10 Underrated Albums By Legendary Rock Music Bands

It’s every band’s dream to have some of the biggest hit singles of their time, and Def Leppard were no exception. After becoming one of the kings of the ‘80s hair metal scene, they had hit a major slump once the ‘90s kicked in, not being able to compete with the likes of Soundgarden and Nirvana tearing up the charts around the same time. The tide seemed to be turning in their favor again on the album Euphoria though, but the band ended up going in too much of a mainstream direction than some fans were willing to take.

For most of X, the band actually tone down the distortion and spend the majority of the album doing straight pop tunes, which alienated almost every single fan who got into the band because of songs like Photograph and Rock of Ages. For a group of guys that were trying their hand at pop music though, these are some pretty damn good pop tunes for the time. Working with outside songwriters and not having Mutt Lange in the studio to help them anymore, it sounds like the band at least has an understanding of how to create that kind of pop that the ‘00s was known for, having a certain sheen that had been missing from their past few records.

Outside of just the genre shift though, the ballads are still some of the greatest parts of the record, like the song Unbelievable and Long Long Way To Go actually having a fair bit of power behind them, along with those impressive Leppard harmonies. There’s definitely a bit of an adjustment period to listening to an album like this, but Leppard had been doing this for longer than most other mainstream bands, and this transition was miles better than what their peers like Aerosmith were doing around the same time.