10 Bands That Never Topped Their 1st Album

There's only so much you can do with three chords and Ramones already did it, so there's no point in trying it again, daddy-o.

The band's 1976 debut is the purest example of how simple, instinctive songwriting and memorable slogans can overcome even the most severe shortcomings in a band's musicianship and lack of conventional sex appeal.

It predates Never Mind the !*$%, Here's the Sex Pistols by more than a year and confirmed the band as one of rock's greatest. It's both one of the dumbest and funniest rock and roll experiences available to the consumer to this day.

The follow-up Leave Home is, song-for-song, slightly weaker and polishes off some of the rough edges with some bubblegum pop elements. Their third, 1977's Rocket To Russia, is worthy of a mention in the same breath as the debut with its bizarre dropped-on-the-head take on surf rock, but by then the element of surprise had gone.

Over the two decades that followed, the band squeezed every last possible variation out of their three-chord formula with varied success, but never again would their first brilliantly stoopid statement be matched.