10 Artists That Ended Their Career With One Album

Everything that the Eagles had worked for at the start of the ‘70s seemed to be building towards Hotel California. After already striking solid gold on every single album, this was the record that put them in the same breath as their musical heroes, with almost every single song having the potential to be a single. They may have reached the top of the mountain, but there’s no real rulebook of where to go next after that.

Then again, these sunshine rockers were already on unsteady ground during the tour promoting Hotel California, letting go of bassist Randy Meisner and hiring Timothy B. Schmidt in his place. Launching themselves into the ‘80s, most of the band don’t really have fond memories of recording the Long Run, not hiding the fact that most of them were high out of their minds on cocaine during most of the sessions. Now that they were living their rock and roll fantasies, the songwriting machine of Glenn Frey and Don Henley was starting to break down, leading to songs that either had weak premises like The Disco Strangler or were focusing more on sounding like the new wave of ‘80s music on King of Hollywood.

While there are some decent tracks on here like I Can’t Tell You Why and the title track, the writing was on the wall that this version of the band wasn’t going to last very long afterward, as the band got more and more dysfunctional on the road and leading to an infamous performance where Don Felder and Glenn violently argued with each other in between songs. These guys brought California bliss to everyone in the ‘70s, but after this album, they were never going to survive the ‘80s intact.