10 Perfect Albums That Broke Up The Band

There's a good case to be made that the La's debut album helped launched the Britpop movement 5 years before it was a thing. While there were definitely bands like the Stone Roses coming out before the likes of Oasis and Blur hit the scene, the songwriting of Lee Mavers had that perfect balance of alternative attitude and pop hookiness that would come to define the songwriting of everyone from Noel Gallagher to Richard Ashcroft. In fact, maybe the problem here was the fact that it sounded a little too perfect.

As the La's tried to make their debut album, Lee was getting more and more agitated about not getting the sounds that he heard in his head, along with getting more and more pedantic about every little thing in the studio, like tuning to the ambience of the air conditioner in the corner of the room. After being given an ultimatum by the record company, the band's debut was thrown together just to have something out, and Lee was quick to discount it as nowhere close to the band's best work when it was actually released.

Over the course of the tour though, that perfection never really came, with Lee continuing to woodshed one song after another and playing the same tracks over and over again without any new material. Having played the same setlist for years, John Power had had enough, getting into a fight with Lee onstage about playing new songs and eventually leaving to form the band Cast later on. Though the La's debut remains one of the greatest albums of the early '90s, it doesn't really look like Lee is planning to make a new album any time soon.