10 Rock Artists That Tried To Destroy Their Career

The rock and roll roller coaster isn’t necessarily for everyone. Everyone strives to be good at what they do, but none of them really want to handle the baggage that goes along with it either. You can try to play the game on your own terms if you want to, but more often than not it’s better to work with what you can control.

Taking full ownership of their music, these bands deliberately tried to sabotage some of the bigger parts of their career, either by limiting the exposure that they get in the media or trying to make some sort of divide between their fanbases. For as much as these bands may have liked their fans, they weren’t too keen on the more fairweather people that came with them, and decided that it was time to even things out by making some of the most divisive music of their career.

So when you listen to albums like these in context, just know that these aren’t records that are supposed to be listened to as the next pop marvel or something. More often than not, these artists were pissed off about their place in the world and figured that it would be better to just avoid the spotlight completely. Some may have worked and some might not have, but even if these musicians are famous today, they still did it on their own terms.

One of the common problems that come with fame is people thinking that it's going to cure a lot of the problems that you have. When you're a starry eyed kid without a penny to your name, the idea of going around the world playing music may seem like the greatest thing in the world. When Trent Reznor came up for air during the peak of Nine Inch Nails though, he seemed to feel almost more alone than he did before.

After combing through the most toxic parts of his personality on The Downward Spiral, the next few years would be even more hectic for Trent, from producing even more industrial music with acts like Marilyn Manson to putting out the album the Fragile, which continued on the hedonistic streak of Spiral while also playing him up as the rich rock star who finally managed to conquer the world. Things seemed to be looking up for Trent commercially, but this was also the time where he decided to cut and run.

Although Nine Inch Nails never really broke up, the next few years saw Trent doing everything else but work with his band, almost trying to make himself invisible by doing different side projects like the Quake soundtrack before finding a calling in films later down the line when he scored motion pictures like the Social Network. While With Teeth was the return to form that most Nine Inch Nails fans had been waiting for in the mid '00s, the character of Mr. Self Destruct that we had met covered in mud during Woodstock 1994 was officially dead and gone.