10 Rock Bands That Only Have One Bad Album
1. Guns N Roses
Bad Album: Chinese Democracy
The fallout of Guns N Roses in the mid '90s felt like the stuff of rock and roll folklore. After the massive tour cycle for Use Your Illusion cost the group two band members and Axl Rose's sanity, most of their covers album the Spaghetti Incident? was a feeble attempt to sooth things over before the next record started. Once Slash and Duff McKagan left, fans waited and waited until we finally got Chinese Democracy in 2008.
As it stands, this album was pretty much slated to fail right out of the gate, given that the anticipation period ran almost 14 years. On the surface though, there's nothing too wrong with the actual construction of the songs. Being primarily written by Rose, most of this record is just a revolving door of musicians doing their best to cater to Axl's ego, which makes for some musical trainwrecks on songs like Sorry and Scraped. Even though some tracks like Shackler's Revenge and This I Love still sound like GNR tracks, the overproduction makes them feel bloated before they are even finished.
Then again, this may have had a silver lining by actually bringing Slash and Duff back into the fold again just a few years ago. Though the core members of GNR are now accounted for, maybe it's best to leave the legacy where it is than risk going down the rabbit hole even further.