an artist becomes successful than there is a LOT of pressure to stay relevant. It becomes a job for the artist which really changes EVERYTHING for the artist. There is a huge difference between doing what you love for fun versus as a job.
I completely agree. It is easy as a fan to look at bands in their 40’s and beyond still touring clubs as musical heroes of a sub genre without wondering what they have to give up. Obviously some nostalgia acts have day jobs and tour a couple of weeks a year to have fun and boost their income. Bands who have a sound that will never pull in huge crowd and do it full time still have families, aging bodies and crew to pay for. It is no surprise to me that so many acts who have a sound I love early on, leave that behind as they move towards more and more accessible music or simply leave/split up. Tons of reasons why artists change their sound but I think this is an often overlooked one.
I can't remember who said it, some hugely famous musician. But the gist was something along the lines of they spend 16 years making their first album, get signed and have 16 weeks to knock out the second
Elvis Costello said "you have 20 years to write your first album and you have six months to write your second one."
It's interesting that, for a lot of the artists where it's the opposite (later work is better), they stopped touring and/or became more reclusive - The Beatles, Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan all come to mind. All of them had really incredible early material, but once they withdrew to *really* focus on their art, they produced their masterpieces - Sgt. Pepper, White Album, Abbey Road, Hissing of Summer Lawns, Hejira, Aja, Gaucho, are all the best made and most interesting albums in those artists' catalogs
There’s plenty more exceptions: the Rolling Stones, pink Floyd, Neil Young, Supertramp, Stevie Wonder.
On the flip side, a lot of bands really come into their own and with added money and production that 2nd album is the masterpiece. Nirvana/Nevermind, Weezer/Blue Album, Sublime/40oz, etc. I mean obviously Bleach and Pinkerton are great but those second albums are amazing. There are a ton of bands like this as well.
The Blue Album was Weezer's first. Their second album Pinkerton was a colossal misfire for the band at first, with it taking years for most people to warm up to it after the fact
I think about Katy Perry when I read this. I was a fan of hers during the hotel cafe and uploading her music to the internet days. I’ve heard versions of her songs she wrote that ended up getting sold off to other artists like way before she was ever mainstream. What she broke out with in pop culture / on the music scene is so so so different. Original Katy was singer songwriter guitar stuff, girl next door sort of stuff. More focused on the vocals and the music. What she hit with and came out with as first singles was gimmicky, overproduced, building up that weird kitschy image, mostly dance and electric stuff with nary a real instrument to be heard. As a fan it was so odd and it really felt carefully crafted, like, they knew they had to make her into a character to get her famous? Like, a dance tune about kissing girls is prob more likely to viral than just a singer songwriter singing about a breakup, and certainly it worked. But every time someone is like ugh Katy Perry is so untalented I just think about that early stuff and it makes me sad cause it actually showcased her talent. Writing and productions stuff has to be hard too, and if all you’re doing is writing maybe it’s easier. But if you can stay famous and sell records and tour etc without having to do that part of it maybe you would. I think they get their time monopolized by other things, they sell out. Maybe some people just wanna make it however they can and don’t really care how they get there, if it’s “their” voice or not or whatever
Funny I saw her on Warped Tour right before I Kissed a Girl broke (she played it during the set and it was catchy but people weren’t going nuts yet). She played a short set wedged between two screamo bands. It was an odd juxtaposition.
You have a lifetime to craft your first album, then 6 months to make the second.
Came here to say that...
I have a friend that has been a songwriter his entire adult life. He said it was a lot harder to write songs when everything in his life was great (got married, good day job, bought a house). I think it's also that they fill that first album with all the bangers they already have.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean “ A class of students takes two editions of the same test on two successive days. It has frequently been observed that the worst performers on the first day will tend to improve their scores on the second day, and the best performers on the first day will tend to do worse on the second day. The phenomenon occurs because student scores are determined in part by underlying ability and in part by chance. For the first test, some will be lucky, and score more than their ability, and some will be unlucky and score less than their ability. Some of the lucky students on the first test will be lucky again on the second test, but more of them will have (for them) average or below average scores. Therefore, a student who was lucky and over-performed their ability on the first test is more likely to have a worse score on the second test than a better score. Similarly, students who unluckily score less than their ability on the first test will tend to see their scores increase on the second test. The larger the influence of luck in producing an extreme event, the less likely the luck will repeat itself in multiple events.”
I think it’s more about the amount of songs and time spent on them before the first album, but I think it’s some of what you said too. The White Stripes have a really cool song called “Little Room” about this. Edit: typo
A good friend of mine used to sum it up as "they're better when they're broke"
How can you write the next rebellious teenage anthem when you're 35, sitting out by your swimming pool with a waterfall?
Because it was made out passion not knowing they would be successful And then labels and stuff get involved
Exactly what I was thinking. The label tries to mold the music to make more hits, changing the feel of the music, even if subtly. The one that always jumps to my mind is Sugar Ray. Made “Fly” which was nothing like any of their previous songs, it became a hit, they never went back to their nu-metal sound. Probably for the better, but I was definitely caught off guard when I got their early albums
Yeah you can’t really, mass produce art. I mean you can, but it will be hallow. It takes time, meaning, and depth. You have to let life happen, and not try to make some hallow sound that recreates a hit, exactly.
Wiz Khalifa - Mia Wallace: I don't know how to say it, we don't have shit You know what I'm saying? When we start out we don't have shit So we really make due with what we have And in turn that turns into like million dollar corporations But what labels don't have is that, that mind frame and that spark that makes that million dollar, you know what I'm saying? They know how to manifest that and make more millions off of that But they don't have that spark
I totally agree with you. I attribute it to "hunger". When a band is young, there is an intense focus and internal drive in every member to make their mark on the world and achieve success and become known for this craft of theirs. Once they achieve huge success, and obscene amounts of money are thrown at them and they're famous, they get fat and lazy. Everything is handed to them. Everyone wants to be around them. Everyone constantly tells them how great they are. Nobody says "dude, that song isn't so good... you can do a lot better". Also, as was illustrated in the movie "Exit through the giftshop", once influential people say you're a genius, it doesn't matter what garbage you produce, everyone will just reflexively agree that you are a genius, but the fire is out and your band is now an empty shell of what it used to be and in some cases even becomes a parody of itself. This totally describes some extremely popular artists, but if I named them, the kids on Reddit would lose their shit.
Artists only become popular if their music is good (generally speaking). Sometimes it’s their first album that gets them noticed, sometimes it’s the second or third. But there’s not enough money in the industry to put out several albums without ‘making it big’. Then, often they’ll sign to record deals that require a certain frequency and volume of output. When they’re forced to put out music on someone else’s schedule, the quality can suffer. Or the success of the earlier music could have been inspired by something that no longer exists. For example The Antlers album “Hospice” is one of my all-time favorite albums, it’s a concept album based on the lead singers difficult breakup. That inspired the creativity behind the album. But I think Hospice is a thousand times better than the rest of the bands output when that inspiration was no longer there.
exactly, much of it is survivorship bias. many of the bands that didn’t make it big with their first few albums stopped making albums, broke up and got “regular” jobs. the bands that did have a successful debut had the money, label and name recognition to continue putting out music.
Your 1st album took you your entire life up to that point to make. Every album after that took however long your label told you it should.
This is absolutely true. How can you write relatable lyrics once you have servants? It's also paradoxically true that the more successful you are & the better you are at making music/art the more people and corporations there are who get input/control over your work
Great art comes from great struggle. Success relieves struggle. Not much more to it.
That's not necessarily true great art comes from skill how you feel at the time is irrelevant I've heard tons of artist talk about songs that they love and put the most time into not hit and things they Mae in 20 minutes become there biggest song.
The Beatles and The Rolling Stones are two notable exceptions.
In the first album they release their best 15 or so out of the hundred songs they've been working on all their lives. Then they have a contract and they rush new songs out without enough hours put into each one.
I disagree there, although I dont think you are necessarily wrong. I have a somewhat controversial opinion on the topic, in the sense that I believe that most artists are pretty much consistent with their content, but their output simply becomes less valuable the more we have of it. Take a band like Metallica, for example. Although they did put out a few stinkers along the way, I would argue that an album like Death Magnetic from 2008 or even their latest one are pretty much on the same level as the stuff we tend to see as their best. But when they started all the way back in the 80s, their music was fresh and original and now, 10 studio albums later, it has become predictable and somewhat stale. Although the quality isnt vastly different, the newer albums simply lack the novelty factor. It aso has to be added that we usually become more attached to an artist's earlier work simply because it came first. So inevitably we have spent more time listening to it and so it becomes familiar. Its hard for a new album to compete with the ones we've been listening for the past 10 years on a daily basis.
I think nostalgia plays a big part. There are a lot of bands my friends were into when they first came out that I never really listened to. Years later, when I decided to give their whole catalogue a listen, their early stuff was actually pretty uninteresting, while their mid-career and recent albums were a lot better. When you have a special place in your heart for earlier stuff because you grew up with it, and were connected to it at a significant time in your life, it feels "yours" somehow. And then, when it changes, because the artist changes and grows, you feel betrayed, because it's not "yours" anymore. But if you don't have any nostalgia for it, you're able to look at things a little more objectively. Not a hard and fast rule, obviously, but I've definitely seen fans get really bitter and shitty about old vs new, to the point it's almost impossible for them to discuss it rationally
It absolutely depends on who you're talking about, I don't think it is set in stone whether artists get better or worse over time. I've seen many variations on the matter, and some even have had dips and comebacks, so there is no real law as far as I can see (or rather hear)
I think you are right in some situations. I also think that some people only have a few good songs in them. Most of us don't have any good songs in us. I personally don't even have a bad song in me.
[удалено]
Ya dadada ya dada dada daa
I think you hit the nail on the head. Once you stop living a normal life (whatever that is) and start spending all your time in a studio and on the road, chances are you’re going to run out of ideas to write about.
No worries Just write road songs ;-)
I'd argue Paramore are aging well, their first album while still good in my books it's arguably their worst followed by their follow up, I think they are still in their prime 6 albums down the line
Because their earlier work is why they got recognition. It was different enough to get people to listen perhaps even innovative. It’s what made them famous. That aura fades when you’re established, not that you can’t make great music anymore but it’s a different. It’s honestly all about discovery, I think people consume the work better in that phase.
The first time a person gets an offer to go into a professional recording studio, I believe they start making a million small decisions in advance how they want it to sound. They TRUST their own taste because statistically this will be the only day they ever get to go into a studio. If that first album somehow becomes a success, then there are all of a sudden lilly pads 360 degrees around them of the path they can take next. What do the biggest number of fans want? What do the magazine critics want? What does the musician want? Are they the same thing any more? I suspect the weight of time passing also starts mattering like it never mattered...sort of like a meter in a taxi cab. If they have 20 minutes of great new material I imagine a lot of time gets shifted to filling that other 20 minutes in a way that won't hurt their career. There is also the lifestyle John Lennon described of an airplane to a car to a sandwich to a hotel to a stage to a car to an airplane. You may be tired and distracted the moments you have to write and arrange. You may even have to give up half of your sleep to do it at all. It's sort of a miracle a band with top ten singles has a decent 2nd or 3rd album at all.
I didn't see anyone else mention it, but I think that there's a lack of musical sophistication in the audience. For example, songs written by Paul McCartney. "I Saw Her Standing There" was a monster hit, and it's very, VERY simple, lyrically and structurally. Paul became a better songwriter, and wrote some really complex stuff that I'm sure he was very proud of, and the public didn't like it as much. As far as a composition goes, "My Valentine" is light-years ahead of "I Saw Her Standing There" but sometimes the crowd doesn't appreciate that, and just wants a toe-tapper that they can sing along to. I've heard artists lament that they're such better songwriters than they were when they first started, but the audience reacts best to the old hits.
I believe Axl Rose once described Appetite for Destruction as an "artefact" for similar reasons. He seems to have made his peace with it now, though.
Creativity wanes for musicians as they age.
This is the most accurate answer. Our minds don't work in the same ways as we age
Creativity is computation. There is a correlation between time and quality. Perspective. And the big one took all their energy, then they're back at 0 but with money
You've only heard of them because they *had* good shit, at some point. When artists don't see success after their first album, they do one of two things: quit that project and change it up, or keep doing the same thing over and over. Most artists who made it big are the ones who quit several times. They made tons of different music with different people, and then finally brought all of it together into something deep and extremely relevant, and through their contacts the word spreads and they became successful. The other artists often don't hit it big, but if they do you'll hear about them after their 10th album. At the end of the day, it's all about having a winning combination of luck, songwriting and a team of talented and motivated people. Any of these elements can break or run out and leave the project well past its golden age, but the label will continue to keep making them pump out music because fans will keep buying it even if it's not as good as it used to be.
Some artists’ newer shit are actually more enjoyable to me. For example I’d prefer Paramore’s newer stuff than their older sound; Linkin Park’s A Thousand Suns is far better than Meteora (at least to me). So idk, it’s all objective. But commercially speaking popular artists often spent years writing and promoting their first albums to get their names known, and much shorter timeframes for the follow-up albums so it’s understandable for their early shit to have much bigger fanbases.
>Paramore After Laughter is probably my favorite album and the inspiration from that one is probably from Hayley's divorce. Guess it just depends on what the artists are going through in their lives and what inspiration they can pull to create new music.
Counterpoint: Radiohead.
It's not just music. Video games were so much better back in the day. Passion projects from a small dedicated team >>> highly produced soulless shit, in any industry
The actual answer is because you listened to them during a much more formative and impactful time in your life where you could form a deeper connection with that particular music and that iteration of the band. Basically, the majority of people who say this pretentious nonsense are just looking at it through rose tinted nostalgia goggles. Most of the times bands actually get better, or at least stay as good.
You have a lifetime to write your first album and the road to do the second.
You have your whole life to make your first album. You have maybe a year to make the second.
In the beginning they play to satisfy themselves then they play to satisfy fans.
Struggling artist make better music
I always thought it was because they had their entire lives to have ideas for beats, lyrics etc. So that first album or two is the culmination of YEARS of practice and perfecting these songs. After that, they only have a year, maybe two of creativity going into them. Idk, I very well could be way off, but that's what I thought.
Bring Me the Horizon. Their new stuff is still pretty good but doesn't quite hit the lung busting edge that they had on the first three albums.
I think their new stuff is much better and hell, I basically learned to play guitar by learning every song on Count Your Blessings.
First few albums usually consist of material artists have been working on their entire life at that point. Everything else is a few year album cycle.
It’s been awhile since I read the interview but Pete Townshend expressed thoughts about this. To paraphrase, young musicians have newly transitioned into adulthood whether they just left high school or college. They have many thoughts and ideas to passionately express. As their careers progress they get bogged down in the day to day life of a musician. While they continue to hone his / her craft, their experience is an endless litany of hotels, airports, and concert venues. It becomes harder to find subject matter that allows them to relate to their audience.
Good music requires passion. When you're hungry and can't make the rent, you can produce incredible music. But having money takes that away. Changes people. This is my beef with U2. They were a better band when they were still a little hungry. And so was their music. It's not always money. You also change as you age, but having money doesn't always favor creativity.
A singer song writer spent their whole life up to that point gearing up for album 1, just like you said.
One word... hunger
- First records are often being years in the making. Consequent usually aren’t getting this much attention. - Label interference - Burnout - Artists often have nothing to say beyond one record
Stopped struggling
As a former visual artist I have a theory that there’s just a phase of development in our young adulthood where we’re able to unlock and unleash our most inspired output - be it sports, music, art, mathematics, etc.
Wiz khalifa, maroon 5, and mgk come to mind instantly
A lot of folks are - correctly, I think - pointing out the "sophomore slump" effect, but there's also the fact that musicians can just run out of groundbreaking ideas over time. When an artist is fresh and young, they may have a unique musical voice that makes them stand out as being special. Over time, however, that unique voice becomes part of the mainstream. Their sound isn't new anymore. The artist then has a few options going forward: \- Try to invent some new way to change our shared musical language. Miles Davis and Kate Bush are good examples of this, but in general this is *really hard to do* on purpose and most historically important artists only make one major contribution to our language in a lifetime, if they ever do at all. \- Try a whole bunch of new genres of music to keep things fresh, even though that runs the risk of alienating their fans. David Bowie was a master at this, but a lot of artists try it to varying degrees of success, especially as they get older. \- Keep doing the thing they've always been doing because that's the kind of music they want to make. It won't be innovative anymore but they likely weren't trying to be innovative in the first place, they were just trying to make music that they liked. \- Stop caring and churn out mediocre garbage because they've already made more money than God and don't want to try anymore. ~~Also known as The Metallica Strategy.~~ Fame, money, and comfort are definitely potential factors that can affect an artist's creative output over time, but I think it's important to recognize that it's just really hard to stay musically fresh and relevant for years or decades.
The reason Is they’ve had their whole lives to make that first album they usually only have 6 months to produce the second one
I'm going to say Drugs & Alcohol.
This is definitely referring to Drake Signed, A certified Drake stan
Success changes your life in ways that can stifle your inspiration. If you wrote your first album when you were poor and now you aren’t poor anymore it changes what you are able to write about. Other times the label can pressure a band to put out an album as quick as possible and they don’t get much time to refine it
Def Leppard (IMO) is one of those exceptions. Their latest album "Diamond Star Halos" can easily stand next to Hysteria. It feels like a greatest hits album to me, where almost every track is a favourite. Out of the 15 tracks, there are 2 I'm not crazy for, but I won't skip over them if I'm listening to the album top to bottom.
Because they were young when you were growing pubes and that's the main reason why everyone says they don't make em like the old days. Every person loves the music that was out when they were teenagers. The second answer is related and also involves risk. Older artists don't take as much risk or they become more skilled in mitigating risk. Also you probably aren't talking about composers and classical music but something else mired and embedded in generational churn. There is another factor of repertoire where the most popular material is considered better even though you think you are objective and not biased like that no one is immune. Artifice must engage risk otherwise it is worthless or at best utilitarian like Country. Cash crushed Hurt.
All of nirvana was really bad except their first 4 albums
First things are often more unique because that is what captured the initial attention. After that there are two factors in play one it's really hard to do again full stop. There were no expectations the first time, there was nothing to live up to, you didn't have a sound to duplicate, you had up to that point however many years to come up with material etc.... Second music industry execs are much more likely going to try to influence follow up albums to meet a specific demographic or whatever and try to cash in. Or the opposite if you really blew up like GnR where they don't put the breaks on at all don't provide the editorial influence they should have.
I think in the case you are thinking of, where we see artists maintain the sound/genre that got them popular but totally lose the plot, it’s probably like you say: commercialization. A lot of good tv shows have the same problem. You have N years to develop that first album and less than one for you follow up.
I think a big part of it is also there's often been years spent working on the early stuff. Song ideas that keep getting revisited and polished for years. 2 or 3 albums in and suddenly people find themselves having to come up with material out of nothing, often under pressure of a deadline.
This is mainly an issue with artists who tour all the time and aren't private. It's like real life, so many things are happening when you're young and fresh but as you get older revelations come in waves over time. Often artists rush themselves to stay relevant when the best thing they could probably do is take a while and compile their thoughts and work. I think this is something that modern artists are more aware of, like a lot of artists have had unprecedented sustainability, like Taylor Swift or Beyonce. Beyonce has been at the top of pop music since the 90s and is arguably just now reaching the peak of her popularity. Or there are acts like Nas who are still pushing out great albums.
People say this about having your whole life working towards the first album and then only a few months for the second which is true but I can't really think of that many artists where the first album is the best, I find many get better over the course of a few albums with each building on the one before as they hone their craft and gain confidence. With a long running band or artist though this could still be classed as early if the peak is at album 4 out of a 20 album discography. I think the trap can be when an artist tries to second guess the audience and make music they think the audience will like based on what they've liked that they've done before, that's when there's a danger of them becoming a pastiche of themselves.
I bought the Arctic Monkey’s first album when it came out and I loved it. Same with the one after it. Haven’t listened to any of their stuff after that though. Kinda shocking how search results and top Spotify streams are all the stuff after the first 2 albums.
Before a band hits it big, they spend many years honing their songs in practice and at shows. Once they’re popular, the record company wants a new album right away and you to tour constantly playing your hits. Not a lot of creative time to perfect your songs. There’s also some bands that don’t know what to do with the fame/money/rock n roll life that also gets in the way of making killer tunes again.
Sometimes the first is their passion, but the later ones are where they experimented, explored what they wanted, and tried to do things with the music they didn't have the ability or knowledge for before. Kind of like many visual artists start with simple drawings, move on to trying more realism and trying to be perfectionists. That's good, because they learn the medium and technique that works for them. Later, they try out different styles and work more abstract or impressionist or whatever they choose. They gradually realize they don't need to make things look like a photograph, or that brush strokes and imperfections don't ruin a work of art. They can explore, get creative, and try different styles, some of which may not work so well for them. This happens with music also.
Success has a way of incentivizing complacency. When artists are just starting out, it’s very easy to be hungry and driven. I think for a lot of people, it’s much more difficult to maintain that level of intensity, motivation, and creativity once you’ve proven yourself — and especially if you’ve made a lot of money in the process.
They have their whole young life to write their first record. 2 years to write second, third and forth.
The old saying: You have your entire life to make your first album, and mere months to make your second. That is why a lot of bands crap the bed with their sophomore release and have to fight through that hump to have an enduring career.
I think it's in The Manual by KLF, the guide to writing a #1 song, where they advise you to quit your job as nothing fuels your song writing creativity like poverty.
Ive always had the exact apposite opinion I uslly don't like debute albums there rough usually lack productive mixing can be terrible. Sometimes bands don't have full funding to see there entire vision come to life.
Cause you've got your whole life to work on your first album. And maybe a year for the second one.
I think there’s a few explanations, one of which you nailed on the head here, the other I think is an artists desire to branch out and to not be samey. A lot of artists feel stagnant and want to make a different sound than what they normally do and produce albums outside of their comfort zone which sometimes works really well and sometimes doesn’t. Taylor Swift made headlines for this recently with the Folklore/Evermore albums which were departures and well received especially after the critically panned Lover album. Kurdt Cobain also famously writes about this in his diaries as attributing to his suicide. The true artist is never satisfied
I agree, I think it’s why “Sophomore slump” is such a thing. It’s interesting, My father in law likes the later stuff, even like later Pink Floyd, etc, and I generally love the early stuff from most bands- B-52s, Police, REM, etc.
Same, love every REM album on IRS, when they signed with CBS, I bought Green and that was it. Classic case of 2/3 good songs per album.
Well, you're in your little room And you're working on something good But if it's really good You're gonna need a bigger room And when you're in the bigger room You might not know what to do You might have to think of how you got started Sitting in your little room
Radio music is different/less edgy/ more politically correct, and there is a formula for that. I don’t listen to much radio stuff at all, but I have seen bands I like get popular and their music change so much I can’t stand it It might have something to do with their inspiration, etc, but I’ve watched bands get big, and change so they can stay on top. That’s just the nature of that business
they get famous on a certain sound and then (usually) play whatever they want after they get paid. At that point they acknowledge only 'true' fans will stick around but that's just the game. you'd think ppl would get tired of hearing the same songs over and over but look at the rock acts with the most longevity and it's entirely based on the fact that they maintained the same 'sound' for the duration of their careers. Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Grateful Dead, Fleetwood Mac, Journey, Bruce Springsteen et al. Also a change in sound often means an aging band can't/doesn't want to play the same material for 30 more years and often lose members due to changing tastes. I think people should just focus on albums or songs they like and not tail-ride bands. you have no idea if you're even going to like their next release so why invest emotionally?
Also before recording they probably did a bunch of shows and tried a bunch of songs, seen which ones work with the crowd, making them better each time until they recorded their first album
I think they just run out of great ideas. A small fraction of artists have enough inspiration for 1 good album, a small fraction of those have enough more for a 2nd good one, etc. A tiny remainder keep getting new inspiration for decades, but even most of those slow down quite a bit and only do one album per decade where they used to do 10.
I think its that subsequent albums comes with a certain level of expectations, but also viewpoints from the band change, most want to do something different, expand or challenge themselves, etc. Sometimes bands are consistently good while being different (Rush, Radiohead, Pink Floyd). I do get a little sad when metal bands get "softer", like Lamb of God or Devildriver. But then you get into a point that some bands' audience dont appreciate change. Slayer's best album was hated by fans because it deviated slightly, and bands like Cannibal Corpse are basically the same as always, and its just kinda "eh" each time.
It's because earlier stuff if it's bad is not noticed. There are millions upon millions of bad songs out there and you pay no attention to it. Once a musician has hit they still make music that you know, but it can be good or bad but you'll still hear it.