10 Albums That Killed Artists' Careers
1. Pinkerton - Weezer
It almost feels wrong to put the best album on this list at the top of the heap as a career killer. On the surface, Pinkerton is not only one of the greatest albums Weezer has ever produced, but may very well be one of the greatest albums of the '90s as a whole.
On the other hand, this stroke of genius ended up backfiring on the band spectacularly.
Coming off of the high of their pop punk debut, Rivers Cuomo used Pinkerton as a way for the band to get raw, with a blemished production and more introspective lyrics about Cuomo's love life and disarray with being a rockstar. While these tend to be seen as the album's greatest strengths nowadays, people were having none of it at the time. With Weezer supposed to be the antithesis of bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden, the last thing they wanted from these nerd rockers were downtrodden songs about despair.
The entire rock fanbase ended up coming around on Pinkerton over the years, but the damage had already been done.
Given the intense backlash, Weezer broke up for 5 years, only to re-emerge in the early '00s, with Cuomo changing his writing style to appease his audience. Weezer have released some solid albums since Pinkerton, but as a whole, this initial flop ended up changing Cuomo's songwriting... and not for the better.