10 Massive Drops In Quality Between Albums

The Stone Roses were probably not thinking about what their debut record was going to mean for British music when they were making it. Though they definitely had a handle on the dance centric side of rock and roll, hearing these straight up pop rock songs right before the Nirvana era of music planted the seeds for what would become Britpop once the grunge empire rose and fell. With that much to measure up to though, you can't really blame the Roses for second guessing themselves on the follow up.

For most of Second Coming, the band were struggling to even get on the same page in the studio, as John Squire and Ian Brown kept getting more frustrated with how the songs should take shape. And you can really hear that studio tension on the record, with the songs stretching out to ridiculous lengths and often going nowhere. Though there are definitely songs like Love Spreads which puts you in a trance like atmosphere, you can't help but feel the band trying to equal the kind of bombast they were seeing with bands that had come up after them like Oasis.

They didn't need to change at all though. If they had just kept up being the Stone Roses on the second album, it would have made for something that was fairly decent and kept them in the public eye for a little while longer. For what we got, this feels closer to an EP's worth of great material than an actual great album. There are sprinkles of brilliance...just not enough to go around.