10 Rock Albums That Went From Hated To Loved

Not everyone who comes into the music business is necessarily looking to become famous. Even when Pearl Jam were dominating the Seattle club scene in the early ‘90s, Eddie Vedder was never quite comfortable when it came time to actually play the music he loved on a bigger stage. Eddie couldn’t control the crowds that were showing up, but he could control the kind of music that he wanted to make.

While Vitalogy was the first time that some fans got a look at the stranger side of Pearl Jam, No Code is almost nothing but them experimenting for an entire project, which threw fans for a loop when they first heard it. Coming off of songs like Better Man, hearing tracks like Who You Are and In My Tree released as singles made people scratch their head more than rocking out. Although this album is very much doing its own thing, that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily bad. If anything, this is probably the most raw Pearl Jam album that they’ve ever released, with the band sounding like they’re at their wit’s end trying to put these tracks together.

And while hardcore fans may have gotten this record for the more hard hitting songs like Hail Hail, the best parts of the project these days tend to be the more experimental bits, like when the band goes full acoustic on Off He Goes or whatever the hell is going on in Habit. If any other band were to release a record like this after becoming big, this would have been considered one of the biggest sophomore slumps in rock history. Pearl Jam were built for something stronger than that, and No Code is just the image of five men with the music world at their feet and being absolutely terrified of what happens next.