The artists that came off second best
Lorde’s follow-up to her debut album, Melodrama, is out this week. James Croot looks at bands who’ve struggled to replicate the hype of their breakthrough albums.
Having seen the glowing reception for the early singles from most music critics, we don’t expect it to be a problem forLorde when Melodrama is finally released tomorrow.
But she’s well aware of the potential risks of what’s become known as the ‘‘difficult’’ second album, or in twee American parlance, the ‘‘sophomore slump’’.
Call it what you will, but following up a hit debut can often spell disaster for musicians. There are countless examples of artists who went from hero to zero as they tried to recapture the lightning in a bottle a second time, or tried to prove they were no one-trick pony. Sometimes a less-than-wellreceived second take can be career-ending, other times it has proved to be a learning experience from which they haven’t looked back.
As Lorde wrote recently for Fairfax Media: ‘‘It’s a well-documented idea that somebody’s second try after a successful first try is often not as good.’’
Her five-year labour over album No. 2 has been to ensure the syndrome doesn’t strike here. It looks like Lorde won’t stumble. But here are six times when musicians did trip-up in trying to follow-up a hit debut album:
A-Ha (From Hunting High and Low to Scoundrel Days)
The Norwegian boy band burst onto the scene in 1984 with a mix of eye-catching videos and toetapping tunes. Take On Me is still seen as a great example of 80s pop and music-video making, while the trio (led by the brilliantly named Morten Harket) also had hits with their debut album’s title track Hunting High and Low and The Sun Always Shines on TV.
However, while that record reached No. 1 in many countries including New Zealand, 1986’s Scoundrel Days received a more tepid response, with mixed reviews from Rolling Stone and Q magazines and only Cry Wolf and I’ve Been Losing You making it into the Kiwi Top 20 singles. And despite later recording a James Bond single (The Living Daylights) and covering The Everly Brothers, Scoundrel was hardly an A-Ha moment for the band as they faded away before attempting countless comebacks (the latest being a European acoustic tour next year).
The Darkness (From Permission to Land to One Way Ticket to Hell... and Back)
Seen as the noughties successors to Queen, Justin Hawkins and his fellow English rockers delighted audiences with their mix of fruity lyrics and overthe-top theatrics when Permission to Land dropped in 2003. Featuring the mega-hit single I Believe in a Thing Called Love, as well as Growing on Me and Love is Only a Feeling, the album sold 1.3 million copies in the UK alone and earned the band three Brit Awards.
Unfortunately their follow-up was beset by delays and the end result, 2005’s One Way Ticket to Hell... and Back, had many questioning whether their debut’s success had gone to their heads. ‘‘When the opening Peruvian pan pipes are followed by the sound of someone snorting cocaine and a gale-force monster riff, it is hard not to chortle at its preposterousness. How absurd do The Darkness think they’re being?’’ opined The Observer‘s Sarah Boden. Hawkins then went into rehab and the band wouldn’t release another album until 2012’s Hot Cakes. They recently conducted a short tour of New Zealand.
Franz Ferdinand (From Franz Ferdinand to You Could Have It So Much Better)
Named after the Austrian archduke whose assassination ultimately sparked the start of World War I, this Glaswegian band helped bring punk into the 21st century with their 2004 self-titled debut.
Thanks largely to the global success of single Take Me Out, the album sold more than 3.6 million copies worldwide and won them both a Grammy Award and the 2004 Mercury Music Prize.
But although the following year’s You Could Have It So Much Better was well received by critics, it failed to have the same impact as Franz Ferdinand on the charts or music lovers. They returned four years later with ‘‘concept’’ album Tonight: Franz Ferdinand. They are currently touring North America.
Hootie & the Blowfish (From Cracked Rear View to Fairweather Johnson)
Eight years after they formed in Columbia, South Carolina, singer Darius Rucker and his three mates took the world by storm with 1994’s Cracked Rear View. Still in the Top 20 selling records of all time in the US, it rode a wave of hit singles including I Only Want To Be With You, Let Her Cry and Hold My Hand (and yes, it spent four weeks at No. 1 in New Zealand in 1995).
Fans and critics were less enthusiastic towards the 1996 follow-up Fairweather Johnson though. Rolling Stone magazine’s David Fricke called it a ‘‘flat-liner, a wearily earnest record suffocated by over-restraint and lacking even the modest, neighbourhood-tavern-band bounce of Cracked Rear View‘‘. It sold only a seventh of the records as the debut did and was described by Pitchfork Media as one of the 10 ‘‘career-killing albums of the 1990s’’. Hootie & the Blowfish last appeared together as part of TV host David Letterman’s long farewell in 2015.
Jewel (From Pieces of You to Spirit)
Attempting to save America from a rising tide of grunge, the singersongwriter’s 1995 debut initially took a long time to gain traction. But after You Were Meant For Me finally got some airplay in the summer of 1996, the world caught on to her relaxed vibe. She was a particular hit here in New Zealand, with Pieces of You the fourth-biggest selling album of 1997.
Ever a restless spirit (her later albums have dabbled in everything from country to children’s songs), 1998’s Spirit saw Jewel in ‘‘dire need of a [songwriting] editor’’, as Entertainment Weekly‘s David Browne put it. Describing her as ‘‘a mass of contradictions’’, he thought the album’s low-point was Fat Boy, ’’an agonisingly syrupy ode to an overweight boy sung like a number from a campfire-girl theatre group’’.
She recently supported Don Henley on his tour to Australasia, earning plenty of plaudits for her openness and voice.
Terence Trent D’Arby (From Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D’Arby to Neither Fish Nor Flesh)
A former boxing champ and dishonourably discharged army man, the New York-born singer stunned audiences with his debut album in 1987. Featuring hits like Wishing Well and Sign Your Name, it sold a million copies worldwide in its first three days and won him Grammy and Brit awards.
But if some saw him as the new Prince, he acted like it as well. Not only did he describe his debut as the most important album since The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper, he also fought with his record label and later changed his name to Sananda Maitreya.
Released in 1989, Neither Fish Nor Flesh was symptomatic of his grandeur, a sprawling, overly ambitious work beset by what The Village Voice‘s Robert Christgau described as ‘‘pretentions and awful lyrics’’.
Maitreya himself later stated that Neither Fish Nor Flesh was ‘‘the project that literally killed ‘TTD’’’.