10 Massive Albums That Never Lived Up To The Hype

When you reach the top of the musical food chain, hype can be the most important thing in the world for an artist. Before you even release anything after your classic records, the thought of you even dropping something will have your fans clamoring to get their hands on whatever you do next. The hype might be real, but it can also get more than a little bit heavy after a while.

Even though every one of these bands may have put their best foot forward on every single one of these albums, the hype that was surrounding them just ended up feeling like a bit of a buzzkill by comparison. That’s not necessarily the band’s fault though. In their minds they were just looking to make the next best album in their discography, but the fans wanted the second coming of musical gods and were disappointed when their expectations fell short. That doesn’t mean that every single record on this list is bad. There are some that deserve to be classics on their own, if they didn’t have to be put next to some of the biggest records ever made.

At the same time, you can tell that a few of these records tended to get swallowed in the recording process, with the artist focusing so hard to make their record sound big that they ended up with a mess by the end. The hype may have had people a little bit overzealous for what their favorite bands were going to do next, but these records are a good example of how expectations can sometimes bite you in the ass.

When Joe Perry returned to Aerosmith, it really did feel like the impossible had happened. The Toxic Twins partnership between him and Steven Tyler fell out hard and the band was not going to be half the band they were without Joe pumping out the riffs in the back of everything. Just because everyone’s buddy buddy again doesn’t necessarily mean that the album holds up though.

While half of this record is the next logical step for where the band should have gone after Joe’s last album Draw the Line, you can tell that the band are still not at full capacity yet, still being strung out on drugs and letting the jammy part of their sound get in the way on tracks like She’s on Fire. Old habits also die hard for some of the songs on here, having a much darker slant that works wonders in some spots but tend to feel too left of field for what Aerosmith is all about as the record goes on.

That’s not to say that there’s all dogs on this record, especially considering the opener Let the Music Do the Talking, which might be one of the best comeback singles the band could have asked for, complete with the rapid fire delivery from Tyler and an almost punkish energy behind it. The label knew they needed to switch things up on the project, but if the guys could have just kept their sh*t together, we may have been able to avoid some of the more glossy production that was to come.