10 Rock Albums That Almost Killed Careers
4. No Code - Pearl Jam
It's usually every musician's dream to be a part of a successful rock act. Instead of just slogging it out playing in random bars night after night, Pearl Jam had managed to capture the attention of the world and launch the alternative rock movement at the start of the '90s. This was normally a time to celebrate...not so with Eddie Vedder.
Across the band's next few records, Vedder tried as hard as he could to distance himself from his fans and the rest of the world. While almost any of the albums could have fit in that category, No Code is where things take a quantum leap in terms of sound. Compared to the larger than life sounds of their debut album Ten and even the punkier side of Vs., this album is much more downtempo and more concerned with making rock-influenced art pieces rather than coherent songs.
Even though there are some songs that end up working like Hail Hail and Lukin, other tracks like I'm Open and Who You Are almost feel like Eddie is deliberately trying to sound uncommercial. With the band at odds on top of the whole thing, this proved to be a breaking point for the group's tension, after which they moved on to straight up rock and roll on Yield. For as many artists try to reach a broad demographic of fans, No Code sounds like the one album intentionally designed to lose fans.