commercially disappointing major label rock/alternative albums of 1996

Philip wins the thread. It's all about Thayil's "Whatfuckingever, man."

Down on the Upside is not great. Ty Cobb is okay, and Blow Up The Outside World. But def pale compared to Superunknown...you could kinda tell they were pretty much done

― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Friday, May 4, 2012 4:16 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes, and 'Pretty Noose', 'Rhinosaur', 'Burden In My Hand', 'Never Named', 'Never The Machine Forever', 'Switch Opens', 'Overfloater' and 'An Unkind'.

― The Jupiter 8 (Turrican), Friday, May 4, 2012 12:27 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

and "Dusty" and "Zero Chance" and "No Attention"!

btw guys i finally thought of a major label follow-up with a serious sales dropoff from '96 that i totally overlooked for the thread options:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7a/CrackerTheGoldenAge.jpg

I actually just listened to "I'm A Little Rocket Ship" the other day

i hate my generation!!

fight this generation

Philip wins the thread.

I always thought Cracker was pretty lame and trying way too hard.

oh god yes

lol anthony when you added that song to your spotify 'used bins' playlist at first i thought the playlist was called "I'm A Little Rocket Ship to Used Bins"

which is p otm when you think about it

Voted "Amazing Disgrace" in spite of it probably being The Posies' weakest album.

lol i'm glad that even you didn't want to vote for Wild Mood Swings

Amazing Disgrace is definitely better than Success, Every Kind of Light and Blood/Candy, though, even if you prefer the earlier stuff.

Oops. Didn't see that one. Would have went for "Wild Mood Swings" instead, but thought this was all American alternative and didn't notice it.

bullet = dodged

although I'm surprised you didn't give any consideration to the esteemed America musical acts Bush, The Cranberries or Elvis Costello

Dan so funny.

Though really, Bush is more an American act than British. By like eleventy jillion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gfey7YwuqQ

POLL it to hell and gone: DOWN ON THE UPSIDE

Though really, Bush is more an American act than British. By like eleventy jillion.

OTM!

As for Elvis Costello, "All This Useless Beauty" was maybe his last album worthy of much attention at all, and all the same sooo much less worthy of attention than the one before it.

This thread seems like it was MADE for me, because 95/96 is when I started listening to the radio and catching up on all the stuff, so my musical world was really heavily flooded with these albums and their rather long runs of singles. The soundtrack to countless hours spent designing Duke Nukem levels after school!

Better Than Ezra - Friction, Baby - Only know the singles ("King of New Orleans," "Desperately Wanting") - those are pretty solid though

Bush - Razorblade Suitcase - Owned this. It's horrible.

Counting Crows - Recovering The Sattelites - Again, decent singles - I have no beef whatsoever with "Long December" although a coworker of mine once declared "Trying to sing like that guy just makes me feel... dumpy."

The Cranberries - To The Faithful Departed - Shark-jumping moment IMO.

Hootie & The Blowfish - Fairweather Johnson - Did anyone buy this? I always had the sense they had this ENORMOUS hit record and then this one barely made any impact at all, to the point where I don't recall it even getting a second single pushed after "Old Man & Me." Which is a perfectly good Hootie song, really. You wonder if everyone who bought the first one spent the following couple of years listening to it exclusively and just got sick of their whole thing. I actually put it on recently and it's not a bad album really - but moronically sequenced with all the singles up front and the filler in the back.

Metallica - Load - I have a fondness for all the singles off this. Again, Duke Nukem time. I think "Until It Sleeps" is the first video that I remember just seeing on CONSTANTLY and wishing they would play something else.

Pearl Jam - No Code - This is a good record. It's not as good as its champions want to make out - I find a lot of it just a little TOO jammy and open-ended - but the strong songs are really strong and it has a great sound overall.

The Presidents of the United States of America - II - This is also okay! Consistent, anyway. "Ladies and Gentlemen" I like, also "Tiki God." Did what they do pretty competently. Hard to say it's somehow measurably worse than the first one.

R.E.M. - New Adventures In Hi-Fi - My vote for best here, easily. It's another overlong late-90s CD, but there's no out-and-out duds (the instrumental could go, okay) and it has a wonderfully earthy, recorded-live quality that totally fits where the band was and the kind of songs they were writing and themes they were addressing. Would have been their perfect final album had they quit at this point, and I think there's a substantial REM fan contingent that would rate this their career best. Basically this was killed by a) terrible choice of lead single and b) their fanbase had always been too big for the kind of band they were and it was sort of inevitable that that bubble would burst. I think I got that take from someone on ILX though...

Soundgarden - Down On The Upside - This is also very good, also terribly over-long and badly in need of an edit. Did we do a thread about this one? I like it a lot but there's easily four or five songs you could chop and not miss. But great material - and "commercially disappointing" only relative to the previous record going 5x platinum, right?

Stone Temple Pilots - Tiny Music... Songs From The Vatican Gift Shop - Great glammy singles and lazy, "creative" filler. "Art School Girlfriend"? Jesus Christ.

They Might Be Giants - Factory Showroom - A weird record for them, honestly - clearly an attempt to step back a little from John Henry and get back some of the quirk to their sound after being so excited about sounding like a "real band," ie, a boring alt-rock band. Oddly enough, this one always felt too short to me and this is where I got off the TMBG bus (well, I did buy the live album after this). Some great songs on it though - "Spiraling Shape," "Your Own Worst Enemy," "Til My Head Falls Off"... Anyway, while I'm not sure this belongs here (how well did John Henry sell exactly? Surely Flood has to be their highest-profile record?), it still belongs among this company because it easily has THE worst cover art of any of these records.

Weezer - Pinkerton - It's okay. I tried hard to like it more than I did, because of all the cult praise - that would have been a few years later I think. Just a kind of dreary, unexciting record, and I don't think that's because of its "serious themes" or "darkness," or whatever, because in fact the songwriting is still generally pretty solid - it's just that the hooks sort of sit there on the disc instead of leaping out the speaker, seems like a production issue or maybe just not spending enough time adding the special little touches. This might be the biggest creative drop of any of these IMO - the best stuff here still doesn't measure up to the pure brilliance of the album cuts on the blue one.

Did we do a thread about this one?

Linked two posts up: POLL it to hell and gone: DOWN ON THE UPSIDE

The Cranberries - To The Faithful Departed - Shark-jumping moment IMO.

the Cranberries were born on the wrong side of the shark

i don't think this album was ever looked at as a "big flop"

I think that perception comes from received wisdom that '96 was the year of big rock "flops" (Load, New Adventures In Hi-Fi, No Code etc)* which paved the way for the late 90s rapcore/techno/ska movement.

*All of which sold in #s labels would kill for today.

― The Wild Shirtless Lyrics of Mark Farner (C. Grisso/McCain), Tuesday, March 24, 2009 3:31 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark

ha prescient post on that DOTU thread

my friend Joel always sings "Asshole Son" for "Black Hole Sun" - try it, it's really much funnier

unless he's your dad

Casino otm about New Adventures in Hi-Fi, particularly wrt the lead single. I always suspected they led off with "E-Bow" with the intention of deflating the very bubble you speak of.

E-Bow is easily favorite REM single and one of the main reasons why I would vote for it

Would have been their perfect final album had they quit at this point, and I think there's a substantial REM fan contingent that would rate this their career best.

for a while Brit critics DID consider it REM's best album.

Anyway, while I'm not sure this belongs here (how well did John Henry sell exactly? Surely Flood has to be their highest-profile record?)

well, the idea isn't that these albums all necessarily followed the band's biggest album (about a third of them didn't). but yeah i may be exaggerating the dropoff just because Factory Showroom's Billboard peak was lower, it didn't even have a moderate hit on the level of "Snail Shell," and they got dropped by Elektra immediately afterwards.

I don't dislike "E-Bow", it's just an objectively insane lead single for a mainstream, major label album.

In this context, "insane" = "expected to entice anyone but fans to buy the album".

r.e.m. and PJ are my faves here. i sort of like the neil young one in parts. 'big time' is a jam, 'scattered' and 'music arcade' are pretty excellent, the rest seems sloppy even by neil standards of slop.

it's funny because compare that to "What's The Frequency, Kenneth" doing such a great job of tricking millions into thinking Monster would be awesome (xpost)

'monster' is pretty awesome imo!

my friend Joel always sings "Asshole Son" for "Black Hole Sun" - try it, it's really much funnier

― cosi fan whitford (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Friday, May 4, 2012 8:26 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This was a "thing" actually, or at least I remember hearing a radio DJ type parody with this. "Asshole son, mow the lawn.." etc. Not exactly Yankovic level.

Yeah, I stan for Monster too, see for example You Wore Your ExPOLLtations Like An Armored Suit: REM's "Monster"

well, the idea isn't that these albums all necessarily followed the band's biggest album (about a third of them didn't). but yeah i may be exaggerating the dropoff just because Factory Showroom's Billboard peak was lower, it didn't even have a moderate hit on the level of "Snail Shell," and they got dropped by Elektra immediately afterwards.

Okay, yeah, that makes sense. I think i had my wires crossed with the "career-killing followups" thread!

In hindsight some of this is just radio listeners and record companies shedding themselves of acts that were ill-conceivedly signed in a rush of post-Nevermind and Ten enthusiasm, right? Like in what universe did REM's bazillon-dollar contract ever look like a long-term Good Idea? Or the idea that They Might Be Giants were the kind of band that clearly was going to just knock out hit record after hit record? Of course they put out a trio of moderate and/or lukewarm-selling things and went back to a cult.

What it meant though is that, as much as some of these records are indeed bloated crap, it was a really fun time to listen to the radio because everything seemed really in flux and you could get exposed to MUCH weirder music than you'd expect for mainstream rock radio. Not just "alternative breaking through" but the idea that some of these records got even a halfhearted push by major labels is pretty cool to me. And the fallout from this is the really vibrant radio landscape of 96-98 when seemingly just any damn thing would be played on the alternative station. It was a lot of fun and made a good gateway drug for getting into indie rock once I hit college.

none of these records sounds particularly weird to me, Doctor

now if you argue that Kurt Cobain referring to the Raincoats and such, then, yeah

to my ears the mid nineties college radio charts really sucked compared to the diverse programming of the 1988-1991 period.

i dunno, i don't think REM's popularity was on such shaky ground. i mean, it makes sense in retrospect that they went back to being a cult band while U2 stayed in stadiums, but they were neck-and-neck for years and years, i can easily picture an alternate reality in which REM held onto much more of their peak era audience for much longer.

but yeah obviously this whole list is just a testament to the hubris of the majors at that point and the inevitable bubble burst of that 91-95 signing frenzy.

xpost

i dunno it was pretty weird that anyone thought cowboy-hats-and-megaphones ers ministry might be a commercial proposition

xp to alfred there

yeah this is the period when U2 (according to the definitive Bill Flanagan book) and R.E.M. were not quiet about praising each other as the only competition for Biggest Band in the World.

yeah i mean, at the point that REM signed that ridiculous deal, they were in the artists who had a long streak of every album selling more than the last club for 9 albums straight, they were kind of unstoppable.

nothing on this list was as disappointing to me as 'freak*on*ica' was several years later

haha i have a friend who was a huge GVSB stan and he was so excited and then disappointed about that album

weren't we all

Oh jesus fuck no Freak*On*Ica no no no.

Even after that travesty, I regrettably went back to the well not once but twice (if you count the Session 7 soundtrack. Such a dummy.