10 Rock Bands Who Never Topped Their First Album
The impeccable debut album. You've never had a first time quite like this.
Long has rock music reigned, and long may it continue. Over the 60+ years since its invention, rock has come a long way as a genre, expanding in all directions and delivering us sights, sounds and a series of musical idols we could never even have conceived of otherwise. But the music industry is a tough and fickle place for a bushy-tailed young rock star. Artists come and they go, some with only one or two records in the bag, some without ever making a name for themselves at all.
That's not the case for this lot, however.
Each of these acts stuck it out for the long-haul, putting in the work, cranking out the albums, and yet somehow none of them managed to top the ear-stroking synchronicity of their first release. Whether there was something unique about those early days, whether they created a whole new genre (and who can do that twice?!), or whether the gold dust of a perfect album was just too difficult to obtain a second time round, none of them have ever topped their debut release.
Killers, Strokes and Velvet Undergrounds -- they come in every shape and size, but all with one thing in common...
10. The Dead Weather - Horehound (2009)
Dean Fertita, Jack Lawrence, Alison Mosshart and Jack White came together in 2009 to form supergroup The Dead Weather, bringing with them the sounds and influences of The White Stripes, The Kills, The Raconteurs and Queens of the Stone Age.
What resulted was a bold new entry in the garage rock annals, sounding comfortably at home alongside each member's original band, while offering something new that, in many ways, broke the garage rock mould. This included the melding of Mosshart and White's performances into a frequently androgynous and multi-layered vocal, and an equal prioritisation of synthesizers and guitars, departing from the mid-heavy chug that typifies a lot of the garage genre.
Ripping, experimental and expansive, Horehound hit the ground running, making it to number six on the Billboard 200 and developing a cult following for the foursome that would see them safely through two further albums. Sea Of Cowards (2010) followed hot on its heels, and took them a place higher in the charts, but the album's sound merely felt like a continuation of their previous rather than the next big step.
Five years and various other projects followed before their third album, Dodge And Burn (2015), but the group once again failed to progress their sound, with the album feeling more strained and less original, tacking closer to the garage playbook and offering fans precious little to get excited about.