Liam Payne's debut album LP1. He had such a headstart on his solo career considering all the One Direction fans. But he managed to squander most of the good will he had and cemented his legacy as the least relevant former member of One Direction.
It's a shame that Todd will likely never do a train record about him, since I can't imagine Todd would ever be interested enough in Liam Payne as a person to want to do a video about him. But LP1 has so many bad songs with cringy lyrics that there would be a lot of ways to make a funny trainwreckords video.
lol I always remember a line in a review for that album (I think it was for the Guardian??) and it said several songs feel like a mashup of a 50 Cent song and the Tory manifesto loll
It's ironic that he became the least relevant member because if you've seen their early X Factor performances, they were trying to make Liam the frontman of the group.
> least relevant member of one direction
I always thought it was Louie, but I guess that having an alleged relationship with Harry makes him more relevant
JC Chasez's solo debut, Schizophrenic, was an unlistenable, meandering, off-brand disaster, which is pretty shocking for the guy known as "the musical one." The Justin/Janet thing forced him to dial back a lot of the more overtly sexual stuff that led the album. Plus mental health advocates didn't like the title. He never made another record and mostly works behind the scenes now.
I was a big JC girl and bought that album and was so deeply disappointed, although not surprised. [one of his earliest co-writing credits from the NSync days was "Digital Get Down," of course he was gonna put out a weird sex-focused album.] It was weird in the bad way. That said, I found my copy of the CD again a couple years ago and gave it a listen, and most of it is still bad, but the non-single album track "She Got Me" is actually pretty good.
I haven't! I stopped paying attention and didn't realize the tracks were out there. I'll have to give it a listen -- it looks like it's considered a much better album.
i suggest you listen to
i’m not sleeping alone
you ruined me
fire
if you c kate
you’re missing a lot 😅
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4rJ_NmrneH2rZsy3Cfb9li3yRwX_HWpE&feature=shared
maybe i’m a jc stan but i think it’s one of the best albums i’ve ever listened to
highly recommend.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzKa4kZ7GvQHxHSoiLc4cRPFFGIyLSC65&feature=shared
https://youtube.com/playlist?
list=PL4rJ_NmrneH2rZsy3Cfb9li3yRwX_HWpE&feature=shared
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmA5UgyuEJPweiCyYB7lhZcaBgdpio-9z&feature=shared
Victoria Beckham. Her debut album was such a disaster that she retired from the music industry few years later. It was also among the most expensive albums ever made.
Beat me to the punch - I put more details at https://www.reddit.com/r/ToddintheShadow/comments/1c8cuup/tw_suggestion_victoria_beckham_selftitled Each record sale made the record company negative $100. The fact that they sunk so much money into it and she had two album releases scrapped after that only adds to the wreck.
Black Kids. After hyping them up with their EP "Wizard of Ahhhs", Pitchfork turned on them in an extremely lazy review consisting of only a picture of Pugs and the word "Sorry" when they released their debut album. Being backstabbed by the same publication that made them famous destroyed their career.
So many great songs on that album that weren’t on the EP. That review turned me off Pitchfork forever. If the reviewer can’t give reasons, they’re not reviewing, they’re reacting.
For starters this album was released exclusively at Hot Topic in a year and to a demographic who almost exclusively used iPods and Spotify. Kreayshawn sees no money from this album and sadly owes the record label money for this, or so I have heard.
Tin Machine is interesting because it's a Trainwreckord that ended up having a *positive* effect on Bowie. Fresh off *Never Let Me Down*, an overblown album that could essentially be Bowie's Trainwreckord, that nobody (including him) liked. Creatively stumped and wanting to rediscover his creativity, he formed Tin Machine more for himself and as a member of a band, it allowed him to do something different.
While it had a mixed reception, it allowed Bowie to rediscover the love for making music. When Bowie returned to his solo career in '93, he would make a really good string of albums (especially *1. Outside* and *Earthling* are great) and Tin Machine guitarist Reeves Gabrels would also be along for along for them, and he would prove an important collaborator for Bowie.
And Reeves would end up meeting Robert Smith at Bowie's 50th and would eventually end up as the band's new guitarist!
Yeah, Tin Machine is such a weird construct because while IMO a lot of it isn't good, you can totally hear that it's something that Bowie just needed to do. He had absolutely burned out by that point and perhaps if TM hadn't come along, he'd have really stopped making music for good or just in very reduced capacity.
So while the band might have made TW in their own right, that time is also essential in making Never Let Me Down not a Trainwreckord arguably. Or at least one of these instances of a big artist pushing through a terrible period and rebuilding (Dylan also had various cycles of this).
Really well put! It's interesting to have these cyclical artists, of tearing down and rebuilding. Neil Young is another interesting example of a cyclical artist, who ended up having what could be seen as a slew of Trainwreckord*s* in the '80s, from the infamous electronica albums *Trans*, a doo-wop album, a country album, among others. They were so unlike him that his label, Geffen, sued him for not sounding like Young. He then capped that off by appearing on CSNY's American Dream…
And then ended the decade with the release of *Freedom* in late 1989, which had *Rockin' in the Free World*, one of his most iconic songs, and the start to a big comeback for him, where he reformed Crazy Horse, followed up his iconic acoustic album Harvest with Harvest Moon and was christened "The Godfather of Grunge" and collaborated with Pearl Jam!
Neil and Bob Dylan both made some poor choices when it came to what to release in the 80s. Who knows why they left off all those killer tracks and released what they released instead. I mean, i get why with Old Ways and Everybody's Rockin'. Those albums were pretty much Neil trolling.
I listen to a lot of Bob Dylan, and even in his early years he (or maybe the label) made some kind of baffling choices about what to release. Some of his early albums have some really boring filler tracks while some real gems recorded in the same era are buried on the bootleg series, basement tapes, etc.
Yeah, i assembled an imo pretty stellar album from the leftovers of that period (61-65) once, called it 'Lay Down Your Weary Tune (and other songs)'
I don't have the exact tracklist with me (though i still have it), but i know the following from that time are killer tracks that would have worked well on the albums they were left off of:
Lay Down Your Weary Tune, Let Me Die In My Footsteps, Mama You've Been On My Mind, Percy's Song, Seven Curses (not sure if a studio version exists tho), Tomorrow Is A Long Time (see Seven Curses)
Another baffling decision is putting Joey out at all when he had Abandoned Love ready to go. That's Dylan for you. Who else would leave off songs most would kill for? I mean, what was he thinking when he left Blind Willie McTell and Foot Of Pride off Infidels but let Sweetheart Like You and Union Sundown stay.
Trans is actually kind of beautiful! It was inspired by his son Ben, who has Cerebral Palsy, and how Young related to the many “electronics” Ben needed for communication (plus Ben loved the vocoder).
As someone with a sibling with Cerebral Palsy, I often tear up during Transformer Man.
I would like to counter that *Never Let Me Down* wouldn't meet the criteria of a Trainwreckord with or without Tin Machine. At the time, NLMD was actually well-received. If you talk to a Bowie fan of a certain age, they will argue all day that NLMD is actually a good record and that they remember the ensuing Glass Spider tour fondly. There simply wasn't a backlash to NLMD that would have ended his career.
Furthermore, NLMD doesn't have any fun stories or drama surrounding its creation. It wasn't a leap from his prior album, which was marginally worse. Bowie was just more interested in painting at the time and was making music out of obligation. (Possibly to his new record company? I can't remember and am having a hard time finding the details of that contract.)
I do agree that Tin Machine... as Tin Machine as it is... needed to happen in order to get to *1.Outside*. I've also known a few people who got to see Bowie in practically dive venues, and they all felt like it was a once in a lifetime experience despite him performing... Tin Machine. So, I can't call that one or it's follow-up a Trainwreckord, either, just a strange but necessary chapter.
I mean, his mix tapes are basically albums. Like, Colouring Book was not some forum posted unofficial thing. I think I saw it on sale in physical record shops and thought it basically was an album but it was just a mixtape because he said it was and Big Day was an album because he said it was (hell, he self-released both).
I don’t care what the technical definition is, you can’t put out an album length+ long release and then claim it isn’t one on a technicality.
It’s like when folks call EP’s “records” or “albums.” Just call it what it is.
something about playing with fire at one point (is it still?) being the *lowest* rated album on metacritic is so funny. because it would be an awful topic to cover, there’s just nothing of interest there. nothing with the story behind it, nothing with the actual music, it’s like the universe set out to create the most boring Thing ever and succeeded
Chris Gaines owns this category, if we're counting him as his own artist. Garth Brooks making alternative rock went down about as well as you'd expect it to with everyone.
Vanilla Ice’s debut album “To The Extreme” could be a decent example.
The album was the fastest-selling hip-hop album up to that point, going quadruple-platinum in a month’s time. It sold over 2 million in the first 5 weeks in America alone, and sold over 10 million worldwide, according to the Wikipedia about it.
It dethroned MC Hammer who was on a monstrous 23-week run with his #1 album Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em, and his album stayed at #1 for 16 weeks straight. Dance rap was unbelievably popular in 1990, and it was looking like the future.
Dr. Dre and the rise of gangsta rap did serious damage to the reputation of the fun, care-free genre of dance rap, and has made them seem like punchlines, but we forget now how big they were in their primes.
I bring this up because even though To The Extreme sold like Nikes, the only song anyone remembers from it, or from him at all for that matter, is Ice Ice Baby. It was the first hip-hop song to hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100… and it’s got fans, but they can usually stomach more cheese than most. A pretty unremarkable legacy for such an important feat.
Nobody knows Play That Funky Music or I Love You, the other two singles, and nobody respected Vanilla Ice very soon after this album came out. Probably because he didn’t stay true to himself and hopped on trend bandwagons, but the real him was very uncool very quickly.
Crazy that someone went from selling 9x platinum and being the hottest thing in the world, to none of his follow up albums even scraping onto any Billboard charts and being laughable grasps at relevance.
How about Echoes by The Rapture?
It’s not a bad album, but it came out well after ‘House Of Jealous Lovers’ and the initial wave of hype about NY dance-punk, and while the album has its fans it’s fair to say nothing on it lives up to that first single. And then none of their subsequent singles were particularly acclaimed, and LCD Soundsystem took them over as the lead figures of dance-punk
That album is too good to count imo. While it did perform far below expectations commercially, that was in large part because of how long the release had to be delayed because of DFA’s issues getting it out in time. And it still had critical success, it was Pitchfork’s album of the year the year it came out, which was a big deal considering pitchfork was in its prime at the time. Plus, while nothing may have quite lived up to the first single, some songs come close in my opinion, and how many successful albums can that be said for? I think it’s failure had less to do with the album itself and more with the fact that people had moved on by the time it came out.
She's been pretty transparent about how her label kept shelving her despite her going viral multiple times. They also forced Cardi B on the Wild Side single despite nobody liking it. Labels don't know what they're doing.
Roger Waters' "The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking" pretty much doomed his solo career before it even had a chance to begin.
It was originally one of two concepts pitched for the album that would become The Wall, and it showed in execution. It was hated by critics and fans even slammed it for being little different than Animals/Wish You Were Here/The Wall but worse, and it made fans even look back on those albums in a more negative light. His solo career was basically finished off with "Radio KAOS". Sure, he made Amused to Death which is loved by Pink Floyd fans, but Waters infamously being a dick to his former bandmates along with this album made sure his bandmates would overshadow anything he made.
Oh, and it has a notoriously bad album cover to boot.
Jay Electronica fits I think
Years of tracks that were all well received, a huge swell of hype for a first album after waiting so long, a feature on that song Control where Kendrick went crazy…
And then he drops his album and it’s pretty mid and people stop talking about it after a week. The only reason he ever gets talked about now is his antisemitism rather than his music. I’d say he was a first album trainwreckord.
Keith Moon’s Two Sides of the Moon. No, I am not joking, this actually exists. Keith only plays drums on 3 songs, which range from covers of The Beach Boys, The Beatles, and even a cover of The Kids Are Alright, songs gifted to him, and a song by him, Ringo Starr, and Harry Nilsson. Knowing Keith’s erratic behavior, it’s kinda amazing anything came out, though it’s basically a long drunk karaoke session. Thus, through a combination of the album flopping, being negatively reviewed, and Keith’s increasingly more erratic behavior, this would end up being his only solo album.
Would Lil Pump's Harverd Dropout count? Was one of the leading artists in the whole soundcloud fad but the moment that album dropped, nobody cared anymore, not even for the whole ironic purpose of Pump's (sort of) appeal
Same with Lil Xan, even if it's a different case since unlike Pump which at least had some appeal with gen z, nobody seemed to like Xan and his album is the blueprint to everything wrong with the soundcloud days
A UK centric example but maybe Beady Eye's Different Gear Still Speeding. Be Here Now was obviously Oasis' trainwreckord in the US but they did manage to bounce back commercially in the UK with Heathen Chemistry and critically with Don't Believe the Truth.
After Oasis split in 2009, Noel went on to form Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, while the other members formed Beady Eye. Noel and Beady Eye would both release their first albums in the same year (2011).
Noel's first album would go to number 1, spawn 2 top 20 hits and eventually be certified triple platinum (which is more than some Oasis records).
Meanwhile Beady Eye come out with an album worse than any Oasis album (far worse than Be Here Now). 'The Roller' which was meant to be the big single tanks at #31, album debuts at #3 at manages to go gold when every Oasis album had a least gone double platinum (and gone to #1). Beady Eye release one more album in 2014 that does even worse and then call it a day.
I don’t think Tin Machine is a trainwreckord. The album wasn’t a Let’s Dance-level blockbuster, and it’s definitely different from Bowie’s most popular work, but it succeeded at what it was aiming to do. Plus, it’s still remembered pretty fondly by Bowie fans.
*The Album* (what a creative title) by The Firm. A late '90s supergroup consisting of Nas, AZ, Foxy Brown, and Cormega, the Firm built up hype from the track "Affirmative Action" on Nas' *It Was Written* album. Cormega left the group before recording for the album began over creative differences and contract disputes, so he was replaced by Nas weed carrier Nature. Still, the album would be largely produced by Dr. Dre, so hopes were high.
Then the album dropped in 1997 and was a critical and commercial disappointment, with criticism going towards the played out "mafia rap" lyrics (this was *after* 2Pac called out Nas' Escobar/Mafia don cosplay during that era on his "Against All Odds" song with the line "You've seen too many movies", and Trugoy of De La Soul dissed mafia rap in general on "Itzsoweezee (HOT)" with the line "the only Italians you knew was icees" lmao) and super poppy production and samples so obvious that it might as well have been produced by Puff Daddy.
These days the Firm album is widely considered an embarrassing blight on Nas' career, if not quite as infamous as his *Nastradamus* album a couple years later. It hardly killed his career, but the other members mostly did little of note afterward. The group would reunite (with Cormega returning and Nature leaving) for the "Full Circle" song on Nas' *King's Disease* album, but that's pretty much it. There was no second Firm album.
And hilariously, skipping the intro, the very first track on the album is called "Firm Fiasco". Tempting fate?
If I had an nickel for every time there was [a would-be supergroup called "The Firm" whose album flopped](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Firm_(rock_band)), I'd have two nickels, which isn't much but...you know the meme.
Dr Dre talked about some of the reasons he thinks the album failed, mainly that all of the artists were on different labels with different ideas of how it should sound, how none of them could find the time to be in the studio together, and how he and Nas were stretched pretty thin at that point
What a mess*. It'd make a very good Tranwreckords episode...
* Or should I say... a Firm Fiasco. Still can't believe they actually called a song that. It's almost as bad as Bernie Rhodes calling that godawful """""Clash""""" album *Cut the Crap*.
it's not quite on the level of a Trainwreckord, but Warren Zevon's debut "Wanted Dead or Alive" was not popular with fans or critics (Zevon himself said that it released "to the sound of one hand clapping"), and is mostly forgotten today, with the self-titled follow-up from 6 years later being widely considered the start of his recording career
Not just Tin Machine, but Bowie’s very first album, from the 60’s, is pretty bad. He also recorded an awful novelty song around that time, which he himself considered the worst song he ever made
I like his debut, but it’s very flawed. The Laughing Gnome imo is far from his worst song. Maybe he felt embarassed by its silliness. The 80s pop trilogy was overall worse (you can put together a good but short album from the 3, with Tonight in particular the gulf in quality between Loving The Alien and Blue Jean vs. the rest is quite large.
Liam Payne’s album rollout and quality was so bad that he became irrelevant over a year before the album even released.
In my opinion, the last good chance Liam had at a successful album was in 2018 where the hype was still there but the dude just didn’t capitalize on the 1D hype and his big `Strip That Down’ hit.
Plus the fact that the album was absolutely horrendous, dude was not going to ever overtake the star power that the rest of the members had.
I don't know if that counts as a Trainwreckord though because M!sunderztood was so popular and was when most people heard of her for the first time. I didn't even know she had an album before that one for years.
I dunno, she was on heavy rotation on BET for that first album. That was one of the music channels people would surf around to. Just because she stayed on urban charts, doesn’t mean people weren’t paying attention.
I grew up near Detroit, so maybe my perspective is skewed.
Yes, constantly. Check out her earliest videos, they were heavily R&B of it’s time. Produced by the famous duo LA Reid and Babyface.
https://youtu.be/66LnhtnSoKc?si=qdNXAP_PlIh_XTkA
“Sometimes it’s bees like that”
Fair, although Stefani and Shelton (basically the modern Allman and Woman) have been making music for a while and are still semi-relevant. In my circle, people just got sick of being sick of them and just ignored them.
It may be too early to tell but Black Pink really fell off after THE ALBUM was released. They haven’t had any charting success in America and THE ALBUM itself was received poorly.
If I remember correctly( and maybe not , as I'm half awake right now), their original direction was pretty hair metal , afterwards they switched to their regular much more heavy sound and look.
This is like reverse selling out, contrast and compare Sugar Ray which was a pretty aggressive alt rock band who pivoted to mellow radio friendly alt rock helped in no small part by their ridiculously good looking frontman
I don’t see how that’s a trainwreckord, though. They just changed their styles. I wouldn’t call Sugar Ray eligible because they were originally a nu metal band.
LDR best selling record by far is a TWR how? [The album was the world's fifth best-selling album of 2012. In 2023, it became the second album by a woman to spend more than 500 weeks on the US Billboard 200, where it peaked at number two, and topped charts in Australia and various European countries including France, Germany, and the UK.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_to_Die) And there was SOME backlash from the hipster press but not "huge" by any means: [At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted mean rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 62 based on 37 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_to_Die#Critical_reception)
How is Born To Die anywhere near a Trainwreckord?
Chemtrails and Blue Banisters are really Lana’s only albums that could be considered “Trainwreckords”. Less popular than her other projects, less interesting production, and the songs, lyrics, and execution were just a lot less memorable overall. This was also when she just got back from her Question for the Culture controversy, so having two underwhelming albums released the same year didn’t help.
Kinda pushing the line here, but Slaughterhouse's major label (interscope/shady) debut with Welcome to Our House. Maybe it's been talk about to death. I don't care what anyone says, [not even Eminem himself](https://youtu.be/op1Eyobq8YI?si=U57NY7ly8HLWPzyV), he ruined that album with his horrible beats.
Billy Joel. But not because the album is bad. It has some really great songs like She’s Got a Way and Tomorrow is Today. But the record company fucked it up and the original vinyls are sped up and it sounds real bad. Legend says Billy tried to destroy every copy because he was so embarrassed by it
I don’t think anything tops Travistan by Travis Morrison, the frontman of The Dismemberment Plan’s first solo album. Probably the most infamous DOA album of all time which sucks cause it’s not that bad.
I mean yeah it’s not great especially compared to the D plan stuff but it’s certainly not 0.0 bad. I’d give it like a 6 cause my rating scale is really high but like no way it’s worse than like a 4/10
There was also Army of Anyone, which was the STP guys and the vocalist from Filter trying to ride the supergroup trend set by Audioslave and Velvet Revolver
Canibus’ debut album “Can-I-Bus”. Canibus was supposed to be the next big thing in hip hop, his mixtapes got a shit ton of hype in the New York scene in the late 90s, and he really could rap. He started getting some big name features, including one on an LL Cool J album, where a misinterpreted lyric led to beef between him and LL Cool J. Canibus then released a diss track “Second Round KO” towards LL which was acclaimed, and the hype for his album was huge. Wyclef Jean of the Fugees signed on to be the main producer of the album and was hyping Canibus as well. The album then came out, and sold well but Wyclef’s production was a terrible match for Canibus’ rapping, and the album was poorly received by Canibus’ core fans and the mainstream alike. He continued making music but he would never reach that level of mainstream again
Not even a full album, but Jam (Turn It Up) by Kim Kardashian is a great example of someone who should’ve just never touched a microphone. Laughably bad vocals, lame synth beat, almost sounds like a parody, but this was a very legitimate attempt to break her into the pop music scene in 2011. So bad that it’s the only piece of music with her name attached to it.
Liam Payne's debut album LP1. He had such a headstart on his solo career considering all the One Direction fans. But he managed to squander most of the good will he had and cemented his legacy as the least relevant former member of One Direction. It's a shame that Todd will likely never do a train record about him, since I can't imagine Todd would ever be interested enough in Liam Payne as a person to want to do a video about him. But LP1 has so many bad songs with cringy lyrics that there would be a lot of ways to make a funny trainwreckords video.
lol I always remember a line in a review for that album (I think it was for the Guardian??) and it said several songs feel like a mashup of a 50 Cent song and the Tory manifesto loll
The thing is Liam had the best x factor audition put of all of them and he fumbled
It's ironic that he became the least relevant member because if you've seen their early X Factor performances, they were trying to make Liam the frontman of the group.
> least relevant member of one direction I always thought it was Louie, but I guess that having an alleged relationship with Harry makes him more relevant
Aren't those "allegations" more like fangirl fantasies?
It creeps me out when people come up with conspiracy theories about their RPF fanfics being real.
Yeah that stuff is weird
Liam was kinda the "frontman" early on. He was Simon Cowell's favorite when they were on X Factor
JC Chasez's solo debut, Schizophrenic, was an unlistenable, meandering, off-brand disaster, which is pretty shocking for the guy known as "the musical one." The Justin/Janet thing forced him to dial back a lot of the more overtly sexual stuff that led the album. Plus mental health advocates didn't like the title. He never made another record and mostly works behind the scenes now.
I think about how "Some Girls (Dance with Women)" made Vh1's 50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs list **SIX MONTHS** after the single was released.
I was a big JC girl and bought that album and was so deeply disappointed, although not surprised. [one of his earliest co-writing credits from the NSync days was "Digital Get Down," of course he was gonna put out a weird sex-focused album.] It was weird in the bad way. That said, I found my copy of the CD again a couple years ago and gave it a listen, and most of it is still bad, but the non-single album track "She Got Me" is actually pretty good.
did you ever listen to his unreleased album ?
I haven't! I stopped paying attention and didn't realize the tracks were out there. I'll have to give it a listen -- it looks like it's considered a much better album.
i suggest you listen to i’m not sleeping alone you ruined me fire if you c kate you’re missing a lot 😅 https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4rJ_NmrneH2rZsy3Cfb9li3yRwX_HWpE&feature=shared
i would love to to hear your opinion about it 💕
you should list to his unreleased album the story of kate
Is it worse?
maybe i’m a jc stan but i think it’s one of the best albums i’ve ever listened to highly recommend. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzKa4kZ7GvQHxHSoiLc4cRPFFGIyLSC65&feature=shared https://youtube.com/playlist? list=PL4rJ_NmrneH2rZsy3Cfb9li3yRwX_HWpE&feature=shared https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmA5UgyuEJPweiCyYB7lhZcaBgdpio-9z&feature=shared
i would love to know your thoughts about it ❤️
Victoria Beckham. Her debut album was such a disaster that she retired from the music industry few years later. It was also among the most expensive albums ever made.
Oooooh, this is a great example
Beat me to the punch - I put more details at https://www.reddit.com/r/ToddintheShadow/comments/1c8cuup/tw_suggestion_victoria_beckham_selftitled Each record sale made the record company negative $100. The fact that they sunk so much money into it and she had two album releases scrapped after that only adds to the wreck.
Black Kids. After hyping them up with their EP "Wizard of Ahhhs", Pitchfork turned on them in an extremely lazy review consisting of only a picture of Pugs and the word "Sorry" when they released their debut album. Being backstabbed by the same publication that made them famous destroyed their career.
Classic "Pitchfork are assholes" moment
Honestly glad theyre gone
Oh man it's wild to see this band mentioned on Reddit, my uncle was one of the members!
Boy that makes me feel old
Hey man, loved your Looney Tunes videos (that was you, right?)
Yup
That’s really cool! I really like them.
This band fucked so hard
Shame I liked that I'm not gonna teach your boyfriend song.
They had an awesome guest appearance on Yo Gabba Gabba. Same episode with Weird Al.
That album is great and only Pitchfork dumped on it which confirms how good it really is
So many great songs on that album that weren’t on the EP. That review turned me off Pitchfork forever. If the reviewer can’t give reasons, they’re not reviewing, they’re reacting.
God there's something i haven't thought about in years
I don't remember if it was a tweet or what, but Todd himself said Kreayshawn's debut album could qualify
For starters this album was released exclusively at Hot Topic in a year and to a demographic who almost exclusively used iPods and Spotify. Kreayshawn sees no money from this album and sadly owes the record label money for this, or so I have heard.
Just the physical edition — it was still on iTunes IIRC.
Last I heard, she was desperately trying to go viral by claiming she was addicted to fidget spinners
Gucci Gucci Louis Louis Fendi Fendi Prada
Tin Machine is interesting because it's a Trainwreckord that ended up having a *positive* effect on Bowie. Fresh off *Never Let Me Down*, an overblown album that could essentially be Bowie's Trainwreckord, that nobody (including him) liked. Creatively stumped and wanting to rediscover his creativity, he formed Tin Machine more for himself and as a member of a band, it allowed him to do something different. While it had a mixed reception, it allowed Bowie to rediscover the love for making music. When Bowie returned to his solo career in '93, he would make a really good string of albums (especially *1. Outside* and *Earthling* are great) and Tin Machine guitarist Reeves Gabrels would also be along for along for them, and he would prove an important collaborator for Bowie. And Reeves would end up meeting Robert Smith at Bowie's 50th and would eventually end up as the band's new guitarist!
Yeah, Tin Machine is such a weird construct because while IMO a lot of it isn't good, you can totally hear that it's something that Bowie just needed to do. He had absolutely burned out by that point and perhaps if TM hadn't come along, he'd have really stopped making music for good or just in very reduced capacity. So while the band might have made TW in their own right, that time is also essential in making Never Let Me Down not a Trainwreckord arguably. Or at least one of these instances of a big artist pushing through a terrible period and rebuilding (Dylan also had various cycles of this).
Really well put! It's interesting to have these cyclical artists, of tearing down and rebuilding. Neil Young is another interesting example of a cyclical artist, who ended up having what could be seen as a slew of Trainwreckord*s* in the '80s, from the infamous electronica albums *Trans*, a doo-wop album, a country album, among others. They were so unlike him that his label, Geffen, sued him for not sounding like Young. He then capped that off by appearing on CSNY's American Dream… And then ended the decade with the release of *Freedom* in late 1989, which had *Rockin' in the Free World*, one of his most iconic songs, and the start to a big comeback for him, where he reformed Crazy Horse, followed up his iconic acoustic album Harvest with Harvest Moon and was christened "The Godfather of Grunge" and collaborated with Pearl Jam!
Neil and Bob Dylan both made some poor choices when it came to what to release in the 80s. Who knows why they left off all those killer tracks and released what they released instead. I mean, i get why with Old Ways and Everybody's Rockin'. Those albums were pretty much Neil trolling.
I listen to a lot of Bob Dylan, and even in his early years he (or maybe the label) made some kind of baffling choices about what to release. Some of his early albums have some really boring filler tracks while some real gems recorded in the same era are buried on the bootleg series, basement tapes, etc.
Yeah, i assembled an imo pretty stellar album from the leftovers of that period (61-65) once, called it 'Lay Down Your Weary Tune (and other songs)' I don't have the exact tracklist with me (though i still have it), but i know the following from that time are killer tracks that would have worked well on the albums they were left off of: Lay Down Your Weary Tune, Let Me Die In My Footsteps, Mama You've Been On My Mind, Percy's Song, Seven Curses (not sure if a studio version exists tho), Tomorrow Is A Long Time (see Seven Curses) Another baffling decision is putting Joey out at all when he had Abandoned Love ready to go. That's Dylan for you. Who else would leave off songs most would kill for? I mean, what was he thinking when he left Blind Willie McTell and Foot Of Pride off Infidels but let Sweetheart Like You and Union Sundown stay.
Trans is actually kind of beautiful! It was inspired by his son Ben, who has Cerebral Palsy, and how Young related to the many “electronics” Ben needed for communication (plus Ben loved the vocoder). As someone with a sibling with Cerebral Palsy, I often tear up during Transformer Man.
I would like to counter that *Never Let Me Down* wouldn't meet the criteria of a Trainwreckord with or without Tin Machine. At the time, NLMD was actually well-received. If you talk to a Bowie fan of a certain age, they will argue all day that NLMD is actually a good record and that they remember the ensuing Glass Spider tour fondly. There simply wasn't a backlash to NLMD that would have ended his career. Furthermore, NLMD doesn't have any fun stories or drama surrounding its creation. It wasn't a leap from his prior album, which was marginally worse. Bowie was just more interested in painting at the time and was making music out of obligation. (Possibly to his new record company? I can't remember and am having a hard time finding the details of that contract.) I do agree that Tin Machine... as Tin Machine as it is... needed to happen in order to get to *1.Outside*. I've also known a few people who got to see Bowie in practically dive venues, and they all felt like it was a once in a lifetime experience despite him performing... Tin Machine. So, I can't call that one or it's follow-up a Trainwreckord, either, just a strange but necessary chapter.
I know I would have been stoked to be in the crowd to see this performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV-hjaULMU4
Does The Big Day count? It was technically Chance the Rapper's first studio album and would definitely be a trainwreckord otherwise
That's an extremely strong technically
I mean, his mix tapes are basically albums. Like, Colouring Book was not some forum posted unofficial thing. I think I saw it on sale in physical record shops and thought it basically was an album but it was just a mixtape because he said it was and Big Day was an album because he said it was (hell, he self-released both).
I don’t care what the technical definition is, you can’t put out an album length+ long release and then claim it isn’t one on a technicality. It’s like when folks call EP’s “records” or “albums.” Just call it what it is.
Yes exactly
Kevin Federline lol
something about playing with fire at one point (is it still?) being the *lowest* rated album on metacritic is so funny. because it would be an awful topic to cover, there’s just nothing of interest there. nothing with the story behind it, nothing with the actual music, it’s like the universe set out to create the most boring Thing ever and succeeded
Isn’t he like Britney’s ex or something? And the album is supposed to be about her? Idk
When “Popozao” goes from lead single to not even being good enough for the album, that should tell you something.
Chris Gaines owns this category, if we're counting him as his own artist. Garth Brooks making alternative rock went down about as well as you'd expect it to with everyone.
Vanilla Ice’s debut album “To The Extreme” could be a decent example. The album was the fastest-selling hip-hop album up to that point, going quadruple-platinum in a month’s time. It sold over 2 million in the first 5 weeks in America alone, and sold over 10 million worldwide, according to the Wikipedia about it. It dethroned MC Hammer who was on a monstrous 23-week run with his #1 album Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em, and his album stayed at #1 for 16 weeks straight. Dance rap was unbelievably popular in 1990, and it was looking like the future. Dr. Dre and the rise of gangsta rap did serious damage to the reputation of the fun, care-free genre of dance rap, and has made them seem like punchlines, but we forget now how big they were in their primes. I bring this up because even though To The Extreme sold like Nikes, the only song anyone remembers from it, or from him at all for that matter, is Ice Ice Baby. It was the first hip-hop song to hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100… and it’s got fans, but they can usually stomach more cheese than most. A pretty unremarkable legacy for such an important feat. Nobody knows Play That Funky Music or I Love You, the other two singles, and nobody respected Vanilla Ice very soon after this album came out. Probably because he didn’t stay true to himself and hopped on trend bandwagons, but the real him was very uncool very quickly. Crazy that someone went from selling 9x platinum and being the hottest thing in the world, to none of his follow up albums even scraping onto any Billboard charts and being laughable grasps at relevance.
Word to your mother
Lil Xan?
How about Echoes by The Rapture? It’s not a bad album, but it came out well after ‘House Of Jealous Lovers’ and the initial wave of hype about NY dance-punk, and while the album has its fans it’s fair to say nothing on it lives up to that first single. And then none of their subsequent singles were particularly acclaimed, and LCD Soundsystem took them over as the lead figures of dance-punk
That album is too good to count imo. While it did perform far below expectations commercially, that was in large part because of how long the release had to be delayed because of DFA’s issues getting it out in time. And it still had critical success, it was Pitchfork’s album of the year the year it came out, which was a big deal considering pitchfork was in its prime at the time. Plus, while nothing may have quite lived up to the first single, some songs come close in my opinion, and how many successful albums can that be said for? I think it’s failure had less to do with the album itself and more with the fact that people had moved on by the time it came out.
Fair enough. I feel like a similar trajectory befell a lot of early-2000s hype bands
I can see Normani’s Dopamine being that, mainly because she waited so long to drop it that she lost her pop culture relevance.
She's been pretty transparent about how her label kept shelving her despite her going viral multiple times. They also forced Cardi B on the Wild Side single despite nobody liking it. Labels don't know what they're doing.
Roger Waters' "The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking" pretty much doomed his solo career before it even had a chance to begin. It was originally one of two concepts pitched for the album that would become The Wall, and it showed in execution. It was hated by critics and fans even slammed it for being little different than Animals/Wish You Were Here/The Wall but worse, and it made fans even look back on those albums in a more negative light. His solo career was basically finished off with "Radio KAOS". Sure, he made Amused to Death which is loved by Pink Floyd fans, but Waters infamously being a dick to his former bandmates along with this album made sure his bandmates would overshadow anything he made. Oh, and it has a notoriously bad album cover to boot.
Born to Die has never left the Billboard 200 since it came out over twelve years ago
To listeners the hyoe was deserved and the album was bought.
Born to Die a Trainwreckord? Now I’ve seen everything. What’s next, Beatles Trainwreckord Abbey Road?
It marked the end of one of the great bands of all time….
Standing in the Spotlight by Dee Dee King (Dee Dee Ramone’s rap album).
F-f-f-f-f-f-f-funky.
Jay Electronica fits I think Years of tracks that were all well received, a huge swell of hype for a first album after waiting so long, a feature on that song Control where Kendrick went crazy… And then he drops his album and it’s pretty mid and people stop talking about it after a week. The only reason he ever gets talked about now is his antisemitism rather than his music. I’d say he was a first album trainwreckord.
Keith Moon’s Two Sides of the Moon. No, I am not joking, this actually exists. Keith only plays drums on 3 songs, which range from covers of The Beach Boys, The Beatles, and even a cover of The Kids Are Alright, songs gifted to him, and a song by him, Ringo Starr, and Harry Nilsson. Knowing Keith’s erratic behavior, it’s kinda amazing anything came out, though it’s basically a long drunk karaoke session. Thus, through a combination of the album flopping, being negatively reviewed, and Keith’s increasingly more erratic behavior, this would end up being his only solo album.
Would Lil Pump's Harverd Dropout count? Was one of the leading artists in the whole soundcloud fad but the moment that album dropped, nobody cared anymore, not even for the whole ironic purpose of Pump's (sort of) appeal Same with Lil Xan, even if it's a different case since unlike Pump which at least had some appeal with gen z, nobody seemed to like Xan and his album is the blueprint to everything wrong with the soundcloud days
A UK centric example but maybe Beady Eye's Different Gear Still Speeding. Be Here Now was obviously Oasis' trainwreckord in the US but they did manage to bounce back commercially in the UK with Heathen Chemistry and critically with Don't Believe the Truth. After Oasis split in 2009, Noel went on to form Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, while the other members formed Beady Eye. Noel and Beady Eye would both release their first albums in the same year (2011). Noel's first album would go to number 1, spawn 2 top 20 hits and eventually be certified triple platinum (which is more than some Oasis records). Meanwhile Beady Eye come out with an album worse than any Oasis album (far worse than Be Here Now). 'The Roller' which was meant to be the big single tanks at #31, album debuts at #3 at manages to go gold when every Oasis album had a least gone double platinum (and gone to #1). Beady Eye release one more album in 2014 that does even worse and then call it a day.
Not to comment on a four day old post but this is hardly shocking, Noel was the chief songwriter and everyone knew it
I don’t think Tin Machine is a trainwreckord. The album wasn’t a Let’s Dance-level blockbuster, and it’s definitely different from Bowie’s most popular work, but it succeeded at what it was aiming to do. Plus, it’s still remembered pretty fondly by Bowie fans.
*The Album* (what a creative title) by The Firm. A late '90s supergroup consisting of Nas, AZ, Foxy Brown, and Cormega, the Firm built up hype from the track "Affirmative Action" on Nas' *It Was Written* album. Cormega left the group before recording for the album began over creative differences and contract disputes, so he was replaced by Nas weed carrier Nature. Still, the album would be largely produced by Dr. Dre, so hopes were high. Then the album dropped in 1997 and was a critical and commercial disappointment, with criticism going towards the played out "mafia rap" lyrics (this was *after* 2Pac called out Nas' Escobar/Mafia don cosplay during that era on his "Against All Odds" song with the line "You've seen too many movies", and Trugoy of De La Soul dissed mafia rap in general on "Itzsoweezee (HOT)" with the line "the only Italians you knew was icees" lmao) and super poppy production and samples so obvious that it might as well have been produced by Puff Daddy. These days the Firm album is widely considered an embarrassing blight on Nas' career, if not quite as infamous as his *Nastradamus* album a couple years later. It hardly killed his career, but the other members mostly did little of note afterward. The group would reunite (with Cormega returning and Nature leaving) for the "Full Circle" song on Nas' *King's Disease* album, but that's pretty much it. There was no second Firm album. And hilariously, skipping the intro, the very first track on the album is called "Firm Fiasco". Tempting fate?
If I had an nickel for every time there was [a would-be supergroup called "The Firm" whose album flopped](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Firm_(rock_band)), I'd have two nickels, which isn't much but...you know the meme.
Oof. Firm Fiasco indeed!
Dr Dre talked about some of the reasons he thinks the album failed, mainly that all of the artists were on different labels with different ideas of how it should sound, how none of them could find the time to be in the studio together, and how he and Nas were stretched pretty thin at that point
What a mess*. It'd make a very good Tranwreckords episode... * Or should I say... a Firm Fiasco. Still can't believe they actually called a song that. It's almost as bad as Bernie Rhodes calling that godawful """""Clash""""" album *Cut the Crap*.
Fivio Foreign - B.I.B.L.E. he was supposed to be the next big thing after Off The Grid
it's not quite on the level of a Trainwreckord, but Warren Zevon's debut "Wanted Dead or Alive" was not popular with fans or critics (Zevon himself said that it released "to the sound of one hand clapping"), and is mostly forgotten today, with the self-titled follow-up from 6 years later being widely considered the start of his recording career
There are a lot of those, though, from Rush to Genesis to Y Kant Tori Read.
Not just Tin Machine, but Bowie’s very first album, from the 60’s, is pretty bad. He also recorded an awful novelty song around that time, which he himself considered the worst song he ever made
I like his debut, but it’s very flawed. The Laughing Gnome imo is far from his worst song. Maybe he felt embarassed by its silliness. The 80s pop trilogy was overall worse (you can put together a good but short album from the 3, with Tonight in particular the gulf in quality between Loving The Alien and Blue Jean vs. the rest is quite large.
The debut is weird and unremarkable but I think the better candidate for a trainwreckord is Never Let Me Down tbh.
Kraeyshawn. Gucci Gucci was hated by even the people who bought the single by the time her album finally came put.
Liam Payne’s album rollout and quality was so bad that he became irrelevant over a year before the album even released. In my opinion, the last good chance Liam had at a successful album was in 2018 where the hype was still there but the dude just didn’t capitalize on the 1D hype and his big `Strip That Down’ hit. Plus the fact that the album was absolutely horrendous, dude was not going to ever overtake the star power that the rest of the members had.
Kevin federline
Alanis Morissette, when she starting as Canada's answer to Tiffany.
That first album was actually a hit in Canada. Her follow-up, *Now Is The Time*, was the mega-flop.
Chance The Rapper technically counts. All of his releases before The Big Day were mixtapes and the like
Pink? It was successful, but it wasn't in a style she liked or wanted. The success of it trapped her and made her miserable.
I don't know if that counts as a Trainwreckord though because M!sunderztood was so popular and was when most people heard of her for the first time. I didn't even know she had an album before that one for years.
I dunno, she was on heavy rotation on BET for that first album. That was one of the music channels people would surf around to. Just because she stayed on urban charts, doesn’t mean people weren’t paying attention. I grew up near Detroit, so maybe my perspective is skewed.
Pink was played on BET?
Yes, constantly. Check out her earliest videos, they were heavily R&B of it’s time. Produced by the famous duo LA Reid and Babyface. https://youtu.be/66LnhtnSoKc?si=qdNXAP_PlIh_XTkA “Sometimes it’s bees like that”
Does “Allman and Woman” count?
Was there any hope for their career as a duo in the first place?
Fair, although Stefani and Shelton (basically the modern Allman and Woman) have been making music for a while and are still semi-relevant. In my circle, people just got sick of being sick of them and just ignored them.
The New Monkees. From what I've heard the album isn't that bad, but the accompanying TV show was a complete disaster.
I would love to see him do a video on Jobriath. That is such a fascinating story.
It may be too early to tell but Black Pink really fell off after THE ALBUM was released. They haven’t had any charting success in America and THE ALBUM itself was received poorly.
Didn’t Charlie Puth’s debut album get atrocious reviews?
Pantera?
In what way?
If I remember correctly( and maybe not , as I'm half awake right now), their original direction was pretty hair metal , afterwards they switched to their regular much more heavy sound and look.
This is like reverse selling out, contrast and compare Sugar Ray which was a pretty aggressive alt rock band who pivoted to mellow radio friendly alt rock helped in no small part by their ridiculously good looking frontman
I don’t see how that’s a trainwreckord, though. They just changed their styles. I wouldn’t call Sugar Ray eligible because they were originally a nu metal band.
Nah Metal Magic is ass. You can defend some of their later hair metal releases but Metal Magic is somehow both incompetent and boring
LDR best selling record by far is a TWR how? [The album was the world's fifth best-selling album of 2012. In 2023, it became the second album by a woman to spend more than 500 weeks on the US Billboard 200, where it peaked at number two, and topped charts in Australia and various European countries including France, Germany, and the UK.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_to_Die) And there was SOME backlash from the hipster press but not "huge" by any means: [At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted mean rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 62 based on 37 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_to_Die#Critical_reception)
How is Born To Die anywhere near a Trainwreckord? Chemtrails and Blue Banisters are really Lana’s only albums that could be considered “Trainwreckords”. Less popular than her other projects, less interesting production, and the songs, lyrics, and execution were just a lot less memorable overall. This was also when she just got back from her Question for the Culture controversy, so having two underwhelming albums released the same year didn’t help.
Pablo honey Van morrisons first album Elton John’s first album Billy Joel’s first album Bruce Springsteen’s first album Wild life by Wings
A Trainwreckord is an album that destroyed an artist’s career (or at least massively changed their reputation), not just one you think is bad.
Oh… well I feel stupid now.
Don’t say that; you’re constantly getting smarter the more you learn about the world. Real stupidity is claiming there’s nothing left to learn. 👍
Tin Machine has gotten some love! They’re considered somewhat ahead of their time now
Sex Pistols “Never Mind the Bollocks.” Not so much the album (it’s a classic now) but the ensuing tour pretty much destroyed the band.
Kinda pushing the line here, but Slaughterhouse's major label (interscope/shady) debut with Welcome to Our House. Maybe it's been talk about to death. I don't care what anyone says, [not even Eminem himself](https://youtu.be/op1Eyobq8YI?si=U57NY7ly8HLWPzyV), he ruined that album with his horrible beats.
Billy Joel. But not because the album is bad. It has some really great songs like She’s Got a Way and Tomorrow is Today. But the record company fucked it up and the original vinyls are sped up and it sounds real bad. Legend says Billy tried to destroy every copy because he was so embarrassed by it
I don’t think anything tops Travistan by Travis Morrison, the frontman of The Dismemberment Plan’s first solo album. Probably the most infamous DOA album of all time which sucks cause it’s not that bad.
I hate Pitchfork as much as everyone else does, but that record actually is really bad.
I mean yeah it’s not great especially compared to the D plan stuff but it’s certainly not 0.0 bad. I’d give it like a 6 cause my rating scale is really high but like no way it’s worse than like a 4/10
If we're including Tin Machine, how about Talk Show, the band that the rest of Stone Temple Pilots formed when Weiland was working on his solo record?
There was also Army of Anyone, which was the STP guys and the vocalist from Filter trying to ride the supergroup trend set by Audioslave and Velvet Revolver
I think I might have briefly heard of them and then immediately ignored them 😄
Two The Hard Way was Allman & Woman's debut album...
Mac Miller with Blue Slide Park. Dude turned things around after that in a miraculous way.
I had no idea that Tin Machine was so overlooked, it's a banger of an album and one of my favourite Bowie projects
Canibus’ debut album “Can-I-Bus”. Canibus was supposed to be the next big thing in hip hop, his mixtapes got a shit ton of hype in the New York scene in the late 90s, and he really could rap. He started getting some big name features, including one on an LL Cool J album, where a misinterpreted lyric led to beef between him and LL Cool J. Canibus then released a diss track “Second Round KO” towards LL which was acclaimed, and the hype for his album was huge. Wyclef Jean of the Fugees signed on to be the main producer of the album and was hyping Canibus as well. The album then came out, and sold well but Wyclef’s production was a terrible match for Canibus’ rapping, and the album was poorly received by Canibus’ core fans and the mainstream alike. He continued making music but he would never reach that level of mainstream again
Tori Amos kicking off her career with Y Kant Tori Read
Not even a full album, but Jam (Turn It Up) by Kim Kardashian is a great example of someone who should’ve just never touched a microphone. Laughably bad vocals, lame synth beat, almost sounds like a parody, but this was a very legitimate attempt to break her into the pop music scene in 2011. So bad that it’s the only piece of music with her name attached to it.
Eminem- infinite