One Album Wonders

 6  One Album Wonders

So did you ever get excited by a band, you go out and get their first album or tape or cd, you start thinking the band is great but then all of a sudden they never impress you the way they did the first time?

I get that a lot, so I wanted to make a list today (in no particular order), of the bands that have really only had one great album. Maybe it’s commercially or critically, or even amongst a major group of people. Just a list of bands or artists that made us long for more but never created a decent follow up.

I want to point out quickly, that I am not talking about artists that never made a second album, so you won’t find The Sex Pistols or Lauryn Hill today. But I am thinking about dedicating a day to the Sex Pistols soon. So no more talking about it, let’s get on with it.

Hootie and The Blowfish

Their debut album in 1994 was Cracked Rear View.  It is the 16^th best-selling album of all time, I loved it.  Everyone knows at least one of the four hits from the album: Time, Hold My Hand, Let Her Cry, or Only Wanna Be with You.  They won a Grammy as Best New Artist for Christ’s sake.  My dad liked them, for Fuck’s sake my dad and I agreed on what was good music for this one point in my puberty era. (keep in mind this was before I heard Pinkerton)

So, Then 1996 came along, by the end of the year I would be finding new things to worry about, but in Spring Hootie put out a new album, and it was called Fairweather Johnson.  Well I became a Fairweather Hootie and the Blowfish fan.  I don’t want to say the album sucked,but it was not good. I just re listened to it again, and maybe I was biased, but it felt like they phoned it in. The whole world sort of agreed with me, sure they were on friends but that episode sucked too(the one where Rachel Phoebe and joey are poor) Rolling Stone got it wrong, they liked the album but that is because they fired the guy that wrote the original review of the album and it was negative. Don’t believe me, read this.

Ok, I will say this for the band, they had 1 last song that the world remembered, it was I Go Blind, a cover song, that ironically was on a Friends CD, not on any official Hootie CD until their greatest hits album.  But that was it in my opinion. Yes, they still sold albums but come on, their singles sucked.  

Hootie and the Blowfish made Three more studio albums 1998’s Musical Chairs, which still went platinum, but the other two, a self-titled venture in 2003 and Looking for Lucky in 2005 didn’t do shit.(maybe looking for Lucky was appropriately titled) Nothing they did seemed to recapture the grand sound on Cracked Rear View, and eventually stopped playing together.  They are not officially split up, but Darius Rucker, the front man of the band, has released a few solo albums albeit country albums, and they are actually good.

In the end I hope Rucker’s  career somehow brings the band back. I would go see them if they played Cracked Rear View from cover to cover, hell I would even sit through a couple of Rucker’s country songs. I just don’t want to hear any of that other crap.

Third Eye Blind

Ok, this one will not be as long as the last but let me start by saying that officially as of now Third Eye Blind is still a fucking band. Granted, you would only recognize the lead singer and the drummer, nonetheless they are still together. Also, they are in the midst of recording what lead singer Stephan Jenkins calls their last album.

Wait- Don’t go!

No- No I am kidding you should have hung your shit up in 1998!

Ok so that first album it was self-titled, it had arguably 4 good singles, three of which were top ten hits: Semi-Charmed Life , How’s It Going to Be, and Jumper.  I always liked Graduate so that’s why I consider it a hit, it reached number 14 on the hot 100 chart, so yeah that counts.  They were all good songs, honestly.  There is a darkness to Third Eye Blind’s music, a sort of angst, sure Semi-Charmed Life is a poppy song but it had dark lyrics about drug addiction and sex, so it still had a coolness to it. 

So, yeah I am not afraid to admit it, I loved this tape.  It held a spot for me, I was a sophomore at that point and I could really start relating to darker stuff, maybe I didn’t know anyone who had committed suicide, nor did I know anyone that was hardcore into drugs. We had tried pot by then, but the heavy stuff came later. But I liked it, there were great dynamic shifts in the album, somber moments, reflective moments, angry moments, just pick your favorite song.

Then Blue came out in the middle of my senior year. Stephan Jenkins might as well sat inside the cd case and just jumped out and spit in my face. At least then I could have punched him in his non existant nuts afterwards, but no instead I got to listen to a shitty CD and wonder why I wasted 13 bucks on that crap and wished I would have bought some tacos instead.

It wasn’t that the CD was bad, it still had some darkness to it, but every song felt poppy and fake. Like they said “hey, we are going to take our last album, paraphrase that shit, slightly alter the beat a little and call it a new album.”  On top of that, they took what I would consider the best song on the album, Slow Motion, and made it instrumental except for the chorus. ( I didn’t find out until a few weeks later at The Exclusive Company that they had done that, I thought the song was just supposed to be that way.) So here was this band that was cool and had a chance at becoming something great for me, and anyone else that wanted darker lyrics and they fucked it all up.

They put out two more albums  and an EP, but the only thing worth listening to was their greatest hits album, that finally had the whole song of Slow Motion on it. The world finally got to hear the verses. They haven’t had a single in the top ten since Jumper in 1998. Maybe they have some die-hard fans out there somewhere, but I have never heard anyone mention them fondly, and until I do, Fuck Em

Below is a video of the band performing Slow Motion, I felt like showing you this rather than anything off the self-titled release. This song has dark lyrics, and in my opinion it’s a tongue in cheek view of shit going on. I highly recommend it, plus go listen to Semi-Charmed life on your own time.

Jewel

Ok so I thought the last one was going to be shorter, maybe I should focus on artists that I didn’t really like for a while. This should be much shorter.

I wasn’t getting laid yet in 1997, but I like to think that any guy that bought Jewel’s first album, Pieces of You for his girlfriend would definitely be getting some. That album was everywhere you looked. It had come out two years earlier but just sort of did nothing, until someone decide to release Who Will Save Your Soul as a single and make a video. Then she did it again with You were Meant For Me and Foolish Games.  Jewel was awesome and incredibly talented, I will give her that, it was just never my taste. I don’t remember much about her really, other than her Snaggle Tooth.

Oh wait, I remember for another reason, and In my opinion, this is the reason she fell out of America’s graces, but I could be wrong. Super Bowl 32, one of my favorites , because it was the first time the Packers lost a Super Bowl. (Yes I know that it is the only time it happened and ha ha the Bears suck, whatever, it was a great moment for me.) The Half time performance was a damn good Motown revue as well.  But what happened before the game that was the bread and butter.  Jewel was clearly,clearly lip syncing . It wasn’t so much that she was lip syncing but the fact that she was still fucking waving and smiling when the song started. She fucking jumps towards the microphone.  Everyone at home noticed I am sure.(Brett Favre missed it cause he was high on Vicodin) Have a look for yourself here.

So why would that matter?  

  America knows that people lip sync, in fact some people just always assume that it is happening, but when it becomes obvious, it pisses us off. Think of Oz, the first time you watch the Wizard of Oz and you see that giant head you are like “what the fuck, that shit is crazy” depending on your age you might say something more like ‘that’s a big head”, the point being, by the time you watch it a third time you are like, “ Dammit Toto just go open that curtain so I don’t have to watch this nonsense, it’s just a normal sized dude with some bells and whistles”  Think about it What happened to Milli Vanilli, what happened to Ashlee Simpson, Hell people are still talking about whether or not Beyoncé did it at the inauguration.

 So for some odd reason, we just hate that shit.

After that Jewel put out like 7 more albums, none of which anybody really remembers. Sure she had that hands song on her second album, and I will admit I kind of liked that Intuition song, but it was not what any of her fans wanted to hear and, I think the only reason why I liked it was the T and A in the video. She just never made anything as good as that first album. But somehow Jewel manages to keep popping up everywhere, TV shows always seem to want her and keep her name in the news,  but she has yet to keep anyone interested.

Matchbox Twenty

Matchbox Twenty put out their debut album  Yourself or Someone Like you in 96, but it didn’t really catch on until 1998 But it had 6 hit singles, technically 5, technically technically 2. Ok so The 6 are Long Day, Push, 3 A.M. , Real World, Back 2 Good,  and Girl Like That.   Girl Like That never officially charted on any charts whatsoever. And due to some obscure rule about official singles, the only songs that made it to the US Hot 100 were Real World and Back 2 Good.  Literally Side 1 of the tape was all singles.

That is Fucking Crazy!!!!

Seriously, that’s the craziest album marketing that I have ever heard of, but it worked. Matchbox Twenty were in hot demand after that. Rob Thomas the lead singer quickly became a heartthrob, especially when he did that song with Santana(Don’t try to think of it now, it fucking sucks and you know it) I will admit I did my hair just like Rob Thomas and  I thought that shit looked good.  So there is no place to go from there except higher and higher right?

Wrong, Their next album Mad Season actually included a Number One single, Bent, but it was too late. They also released If You’re Gone and two other songs as singles but their popularity was on its way down, the album sold only a third of the copies that the previous one had, and really if you talk to someone about Matchbox Twenty the average person will recall fondly of the first album, mention briefly their second album and wonder what the hell they are doing now.

That is a great question,  after Mad Season they released albums in 2002, and 2007. Then last year they came out with a new album, North.  It fucking went to number 1 in the US backed by the kinda hit song She’s So Mean, but then they disappeared again.  Two other songs were released as singles, but nobody really seemed to care, but who knows, maybe this year more will be issued, but I am not holding my breath.

Bush

Every fucking kid in my junior high could play Glycerine on the guitar!

Bush released their debut album Sixteen Stone in late 1994 and started dropping singles off it in 1995. First it was Everything Zen, which was good and got everyone interested, then Little Things, not as good, I think at that moment me and my friends were not quite impressed yet. Then Comedown came out, “hey this is good shit” By the time rock radio started playing Glycerine we already had the tape or that was why we bought it, and Machinehead as a single made us so excited we went fucking nuts at our  junior high dances. 

Every song was great and yeah sure they sounded a bit like Nirvana but Kurt Cobain was dead and we needed a god damn replacement. These British dudes had everything we were looking for; loud guitars, raspy voices and songs that only kinda sorta made sense to us.  So everything was perfect again, we had our new grunge hero to look forward to and new songs to learn.

So what the fuck happened?

1996 happened, Razorblade Suitcase happened. The biggest fucking sophomore slump of my life. Fuck Gavin Rossdale and everyone that looks like him. (And in 1996 that was a lot of people) They tried to make a new sound of their own; those whiny bastards didn’t want to be the next Nirvana.  It least that’s what they said, but the song Swallowed might as well been written by Kurt Cobain.  But then other songs on the album just plain sucked ass. There were no songs that we could get into deeply.  Hell they had singles from this album that the fucking band, the own fucking musicians themselves didn’t even want on their greatest hits 1994-1999 record! Seriously, it was just uninteresting dribble and I don’t know what it was like at your school, but at my school we moved on, we found punk and ska and anyone that still liked Bush sucked.

Bush managed to put out 3 more albums, The Science of Things in 1999, which was complete bullshit,  they added electronic elements   “are these fuckers trying to be Nine Inch Nails now?” Golden State in 2001 which no one cared about and apparently The Sea of Memories in 2011(I say apparently because I was completely unaware until today that they had done this) to my best record I thought they broke up in 2002. Well it turns out like other overly obsessed with themselves lead singers, Gavin Rossdale kept Bush alive and just pumped new members into it.

 Either way, for me if it’s not the original lineup and they are not playing a Sixteen Stone heavy set list, I don’t want to hear them.

Weezer

      Let me begin by saying that it took me forever to write this and stay true to the subject of the post. I honestly tried my hardest. It’s hard to be honest about something you have fought against for so long, for Christ’s sake my son’s whole name is Rivers Jonas Wade, I have 1 tattoo and it’s a weezer symbol, so this was hard

Ok I thought that I was going to have to write a paragraph or two about Weezer, and I will. I can’t make this list without being subjective right?  Let’s be honest, they came out with their self-titled debut album (The Blue Album)in 1994 and the thing was off the damn charts. Undone – The Sweater Song was cool as hell. Rivers Cuomo was the band leader and the leader of geekdom. (I still wear thick black glasses) Then, oh man then they had this video directed by Spike Jonze where they were playing in their band on the set of God Damn Happy Days. Al Molinaro said they were from Kenosha. Of course I quickly figured out that they weren’t but some people still believed it.  Then Say It Ain’t So got a video.  Weezer was all over MTV they captured every geeky kids heart. The whole album could have been hit singles for all I cared. 

Then Rivers Cuomo went to Harvard and got his leg fixed(he was born with one leg longer than the other) He wanted to make a rock opera as the band’s next album. Sadly they didn’t instead they made Pinkerton, an album critics hated and Rolling Stone called one of the worst of the year. (of course fans and tons of musicians consider it to be one of the best of all time) But Frankly from a commercial point of view the band didn’t do squat. The songs were deeper somewhat darker  but most of all sadder and deeply invasive into Cuomo’s personal life.

Then what happened? Well,  the band took some time off, Cuomo supposedly went dark, burned the Pinkerton master tapes and bounced a tennis ball off a wall for four years(that’s not really what happened, but rumors of it were rampant) Then Cuomo was ready for a return, bassist Matt Sharp left the group and was replaced by Mikey Welsh, and weezer put out another self-titled album(The Green Album).

Then Welsh left the group and new bassist Scott Shriner jumped in. The band released 6 more albums, including yet another self-titled album(The Red Album).  They found some success in 2005 with Make Believe, which included Beverly Hills, the number 2 downloaded song of the year, and they were nominated for a Grammy.  But they never really made anything of it. They just continued to jump in and out of the light, with no major success and no CD that sold more than the original self-titled debut.

There are two camps out there, there are people like me that are waiting for a Pinkerton 2 and there are other people still waiting for a second Blue Album. Who knows which will come first, it will no doubt piss someone off. Let’s just be happy for the recent Memories Tour where they played both albums back to back 2 nights in a row.

So that’s it- that is the list for today, and another glimpse into my world. I hope this makes you think and maybe somehow we can solve this dilemma for our children’s favorite bands,  until then, enjoy my angst let me know what you liked didn’t like about today’s list or maybe I left someone off.