10 Huge Rock Albums That Didn't Deserve To Flop

No band is required to stay in the same sound for the rest of their days. Even though it might be in their best interest to give the fans what they want more often than not, sometimes you just need to trust your gut and do what feels right to you at the moment. You just have to make sure it's a gradual shift, or you end up in Arctic Monkeys' situation just a few years back.

After already nailing down the retro cynicism of AM with Do I Wanna Know and R U Mine?, this feels like it was designed to piss some people off at the start, trading in the guitar centric rock cuts for keyboards and a whole lot of lounge songs. Most of those rock fans had a genuine right to be upset, but if you take away everything you knew about Arctic Monkeys, they actually pull off this style a lot better than you'd probably expect.

Coming into this kind of sound relatively late, this feels like the kind of move that someone like Bowie would have made in his prime, taking the sarcastic lyrics and putting them to a song that sounds like Frank Sinatra's slower side. In between the actual effects, there's also a greater attention to detail when it comes to lyrics this time around, as Alex Turner gets more in tune with himself and trying to switch up his usual style completely. There's no way this is going to be a favorite among rock fans right out of the gate, but once you get over the audio whiplash that you get from this record, it has a pretty compelling story to tell.