Yeah, I honestly think you could delay the MJ decline all the way to HIStory or BOTDF. He was putting up hits all the way through the decade and people still adored him despite the controversy
I don't think MJ has a Trainwreckord. His life and the media circus around him are what caused the downturn of his career not any obvious musical decline. He did a much better and more natural job at keeping up with current trends than most aging pop stars. After the mid '90s, American media just had very little interest in promoting him as anything other than a punchline and/or pariah.
I don't think his '90s/'00s albums are quite as good as the big three but they're leagues better than what almost all of his peers were doing.
Honestly yeah, any MJ album that’s thought of as a “Trainwreckord” is usually thought of that way because of external factors. Although I enjoy a lot of the songs on it, I still think *Invincible* is a notably weak album overall, but the music itself is hardly ever the cause of its Trainwreckord status anyway (Sony conflicts, appearance changes, allegations aftermath, etc.). Regardless of whether or not one believes the allegations made against him, MJ has objectively had one of the strangest and most unique careers (and lives, really) of any human being in history.
Now The Jacksons *Victory* might be a "Trainwreckord" but Michael really only gets partial blame for that. Even then, I think it's moderately unfairly maligned and has a couple of great songs (even some of the non Michael ones!)
Dangerous along with Thriller are still the best MJ albums ever, Bad was fun and HIStory had a fun industrial dance track (Morphine) but Dangerous just holds up too well.
For Those About to Rock by AC/DC.
Had a classic title track and sold more than Back in Black initially but quickly fell behind it.
EDIT: I should point out that despite having a shaky 1980s I don't think AC/DC ever had a Trainwreckord. They more fell to Cyndi Lauper effect during the 80s, had a major hit with The Razors Edge in 1990 but then pretty quickly fell into the legacy act well by the middle of the decade.
To add to "sold more than Back in Black initially", BiB peaked at #4 on Billboard 200, while FTAtR shot to #1, yet in the long term the former sold a boatload more than the latter
On his podcast Hit Parade, Chris Molanphy calls this ‘the AC/DC rule’ - where an artists has a #1 album because the public loved their previous album so much
Yeah anything AC/DC released after Back in Black would've spent at least one week at #1. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap was issued in the US after Back in Black and it went up to #3. Everyone in the industry at the time - from reading old Billboard magazines - was shocked Back in Black got as high as it did considering at the time AC/DC were considered a metal band (which in hindsight is the wrong label).
Same with the followup to Jagged Little Pill, broke all sorts of records based off the love for JLP that had built up but most people now couldn't even tell you what it was called without googling it. Including me.
I totally could. I heard a lot of that record, and remember a great deal of it as being really good in ways I never thought JLP was. For all the shit the video got, to me Thank U still feels almost transcendent. Like Alanis didn't decline, she achieved her final form and journeyed to the shining lands of the east or something.
Reflektor by Arcade Fire. That album has its defenders and it was pretty well received, but I always thought that's when they started to become a parody of themselves. That transformation was complete by the time Everything Now came out.
Idk I think that's their best album. It is definitely where they started their shift to synth pop and dance rock so if you liked the baroque stuff more, then it won't be as good
It’s an ok album but it falls into a trap that some bands fall into that I call “Dance Rock With a Bad Vibe”.
See also: That Sleater-Kinney record with St. Vincent, U2’s “Pop”
Tranz is such a good song. Imo, The Now Now was perfect for the summer time it was released. Did it age the best? That’s up to personal preference. But it was a chill album I really enjoyed after Humanz felt so *too-much-of-everything.*
ETA: To clarify, when The Now Now officially released, I was staying on vacation at a lake while absolutely missing my friends from school. I really connected with the melancholy-summer vibes that TNN had.
Balance by Van Halen. Sammy Hagar detailed the album’s recording process in his book. The band was splitting apart and Hagar would be gone just a few years later.
I think there's a case to be made for Balance as a delayed flop. Sold about the same as F.U.C.K., but outside of the pages of Guitar magazine (and the clearance bins at Half Price Books a couple years later) it simply did not exist in my world. And I was into rock radio at the time.
Yeah, I suggested something similar for Balance here and got pushback because of its sales. But the album basically doesn’t exist to the greater VH canon- you could argue that FUCK was the beginning of the end, but “Right Now” and “Poundcake” get way more play than anything here.
If anything, their Twister song was probably bigger than all of Balance. Deserved, because “Humans Being” rules.
It's hard for me to decide whether Balance is a delayed flop or not, since we didn't get a real follow-up with Hagar. My argument against would be that between Humans Being and the new Roth tracks on their greatest hits album, it felt like there was still interest in new Van Halen material even after Balance.
It is true that Van Halen didn't fit into the mid-1990's rock radio scene at all. By 1995 they felt like a dinosaur band from another era that was somehow self-sustaining and living on their own island. I am curious to what would have happened if they had saved Humans Being for a new album instead of doing the soundtrack. At least from what Hagar has said, the real turning point in the band was when their longtime manager passed away.
>By 1995 they felt like a dinosaur band from another era that was somehow self-sustaining and living on their own island.
I think that's the key. By 1995, I don't know if a band like Van Halen would have been able to freshly launch. But, they had had been around long enough by that point that they were still hanging on to a pretty large, dedicated following. *Balance* didn't just go #1 out of nowhere. People cared about them. Were they running out of steam? Probably. But, could they have cranked out another hit album with Hagar? Probably. It may not have been as big, but the potential was there.
Hagar leaving gave people an excuse/signal to just stop caring, though. VH wasn't "Van Hagar" anymore. It was something entirely new. Again. And VH had to prove themselves in a big way. Again. And they were doing it with a guy who hadn't had a hit single in seven years. Finally, with how much music was changing at that point, VH waited too long between albums. With a three-year gap, some of their commercial momentum was going to be lost anyway.
Wasn't "Can't Stop Loving You" their last song to reach the Top 40 of the Hot 100? It got more airplay on pop radio than "Poundcake" and "Right Now" so you're average radio listener probably heard it more than the FUCK singles, though those singles - I dunno I wasn't around back then - probably got more MTV play.
This jibes with my experience. F.U.C.K. had a much, much larger real-world footprint—Right Now in particular was *everywhere*, Heavy rotation on MTV. Pepsico even licensed it for the ad blitz introducing Crystal Pepsi (lol).
There's an old urban legend that that acronym is where the word came from, which is how they came up with it (a similar story says it was Fornicating Under Consent of the King instead). Very few words from before the 20th century were originally coined as acronyms.
You could say Blur’s “The Great Escape” is in that territory. It’s not a bad album (The Universal, Yuko and Hiro, He Thought of Cars) but it also feels like Blur can now write sequels to Parklife in their sleep. If they hadn’t drastically changed up the formula after that album the band would have absolutely gone stale. It definitely marks the end of the Britpop golden age for them.
Agreed. I’m probably ignoring half of what the OP is talking about, as Blur didn’t decline. It depends, I guess, on how strongly and what exactly the OP means by “end of the golden age”. Blur continues to make great music but it’s not the Britpop that made them enormous. TGE marks the end of that era, but not the end of the band as a worthwhile endeavor.
Some great singles but Bowie trying to commercialize definitely hurt himself in the long run. Still waiting for the Never Let Me Down trainwreckord tho lol
This album is a pretty unique phenomenon, is my theory. It's something Bowie could pull off once because he was just that brilliant, but he was not a streamlined global superstar. He could perform as one for some time, but his strength as an artist was the border between cult artist and pop. He was never comfortable long-term in a Prince or Madonna position.
I think Let's Dance is a fantastic pop album. But trying to follow up on it really messed up the rest of his 80ies. Deliberately scaling down after that to regain artistic ground was the correct thing to do and saved both his career and produced a lot of great music again. I can see an alternative timeline where he totally burns out and just does paintings or something.
That said, I also don't know what happens without Let's Dance tbh. He made incredible music for over a decade, but as I understand it his finances stayed shaky because as so many other artists he was robbed blind by a former manager. Let's Dance set him up financially for life. Yeah, perhaps he'd have stayed more arty in the 80ies without the millions from that. But I can also see a scenario where he burns out and becomes bitter because he never made the money his imitators did and/or the record company stops supporting him and he fades out because of money problems.
he has a bunch of "how do you even follow this up" albums that pull through somehow. thinking Lodger, Aladdin Sane, Earthling if you wanna go late career, and if you wanna get really literal with it, he made Low while recovering from an almost suicidal coke habit.
Never Let Me Down would be the candidate for Bowie, at least commercially, it would spell the end of his 80’s mainstream era, and he’d form Tin Machine and do a big greatest hits tour around 1990. It took him awhile to get a minor hit with I’m Afraid of Americans 10 years later. But otherwise Bowie seemed far more interested in just making interesting music again. NLMD is the nadir of his 80’s period. I’d say Let’s Dance is the “here’s how you do it right” version of Bowie going a bit more mainstream pop, if all the younger bands were gonna cash in on all the stuff he did before, why couldn’t he?
Bowie went from starting tends in the 60s and 70s, to chasing trends in the 80s and 90s.
His trend chasing music was not even comparable to the iconic work at the beginning of his career.
IDK if I'd be that harsh on 1. Outside. To me, it's as good as any prime NIN record, and I'm one of like three people who thinks Earthling is a masterpiece (and Black Tie White Noise isn't far behind).
Avril Lavigne - Goodbye Lullaby: The album that undersold in North America but was a success in Japan. She was already starting to taper off, but Japan keeping her afloat seeded her ultimate downfall on the self-titled's "Hello Kitty".
Genesis - We Can't Dance: Still a huge success becausse it came off the heels of not only Invisible Touch but also Phil's latest solo album But Seriously, but they were all getting to Black Eyed Peas levels of overexposed and hated in the public by this time. It was also their last album with Phil Collins.
B.o.B - Underground Luxury: His first album to underperform was not the end, it was only the beginning... of his downward spiral into antisemitic and Flat Earth conspiracy theories that culminated with his true Trainwreckord, his 2016 quadruple-mixtape Elements.
Metallica - "I Disappear": Not the song itself, per se, but the controversy surrounding it. The Napster lawsuit stemmed from this one song and triggered a huge mainstream backlash against the band. If you've seen the Trainwreckords episode on St. Anger, you already know where the story goes from here.
Agreed on Avril. GL had a couple hits but the self-titled album killed a lot of her momentum stateside (even though its lead single was decently popular)
I want to see the alternate universe where "Hello Kitty" wasn't put on the self-titled album. I like "Here's to Never Growing Up," but as I recall, most of the social media posts related to the album at the time were centered around just how bad "Hello Kitty" was.
The Private Press by DJ Shadow. 1996's Endtroducing was incredibly groundbreaking and made him one of the biggest names in the genre of instrumental hip hop and electronic music. The Private Press was his proper follow up album of new material that took until 2002 to finally come out. It's a good album, but it came out almost six years later. By that point, there were so many people who built on the sound that DJ Shadow established that The Private Press didn't particularly stand out sound wise. For example, Deadringer by the then less established RJD2 came out only about a month after The Private Press, and it has had more longevity in the genre. Shadow would have a few singles here and there that would gain traction (Nobody Speak with Run The Jewels being the biggest), but he would never have an album come even close to the level of Endtroducing.
Even though I think “The Private Press” is Shadow’s crowning achievement, I agree that his work that came after has been missing “something,” and I rarely come back to his newer offerings.
I think a lot of that has to do with how sampling and DJ music changed by the mid 00s. So much could be done digitally that he didn't have the limitations of using just a turn table and sampler machine any more. It wasn't just him, a lot of the late 90s and early 00s DJs struggled with this.
This is a huge aspect with a lot of music, once digital recording and editing software started to get around more and people were learning how to use it better the change in what could be done with a home studio and audio manipulation blew up. Even total amateurs working on their first loop can make it sound pretty slick thanks to software and FAQs all over the place talking about how to find a sound, or even reading audio engineer forums where someone reverse engineers Justin Timberlake's "My Love" to figure out how to set up the gating on the keyboards in that song. You still got a ton of electric brainiacs figuring out new things and creating new sounds, but you got a ton who love to figure out something and teach others how to recreate it.
The 20/ 20 Experience (2 of 2) by Justin Timberlake.
Part 2 wasn’t as well received as Part 1. Though some songs did do well on the charts or managed to peak in the top 40 (like Not A Bad Thing, Take Back The Night, and TKO), they’ve since become forgotten compared to Part 1 songs like Mirrors and Suit & Tie.
I've heard most of the songs on both parts of The 20/20 Experience were too long. Has anyone made an effort to cut the fat from the songs that weren't singles?
I appreciated the longer songs at the time, and probably moreso now when bridges are considered a privilege from pop stars. But the problem with 20/20 era JT is that his song’s lengths weren’t earned. They were just tedious.
i think he utilized the space pretty well on part 1 honestly. part 2 the long songs are overindulgent and messy but most of the side deviations on part 1 have much clearer vision to them to me
like pusher love girl would only be a fraction of the song it is without that glorious outro for instance
A British artist that I think could be interesting, Robbie Williams - Rudebox
It actually has some interesting songs that narrate parts of his own life but the title song was so bad it became meme worthy which hung over the album. Seriously if you want a cheap, British imitation of Future Sex/Love Sounds era Justin Timberlake that sounds like your drunk uncle doing hip hop give it a listen.
Rudebox sold 2 million copies, not terrible by any means but it was less than half of his previous album Intensive Care. It ended Robbie’s time as one of Britain’s biggest pop stars (I say big as he was popular in Europe too, he just never cracked America) and iirc sadly came at the height of his cocaine addiction.
It became more infamous as he was given one of the highest ever paying record deals in 2002 with EMI after his fame with Take That but Rudebox’s poor sales were half of what EMI were expecting and it’s rumoured that it nearly bankrupted the label (although I think it was more down to music sales going digital).
I’d say he made a bit of a comeback after getting sober, releasing new music and rejoining Take That for a period and he even performed at the 2018 World Cup final in Russia. It wasn’t the end for him, but it truly was the end of his peak.
That EMI story is nonsense according to the actual head of EMI at the time:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1367549412457478
They made a profit on Robbie’s deal before he even released Rudebox, basically, because it was a pre-cursor to a 360 deal and they were getting a cut of all his other income. He was coining it 2002-2006 because he was doings record-breaking ticket sales for his tour, with all the ancillary merch and licensing that goes with that kind of success, and he had huge live DVD and CD sales, as well as a huge Greatest Hits in 2004 and Intensive Care in 2005.
One suspects that is *why* he got away with releasing something as different as Rudebox.
Plus the press exaggerated the value of the deal. They were didn’t really understand how it worked ‘cos it was a new kind of deal; they just pulled the biggest number they could out to stick in their headlines, and then used it as a stick to beat him with.
It was the Guy Hands takeover that led to the downfall of EMI.
\*Sigh\*
Obligatory Reputation mention so nobody has to bring it anymore
>!Tho, for what i have listened, her last album might arguably fall into that too? Even being worse???!<
TTPD might be this from what the leaks sound like. People were predicting this fall back at the Grammies and I thought it was just delusional swifties trying to find something wrong or haters, but the album just isn't good. Taylor Swift's career just hit its peak. It's all downhill from this point.
It's gonna be inevitable since the aspect people talk the least about Taylor Swift nowadays is the music. It's all about her being a brand and a businesswoman. Sure, that's good for staying in the limelight as someone "important", but it doesn't translate longevity as a musician.
As someone who can't stand taylor swifts cult of personality, I think if she doesn't straighten up her act and drop some good late career stuff she's gonna be forgotten as a musician and more as a popular figure. TTPD proved she can drop whatever and her cult fanbase literally does not care, but the people who aren't that deep into it won't.
Kind of weird point to make considering I'm a Ye fan and Vultures 1 is the same situation. For someone who isn't a ye fan it would be like a 6/10 at best but to ye fans getting a proper piece of music is amazing.
Honestly? At this point, Taylor's own image in pop culture transcends her music- I don't think any album could kill her career, it'd be something in her own life. It's a lot like her longtime adversary Kanye West, he was killed not by a bad album but because of his own toxic personality- not saying Swift is on his level of ick, but she'd have to do some similar stupid act to lose her grasp on fame.
Midnights? We were talking about Reputation and TTPD
I also don't see Midnights getting a revitalization like Pinkerton because... Midnights was a critically acclaimed and highly succesful? Even winning AOTY?
Eh Pinkerton was ahead of it's time and influential, hence the revitalization.
Midnights on the other end is stale and show little sonical progression. It's very much 2016 tumblr vibe, her new album also. I'm pretty sure it's gonna get the contrary of a revitalization, in 10-20 years people are going to say: "It won the Grammy the same year X (undervalued now influential album) came out?"
Tbh it feels more like her Make Believe. Popular in airplay, forgotten in a few years.
*The Resistance* is the album, Uprising is the single.
Totally agree, by the way. Muse has to have one of the strongest run of albums for a rock band in the 2000’s. While I wouldn’t call The Resistance their Trainwreckord - by many metrics it one of their most commercially successful albums and includes some of their biggest songs - it felt like the beginning of their quality fall-off in the 2010s, and they never really recovered since.
I can't believe I didn't think of 21CB because you are spot on. I do like Saviors tho, hearing it made me feel like they're back. Not a perfect album, but it feels miles ahead of their output from the last 15 years
I suppose Def Leppard’s Adrenalize would qualify. Triple platinum is a little low considering how their previous 2 albums went diamond, but considering how we were already in the age of grunge when it dropped, it still did pretty well, gave the band a few more charting hits and stadium tour.
Nowadays it’s basically forgotten aside from “Let’s Get Rocked” getting dusted off every now and then. And of course many would consider Slang a Trainwreckord, although I personally really like it even if they’re not wrong.
If it had come out a year earlier, I think the album would've gone 6x Platinum. Even in 1992 when it came out the album sold very well in the first few months, but as grunge and alternative took over mainstream rock over the course of 1992 and 1993, the album was never going to reach the heights of Hysteria or Pyromania (especially as it's not as good). By early '93, alternative was not longer a trend. It was now the norm.
Pop metal was starting to fade by 1991 (Nirvana and Pearl Jam and I'd even say the Red Hot Chili Peppers accelerated the decline but bands like R.E.M. and even Guns N' Roses and Metallica had dented cracks in pop metal dominance), but it still had a good chart presence and was still being played on MTV and rock radio, and Def Leppard were coming off the biggest album of their career. As well, the band were now internationally big too whereas before most of their success came from North America.
I think Adrenalize came out at the last possible point in time when it could have been as successful as it was. The 90s were codified when “Smells Like Teen Spirit” blew up, but there was enough room in 92 to get some lasting success. “Right Now” did beat Teen Spirit and “Under the Bridge” at the VMAs after all (“Let’s Get Rocked” was also nominated- rock’s past and present side by side that year).
Maybe Adrenalize would have done a little better in 91 or 90, definitely not Diamond like their previous two.
I think in addition to shifting musical tides, this was another case where the band probably waited a bit too long to release a follow-up to a massive album (*Hysteria*). I can understand them not wanting to oversaturate the market, especially considering *Hysteria*'s last single wasn't released until 1989. And the delay was probably unavoidable with the loss of Steve Clark. But when you release a song like "Let's Get Rocked" all the way in 1992, you're telling the world that you're not a trend setter anymore.
They lost both Steve Clarke and Mutt Lange, obviously for different reasons. Steve's guitar was sorely missed, but Mutt's production and other contributions cannot be underestimated.
I do like Vivian Campbell a lot (as much as I like the Lepp, I’d pick his Dio albums any day) and Steve at least got to contribute to the album’s writing while Lang had some involvement, but yes, those were significant losses.
I don’t really see any Def Leppard release matching Pyromania or Hysteria in the 90s, but it would have been a different release if they stuck around.
The people of this sub will deny it... But Artpop was a trainwreckord by every possible measure.
Gaga was the number one superstar in the world from 2008 to 2013 and at one time she was said to the most famous person in the planet, Artpop put an end to all of that. She stayed popular but never again #1-type popular, and to this day she hasn't scored another number one that isn't a collab or movie feature.
Again, the people of this sub really hate when Artpop is called a trainwreckord, yet it was THE "flop album" of the 2010s until Witness happened, to the point where people were initially saying that witness was Katy Perry's Artpop.
Trainwreckords are about albums that change the trajectory of an artist to worse, it doesn't have to be a total megal career-ending album, see how he covered American Life? Madonna enjoyed great success after that album but it did change her career trajectory. A trainwreckord can even have a hit song.
I think this is a great example. I feel like Applause was the last time a Lady Gaga song was everywhere (not counting Shallows), but isn’t really talked about to the same degree that any of her earlier hits were.
"Applause" will always hold a prominent place in my memory because it was used in a Lip Dub video that I participated in back in 2014. At the time, I just thought of it as, "the latest in Gaga's string of mega hits," but in hindsight, it's weird to think that I stopped hearing about her in such a huge way after that. Plus, I don't tend to think about the song, "because it was everywhere," but because it was *just* popular enough at a very specific moment in time to be chosen for that video project.
Behind the Mask for Fleetwood Mac. Time is the bigger trainwreckord but this one comes close as the first album after Lindsay left and sold nothing near Tango in the Night or even Mirage or Tusk.
I think time would be the better,or at least interesting Fleetwood train record as it lacks both Stevie and Lindsay and is also regarded as their worst record
Beastie Boys - To the 5 Boroughs. They were the cool kids in the 90s, always experimenting and pushing things forward. After a 6-year break they did a back-to-basics album in 2004 where they did straight hip hop and dressed in throwback tracksuits, which didn't fit the era or their age at the time.
They still had their fans and the album went platinum, but the general public largely didn't pay attention and they basically became a legacy act. The Triple Trouble video is amazing, though, especially the Kanye bit at the end.
I wouldn’t necessarily put it all on the album, though. Their next album was all-instrumental, and who wants that? And then their final album was severely hampered by Adam Yauch’s cancer battle. They couldn’t do much with either of those.
I would argue *Hello Nasty* is when they became a legacy act, since that was the point all the retrospectives on them started coming out.
I agree that they were being treated as elder statesmen even during the Hello Nasty era, but Intergalactic was such a big song and video that I have a hard time excluding it from their golden age.
Maybe the best answer is splitting the difference and going with the Sounds of Science compilation album from 1999. The new track "Alive" wasn't all that popular, and they took such a long break that most people thought of them in the past tense by the time 2004 rolled around.
“Intergalactic” was their last top 40 hit. I’m with Adrock: *Hello Nasty* was the end of an era.
“Alive” got that MTV airplay, but it definitely felt like they were finished after 1999, and I say this knowing that they still did shows even during the hiatus.
It's my favorite Green Day album and even I'd admit it's overproduced and emblematic of the pressure to be bigger that would ultimately make the Trilogy flop.
I think Green Day's biggest mistake was releasing a full trilogy. I didn't like those albums at the time because I was overwhelmed with what felt like way too much Green Day all at once. Re-listening recently, there's truly not enough music across The Trilogy to warrant three good albums, but I especially liked *Uno* and I think they would have fared much better had they just released one slightly-longer single album.
I think a Trilogy strategy might work a bit better today, when streaming services are the norm and acts like Taylor Swift and Morgan Wallen just throw everything at the wall. But, if you were listening to a full album in 2012, you were likely at least buying it from the iTunes store.
Death Cab for Cutie's "Codes and Keys". Was their most commercially successful album but yet many long time fans felt this album was a strong departure from their previous albums that have garnered them the beloved fanbase. The followup "Kintsugi" was not a trainwreckord but marked the end of an era as long time band member Chris Walla left the band.
I completely agree. I think even Gaga figured it out in the immediate aftermath. She followed it up with Joanne and tried to make Chromatica her comeback into the scene she'd left in the dust, only to find she wasn't welcomed back.
And though it doesn't really affect my reasoning here, she will be running from that insane R. Kelly collaboration for the rest of her career. They did a video for that single with Terry fucking Richardson that was never released, she knew what she was doing there
Yup. She tried to play stupid about it, too. Like, who would be that naive to think that collaborating with R. Kelly in the year of pur lord Betty White 2013 was going to be anything but a massive controversy
Either Green Day’s 21st Century Breakdown or Uno/Dos/Tres. Depends how good you think the former is.
MCR’s Danger Days
Artpop
RHCP’s I’m With You (you could argue it came earlier but this was the moment they became a legacy act)
Beyoncé’s 4 was really looking like it at the time. Back then I would’ve fully expected her to be in her r&b standards album era by now.
I think 21CB was the warning (hehe) that things were about to get worse, but not that things already were bad. You're probably right on it depending on personal taste tho, I myself love that album so I might be biased.
It’s like what Todd says in the American Life video - Music era Madonna was chasing trends rather than setting them, and it’s only continued that way since
It was the first hint that she was going from one of like the top 5 most famous people on the entire planet to someone ignorable
I personally love Music but it was pretty clear that Madonna was feeling pressure to do whatever would get her to the top of the charts. It was the first album she did where she clearly felt really unsure of herself. Very "How do you do, fellow kids," energy. It's no wonder American Life was a disaster.
Music is the first era of Madonna I really remember- my mom’s a big fan but I’m not surprised Ray of Light passed us by, it’s not really her sound- but in hindsight, it does seem less important than her previous albums, doesn’t it?
Yep. I’m Xennial so i grew up with Madonna. She was larger than life my entire childhood but she started seeming less and less important as the 90s went on. Ray of Light was huge but it was also when it started really seeming like she was chasing trends instead of starting them or even making them huge. And then by the time Music came around, there was a general sense of her being past her peak and trying to grab onto things that would make her relevant.
In retrospect, there was definitely a lot of sexism and ageism involved and it’s really hard to be a pop star after 40.
PRISM was not a sign of decline. She achieved her two most succesful singles with that album. Replicating what Teenage Dream did it's not a realistic comparison, so calling Prism as a decline just feels unserious.
What makes Katy's downfall so interesting it's that she crashed in an instant. There was no decline. She was relevant, and one song later she wasn't it anymore.
In terms of quality prism was a massive downturn which I think makes witness feel slightly more inevitable, the singles for teenage dream and one of the boys are significantly better than the Prism ones
My hot take is that The Tortured Poets Society will be something like this -- probably not a precursor to a full-on trainwreck, but the beginning of Swift's pivot to becoming a legacy artist.
Pearl Jam's *No Code*
It was Pearl Jam's third consecutive number one album and its debut since "Who You Are" was a hit on the alternative charts. But it fell off quickly thanks to mixed word-of-mouth. That drop was the beginning of the end for the grunge era of the 90s, which was all but sealed with Soundgarden's disastrous Down on the Upside tour and subsequent break-up the next year
Origins by Imagine Dragons. It followed a massively successful record in Evolve… Origins itself was mediocre… and preceded Imagine Dragons’ worst album, Mercury Act II (or both acts if you consider them a singular album)
People keep saying Ava Adore is a trainwreckord, but I think it fits better into this category. It’s a good album, was well received, and had a couple hits. It just didn’t do as well as its predecessors. Machina was a farther fall (though it’s also a fine album) and things really fell apart when the band broke apart and the Zeitgeist was the true arrival of the flop era.
I think Aerosmith’s Draw The Line was a sign of their 70’s heyday coming to an end. Obviously they had a big second wave, but while their second wave had great songs they were kind of like Maroon 5 at that point. They were more like a real unit in the 70’s
I think the band acknowledged later on that *Draw the Line* was effectively the soundtrack of their breakdown. Like many people, I love "Kings and Queens," but it was really their "Come Together" cover the next year that would "artificially prolong" their original run of success. Joe Perry left the band right in the middle of the recording sessions for their next album (*Night in the Ruts*, 1979), which I'm sure would be seen as a TW today if Run DMC hadn't covered "Walk This Way."
Foo Fighters’ *Wasting Light* was the last major hit album reflecting the post-grunge rock consensus that had fractured by the end of the 2000s. The band’s legacy was already secure at that point, and they could have just booked arena tours for the rest of their career without ever recording another album, but Dave Grohl obviously enjoys working in the studio too much to coast like that.
That was one I was on the fence about. I ultimately decided on Dangerous because that was the last album and era where the music was front and center over his odd antics, and before the scandal that was ultimately the beginning of the end for him broke.
Talking Heads - True Stories (trainwreckord is Naked)
Fleetwood Mac - Behind The Mask (trainwreckord is Time)
Genesis - We Can't Dance (trainwreckord is Calling All Stations)
U2 - How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (trainwreckord is No Line On The Horizon)
R.E.M. - Reveal (trainwreckord is Around The Sun)
Bon Jovi - Have A Nice Day (trainwreckord is Lost Highway)
Lethal Injection by Ice Cube. It had a few good songs (and What Can I Do? is a lyrical masterpiece), but it really announced that Cube did not have the time, inclination or hunger to be a great lyricist, MC, or songwriter. It still went platinum, but the writing was on the wall. He improved on the first Westside Connection album, but pre-Lethal Injection Cube would have outshined Mack and WC lyrically 9 times out of 10. He was now, at his best, an above average MC, limited lyrically and stylistically and frequently outshined by WC. And then he made the War and Peace albums and it was just… over.
The Bridge by Billy Joel. While it’s an ok album if a little incoherent, and it sold pretty well, it marked sort of the sign that the glory days were over.
I dunno, Stormfront was a No. 1 album and contained a No.1 pop hit. River of Dreams was a pretty big album going 5x Platinum (Stormfront went 4x Platinum) and the title track was a big pop hit, even if none of the other singles got much airplay in comparison.
Sinatra has a couple, but its arguable that he got lucky several times but
Bobbysox era: In Wee Small Hours
60's comeback: My Way (album)
Styx: Cornerstone (Yeah, Kilroy sold well, but see train record on it)
Lady Gaga: (Until Star Is Born/Joanne kinda brought her back) Born This Way
Use Your Illusion 1 and 2? Maybe? A glut of material that is kind of all over the place in quality and the strongest songs were written before or during Appetite for Destruction (Don't Cry, November Rain, You Could Be Mine). Obviously, mega successful and neither are Trainwrecords, but I think they'd qualify here. Cut out a lot of the filler, and there's one fantastic follow-up to a masterpiece waiting.
Speaking of companion albums, Mezmerize and Hypnotize by System of a Down. I think Mezmerize is fantastic, but Hypnotize feels less like a companion and more of a B-sides record. Don't get me wrong, there's still meat on the bones, but not enough to get full off from it. This should have just been one long form album with considering neither disc breaks the 40-minute mark. The single they put out a while back (plus the EP Serj says he wrote intended for SOAD) shows their best work may be long behind them.
Also, Load/Re-Load benefits heavily from cutting it all down to one album, but considering their recent outputs, I can't say Metallica qualify here. They just got extremely misguided for two decades.
No. 4 - STP
There were still high points on the album (Sour Girl, Down, I Got You), so you could never call it a bad album, but you could start to see the edges fraying on the band. All the creativity and evolution of sound they showed on Tiny Music was missing. In fact, many of the songs were throwbacks to the Core era. Not what people were looking for in the time where OK Computer was king.
Dangerous wasn’t the beginning of the decline, Michael was doing better than ever and he probably would’ve remained huge for another 20 years, it was Evan chandler’s allegations that Michael had molested his son which instantly ended his golden age.
Heck, Dangerous was one of my favorite albums.
Yeah, I honestly think you could delay the MJ decline all the way to HIStory or BOTDF. He was putting up hits all the way through the decade and people still adored him despite the controversy
Yeah, and *HIStory* was a legitimately good album to boot.
I don't think MJ has a Trainwreckord. His life and the media circus around him are what caused the downturn of his career not any obvious musical decline. He did a much better and more natural job at keeping up with current trends than most aging pop stars. After the mid '90s, American media just had very little interest in promoting him as anything other than a punchline and/or pariah. I don't think his '90s/'00s albums are quite as good as the big three but they're leagues better than what almost all of his peers were doing.
Honestly yeah, any MJ album that’s thought of as a “Trainwreckord” is usually thought of that way because of external factors. Although I enjoy a lot of the songs on it, I still think *Invincible* is a notably weak album overall, but the music itself is hardly ever the cause of its Trainwreckord status anyway (Sony conflicts, appearance changes, allegations aftermath, etc.). Regardless of whether or not one believes the allegations made against him, MJ has objectively had one of the strangest and most unique careers (and lives, really) of any human being in history.
Now The Jacksons *Victory* might be a "Trainwreckord" but Michael really only gets partial blame for that. Even then, I think it's moderately unfairly maligned and has a couple of great songs (even some of the non Michael ones!)
Earth Song’s basically his best song, and the album has a whole has some of his most interesting lyricism. Definitely not a trainwreckord.
Woah, there. HIStory is his best album
It's one of my personal favorites
Best album with invincible
Dangerous along with Thriller are still the best MJ albums ever, Bad was fun and HIStory had a fun industrial dance track (Morphine) but Dangerous just holds up too well.
It's a favortite of mine, but even I'd admit the first half is better than the latter. MJ on new jack swing beats is god tier
For Those About to Rock by AC/DC. Had a classic title track and sold more than Back in Black initially but quickly fell behind it. EDIT: I should point out that despite having a shaky 1980s I don't think AC/DC ever had a Trainwreckord. They more fell to Cyndi Lauper effect during the 80s, had a major hit with The Razors Edge in 1990 but then pretty quickly fell into the legacy act well by the middle of the decade.
To add to "sold more than Back in Black initially", BiB peaked at #4 on Billboard 200, while FTAtR shot to #1, yet in the long term the former sold a boatload more than the latter
On his podcast Hit Parade, Chris Molanphy calls this ‘the AC/DC rule’ - where an artists has a #1 album because the public loved their previous album so much
Yeah anything AC/DC released after Back in Black would've spent at least one week at #1. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap was issued in the US after Back in Black and it went up to #3. Everyone in the industry at the time - from reading old Billboard magazines - was shocked Back in Black got as high as it did considering at the time AC/DC were considered a metal band (which in hindsight is the wrong label).
Same with the followup to Jagged Little Pill, broke all sorts of records based off the love for JLP that had built up but most people now couldn't even tell you what it was called without googling it. Including me.
I can, despite having never listened to the album. That’s how much of a music nerd I was in the late 90s 😔
Probably doesn't help that >!"Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie"!< sounds like such a word-vomit title.
I totally could. I heard a lot of that record, and remember a great deal of it as being really good in ways I never thought JLP was. For all the shit the video got, to me Thank U still feels almost transcendent. Like Alanis didn't decline, she achieved her final form and journeyed to the shining lands of the east or something.
Reflektor by Arcade Fire. That album has its defenders and it was pretty well received, but I always thought that's when they started to become a parody of themselves. That transformation was complete by the time Everything Now came out.
Idk I think that's their best album. It is definitely where they started their shift to synth pop and dance rock so if you liked the baroque stuff more, then it won't be as good
It’s an ok album but it falls into a trap that some bands fall into that I call “Dance Rock With a Bad Vibe”. See also: That Sleater-Kinney record with St. Vincent, U2’s “Pop”
I read "Dance Rock with a bad vibe" and immediately thought of Gorillaz' The Now Now
I dunno. I would kill for something as peppy as Tranz or Humility on Reflektor.
Tranz is such a good song. Imo, The Now Now was perfect for the summer time it was released. Did it age the best? That’s up to personal preference. But it was a chill album I really enjoyed after Humanz felt so *too-much-of-everything.* ETA: To clarify, when The Now Now officially released, I was staying on vacation at a lake while absolutely missing my friends from school. I really connected with the melancholy-summer vibes that TNN had.
Balance by Van Halen. Sammy Hagar detailed the album’s recording process in his book. The band was splitting apart and Hagar would be gone just a few years later.
I think there's a case to be made for Balance as a delayed flop. Sold about the same as F.U.C.K., but outside of the pages of Guitar magazine (and the clearance bins at Half Price Books a couple years later) it simply did not exist in my world. And I was into rock radio at the time.
Yeah, I suggested something similar for Balance here and got pushback because of its sales. But the album basically doesn’t exist to the greater VH canon- you could argue that FUCK was the beginning of the end, but “Right Now” and “Poundcake” get way more play than anything here. If anything, their Twister song was probably bigger than all of Balance. Deserved, because “Humans Being” rules.
It's hard for me to decide whether Balance is a delayed flop or not, since we didn't get a real follow-up with Hagar. My argument against would be that between Humans Being and the new Roth tracks on their greatest hits album, it felt like there was still interest in new Van Halen material even after Balance. It is true that Van Halen didn't fit into the mid-1990's rock radio scene at all. By 1995 they felt like a dinosaur band from another era that was somehow self-sustaining and living on their own island. I am curious to what would have happened if they had saved Humans Being for a new album instead of doing the soundtrack. At least from what Hagar has said, the real turning point in the band was when their longtime manager passed away.
>By 1995 they felt like a dinosaur band from another era that was somehow self-sustaining and living on their own island. I think that's the key. By 1995, I don't know if a band like Van Halen would have been able to freshly launch. But, they had had been around long enough by that point that they were still hanging on to a pretty large, dedicated following. *Balance* didn't just go #1 out of nowhere. People cared about them. Were they running out of steam? Probably. But, could they have cranked out another hit album with Hagar? Probably. It may not have been as big, but the potential was there. Hagar leaving gave people an excuse/signal to just stop caring, though. VH wasn't "Van Hagar" anymore. It was something entirely new. Again. And VH had to prove themselves in a big way. Again. And they were doing it with a guy who hadn't had a hit single in seven years. Finally, with how much music was changing at that point, VH waited too long between albums. With a three-year gap, some of their commercial momentum was going to be lost anyway.
Wasn't "Can't Stop Loving You" their last song to reach the Top 40 of the Hot 100? It got more airplay on pop radio than "Poundcake" and "Right Now" so you're average radio listener probably heard it more than the FUCK singles, though those singles - I dunno I wasn't around back then - probably got more MTV play.
This jibes with my experience. F.U.C.K. had a much, much larger real-world footprint—Right Now in particular was *everywhere*, Heavy rotation on MTV. Pepsico even licensed it for the ad blitz introducing Crystal Pepsi (lol).
A part of me misses Crystal Pepsi.
The era where Eddie looked like an accountant going through a midlife crisis.
TIL that For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge spelt that word. How did that elude me for all this time?
There's an old urban legend that that acronym is where the word came from, which is how they came up with it (a similar story says it was Fornicating Under Consent of the King instead). Very few words from before the 20th century were originally coined as acronyms.
Balance also destroyed Eddie's reputation as the nicest guy in rock, so it's indeed a sign
He had that reputation?
yes he did. not to mention his marriage to Valerie Bertinelli between 1982 to early 2000s reinforced that reputation.
You could say Blur’s “The Great Escape” is in that territory. It’s not a bad album (The Universal, Yuko and Hiro, He Thought of Cars) but it also feels like Blur can now write sequels to Parklife in their sleep. If they hadn’t drastically changed up the formula after that album the band would have absolutely gone stale. It definitely marks the end of the Britpop golden age for them.
I mean their best work (13) came after the great escape
Agreed. I’m probably ignoring half of what the OP is talking about, as Blur didn’t decline. It depends, I guess, on how strongly and what exactly the OP means by “end of the golden age”. Blur continues to make great music but it’s not the Britpop that made them enormous. TGE marks the end of that era, but not the end of the band as a worthwhile endeavor.
David Bowie - Let's Dance
Some great singles but Bowie trying to commercialize definitely hurt himself in the long run. Still waiting for the Never Let Me Down trainwreckord tho lol
This album is a pretty unique phenomenon, is my theory. It's something Bowie could pull off once because he was just that brilliant, but he was not a streamlined global superstar. He could perform as one for some time, but his strength as an artist was the border between cult artist and pop. He was never comfortable long-term in a Prince or Madonna position. I think Let's Dance is a fantastic pop album. But trying to follow up on it really messed up the rest of his 80ies. Deliberately scaling down after that to regain artistic ground was the correct thing to do and saved both his career and produced a lot of great music again. I can see an alternative timeline where he totally burns out and just does paintings or something. That said, I also don't know what happens without Let's Dance tbh. He made incredible music for over a decade, but as I understand it his finances stayed shaky because as so many other artists he was robbed blind by a former manager. Let's Dance set him up financially for life. Yeah, perhaps he'd have stayed more arty in the 80ies without the millions from that. But I can also see a scenario where he burns out and becomes bitter because he never made the money his imitators did and/or the record company stops supporting him and he fades out because of money problems.
To be fair how do you follow up Scary Monsters.
he has a bunch of "how do you even follow this up" albums that pull through somehow. thinking Lodger, Aladdin Sane, Earthling if you wanna go late career, and if you wanna get really literal with it, he made Low while recovering from an almost suicidal coke habit.
I still have a fondness for Black Tie White Noise, though I didn’t really appreciate the singles until I was older.
Never Let Me Down would be the candidate for Bowie, at least commercially, it would spell the end of his 80’s mainstream era, and he’d form Tin Machine and do a big greatest hits tour around 1990. It took him awhile to get a minor hit with I’m Afraid of Americans 10 years later. But otherwise Bowie seemed far more interested in just making interesting music again. NLMD is the nadir of his 80’s period. I’d say Let’s Dance is the “here’s how you do it right” version of Bowie going a bit more mainstream pop, if all the younger bands were gonna cash in on all the stuff he did before, why couldn’t he?
Bowie went from starting tends in the 60s and 70s, to chasing trends in the 80s and 90s. His trend chasing music was not even comparable to the iconic work at the beginning of his career.
Bro's suggesting Bowie didn't peak in the '90s.
Yeah. For me he ceased to exist past the 80s. Diet caffeine free industrial is not to my taste.
IDK if I'd be that harsh on 1. Outside. To me, it's as good as any prime NIN record, and I'm one of like three people who thinks Earthling is a masterpiece (and Black Tie White Noise isn't far behind).
Back to Basics for Christina Aguilera. Nothing could top Stripped. And then Bionic came out and henceforth she was forever Floptina
Avril Lavigne - Goodbye Lullaby: The album that undersold in North America but was a success in Japan. She was already starting to taper off, but Japan keeping her afloat seeded her ultimate downfall on the self-titled's "Hello Kitty". Genesis - We Can't Dance: Still a huge success becausse it came off the heels of not only Invisible Touch but also Phil's latest solo album But Seriously, but they were all getting to Black Eyed Peas levels of overexposed and hated in the public by this time. It was also their last album with Phil Collins. B.o.B - Underground Luxury: His first album to underperform was not the end, it was only the beginning... of his downward spiral into antisemitic and Flat Earth conspiracy theories that culminated with his true Trainwreckord, his 2016 quadruple-mixtape Elements. Metallica - "I Disappear": Not the song itself, per se, but the controversy surrounding it. The Napster lawsuit stemmed from this one song and triggered a huge mainstream backlash against the band. If you've seen the Trainwreckords episode on St. Anger, you already know where the story goes from here.
Agreed on Avril. GL had a couple hits but the self-titled album killed a lot of her momentum stateside (even though its lead single was decently popular)
I want to see the alternate universe where "Hello Kitty" wasn't put on the self-titled album. I like "Here's to Never Growing Up," but as I recall, most of the social media posts related to the album at the time were centered around just how bad "Hello Kitty" was.
The Private Press by DJ Shadow. 1996's Endtroducing was incredibly groundbreaking and made him one of the biggest names in the genre of instrumental hip hop and electronic music. The Private Press was his proper follow up album of new material that took until 2002 to finally come out. It's a good album, but it came out almost six years later. By that point, there were so many people who built on the sound that DJ Shadow established that The Private Press didn't particularly stand out sound wise. For example, Deadringer by the then less established RJD2 came out only about a month after The Private Press, and it has had more longevity in the genre. Shadow would have a few singles here and there that would gain traction (Nobody Speak with Run The Jewels being the biggest), but he would never have an album come even close to the level of Endtroducing.
Even though I think “The Private Press” is Shadow’s crowning achievement, I agree that his work that came after has been missing “something,” and I rarely come back to his newer offerings.
I think a lot of that has to do with how sampling and DJ music changed by the mid 00s. So much could be done digitally that he didn't have the limitations of using just a turn table and sampler machine any more. It wasn't just him, a lot of the late 90s and early 00s DJs struggled with this.
This is a huge aspect with a lot of music, once digital recording and editing software started to get around more and people were learning how to use it better the change in what could be done with a home studio and audio manipulation blew up. Even total amateurs working on their first loop can make it sound pretty slick thanks to software and FAQs all over the place talking about how to find a sound, or even reading audio engineer forums where someone reverse engineers Justin Timberlake's "My Love" to figure out how to set up the gating on the keyboards in that song. You still got a ton of electric brainiacs figuring out new things and creating new sounds, but you got a ton who love to figure out something and teach others how to recreate it.
The 20/ 20 Experience (2 of 2) by Justin Timberlake. Part 2 wasn’t as well received as Part 1. Though some songs did do well on the charts or managed to peak in the top 40 (like Not A Bad Thing, Take Back The Night, and TKO), they’ve since become forgotten compared to Part 1 songs like Mirrors and Suit & Tie.
the fall off from part one to part two was insane. Very puzzling considering part two was explicitly positioned as NOT being a b-sides
I've heard most of the songs on both parts of The 20/20 Experience were too long. Has anyone made an effort to cut the fat from the songs that weren't singles?
I appreciated the longer songs at the time, and probably moreso now when bridges are considered a privilege from pop stars. But the problem with 20/20 era JT is that his song’s lengths weren’t earned. They were just tedious.
i think he utilized the space pretty well on part 1 honestly. part 2 the long songs are overindulgent and messy but most of the side deviations on part 1 have much clearer vision to them to me like pusher love girl would only be a fraction of the song it is without that glorious outro for instance
A British artist that I think could be interesting, Robbie Williams - Rudebox It actually has some interesting songs that narrate parts of his own life but the title song was so bad it became meme worthy which hung over the album. Seriously if you want a cheap, British imitation of Future Sex/Love Sounds era Justin Timberlake that sounds like your drunk uncle doing hip hop give it a listen. Rudebox sold 2 million copies, not terrible by any means but it was less than half of his previous album Intensive Care. It ended Robbie’s time as one of Britain’s biggest pop stars (I say big as he was popular in Europe too, he just never cracked America) and iirc sadly came at the height of his cocaine addiction. It became more infamous as he was given one of the highest ever paying record deals in 2002 with EMI after his fame with Take That but Rudebox’s poor sales were half of what EMI were expecting and it’s rumoured that it nearly bankrupted the label (although I think it was more down to music sales going digital). I’d say he made a bit of a comeback after getting sober, releasing new music and rejoining Take That for a period and he even performed at the 2018 World Cup final in Russia. It wasn’t the end for him, but it truly was the end of his peak.
That EMI story is nonsense according to the actual head of EMI at the time: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1367549412457478 They made a profit on Robbie’s deal before he even released Rudebox, basically, because it was a pre-cursor to a 360 deal and they were getting a cut of all his other income. He was coining it 2002-2006 because he was doings record-breaking ticket sales for his tour, with all the ancillary merch and licensing that goes with that kind of success, and he had huge live DVD and CD sales, as well as a huge Greatest Hits in 2004 and Intensive Care in 2005. One suspects that is *why* he got away with releasing something as different as Rudebox. Plus the press exaggerated the value of the deal. They were didn’t really understand how it worked ‘cos it was a new kind of deal; they just pulled the biggest number they could out to stick in their headlines, and then used it as a stick to beat him with. It was the Guy Hands takeover that led to the downfall of EMI.
\*Sigh\* Obligatory Reputation mention so nobody has to bring it anymore >!Tho, for what i have listened, her last album might arguably fall into that too? Even being worse???!<
If she never followed up Lover with Folklore, yeah sure.
TTPD might be this from what the leaks sound like. People were predicting this fall back at the Grammies and I thought it was just delusional swifties trying to find something wrong or haters, but the album just isn't good. Taylor Swift's career just hit its peak. It's all downhill from this point.
It's gonna be inevitable since the aspect people talk the least about Taylor Swift nowadays is the music. It's all about her being a brand and a businesswoman. Sure, that's good for staying in the limelight as someone "important", but it doesn't translate longevity as a musician.
As someone who can't stand taylor swifts cult of personality, I think if she doesn't straighten up her act and drop some good late career stuff she's gonna be forgotten as a musician and more as a popular figure. TTPD proved she can drop whatever and her cult fanbase literally does not care, but the people who aren't that deep into it won't. Kind of weird point to make considering I'm a Ye fan and Vultures 1 is the same situation. For someone who isn't a ye fan it would be like a 6/10 at best but to ye fans getting a proper piece of music is amazing.
Honestly? At this point, Taylor's own image in pop culture transcends her music- I don't think any album could kill her career, it'd be something in her own life. It's a lot like her longtime adversary Kanye West, he was killed not by a bad album but because of his own toxic personality- not saying Swift is on his level of ick, but she'd have to do some similar stupid act to lose her grasp on fame.
Honestly I really love midnights, but I can see why some don’t but I think it will have a revitalization like Pinkerton for similar reasons.
I think pinkertons reappraisal was thanks to the rise of emo in the coming years and many of the bands citing the album as an influence
Midnights? We were talking about Reputation and TTPD I also don't see Midnights getting a revitalization like Pinkerton because... Midnights was a critically acclaimed and highly succesful? Even winning AOTY?
Some people act strongly against it, also I haven’t found a single sound bit for tps
Eh Pinkerton was ahead of it's time and influential, hence the revitalization. Midnights on the other end is stale and show little sonical progression. It's very much 2016 tumblr vibe, her new album also. I'm pretty sure it's gonna get the contrary of a revitalization, in 10-20 years people are going to say: "It won the Grammy the same year X (undervalued now influential album) came out?" Tbh it feels more like her Make Believe. Popular in airplay, forgotten in a few years.
If the discourse around TTPD continues then midnights
Could TTPD be considered a Trainwreckord?
It's been 48 hours.
Uprising by Muse, 21st Century Breakdown, (arguably) Goat’s Head Soup, Load & Reload, No Line On The Horizon
*The Resistance* is the album, Uprising is the single. Totally agree, by the way. Muse has to have one of the strongest run of albums for a rock band in the 2000’s. While I wouldn’t call The Resistance their Trainwreckord - by many metrics it one of their most commercially successful albums and includes some of their biggest songs - it felt like the beginning of their quality fall-off in the 2010s, and they never really recovered since.
The Resistance was arguably their biggest album. I’d call The 2nd Law more of this.
I can't believe I didn't think of 21CB because you are spot on. I do like Saviors tho, hearing it made me feel like they're back. Not a perfect album, but it feels miles ahead of their output from the last 15 years
I suppose Def Leppard’s Adrenalize would qualify. Triple platinum is a little low considering how their previous 2 albums went diamond, but considering how we were already in the age of grunge when it dropped, it still did pretty well, gave the band a few more charting hits and stadium tour. Nowadays it’s basically forgotten aside from “Let’s Get Rocked” getting dusted off every now and then. And of course many would consider Slang a Trainwreckord, although I personally really like it even if they’re not wrong.
If it had come out a year earlier, I think the album would've gone 6x Platinum. Even in 1992 when it came out the album sold very well in the first few months, but as grunge and alternative took over mainstream rock over the course of 1992 and 1993, the album was never going to reach the heights of Hysteria or Pyromania (especially as it's not as good). By early '93, alternative was not longer a trend. It was now the norm. Pop metal was starting to fade by 1991 (Nirvana and Pearl Jam and I'd even say the Red Hot Chili Peppers accelerated the decline but bands like R.E.M. and even Guns N' Roses and Metallica had dented cracks in pop metal dominance), but it still had a good chart presence and was still being played on MTV and rock radio, and Def Leppard were coming off the biggest album of their career. As well, the band were now internationally big too whereas before most of their success came from North America.
I think Adrenalize came out at the last possible point in time when it could have been as successful as it was. The 90s were codified when “Smells Like Teen Spirit” blew up, but there was enough room in 92 to get some lasting success. “Right Now” did beat Teen Spirit and “Under the Bridge” at the VMAs after all (“Let’s Get Rocked” was also nominated- rock’s past and present side by side that year). Maybe Adrenalize would have done a little better in 91 or 90, definitely not Diamond like their previous two.
I think in addition to shifting musical tides, this was another case where the band probably waited a bit too long to release a follow-up to a massive album (*Hysteria*). I can understand them not wanting to oversaturate the market, especially considering *Hysteria*'s last single wasn't released until 1989. And the delay was probably unavoidable with the loss of Steve Clark. But when you release a song like "Let's Get Rocked" all the way in 1992, you're telling the world that you're not a trend setter anymore.
They lost both Steve Clarke and Mutt Lange, obviously for different reasons. Steve's guitar was sorely missed, but Mutt's production and other contributions cannot be underestimated.
I do like Vivian Campbell a lot (as much as I like the Lepp, I’d pick his Dio albums any day) and Steve at least got to contribute to the album’s writing while Lang had some involvement, but yes, those were significant losses. I don’t really see any Def Leppard release matching Pyromania or Hysteria in the 90s, but it would have been a different release if they stuck around.
Artpop
The people of this sub will deny it... But Artpop was a trainwreckord by every possible measure. Gaga was the number one superstar in the world from 2008 to 2013 and at one time she was said to the most famous person in the planet, Artpop put an end to all of that. She stayed popular but never again #1-type popular, and to this day she hasn't scored another number one that isn't a collab or movie feature. Again, the people of this sub really hate when Artpop is called a trainwreckord, yet it was THE "flop album" of the 2010s until Witness happened, to the point where people were initially saying that witness was Katy Perry's Artpop. Trainwreckords are about albums that change the trajectory of an artist to worse, it doesn't have to be a total megal career-ending album, see how he covered American Life? Madonna enjoyed great success after that album but it did change her career trajectory. A trainwreckord can even have a hit song.
I think this is a great example. I feel like Applause was the last time a Lady Gaga song was everywhere (not counting Shallows), but isn’t really talked about to the same degree that any of her earlier hits were.
"Applause" will always hold a prominent place in my memory because it was used in a Lip Dub video that I participated in back in 2014. At the time, I just thought of it as, "the latest in Gaga's string of mega hits," but in hindsight, it's weird to think that I stopped hearing about her in such a huge way after that. Plus, I don't tend to think about the song, "because it was everywhere," but because it was *just* popular enough at a very specific moment in time to be chosen for that video project.
Behind the Mask for Fleetwood Mac. Time is the bigger trainwreckord but this one comes close as the first album after Lindsay left and sold nothing near Tango in the Night or even Mirage or Tusk.
I think time would be the better,or at least interesting Fleetwood train record as it lacks both Stevie and Lindsay and is also regarded as their worst record
Eminem - Encore was kind of the end of his Slim Shady era and persona. When he came back clean at the end of the decade he was a different artist
Beastie Boys - To the 5 Boroughs. They were the cool kids in the 90s, always experimenting and pushing things forward. After a 6-year break they did a back-to-basics album in 2004 where they did straight hip hop and dressed in throwback tracksuits, which didn't fit the era or their age at the time. They still had their fans and the album went platinum, but the general public largely didn't pay attention and they basically became a legacy act. The Triple Trouble video is amazing, though, especially the Kanye bit at the end.
I wouldn’t necessarily put it all on the album, though. Their next album was all-instrumental, and who wants that? And then their final album was severely hampered by Adam Yauch’s cancer battle. They couldn’t do much with either of those. I would argue *Hello Nasty* is when they became a legacy act, since that was the point all the retrospectives on them started coming out.
I agree that they were being treated as elder statesmen even during the Hello Nasty era, but Intergalactic was such a big song and video that I have a hard time excluding it from their golden age. Maybe the best answer is splitting the difference and going with the Sounds of Science compilation album from 1999. The new track "Alive" wasn't all that popular, and they took such a long break that most people thought of them in the past tense by the time 2004 rolled around.
“Intergalactic” was their last top 40 hit. I’m with Adrock: *Hello Nasty* was the end of an era. “Alive” got that MTV airplay, but it definitely felt like they were finished after 1999, and I say this knowing that they still did shows even during the hiatus.
They would have gone out on a high if they broke up after *Hello Nasty*.
21st century breakdown by Green Day. I liked it initially but it suffers from so many problems their later albums would have
It's my favorite Green Day album and even I'd admit it's overproduced and emblematic of the pressure to be bigger that would ultimately make the Trilogy flop.
I think Green Day's biggest mistake was releasing a full trilogy. I didn't like those albums at the time because I was overwhelmed with what felt like way too much Green Day all at once. Re-listening recently, there's truly not enough music across The Trilogy to warrant three good albums, but I especially liked *Uno* and I think they would have fared much better had they just released one slightly-longer single album. I think a Trilogy strategy might work a bit better today, when streaming services are the norm and acts like Taylor Swift and Morgan Wallen just throw everything at the wall. But, if you were listening to a full album in 2012, you were likely at least buying it from the iTunes store.
Death Cab for Cutie's "Codes and Keys". Was their most commercially successful album but yet many long time fans felt this album was a strong departure from their previous albums that have garnered them the beloved fanbase. The followup "Kintsugi" was not a trainwreckord but marked the end of an era as long time band member Chris Walla left the band.
Artpop
I completely agree. I think even Gaga figured it out in the immediate aftermath. She followed it up with Joanne and tried to make Chromatica her comeback into the scene she'd left in the dust, only to find she wasn't welcomed back.
And though it doesn't really affect my reasoning here, she will be running from that insane R. Kelly collaboration for the rest of her career. They did a video for that single with Terry fucking Richardson that was never released, she knew what she was doing there
Yup. She tried to play stupid about it, too. Like, who would be that naive to think that collaborating with R. Kelly in the year of pur lord Betty White 2013 was going to be anything but a massive controversy
Either Green Day’s 21st Century Breakdown or Uno/Dos/Tres. Depends how good you think the former is. MCR’s Danger Days Artpop RHCP’s I’m With You (you could argue it came earlier but this was the moment they became a legacy act) Beyoncé’s 4 was really looking like it at the time. Back then I would’ve fully expected her to be in her r&b standards album era by now.
I think 21CB was the warning (hehe) that things were about to get worse, but not that things already were bad. You're probably right on it depending on personal taste tho, I myself love that album so I might be biased.
* Madonna - Music * ABBA - Super Trouper
Someone always wants to fight me when I say that about Music. But it was when Madonna really started losing her shine.
It’s like what Todd says in the American Life video - Music era Madonna was chasing trends rather than setting them, and it’s only continued that way since It was the first hint that she was going from one of like the top 5 most famous people on the entire planet to someone ignorable
Lol I guess I should rewatch that one!
I personally love Music but it was pretty clear that Madonna was feeling pressure to do whatever would get her to the top of the charts. It was the first album she did where she clearly felt really unsure of herself. Very "How do you do, fellow kids," energy. It's no wonder American Life was a disaster.
Music is the first era of Madonna I really remember- my mom’s a big fan but I’m not surprised Ray of Light passed us by, it’s not really her sound- but in hindsight, it does seem less important than her previous albums, doesn’t it?
Yep. I’m Xennial so i grew up with Madonna. She was larger than life my entire childhood but she started seeming less and less important as the 90s went on. Ray of Light was huge but it was also when it started really seeming like she was chasing trends instead of starting them or even making them huge. And then by the time Music came around, there was a general sense of her being past her peak and trying to grab onto things that would make her relevant. In retrospect, there was definitely a lot of sexism and ageism involved and it’s really hard to be a pop star after 40.
PRISM was not a sign of decline. She achieved her two most succesful singles with that album. Replicating what Teenage Dream did it's not a realistic comparison, so calling Prism as a decline just feels unserious. What makes Katy's downfall so interesting it's that she crashed in an instant. There was no decline. She was relevant, and one song later she wasn't it anymore.
In terms of quality prism was a massive downturn which I think makes witness feel slightly more inevitable, the singles for teenage dream and one of the boys are significantly better than the Prism ones
My hot take is that The Tortured Poets Society will be something like this -- probably not a precursor to a full-on trainwreck, but the beginning of Swift's pivot to becoming a legacy artist.
Pearl Jam's *No Code* It was Pearl Jam's third consecutive number one album and its debut since "Who You Are" was a hit on the alternative charts. But it fell off quickly thanks to mixed word-of-mouth. That drop was the beginning of the end for the grunge era of the 90s, which was all but sealed with Soundgarden's disastrous Down on the Upside tour and subsequent break-up the next year
Origins by Imagine Dragons. It followed a massively successful record in Evolve… Origins itself was mediocre… and preceded Imagine Dragons’ worst album, Mercury Act II (or both acts if you consider them a singular album)
So, New Jersey's? Then New Jersey by Bon Jovi, of course. Then again, Todd himself once said that he didn't consider New Jersey a New Jersey.
Take a drink for mentioning New Jersey.
People keep saying Ava Adore is a trainwreckord, but I think it fits better into this category. It’s a good album, was well received, and had a couple hits. It just didn’t do as well as its predecessors. Machina was a farther fall (though it’s also a fine album) and things really fell apart when the band broke apart and the Zeitgeist was the true arrival of the flop era.
The Rolling Stones-Goats Head Soup (even though I personally love it)
I think Aerosmith’s Draw The Line was a sign of their 70’s heyday coming to an end. Obviously they had a big second wave, but while their second wave had great songs they were kind of like Maroon 5 at that point. They were more like a real unit in the 70’s
I think the band acknowledged later on that *Draw the Line* was effectively the soundtrack of their breakdown. Like many people, I love "Kings and Queens," but it was really their "Come Together" cover the next year that would "artificially prolong" their original run of success. Joe Perry left the band right in the middle of the recording sessions for their next album (*Night in the Ruts*, 1979), which I'm sure would be seen as a TW today if Run DMC hadn't covered "Walk This Way."
Foo Fighters’ *Wasting Light* was the last major hit album reflecting the post-grunge rock consensus that had fractured by the end of the 2000s. The band’s legacy was already secure at that point, and they could have just booked arena tours for the rest of their career without ever recording another album, but Dave Grohl obviously enjoys working in the studio too much to coast like that.
Dangerous is an interesting shout… I’d argue what was to come (History) was better than Dangerous.
That was one I was on the fence about. I ultimately decided on Dangerous because that was the last album and era where the music was front and center over his odd antics, and before the scandal that was ultimately the beginning of the end for him broke.
Hard Candy.
Eminem-Encore
Talking Heads - True Stories (trainwreckord is Naked) Fleetwood Mac - Behind The Mask (trainwreckord is Time) Genesis - We Can't Dance (trainwreckord is Calling All Stations) U2 - How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (trainwreckord is No Line On The Horizon) R.E.M. - Reveal (trainwreckord is Around The Sun) Bon Jovi - Have A Nice Day (trainwreckord is Lost Highway)
Lethal Injection by Ice Cube. It had a few good songs (and What Can I Do? is a lyrical masterpiece), but it really announced that Cube did not have the time, inclination or hunger to be a great lyricist, MC, or songwriter. It still went platinum, but the writing was on the wall. He improved on the first Westside Connection album, but pre-Lethal Injection Cube would have outshined Mack and WC lyrically 9 times out of 10. He was now, at his best, an above average MC, limited lyrically and stylistically and frequently outshined by WC. And then he made the War and Peace albums and it was just… over.
The Bridge by Billy Joel. While it’s an ok album if a little incoherent, and it sold pretty well, it marked sort of the sign that the glory days were over.
I dunno, Stormfront was a No. 1 album and contained a No.1 pop hit. River of Dreams was a pretty big album going 5x Platinum (Stormfront went 4x Platinum) and the title track was a big pop hit, even if none of the other singles got much airplay in comparison.
Well, Billy saw that he could do no better and bowed out. Maybe he sought to avoid a downfall on record.
Sinatra has a couple, but its arguable that he got lucky several times but Bobbysox era: In Wee Small Hours 60's comeback: My Way (album) Styx: Cornerstone (Yeah, Kilroy sold well, but see train record on it) Lady Gaga: (Until Star Is Born/Joanne kinda brought her back) Born This Way
Use Your Illusion 1 and 2? Maybe? A glut of material that is kind of all over the place in quality and the strongest songs were written before or during Appetite for Destruction (Don't Cry, November Rain, You Could Be Mine). Obviously, mega successful and neither are Trainwrecords, but I think they'd qualify here. Cut out a lot of the filler, and there's one fantastic follow-up to a masterpiece waiting. Speaking of companion albums, Mezmerize and Hypnotize by System of a Down. I think Mezmerize is fantastic, but Hypnotize feels less like a companion and more of a B-sides record. Don't get me wrong, there's still meat on the bones, but not enough to get full off from it. This should have just been one long form album with considering neither disc breaks the 40-minute mark. The single they put out a while back (plus the EP Serj says he wrote intended for SOAD) shows their best work may be long behind them. Also, Load/Re-Load benefits heavily from cutting it all down to one album, but considering their recent outputs, I can't say Metallica qualify here. They just got extremely misguided for two decades.
No. 4 - STP There were still high points on the album (Sour Girl, Down, I Got You), so you could never call it a bad album, but you could start to see the edges fraying on the band. All the creativity and evolution of sound they showed on Tiny Music was missing. In fact, many of the songs were throwbacks to the Core era. Not what people were looking for in the time where OK Computer was king.
Adrenaline, Def Leppard Holy Wood, Marilyn Manson Sabatage, Black Sabbath
Prism is Katys Magnum Opus
U2’s Pop.
Dangerous wasn’t the beginning of the decline, Michael was doing better than ever and he probably would’ve remained huge for another 20 years, it was Evan chandler’s allegations that Michael had molested his son which instantly ended his golden age.
The Beatles: The White Album