Difficult Second Album Syndrome

The popular meme is that the second album is the hardest one for a band to make. It's said that they have umpteen years to write the first one, and then must write the second from scratch in the space of a few months.

I've always been sceptical of this meme; looking at most of the great bands in rock history; those who have successful multi-album careers, in almost all cases the second album is stronger than the debut. Compare Led Zeppelin II with their first one, for example.

I think the survival of the meme is a consequence of the media's and record industry's habit of over-hyping bands of limited talent. Most of them only have one album's worth of ideas. Their first album contains not only all they can do, but all they will ever be capable of. Their second merely proves this, and in most cases there's never a third; the record company drops them, and they all get jobs as accountants.

I have long believed the music press do this on purpose; since they depend on breaking new 'talent' rather the writing about established artists who have better things to do that talk to some talentless hack. So they deliberately hype bands they know will have no staying power, and will safely fade away to make way for whoever they hype next week

Posted by TimHall at March 13, 2005 07:22 PM | TrackBack

Comments

Interesting comment re: music journalists and why they are so focused on new talent, and so down on the second album.

On a slightly similar note, had a major row with most of the Irish ones (rock journalists - there are only about five of them and my brother used to be one)last week at the Mercury Rev gig. They were being all sniffy - the Rev haven't really performed well since Deserter's Songs, etc, etc - but when we got down to it, they didn't like the new album because it was too happy!?! And of course, if you're a rock journalist, you are almost by default a miseryguts. And then they didn't like the gig because it was 'too slick'!!

Pshawh!

Posted by: Queenie on March 16, 2005 05:14 PM


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